Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

PART I: No Rest For the Wicked

I. NOW:

Darkness.

It fills the totality of your vision, a black so dark that for a moment you’re sure you must still be sleeping. Must still be dreaming, of a cold, eternal void. Must still not exist? You’re not sure if you do. Perhaps Takashi Shirogane has never existed, as it were. Takashi Shirogane is only an idea. A bodiless, limitless, impotent phantom, without form or matter, drifting in the void of space. Yes, you must be some kind of sci-fi quantum ghost. That would explain why it’s so dark.

The realization that you need to breathe puts a kibosh on this theory with disappointing finality. It’s an undeniable burn through your chest, and the logic solidifies in the fire. You need to breathe, so you must have a living body. You have a living body; ergo, you must be alive.

Jesus Christ, you really need to breathe. Like, right now.

Drawing in air is like trying to expand your lungs under a ton of dirt and inside a coffin because - because that is where you are, you realize, with a horrifying certainty. You were dying bloody and scared, with Keith’s agonized face hanging above you, and then you died, and Keith must have buried you.

Keith buried you.

That thought alone is enough to send you hurtling into action. You can’t be trapped down here a moment longer; Keith needs you. Keith is somewhere up on the surface of the world, alone. You claw at the wood above you, beat your fists and forearms into the frame until the lid cracks and bitter, arid soil floods into your mouth, your nose, your eyes, almost smothering you again. Claw at the wood as it splinters apart, tearing your nails ragged, digging yourself upward with aching shoulders and leaden arms in an uphill battle that you have no hope of winning, as exhausted and trapped as you are, but giving one last push as your fingers break through into empty space -

- and a hand clasps your own. Slim fingers wrap around your palm, and by the will of an unseen strength you are hauled into the land of the living. You burst through the soil and into the clean night air, into the arms of Keith. Because of course it’s Keith who fished you out of the dark, who holds you cradled like a newborn, and who will never let you go. Of course.

“I’ve got you, I’ve got you,” he mutters. And he does. He always will. You trust in this, more than you trust gravity. More than you will ever trust yourself. Keith will always come for you, and he will always save you, no matter what.

You try to tell him this, to assuage his own overflowing fears. But your vocal chords are parched with disuse, flooded with graveyard dirt. You wheeze. Keith fusses.

“That’s it, that’s it. Easy does it.” He brushes your forelock back from your face, wiping grime from around your eyes. At his gentle ministrations, clumps of dirt break off from you, pattering to the ground in a soft rain. He’s purifying you, sanctifying you, making you clean, muddying his hands and clothing with your filth. Your darkness is going to stain him through. With what strength you have left, you try to push him away.

“Stop,” you croak.

Keith is unimpressed. He easily evades your attempts at disentanglement. He doesn’t understand. You huff in frustration, and - Jesus, are your eyes watering?

It’s the dust, you try to say. What comes out, is: “D’ Dust.”

“Yeah,” Keith says, “you’re pretty dusty, even for an old-timer. But tell you what, I got a tub back at the motel. We get you there, we’ll get you straightened out.”

That sounds good. Scratch that, that sounds amazing. You nod along to the sound of Keith’s voice, body gone limp, already forgetting why you were fighting him in the first place. It’s probably for the best. Fighting with Keith never goes well because you taught him all you know - and because he never fights fair.

Somehow, despite being half your height and bulk, he hauls you to the car. The passenger seat is a surreal heaven that envelops you, even as dirt creases into the leather. “Oh, baby,” you say mournfully. It’s the best apology you’re capable of right now. But Keith understands; of course he does.

“Don’t worry,” he says, as your eyes flutter with fatigue, “I’ll take care of the mess.” He reaches over to pat the glove compartment. “I’ve still got the polish, too.”

You smile. That’s your boy, cleaning up after you, taking on your failures as his own. All this time, and he still hasn’t changed. Goddamn him. How you wish that he would. In just this one small thing, that’s all you ask. What you wouldn’t give…

Somewhere along the road to the motel, you must fall asleep, because your memory ends and the world goes dark. Your sleep is empty and featureless, like death, like hell. It will be years before you sleep so peacefully again.

***

When you wake up, everything in your body hurts, and that’s how you’re sure that you’re alive. You crane your neck to take in the room and find that shitty motel rooms haven’t evolved much in whatever time you’ve missed, which is a small yet nauseating comfort. The man in the room with you, on the other hand - you don’t know where to begin.

Keith is sitting on the end of the other twin bed, his colt disassembled in front of him. He cleans it with a methodicalness that borders on obsession, but you know how much the piece means to him. It was a gift, you remember, after his third real hunt. A custom M1911A1, with silver engraving down the barrel. The gun had been yours for years, and it showed, in the slight chips along it’s gold-ivory grip, but when you handed it over to Keith he took it with such a reverence that you felt immediately unworthy of his gratitude. A gratitude that persists, even now, in the way he reassembles the components with such care. A shotgun lays on the bed to his left, well within easy reach. He was keeping watch while you slept. Even at rest, Keith is always dangerous.

He doesn’t look older - not like he did when he came hurtling back into your life last year, like a comet slung out of orbit. Still that same lithe wiriness, still that same hidden strength and too youthful face. Eyes too big and open for a boy who’s seen what he’s seen, done what he’s done. He looks like a civilian, with his long braid and sharp bangs shading his eyes. But you can see he’s retained the extra muscle and height that he put on in the years you were apart. The only thing that’s changed, really, since you were last alive - well, there it is, simple as.

The man before you holds your death in his posture, in his composure. Down to his very bones. The light in his eyes, permanently dimmed, because he watched your light go out. Yet another thing you’ll have to answer for, in this new lease on life. You take a moment, behind the darkness of your lids, to make peace with the image of the boy who’s trust you betrayed. Then open your eyes again, ready to meet the man you created.

You sigh, so as not to startle him. Slowly ease yourself up into a siting position. Large flakes of caked-on dirt fall off of your bare forearms and onto the comforter.

“I guess we never made it to that bath,” you say with a grimace.

Keith snorts, despite himself. “You fell asleep. I didn’t want to drown you.” He’s put down the colt and is watching you with an intensity that unnerves you, but which you probably deserve.

“You could’ve woken me up,” you suggest lightly.

All at once, his face falls, hardened mask cracking into a thousand jagged shards.

“Of - of course, you’re right. I’m sorry, I didn’t-” He’s flustered, almost panicked. Your brain is slow on the uptake, and all too late, you realize that he must think you were dreaming.

“It’s alright,” you say, a hand up to placate him. “No harm, no foul.”

Keith still looks terribly guilty; as though he left you to be tormented by nightmares on purpose. Never mind the fact that you slept like a baby; Keith would see it as bad form if he failed to protect you from the same monster that has haunted him for years. You were always there to wake him up, to hold him, when the nightmares burned through his mind - and in that, at least, you never failed him.

“It’s alright, really,” you try again. “No dreams in sight. I slept like the dead.” Then cringe at your own stupidity.

Keith flinches, but recovers fast, letting out a shaky laugh that’s clearly forced. But the guilt never quite leaves his features. If anything, he looks more burdened with it then you’ve ever seen him before - and that includes when he desperately held you as you died.

So what else, you wonder, does he have reason to feel so guilty for? A thought is occurring to you, a terrible suspicion that is slowly simmering your blood into a high boil.

“So,” you say, “How long?”

“Uh, sorry?”

“How long was I gone?” you clarify.

“Oh. Three days to a year.”

You let out a long whistle. “Damn. Nearly had a real unique anniversary there, didn’t I?”

The scowl returns. “That’s not funny, Shiro.”

“I’m the one who went to hell,” you point out, “I’m pretty sure I’m allowed to make jokes about it if I want to.”

Predictably, Keith blows his top.

“You think this is a joke? You think you going to hell is all a big laugh?”

“No, no, I really don’t,” you say. “But you know what really does cracks me up? The fact that I am, somehow, alive once more, sprung from hell, walking the earth a free man! I really find that fucking hilarious, Keith.”

The fury has left his face. He’s unguarded, now, eyes wide. “I don’t see how that’s funny.”

“I bet you don’t,” you say, “I’ll ask you one more time, Keith: how long? How long do you have?”

“What?” Keith looks scandalized. “Shiro, do you think I made a deal to get you out of hell?”

“What else am I supposed to think?”

Keith’s face goes through a series of contortions, emotions running the gauntlet from sorrow to shame, before settling on fiery indignation.

“Well, I didn’t,” he snaps, “but I tried, alright? Early on, I tried. I went to every demon I could find, I stopped at every crossroad. No one would deal. And then, eventually - I stopped trying, but only because I saw you, Shiro. Visions of you, in the future, alive. I saw you crawl out of your grave.”

He says it so imploringly; he’s trying to ask for your forgiveness, you realize, for not making a deal, for not sacrificing himself on the altar of his devotion. In that, at least, there’s nothing to forgive.

“You saw me in a vision.” You test the idea out, see how it feels on your tongue. It’s more than plausible. Keith latches onto your tentative acceptance with renewed vigor.

“Why do you think I’m here, Shiro? Why do you think I was standing over your grave the very moment you crawled out?”

You sigh, scrub a filthy hand through your hair and pinch the bridge of your nose. You’ve been alive again for less than twenty-four hours and already it feels like the weight of the world rests on your shoulders.

“Promise me you’re telling me the truth?” you beg. “You didn’t make a deal?”

Keith gives you a single, solemn nod. “I promise, I didn’t make a demon deal to get you out of hell.”

He stands so straight, lionhearted and noble. You always thought that, in another far-flung age, Keith would make a good knight, or a paladin. He’s honorable, loyal to a fault - and he never lies.

You choose to believe him. It’s the easy choice, but also the inevitable one. Trusting Keith is like gravity.

“Okay, good,” you say, “I’ll take you on your word.”

Standing is an awkward affair, mainly because you haven’t held your own weight up in almost a year. But you manage, taking shaky, careful steps as Keith pretends not to watch your progress.

“I’m going to take a shower,” you tell him over your shoulder, pausing as your draw your shirt over your head. “Oh, and Keith-” He looks up at you through dark, wild bangs.

“- I’m proud of you,” you tell him.

Keith beams. It’s a quiet expression, downright stoic on anyone else. But you know your boy. How little it takes, you wonder, to make him happy. And how much of that is your fault.

***

When you get out of the shower, you look and feel human again. You’ve also had time to take stock of your situation - and from all angles, you’re fucked.

As expected, Keith is standing just outside the bathroom door, arms crossed tight over his chest.

“You know, I’m the one who should be angry,” he says in a quiet voice, giving you no time to recover. “You’re the one who lied. You’re the one who died.”

That you did. A more thorough reckoning is headed your way for that, you’re sure, but you need to stave it off for now. Keep Keith focused on the current danger.

“You’re right,” you say, “you’re right, and I’m sorry. But you need to understand how this looks to me, Keith. I’m - scared for you.”

“There’s no reason to be,” Keith argues, “I promised, and you believed me. Right?”

Right.

“Of course,” you say, “but that doesn’t mean you’re not still in danger.”

“How so?”

You throw your arms out. “Look at me,” you say, “I’m back. And it takes some serious mojo to swing that kind of transaction. Whoever did this, they can’t be a two-bit player.”

“You think someone else made a deal for you?”

“Maybe. Or maybe this is a side-effect, of something bigger going on in the area,” you suggest, “a ritual gone wrong.”

Keith eyes you up and down. “Gone right, more like it,” he says. “Look at yourself, Shiro. You’re not a zombie. You’re not a revenant. This isn’t some run-of-the-mill, botched resurrection spell. You’ve never looked better.”

He’s right. You took some time in the bathroom to look yourself over, and there’s not a cut or bruise on you that you didn’t get crawling your way out of your coffin. Not even an old scar. In fact - you scan your pale, unblemished forearms again.

“Did you even test me while I was sleeping?” you demand. “Silver knife? Holy water? Anything?”

Keith sniffs, clearly affronted. “I didn’t have to. I knew it was you.”

“With your super psychic power.”

“I just know,” Keith insists.

Wonderful.

“Well, now that I’m awake, we might as well get it over with,” you say. Keith grimaces. “Please. For my own peace of mind,” you add.

He takes his time about it, but Keith finally produces a flask of holy water. You brace yourself, and take a swig.

No sizzle, no burn. Nothing but cool, clean refreshment. That’s a relief, at least.

“Knife,” you say.

Keith hands over a silver dagger, slapping the leather handle into your open palm. With a steady hand, you add your first new scar to the stark, alien flesh of your forearm. Hurts like a motherfucker, but the pain is as human as can be.

“Are you done mutilating yourself?” Keith asks.

“Were there any demonic omens? Signs?” you press. “Anything going on around here that looked like trouble?”

“Nothing, I swear,” Keith says, “only - well, there was your grave.”

And yes, grave. Not a bonfire, but a grave site. You put a pin in that for now - you can only have one argument at a time.

“What about my grave?”

“All the trees were flattened,” Keith tells you. “Like a blast zone, and your grave was ground zero. It was already like that when I drove up. You didn’t notice?”

“I had other things on my mind,” you admit. Mostly the breathing process.

But goddamn - this is bad. You scan the room, note that Keith’s packed light, which is good. The faster you get the hell out of dodge, the better.

“Clothes?”

“Here.” Keith reaches into his duffle, tosses you a bundle of familiar fabric. You drop your towel and shimmy into boxers and a pair of jeans, all the while wondering how long Keith carried them around in his own bag, just in case.

“We need to go,” you say, as you pull on a new shirt. “Before we get back into a fight we can’t win.”

“You think someone’s coming after us?”

“No one just waltzes out of hell, Keith,” you say, “Not without a very fucking good reason. We need answers. And we need to make sure that whatever pulled me out of the pit doesn’t suddenly change it’s mind.” Or worse yet, demand a price for your life that you aren’t willing to pay.

“Are you alright to move out?” Keith asks, as he hands you your jacket. Shrugging on the old leather feels like putting on a second skin, settling you further into this new, unnaturally perfect body.

“Actually, I feel great,” you admit. “Never better.”

Keith reaches out to help straighten the lines of your lapels.

“It’s going to be alright,” he says. “I’ve got you back now. We’ll figure out who did this, together. And no matter what, you won’t go back to hell. I promise you that.”

“I know, Keith,” you say, grasping him by the shoulders. “I know.” His devotion has never been in doubt, after all - only his self-preservation. You fold him into a hug, and he goes easily, more than willing to fall.

“It’s good to have you back,” he says, into the fabric of your jacket.

When it comes to Keith, you will always be a greedy man. So you secure your hold, and crush him into the divot of your shoulder where you can hide him there forever. Press your lips into the crown of his hair.

“It’s good to be back,” you murmur.

***

II. THEN:

Here’s the truth: you’ve tried to teach Keith the rules, when it comes to the job. The rules are to keep him safe, after all. But how can you succeed, when you yourself are a hypocrite? You broke all of your own rules as soon as you laid eyes on him, a stranger by the side of the road with a long, sad face. Worst part is, you’ve never once regretted it.

Never stop to speak with anyone at a crossroads, unless you mean to kill them - that’s a rule you’ve carried for a long time. Crossroad demons are notorious for being wily, cunning creatures. It’s better not to let them get a word in edgewise, if you can help it. Never take on hitchhikers, either. Even a hunter can fall prey to a woman in white, or any other run-of-the-mill spectral roadside haunting. Common sense, for someone in your line of work.

Common sense is out the window on the late afternoon you find Keith at the crossroads. You pull over the Impala without a second thought. The passenger-side window is already rolled down as you idle to a stop by the dark, slight figure, a backpack thrown over his shoulder.

“Hey, buddy,” you call out, “need a ride?”

He turns to face you, and - Jesus, he’s just a kid. Not yet out of high school, by the looks of him. You’re caught off-kilter, unsure how to rescind your impromptu offer. If you even should. A scrawny kid like this one, with distrust and hunger carved plainly into every feature - he can’t be running away just for the hell of it.

“Uh, kid? You - need some help?”

He sidles up to the window, bending down to get a good look at you, then the interior of the Impala. Dark amethyst eyes scan you from head to toe. You feel judged, and seen, found wanting and wanted, all in the span of his perfunctory gaze.

“You know,” he says slowly, “I really do.”

The nakedness of his admission catches you off-guard. What can you say to that? What can you do, other then to open your arms, and let him into your life?

You summon up the brightest smile you can muster, and flash it at him, high enough to blind.

“Well, hop in, then,” you say.

He slinks into the shotgun like a wet cat coming in from the rain, closing the door carefully behind him. The ratty black backpack gets tucked between his legs. But once he’s sat, you watch as he stretches out in the seat, a sliver of white skin peeking out from under his tee-shirt as he arches his spine, relaxing back into the leather. Oddly comfortable for being in a stranger’s car. You can’t help but wonder at the life circumstances that led to creating this skittish, foolhardy stray of a boy.

Said boy in question turns to you, and once again you are subjected to the alien power of his eyes.

“Thanks for the ride,” he says, “I’m Keith.”

“Shiro,” you say, and you reach out to take his hand. He clasps it, giving a quick, firm shake.

“So,” you say, as you pull back onto the road, “where you headed?”

“Arizona.”

“You got a long way to go, kid. What’s in Arizona?”

“The future, I guess.”

Enigmatic, you think. You wait for a clarification.

He doesn’t clarify.

After that, you lapse into silence. Not an uncomfortable silence, thank god - almost a companionable one, actually, with your hitchhiker content to watch the scenery fly by his window. When you turn up the stereo, until David Bowie’s greatest hits reverberate through the metal frame, Keith hums along quietly to every song. His voice holds a strangely soothing gravel, so much deeper than his face would have you believe. You catch yourself looking at him from out of the corner of your eye. Drinking in the dark, shaggy hair, the large, soulful eyes framed by a thin, angular face.

The humming stops. Keith clears his throat. You realize you’ve been caught in turn, and quickly look away. Your passenger doesn’t comment on your lapse in hospitality, although the corner of his lip quirks up slightly.

“Nice car you got,” he says eventually.

“Thanks.”

“Chevy Impala, right? 1967?”

You startle. “That’s right,” you say, “you have a good eye.”

Keith shrugs. “It’s a distinctive model. Beautiful, too.”

“That she is.” Absently, you caress the leather padding of the steering wheel. “Rebuilt her myself.”

Keith ducks his head, almost like he’s shy, hair obscuring his face, and mumbles something in return. You don’t catch what he said, but you don’t think too much of it. Just an awkward teenage boy, stuck in a car with a man so much older and larger than himself.

Later, however, you’ll wonder. Later, you’ll review that moment in your mind, and you’ll never be sure, but you’ll think that Keith ducks his head because he’s hiding an oddly nostalgic smile, and the muffled words he says are: “I know.”

***

The motel you pull into is par for the course - which means weak water, odd stains, and a vague, unshakable fear of bedbugs. The receptionist on-duty looks bored, and then she sees you crossing the lobby and looks much less bored. Lean against the counter, bare forearms bracing your weight. Flash her a shit-eating smile - go on, make her day. But when you ask about bus stations, she frowns sympathetically.

“Sorry, hon,” she says. “But we don’t got one. You’ll have to try two towns over, in Louisville - but they don’t keep their schedules regular.”

“Well, thanks anyway,” you say, “We’ll take a room for the night, then. Two queens, please.”

You don’t sleep much that night. Not because you’re not tired, but because a nasty little voice in your head keeps telling you that if you close your eyes for too long, you might wake up to find Keith gone, and your car along with him. But towards 5 AM you must drift off, because you’re awoken to the sound of keys rattling the lock, then the door swinging open and slamming into the wall.

You’ve already drawn your gun out from under your pillow and are taking aim at the figure in the doorway by the time you realize it’s Keith. He blinks back at you, foot frozen in the air, keys dangling from one hand and two coffee cups stacked precariously in the other.

Quickly, you lower your weapon.

“Sorry. You startled me.”

“Yeah, no shit.”

“…come on in?” you offer weakly.

What the fuck is wrong with you?

But Keith lets out a bark of laughter. It’s a good-natured sound, there and gone again, but genuine. Entirety too genuine, you think, for what just transpired. Really, Keith should be running for the hills at this point. Forget about you - what the fuck is wrong with him?

“You always greet people like that in the morning?”

“I travel a lot,” you find yourself saying, “Life on the road can be dangerous. Better to be prepared, just in case. You know?” Jesus, shut the fuck up.

Keith seems to think your rambling is amusing, at least; his eyes are bright, crinkling with mirth around the edges.

“Hey, no sweat,” he assures you, “it’s my fault, honestly. Should’ve seen that coming.”

You’re not sure how he’s worked that out in his brain, but aren’t about to question it. You attempt to look as meek and unassuming as possible as Keith approaches you, extending a cardboard cup like an olive branch.

“Coffee, no cream.”

“Thanks.” You take the proffered cup from him. “I don’t suppose you have extra sugar?”

Keith shakes his head. “You won’t need it.”

Doubtful. You need at least five to make it palatable. You take a swig anyway, to mend the tension, and-

“Oh.” It is sweet. Very sweet. Almost like it has seven sugars already, your ideal number of packets.

Keith smirks at you.

You watch him over the lip of the cup as you sip your coffee. He’s already been up for a while, clearly, clothing neat and unrumpled, ready to go at a moments notice. Surreptitiously, you check the time on your phone, and Jesus - it’s 7AM, and this kid’s already putting you to shame.

“I thought teenagers liked sleeping in,” you comment.

Keith shrugs. “I don’t sleep so good. Nightmares.”

“Ah.” What about, you almost ask, but good sense kicks in before you can make an ass of yourself.

Instead, you say, “I get nightmares, too, sometimes.”

This seems to perk his interest; his eyes snap up to drive directly into yours. “What about?” he asks.

“My, uh - my job.”

“Oh. What do you do for a living?”

“…I’m a professional poker player.”

Keith raises an eyebrow. “A professional poker player,” he echoes.

Your face is burning. “That’s right,” you say.

“You have nightmares about - playing poker?”

Fuck.

You jump up from the bed. “You know what, we better get on the road, get you to that bus stop,” you say. “Daylight’s a’burning.” Make sure to tuck your piece securely into your waistband. When you turn back to Keith, it’s to find him regarding you so intently that it looks like he’s seeing right through you, eyes gazing into the abyss, or another universe.

“Hey, Spitfire.” You snap your finger. “Can you be ready to go in five?”

That gets his attention. Keith blinks up at you, and then an easy grin unspools across his face. “Ready in three,” he counters.

You clear out in record time, but you always do your best to leave your shitty motel rooms in a slightly less shittier state than when you entered them. The beds get stripped, the lights turned off, the garbage bag tied up and left at the entrance. You breeze through the door, duffle slug over your shoulder, Keith tripping on your heels just behind.

As you’re struggling to lock the door: “It’d be okay if you just said you were a hit-man,” Keith whispers confidentially, “I wouldn’t mind.”

The good thing about having excellent reflexes is that, when you fumble and almost drop your keys, nobody notices.

“I’m hungry!” you announce, as loudly as possible. “Hey kid, you hungry? Let’s swing by a diner on the way, my treat.”

“I’m not a kid,” your little sidekick mutters, but he follows after you anyway, like a duckling on it’s mother’s tail, right into the Impala, and onto the open road.

***

The diner menus are greasy under your fingertips. This means the food will be amazing. It also means you’ll need to take two Tums, later. You don’t tell Keith that.

You do tell him: “Get whatever you want. Like I said, it’s on me.”

It’s a hard choice, but you settle on the double stacked Banana’s Foster pancakes. Keith orders a side of bacon, and nothing else.

“Oh, come on,” you say, “live a little.”

He ducks his head, refusing to make eye contact with either you or the waitress.

“I’m not too hungry,” he mumbles.

You turn to Stephanie the waitress, smile at the ready. “He’ll have a milkshake,” you tell her.

“Of course!” Stephanie returns your grin eagerly as she jots that down; when she turns back to Keith, her smile is gone, her tone noticeably shorter. “What flavor you want? We got vanilla, chocolate, strawberry, cookies n’ cream…” She lists them off in a bored voice.

Keith looks like a deer caught in the headlights, and at this mass times velocity the car will send him flying. You almost feel bad for pushing him out into the road. “Uh…chocolate?”

“Chocolate. What a surprise,” says Stephanie, who is becoming less attractive by the second, the more she talks to your boy like that.

“Add a side of fries to that, too - if it’s not too much trouble,” you slide in, as she’s starting to walk away. “Thanks, Stephanie. You’re a real peach.”

You can’t be sure, but you think she flips you the finger; all of your focus is taken up by Keith.

“Look, kid,” you say, “you’ve had a rough time lately, I can tell. And sometimes, when people say they’re gonna help you out, their help comes with strings attached. I get that. But what I’m offering - a ride, some food - I don’t expect anything from you in return. I don’t expect you to pay me back, okay? So you can have whatever you want. Take it with both hands open. Be greedy with it. Alright?”

Keith slumps further into the booth. He nods glumly. “I’m trying,” he says.

“Okay, good. And hey, you can have some of my pancakes,” you tell him. “They’re gonna be too big for one.”

They are. You eat in easy silence, passing cut up chunks of pancake between your plates, dripping syrup across the table. Stephanie glares at you from across the room. Keith slurps on his milkshake with all the finesse of a person who has never had a milkshake before in their life. And perhaps he hasn’t, you realize. Perhaps he needed help all his life, and turned those big, wide eyes on a thousand soulless adults, who let him down every step of the way, to the point that affording a milkshake and a scrap of kindness are a luxury. Or - perhaps he’s always lived by the roadside, spawned out of the mist and fully-grown, a circuit ghost at the crossroads, waiting since the dawn of time for you to pull up in your car and let him in.

“What’re you thinking about?” Keith asks you, between munches of bacon.

“Oh, just silly things,” you answer.

When it’s time to pay, you both walk up to the host’s station. You move to pull out your wallet, but Keith beats you to the punch, sliding in between you and register.

“Don’t worry,” he says, “I got it.” Then proceeds to plunk his backpack on the counter and pulls out a wad of fifty and hundred dollar bills. From what you can glimpse of the inside of his bag, what he’s currently counting in his hands is far from the end of it.

Christ - just when you think you’ve got him figured out. You keep an eye out on the rest of the patrons as Keith settles the bill, seemingly blissfully unaware of the several nakedly hungry stares that are being leveled his way. More egregiously than that, he leaves a 30% tip.

When he’s finished paying, you wrap an arm around his shoulder, taking a fistful of thin suede jacket, and shepherd him out the door

“What the hell was that?” you hiss, as you tow him into the parking lot.

“What?” Keith tries to shake off your grip; he succeeds because you let him go. “You paid for our room last night, you’ve given me a ride. This was the least I could do.”

“Yes, that was a very nice gesture,” you snap, “but you can’t flash that kind of money in a place like this.” You gesture around to the rusted-out trucks, the flickering neon fast-food chain signs, the sad squat-houses that line either side of this barely habitable one-road town.

Keith lifts his chin, defiant in the face of common sense.

“Don’t worry about me,” he says, “I’m not defenseless. I can take care of myself” And then he opens his jacket to pull something out of the inner pocket -

“Is that a stiletto switchblade?” you ask, in something approaching stupefied awe.

Keith shrugs, before slipping the knife back out of view. “Usually,” he says.

You choose not to respond to that because you’re not even sure what that means. Pinching the bridge of your nose does nothing to quell the rising nausea. You’ll need those Tums faster than you thought.

“…get in the car,” you say.

“Yes sir.” There’s not an ounce of sarcasm in Keith’s voice as he scrambles to obey you.

He can take orders, at least, you note. A tiny, treacherous part you whispers: you can make something of him yet.

***

The bus stop is…what you expected.

Two or three weathered men loiter nearby the ticket building. Under the awning, a woman is sprawled out on the ground half-asleep, her head nodding down then jerking up again, again, again. You watch all of them carefully, especially when a shorter, slender figure slips out of the ticketing office and hurries over to the Impala.

Keith comes back up to your window as you idle by the curb, hanging his head through the window.

“Next Greyhound doesn’t get in for another seven hours,” he tells you.

“There’s nothing sooner?”

Keith shakes his head. “A Beiber Bus, but it’s going back out East.”

You nod, thinking everything through. Then you reach over, push open the passenger door.

“Hop inside for a second,” you say.

Keith slides in like a shadow, cut from the wrong cloth and afraid of taking up too much space. He shuts the door behind him, and without thinking, you flip the locks.

You came here to go your separate ways. Now though, confronted with the reality, you hate the idea of dropping Keith off to wait at this bus stop for hours on end in Po Dunk Nowhere, surrounded by the tweaking, the destitute, or both. Keith is scrappy, but he’s scrawny, too. Street-smart, but not wise. He’s a kitten with his claws out, and the world is just waiting to toss a bag over his head and throw him in the river. You have a sudden premonition that, if you leave him here, you will forever be looking backwards through your rear-view mirror, and cursing yourself for it.

You take in a deep breath. Fuck it. What’s the worst that could happen?

“Hey, kid,” you say, “I was thinking - why don’t you stay on with me a little longer? Just until we find a better place to drop you off?”

Big purple eyes lock onto yours; Keith looks desperately hopeful. “You’re okay with me tagging along?”

“I wouldn’t offer if I wasn’t,” you answer honestly. “So, wanna try it out? Unless you don’t want to be bogged down by an old-timer like me?” you add, with a grin.

“No! No, I’d - really appreciate it,” Keith says fervently. And then, small and quiet, almost like a secret: “I hoped you’d ask.”

I hoped you’d say yes. You keep this unsaid. Almost like a secret, too.

***

And the thing is - traveling with Keith is easy, you find. Not just easy, but actively useful, too. It quickly becomes clear to you how Keith has been bankrolling his backpack fund - he is, hands-down, the best pool shark you have ever met. Witnessing him in action is a thing of beauty, and frankly, a privilege to behold. Night after night you watch him work, how he approaches the game table and the broader, older men with the perfect mix of wide-eyed naivete and brash youth. How coltish all of his strikes seem in the beginning. How fluid and premeditated they are by the end. The only part he sometimes has difficulty pulling off is the getaway, especially if his marks are large and drunk - but that’s where you come in now, to play protector, easily stepping in front of Keith to diffuse the situation.

You also discover that, not only can your new travel companion earn his keep and more some - but he can cook. This alone would justify almost any inconvenience on your part, because you have been living off of hamburgers and instant Raman for what feels like years now. And while Keith certainly cannot be called a master chef by any stretch of the imagination, he’s worlds better than you, and a hundred times more creative. You eat hearty, easy to prepare meals like oyakodon and zosui - dishes you haven’t had since your mother died - and a thick stew Keith makes from canned corn that he calls neeshjìzhii. You call it fucking amazing.

But the best part by far is that Keith never questions where you go at night. He never asks why you often leave the motel room after midnight wearing all darks, shovel in hand, or why you need to visit different homes and businesses during the daytime, dressed in your only good suit. He never asks you why he isn’t allowed in the trunk. If he has theories - active hits, perhaps - he never voices them. He never questions you. He doesn’t even try to sneak after you on your excursions. For all intents and purposes, your life with Keith and your work as a hunter are kept totally separate - intersecting only very briefly, sometimes, in the early hours of dawn, when you come limping back bloody and semi-concussed, and Keith will sit next to you on the grimy bathroom tile with gauze in hand, a needle in the other -

Keith doesn’t ask. You don’t tell.

What you’re trying to say, is that you never intended for Keith to be a Hunter. You never intended for Keith to be your partner, or your protege, or even in your life beyond the next bus stop. But when town rolls over into town, motel into motel, state into state as you pick up new cases, new trails, new leads - Keith follows wherever you go, a steady presence by your side, as though he was always meant to be there, and always will.

***

III. NOW:

Early dawn, sunrise already lighting fire to the horizon, in the parking lot of the Super 8 Motel. You expect a battle for driving rights. But when you get to the Impala, Keith tosses you the keys as easy as anything. No bitterness, no resentment; in fact, when you both slide into the cockpit, and Keith sinks into shotgun, he looks more at peace than you’ve seen in recent memory. Like he’s meant to be at your right hand. The years melt off his face, the worries and stresses that you know with a stomach-sick guilt must be your fault. But then his eyes meet yours, and you feel immediate absolution by the grace you find there - even if it is undeserved.

“Are you alright?”

“Never better,” you reply. You start the ignition, and your baby purrs to life under you. God, but that’s a beautiful sound. You give the steering wheel an appreciative squeeze.

“Christ, it feels good to be back,” you say. Then look over at Keith, who’s still regarding you oh so seriously.

“Back in Black.” You waggle your eyebrows aggressively; a chink forms in Keith’s armor, a hairline crack threatening to turn into an answering smile. As it is, a flicker of amusement dances in his eyes.

“So, what’s your plan, Captain?”

“Get the hell away from here, for one thing,” you say. “I’m not stopping until we’re at least five towns over. Then, try to figure out what the fuck is going on. Stamp the pavement, if we have to.”

Stamp the pavement is a euphemism for finding a demon and torturing it until it spills it’s guts. Not your favorite method of intel reconnaissance, but desperate times, etc.

Keith shares your dislike. His face twists into a grimace at the mention of it.

“Last time we tried that, it didn’t work out,” he reminds you.

“Last time we tried, we didn’t have enough time. If you remember, I was on a tight deadline.”

“If I - of course I fucking remember, Shiro! Jesus Christ,” Keith curses under his breath, before turning those baleful eyes back onto you full-force. “And don’t say it like that,” he hisses. “Tight deadline? For Christ’s sake, Shiro, you fucking died!”

“I remember; I was there,” you say stiffly.

“Oh, good. So you also remember the part where you lied to me about the deal you made?”

“I wouldn’t say-”

“-For three years?”

And - okay. When put that way, it doesn’t sound good. You sound like the bad guy. But you had reasons, alright? Good reasons, that even Keith’s not privy to, because Keith doesn’t always know as much as he thinks he does.

You take a deep breath in, hold for five before exhaling long through your nose. Then summon up the most neutral tone you can.

“I wanted to keep you in the dark,” you say slowly, “because I thought you would be safest that way.”

“That is the stupidest fucking excuse I have ever heard,” Keith tells you, point blank.

“Oh, really? So you can tell me with one-hundred percent honesty that, if you’d known about my deal, you wouldn’t have tried to make a deal yourself? Or - or done something even worse?”

Keith shuts up real fast, so at least you know he isn’t lying. But his silence fills you with an old, familiar dread. What wouldn’t he do, a little voice whispers in the back of your mind, to save you from yourself? What lines wouldn’t he cross?

A hurt sound punches out of Keith, and you realize that little voice wasn’t as quiet as you thought.

“I didn’t mean it like that,” you say instinctively, although you’re not sure how else you could have meant it. Keith scoffs.

“Well, I guess I’ve finally found a line I won’t cross,” he says, “I won’t interrogate demons anymore, not for anything. Not even for you.”

Hypocrite that you are, a jolt of hurt and jealousy surges through you at his declaration.

“I’ve been dead a year, and you develop sympathy for the devil?”

Keith levels you with a cool, resolute look.

“I won’t do it anymore, Shiro. Not when there’s a person trapped inside. I hate that I ever did it to begin with.” At your questioning glance: “Possession is torture enough,” Keith explains, “It’s - a mockery of the gift of free will.”

He says it so evenly, like such a conscientious little adult. And he is an adult, of course he is. But the cadence is odd, unnatural, like he’s quoting someone else. You’ve missed something, you realize. It’s been a year, and Keith has grown up, changed, in a way you can’t fully quantify. Keith is his own man now - with or without you.

That thought is enough to set you on fire.

“…alright,” you say, “we’ll figure this out the old fashioned way. Noses to the ground. No one has to get hurt.”

Besides you, Keith sinks back into his seat, tension rolling off him as the fight takes leave, just as quickly as it came, replaced by an air of wistfulness. “That would be nice,” he agrees.

That would be nice. If it were true, that would be even better.

***

Dusk, fast approaching. You’re already scanning ahead for rest stops along the highway. Fuel up the car, take a leak, maybe grab some road food, and then Keith can take over for a few hours while you catch some shut eye. Resurrection is tiresome business, as it turns out.

“Why did you sell your soul, Shiro?”

You jolt forward in your seat, just manage to control Black’s sudden swerve.

“I thought you were sleeping,” you say.

“I try not to sleep anymore,” Keith replies breezily.

How reassuring.

“You’ll make yourself sick, doing that,” you say, “besides, I need you to keep sharp for me, Spitfire.”

“Don’t distract me,” Keith warns. “I want an answer, Shiro. A straight, honest one. I think I deserve that, at least.”

It guts you, sometimes, how little he’s willing to settle for.

“I needed the Colt,” you say, the simple answer. “You know that. Yellow-Eyes had us dead-to-rights.”

“We could’ve found another way,” Keith insists, “the calvary was coming for you, Shiro, we were almost there. Jesus, we must’ve gotten there just after you kissed the bitch.”

“…half an hour,” you admit, “give or take.”

Keith swears none too quietly under his breath, a long string of expletives.

“What did Lilith say to you?” he finally asks. “What did she do to sweeten the pot? Because you can’t expect me to believe that you threw your soul away for a magic gun we weren’t even sure would work.”

You’re branching into dangerous territory, now, virgin ground you hoped Keith would never set foot upon. You can’t lie to him, not completely. He’ll know, because he knows you, inside and out, better than you’ve ever known yourself.

But you can’t tell him the full truth, either.

“It wasn’t Lilith,” you admit. “Lilith just brokered the deal. It was Yellow-Eyes that convinced me I was making the right decision.”

You glance over to see Keith watching you, wide-eyed and looking half his age.

“What did he do?”

“…he made some threats I couldn’t abide,” you say.

“Shiro-”

“-and that’s all I’ll say on the topic, Keith,” you add, as firmly as you can.

“I just…” You hear him swallow with a painful click of his throat. “…I just wish you’d trusted me to help you,” he says, after a long, defeated pause.

You little fool, you think fondly, despairingly. How can he know so much, and understand so little?

You still remember the maniacal gleam in the demon’s eyes, glazed over in pale, antiqued ocher, as he’d walked with you, as he’d pinned you to the ground and threatened everything you cherished. You knew, then, that you would do anything to stop him. Finding a crossroads, summoning Lilith - those were actions you went through the motions of, as though you’d already done it a million times over, and always would, a mobius strip of cause and effect.

She’d given you the Colt. You’d killed the demon that took everything from you. You’d saved the only thing you had left.

And then you left him.

That was your first mistake. Just the thought of all that wasted time sours and roils in your gut. Those two years spent apart, trying to keep him safe, sacrificing your happiness on the altar of your savior complex when all you really wanted to do was take Keith, and Black, and drive for as fast and as long as you could. Squeeze every last drop of life out of the three years you were given. You should’ve never left Keith, you know that now.

You also should’ve never taken him back.

When he’d turned up on your doorstep, begging for help, you should’ve told him to keep on moving. Told him to get lost, to let you enjoy your retirement in peace. But, like an addict, time didn’t factor into your habit. One hit was all it took. You got in the car with Keith, and you spent your last year on the road once more; your second mistake.

Your third mistake was the worst - because you never told him. A year spent back in the saddle, with your partner by your side, and you kept your shame to yourself. There was a certain dignity, you thought, in laying down willingly in the bed you made. But you were arrogant; you had grossly overestimated your own fortitude. When the hounds began to bay for your blood, you understood by just how much.

You meant to die like a dog, tail tucked between you legs as you slunk from the den, from the pack, to die on your own terms, alone and far away. But you didn’t cover your tracks well enough, and Keith was trained by the best. He found you, barricaded in a motel room, shivering and shaking and a week out from damnation. When he broke down the door you almost had a heart attack right then: his face melted before your eyes, his eyes grew yellow and his teeth turned sharp. But you were in no state to fight him off, and he held you through the hallucination - and then, in your weakness, you broke down in his arms and confessed. Through hysterical sobs, you admitted what you’d done, three years ago, and how the price was finally coming due.

“How long?” he’d asked.

“Seven days,” you said, and watched as his world fell apart.

As long as you live, you will never forget the devastation you saw on his face. That memory alone is hell enough.

The days that followed were filled with blood, and taunting, and screaming, and that, too, is a memory that haunts you, of Keith becoming more and more desperate, riding them harder and harder, until you had to physically restrain him from drowning a man in a barrel of holy water. The bound, nameless man wretched, his skin steaming as he convulsed on the floor. He screamed like the water was acid, and you held Keith through it all, gripping his thin, shaking body to the bulk of your own.

“Stop,” you’d begged, “please, Keith, stop. I’m not worth your soul, too.”

That was the first time you’d ever seen Keith cry. Looking at him now, you think that might’ve also been the last.

There’s a new hardness to his features, carved into him over the last year without you. His face is set like flint, impenetrable in ways you don’t understand. You’ve lost his trust. You deserve it, of course. You deserve everything that’s coming to you.

Black drives on in darkness for several miles, sans conversation, while you both stew in the despair of words unsaid. But you can’t help yourself; you never can.

“So…you really didn’t see it coming?” you ask, as delicately as possible.

No response.

“Because there were times I thought you suspected,” you blurt out in a rush, “times where I was so close to telling you, to coming clean, when I couldn't face lying to you anymore, Keith - but then you’d say something, something - cryptic, and I thought you already knew, somehow. You knew, and you were letting me keep my silence.”

Keith’s eyes flash with an unholy fire. “If I’d had any clue beforehand, you wouldn’t have gone to hell,” he seethes. “I wouldn’t have let you.”

“I don’t think it works like that, Keith. Not even for us.”

“I would’ve found a way,” he insists. And then, so plaintive it breaks your heart, “…why didn’t you tell me, Shiro?”

You can’t look over at him; you know that if you do, you’ll be met with those big, pleading eyes that you’ve never developed a defense for.

“I was a coward,” you say, “I was afraid.” And the last, the worst: “I didn’t want to hurt you.”

Keith makes a wet, wounded sound.

“I was hurt,” he says.

Your eyes are burning. You blink, rapidly, to keep the road from swimming away.

“I know, buddy,” you say. “I know. And I’m sorry.”

Keith is silent for a long while.

“I can’t see everything, you know that.” He says it quietly, like it’s a personal failing. And it probably is, in his mind. “There are…gaps. Blind-spots. Especially when demons get involved. Some of the more powerful ones, like Azazel, or Lilith - it’s like they can hide from my sight. Or hide things from my sight,” he admits.

Even at the mention of either of their names, your stomach twists in on itself.

“What about now?” you ask, to distract yourself, and him.

“Huh?”

“You said you aren’t sleeping. What do you see now?”

Silence, as Keith chews on his lip. “Darkness,” he says at last, “and fire. Storms, and sickness, and - and just bad things, generally.”

“The world’s a terrible place,” you say, as evenly as you can, “it’s sad to say, but those things are a natural part of life, Keith.”

“I know,” Keith agrees hesitantly, “but there are other things, too. Things I don’t know how to explain. But - not everything I see comes to pass. You know that.”

Yes, you do. Or, you’ve taken Keith’s word for it.

“Alright,” you say, “you don’t like what you see. So change the future.”

Keith huffs. “Just like that, huh?”

“Just like that,” you say. “You've done it before. You can do it again. And hey, you got me back now, Spitfire. Between the two of us, there isn’t anything we can’t accomplish.”

A blatant lie on your part, but you said it to make him smile. And it works; you see the barest hint of one, small and furtive, play across his lips.

“Even if we were facing down the apocalypse?” he asks wryly.

An unexpected bark of laughter escapes you. “Sure. Why not,” you agree, “Us two against the end of time? I’d take those odds.” You reach out to clap a hand onto his shoulder.

“But seriously, Keith,” you pause, to make sure he knows that you mean every word, “I believe in your ability. I believe in you. If anyone can change the future, you can.”

The smile Keith gives you is full this time, soft and sad and filled with a tenderness that no one should deserve to be graced with, least of all yourself.

“I hope I already have,” he says.

***

Morning of the next day, in the comfort and safety of a roadside diner. Nothing bad has ever happened to you in a diner, you think. Of course, with your track record, that’s bound to change any day now. But for the time being, bask in the warm familiarity of this mom and pop shop that you have never been to before and will never go to again, indistinguishable from any other diner you and Keith have spent you hard-stolen cash in. Blessedly free of the hazards of your occupation, ghosts and demons and bloodshed and whatnot. More reliable than a church is, at any rate.

You should be tired from stealing a scant few hours of sleep, cramped up in the passenger side while Keith drove. Instead, you feel good. Great, even. You dig into the combination platter you ordered, drench the bacon and the pancakes with a generous pour of maple syrup. Try not to feel judged, as Keith watches you from over his black coffee and plate of scrapple.

“Hungry?” he jibs.

“Starved. Like I haven’t eaten in a year.”

Keith rolls his eyes. “But you’re feeling alright?” he presses, “All things considered?”

“More than alright,” you admit. “I’ve never felt better. It’s like I just woke up from the best nap in my life. I feel amazing, awake. Energized.”

Whatever happened to you, whatever was done to your grave-site, it’s like it’s left a current of electricity lingering behind in your veins. Your body is a live wire; all you have to do is keep on top of the currant’s arc, and ride the lightning.

This is, admittedly, a sign that something is off. Or maybe it’s a clue. At any rate, this whole thing is above your pay-grade to sleuth out; you’re going to need to go to the self-declared experts.

Which is why you announce, right before you take another large bite of pancake: “We need to go to the Castle.”

Across from you, Keith spits his coffee back into his mug.

“No, Shiro. No. Absolutely not.”

“Why not?” you challenge. “You don’t want to see your friends?”

“First of all, they’re your friends, not mine; they just tolerate me-”

“That’s not true.”

“- yes, it is, and second-”

“Do you have any better ideas?” you cut in. When Keith says nothing, you keep on pressing forward. “We need information, and we need backup. The Castle is our best resource for both. Why shouldn’t we go?”

“Because!” Keith sputters. “Because they’ll shoot first, ask questions later.”

“Like any good hunter would,” you agree.

“What happened to ‘patience yields focus’?” he snaps.

You hold out a placating hand. “Keith, I know you want to protect me, but you can’t hide me away forever. We have to face the music sometime.”

Keith looks like he very much wants to argue that point. His face screws up, like he’s sucking on a lemon, before he capitulates with a huff.

“Alright,” he says, “We’ll go. But we’re gonna be careful about it. You’ll let me take point on this one,” he adds, with gravely seriousness.

“Of course.” After all, you’re not actively trying to get shot in the head by an overzealous hunter - or worse, Lance.

Your concession seems to mollify Keith, if only slightly. He sinks back into his booth, picks up his mug once more. A wrinkle of worry is still gouged into the space between his eyebrows. You have the sudden urge to reach across the table and smooth out the creases with your thumb.

“It’ll be alright,” you say, “we’ll take it slow. They’re just a little skittish of us, that’s all.”

“They’ve never trusted us,” Keith mutters darkly.

“And they have good reason not to,” you demur.

At that hint of the bond you two share, Keith’s interest seems to perk up. He leans towards, glancing furtively around before he murmurs, “I’ve been meaning to ask. Since you got back, can you still…do it?”

“I…don’t know,” you admit.

“Have you even tried?”

“Honestly, no,” you say, “but I can test it right now.”

The last thing you see before the world goes black is Keith’s scandalized face. Then, nothing.

Darkness. Unyielding, unending darkness.

When you disappear, you like to think that you are in the void of the cosmos. A primordial darkness, before the creation of gases, nebulae, stars and planets. A darkness before God. Here, where you hang suspended in isolation, is everywhere. And anywhere. And anywhere is where you can be.

Picture it in your mind. Clearly, now. Visualize it, down to the very last detail.

Traveling through the void is disorienting, precisely because you aren’t. It took you a long time to understand this - through countless trial and error - but eventually you realized that you aren’t the one moving at all. In this complete blackness, it’s almost impossible to see that space and time move around you, bending around your gravity well in this eternal chasm of night. No matter, no space, no time, no stars -

When you are here, you and the void are one. You bend around each other. You come out on the other side, unmoved, and unchanged.

In the real world, it’s been less than half a second. You re-materialize on the opposite side of the table, crammed in-between the corner of the booth and Keith’s shoulder. Keith, who takes the opportunity to punch you in the arm as hard as he can.

“-idiot!” he hissing, “we’re surrounded by fucking civilians! Anyone could have seen that!”

“Relax.” You give his shoulder a friendly bump with your own. “We’re in the back of the room. Nobody saw anything.”

“You better fucking hope so. Last thing we need is your face plastered across national television, again.”

“At least we know I’m fully functional,” you say with a grin.

Keith goes red. “Looks like,” he mutters. And then: “Hey. Why didn’t you do that when you were trapped in your coffin? Teleportation’s a hell of a lot easier than clawing through six feet of dirt.”

“It was hardly six feet. You dig a shitty grave,” you inform him. “Also, I was panicking, Keith. Being buried alive will do that to a man.”

Keith smirks at you. “Shiro the hero is claustrophobic. Who would’ve thought?”

“Brat.”

“Nerd.”

You throw an arm around him so you have easier access to ruffle his bangs. Keith ducks under your hand, his body pressing further into yours. The sigh you let out is accidental, honest in its contentment. Even better is the unconscious way Keith’s head dips toward your shoulder blade, skirting the edge of familiarity and into - into you don’t know what, exactly. Something else.

But Keith must remember himself, because he flinches away from you abruptly, and the spell of the moment is broken. He turns to face you, and the seriousness that falls over him is your forewarning of a heavier topic on the horizon.

“Shiro, I need to ask you something else,” he says, “and - I don’t mean to push you, but you haven’t said anything yet, and I need to know. Do you-,” he stutters, bites his lip until you fear he’ll make it bloody.

“What is it, Keith? It’s okay,” you assure him, “I won’t be mad.”

Keith huffs, as though he severely doubts it, but you watch as he settles into himself again, drawing from that fathomless well of courage he holds inside himself.

“What was it like?” he asks. “Hell?”

And - oh. You thought it would be much worse. You blink dumbly back at his worried face.

“I don’t remember it,” you admit. “It’s all just - black.”

“You don’t remember anything?”

“Nothing. It’s like I went to bed, and woke up from a dreamless sleep.”

“Really?” Keith looks mystified, as though this outcome was the only one out of millions that he had not accounted for. “Well, damn.”

“Yes, that was the idea.”

Keith hits you again. It hurts, but you deserve it.

“Don’t worry about me, Spitfire,” you say, with a helpful smile. “Believe me, I know it’s strange, but I’d tell you if I could remember anything.”

Keith frowns at you, not looking very convinced.

“You’re not lying to me, are you?”

That cuts deep. You try to hide how much, but it leeks out through your voice.

“No, I’m not,” you say, “not about this. I swear on Black’s leather interior.”

A crack forms across Keith’s cross countenance; he fails to stifle a smile.

“Alright,” he says, “I trust you, Shiro.”

“Just as I trust you,” you return. “You said you didn’t make a deal, and I’ll take you on your word, Keith.” Against your instincts and better judgment, of course, but that’s a problem to unpack later. At least Keith seems to be heartened by your words; he beams at you, a rare moment of emotional inhibition.

“So,” he says, “no more secrets?”

And, well. There’s the rub.

There will always be secrets you carry, things you cannot tell him. That you’ll never tell him. Not if you want to save his soul.

What’s another sin upon your own, to send you straight back to damnation?

You clasp Keith’s proffered hand within your own. Grip it tight, as tight as when he raised you from perdition.

“No more secrets,” you say.

Another mistake you’ve made. Another promise you’ll never keep.

***

IV. THEN:

The problem is, sooner or later, Keith’s going to get hurt.

A few months into your road-trip that never ends, and you’re starting to understand that Keith will always be a permanent fixture in your life. He fits so well into your routine, into the hustle and grind of your clandestine lifestyle. He’s the right-hand man you didn’t know you needed. You’d be loathe to let him go. But you can’t lie to him forever.

You’re hesitant to tell him the truth about what you do - why you hop from town to town, where you go at night. If you do confess, he’ll want to join in your hunts. You know he’d jump at the chance. But if you don’t keep your secrets, it’s only a matter of time before some monster from your professional life crosses over into your personal, and Keith unwittingly gets caught in the crossfire.

And Keith - well, Keith is just a kid.

Here’s the thing: you always knew he was young. Hell, ever since you laid eyes on him, you understood that you had a good few years on the kid. But it isn’t until two months into your travels that you realize just how much shit you’re in.

You’ve pulled off of a dead highway in the middle of an empty field. No houses or towns for miles, no light except for the stars and a full-bellied moon. Cold night air bites at your noses as you and Keith lay across the hood of Black, but Keith is bundled up in the winter coat you bought for him, so you’re not too worried. As for yourself, you never get cold. You burn like a furnace, even in this temperature, in your torn jeans and thin cotton t-shirt. A beer bottle seers it’s impression into the palm of your hand, and you laugh when Keith takes a sip from his, only to spray it back out again. Above you, the winter night sky is spread out for you in a prefect unbroken tapestry. With your arm stretched upward, you show Keith how to find different constellations, pointing out which stars to use as a guide. Three stars in perfect alignment make up the line of Orion’s Belt. Cast out further to find the points of his arms and legs, all shining bright in the void of space. Move onto Canis Minor and Monoceros. Cancer, Lynx, Ursa Major. Continue on into the darkness, guiding your companion out into the black.

“You sure know a lot about the sky,” Keith says.

“I’ve always loved astronomy,” you admit. “…I was an astrophysics major in college.”

“You went to college?” Keith asks, naked awe in his voice.

“Only for a year. Berkeley. Go Bears,” you add, with an ironic drawl. “The goal was to work for NASA. But when I was a kid, I dreamed of being an astronaut. That was never meant to be, of course.”

“Why not?”

You gesture lazily to the reading glasses perched atop your nose. “I don’t have twenty-twenty vision,” you say wryly, “and that’s a sticking point for NASA. For the Air Force, too. Believe me, I checked.”

Keith nods. “You wanted to be up in the sky, no matter what.”

“Yeah,” you admit. “Before the - before I quit college, I was taking flight lessons over at Oakland. One way or another, I was determined to get up there. Obviously, it didn’t work out,” you add, as an afterthought.

“I’ve never been in a plane,” Keith admits quietly, “closest I’ve ever gotten is riding a motorcycle. It’s kind of the same, isn’t it? The speed, the freedom. The danger.”

“Yeah,” you agree, “it’s got the core elements. The danger is what made me feel alive, you know? Like all this time I was asleep, until I got into the cockpit with the instructor, then suddenly I was awake for the first time in my life.” A thought comes to you, then. “Do you remember the Challenger explosion?” you ask Keith.

“Yeah, I guess so.”

“I was in English class when it happened,” you say. “Our teacher, Ms. Silwyck, she scrapped the lesson plan for the day and wheeled out a television so we could watch the launch. And when the shuttle exploded, there was just - silence. No one screamed. No one cried. Everyone just stared at the screen in silent devastation, until she turned it off.”

“But not you,” Keith guesses. You smile over at him. How well he knows you already, after just two scant months.

“Not me,” you confirm. “That was the moment I knew for sure what I wanted to do with my life. I wanted to fly up there. I wanted to risk my life, to have even the slightest chance at getting to space. For me, the devastation came later, when I realized I’d never be able to go.”

Keith nods along. “Call of the Void,” he says, “like when you’re standing on the edge of a canyon, or the top of a tall building, and you want to jump off?”

Oh, Jesus. This is not terrain you should be traversing; you’re hardly equipped for it.

“Ah, maybe,” you say hastily, and then, grasping for something, anything else, “did your teacher make your class watch the Challenger explosion?”

Keith chews on his lip as he thinks. “I don’t know,” he says. “Must’ve been in pre-school, I guess. If they let us watch the take-off, I don’t remember.”

You feel a trickle of dread seep its way into your bloodstream. This is a conversation you’ve been trying to stave off, because having it will illuminate to you just how much you’ve fucked up.

Take a steadying breathe. Then ask, as casually as possible: “How old were you, back then?”

Keith scrunches up his face in concentration. “Four, I think?” Then he shrugs. “I’m not so good at math.”

“What date were you born? I can do the math.”

“1984,” Keith says. “November 1st. All Saint’s Day,” he adds, with a wry smile.

“You just turned sixteen,” you realize aloud.

“A month ago, yeah.”

“Barely.”

“Hey, sixteen is sixteen,” Keith says hotly. “I could get a driver’s license, if I wanted. I could legally drop out of school, too.”

Never mind that he’s clearly already done so, despite the illegality. It begins to crystallize for you just how much of this kid’s life you're willing to steal, just for a little bit more of his time spent in your own. If you were a good person, you’d set him up in a steady home, or a boarding school. Pay for it yourself if you have to; you have the money. At the very least, you should be enrolling him in some kind of home-schooling, or making sure he gets his GED. Make sure he can find a path to college, or trade school, a normal civilian life. Instead, you’re dragging him around the country on a never-ending road-trip, with no future and no prospects - because you’re lonely.

“There’s a ten year age difference between us, Keith,” you say slowly. “Do you realize that?”

“Well, sure, but-”

“That means I need to be the responsible one,” you say. “I knew that from the start, and the fact that I didn’t do anything to help you is bad enough, but treating you like an adult - Jesus, I gave you that beer-”

You reach to swipe it away, suddenly appalled by what you had thought so endearingly cute just minutes before - but Keith is too quick. He keeps the bottle out of your grasp, twisting away and then rising up to his elbows in a flash, leaning into your personal space.

“I’m gonna stop you right there,” he all but snarls. “You don’t know me, and you don’t know my life. If I was looking for a parental figure, I would’ve found one. But I wasn’t; I was looking for - for someone like you, Shiro. And now that I’ve found you, there’s not a damn way you’re gonna get me to leave. You’re not my father; you’re not even my brother, not really. So whatever ‘responsibility’ you think you have, you can go ahead and shove it up your ass, Old Man.”

You blink. Then: “Is that how you used to talk to your teachers?” you ask. Keith immediately deflates, already ashamed of his outburst.

“…Sometimes,” he admits, “but only if they deserved it.”

You can’t help it; you start to laugh, dropping your head back down onto Black as you look up at the endless sky.

“You’re unbelievable, you know that, Spitfire?”

“So…you’re not gonna send me away?” Keith asks quietly, so far removed from his outburst moments earlier that you realize this is a genuine fear for him. You sober back up.

“You’re right,” you say, “I’m not your father. And whatever responsibility I had over you when we first met, I forfeited when I didn’t immediately get you some real help. But I’m not gonna make you leave, Keith. I’m not gonna leave you behind. It’s you and me, kid, till the end of the road - for as long as you want.”

“Okay.” Keith looks mollified, but still slightly glum. That needs to be corrected, you decide, even at the cost of your own dignity.

“Actually, on second thought…our age gap isn’t so big,” you say hesitantly, “because…I’m six and a half years old.”

“Huh?”

“I was born on February 29th, 1972,” you admit sheepishly, “Leap Year.”

“What, really?”

“Yeah, really.”

Now it’s Keith’s turn to laugh. It grows from a snicker to a full-on chortle as he too drops back onto Black’s hood, laughing up at the sky.

“That explains why you’re so fussy,” he chokes out, between peals of mirth, “because you’re a big baby!”

“I thought I was an old man.”

“You wish.”

His eyes sparkle back at you with the joviality you placed there; it’s a thrilling power, to make him happy. Just like that, the night turns back into a good one, with Keith smiling freely under the freedom of a lonesome road and a wide-open sky. You let your worries settle for the night. Let them be a problem for another day.

But, once spoken, the truth now hangs over you at all times, a new, unshakable weight upon your shoulders. Keith is a minor, practically a child. He looks up to you. He trusts you to keep him safe. And now, you need to have a damn good reason for why he’s here, with you, and not in the care of people who could really help him. So far, those reasons boil down to his desperation, and your greed. You need a better justification than that.

But, as fate will have it, the problem will soon be taken out of your hands. For better or for worse.

***

You’re working a salt-and-burn case in Wyoming when things come to a head.

Three and a half months since you first took on your wayward hitchhiker, and you pick up a case from another hunter’s tip. Selfishly, you wish you hadn’t. The case has been needlessly frustrating - a textile factory fire that occurred nearly half a century ago, with dozens dead, and pauper graves to boot. You spend two long, thankless weeks chasing rumors and legends, as the newly opened factory built on the old ground sustains three casualties in the span of five days. It would be faster work if you had a helping hand, of course, but you keep that temptation in check. The last thing you want is Keith to get ganked by a spirit that has a fetish for rebar and strangulation.

Just in time for the grand re-opening, you reach a breakthrough. The old foreman of the factory, Steve Oberdine, deceased not even a month ago, who warned his superiors for years about the unsafe working conditions in the previous factory, before the fire killed his two brothers who worked along side him. He was put down into his family plot not three weeks ago, in St. Mary’s Cemetery, still marked by flowers and fresh soil. Best of all, the name on his headstone is nice and big, easy to find and read under torchlight.

You wait until the cover of darkness, and until you’re sure Keith’s asleep. Then out you go, into the night with a shovel over your shoulder, slinking into the cemetery like a thief.

Digging up a coffin is hard, dirty business. You grunt softly as you work, keenly aware of the dangers of making too much noise, from both natural and supernatural sources. Not for the first time, the idea of having a partner appeals to you. A brother-in-arms, who could watch your back as you toil away in the grave, who could take the shovel out of your hands when you’re too tired to continue. Someone eager and willing to learn, and maybe a little younger than you, so you could take the role of leader and mentor, guiding him, teaching him everything you know -

You dig harder. Nothing like breaking a good sweat to burn out inappropriate desires.

Hour blurs into hour. You work without interruption. Occasionally, you have the sensation of eyes on the back of your neck, watching you when your back is turned, but when you scan the area you find no evidence of voyeurs, either living or dead.

That changes when you finally get down to the coffin, hitting wood with your shovel. As you pry the lid up with your crowbar and douse the sorry son-of-a-bitch in gasoline, you feel a shift in the air, a change in the atmosphere. And that’s all the warning you get before you’re thrown bodily up and out of the grave by an invisible supernatural force, landing on the wet grass besides the tombstone.

You manage to stagger to your feet and pick up your shotgun before you see the spirit materialize just at the lip of the grave, a clear barrier between you and it’s bones. Alright, you think, bring it on then. You open your arms, a grin spread wide across your face.

“Come and get me, you fucking bastard!”

You’ll give credit where credit is due; it’s a quick motherfucker. In the time it takes you to blink, it’s already crossed the space between you in half a second, gliding across the ground, no friction to slow it’s path. Time slows down for you, as it so often does preceding one of your jumps. The world moves in slow motion, as you let the spirit dive for you, waiting for the last possible, perfect moment to -

“SHIRO!!”

That’s the only warning you get before Keith plows into you like a battering ram. You go airborne, having just enough wherewithal to vaguely appreciate your boy’s unexpected strength, before the breath is knocked out of you by a tombstone connecting with your solar plexus. From your sprawl over the headstone, you see where Keith’s fallen in the dirt, scuttling backward from the advancing, freshly-pissed off ghost. Keith manages to get into a crouch, springing back up with an agility you didn’t know he possessed. As you stumble to your feet, you watch the spirit advance on him, but Keith doesn’t panic - just the opposite, in fact. He looks like a stone-cold killer, like he’s done this a hundred times before, and will do it again. Just as the spirit reaches him, Keith’s switchblade is in hand. He takes a swing, and you watch in dumb awe as the metal of the blade shimmers, elongates, until it’s - you blink and your brain stutters.

Is that a fucking sword?

Keith carries through his swing, slashing through the spirit regardless of your confusion. It screams as though burned, flickering out of existence.

You climb to your feet, dumbly watching your unexpected companion. Keith stares at the empty space the spirit once occupied, sword still in hand, the hilt hanging limply from his fingers. Then turns to look up to you, his eyes wide with a sudden, uncertain fear.

“I don’t know what comes next,” he say.

You have no idea what that’s supposed to mean. You do have just enough time to raise your shotgun right as the spirit re-materializes just off of Keith’s shoulder. You take the shot.

The rock salt whizzes right past his ear, catching tendrils of dark hair in it’s path, before blowing Oberdine’s head away, along with the rest of his body. As nimbly as you can, you sling out your lighter, send it arching in Keith’s direction. Keith, who catches it like a fucking cat, a bewildered expression plastered to his face.

“Go! Burn the bones!” you shout, “Burn them!!” Desperately, you hope he understands.

You see Keith turn from you, staggering for the grave; so does the spirit of Steven Oberdine, freshly regenerated, and looking for vengeance. To keep him occupied, you opt for a blitz attack, teleporting around the spirit multiple times in the span of seconds, getting a hit in with each apparition. Oberdine snarls, spinning in a circle, slashing at the empty air where you were just standing not a heartbeat ago. You see his form start to flicker, as he attempts his own form of teleportation - but you are a master of your craft, and the void is your realm. It bows to you, and no one else. You jump with the spirit, reappearing just a split-second sooner, already swinging with your metal crowbar as he flickers back into existence. The crowbar disperses him again, and again, and again. Until, halfway through your next swing at his torso, Steven Oberdine’s spectral body bursts into flame from the center outward, the fire racing through his phantom form, eating him away as he howls, and turns to dust.

You take a moment to catch your breath, then look over at Keith, who’s just turning away from the burning coffin in the grave and pulling himself up to his feet. Which - thank god for that; hopefully he didn’t see anything he doesn’t need to know.

When Keith does see you, a smile breaks across his face, radiant as the first crack of dawn. He beams at you, an adrenaline-high grin if you’ve ever seen one. Your pulse spikes, and that’s the only warning you have that you’re about to lose your shit.

“Don’t you ever do that again!” you roar. “What the hell were you thinking, Keith! Jumping in front of me like that? That thing could’ve fucking killed you!”

He flinches back from you, stumbling away as you approach him. "I’m sorry, Shiro! I’m sorry! I didn’t - I just thought-”

You pinch the bridge of your nose to ward off a swiftly blooming stress-headache.

“How the hell did you even get here?” you demand.

“I followed you,” Keith admits quietly. “I stole a bike.”

He holds your silver lighter out in his palm, like an offering to appease a wrathful god. In his other hand, the hilt of his sword dangled limply from his finger, blade tip scrapping into the dirt.

“…put that away before you hurt someone.”

“Yes Sir.”

Keith does a fancy flick of his wrist; the blade he wields is now just a stiletto switchblade - long, but within the realm of logic. Perhaps it always was, and you’re just finally starting to crack. You blink to the dispel the white light of it’s transformation from your retinas.

“Help me clean this place up,” you say. “We’ll talk when we get back to our room.”

Keith nods mutely, as sweet and docile as a little kitten. A fucking act, as you well know. Still, what you wouldn’t do to keep him that way.

***

First of all, it’s not a bike; it’s a Harvey-Davidson Cruiser, trigged out with all the bells and whistles. Under the cover of darkness, you make sure that Keith returns the motorcycle to the bar parking-lot he found it in, then get the hell out of dodge, because the last thing you need to deal with right now is Hell’s Angel’s up your ass. Then, you return to the motel room.

First aid comes before anything else. You make Keith take off his shirt, then gingerly run your fingers over his skin, along the lines of his collar bone. You thought you heard a crack, when he plowed into you, and are unhappily proved right. There’s a nasty bruise blooming around his left collar bone, stark evidence of how he came flying in, taking the hit that was meant for you.

Under your fingers, Keith flinches, and hisses. You help him immobilize his left arm, keeping your touch fleeting and gentle.

When you’ve tied off his makeshift sling, you murmur, “Why’d you go and do a thing like that, huh?”

“I had to, Shiro. I had to save you,” Keith pleads, adamantly. “You were gonna let it - gore you, or something.”

“I wasn’t,” you assure him. “Before he got close enough, I was going to tel - to, ah, dodge him. I do it all the time; I would’ve been fine.”

“Maybe not this time,” Keith mumbles. His good arm is crossed hard against his chest, chin tipped down, eyes skirting away from yours. You scared him, you realize. You’re nothing but a familiar stranger to him, really, but he’s just a kid who has no one else; of course he’s going to cling to you, no matter what. Even if that means confronting the things that go bump in the night.

Speaking of which.

You sigh. “…so, I guess you have some questions,” you hazard.

Keith nods, his eyes saucer-wide.

“That thing out there. Was that - a ghost?”

“A spirit, yes. A vengeful spirit, of a man who died recently. You heard about all the strange deaths happening at the new textile mill in town?”

“Yeah, I saw it on your murder wall.”

“That - it’s not a murder wall, Keith. It’s an evidence board.”

“Well, I know that now.”

He’s fucking with you, you realize. Unbelievable. And at a time like this, too, as nonplussed as anything.

“You seem to be taking this very well,” you remark. “You find out ghosts are real. You burn a corpse. All in a day’s work?”

Keith sobers up quickly, schooling his features to a somber frown.

“Look, I’m not stupid, Shiro. I’ve known for a while that you’re a - a dangerous man, in a dangerous business. I knew that when I came with you.”

“You thought I was a hit-man.”

“Well, you are, kind of. A hit-man for the supernatural. Except you protect people, too.” Keith looks so earnestly up at you that it hurts. This boy - he’s gonna be the death of you, you just know it.

“You’re right,” you say, “I do protect people. But not just from ghosts. From vampires, too, and werewolves. Demons, and wendigos. All the monsters that you were ever told lived in your closet, or under your bed - they’re all real, and they’re all nasty. Being a hunter, like I am, it’s a dangerous job, and it’s a dangerous life. It’s liable to get me killed, one of these days.”

“That’s why you should train me,” Keith pipes up. “That’s why I should be your hunting partner. So I can protect you, and watch your back.”

Oh, no. Oh no no no. This isn’t going the way you hoped it would. What you were desperatley praying for was for him to ask you to drop him off at a bus-stop in the morning, not - whatever this is.

“Keith,” you press, “this isn’t the sort of life you get into without a good reason. And every hunter I’ve ever met had a very fucking good one.”

“How do you know I don’t?” Keith challenges.

And, yes. With his mysterious past, and his magically transforming sword, you suppose that Keith might have a very good reason for wanting to hunt down and kill the supernatural.

“Becoming a hunter will get you killed, probably sooner than later,” you tell him, point blank. “Is that worth your life? Is it worth your soul?”

“…I don’t know.”

“You need to know,” you say, as you turn away to repack your first-aid kit. “You need to be sure.”

Keith is silent for a moment, his head tipped down to his chest as he hides behind his hair. Then, in a tiny, quiet voice: “It’d be worth you.”

“What?” You spin back to regard him with - you don’t know, hysterical fear, maybe? What have you done, you think wildly, in the short time you’ve known him, to make this kid so attached to you that he wants to gladly throw his life away?

Keith fidgets under your attention. “I mean, we’d spend more time together, right? Working cases? Hunting monsters? We’d have each other’s backs, no matter what. We’d be brothers-in-arms.” Through dark, sweat-strung bangs, those amethyst eyes look up at you shyly. “Having a brother would be worth anything,” he admits, like a terrible, dirty secret.

Goddamn. What are you supposed to say to that?

You breathe in, count to five. Breathe out. Release whatever perceived control you thought you had over this situation.

“If I were to - to teach you, to train you, you’d need to listen to me,” you say. “You’d need to follow my orders - without question. If I tell you to do something, you do it. If I tell you to stop, you stop. Do you understand me?”

I will not have you dying on my watch.

To your surprise, Keith snaps to in perfect military precision, shoulders back, back straight, and gives you a sharp salute, thumb tucked neatly under his hand. “Yes, Captain!” he swears. A glint in his eye reveals his mirth; the rough set of his lips reveals his seriousness. Oh, damn you, but you’ve really stepped in it now.

You take the only course of action left available to you. You hold out your hand. Keith takes it.

“Alright then, kid,” you say. “Welcome to the family business.”

In the future, during your more morose moments, you’ll be prone to think that this, right here - his bleeding hand clasped within your own, a blood oath between two almost strangers - was where it all truly started, the point where Keith’s dark destiny changed from shadow to certainty. The point of no return.

Through the gleam of the dim bathroom lights, Keith smiles up at you. Eyes florescent with flame and faith. All his trust, given over into your hands.

This is the beginning of the end. If only you’d known. But foresight was never your gift.

Author's Note: Is now the right time to tell you guys that I have never watched an episode of Voltron in my life? Lol but seriously, we’re flying by the seat of our pants here.

Chapter Text

V.        NOW:

Half an hour out from your destination, and Keith puts a hand on your shoulder, breaking you from your mindless tunnel vision on the highway in front of you.

“You sure we really need to go? Anything could happen there,” he says.

“Like what, exactly?” you ask.

“I don’t know,” Keith says, but the way his eyes skitter away from yours gives him away.

“Did you have a vision of us going there?” you ask. “Is that why you’re so against this? You think something bad is going to happen?”

“No,” he says quickly. Too quickly.

“Keith.”

His mouth draws further into a tight line, just this side of an outright scowl, jaw tense and sharp enough to cut. He’s scared, you realize with a start. Really scared.

“Jesus, kid, what do you think they’re gonna do to us?”

“It’s nothing,” Keith insists.

“Hey, I won’t really let them shoot me, if that’s what you’re worried about,” you assure him. “Cross my heart, hope to die.”

“Shiro.”

“Sorry,” you say with a grin, to make it clear how sorry you’re not. Either way, your ploy works; Keith looks adorable when he’s trying to make himself angry with you.

You watch out of the corner of your eye as your copilot worries aggressively at his bottom lip. When he finally releases the flesh, the indents of his sharp canines remain, two sharp craters into bloodless skin.

“Just - promise me, Shiro - if things start to go south, you follow my lead and we leave immediately. No questions asked.”

“Of course,” you say, “If you think it’s best. I trust your judgment, Keith.”

A nasty little voice reminds you oh so helpfully that it’s your own judgment, nowadays, that you can’t seem to trust. Every pivotal decision you’ve made in recent memory has only led you into disaster - and still, somehow, you find yourself at the wheel. Maybe it’s about time you let Keith start driving you around.

You crank up the dial on Radiohead, drown out the devil on your shoulder. Give Keith a nudge with your elbow just to hear his breathy exhalation.

“Hey, don’t worry, kid,” you say, “we’ll be alright. And if we’re not - well, you can always say ‘I told you so.’”

Keith grimaces, but he laughs, too, a hint of a snicker that he immediately tries to hide. You count that as a win.

***

The Castle is, to put it bluntly, a dump.

Smack dead in the badlands of Arizona, the white building rises up out of the horizon to meet you, a sad dilapidated bar on a long-bypassed highway. It sits squat in the middle of an empty dirt parking lot, its signature turrets barely standing higher than its roof. The white vinyl siding has seen better days, battered and worn and in desperate need of a good power-wash. As dive-bars go, this one looks like a solid pass from the roadside - which is exactly the point. But any seasoned hunter worth his rock-salt knows about the Castle. It’s one of the only way-stations that caters to your particular occupation; some even call it home sweet home.

You never have. Neither has Keith. Though the two of you have reported back here countless times over the years, you’ve never stayed longer than your welcome. There’s a bit of truth to Keith’s assertion, about the others not trusting you. You’ve always towed a fine line between being part of their team, and being an outsider, oftentimes balancing right on that razor-thin edge. But despite whatever misgiving they might have, you’re sure the Castle will help you. You’re like family, after all. And as all hunters know, family is hard to come by - and so easily snatched away.

Black rumbles into the empty parking lot with all the subtlety of a roaring wildcat. You take a moment to wait, watching for any sign of movement at the front door, or through the cracks of the shuttered windows. The Castle stays quiet. But that doesn’t mean that you aren’t being watched.

“Alright, I guess we should get this show on the road.” You clap your hands, rubbing them together with vigor, as though with enough friction you can spark the most ideal outcome.

“Just - stay behind me,” Keith says, “and let me do the talking?”

You hold your hands up in surrender. Keith doesn’t look particularly assuaged.

Gravel skitters under your boots as you approach the Castle, movements slow and arms held carefully away from your sides. Firearms stay in their holsters; there’s no need to get anyone jumpy. Especially when you have the feeling that at least one person is already observing you through the barrel of a sniper.

Your gut feeling is proved right by the shot that shatters the uneasy silence, bullet ricocheting off the gravel just a few feet in front of Keith, who yelps, trainers skittering backward. But his recovery is lightning-quick, gun unholstered and pointed squarely up at the second-story slatted window that conceals the shooter. You raise out a steadying hand to temper him, but it’s too late; Keith has lost his shit.

“Lance! You motherfucker - get your skinny ass down here so I can shoot you a new asshole,” he growls. The gun cocks for good measure.

“Keith-”

“What, Psychic-Boy, didn’t see that coming?” Lance’s muffled voice drifts down to you, just as smugly aggravating as you remember - and perfectly calibrated to set off the man next to you.

“Oh, I’ll give you something to see,” Keith snarls, his upper lip actually curling to reveal sharp, white canines. You’d recognize that intent anywhere.

Well, shit. So much for letting Keith do all the talking.

You move fast, jumping over in less than a millisecond to grab his arm and wrestle it down just as Keith pulls the trigger, the gun discharging harmlessly into the ground. Keith grunts as he tries to shrug you off, but you keep your grip, forcing him into an awkward headlock. Above you, Lance’s scandalized voice filters down to you

“Oy, cabrón! You just tried to fucking kill me!”

“Lance,” you grit, “how ‘bout you do yourself a favor and shut the fuck up.”

“Yeah, Lance,” Keith parrots, “how ‘bout you do everyone a favor and-”

BAM!

The shotgun going off behind your back startles some sense back into all three of you. You freeze, and Keith stills in your arms, gun hanging limp in his hand as he stops trying to fight you off.

“Lance, please stand down,” says a delicate, feminine voice behind you.

“Are you kidding me? Princess-”

“Blue Paladin, stand down. Now.” The words are clipped, posh, and yet unmistakably dangerous. Just like the woman that you can’t see who stands behind you - who’s just chambered a new shell with an audible ka-thunk.

“Yes ma’am. Rodger-rodger.” Lance’s response comes from both up above and through the static hiss of a walkie-talkie.

“Keith,” you say, “come on, gun down. You heard the lady.”

To your relief, his arm drops down the rest of the way, enough anger leached out of him that you feel confident in releasing him fully and oh so slowly turning around to face the Princess of the Castle.

Allura stands before you, tall and proud as ever, her beautiful white curls pinned away from her face and trailing down the back of her sharp denim jacket. Denim jeans, too, with white cowboy boots to match the white stetson that sits perched atop her head. A pale pink scarf bursts from her collar like a delicate satin flower at her throat. Really, everything about her looks delicate, right down to her perfectly manicured nails with their French-tips at the end of long, dark, delicate fingers - fingers that grip her shotgun with a hidden strength, as she keeps it leveled right on your chest.

Looks, as they say, can be deceiving.

Besides you, Keith snorts. “Real warm welcome you’ve given us so far,” he says.

Allura smiles faintly.

“My apologies for our…less than cordial greeting. Strange creatures are walking the earth, nowadays. One can never be too careful.” Then, as though to make a point, her eyes trail over to you.

“Shiro,” she says coolly, “last time we heard, you were dead.”

“…well, I’m not anymore,” you offer weakly.

Allura’s lips thin dangerously. “Hmm, yes. So I see,” she acknowledges. “Would you care to tell us how this transpired?”

With hands held up, you take a careful step forward.

“Shiro-” Keith growls beside you. A sharp gesture of your hand strangles whatever he was about to say.

“We’ll tell you everything we know about my…situation,” you say. “We’ll let you do all the tests, too - to your heart’s content, if need be. All we ask is that you hear us out. And help us, if you can.”

Allura purses her lips, her imperious gaze raking you up and down. What she’s searching for, you can’t begin to guess - but she must find it, because her stance relaxes, shotgun lowered to point just slightly lower than your central mass.

“This should be interesting,” she says, with a half-fleeting smile. “Well, come on then. You’d better get inside.”

***

Atmospheric would be a kind way to describe the interior of the Castle. The entrance is enshrouded by shadow, illuminated only by the beams of soft light that manage to filter in through the slatted windows. Above the bar, one dim fluorescent pendant fixture flickers weakly over the antique taps and dusty liquor bottles. Decrepit, moldering, atmospheric, yes - and yet, a home away from home. You feel guilty for even thinking that; after all, Black has been your de facto home for years now, and you don’t like to step out on a girl. But the Castle, and the hunters that haunt it, have been a second sanctuary for a long time now, a refuge where you and Keith are allowed to be paladins, and freaks, and part of a team.

It’d be a real shame if it came to an end over all of this. But you understand why your sudden, mysterious resurrection might be a hard pill to swallow. So you’ll submit to any tests the Princess wants, if it puts her fears to rest.

You pass the first two as you enter the bar, stepping deftly over the salt line at the front door and walking across the muddy Persian rug that undoubtedly conceals a devil’s trap underneath it. Behind you, Keith lets out a slight breath of relief, which-?

“Thanks for the vote of confidence,” you snark. Because he’s an adult now, and this is a serious situation, Keith flips you the middle finger.

Your light banter startles the person who’s sitting at the bar, hunched over her laptop as she perches precariously on a rickety bar stool. Once she’s swiveled to your direction, Pidge surveys you from over the rims of her coke-bottle glasses. With her messy, cropped hair, and the slight glare off her round frames, she reminds you of a scruffy, frazzled owlet.

“Oh, look. The abominations are here,” she says.

“Ouch.” You rub a hand over your heart for emphasis. Pidge rolls her eyes.

“Meant in the strictest possible academic sense, of course,” she says as she hops down from the bar stool. “Hey, Hunk. Get out here! We have company. Our test subject has arrived.” Her smile takes on a sharper edge, a bit too gleeful for your comfort.

Moments later, and the swinging doors bang open. Hunk appears from the steam of the kitchen, a dirtied apron hung around his neck, hands powdered white with flour.

“Shiro! Keith! Aw, it’s so good to see you guys. Come on, bring it in - wait, wait.” He retracts the offered hug, shuffling backwards. “Tests? What tests?”

“We’re getting there,” you assure. At his obvious confusion: “Tests to make sure I’m not an unholy creature of the undead.”

Hunk surveys you up and down. “Well, if you are, you’re the best looking zombie I’ve ever seen in my life,” he decides.

“Yeah, well, you should’ve seen me when I was covered in graveyard mud.”

While you’re both chuckling, Keith manages to slice through the space between the two of you, setting himself as your shield. As overprotective as ever.

“You all seem to be pretty nonplussed about our situation here: Shiro, back from the dead. I mean,” he shrugs, “don’t get me wrong, we appreciate the hospitality, but we expected you’d all be a bit more…?”

“Chary? Leery? Iffy?” You get whiplash trying to pinpoint exactly where that familiar Kiwi accent is coming from; Coran does your spine a favor by popping out of where he’d been stooped behind the bar, a grimy keg line hung over his shoulder.

“…suspicious.” Keith finishes.

“Well, don’t worry your noggin about it, Number Four!” Coran twirls a wrench around lazily by its cord, just narrowly avoiding clipping himself on the chin. “We’re plenty suspicious! Dead men hardly rise out from their graves all the time, you know! And when they do, it only takes one whiff of the old nostrils to know you had better stick them straight through with a silver dagger - but! You needn’t worry too much, Number One - we’ve heard all about your predicament.”

You blink. “…you have?”

“Oh, yes! The psychic radio’s been yammering on about it for days now. But we’ll get to that bridge when we’re ready to burn it.” Coran waves your curiosity away. “Allura can explain later. For now-”

“We need some assurances,” Pidge finishes for him. “Just the usual tests; you know the drill. For science,” she adds, with a sharp smile.

“Oh, well. As long as it’s for science,” you say.

Keith edges another step closer to you, one protective hand held out to keep Pidge at bay.

“Just how much more do you really need to do?” he protests. “Shiro’s already passed at least several just by getting into this building. And he did all the other ones willingly, on himself. I saw it firsthand.”

Allura’s booted heels on the wooden floor behind you click to a stop, and you remember with distinct discomfort that she still has both hands securely on her shotgun.

“That’s all well and good,” she says, “but we can’t just take your word for it. We need to see hard proof. I’m sure you understand.”

“Of course-,” you start to say, but the sound of heavy footsteps pounding down the stairs interrupts your train of thought.

“Hey, don’t start all the fun without me!”

The blur of sharp elbows and frenetic energy that comes flying down the stairs and into your little cluster resolves itself into Lance, who takes one second to pick you out of the group before he’s enthusiastically flinging himself towards you.

“Shiro! My buddy, my pal!” Lance shakes your hand vigorously, so caught up in his own enthusiasm that he’s completely heedless of any potential danger. You manage to extract your hand before he wrings it from your wrist. “It’s real good to see you, compadre. And Keith,” he turns, arms out like a showman trying to approach a lion. “You’re here, too.”

“Touch me and you lose a hand.”

“Yeesh.” Lance retreats slowly from the hug he was about to inflict on Keith, arms flapping back down to his sides. “No affection for the Keithy-cat today, I see.”

“Affection? You just tried to kill me!” Keith snaps.

“Hey, what’s a little gunfire between friends?”

“Fuck you, Lance.”

“Baby, you’ll have to buy me a drink first.” Lance waggles his eyebrows lasciviously as he saunters away, going back behind the bar. “And I’ll have you know, I’m not a cheap date. No bottom shelf rot-gut whiskey, or whatever the hell it is you drink.”

“Paladins.” Allura’s stern voice cracks across the room. “As charming as this banter is to witness once more, we do have pressing business to attend to. Now, Shiro - if you wouldn’t mind?”

You bring out your best 1000-kilowatt smile, plaster it on so tight it cracks around the edges. Extend your forearms out, to the tender mercies of their silver blades.

“Do your worst,” you declare.

***

As expected, you pass all the standard tests with flying colors once more. Pidge looks slightly disappointed.

“But there has to be something we missed,” she insists, “some symptom of the cause. People just don’t - rise from the dead!”

“Shiro isn’t people; he’s Shiro,” Keith says, as though that should be self-evident. Which it is, but also - what?

“The fuck that’s supposed to mean?” Pidge squawks.

“No, no, he’s got a point,” Hunk butts in. “I hate to bring it up, I really do, but the two of you have always been - different? I mean, with your super freaky powers, maybe the normal rules just…don’t apply to you?”

“So now you think they’re exempt from death? From hell? From crossroads deals?” Lance scoffs from where he sits perched on the bar counter. “Nah, man. Come on. All of those are pretty binding, even for psychics and witches. You can’t tell me these two are just so super special that the rules don’t apply to them.”

“Trust me, that’s not what we’re saying,” you say. “Someone, or something, did this to me. Someone brought me back from the dead. Tell them about the grave-site, Keith.”

“Grave-site?” Allura raises one finely-arched white eyebrow.

“Not now,” you order. “Keith?”

From his spot by the wall, Keith recrosses his arms, casting a wary glance around at the rest of the self-titled Paladins.

“…it looked like a bomb went off. For a radius of more than 50 feet, all the trees were blown flat to the ground. Like the remnants of a resurrection spell, but I’ve never seen any spell that can do something like that on such a massive scale,” he admits.

Silence descends as the rest of the group process Keith’s words. Finally, Allura sighs. She rises from her bar stool, putting down her bottle of beer with a delicate clink as she approaches you, a thoughtful expression gracing her face.

“Shiro will be allowed to stay here for the time being and reclaim his position as Black Paladin. We’ll take his resurrection at face value - until proven otherwise.”

“Oh, come one!” Pidge exclaims. “How is this in any way a good idea? We have no idea what we’re dealing with, here. So Shiro’s not a monster that we have empirical tests for, big whoop. That doesn’t mean he isn’t something. How do we know he isn’t tainted, that he didn’t bring something back with him, huh?” She throws a wide-eyed, sheepish glance in your direction. “No offense, Shiro.”

You hold up your hands. “None taken,” you assure her.

Allura clears her throat. “I’m not making this decision lightly,” she announces. “But it would be pointless to keep Shiro out of the fold, not when he and Keith are going to go out on their own and take up cases regardless - with or without our say-so.” She levels a particularly stern glare at the both of you. “All I ask,” she continues, “is that you be vigilant. Report back to us if you uncover anything new about Shiro’s - situation.”

“…what?” Keith pushes off of the wall, stalking closer to the group. ‘That’s it? We come to you for help, and all we get is ‘don’t worry, we’re not gonna kill you?’”

“Well, there is one other thing we could do,” Coran pipes up. “Bit of a horror movie cliche, really, but, well - there’s always a seance.”

“Seance?” That draws you up short. You pause in fixing the newly wrapped bandage around your wrist and turn to Allura, who sighs.

“I was circling back around to that,” she admits. “What Coran mentioned earlier, about us hearing about your return through - how did he phrase it? - the psychic radio? Well, that wasn’t a figure of speech, per se. The Other Side’s been chattering on for days, now. And all they can talk about is you, Shiro.”

Her bright eyes pin you to your seat.

“Me?” You fight the urge to fidget under her stare.

“Yes,” Allura confirms. “That’s why we had forewarning of your arrival. Four days ago, as I was listening in, there was an explosion of activity, spiritual chatter like I’ve never heard before. And through it all was your name, Shiro, over and over again - ‘Takashi Shirogane has been freed.’”

Absolute silence. You cringe under the renewed scrutiny from everyone else in the room.

“What?!?” Lance finally sputters. “When were you going to tell the rest of us about this, huh?”

“When the entire team was reunited to hear it,” Allura snaps. Lance, wisely, shuts his mouth.

“What kind of spiritual chatter are we talking about?” Keith asks. “…Demons? Spirits?”

“Everything. All of the above. It was…a cacophony. Unlike anything I’ve ever heard before,” Allura admits quietly. “And it’s still ongoing. I’ve called every spiritualist and medium I know, and all of them, regardless of distance, have been experiencing the same phenomenon. All of them say it started four days ago; the day Shiro apparently rose from his grave.” Her gaze snaps to yours, boring into you so suddenly that your heart misses a beat. “So, that is why I am inclined to believe you, Shiro. There is clearly an upheaval occurring within the spiritual realm, with unknown forces at play - greater, perhaps, than anything we’ve experienced in the past. And, with all of this in mind, that is why I suggest we perform a seance.”

“Is that…safe?” Hunk hedges. “Like, is that even a good idea at this point? If we have no idea what we’re up against, isn’t our best option to stay under the radar? And like - not point a giant spotlight right on ourselves?”

“Gotta agree with Hunk on this one,” Lance chimes in.

“But would it work? Would it get us some answers?” Keith demands. “If we gain more knowledge about what we’re up against, then I say it’s worth the risk.”

“Oh, yeah, great. We’ll have more knowledge, right before all of holy hell swoops down and smokes our asses-”

“Paladins-,”

Thankfully, Coran manages to salvage the discourse before it can spiral further down into chaos. “How about a vote?” he suggests. “A good old-fashioned show of hands?”

“Because nothing bad has ever happened in a democracy,” Hunk grumbles.

Coran, buoyed by his enthusiasm, misses the sarcasm.

“Excellent!” he exclaims. “Then, all those in favor of holding a dangerous, backwater seance, please say ‘aye!’”

“Yes,” says Keith.

Allura holds up one slim hand. “Aye.”

“Aw shucks, who am I to stand in the way of progress?” Pidge drawls. “Sure, let’s go with ‘aye.’”

“And an ‘aye’ from me makes four,” Coran tallies. “Against?”

Both Lance and Hunk raise their hands; Hunk sheepish, Lance exasperated. And-

“Shiro?”

Keith looks at you with something akin to betrayal. Or rather, at your right hand, which is raised along with theirs.

“I’m sorry, but I just don’t think it’s a good idea,” you tell him, “although clearly, I’m outnumbered in this.”

“You’re the one who wanted to come here so we could get some answers,” Keith accuses.

“And I still want that,” you assure him, “but are we sure a seance is the best way to do go about it? The last thing we want to do is put a target on our backs. Especially since we don’t know what we’re dealing with.”

“I can assure you, the danger to this is minimal,” Allura interjects. “This isn’t a summoning; we’re not trying to draw anything to us through the veil. We’re simply peering through a window we’ll create, which is under our control. Combined with the right warding, and the chances of anything going wrong are - statistically negligible.”

“Oh, well, if they’re statistically negligible-”

“Are you a hunter or not?” Keith’s voice cracks out like a whip, sharp and unflinching as he cuts Lance off mid-joke. “Because hunters aren’t afraid to do what needs to be done. And what we need to do is get some damn answers.”

His righteousness is startling in its intensity. And, frankly, a bit unnerving, too. He’s always had a short fuse, you’ve known that for ages, but again, you find yourself wondering what Keith’s been doing in this past year; just what, exactly, has he been up to, that’s managed to fill him with such - wrath? You can almost feel the heat of his anger, buzzing in static electricity off of the fine hairs on your body. Pulsating in the room, like it’s his second shadow. You’re almost positive the others can feel it, too, with the way they’re looking at him.

Well. When stated with such aplomb…

“It’s settled, then,” Allura announces. She rises from her seat. “We’ll start the seance at dusk. Until then, I’ll need all of you to help with the warding…”

You half-listen as she begins to list off the various protective steps she’ll need aid in completing; Pidge, already with her notebook whipped out, is taking furious, cramped notes in her terrible penmanship. The attention of the other Paladins are fixed rapt on Allura, their faces resolute. Now that the Princess has spoken, there will be no turning back.

When everyone finally begins to disperse, you rise from your bar stool slowly in an effort to wait them out. You’re determined to keep any of your lingering reservations to yourself - but then your eyes meet Keith. He’s watching you, with an unreadable expression, like he doesn’t know what to make of you. But that same electric intensity as moments before remains, an almost preternatural caress. Your heart swoops low into your stomach.

“Keith-”

“Later,” he says, short and clipped. “Right now, we have work to do.”

Then he’s walking away into the next room, trailing behind the others. You let yourself plop back down onto the bar stool, fiddling absentmindedly with your empty beer bottle as you stew in the ache of his disappointment. It’s a feeling, you’re sure, that you’ll need to learn to live with.

***

You can see how, from an outsider's perspective, the Paladin system might appear a bit - juvenile. After all, it is based off of a cartoon for children, some obscure Japanese mecha series from the 80’s. But, despite being a fully grown-ass man, Coran has been obsessed with the show for going on three decades, and once he introduced it to Lance, who introduced it to Hunk, who introduced it to Pidge...suffice it to say that Allura gave up on trying to curb their enthusiasm years ago, and now she, too, embraces the Paladin system with all it’s strange and charm.

The Paladin system is very simple, and goes as follows: the Castle is the central hub, the command base, if you will, and since Allura is the proprietor of said establishment, she enjoys certain decision-making privileges that, as being the most experienced, active hunter, you share with her. Through copious research, and a herculean amount of data analysis on Pidge’s part, the Castle is able to discover and pinpoint the location of active supernatural cases all across the country by collecting and cross-referencing weather patterns, crime statistics, astrological events, etcetera, etc. Then, it’s only a matter of deciding which team to dispatch on which particular case. The pair-offs are natural and easy, Allura with Lance, Hunk with Pidge - and you with Keith, of course. And the beauty of this system is that, while you are all expected to report back to the Castle at semi-regular intervals, each subgroup is free to come and go as they please, or as the job urges them. Coran, who always remains at the Castle, acts as your case coordinator, and if you ever need backup, another sub-team is only a quick call away.

It has always bothered you, though, just how young the rest of the Paladins are. Granted, hunters do tend to be on the younger side, due to the inherent danger of the job - but it’s always disturbed you. Allura and Coran are exempt from this worry, of course. Though he likes to pretend otherwise, Coran is in his late 40’s, while Allura is somewhere in her early thirties, although a lady never tells. She hardly looks it; perhaps one benefit to being a natural-born psychic is that you never look a day over twenty-five. But Hunk? Lance? Pidge? Several years younger than Keith, at least, and most of them without any family to speak of. All for the usual reasons why hunters are perpetually alone, of course. In this line of work, everyone has a tragic back-story to unlock, and the younger they are, the worse it tends to be. Lance, you think, might be the only exception to that rule - he’s openly admitted to becoming a hunter for the guts and the glory. But for the rest - for Pidge, especially - it wasn’t much of a choice at all. The hunting life found them. And if an old kid’s cartoon about found family and fighting space monsters is what keeps them going, who are you to argue?

It’s not even a very good animated series, from what you’ve heard - ended at season two on a cliff-hanger that never got resolved. But if it makes your team happy, then you’re more than willing to play along.

Speaking of which. You watch Lance pass you in the hall, a bag of salt hefted over his shoulder. The movement of his muscles pulls his old, ratty tee tight across his chest, showing off the graphic print of the Blue Paladin in sleek space battle-armor. You have to duck your head to hide your chuckle.

Your good humor is dampened when someone clears their throat behind you. You pause in your sigil writing, slip the piece of chalk you were using into your pocket, and turn to face the man standing behind you. Keith looks shame-faced, eyes on the ground as he shuffles back and forth.

“I’m, ah - sorry. For snapping, earlier,” he says quietly. “You didn’t deserve that.”

You release a long, drawn-out breath. “It’s alright, Keith,” you tell him. “I know I’ve put you through the ringer, these last few days.”

“Yeah. That’s one way of putting it.” He looks amused despite himself; however, that joviality quickly bleeds away as Keith gives you a long side-eye.

“I’m gonna ask you a question,” he hedges eventually. “And you’re not going to like it.”

You frown. “Well, go ahead and shoot. You won’t know till you say it.”

Keith grimaces. “Are you…sure you don’t remember anything? From hell?”

You’ll have to admit, you’re thrown for a second.

“Yes, I’m sure,” you say, “and I promised you I was telling the truth. Did you not believe me?” Then, a sneaking suspicion that you can’t help but give voice. “Do you…want me to remember?” you ask, with equal parts perplexity and hurt.

“No! Of course not, Shiro.” Keith ducks his head, as though ashamed of what he’s about to say next. “I just wonder if maybe…you already might? Subconsciously, at least? And that’s why you’re not pushing for more information. Because you already know some of it, and you don’t want to know anymore.”

That is…the dumbest thing you’ve ever heard. You don’t say so, but your expression must communicate that for you. Keith huffs, suddenly looking embarrassed.

“It was only an idea,” he says with a shrug.

“A far-out idea. Look, this isn’t Total Recall,” you remind him. “This is real-life. My life. And if I remembered anything from hell, I’d think I’d fucking know it.”

“Just think about it, Shiro-”

“I know what you’re going to say,” you interrupt. “That I have PTSD, right? Or some sort of psychosis?”

Keith says nothing, stone-faced and silent.

“Believe me,” you say, “it’s nothing I haven’t thought of, too. Everything you could possibly suggest, it’s already crossed my mind. And if I thought there was anything wrong with me, I would tell you immediately. Okay?”

Keith nods dumbly. “Okay,” he murmurs.

“The reason I’m urging for caution is because I’m trying to look out for both of us,” you remind him gently. “I’m not pushing for us to go flying head-first into danger precisely because we don’t know what we’re dealing with, and just throwing ourselves at the problem could get us all killed. We need more intel, and we need strategy. Then we can focus on the offensive. Patience yields focus, right?”

You watch as Keith’s hot temper flares yet again, as he opens his mouth and then has to forcibly stop himself from spitting out the first fiery rebuttal that comes to his mind - no doubt something along the lines of shoving your patience up where the sun don’t shine. Instead, you watch as he wrestles with that impulse and masters it, channeling that inner fire into a more constructive force.

“This seance-thing will get us the intel,” he argues, instead. “With Allura conducting it, we’ll be as safe as we possibly can be. We’ve warded this place up to kingdom come. Eventually, we have to stop running, and stand to face whatever’s behind all of this. Victory or death, right?”

He’s right. You hate that he’s right. Throwing back that old rallying cry into your face hurts like a bitch, reopens old wounds that you didn’t realize were still tender - but he’s right. Those were your words. You are the Champion; you are the only one who survived the Arena, and Yellow-Eye’s machinations. You made it out of there alive, when all the other special children didn’t.

Keith can’t say the same. He wasn’t there. He wasn’t snatched up and spirited away, forced to fight for his life over and over again. And yet here he is, parroting your words, when you yourself don’t have the stomach for them anymore.

You swallow all that unbidden pain back down. Refocus yourself on what’s really important here.

“There’s no point to any victory if I lose you in the process,” you tell him quietly. Almost like you hope he won’t hear it. But he does. Keith’s eyes go wide, as though he never expected to hear such a sentiment from you.

“Shiro…” Really, he looks so shocked. At what, you don’t quite understand. Isn’t it obvious, how much you regard him, how important he is to you?

“Keith-”

“HEY, LOSERS.”

Lance’s voice rings out, snapping both of you out of whatever strange daze you were in. Keith jumps backward, and you yourself find yourself straightening back, recollecting your sense of personal space.

Lance is peering at you from the doorway down the hall, his head peeing just around the corner.

“Save the chick-flick moment for later, and get your butts in here!” he orders. “Allura says we’re about to start any minute now.”

“Allura can wait one more fucking minute,” Keith barks back.

Lance flips you both off, sticking his tongue out at Keith before darting back into the other room. You turn back to face Keith, one eyebrow already cocked.

“Was that really necessary?” you ask.

Keith grins at you, baring his sharp incisors. “Absolutely. Lance was asking for it.”

“It’s a little cruel to needlessly antagonize your friends like that,” you remind him.

Keith shrugs. “I told you,” he says, “they’re not my friends.” Then he’s turned on his heels, trotting down the hall towards the direction of where you’ll be performing this foolhardy seance. You take a moment to finish up the sigil pattern you were drawing on the hallway wallpaper. Then you follow behind Keith into the dark inner parlor of the Castle.

Everyone is already seated when you enter the parlor. The black paint and antique mirrors are a little too on the nose, if you’re being honest, but Allura is adamant that everything in this room has been meticulously placed. Black paint for protection, mirrors for reflection, candlelight for illumination. A dark cloth drapes over the round table all the other Paladins sit around, symbolic of the veil that you are about to peep through. You take your seat in the empty chair by Keith. On your other side, Allura gives you a tight smile as she finishes checking her phone.

“We’re one minute out from midnight,” she announces. “While we have the time, let me make this clear once more: we will not be summoning anything into this room. Our purpose tonight is simply to get a glimpse behind the curtain. Now, Shiro.”

You startle when her slim hand alights on your bicep.

“You’re going to be our anchor-point during this ritual,” Allura informs you gently. “Obviously, you’ve come into closest contact with the entity we wish to communicate with. We’ll be using you to amplify our foot-hold in the spiritual world. If anything does go wrong, I sever our point of contact-” she removes her hand from your arm to demonstrate, “-and the connection is broken. Understand?”

You give her a firm nod.

“Alright, then.” Allura offers her hands out to you and Lance; you take her hand in one of yours, and Keith’s in your other. He gives you a quick, encouraging squeeze, which you mirror back. Hand in hand, the rest of the Paladins complete the circle, interlinked in the dark.

“Everyone close your eyes,” Allura orders, “and let’s begin.”

The darkness behind your eyes is a comfort, only because it reminds you so much of the void. You breathe in deeply in an attempt to fortify your resolve as Allura’s voice begins to drone.

“I invoke, conjure and command you: appear unto me before this circle. I invoke, conjure and command you: appear unto me before this circle. I invoke, conjure and command…”

The first sign is the vibrations. So minute at first that you think it might be your imagination, but then the table begins to shake and the panes of the mirrors start to rattle. A high whine fills your ears, growing in intensity, until suddenly it’s not a whine but a deafening roar, the most terrible, ear-splitting sound you’ve ever experienced. You feel yourself cry out as the frequency pitches even higher, mirrors shattering all around you and raining down jagged shards. Your eyes open of their own accord, and you can see most of the other Paladins have inadvertently broken the circle in a vain attempt to cover their ears. Only you, Allura and Keith are still linked together, desperately gripping each other’s hands.

Allura must notice this, too, because she pauses in her chanting to shout, “Keep the circle intact! It’s the safest way through this!”

You’re not so sure about that, because as soon as the circle is fully reformed again, it’s like an electrical current surges through the room, running through your joined palms in a river of fire. Every fine hair on your body stands on end, and you hear a few people cry out in pain. The agony only seems to spur Allura on.

“I demand your name!” she shouts into the building storm. “Give me your name!”

The roar breaks into staccato static, almost as if in laughter, before re-coalescing into a tsunami of sound. Next to you, Keith pales considerably, his hand clenching spasmodically in your own.

“Cut the connection,” he demands, his voice rising to new heights of anxiety. “Break the circle! Do it! Break it NOW!”

“No, we almost have it!” Allura cries. She gripes you tighter. “I conjure and command you, show me your face! I conjure and command you, show me your-”

The room flares white. Keith lets out a desperate, guttural sound as he dives across you and physically rips your arm out of Allura’s grasp. Instantly, it’s like the circuit of power is broken, the electrical charge fleeing the room with an audible bang. Allura is thrown backwards in her chair, and -

“Keith! KEITH!”

He’s draped across your lap, boneless and unresponsive, and when you turn him over, you see his upper lip is smeared with blood. An overwhelming fear grips you, and you grab onto his shoulders tight, shaking him like a rag-doll as you search desperately for some sign of life.

To your everlasting relief, Keith nods his head listlessly, a minute sign that he’s still cognizant. He keeps his eyes tightly shut. More blood drips slowly from his nose, and to your horror, from the inner corner of one shut eyelid.

“Well.” Pidge’s voice is raw and hoarse. “Clearly, this was a bad idea.”

“So now you listen,” Lance moans.

Chairs screech across the floor. Out of the corner of your eye, you see Coran diving to help the Princess sit up from where she was thrown to the floor. Somewhere in the background, Hunk is violently throwing up. It doesn’t matter. All of your attention narrows to the body you’re supporting in your arms.

“Keith.” You touch his cheek as carefully as you dare, tapping lightly, afraid of your own strength. “Come one, buddy. Open your eyes for me.”

Gradually, he does, and you are relieved to see deep amethyst peering groggily back at you. Several more bloody tears roll down his pale cheeks; you do your best to wipe them away with shaking fingers.

“…I don’t understand,” Allura says weakly. “It was speaking, but the words were - incomprehensible.” She turns feverishly to the both of you.

“What did you see?” she demands. “What did you hear?”

Keith manages to shake his head. “Nothing?”

“Nothing. Just noise,” you agree. “There were no words. It doesn’t matter right now, anyway.”

Allura sends an unimpressed glare your way. “Not you,” she snaps. “Keith.” Her focus narrows in on him, fierce and unwavering as she leans further into your personal space, caging Keith up against you.

“What did you do?” she demands. “How were you interfering?”

“He pulled your fucking arm off me before you got us all killed,” you snap. “Or did you miss that part?”

“No!” Allura insists. “He blocked me in the spiritual plane, Shiro. He kept me from making contact with the entity, I could feel him doing it!” Her eyes narrow dangerously. “If I knew he was going to try to hijack this seance, I never would have suggested it. Do you understand how dangerous that was?”

This is getting ridiculous. “Keith’s not a psychic,” you argue. “He didn’t do anything. We might have weird powers, Allura, but we’re not like you.”

Allura’s beautifully delicate features twist into a snarl.

“No, you’re not like me,” she hisses. “You’re something else. Something unnatural.”

The silence in the room is so total you could hear a pin drop. Distantly, you’re aware that all of the other Paladins are glued on the melodrama playing out before them, eyes saucer wide. Lance’s mouth is hanging open at, frankly, a comical level. Coran is turning a rare beetroot color. Even Allura seems to realize she’s gone too far; all of her anger dissolves in an instant as she slumps into herself.

“I’m sorry,” she whispers, “I didn’t mean that.”

“Yes, you did.”

Keith has managed to sit up mostly on his own; he’s currently wiping blood from off his top lip with the cuff of one sleeve. His voice is weak and scratchy when he speaks, but his clear baritone carries far enough.

“I - could hear something,” he admits. “It almost sounded like words, at one point, but nothing that made sense. And then - I just had a feeling everything was going to go wrong, so I shoved you off of Shiro. And that’s all I did, I swear,” he adds sheepishly.

Allura has managed to gather herself back up to a certain image of stoicism. She nods briefly, as though in deep contemplation.

“Well, then,” she says. “Though this mission clearly didn’t go to plan, we know more than we did before.”

Lance raises a tentative hand. “And…what do we know now, exactly?”

“That we have no idea what the hell is going on, or what the fuck we’re dealing with,” you mutter, “and that we’re really fucking screwed.”

“…I would have worded it differently,” Allura says, “but, essentially - yes.”

“Mega fucked,” Hunk stutters.

“Six ways to Sunday,” Pidge chimes in.

“Right up the wazoo!” Coran agrees with a nervous crow.

“It could always be worse,” Keith whispers into your ear. His nose is beginning to sluggishly bleed again. You use the hem of your own shirt to stem the tide.

“That’s the spirit,” you whisper back, with a forced smile. And think, how worse could it be? And, can’t enough be enough? And God, oh God, Keith - what have you done?

***

VI.          THEN:

You don’t ask about the sword.

Do you want to? Hell yes. It drives you crazy, sometimes, especially whenever he’s polishing the damn thing, or playing with the hilt as he sits shotgun next to you, one thumb caressing the short, blunt pommel as you do your damnedest not to glance over, mile after mile. You aren’t worried, exactly. You’ve come across a plethora of people with strange talismans and occult objects, and not everyone who possesses such a thing is automatically a danger. Mostly, they’re frauds, or collectors with an academically satanic inclination, who’ve accidentally got their hands on something way out of their depths. Then there are the root-workers and faith-healers, the scryers and dowsers and psychics, most of whom are harmless at best, and simple charlatans at worst. It’s rare to meet an actual witch, someone who’s sold their soul in exchange for supernatural ability. In your sordid career thus far, you’ve encountered only three. Each of them had an oily, crooked presence in the way they walked and spoke, a slick, electrical charisma that you could almost taste on the air. None of them - none of any of them - are like Keith.

The level of innocence that radiates off of Keith is almost unbelievable in its intensity. For a kid who steals, who lies and cheats and swindles with almost alarming regularity, he has the purest heart you’ve met in all your time on the road. In that way, he almost reminds you of…someone you used to know, back before you were a hunter. But even that comparison is inaccurate, because despite how he’s been treated by life so far, Keith is never cynical. Mistrustful, yes, but with a heart so honest and open to the world that it frankly scares you. Keith’s heart is his sword, in a way - strange and alien, a thin blade of tempered rage and hope, offered freely up to you for your own defense.

All that to say: you keep your burning questions to yourself. Wherever he got the blade from, it’s dearly important to him, a personal memento more than an actual weapon - rarely used but greatly valued. You highly doubt it will be of any danger to you, or any other living soul. And isn’t everyone allowed their own little secrets? Their personal, private wounds? You certainly nurse many, not least of which is your strange, terrible ability.

You’ve come to rely on your secret power over the years. Trust in it, even. It’s your own bittersweet weapon, to cherish deeply, yet shield from prying eyes. Nevertheless, it marks you as other. As a danger. It will always hold you apart from the suspicious hunter community, from the mundane world - from Keith. From anyone you could confide in, really.

[But if there was someone out there, just like you, with an unexplainable power born out of flames and terror, fear and grief and a slow deep-simmering, all-consuming rage, just like you - ]

So you don’t ask about the sword. What right do you have to truth, when you live so comfortably in its shadow?

***

Of course, the cat’s bound to get out of the bag sooner or later. After all your years of solitary life on the road, you’ve gotten used to utilizing your power as you see fit - some might even say you lean on it too heavily, a fail-safe crutch for any dangerous situation you find yourself in. But hey, you work alone; you don’t have the luxury of relying on backup during a hunt gone wrong.

Except - you don’t work alone anymore. This poses a slight problem, as you’ve gotten used to…overindulging in your power. And now that you have a constant companion, you’ve been finding it very difficult to cut yourself off. It’s only a matter of time, really, before Keith catches you in the act.

You don’t want to get caught, of course. Things would be easier if you could just pretend indefinitely that you’re a normal human being. But if getting caught is an inevitability - well, it would be nice if the grand reveal of your secret power could be through a daring, heroic act. Saving Keith’s life during a hunt, for example. At least then, he might not be as frightened, might not cower from you. He might even stay long enough to hear you out.

But when the time finally arrives, you’re not going to get your hero moment. Because the universe hates you, that’s why.

It happens in an Econo Lodge. A shit place for anything to happen, but such is your life. It’s one of those rare days when you’re fresh off an old case, but without anything new on the books yet. In other words, a restful day. Keith excused himself earlier in the day to go check out a strip mall, so you take the opportunity to indulge in a long afternoon nap, finally allowing yourself to sink into the balm of sleep without any guilt. You’ve pulled enough long night drives to more than earn it.

When you’re woken up later, you’re not sure what caused it. A sound outside your window, maybe, the bleat of a car horn or footsteps on the pavement. As you blearily take in the room around you, it’s clear by the way the shadows have shifted around the room that it’s been at least an hour. The room is still bathed in quiet solitude; there’s still time for you to unwind alone. Immediately you know you won’t be able to go back to sleep, at least not for a little while longer. But a little white noise would be nice. God knows how many times you’ve fallen asleep to the soothing sounds of the QVC channel.

The remote to the small box television with its sad, long floppy antennas is still by the console on the other side of the room. With how nauseous you still feel from your abrupt awakening, the decision to jump is made in a split-second, easy to make and even easier to execute. You’re across the room, remote swiped up into your fist, and back in bed before the mattress has time to lose your impression.

It’s as you’ve popped back into your cozy cocoon of sheets and comforter that you realize how much you’ve just fucked up. Because Keith’s just walked out of the bathroom.

The moment of silence you share as you stare each other down stretches into eternity within the space of your skipped heartbeat. Whatever’s going through his mind, Keith’s face gives nothing away as he watches you, seemingly awaiting your direction. Through the silent roar echoing through your head, you scramble to remember what words are, and how to form them.

“Uh, hi.”

“Shiro,” he acknowledges, with a quirk of his eyebrow.

“That wasn’t what it looked like,” you blurt out, and then immediately want to kill yourself.

Keith nods slowly.

“So you didn’t just teleport across the room to get the TV remote?”

“Ah, yep. That’s right.”

“Alright then.” Keith looks puzzled, but strangely resigned. He turns on his heels, making a beeline for the door.

“I’m gonna get us some ice,” he announces over his shoulder.

It occurs to you, like the clarity of existence slicing through a surreal dream, that if you let this go, Keith will do exactly what you’ve asked of him. He’s really prepared to pretend like he hasn’t seen anything out of the ordinary, to continue this ridiculous charade - because he wants to make you happy. The absurdity of the situation is enough to jolt you into action, damn the consequences.

“Wait, Keith - stop.”

Obediently, he comes to a halt by the door, before turning back to you. Studying you, with those intense amethyst eyes, as if waiting for you to decide your next move. Too calm and collected for someone who’s just discovered that their supernatural hunting partner is, in fact, supernatural himself.

Which begs the question. You let out a defeated sigh.

“How long have you known? When did you see?”

Keith shuffles, barely meeting your eyes.

“Since the first time you did it. I’ve always known.”

He admits it in a whisper, and with that particular little tone he so often adopts, half-guilty admission and half-truth, as though he’s telling you an inside joke that only he understands. You can’t help the groan that escapes you as you scrub your hand over your eyes.

“You’ve known since Wyoming. Since you followed me to that cemetery,” you realize aloud.

Keith shrugs, making a vague affirmative sound.

You little fucker. It’s a fond thought, but a vehement one.

“And what, you just didn’t feel the need to say something?” you demand hotly. “You don’t have questions? You aren’t - scared?”

Keith frowns, his bottom lip dipping into a pout. “Why would I be scared?”

“Because I’m a freak of nature, Keith!”

“You’re not a freak, Shiro.” Said so simply, as though it’s the most obvious thing in the world. You grit your teeth against his utter naivete, and shake your head with vehemence.

“Oh yeah? You ever met another person that can do what I can?”

“…well, no,” Keith admits, “but what if I had? You can’t be the only person around with weird powers, Shiro.” He shrugs. “I just don’t see why it’s such a big deal, is all.”

Your fingers twitch with the urge to grab him by the shoulders and shake some self-preservation into his body. You settle for digging your blunt nails into the bedding, instead.

“There’s a reason I’ve always hunted alone, Keith. It’s because no other hunters want to get near me with a ten-foot pole. In our particular circles, I’m considered a danger. A threat. Just a slight degree away from being - something to be hunted, in their eyes. Do you understand?”

“No!” Keith scoffs, “I guess I don’t understand, because that’s stupid! You use your powers for good - you literally fight off evil with them, I’ve seen it!”

“That doesn’t change the fact that my powers are unnatural,” you counter. “Humans aren’t supposed to do what I can do. So I don’t blame anyone - and I wouldn’t blame you - if you…were uncomfortable with it. If you started to think of me differently.”

Keith’s face screws up in frustration, and you expect a vehement outburst of some sort, but at the last second he seems to reign it in. Instead, he pins you with a penetrative stare, securely nailing you to where you sit on the bed.

“What if I had a superpower?” he says. “Would you think any differently of me?”

The question strikes you as laughably outrageous. “Of course not, Keith-”

“No, don’t roll your eyes at me. I’m serious, Shiro.” And he is, you can tell by the fierce line of his brow, the jut of his sharp chin. “If I had some sort of…unexplainable ability? Would you think I was a monster? A freak?”

“No.”

“Would you think I was evil?”

“God, no.” The thought alone, of Keith being anything other than he is - good, kind, innocent - is too painful to even think about. There could never be a world where Keith could be infected with the same stain you bear, a sickness born in fire and violence. And even if there were -

You banish the thought from your mind as you push yourself up from the bed, crossing the space until you can lay a careful hand on Keith’s shoulder.

“There’s nothing you could tell me about yourself that would ever make me think those things of you,” you tell him, soft and earnest.

Keith nods once, swallowing hard.

“Well, it’s the same for me,” he says. “I don’t care what you can or can’t do, Shiro. It doesn’t matter. You’re a good man, and I - I trust you. With my life.”

So, that’s settled, then. You can tell, just from the way Keith looks at you, that he’ll broker no more argument about it. The breath you release from your body is sudden and deep, as though years-worth of self-disgust has just exited your body, exorcized by his simple gift of faith.

“Thank you.” The words come out quiet, threaded with emotion; you have to clear your throat a few times before you can be made audible. “And I trust you, Keith. With my car, with my life. With everything. No matter what.”

[Even if he were-? ]

“No matter what,” you repeat, giving his shoulder a squeeze. Keith looks down and away, a lightning-quick smile glancing across his face.

And just like that, the matter is solved. The air is cleared. Keith continues on with his day as though he hasn’t just upended your entire world view, and you manage to muddle through without too much vicious introspection. It boggles your mind, how easily he accepts you and all your faults. It occurs to you that no one else has ever looked upon you with such grace, beheld you with such radical acceptance. Not your parents when they lived, not your teachers and friends, not even Ad-

Not even those who were closest to you.

That night, you watch Keith’s sleeping form in the opposite bed, a dark bundle of blankets and trust. You could reach him so easily, you realize, just an infinitesimal jump to the left. If it wakes him up, claim it to be a joke or an accident, instead of what it really is - a desperate attempt by a lonely, pathetic man to keep that feeling of acceptance alive and burning in your memory.

You stay in your bed. Instead, you run your conversation over and over again through your mind. Replaying the promises that were made on both sides, pausing over the words he said to you with utmost sincerity. Drawing them out. Letting them fill you with a dull, soft afterglow that you stoke until you go to sleep.

It does not occur to you, then, that perhaps one of you was lying.

[Even if-? ]

***

You promised to train Keith in that grimy motel bathroom back in Wyoming, and damn you if you aren’t a man of your word.

It’s still not a good idea. Not in the slightest. But a part of you has realized that Keith will continue to get himself involved with your cases whether you like it or not. You may as well like it.

And the thing is - there’s not actually a whole lot you need to teach him. Keith is a quick study, with an uncanny ability to pick up whatever it is you throw at him. Supernatural lore? You explain the intricacies of trapping and exorcizing a demon, and he can repeat it back to you verbatim. You give him the Roman Ritual to memorize one night, and the next morning he has it down stone cold. Frankly, it’s a bit scary - but you tell yourself that Keith must be some kind of genius, IQ up in the stratosphere. He’d be a gifted student for sure, if he hadn’t ditched the system. But you find, as you progress further into his training, that Keith’s prowess for hunting goes past just the book-smarts. The first time you hand him a gun, for example: before you even get close to placing it in his hand, you ask him if he’s ever shot one before.

Keith shakes his head, his shaggy bangs falling into his face. “No,” he says. “But I’ve - seen it before. You know, on TV.”

You laugh jovially. “Well, the real thing’s a little bit different, hotshot.”

“We’ll see,” says Keith, with a small grin. He proceeds to watch you strip your Colt and then reassemble it.

“Before we even move on to discharging this piece, I want you to be able to do what I just did,” you tell him.

“Sure,” says Keith, one hand already out to take the gun from you, “no problem.”

You have to tut at his hubris. “Whoa, there. Watch me again. At least once more, before you try doing it yourself.”

Keith watches you avidly. Then, when you turn the Colt over to him, he breaks it down and then puts it back together with a proficiency he shouldn’t have, hands quick and nimble, only faltering once over the bolt.

“Not bad,” you say, as you tamp down on your growing suspicion.

He does even better with actually firing the weapon. The range isn’t much, just an out of the way back road with a rickety wooden fence, on which you’ve placed multiple tin cans, but Keith does good. Really good. He doesn’t hit every single one right out of the gate, but after three missed shots, he knocks all the other cans off of their posts, the whizz-ding of each bullet finding its mark shattering the silence of the brisk spring afternoon.

You take back what you thought before. Keith isn’t a genius. He’s a prodigy. A goddamn savant, when it comes to the hunting lifestyle. What other explanation is there?

You continue to teach him everything you know; Keith continues to keep pace. Hand-to-hand combat, lock-picking, and the intricacies of forging passable law-enforcement credentials. But what sets you apart from all the other hunters on the continent is that you’ve never been content with sticking to the basics. If there’s a field of study that you think might make you a better hunter, then you pursue it, no matter how strange or whimsical it might be. Which is why, on the first chance you get, you take the opportunity to teach your protege the ancient and noble art of swordplay.

You don’t have immediate access to your fencing gear anymore; all of that is packed up far away in a storage container in sunny California, along with all the remnants of your old life. Instead, you and Keith make due with two lightsabers that you got from K-Mart. A hard-won prize, too - with Episode I just hitting movie theaters, it was a bitch and a half to get your hands on the merchandise. You might have sent Keith to pilfer a harried mother’s shopping cart while you distracted her with your charm and winning smile. But that’s neither here nor there.

“We could’ve just gone with the plastic ninja swords,” Keith points out, as you drive him to your chosen training ground. “Doesn’t thievery and deception lead to the dark side?”

“Then we’ve already joined the dark side,” you remind him. “Remind me again what you were doing all yesterday afternoon?”

“Yeah, well, credit card fraud is a victimless crime.”

Jesus. You pinch the bridge of your nose, right along your scar-line. Sometimes it’s nice to have a partner that’s more of a delinquent than you; it gives you the moral high ground. Other times, it’s just plain scary.

“I get the red one,” Keith declares, on your first day of practice. You’ve taken him to a secluded clearing in a county park, with soft grass underfoot for when you inevitably lay him out on his ass. You throw Keith the red lightsaber, which is alright by you. Cool tones are more your speed, anyway.

“Alright, my young Padawan, listen up. You’re not going to be using your sword on a hunt anytime soon,” you announce, “not until I’m confident you know how to handle one safely.”

Keith frowns at you. “You’ve seen me in action. I’ve done well on my own so far.” He sounds slightly affronted.

“But now you’re not alone,” you argue, “and if you’re gonna be swinging that thing anywhere around me, I want you to be trained in handling a blade.”

“Oh, yeah? And what makes you so qualified to teach me?”

“Well,” and here you can’t resist a touch of pride entering your tone, “I was a nationally ranked competitor in the Senior Men’s sabre division. Fencing,” you add smugly, to clear any confusion.

Keith’s eyes practically light up. “Really? You’re a fencer?”

“Really, really. And it’s ‘sabreur,’ to use the technical term.”

“Wow. I can’t believe I didn’t know this already,” Keith says, and he really does look dazzled by this new information, as though he truly has trouble comprehending that there might be a small part of your life that he hasn’t already unearthed yet. Which both warms your heart and kind of pisses you off at the same time.

“Well, you never asked,” you respond. A bit short, and you regret your attitude as soon as you see Keith’s face fall.

“Come on, Spitfire,” you coax, “let’s start with opening forms, and I promise you, we’ll be dueling in no time.”

You teach Keith a modified form of saber fencing; after all, the point-system rules of a competition will hardly be useful in a fight for his life. But you teach him the basics: how to lunge and parry, the particular timing of a good riposte, the important differences between a beat and feint attack. And as you expected, Keith takes to it as easy as breathing. It takes a couple months for him to become proficient, and while he’s certainly nowhere near your caliber, it’s clear to you that swordplay is just another thing that Keith will be a gifted natural at. Honestly, it makes you a bit jealous, as you remember the countless hours you spent on the piste with Ad with your teammates, sweating under your gear as you pushed your body to it’s limit night after night, constantly striving to be better, better, best.

But it does fill you with pride, to see how far you boy has come in such a short time. The first time Keith scores a point against you is a thing of beauty. Late summer, July 30th, 1999, the sun so hot it beats rivulets of sweat down your back, soaking into your t-shirt as you dance together in an empty wheat field. You’ll never forget that day. What starts out as any ordinary match quickly becomes something entirely different when Keith finally manages to anticipate your feint, and with some truly inspired footwork and then a long, lean lunge, manages to strike a point right at your central mass.

“Good job, Keith! That - that was excellent,” you admit with a giant smile, as you clap him on the shoulder afterward. “That’s exactly what I mean by anticipating my moves, and not reacting to them. You keep that up, and you’re gonna give me a run for my money way sooner than I thought.”

Keith flushes, looking down at his shoes. “I did alright,” he says with a little shrug.

“No, no, don’t be modest,” you chide. “If I’m giving you a compliment, then you deserve it. The speed you had there - that was right out of the Matrix.” You mime Neo bending backward to dodge the bullets in slow-motion, arms pinwheeling as you fight to keep your balance. When you invariably lose your footing, you go down with a thud into the grass, Keith joining in on your laughter.

“Seriously,” you look up at him with an easy grin. “You saw me coming before I even moved. That’s impressive, Keith.”

If possible, Keith reddens even more.

“What can I say?” he says with a shrug. “I’m psychic.” He flashes you a little crooked grin. “I can see the future.”

“Oh, really now?”

“Sure.”

You reach out an arm for assistance, and when Keith takes the bait, clasping his hand in yours, you pull him down with you.

“Didn’t see that coming, Punk.”

You grapple in the grass, but vigorous wrestling soon turns to halfhearted tussling. Finally, Keith gives up struggling for the advantage, and allows you to pull him into your side despite the ungodly heat. Tucked up against your rib cage, you prop up your arm so that you can give his hair an affectionate ruffle.

“Psychic, huh.” You pretend to mull over the idea in your mind. “Can you tell what I’m thinking?” you wheedle.

“Shiro.” Keith gives a dramatic roll of his eyes, barely visible from your plane of view. “That’s not the future.”

“Alright, then.” You smile cheekily down at him. “Can you tell what I’m going to think?”

Beside you, Keith goes unexpectedly quiet. When he does speak again, his voice is tinged with a strange emotion. Nostalgia mixed with tenderness, perhaps - and just a faint shadow of dread.

“Yeah,” he says, “Yeah, I can.”

***

Even if?

***

VII.          NOW:

“Where’s Keith?”

Your question echoes out around the dark, moody bar you’ve just stepped into, addressed to the scattered Paladins who are currently lounging about. Pidge at her computer setup, perched up on her bar stool like a fragile baby bird. Lance, lounging table-side, the two front legs of his chair raised dangerously high off the ground as he leans back with studied insolence, filing down his already perfectly rounded nails. Hunk just two seats away, wiping mustard off his face with one of his sleeves as he eats his sandwich. Coran, you can hear puttering about in the basement, and Allura is still convalescing after her ordeal yesterday night. Spiritual whiplash can be a real bitch to recover from, or so you’ve heard.

That just leaves one person unaccounted for.

“No idea. Haven’t seen him since breakfast,” Hunk supplies. “Which he didn’t even eat, by the way. Do you know how much effort I put into making those sausages?”

Pidge is slightly more helpful. “He mentioned he was going out for a while,” she offers offhandedly, eyes still glued to her screen. “Taking a drive to clear his head, or something like that.”

“In this heat?”

Pidge shrugs as she spins her seat slightly to face you. “The Impala’s still got AC, right?”

“Of course.” You’re almost insulted that she would think otherwise. You keep a strict maintenance schedule for your baby, and take pride in the fact that you do her upkeep all yourself. But you do your best to ignore the unintentional slight; you’ve got more important things on your mind.

“So…” You do your best to affect a casual stance, hands thrust deep into your pockets and weight transferred to a slouchy, back-footed lean against the wall. “What hi-jinks have Keith and you guys been up to in the year that I’ve, ah, been gone?”

“Don’t know about Keith,” Lance says, with a laconic stretch, “but we’ve just kinda been chillin’, you know? No big bads, no grand evil plans - just honest, simple salt-and-burn cases.”

“Yeah,” Hunk chimes in, “In fact, I’d say that these last few days have had the most action we’ve seen in months.”

“Hmm.” You mull this new information about in your mind. “And what about Keith?”

“What about Keith?” Pidge squints at you like you’re a string of coding that’s riddled with errors. You’re not sure where you went wrong, so you decide to play it casual.

“Ah, you know…what’s he been up to, all this time?”

“How should we know that?” Hunk looks genuinely confused.

“Well, you are friends,” you try.

Lance pulls a face, half-incredulous and half-pitying. “Dude,” he says, “Keith’s not as buddy-buddy with us as you seem to think. Shoot, we haven’t seen a lick of him in the year since you died. So how the hell are we supposed to know what he’s up to nowadays?”

You feel something slimy and cold slither its way into your gut. “You haven’t seen him since I died?” you repeat, in numb disbelief.

“I mean, we tried, man,” Hunk offers. “We tried to get him to come back to the Castle. We tried calling just to keep in touch, too, but,” he shrugs helplessly, “Keith turned us down every time. He stopped answering his phone. So I’m sorry, Shiro, but we really don’t have any idea what he does these days.”

“…Oh.”

You’ll admit, you feel a bit deflated. The reason you came here years ago with Keith was because you thought it’d be good for him, having some peers his own age to engage with, to form ties with. You always thought - you always hoped - that the bonds forged within the walls of the Castle were strong enough to withstand all travails and tragedies. Now, you’re starting to realize the threads binding you and Keith to the rest of the Paladins might have been thin and brittle at best. Perhaps, at worst, nonexistent.

You’re about to take your leave from the group to ruminate over this new-dawning revelation when Coran waltzes into the room, looking as spry and polished as ever despite the chaos of last night.

“Number One!” he crows. “You’re looking rather glum. What’s got you so down in the mouth?”

“Nothing. I’m fine,” you reassure him, “but - have you seen Keith around?”

“Not since breakfast,” Coran corroborates, “but - oh! You know, I saw him headed out to your car a while back. When I asked where he was going, he said he was headed out to the old barn down on ‘83. Said he was looking to salvage some scrap metal.”

“Scrap metal?”

“Right-o! For a sculpture project!” Coran flaps his hands excited. “He’s an artistic one, that boy of yours. Whatever he ends up constructing, we can display it at the entryway!”

“…you know what? That rings a bell,” Lance chimes in. “He did mention something about a barn, earlier. And this sculpture better be good,” he adds acidicly, “because I gave him our last can of spray paint.”

“And you’re sure he said he would be salvaging scrap metal?” you press.

“Yeah, pretty sure,” says Lance. “Why, what’da’ya think he’s up to?”

You don’t know. But you have a pretty good fucking idea.

***

The barn in question is in an open field, connected to the main highway by only a thin, ragged dirt road that has more potholes and washes than flat surface. ‘Barn,’ too, is a strong word for the sad heap of rusting metal sheets and steel beams that make up the long rectangular building you find. If Keith’s foolhardy actions don’t kill him here, you decide, tetanus surely will.

The barn doors are heavy, but unlatched; all it takes is a good shove to send them squeaking open. The dying light of the day filters into the dark windowless interior of the structure, revealing a figure crouched over on the ground, drawing in the dirt. At the sound of the doors screeching open, Keith goes scuttling backward, a hunted expression naked on his face. One hand flies outward, fingers still clutching a can of spray-paint, as though that might defend him from whatever supernatural entity he’s expecting; when he sees it’s you, his posture relaxes, if only fractionally.

“Shiro?” He sounds bewildered. “How did you get here?”

“I jumped. How do you think?”

“Over two miles?”

“Well, I didn’t have much choice,” you point out. “You stole my car.”

Keith looks doubtful. “Then your range has gotten a hell of a lot better,” he notes. “Your control, too.”

You sigh as you take a good look around you. Clearly Keith’s been busy these last few hours, because you seriously doubt the entirety of this warehouse was littered with hand-drawn symbols before he got here. Deftly outlined in black spray paint, they cover the walls floor to ceiling, a patchwork of different cultures and religions from all around the globe. In the center of the room, the square of Abraham sits inside a devil’s trap, surrounded on the perimeter by strange, almost alien-like sigils that you’re certain you’ve never laid eyes on before.

“So,” you say, “where’s this sculpture I’ve heard so much about?”

Keith sighs, hands firmly wedged into his jean pockets as he viciously digs the toe of one sneaker into virgin, unmarked dirt. “There is no sculpture,” he admits readily enough, “but you probably already figured that, Shiro, else you wouldn’t have come tearing out here so quickly.”

“Keith.” Your intonation is weighted with gravitas, as though pronouncing his name can compel him to utter the truth. “What are you doing here?”

“Testing a theory.”

“A theory.”

“Yeah.”

And just like that, with that flippant little response, you feel the calm facade that you’ve been wearing for the last twenty minutes or so give way with an almost audible crack.

“Don’t bullshit me. You’re going to try to summon the damn thing.” You wave around at all the meticulously drawn symbols that must’ve taken hours to complete, at all the ridiculous amounts of warding that was layered into this ram-shackled dump. “Admit it,” you say, “just admit it, Keith, or so help me god-”

“Okay, yes! Or I was gonna try, at least!” Keith exclaims. “Is that what you wanted to hear?”

You feel a vein in your neck jump, tendons standing on edge.

“NO! That’s the very last thing I want to hear! Of all the reckless and boneheaded things to do-”

Keith holds a hand out between you, as though he’s trying to fend you off. “Shiro, calm down,” he orders.

Miraculously, you do; you feel your wrath recede into a more manageable slow-burn. And you realize that you were advancing on him, fists clenched, herding him towards a corner of the large room. As though you were going to hurt him. But that’s a preposterous idea, immediately repudiated as soon as it crosses your mind. You’d never hurt Keith. You’d rather die, first. Still, you take a moment to shake out your fists, step back a few paces to a safer distance.

“If you’re so set on doing something this fucking stupid, you should have brought backup,” you say. “One of the Paladins, at the very least. Or Coran.” Or me, but that goes painfully unsaid.

“No. This is something I need to do alone,” Keith insists.

“And why is that?” you demand. “Why, when you have teammates two miles away who would be willing and able to have your back?”

A flicker of something suspiciously close to guilt swims across his face, and you can’t help yourself; you pounce on the opportunity.

“I had a little chat with the other Paladins earlier,” you drawl. “And they told me that this is the first they’ve seen of you in the year since I died. That you’ve been in the wind all this time, without any backup, doing who-knows-what and going who-the-hell-knows where. So tell me, Keith: were they exaggerating? Or were they telling the truth?”

The man in question squares his shoulders, chin tipped up defiantly as he stares you down.

“They weren’t lying,” he admits, forthright as ever. “This is the first time I’ve been back to the Castle. But I didn’t need their help, Shiro, or their sympathy. I didn’t need it and I didn’t want it. I still don’t.”

“We’re stronger together,” you argue. “As a team-”

“But we’ve never been a team!” Keith all but shouts. “We’ve never even been friends! Not when Allura thinks we’re fucking monsters!”

His voice rings out into the hot desert air, bouncing off the metal walls of the barn and echoing in the shell of your ears. Each word like a knife to your heart.

“Come on, buddy,” you say, “you know that isn’t how she really feels. Allura’s-”

“-right. Allura’s right,” Keith argues. “Or at least she isn’t wrong. We are monsters, to them. We’re freaks. We have our powers because Azazel force-fed us demon blood as infants. To the rest of the Paladins, we’re only a stone’s throw away from a creature they would hunt.”

All of this is true. Still, it pains you to hear the words come out of Keith’s mouth. You’ve wanted - you’ve tried for so long - to prove to him that the two of you are meant for more than a cursed existence. To know that you have failed, and that perhaps failure was inevitable - well. It’s a bitter pill to swallow.

“Alright,” you say, “so we’re monsters. But we’re still monsters together, Keith. We’re a team, the two of us, just like we have been since the beginning. So you should know that I’m not going to just let you run off and perform this reckless stunt by yourself.”

“You’re not helping me with this, Shiro,” Keith protests immediately, “I’m doing this alone.”

“Like hell you are,” you say, “If you’re not going to call anyone from the Castle as backup-”

“I’m not.”

“-then I’m staying here with you.”

Keith glares at you, crossing his arms tight over his chest as he fumes silently.

“There’s nothing I can do to make you change your mind, is there,” he finally states.

“Not a thing,” you agree.

Keith throws his hands up in the air, turning away from you in frustration as he paces gingerly over the marked up floor beneath his feet.

“Fine. Fine. Stay here with me, then.” He rakes a hand through his hair, mouth pulled taut with anxiety. “Maybe this way will be better,” he mutters distractedly.

“Of course it will be,” you stress, as you follow his retreat. “Hey. Hey. We’re always better together, you and me,” you remind him, reaching out to punctuate your words with a tight grip on either of his shoulders. They’re firm and broad under your hands, the fine bones reinforced with the new muscles of maturity. Nothing like the thin, narrow frame you remember from his adolescence. And yet - there he is, that distrustful, wounded child you once knew, who’s still peaking out at you from the face of a hardened adult. Who still needs you, to defend and reassure him, even after so many years spent apart, and so many failures in your duty. But god - how can you ever be successful at protecting your boy when he’s bound and determined to throw himself into harm’s way with every given chance?

Keith seems to accept that you’re staying for the summoning like it’s the weight of the world on his back: he sighs heavily, brow creasing as his posture slumps just the tiniest bit.

“Okay. You’re right,” he says. “Let’s do this together.”

“That wasn’t so hard, was it?”

Keith ducks out from under your attempted hair ruffle.

“Don’t push it,” he warns, with mock ire.

“So…” you clap your hands together, the sound echoing like a gunshot throughout the barn. “What invocation were you planning to use?”

“Something new. Something you haven’t seen before.”

You raise an eyebrow. “Oh, really? That a fact?”

Keith shrugs. “See for yourself,” he says, as he bends over to dig into his bag. When he stands back up, he holds a sheath of crinkled notebook paper, which he tries to flatten haphazardly against his stomach before offering them to you. You take them, and your second eyebrow joins the first, pushing high up towards your hairline as you study the scrawl that covers each war-torn page.

“Didn’t know you could write a summoning ritual using the Black Speech of Mordor.”

“Har-har.”

“Seriously, what is this?” Not Latin, or ancient Greek, you’re absolutely sure of that. Ancient Sumerian, perhaps? But since when has Keith been a master linguist of dead Mesopotamian languages?

“It’s…Enochian,” Keith answers, which only serves to make you snort.

“Go ahead, pull the other one.”

“It is.”

“Alright, don’t tell me, then.” You’ve seen Enochian before, and you know it looks nothing like whatever Keith’s got scribbled down. Besides, everyone in your particular line of business knows that John Dee and Edward Kelley were hacks. Well-intentioned, certainly, but hacks nonetheless. But you’ll let Keith keep his secrets on this one. You really don’t care what obscure, occult language he’s used to craft this summoning ritual; all that matters is that it works.

“Groundwork laid?”

“All the traps and boundaries you ever taught me,” Keith supplies, “plus all of the warding and sigils Allura’s showed us in the past.”

You take a few moments to pace around the room as you give his work a cursory glance over. Mostly just for propriety's sake. Keith can be a wild-card, but he’s meticulous when it comes to preparation like this; his artist's soul wouldn’t allow him to do otherwise.

“Everything looks good. You did a hell of a lot of work today,” you compliment, as you circle back to where Keith is standing.

“It gets your seal of approval?”

“Absolutely.”

“Then we should get started now,” Keith says, as direct and matter-of-fact as ever. But his eagerness to begin skips your heart several beats, and your hand is grasping his forearm to hold him still before you even realized you’ve reached out.

“Keith. If something - happens. If this goes sideways.” You lick your lips, which suddenly feel so chapped and dry. “Not that it will, of course. But if it does. You should know-”

“I know,” Keith says quietly, saving you from your internal spiral.

“Good. Good.” And that is good, because you weren’t exactly sure what you were trying to say. But you trust Keith to know your mind and your heart, even before you do.

“Well, then. Let’s get this over with. Glory waits for no man,” you declare, with more confidence than you currently possess. Keith nods solemnly as he reshuffles the papers in his hands. And then he begins to speak.

It’s not Enochian. Definitely not. The sounds coming out of his mouth are - unimaginable. Eldritch. Inhuman, you’re tempted to think, even as Keith speaks with lips and teeth and tongue. You make a quick mental note to really grill him on what he’s been up to this past year while you were dead, because you can’t possibly imagine where he got this ritual language from - you’re not even sure you want to know. The words sound impossibly resonant, expanding to fill the barn and bouncing off of the metal roof. And then, just under his intonation - a ringing sound. Clear as a bell, buzzing louder and louder with each second, it reverberates in your eardrum like a radioactive mosquito. A quick glance and Keith meets your gaze, nodding as he continues to speak. Confirmation that he hears it, too.

The ringing in your ears only gets louder, as you knew it would from recent experience. Luckily, Keith finishes the invocation before he involuntarily drops the papers, his hands flying up to cover his ears. You’ve done the same, you realize, fingers digging into the side of your head as you try to white-knuckle through the explosive pressure that feels like it’s built up inside your skull within the span of two seconds. You can’t control the guttural cry that escapes you, or the panic you feel when Keith stumbles away from you blindly, blood droplets spattering on the ground. He looks like he did yesterday, a mess of blood trailing from his nose.

You don’t have the opportunity to rush to him, as the entire room flares white. Your vision is eclipsed by the brightest light imaginable, brighter than a thousand suns, and as you cast blindly around the room, the entire barn is filled with that same unearthly glow. You might as well be standing on the surface of the sun. The electric feeling from before is back, too, and with a vengeance, raising every fine hair on your arms until you swear you can see tiny arcs of electrical current jumping from strand to strand. The walls of the building around you shake with fervor, the roof rippling above you like a living creature - and then blessedly, the light dims enough for just long enough for you to locate Keith.

He’s stumbled away from you, face hidden from your searching eyes. You reach out for him instinctively, the need to protect him from this trumping all other thought.

“KEITH!” Your voice somehow manages to cut through the cacophony, a blast of sound that slices out of you like a sword. And thankfully, Keith hears you. He turns wildly towards your direction, his eyes widening in abject fear.

“Shiro…?” His voice whines high with childlike, genuine terror.

You do the only thing you can think to do, reaching out and drawing Keith to your chest. In his panic, he fights against you, but you’ve always been the stronger one, and holding him to you takes little effort at all. And that’s how the two of you stay, as the entire barn shakes and great shadows shift and scatter across the roof above you.

After about fifteen seconds of huddling in fear, you start to realize that whatever’s happening around you seemingly isn’t getting any worse. You poke your head up more to look around, nudging Keith to do the same. He doesn’t seem to want to take his eyes off you, but you push him to turn around and see what you see.

There’s no one in the devil’s trap. No one else in the whole barn that passes for a demon. Instead, the whole of the building is softly lit by an unearthly white-green glow, an illumination that seems to pulse in time with your heartbeat. Above you, the metal roofing no longer flaps like it’s in the middle of a hurricane; instead, the overlaying sheets ripples gently, like breath blown upon water. Even the piercing frequency has become more of a melodic drone, no longer trying to shatter your eardrums. Now, it’s a hypnotic overtone, and you find yourself drifting into a strange fugue as you gaze upward, watching the unnatural shadows shift and scrap together like the silhouette of fingers from two giant, unseen hands. You reach back out to Keith, if only to keep yourself grounded by his touch.

“It’s alright, Keith. It’s over,” you hear yourself say, and hope to god that you’re right.

“It’s not over,” Keith disagrees softly. “It’s still here.” His hands drift upward, fingers grasping gently at the air, as if he might be able to pull answers from the ether itself.

“But it’s not - aggressive,” you murmur. “And whatever the hell this thing is - it doesn’t seem to want to hurt us?”

“Not yet, at least,” Keith agrees quietly, his voice barely above a gravelly whisper. When he turns back to look at you, it’s like he’s seeing you again for the first time, eyes wide with a dreadful awe. Perhaps he really believed you were both about to die. You don't blame him - it is frankly a miracle that you’ve both made it through this experience unscathed. And you almost hate to break the strange, faux peace that’s descended upon both of you, but you have to know.

“Is this what you thought would happen, when you came out here?” you question gently. “Has your theory panned out?”

Keith’s eyes are wide in his skull as he looks up at the ceiling, then back to you.

“…no. Yes.” He hangs his head, bangs obscuring his eyes as he shakes his head in confusion. “I don’t know,” he admits. “I thought…but I don’t understand-”

“It’s okay, it’s alright.” You reassure him instinctively, even though you’re not quite sure what has him so distressed. Everything that you’ve learned in the last five minutes should be good news. “We can figure out what all of this means later. Let’s just focus on the now,” you suggest.

Keith nods jerkily. “Patience yields focus,” he parrots, looking only the slightest bit manic, and you give him an encouraging clap on the shoulder.

“That’s the spirit, Spitfire. Now come on. Let’s make the most of this.”

You end up being the one to pull out the equipment from Keith’s bag, keeping the EMF machine while handing over the digital voice recorder to Keith. Then you both begin to systematically sweep the barn, searching for anything out of the ordinary. Keith doesn’t really seem to have his heart in it, though, eyes roaming back to find you even as he circles the room, as though he’s afraid you’ll disappear on him.

“EMF’s off the scale,” you call out. “Christ, it’s like we’re in Chernobyl right now.”

Keith removes an earphone.

“Nothing on the recorder, so far,” he tells you. “Just static.”

“Background radiation?” It’s meant as a joke, but it hits too close to be funny. “The energy output of this creature must be massive,” you muse aloud. “Do you think it’s even safe for us to be here?”

Keith gives you an inscrutable look. “I don’t know, Shiro,” he says. “You tell me.”

Ouch. That feels a little harsh, especially since Keith is the one who seems to have all the hare-brained plans and secret knowledge.

“…I think we’re alright, for now,” you hedge. “Whatever this phenomenon is that we’re currently experiencing, it seems to be somewhat dormant. Do you feel sick? Strange, at all?”

Keith gives a mirthless snort. “Shiro, if it was going to kill us, I doubt it would do so through radiation. It’s not an alien, or whatever.”

“And how would you know that?” you retort, a little hotly. “Maybe we’re having a close encounter of the third kind, here.”

You expect Keith to come back with his usual retort of ‘I just know.’ It actually startles you when you get no response, so much so that you turn back to face him.

“What? No cryptic foreshadowing?” you ask. “No funny feelings? No hidden, inner knowing?”

You’re aiming to rile him up. It’s cruel, but suddenly you need to see that inner fire, the one you’ve always tried to help him temper and control. Right now, you want to see it roar, if only to prove to yourself that the world hasn’t gone topsy-turvy, that gravity still works and everything makes some kind of quantifiable sense. But your shots go wide by a mile. Any and all animation on Keith’s face immediately drops away, replaced by impenetrable stone. He’s still staring straight at you, but his eyes are light-years from here, looking past you like you’re only a ghost.

“Like I said,” he says, “I don’t know anything anymore.”

His intonation is so dull and quiet, the admission so defeatist, so unlike him, that it gives you pause. You wait for the second shoe to drop, but it never comes; Keith continues to look at you like the world is ending, with a listlessness that borders on comatose.

You jump the space between you before you can even think about it. Keith startles when you reappear right in front of him, flinching backwards; you save him from sprawling on the floor by grabbing onto his forearm, holding him tight.

“Keith, we’ll figure this out,” you promise. Will your words to be so steady and certain that not even you can find room for doubt. “Everything about this situation looks like it’s not nearly as bad as we thought. There’s no witch or demon after us, and whatever we summoned here isn’t actively trying to kill us. Now, I don’t know about you, but I call that a win.”

“A win,” Keith repeats, voice small and tone-dead. You give him an encouraging nod.

“Yes. And whatever comes next, we’ll face it together. We’ll go over our data. You’ll tell me everything you think you know. We’ll solve this case like we do any other, side-by-side. How about it?”

Finally, you seem to crack through that armor, because Keith gives you a faint smile.

“That sounds nice,” he murmurs. So softly, as though he’s afraid he might be overheard.

You clap him on the shoulder, giving a rough squeeze.

“Chin up, Spitfire. We’re halfway there already.”

Keith returns your smile hesitantly, and his spirits seem to perk up; he helps you complete the investigation with a bit more vigor. But the paranoia remains, because even after he shakily recites the banishing ritual, and the strange ambient light vanishes silently between one blink and the next, his gaze continues to find you and lock on for dear life. As though he’s afraid you’ll be spirited away from him once more, taken by a force greater than either of you to a place he can’t follow.

***

“We can’t go back to the Castle,” Keith announces into the silence. It’s the first thing he’s said since you both got back into the car. He sits rigid, as though braced for push-back. But he’s in for a surprise.

“I was about to suggest the same thing,” you admit.

“Really?”

“Really, really.”

Keith frowns. “Normally you’re all for a team effort.”

“Normally I am,” you agree, “but this time we have - extenuating circumstances.”

Keith hums lightly, your cue to explain yourself.

“Whatever the hell this thing is, it does seem to have latched onto us. It resurrected me from the dead,” you point out, “and don’t think I’ve forgotten how it’s been trying to speak to you.”

Keith begins to protest; you shut him up with a sharply raised finger.

“I know you can understand a little of what it’s saying, so don’t try to play dumb. You said so yourself, last night. While you were weeping blood. Now this is just my wild conjecture,” you add bitingly, “but I’m guessing the nosebleed today was caused for the same reason. Oh, and you missed a spot, by the way.” You gesture to his chin, where a spatter from his nosebleed has crusted on and dried into a rusty tack.

“Damn.” Keith tries to wipe off the stain as he peers into the rear-view mirror; you hand over your flask of holy water to make the clean-up process easier.

“And don’t think we won’t talk more about that later, by the way,” you warn.

A huff in response.

“I figured,” Keith grumbles.

You sigh. That’s good enough for now, although you’re sure you’ll have to keep him to task; Keith never volunteers anything easily. But back to the problem at hand.

“Anyway, our mysterious entity seems to be a bit more friendly when it’s just the two of us,” you observe. “Adding in other people only appears to make it more reactionary. Plus, we have to take into account the fact that it hasn’t harmed us in any way.”

“Yet.”

“Yet,” you amend. “But it clearly could, if it wanted to. There was nothing holding it in the barn; none of our warding or traps seemed to be able to contain it. And yet here we are, completely unscathed. Or, well, mostly,” you amend, gesturing to Keith’s newly clean face.

“So you think the Paladins make this thing more aggressive, somehow?”

“Hey, I agree with you that something was about to go very wrong with the seance,” you say, “and it was a good thing you stopped it when you did. But I have to wonder if the problems started because of the presence of other people. When it’s just us, this entity seems to be manageable. It doesn’t seem to want to hurt us; in fact, it’s done the exact opposite. But we can’t be sure the other Paladins will get that same immunity.”

Silence descends on the car as Keith takes in your words, nodding to himself as he digests your thoughts.

“…that’s your theory?” he asks eventually. “That we have some kind of…guardian angel looking over our shoulder? But it only likes you and me?”

“…it’s a working theory.”

Hell, when said out loud like that, in such concise, no-bullshit terms, you feel stupid for even suggesting the idea. Because when has that ever been your life? Or Keith’s? Or any hunter’s, for that matter? There’s no such thing as a guardian angel, or a fairy godmother, or god with a capital G. No one looks out for you, or has your best interest at heart - no one except Keith for you, and you for him. The idea that a benevolent entity raised you from the dead and is now following you around, watching you from on high - well, it’s just silly. You hate how much you want it to be true.

Keith lets out a long-held breath of tension, drawing you out of your self-loathing spiral. It suddenly occurs to you that by leaving the Castle, he’s finally getting his way in all of this, and you can’t help but wonder how much of this he already saw, and how much he predicted. The seance going tits-up? The strange manifestation at the barn? When it comes to what Keith does and doesn’t know, your guess is as good as anyone else’s.

Thankfully, Keith’s never been a gloater, and he isn’t going to start now. “Better call Allura, then,” he says simply, and leaves it at that.

You hand your phone over so he can pull up your favorite contacts shortlist and dial the Castle while you concentrate on driving. Then you wait, listening to the heartbeat of the dial-tone as you keep your eyes on the darkening road, hands steady at the wheel.

Allura picks up on the second ring, her warm British accent accentuated by the speaker phone.

“Shiro! Did you find him? Is Keith alright?”

“He did,” Keith confirms, “and I’m fine.”

“Hmm. May I assume our Red Paladin was getting up to a little bit more than an impromptu arts and crafts project?” Allura asks playfully.

“You may. But don’t worry about it,” you assure her, “everything’s been handled now.”

“Oh, good.” Her breath of relief is filled with a rush of static across the line. “Then when can we expect you back tonight?”

You glance over to Keith, as you both silently reconfirm what you agreed upon just moments ago.

“…we’re not coming back,” you tell her, “at least not for a while. We don’t think it’s safe to do so at the moment.”

“But you said everything went well?” Allura’s voice lilts upwards in confusion.

“Everything went - fine. But whatever force resurrected me, it’s locked onto us hard,” you say. “It practically manifested itself in the barn, and whatever it is, it’s the most powerful entity any of us have ever come across. And clearly, we don’t know even half about what this thing is really capable of. So far, it hasn’t shown itself to be dangerous, but just in case…”

“We can’t take the chance,” Keith finishes. “Coming back to the Castle would only put Voltron in unnecessary strategic danger. It’s better if we split up.”

“For now,” you clarify. “We can reassess our situation later. But - yeah. At the moment, this looks like it’s goodbye.”

The line is silent for a few moments before Allura speaks again.

“I understand,” she says softly. “Thank you for giving us a heads-up. We’ll make sure to keep in contact and update you on anything we uncover. If Pidge receives any hits of unusual demonic activity from her software, I’ll make sure you’ll be the first to know. And Shiro, Keith…” She takes a deep, steadying breath. “I truly am sorry about what I said yesterday. It came out of a place of fear and prejudice, which neither of you deserve. Both of you have shown yourselves to be exemplary hunters time and time again, and…you have our utmost trust.”

Your throat feels swollen all of a sudden, and you swallow painfully in order to be able to respond.

“Thank you, Allura. That means a lot,” you tell her. “You’re more than forgiven.”

An awkward pause; you glance over to Keith, giving him a quick elbow nudge when he doesn’t say anything.

“Hello? Are you still there?” Allura calls hesitantly.

“…sorry. We’re still here, Princess,” says Keith, “and…there’s nothing to forgive. I understand what you meant, and you’re right to be protective of the Castle. There’s no hard feelings; I don’t blame you for anything.”

You think you hear a sniffle over the line; when Allura speaks again, her voice sounds the slightest bit watery.

“It’s been an honor to fight alongside you,” she says softly. “Godspeed, Paladins, and safe travels.”

“Until we meet again.”

“Goodbye,” Keith says softly.

The line clicks dead. Still, you keep listening for the next couple of miles, as though you’ll be able to hear phantom conversations from the Castle. One last piece of team bonding and domesticity before the long, open road. But the call is over, and any chatter is only imagined, an audible memory of the team as you leave them behind on the twilight highway of Arizona.

The car continues on in silence. Keith, you’re sure, is probably content to keep it that way, lost in thought and softly pensive. But eventually, you need to break the quiet for the sake of your own sanity

“So, what do you think are the chances we’ve got a friendly little guardian angel on our shoulder?”

Out of the corner of your eye, you watch Keith grimace. “Given our track record, I’d say not so good.”

Pessimistic, though probably true. Although if any two people on the planet Earth deserve to catch a break right now, you think it probably ought to be the two of you. And if you believed in the big man upstairs, you’d go ahead and tell him that. Get down on your knees in church, clasp your hands together, scream at the heavens, the whole debacle. Rend your clothes and tear out your hair if he didn’t answer you. Not stop until he did. There must be a noise threshold that even the creator of the universe can’t abide.

“Keith,” you say, apropos of nothing, “Do you believe in God?”

Clearly not a question your companion was expecting because he jerks upright in his seat, then looks at you with a strangely bewildered expression.

“…I don’t know,” he admits slowly. “My mother did. I’m not sure I can say the same.”

“What about angels?”

“…what about them?” Keith asks warily.

“Do you believe in angels?” you clarify. “We know demons exist. It would only be logical, if angels did, too.”

“Maybe. I guess that would make sense.”

“So do you believe in them?”

“Believe in them? No.”

“…no. Me neither,” you agree. “But I will say, it’s a nice idea. A being of pure goodness guiding your every step and keeping you from harm? It would make our lives a helluva lot easier.”

Keith gives a humorless snort. “If that’s what angels were, we’d be out of a job,” he points out.

“But would that really be so bad?” you counter. “No demons, no monsters, no creatures that go bump in the night? Just a nice, quiet apple-pie life for the both of us?”

“You’d get bored,” Keith declares, “and I’d get reckless. We wouldn’t last six months.”

“I’ve done it before,” you protest.

“Because you're a suicidal masochist.”

Well, he has a point.

“...but what if we tried?” you press. “Really, Keith. Think about it. Once we get all this sorted out - once all the crazy resurrection stuff is put behind us - why don’t we give it a go? What would there be to stop us?”

“That sounds like a terrible idea.”

You wave off his pessimism. “C’mon,” you say with a grin, “Just for the hell of it. When we get bored, we can go right back to the open road. Back to hunting. No harm, no foul.”

“Shiro-” Keith looks caught between pained humor and exasperation. You flash him a wide smile, hoping to tip the balance.

“Won’t you brave suburbia for me?” you tease lightly. “Or have I finally found the one place too terrible for you to follow?”

Keith looks at you like you’re the biggest idiot in the world.

“I’d follow you anywhere, Shiro,” he says. “To hell and back, if I need to. You know that.”

A simple statement, said so easily. No pomp or circumstance, no special occasion. Somehow, Keith always manages to sucker-punch you when you least expect it. You quickly look away, eyes glued back to the road, before his painfully honest face and soulful eyes can gain any more traction over your soul than they currently do.

“’Course I know that, buddy,” you reassure him. “You know I was just messing with you.” The edges of your voice pulled a stitch too tight to sound completely at ease.

Because the thing about Keith is that yes, he keeps secrets, and he knows more than he should, and he lies by omission. But all of that you are able to expect and compensate for. It’s when he tells the truth that suddenly all of your defenses are stripped bare. You have no power against your boy when he means every word he says.

Besides you, Keith stretches and yawns, an almost catlike movement in the tight confines of the Impala. He seems to be oblivious to your inner turmoil; he often is, when he’s the cause of it.

“I’d take suburbia over hell,” he admits to you, with a shy, sleepy vulnerability, “but don’t think I won’t follow you either way. Better keep that in mind.”

“I’ll try,” you croak.

Keith’s already out like a light. He might not have even heard you, he fell asleep so quickly. It’s the stress and the blood-loss, you know, but a part of you hopes it’s because he feels so safe with you. Because he trusts you to drive at night, and because he trusts you to protect him. Because he trusts you’ll always have his back.

The self-recrimination that invariably bubbles up inside you at these thoughts is acidic, sulfuric, embittered by your own worst qualities. You’re a fool; you’ve always known that. But it shames you, how you proved it to Keith so thoroughly. How much precious time did you waste, running away from him while you licked your self-inflicted wounds? How much did you unwittingly lose, with all your supposed self-sacrifice? How much will you never get back?

You press down harder on the gas pedal, as though a little more horsepower will help you outrun your own invasive thoughts. Shake your head, and grip tighter into the leather steering wheel. Your past is just a shadow, lived by another, weaker man. None of it matters now, not when that man is dead. Not while you have a second lease on life. Not while you have the most important thing in the universe curled up in the seat next to you, sleeping so peacefully.

Not while you’re running away together.

***

VIII.          THEN:

Here’s the truth about your self-imposed exile, the one you’re most ashamed of: as soon as you got Keith out of your life, you harbored a secret dread that he would find a way to weasel himself back in.

Not that you didn’t want him back. Not that you didn’t long to see him, those two barren, fruitless years that you lived by yourself, ticking off the days until your death. How you yearned for his sudden reappearance into your sad little life; it was a quiet, desperate hope that you hid deep inside, too ashamed to admit it to yourself. You can’t count the number of times you looked out the window to see a dark, lithe figure standing on the sidewalk, your heart leaping up into your throat - only to blink, and realize it was just a neighborhood kid, or a stranger passing through the street.

Of course you want Keith back; it’s the idea of what comes next that terrifies you. Because as far as you can see, you then have two possible futures: either you have to go through the painful process of saying goodbye all over again - or you come clean about what you did, and stay with Keith until the end of your very short road. Both of these options are appealing, in their own terrible ways. Both of them are actively horrifying, too. And so you selfishly hope Keith takes the hard decision out of your hands and stays the hell away, for both of your sakes.

But you never stop wishing.

Which is why, on the night you wake up to the sound of your back door swinging open, you’re not particularly worried. Perhaps it’s a burglar, or someone intent to do you harm. In either case, you’ll subdue them - or you won’t, and you get killed, and you go to hell early. Which is hardly a loss for the world, in the grand scheme of things. But if, on the other hand, it’s someone you know -

You listen intently for any sounds as you creep down the stairs, deftly avoiding all the places that creak. Your intruder is scarily silent, in the way only supernatural creatures can be - or the Hunters that hunt them. Which narrows down the list of possible suspects to a handful of people you never thought you’d see again. But one possibility shines above the rest, and as you make your way into the living-room towards the kitchen, you pray to a god you don’t believe in. That it isn’t him. That it is. Schrodinger's prayer, as you like to think of it - and one way or another, you’ll get what you asked for.

Your intruder comes wheeling out of the dark kitchen, fists first, batting away your defense and hooking one heel around your ankle before you know what hit you. Your weight flies out from under you, and you both go down in an ungainly pile of limbs with your attacker on top, but your momentary shock has already worn off. You manage to lock your legs around him, using your superior mass to flip the tables, and your combatant ends up on his back, arms above his head, staring up at you through the unlit gloom of your living-room. Dark hair, grown out to just past the nap of his neck. Long, ratty bangs, and an old, worn leather jacket on a scrappy frame. In the dark, really, it could be any young delinquent. But those eyes. God, do you know those eyes.

You clear your throat, just to make sure there’s no hitch in your voice when you speak. Ready your best shit-eating grin.

“You’re gonna have to do better than that, Spitfire,” you say, as you keep Keith pinned into the carpet.

“Fuck you, too, Shiro,” he says. “Now let me up.”

You raise an eyebrow. “Do you yield?”

Keith checks your holds repeatedly for weak points; you can feel it in the way his muscles tense and contract under your hands, before he relaxes utterly with a soft huff.

“Yeah, yeah. I yield.”

Offer a hand to pull him up; Keith takes it eagerly, grasping onto you until his blunt nails gouge into your flesh. Once back on his feet, he doesn’t let you go right away, either, using his hold to tether you together as he takes you in. You shift awkwardly to extricate yourself from his hold.

“So, uh…whatcha doing here, buddy?” you ask.

A loose shrug. “Was in the area. Thought I’d drop in for a visit.”

“So you’d thought you’d break in during the middle of the night?”

Keith smirks at you, a half-formed, insolent expression that’s been expertly honed to push all of your buttons.

“Christ, Keith. You could’ve just knocked,” you say. “During the daytime.”

“That’s what boring people do,” Keith says breezily. “Plus, I wanted to make sure you still had it. Keep you on your toes, make sure civilian life hadn’t dulled you too much.”

“Well, it hasn’t.”

“Clearly not,” Keith agrees, giving you a once-over with a critical yet appreciative eye. He’s much more obvious about it now then he ever was before, you note, and feel yourself blush fiercely at the thought. Hurriedly, you cough into a fist, as through purging the mucus from your vocal chords will also purge any bad-thoughts from your head.

“Well, feel free to stay here for the night,” you offer, “as long as you’re not here for work.”

“I’m not,” Keith assures you quickly.

“Good,” you say, “because I’m retired now, Keith. You know that. I don’t want any family business spilling over onto my front porch.”

“I’m not on a case right now,” Keith says, so guilelessly, with those large soulful eyes boring right up into your own, that for a moment you don’t quite catch the careful phrasing he’s used. Because Keith won’t lie to you, not when he can help it; he’s proved to be pathetically incapable of it. But that doesn’t mean he won’t try to bend the truth.

You catch him with the look, raising an eyebrow to let him know that you’re not fooled. “Alright, good,” you say, “but I - I need you to be gone by the weekend, alright?”

Keith swallows heavily, his Adam’s apple bobbing in what looks like a painfully tight motion. “Yeah, alright,” he croaks, “I can do that.”

“Okay, then.” You gesture awkwardly towards the couch. “I don’t have a spare room here. Never thought I’d need one,” you add, with a self-deprecating smile. “You don’t mind taking the couch?”

“No, I don’t mind.” But he shuffles under your scrutiny, as though he wants to add something else. You wait it out, and the fidgeting fades away, but Keith’s nervous energy still pervades the air.

“Well, alright,” you say. “Make yourself comfortable. I’m gonna go back upstairs-”

“Wait, Shiro-”

You exhale on a long sigh, then turn back around. Here’s the other shoe you were waiting for.

“Yes, Keith?” you say.

“I’m not here on a case,” Keith says hurriedly, “not an active one, at least. But I am following a lead. And I came here because I want - no, because I need your help, Shiro.”

Your fists clench at your sides. “Oh?” you hear yourself say.

Keith nods, eyes swimming with a miasma of complicated emotions.

“I’ve been hearing whispers,” he says, “about Azazel. About the yellow-eyed demon.”

Your reaction is immediate, a gut-instinct of hatred and denial. “Yellow-Eye’s is dead,” you spit, teeth bared and nostrils flaring wide.“We got the bastard. I killed him myself.”

“I know,” Keith says, hands out to pacify you. “I know you did. And I was so proud of you when you did it. I still am.” And he is, you can see it, radiant in his face. The knowledge of his high regard warms you from the inside, suffusing your body, even as you try to tamp the embers out.

“Then what do you mean, you’re following a lead? If he’s dead, then he’s dead. There’s no more leads to follow.”

“Azazel’s dead,” Keith agrees with you. One hand up, still so placid and gentling, as though he’s afraid you’ll lash out at him in anger. “You’re right; he’s dead and gone. But maybe his plan isn’t.”

It takes a few seconds to process his words, then a few more as you intentionally release all of the pent-up energy from your body, surrendering your impotent rage to the universe

“Alright,” you say, “Go on.”

“We never really learned what Azazel was trying to do, did we?” Keith says. “I mean, we know that he fed his own demon blood to all of his special children - but we don’t really know why. We don’t know what he was planning to do with us. We don’t know how many other demonic children are even out there. And we have no idea if any of his pals or underlings are interested in finishing what he started.”

You stifle the sudden, suffocating guilt that rises within you. “Uh, you’re right,” you say, “we don’t know why, exactly. But - do we need to know, Keith? Demons are crazy son’s-of-bitches. We don’t know why they do half the things they do. Yellow-Eyes just happened to be more powerful and more crazy than all the rest of them. I don’t really see why we need to figure him out, two years after the fact.”

Keith stares at you for a solid fifteen seconds, until you start to fidget under his glare.

“Seriously, Shiro? That’s your answer? Really?”

He looks so disappointed in you that you feel it like a physical blow, catching you right in the diaphragm and snatching your breath away. You just manage to hold onto your self-composure.

“Yes, Keith,” you say, as cuttingly as you can. “That’s my answer. I spent my life chasing after Yellow-Eyes, and I killed him. I got my vengeance. Now, if I want to spend my retirement away from the supernatural - away from you - then that’s what I’m owed, don’t you think?”

You can see the hurt bloom behind his eyes, but Keith isn’t a kid anymore, and he keeps the devastation locked down tight behind an impenetrable, alien mask.

“What the fuck is wrong with you, Shiro?” he hisses. “Why don’t you want to know what Yellow-Eyes was planning? He killed my father - and did God knows what to my mother. I need closure. I need to know why. And, just this once, I need your fucking help.”

It takes all of your meager strength to say what you need to say next.

“I understand,” you say woodenly, “But you can do all of that on your own, Keith. You don’t need me to hold your hand along the way, not anymore. You’re your own man now. A hunter in your own right. If you want to hunt for your own vengeance, you’ll have to hunt alone.”

You expected anger - but you don’t expect Keith to snarl. Actually snarl, a full-bellied feral growl rising up from the recesses of his throat. His teeth are bared so fiercely that faint moonlight reflects off of his strangely-elongated canines, and for a moment you could swear that his eyes gleam a sickening, ochered yellow - you blink viciously, and the illusion dispels itself. Keith, fully-human, turns his back on you as he sweeps his arms out, encompassing the rest of your living-room into his wrathful purview.

“How can you be happy with this?” he demands. “With this - fake life? Don’t you want answers, too? Don’t you want to know why Azazel burned down our lives? Why he killed your parents? Or what about your boyfriend, for that matter? Don’t you wanna know why he killed Ad-”

This time, there’s no faking, no performance. You really do see red. You have Keith pinned up against a wall before you even realize you’ve moved, forearm pressed tight into the hollow of his throat.

“Don’t,” you warn. “Don’t you dare bring him into this. You didn’t know him; you don’t get to say his name.”

Keith gasps for air, his eyes glassy with emotion. Through your haze of rage, you watch from the outside of your body as he desperately grasps for words.

“You’re right,” he says, “I’m sorry. Shiro, I’m sorry.”

It takes all your concentration to let up the pressure from his windpipe so that Keith can drop back down from the balls of his feet and get in a full breath. Already, shame and self-hatred threaten to overwhelm you, to tow you back down into your own self-made misery. You’ve got Keith back in your life for less than a half-hour, and you’re already pushing him away, destroying him in that very particular way you so excel at.

“Is that all you came for?” you ask.

Keith opens his mouth, and for a moment, it looks like he’s going to say something else, but-

“Uh, yeah. That’s it,” he mumbles.

“Alright. Well, the answer’s no, so it looks like you came all this way for nothing. Sorry to disappoint,” you add, a spiteful parting shot, because the other thing you excel at is self-sabotage.

Keith just watches you with those big, soft eyes of his.

“You never disappoint me,” he says quietly. Then he’s already turning away from you, shrugging off his jacket and tossing it onto the sofa.

“Still okay if I crash here?” he calls over his shoulder.

“Of course.” The words come out of you dumb and route. You wish he’d turn around, just for a second, so that you can see his face, look into his eyes. He can’t lie to you, with his eyes. Trouble is, though - most of the time, you don’t really want to know the truth.

When Keith does turn back to you, it doesn’t help you any; his eyes are shaded by his bangs, hooded by shadow. Nothing for you to gleam from them but unnatural darkness.

“See you in the morning?” he asks, in a weak voice.

“Yeah, Keith. Of course.” It hurts that he even has to ask. But, with the way you’ve been behaving you suppose it only makes sense.

“Goodnight, Keith,” you add, as you reluctantly turn to head back to your bedroom.

“Goodnight, Shiro.”

Sweet dreams, you almost add, but bite down on your tongue at the last second. Two years gone, and you’ve already forgotten the details. How long, until you forget everything? Until even his face and voice are burned away?

As you climb the steps, and slip into bed, you push those musings from your mind. No point in dwelling on them now. After all, you’ll have a whole eternity to find out.

***

You don’t sleep that night. Mostly because you have a terrible suspicion that if you allow yourself to drift off, Keith won’t be waiting there for you in the morning. And sadly, your paranoia is proved to be correct. Somewhere in the early dawn, just as the songbirds are beginning to chirp under your window, you hear muffled shuffling coming from the first floor. A stealthy creep down the stairs reveals Keith with his back to you, shucking on his backpack and heading for the back door.

“Not even gonna have coffee?”

Keith jumps, then turns, a guilty look already plastered over his face.

“Uh - wasn’t planning on it. Didn’t want to bother you.”

“Keith, you’re never a bother,” you say.

You can see the doubt written plainly in his features. He chews on his bottom lip to keep whatever he wants to say locked inside.

When you can’t stand to see his indecision anymore, you say, “Come on. One cup.” Then dust off your most winning look for good measure. “You can keep an old man company for a little while longer, can’t you?”

You watch as Keith’s uncertainty turns into a shy half-smile. “Just for a little while,” he echoes.

The coffee pot whirs to life with a press of a button, sputtering and hissing as it begins its brew cycle. You and Keith sit opposite each other at the small wooden dinner table you salvaged from the side of the road a year and a half ago. Scratched and water-stained, it’s a bit of an eye-sore, really, but it seemed silly at the time to spend any money on a piece of furniture you only needed for another thirty months. Now, though, with Keith sat squarely amongst the detritus of your current life, you feel nakedly embarrassed - as though you should have something better to show for your civilian existence. But if Keith wonders about the wobbling chairs, or the dead house plants that sit mummified on the sill of the kitchen window - well, he doesn’t mention it.

Waiting for the coffee to brew would be easier if there were small-talk. But Keith isn’t one for meaningless conversation, and neither of you have ever been big believers in making anything easier for yourselves, so uncomfortable silence it is, with both of you stewing painfully in the awkward, long-neglected space that’s grown between you. It’s a game of chicken, really, with neither of you willing to blink first- but eventually you can’t help yourself. Your burning curiosity is the one quality you have that outweighs your pride.

“…So,” you drawl, as you pour each of you a hot mug and slide Keith’s over to him. “These leads you mentioned, last night.”

“Yeah?”

“Who’d you hear them from?” You cock an eyebrow. “Anyone I know?”

“Uh, no,” Keith admits uneasily. “You wouldn’t. Know them.”

“Uh-huh. New friend of yours?”

“Not really.” Keith blows irritably on his coffee, before setting it down with a loud clink, apparently fed up with the little dance you have going. “I met a demon who gave me the first tip-off,” he says, point-blank. “She told me where to start. I just followed her leads.”

“A demon.”

“Yeah. ’Called herself Ruby.”

The slight twitch of your left eye is the only outward sign of your fracturing self-control.

“And what, this Ruby girl, you’ve just decided to trust her?”

Keith gives you a look like you’re the crazy one. “’Course not. I killed her,” he says with an indignant huff. “I’m not a fucking moron - I don’t make friends with demons.”

Actually, that sounds more like something you would do. First with Meg, then with that lady-demon you got trapped in a basement with. Even Yellow-Eyes - excuse you, Azazel - was scarily easy to talk to, a real chum when it came to conversating, even as he quite literally held your life in the palm of his hands. This is one bad habit that Keith hasn’t inherited from you, at least. When he sees a demon, he does his best to exterminate it, no questions asked.

Still: “I leave you alone for two years, and you’re taking advice from demons,” you mutter. The heat of the coffee burns through the ceramic and into your palms as you do your best to throttle the mug you’re holding.

“I’m interrogating demons,” Keith snaps. “You know, like you taught me to? And damn if it isn’t working.” Suddenly, he’s hunched over the table, an electric fanaticism bleeding into his voice. “The demons I’m finding, they know things. Things about hell I never knew before, about the structure of hell. It has layers, architecture, demonic armies with ranks and legions and everything. They even have their own fucked up religion. Did you know demons believe in God?”

…no, you can honestly say you didn’t.

“Well, they do,” Keith says. “They believe God exists. And they believe that Lucifer exists, too. They think he’s their savior. They - they think he’s going to come back to lead the legions of demons out of hell.”

You blink. “To do what?”

Keith is practically vibrating out of his chair. “What do you think?” he hisses. “They think the devil is going to make hell on earth. They literally want to conquer the world.”

“That - that’s silly,” you say. It’s your gut reaction, but even as the words come out, you’re assaulted by the vivid memories of that day, when the Yellow-Eyed Demon stood above you, taunting you with his poisonous words.

Now, that boy of yours. He’d make a good leader, wouldn’t he? A general at the head of my armies - I can almost see it now. He has the blood for it. He’d leered at you, ocher eyes half-lidded in perverse, sensual pleasure. The boy-king of hell, Shirogane. Has a nice ring, doesn’t it?

You’re broken free from that memory by Keith, who has launched himself fiercely onto the defensive.

“- I’m telling you, that’s what I’ve been hearing,” he says, “almost every single time I manage to bag a higher-ranking demon - and to tell the truth, I think I’m still dealing with the small-fry. I don’t even think I’m close to the real-deal yet, but they’re out there. Actual demon princes and lieutenants, and I’ll bet they know what Yellow-Eyes was planning. All we have to do is find them.”

Out of the blur of all possible new information, that catches your attention. Your mug slams onto the table, sloshing black coffee all across the ruined wood.

“Like hell are you running around after demonic admiralty! Are you trying to get yourself killed, Keith?”

Keith tips his chin up in a way he probably thinks is commanding, but in actuality just emphasizes his stubborn pout. “Somebody has to do it.”

“Somebody with backup. With a team. Get the Castle involved in this, if you have to, but for god-sakes, Keith, you should know this job is too big for you alone. Get someone involved in this besides yourself!”

The look Keith shoots you is withering.

“Besides me,” you amend. “I’ve done my time; I’m out of the game. You know that.”

“Even with a potential demon incursion hanging over us?”

“Even then.”

It’s a damning thing to say. You can tell the exact moment something changes in Keith’s eyes, when he realizes to just what extent you’re a broken shell of the man you used to be.

“What happened to you, Shiro?” The demand is threaded with desperation, real anguish shimmering in his eyes. “What did that fucking demon do, to made you want to give it all up?” He shakes his head. “I just don’t understand it. Help me understand, Shiro. Please.”

You grit your teeth together. Force yourself to lie, to the face of the man who trusts you with the world, and his heart besides.

“There’s nothing to understand. I’m just tired, Keith. Of the lifestyle, the danger. Of constantly feeling like other people’s lives rest on my shoulders. Of-”

“Me?”

You blink stupidly. That’s not what you were going to say, not at all. But whatever was on the tip of your tongue is gone now as your mouth hangs open. You shut it with a snap.

“No, Keith-”

Keith holds up a solemn hand.

“Shiro, don’t. It’s okay,” he says, “I get it. You took me in when you were, what - twenty-six? Became a guardian to a bratty, surly fifteen-year old you didn’t even know? You never asked for that.” He chuckles, a low, gravelly sound filled with a strange, bitter mirth. “You know, when I first met you I used to think you were so grown-up, so wise and all-knowing. But as I get older and older, I realize how young you were, to take on that sort or responsibility. So I get it, if you can’t play that part anymore. If you want to be free of it. I do.”

You don’t know how to rebut that. It’s as close to the truth as you can ever let Keith venture - and yet so terribly far. Desperately, you grasp for humor, your last defense against pain.

“…I’m still wise,” you say weakly.

Keith smiles, willing to take the bait. “You are,” he says warmly, earnestly. And then: “You’re the best man I’ve even known.”

As you recover from that unexpected sucker-punch, he gets to his feet, bringing his mug over to your sink and washing it out.

“Anyway, I should get going,” he says over his shoulder. “Daylight’s burning, and if I want to get to where I’m going by the end of the day, I really do need to leave now.” He dries the mug with your dish towel before placing it lightly on the counter, then turns to you as he leans against it, one finger still playing with the handle of the mug. “I swear, I really didn’t come here to drag you back in,” he says, with a quiet desperation. As though he needs you to believe it, so that he can believe it himself.

“Then why did you come here, Keith?” you practically beg. “What do you need from me?”

“You don’t know?”

You stare at him, bereft of answers. After a moment, Keith deflates, turning away from you once more.

“Never mind, I-”

“Keith.”

You cross the space between the both of you to stop him with a hand on his shoulder, spinning him around and drawing him back in towards you. Catch his chin with a firm hand, so that he has no choice but to look into your eyes. An overly intimate gesture, you belatedly realize - you aren’t entitled to touch him with this kind of familiarity, not after so much time has passed. Not after what you’ve done to him. But you can’t make yourself regret it, or let him go.

Keith shuffles in your grip, tremors of uncertainty making their way from his body and into yours as you hold him still. His gaze flickers down, fleeing from your restless pursuit.

“I don’t know what I did to drive you away, but - I’m sorry. I’d do anything to make it right,” he says quietly.

An unbidden emotion wells up in your throat. “No, Keith, no-,” you choke on your words, fumbling in the dark for the closest half-truth. “You have nothing to be sorry for. You didn’t do anything wrong. I didn’t leave because of you. It’s just - me,” you finish lamely.

Finally, Keith returns your gaze. His dark eyes rest heavy on your soul as he regards you, weighing the truthfulness of your words. You’re not sure what conclusion he comes to, but he pulls himself from your grasp all the same.

“Shiro,” he says, “I really do need to go.” It almost sounds like a plea. Begrudgingly, you extract yourself from Keith’s personal space, so that you won’t be tempted to overstep once more. Watch dispassionately as Keith gathers his jacket and his backpack.

You insist on walking him to his car. He parked it a block down, as though afraid the tell-tale rumble of the motor would’ve been enough to wake you last night from a dead sleep. Which, honestly, it probably would have. You still have dreams about her, where you’re back in the cockpit, flying down an empty interstate under a perfectly starless sky. You can’t help yourself; you reach out, run a hand over Black’s shell and down her hood.

Your car - but now Keith’s, you chastise yourself, given over freely as a gift. She belongs to him now. He deserves her, and she deserves to be on the open road - not cooped up in a garage, hidden under a dusty tarp. But Keith catches how your touch lingers on her body; he smiles at you, a wry twist of his lips.

“You two need some alone time to say goodbye?”

“Hush, you.”

The grin you share is easy and nostalgic. You open the car door for Keith, who throws his bag haphazardly into the empty shot-gun seat. He turns back to you, leaning forward against the open door frame. So artless and transient; this is a snap-shot of imminent departure, you realize. Suddenly, you need to do anything just to get him to stay a moment longer.

“So…” Your brain scrambles for possible topics. “What lead are you chasing right now that led you all the way out to Kansas?”

To your great regret, the smile drops away from Keith’s face.

“One of Azazel’s left-over psychic kids, I think,” he says. “Don’t have much to go on, but it looks like he has some kind of telekinetic ability. His mom died in a fire when he was still in diapers, he’s somewhere between us in age - it all fits. He lives somewhere south of Wichita, but that’s all I got so far.”

Not a whole lot, as far as leads go. You feel your lip curl in distaste.

“Did that Ruby girl tell you about this guy, too?” It comes out sounding more bitter than you intended. But Keith doesn’t notice.

“Uh, no. She didn’t.” He ducks his head, eyes skirting shiftely away from your own. “I found him all by myself.”

He’s obfuscating. Or, trying to. You level him with your best disappointed look.

“Keith,” you intone.

Keith squirms. “I - saw him, alright? Like, in a vision.”

“…what?” you hear yourself say.

“I saw him in a vision,” Keith repeats. Slightly more emphatic, this time - but no, that can’t be right. You shake your head in denial.

“You said the visions stopped. After Yellow-Eyes died, you told me that you weren’t having them anymore.” A new thought dawns on you. “Were you - lying to me?”

Hypocrite that you are, the possibility is enraging. But Keith shakes his head, a desperate denial.

“No, I didn’t! I wasn’t,” he insists. “Up until two months ago, I was vision-free. Sleeping through the night like a fucking baby. But about two months ago, they started back up again. And they’re getting more vivid, too. I know more than I should. I can hear whole conversations, now. Last time my visions were this intense, Yellow-Eyes was still alive - and he was just warming up.”

Sometime during the last few seconds, the world has fallen out from under your feet. This changes everything - and not for the better.

“Were you just going to keep this from me? Why didn’t you mention this before?” you demand.

“You know why.” When you don’t respond, Keith practically growls out his frustration, raking his hands through his hair so violently you think he’s going to rip it out. “Because whether you believe it or not, Shiro, I actually want you to have your peace!” he exclaims. “If this life makes you happy, then I want you to have it.” His head dips in defeat. “That’s why I wasn’t going to mention the visions. Because I knew that telling you would make you change your mind.”

And that’s the thing - he’s not wrong. A black hole has opened up in the pit of your gut, eating you away from the inside out as you feel the prickling bite of real, true fear for what dark uncertainties the future holds. You’re a lost cause, obviously, your destiny long since sealed. But Keith - what guarantee were you really given of Keith’s destiny being averted? Azazel is dead by your hand, but his words still haunt you every damn time you close your eyes. Who’s to say another demon won’t come along and finish what he started? And now, with Keith’s psychic power seemingly reactivated - well, the possibilities are terrifying.

It was your own hubris, you realize now, to ever think that the price of your single, crooked soul would be enough to save anyone, least of all the most precious person in the world. Hubris, and vanity, to think that you could be Keith’s salvation. But what wouldn’t you give to make that so?

“I’m not…coming back,” you say slowly, “not for good, but - maybe just for a little while. I’ll help you chase down a few leads.”

Keith nods. He looks like he doesn’t know whether to be miserable or overjoyed. You can’t help the familiar motion; you reach out to ruffle his hair.

“You could look happier about it, Spitfire,” you rib gently. “You got what you wanted.”

“I didn’t want you to give up your retirement for me,” he says quietly.

“Retirement will still be waiting when I get back.” Hell will still be waiting. You stifle your grimace, push your grisly, inevitable fate as far from your mind as possible. “One last case together,” you say instead. “You were right. We have unfinished business.”

Now Keith looks cautiously hopeful, his eyes swimming with tender relief.

“You won’t regret this, Shiro,” he says. “We’ll figure this out together, and then I’ll have you back home, and I’ll be out of your hair forever. I promise.”

You grit a smile through the ache of those words. But Keith is only saying what he thinks you want to hear. How is he to know that just seeing him again, living in his presence and walking by his side, is all you could possibly want? Your last boon and greatest treasure, before you shuffle off the mortal coil and sink straight down to hell?

Drink it all in: the fall of his hair, the texture of his jacket, the firm strength of his shoulder under your hand. The unidentifiable color of those eyes that peer into your soul, so alien, and yet more familiar than your own. How you’ll miss seeing them, when all this is through.

“Let’s swing back so I can grab a bag,” you say. “How about it, partner?”

Keith tosses the keys to you, already making his way for the shotgun. “Yes, Captain,” he says, with an insolent little salute. But he’s smiling when he slides in next to you, an expression so open and honest that you want to freeze the moment in a snapshot of time, and keep it forever.

One last case together, you remind yourself. Better make it count.

***

But you know what they say about good intentions.

You never will find the psychic that Keith saw in his dreams. By the time you’ll get to his last known location in Winfield, he’ll have vanished into thin air, as though snatched up by some greater force and carried away into the ether - which very well could have happened.

“We’ll keep looking,” you’ll promise Keith. You don’t specify for how long; ‘until we finish what we started’ is implied.

The misstep will arrive while you’re on the hunt for a new lead, driving cross country up over to Wisconsin when, while stopping to pay for gas in Turn Key, Iowa, you’ll overhear two locals murmuring to themselves as they pour over the magazine selection. Snatches of conversation catch your ears, something about a recent murder, multiple missing persons in the countryside, a local legend…etcetera, etc.

No, you’ll tell yourself sternly. You’re here to help Keith, and that’s it. The days of picking up miscellaneous supernatural cases are behind you - even as your hand strays, unbidden, into your jacket pocket. You’re already walking up to the two men, with a blandly pleasant expression and a sharp, square jaw, shoulders back, back straight, a swagger of authority seeping into your every step.

“Afternoon, gentlemen,” you’ll say, as you sidle up to them, with a smooth flip of your I.D. “Special Agent John Glenn, FBI.”

The two men shift uneasily; you affect the most disarming smile within your arsenal. “I couldn’t help but overhear your conversation,” you say, “and I just have a few questions….”

The case turns out to be a generic haunting, a regular salt-and-burn that you could take care of with your eyes closed, even two years out of the game - one that you’re sure Keith has done hundreds similar to, on his own, since you left him to his own devices. But when the chips are down on the table, when you’re in the thick of it, battling a vengeful spirit in a dark, deserted graveyard, the danger of the moment reignites you, burning you up from the inside out, all of the doubt inside reduced to ash. This is where you’re meant to be, you realize, as you narrowly duck a shovel that the enraged spirit has just flung at your head. How could you ever think that retirement was enough to tide you over, when you can have this, every night, right until the bloody end?

When you happen to catch Keith’s eye in the thick of the fight, he must be thinking the very same thing. He stands in front of the open grave, face illuminated by the flames he’s just created. There’s delight burning in his eyes, the grin on his face marking him as triumphant. Because he was right: how could you be happy with anything other than this?

Of course the spirit you’re hunting chooses this exact moment of brotherly bonding to get creative with its attacks. You realize you’ve lost sight of it for just a split second before it materializes way too close to Keith for your comfort. It’s already wreathed in flames, burning from the inside outward, but it seems to have one more spiteful trick up its sleeve when it extends its disintegrating hand out and gives one last supernatural shove - sending Keith falling into the open pit of fire.

It’s not even a thought for action; your body is already lunging as, for the first time in two years, you leap into the void.

The darkness is just as you left it, eternal and unyielding - as though you never stopped jumping, or never left. It’s a strange comfort, too, to realize that you can still traverse this hidden place, this chasm in the world that is all your own, with as much ease as the last time you made the journey. For so long, you’ve seen your demonic power as a curse - but for the first time in your life, when you come flying out of the void to tackle Keith into your arms, it feels like a superpower. Flames rear up to fill your vision as you both fall, intertwined, as the burning corpse looms into view, and then both of you are whisked away.

You’ve never tried traveling through the void with another person. Perhaps because you always had a hunch that it would be - difficult. And hell if your predictions aren’t correct, because going through the void with Keith is like swimming through syrup, if syrup were absolute darkness, the static background radiation of the universe, a kaleidoscope of epileptic blackness and roaring silence. The chasm of space expands and contracts around your two separate wells of gravity, a sickening dilation like nothing you’ve ever felt before, almost tearing Keith from your grasp, but you keep your hold, hang on for just one more infinity -

- and you materialize on the other side of the grave. Flames safely out of reach, and Keith crumpled under you in the grass. It’s been less than a millisecond in the real world; you can hear the vengeful spirit’s last scream of rage trail off behind you into ash and soot. Beneath you, Keith groans, and you realize you’ve been crushing him into the ground. With what last reserves you have, you manage to stumble to your feet. You bundle Keith up along with you; he’s become an unexpected dead-weight in your arms.

“Whoa, there, buddy. I got you, I got you,” you soothe, as Keith shudders against you, clutching you like a lifeline. He’s frozen to the bone and trembling like a leaf, his shivers so violent they rattle into his teeth. It’s the void, you realize numbly - he’s not used to traveling between worlds. It’s sapped him of warmth, perhaps even of a hint of life - but that’s okay, that doesn’t matter, you’re here to make things right. He’s got you to hold him up, to rub sensation back into his frigid limbs, to protect him from the world and from yourself in equal measure.

“You alright there, Spitfire?” You rub his back as firmly as you dare.

“Feel sick,” Keith groans miserably, and then, with a hint of wonder, “Was that-?”

“Yeah.” You can’t help your answering smile. “That’s where I disappear to. The space between the world. Cool, huh?”

“Really cool,” Keith agrees, and then, “Gonna’ throw up.”

He does. You hold his hair out of his face as Keith wretches up what little bile he had in his system. When he’s finished, you tuck his head back where it belongs, resting against your shoulder.

“Thanks. For catching me.” His voice is barely above a rough whisper.

“Of course. That’s why I’m here,” you say, and then, “And that’s why I’m staying. For the long haul. Can’t trust anyone else to look after you, kid.” As if you would ever let him fall. As if you could ever leave him again.

“M’not a kid,” Keith reminds you. It’s said sullenly, as he buries his face into your shoulder, but you can feel his adrenaline-powered smile against the exposed flesh of your neck. He smells of dirt and sweat, smoke and flame. Like family, and nostalgia, and safety - and something more than that, you realize. Keith smells like home.

So perhaps this, instead, is where everything changes. Because this is the very moment where, with Keith gathered up and crushed into your chest, you see the third possible trajectory of your life open up before you. Dying alone or confessing your sins was a false dichotomy you set up for yourself, one inherent on more of your own personal sacrifice. But it doesn’t have to be that way. You don’t need to choose between two evils, not at all. No - you will stay with Keith, by his side, until your final year is up and the devil comes for his pound of flesh.

But that doesn’t mean you have to tell Keith anything.

It’s selfish, of course. Supremely selfish, to try to have your cake and eat it, too. To try to keep Keith, and your secrets. But haven’t you made enough sacrifices already? Isn’t it about time life gave you what you were owed?

For the first moment since you made your deal, the knowledge of this - your secret, hung over both your heads like an invisible sword - suffuses you with a strange, intoxicating power. Here, within your arms, Keith is something to be protected and sheltered. He doesn’t need to know the truth. And he never will, because god willing - no, no, take god out of this equation. Because you will it. Because you will make it so.

You bask in the warmth of this pivotal moment before the fire of the burning corpse, your partner secure within your arms. A perfect moment, you think, to embrace this new, terrible course of action, your last great choice you can make with any real agency. A final ‘fuck you’ to your inevitable fate. Keith doesn’t know any of this, of course. For all his gifts, he’s not a mind-reader. And even if he were, well - it wouldn’t matter. Keith has always seen the best in you, even when it isn’t there. Like right now, as he nuzzles into the flesh of your neck, as affectionate and trusting as he’s ever been. A soft comfort, before the end of the beginning.

“It’s good to have you back,” Keith murmurs into your skin. Lips barely skimming salt and stubble. Unbidden, your hands fist harder into the fabric of his jacket. As though you can keep him there forever.

“It’s good to be back,” you say.

END OF PART I

Chapter Text

Part II : What Is and What Never Should Be

I. NOW:

Darkness.

It’s the kind of darkness that now typifies your nights, sweltering and weighted, an oppressive blanket of unrest. Unconsciousness drags and claws at you, bundling you up, suffocating you within its eternal cocoon. And while it’s not slumber, never a true respite from exhaustion, it must be sleep, because -

You wake up. And though lately you’ve been having trouble telling if you’ve ever really been able to reach a true REM cycle, you know you wake up. Because one moment you weren’t here - weren’t anywhere, for that matter - and the next, you are.

It takes a moment for you to regain your senses. Unlike returning from the abyss, waking from this new, dreamless type of sleep is a slog that you must fight through, losing precious seconds to disorientation. But when you do manage to blink yourself back into full control of the present, you find yourself up-right in bed, tangled in the scratchy, suspect sheets of your latest motel room. It’s still pitch black inside, save for the blinking green light of the smoke detector mounted to the wall, but as a rule your eyes are used to the dark. It takes you only half a heartbeat to catalog your surroundings and pinpoint what exactly it was that towed you back into existence.

The man lying next to you in bed is having a nightmare.

Keith has always been very skilled at hiding his weaknesses. Nightmares are no exception. No doubt it’s deeply tied to the bundle of trauma that was his early childhood in group homes and foster families. Keith will never admit this, of course, but you can extrapolate, and he’s been at your mercy to observe for many years now. And this is what you see: how, even in sleep, Keith keeps a tight guard over his emotions and reactions, never crying aloud as he suffers under the visions of the future. How he twitches minutely, each burst of movement quickly aborted and contained. How his distress is only audible in the softest hitches of breath. How he suddenly jerks into wakefulness, mouth open in a silent scream, instantly smothered before it can be given air and voice. Even in the dark, you can see the whites of his wide eyes, the desperate heave of his chest as he draws close to silent hyperventilation. Your hands move automatically, instinctively, a flight pattern born out of repetition. One hand up to his shoulder, the other to his chest, palm flat, over the staccato beat of his heart.

“Keith. Hey there, star-shine.” You keep your voice soft as you ground him back down to the present. “It was just a dream, alright? It’s not real.”

Your bed partner nods jerkily, lungs slowly catching up to his brain as he comes down from the high of fear. He’s managed to steal both the sheet and duvet, you realize, leaving you chilly and bare-chested and him trapped by a tornado of fabric. You make an attempt to untangle him, but Keith seems to be against the whole endeavor; he burrows back down into the bed, taking you with him as he attempts to hide between your shoulder and the pillows.

“Keith-”

“Please, Shiro. Just…give me a second.”

It’s the closest he’s come to begging for anything in a long time, and the sound of it breaks your heart. So you lean back, carding your fingers through his hair as you give him all the time he needs to process what he saw.

Eventually, Keith opens his eyes again, reemerging into the world with a new, sharp shadow behind his eyes to match their old, worn pain.

“Sorry,” he says, “that was - intense.”

“Bad dream, huh?”

Keith nods. He ducks his head back down into the slot between your neck and collarbone.

“Do you want to talk about it?”

Immediately, Keith shakes his head ‘no,’ even as his voice is already vibrating in his soft, upturned throat.

“We were fighting,” he whispers. “It went on and on for hours. I thought it would never end.”

You nod carefully. “Against what?”

A wet laugh at your question.

“No. We - we were fighting each other, Shiro,” he croaks. “With swords. It was a fight to the death.”

“Oh.” The concept alone seems inconceivable to you. Unimaginable. What would ever occur between the two of you to drive you to that point?

“What happened, at the end?” you ask hesitantly. “Did you see how it - I mean, who…?”

Keith gives a short, humorless laugh.

“No one won, if that’s what you’re asking,” he says bitterly. “We both - fell. I couldn’t stop it.” His voice breaks on the admission, and before you can even think about it, you find yourself swaying slightly back and forth where you sit, rocking Keith in your arms as though he’s still a child.

“Shh, shh. It was a dream. Just a dream.” You give him a little shake. “You remember what we do with dreams? We acknowledge them, and then…?”

“…we let them go,” Keith finishes wearily.

“We let them go,” you echo. “It’s not real unless we allow it to be.”

Your boy scoffs at you, a broken little sound. “You sound real confident, for someone who can’t even predict a scratch ticket,” he snarks, but long and hard-earned experience has taught you that when his hackles are raised like this, when he’s pushing you away as hard and as fast as he can, then that’s the time to lean in and cling to him with all your might. So that’s what you do, bundle him up in his swath of fabric and hold him to you, so tight he can never escape. Give his hair a firm ruffle, just for good measure.

“I don’t need to be able to see the future to know where it leads. It’s you and me, Keith,” you promise him softly, “on the same damn side, ‘til the end of the road.”

“Yeah?” In the night, his eyes almost glow up at you, faintly shimmering over with hope.

You wet your lips, which suddenly feel so cracked and dry. Under the cover of darkness, you’re allowed to drop a kiss onto his brow, quick and feather-light, over before it’s begun.

“Yeah,” you promise him. “We save each other, remember? As many times as it takes.”

***

II. THEN:

Here’s the truth: you’ve always known that Keith is too good to be true. Of course you have suspicions; you’re not stupid. But life is so much simpler, so much easier, when you just - let things slide under the radar. Turn your mind away from the glaring problems of existence. Let the unacknowledged continue to go…unacknowledged. Is this the coward’s way out? Yes, certainly. But let the record show that you’ve never claimed to be particularly brave. Especially when it comes to the dangers that can’t kill you.

It all comes to a head in Washington State. Usually, a few missing hikers aren’t your problem, but when members of the search and rescue team also go missing in North Cascades National Park, you figure it’s worth looking into. You’re in Wyoming, anyway, so it doesn’t hurt to drive on up and scope out the situation.

What you do discover is that this is very much your problem: twenty-five years ago, three hikers went missing in the same park, on the same trail, in the same pass. Twenty-five years before that, four hikers went missing in the exact same place within a three week period. And twenty-five years before that - the cycle continues, until you go so far back that you run out of paper to follow.

Turns out, you’re not the only one who’s picked up on the pattern. And luckily for you, the man who’s put two and two together happens to be a Senior Park Ranger.

He picks you and Keith out from the crowd milling about the search and rescue command center, giving a two-fingered point for you to follow him. You glance over to Keith, who shrugs uneasily, but with nothing better to do at this point, you follow the rough woodsman to a more secluded spot, away from the main hub. Then, he rounds on you.

He’s a hulk of a man, thickly muscled with years of honest work, and weathered by fierce elements. Paired with the two furry salt-and-pepper sideburns he sports, and he looks like someone who’s just emerged from the bush, a wild man barely dressed by the trappings of civilization. His eyes dart to glance over Keith before his gaze settles on you, weighted with authority.

“Shirogane?”

“Yes?” You raise an eyebrow, a silent invitation for him to explain himself.

“Iverson said a pair of hunters would be out this way to meet me,” he says, “and, well - you two looked the part.”

Iverson, huh? You haven’t been in contact with your old mentor in a long time, not since your little falling out four years ago, but you don’t doubt that he’s kept tabs on you. It’s within the realm of possibility that he would send someone your way.

“You know about hunters?” Keith asks, wide-eyed with new interest.

The man snorts, a wry smile peeking out of the corners of his heavy mustache.

“Boy, I been out in the backcountry a long time,” he says, “There’s not a whole lot I don’t know about.”

“Woah.” Keith sounds breathless with wonder; you can tell by the hungry look on his face that he’s already formulating a whole host of Sasquatch-related questions to bombard this poor, unsuspecting man with when given half a chance. It seems, even before he met you, that Keith’s always been a cryptid enthusiast. You still haven’t worked up the courage to break the bad news to him about Nessie.

But. Hold on -

“…what did you mean, we ‘look the part’?” you ask, voice laden with suspicion. Your mysterious ranger friend gives you a look that can only be described as gleefully sardonic.

“Your lot have a certain - flare,” he says. “For example, next time you two go undercover as search and rescue-” he gestures to your jacket, then your boots, “maybe lose the leather.”

You feel the tips of your ears grow red.

“We’ll take that under advisement,” you mutter.

Ranger Carl Whooster, as you come to learn, has been working for the National Park system for close to forty years, and twenty-five of those were spent right here, in North Cascades. He was only two months into his transfer when the three hikers went missing on Long Crest Trail in the late summer of 1974.

“So you were here for the first disappearances?” Keith asks excitedly.

“No, no, not the first. Only the last.” Ranger Whooster gives a manly huff as he strokes the tails of his mustache with a gravitas that, frankly, makes you envious. “Ain’t hard to figure out that there’ve been disappearances off Pitchfork Trail for going on decades now - maybe close to a century. It’s all there in the reports and the papers, but nobody ever put two-and-two together before. Probably good for them that they didn’t.”

“Someone’s taking them,” Keith guesses.

“Maybe once it was a someone,” you correct, “but now it’s a supernatural creature. A Wendigo. And by the looks of it, it’s just come out of hibernation.”

Keith nods in understanding. “It hibernates for twenty-five years. And when it re-emerges…”

“…it’s gotta replenish the larder,” Ranger Whooster finishes.

You turn to Keith, silently imploring him to listen to you.

“Do you remember what a wendigo is?” you ask him.

Keith nods. “A person who got lost or stranded in the wilderness, and to survive, they turned to cannibalism. They lose their humanity, and slowly become a monster. They’re super strong and fast, and the only sure way to kill them is with fire.”

“But wendigos aren’t your average monster under the bed,” you remind him. “They’re smart. Cunning, even. They were men once. If you give them the chance, they will confuse you, separate you from the group, and then kill you. And that’s if you’re lucky. They like to play with their food before they eat it.” You stick a finger directly at Keith, channeling your authority. “So when we go out on the trail to hunt this bastard, whatever we do,” you stress, “it’s imperative that we do not split up.”

***

You split up.

It certainly isn’t intentional. But unlike you and Keith, Ranger Whooster has an actual job - with a government agency, no less - and when he gets orders from the top, he can’t disregard them. So instead of joining you in the B team, which was the original plan, he’s been shuffled over to the A team, which will be in an adjacent quadrant of the search area, miles away from your location. Not the ideal situation, certainly, but needs must, and before he leaves you to the wilderness, Whooster has time to get you situated in the B team, a satellite phone his gruff parting gift.

“Anything goes tits-up, you give me a call,” he says. His gravelly tone reminds you of distant thunder.

“Absolutely, sir. If we’re not being eaten, that is.”

You give him a grin coupled with a wink that’s meant to be endearing; the older man is not impressed. His mustache twitches as he sighs heavily through his nose.

“Try not to get the kid killed,” he grumbles.

B team, you soon discover, is headed up by an experienced search and rescue responder named Sara Lang. She rolls her eyes as soon as she sees the two of you, even though you made a recent and hefty investment in Patagonia apparel.

“So you’re the two I need to keep on a tight leash,” she says as she surveys you up and down. Clearly, you are found wanting. “Ever been on a search and rescue mission before?”

You paste on your sunniest smile.

“Well, no,” you hedge, “but we do have significant experience with-”

Sara isn’t having it; she is, apparently, immune to your bullshit. She eyes your brand-new, scuff-less hiking boots with a cynical eye.

“Either of you ever been on a hike before?”

“…I’ve camped outside,” Keith says, in a tone that’s so unassuming it only succeeds in sounding suspicious. Sara certainly isn’t fooled.

“Uh-huh,” she says, before rounding to you. “What about you, G. I. Joe?”

You nervously palm at the back of your undercut.

“I earned my Tenderfoot badge?” you offer weakly.

Sara looks both supremely triumphant and vaguely disgusted all at the same time. “Ranger Whooster told me you two have special skills,” she says pointedly. “God help him if he’s pulling my leg at a time like this.”

And with that warm welcome, you’re officially part of the team.

Your assignment to the B team is a strategic move. This is the search group that’s going to cover the northeast quadrant of the search zone, a particularly mountainous region that’s known for its waterfalls and cave systems. In other words, prime wendigo territory. In your estimation, your chances of finding the creature in this spot are nigh on perfect. Despite his lack of practical experience, Keith also seems to agree with you. His quiet certainty on the subject is disconcerting but probably accurate. After all, you’re walking into an ideal hunting ground, vastly outnumbered by search and rescue volunteers. Or, as the wendigo must see it, a veritable smorgasbord.

It’s the sheer number of people in Team B that worries you. Seven civilians are seven too many on any given case, and without your expected third man, that leaves just you and Keith to protect a gaggle of people who think the worst thing that could happen to them on this little sojourn is getting lost. But you have no choice. The search parties are going out, with or without you. If they do go out without protection, and they don’t come back, that will be on your conscience.

All too soon, it’s time to begin the search. Led by Sara, you and Keith plunge into the Pacific Northwest wilderness, following the second prong of Pitchfork Trail.

What happens next is, essentially, a clusterfuck.

It becomes very obvious fairly early on into the hike that you are being hunted. The unnatural silence of the forest is the first sign. You catch Keith’s eye as you walk, and he nods; he’s noticed it, too. But - to your everlasting dismay - when the first team member goes missing, no one notices for at least fifteen minutes.

The panic is slow to build. These are experienced first responders and rescue volunteers that you’re dealing with, after all, so logic tends to triumph over paranoia, and the team consensus is that Daniel Ortiz must have been left somewhere down behind you on the trail. Perhaps he slipped and fell. Perhaps he stopped for a sip of water, lost sight of the group, and became disorientated. All far-fetched theories, in your personal opinion, but B Team decides to double back immediately, with Sara leading you back down the trail, speaking into her walkie-talkie as she updates command base on your status.

Thirty minutes go by with no sign of Ortiz, and nervousness starts to set in, the hushed voices and harried movement of the other hikers escalating with their concern. But when the second and third person disappear, seemingly within moments of each other - that’s when the panic really sets in.

Sara is the first to truly realize the severity of the situation, and after instructing the remaining team members to link arms and sit in the middle of the trail, she quickly rounds on you, a fire of suspicion alight in her eyes as she pulls you and Keith off to the side.

“Alright, Boy Scout, you better tell me what the hell is going on around here,” she hisses.

“Alright,” you agree, “but you’re not gonna like it.”

It’s hard to tell if Sara believes your explanation. In any case, it doesn’t really matter because things go to hell in a hand-basket shortly after. Ultimately, it’s the voices that do B Team in. At first, it’s just Daniel Ortiz’s voice that filters through the trees, panicked and calling for help, and between Keith, you, and Sara, you manage to keep the other hikers on the trail, appealing to their sense of rationality. But when the voices of Amanda and Stephanie join in, plaintive and desperate, it’s all over. Before you can stop them, the rest of the team have haphazardly charged into the bush, forgetting all sense as they desperately look for their missing comrades. That’s when the wendigo decides to forgo the trickery, and reveals its true voice - unearthly shrieks, clicks and growls that sound almost alien, but with the unmistakable tone and voracity of an apex predator.

After that, it’s mostly chaos. What remains of Team B runs helter-skelter through the forest. Throughout it all, you manage to keep Sara and Keith by your side during the pandemonium, and when darkness begins to fall, you protect them by lighting fires and drawing a ring of protective symbols from the Anasazi tribe. Keith agrees to take first watch, with you second, and Sara third.

By the dim, early morning light, you awaken to the realization that Sara is missing now, too. Clear tracks show her stepping outside of the circle, which then end mid-step; Keith crouches over the spot where they fade, a sour expression marring his face.

“It got her,” he says miserably. “If she heard something out there, why didn’t she wake us up?”

“Because she never really believed us,” you say with a sigh. “And who knows? Maybe she didn’t hear anything. Maybe she just stepped out to pee, and it was waiting there silently, the whole night? At any rate - it’s just you and me now, kid.”

After a lot of desperate searching, by some miracle you manage to backtrack your way to the trail - and thank fuck for that, because while back on higher ground, your satellite phone finally manages to connect despite what can only be supernatural interference. You call Ranger Whooster right away.

When he picks up your call, the background noise is near-deafening.

“Where the hell are you?” you demand.

“-elicopter,” comes the terse answer. “We’re being airlifted out of—lost two of our—hunted like fish in a barrel-”

“That’s impossible,” you argue against the ear-splitting noise of the ‘copter blades. “We’re being hunted.”

You don’t get to hear what Ranger Whooster says in response, because the call cuts out. You barely refrain from stomping on your phone in frustration.

“What’s goin’ on?” Keith asks. “What’d he say?”

“He says Team A was being hunted,” you relay, “but that’s impossible, because-”

“Unless there’s two of them,” Keith says suddenly. “God, that makes so much sense. There’s two of them. I thought there was only one, but there’s two.”

You’re not sure why that makes so much sense, or why Keith seems to be taking this so hard - he’s bent over and gripping the roots of his hair like he wants to tear it out.

“I - don’t know what you’re talking about, but…wendigos are solitary by nature,” you remind him, and Keith seems to explode with frantic energy.

“Team A was being hunted at the same time as us!” he exclaims. “These fuckers are fast, but they’re not that fast. There wasn’t enough time, not for one wendigo to cover that much ground and take that many people. There have to be two.”

Going on a wendigo hunt with only two hunters was risky enough. For there to be two wendigos, you should have called in the whole Garrison, and damn the consequences. If Keith’s correct, you’re more than just fucked - you’re dinner.

“Why are you so sure about this?” you demand. “Did you see something I didn’t?”

Keith fidgets under your scrutiny, his lips pulling into a pained grimace.

“I just know,” he says simply.

Ah, yes. Right. He just knows. Just like he just knows everything else. A sudden sense of foreboding overcomes you, like a dark falling shadow of premonition. You shake off your unease, pulling Keith along with you.

“Come on,” you say. “Let’s retrace our steps to the circle. We can pick up the monster’s trail there.”

It’s easy to follow the creature’s path of destruction through the forest for the first several hundred feet, but soon enough the trail goes cold; clearly, it’s taken to the trees, leaping from trunk to trunk and branch to branch like a fucking animal. You do your best to follow the claw marks, but it’s becoming difficult. Soon, Keith sits down on a fallen log with a soft groan, his face buried in his hands.

“You okay there, buddy?” you ask as you approach him cautiously.

When Keith looks up at you again, his eyes are wet and glassy.

“If I asked you to follow me right now, no questions asked - would you do it?” he questions you.

“…follow you where?”

“To the mouth of the cave. Where the survivors are being kept.”

“…you know where that is?”

Keith nods miserably. “I do now.”

The dark foreboding is back with a vengeance. You do your damnedest to squash it down inside of you, as deep as it will go.

“Alright, we follow your lead,” you hear yourself tell him. “No questions asked. For now.”

Keith is unerring, of course. He leads you right to an abandoned mineshaft, not far away at all, but so covered with foliage and dead debris that you wouldn’t have stumbled upon it in a hundred years of searching. Entering the mine, you know you’re right on the money; the stale air reeks of carrion and refuse, and pungent unwashed animality. And Keith continues to be right, even inside the cave. He predicts a fork in the mine before you even come upon it. He knows exactly where to find the victims, both living and dead, strung up as they are like pigs to slaughter. He’s right about there being two wendigos too; he barely has time to warn you of the other one advancing up from behind you before it attacks. He’s always right, when it comes to these things.

You set the nasty bastards on fire. The harmonic sound of their screaming is celestial music to your ears.

***

You wait until you get back to Cascades Lodge, nestled in a tiny, sleepy tourist town. Wait until you get back to the car, get back to the relative privacy of your shared room. Until the door is firmly locked and you can spin to confront your companion, pressing him into the corner of the room, between the bed corner and the tacky coniferous wallpaper.

“You’re going to tell me the truth,” you tell Keith simply. “About how you knew where to find the survivors. No skirting around it, no weaseling out of the conversation. No bullshit.”

Keith swallows heavily, his Adam’s apple bobbing sharply under the thin, pale skin of his throat.

“Alright,” he agrees. No argument, no denial. For a moment, you’re taken aback. You honestly expected a little bit more of a fight on his end, but Keith seems stoically resigned to accept defeat.

“Well, then? I’m all ears.”

The breath Keith lets out before he speaks sounds as if it’s been held in for years, weary with the weight of the world.

“I’m like you, Shiro,” he says quietly, with a helpless little shrug. “I have a secret power, too. I…can see the future.”

And-

Absolute silence.

Keith has an excellent poker face, but you have an equally keen eye. You watch as a myriad of micro-expressions flit across his face as he waits for you to respond, and wonder at what your own expression must reveal in turn. You feel calm. But as you internalize and digest his words, you can distinctly sense that your placid exterior is a brittle-thin facade, slowly cracking under a pressure of slow-rising, white-hot emotions, too numerous to put a name to.

“Alright,” you hear yourself say.

“…alright?” Keith looks deeply bewildered at your seemingly easy-won acceptance.

“Well, it makes sense, doesn’t it?” you say casually. You can’t pinpoint why, exactly, but there’s a certain curve to the shape of the last twelve-plus months of your life that fits itself perfectly within this explanation. Of course. Why not? Things have been going nearly too well for you, ever since you met Keith. The simplest answer must obviously be that nothing is ever fucking normal.

Distantly, you sense your ears are ringing. When you speak, your voice sounds far-off and light-years away.

“Why didn’t you tell me sooner?”

And ah, yes, there it is - the full weight of this betrayal is starting to dawn on you. Why would Keith keep this part of himself hidden from you? - when he’s known your own secret for months? Where is the supposed trust you thought you had in each other?

“There were so many times you could have told me,” you sputter, “you had so many chances-” Your mind flies back to just last month, when Keith first scored against you in a sabre match.

I’m a psychic, he’d said. I can see the future.

Christ. How could you be so blind?

“Fuck. You weren’t kidding,” you whisper.

Keith, at least, has the decency to look shame-faced.

“I couldn’t tell you my secret,” he says. “Not until now.”

“And why not?” you demand. The shock is starting to recede, and in its place is fresh, roaring anger. Even your voice shakes with barely suppressed rage. But Keith will not be cowed, it seems. He sticks his chin out defiantly, a new fire ignited behind his eyes.

“Because,” he says, “This is how it’s always been. How I’ve always seen it happen.”

You let out an ugly laugh. “Oh, really?” you say. “This is how it’s always been - after a whole year, in this shitty motel room?”

Keith nods furtively.

“And - what? You can’t deviate from the god-damned script?”

You regret the sarcastic quip as soon as you see the effect it has. Keith’s face screws up, brow deeply furrowed, mouth pulling into a tight grimace. As though he’s actually in pain. He looks both winded and gutted, and all by your hand.

“N-no,” he stutters, “I mean, yes - but not always. See, it’s complicated - Shiro-”

He’s almost shivering with anxiety, you realize. He looks at you like he’s about to fall apart before your eyes, shattering into a thousand shards of razor-sharp anguish. Immediately, your hands move to cup his face, large palms almost swallowing up his expression.

“Shh, shh,” you soothe. “Breathe with me, Keith.” And then you inhale slowly, holding for five before you exhale as you watch Keith struggle to mirror you. How quickly you’ve gone from aggressor to comforter, you marvel. You’re still the aggrieved party here, you’re certain of that. Keith’s the one who lied to you. But as Keith gets himself back under control, and you surreptitiously wipe away dampness from underneath his dark eyes, it suddenly doesn’t matter anymore who was wronged first.

It takes more willpower than you’d like to release your hold on his face. As Keith pulls himself together, you make sure to keep him boxed in, leaving no room for escape.

“So…” you test out the idea slowly on your tongue. “You can see the future. But you couldn’t tell me until now because - you saw it happen this way?” You feel like you’re on the precipice of a terrible realization. “Are you saying…you didn’t have a choice?”

Keith nods frantically. “I know how it sounds - but Shiro…” he trails off, at a loss for any more defense. You can feel a deep ‘v’ drawing down between your brows.

“…Keith, do you not have free will?” you ask carefully.

“Of course I have free will!” Keith snaps. “But just - not all the time.”

You don’t point out how nonsensical that statement is; it would do neither of you any good, at this point. Instead, you continue with your measured breaths, this time for your own sake.

“Is there anything else you need to tell me?” you ask as calmly as you can manage. “Any other secrets you’ve been keeping?”

Keith laughs wetly. “My entire life is one big secret, Shiro,” he says. “What do you want to know? What do you want from me?”

“Everything,” you demand.

The look that steals over Keith’s face is effervescent with righteous indignation. Any fear or doubt is immediately burnt away, and for a moment you are allowed to see the formidable man he will one day become.

“Everything? Alright, then. My name is Keith Kogane,” he says. “I was born in Flagstaff, Arizona to Tex Kogane and Krolia Nakai. And I was a perfectly normal kid until - until second grade, when I started to get visions. And these visions were of my parents dying, Shiro. At first, it was dreams - nightmares, really, every single night - but then I started to see these visions when I was awake, too, like they were happening right in front of me. I could hear my father’s voice, my mother screaming his name. I could smell the smoke and feel the heat of the flames on my skin. I thought I was going crazy. And at the same time, I was so, so terrified that what I saw would come to pass. And when…” he swallows painfully, eyes wild and wet, “…and when it finally happened, I felt so guilty, Shiro. Because I had seen it coming, and I hadn’t stopped it. I hadn’t done anything.”

His words are like a knife to your heart, reopening an old wound that you’ve nursed, and nursed, and yet somehow also left to fester. As you stare into his pain-filled gaze, it’s like looking into a raw, grief-filled reflection of yourself.

“Your parents…died in a fire?” you whisper.

Keith quirks his head slightly. “My father died,” he says quietly, “I know that for certain. The firefighters…they never found my mother’s body.”

His voice is so quiet, but the depth of his pain, of his loss, guts you. You want to take it all into yourself, every last drop. In a perfect world, you could draw his pain from him and into you like poison from a wound. But this is hardly a perfect world.

“…I’m so sorry, Keith,” you say. It’s the only thing you can say, the only words you can give him that even come close to comfort, and yet. You know first-hand how words will never be enough.

But Keith shakes his head vigorously, his face alight with the fire of conviction.

“It’s alright,” he insists feverishly. “It’s all alright now. Because for the longest time, I was searching for - someone who could understand me. Searching for someone else just like me. But I don’t have to search anymore, because - because I’ve found you.” His wide eyes plead with you for understanding. “I’m like you, Shiro. I’m just like you.”

You cringe away from his words almost immediately, a full-bodied reaction that you can’t master or hide. Some ancient, unnameable dread rolls over you, like the shadow of a great, unseen leviathan.

“No.” Your denial is immediate and instinctual. “No.”

Now Keith looks baffled. “What do you mean, ‘no?’” he demands.

You have no goddamn clue, except that even the suggestion of Keith being like you makes you utterly recoil on principle. No, because Keith is pure, and noble, and good, and you’re -

“You’re nothing like me,” you tell him desperately, “because I’m-” cursed, you want to say. I’m cursed, Keith. You can’t be like me. And if you are -

No. NO. This isn’t the time for you to go spinning off into an abyss of your own creation. You need to hold yourself together - for your boy, if nothing else.

“I’m - sorry,” you grit out. “I didn’t mean it like that. I don’t know what I’m saying.” You scrub a calloused hand over your tired eyes and it does you no good, only reminds you of how exhausted you really are, and how old you really feel.

“…it’s been a long day,” you say slowly. “It’s been a long several days. Neither of us has slept in forty-eight hours. We’re putting a pause on this conversation-”

“Shiro!” Keith cries out in dismay.

“-before either of us says something we regret,” you finish curtly.

“We can’t just shelve this conversation and forget about it,” Keith insists. “I know how you are about this kind of thing.”

Innocuous words. And yet, for whatever reason, they give you pause.

“…What do you mean, this kind of thing?” you say slowly. Venomously.

Keith doesn’t see the warning signs. Instead, he blows right through them.

“Emotional things! Hard things!” His arms flail up in frustration. “If it was up to you, once this conversation is over, you’d ignore this revelation for the rest of our lives! You’d box it up and stick it on a back shelf where it’ll never see the light of day ever again!”

“And how do you know that?” you demand. “You think you know me so well-?”

“YES!” Keith exclaims. “I know you better than anyone, Shiro! Better than you know yourself!”

“Do you?” The words ring out flat and discordant. Keith inches backwards, as though he’s finally realized just how far he’s overstepped.

“You’ve known me for less than two years,” you remind Keith icily, “and only because I decided to pull over for a pathetic-looking hitchhiker on the side of the road. I took you in. I’ve taken care of you. And I’ve agreed to train you - but only because you forced my hand. So…what more, exactly, do you think you’re entitled to?”

Keith stays silent, expression contrite and shame-filled. But it’s not good enough.

“My vulnerability?” you prompt. “My honesty? Is that what you think you deserve?” You stick an accusing finger at his chest, pressing into his sternum with the weight of your wrath. “You don’t get to demand that,” you sneer, “not when you don’t give the same in turn. And certainly not when you’ve been lying to me the entire time I’ve known you!”

“You’ve been lying to me!” Keith shouts. “All this time, you’ve lied to me, too! You keep things to yourself - I know you do! You’re still doing it!”

“AND I HAVE EVERY RIGHT TO!” you roar. “I’m the adult here, Keith! I decide what you need to know, and what you don’t! You agreed to that when I agreed to train you!”

“As your partner!” Keith insists. “As your equal!”

You feel your lip curl back, the only warning sign that you’re about to go for the jugular with unmatched cruelty.

“You aren’t my equal,” you snarl. “You aren’t my partner, or my - my companion. You’re my charge, Keith. My protege. My responsibility. And I don’t have to share anything with you because it isn’t yours to have!”

As soon as you began speaking you knew you were going to go too far. But even as you feel yourself saying the words, it’s like watching a train wreck in slow-motion, out of body and out of mind. You watch as Keith’s expression folds in on itself, shoulders hunching in as a form of protection. Against yourself, you realize, and your stomach gives a sharp, sickening lurch. That regret you were forewarned of is front and center now, gnawing at your heart from the inside out.

You don’t even know why you’re fighting anymore. Somewhere within your blaze of self-righteousness, you lost sight of the original argument - and suddenly, it doesn’t matter who held the first grievance. Nothing matters, right now. You’re just so fucking tired you want to die and never wake up.

“…We will talk about this tomorrow,” you say woodenly. “That’s a promise, Keith.”

Keith shrinks visibly; to be fair, it sounded more like a threat. And it is, in a way: a threat to the careful equilibrium you’ve shared for over a year now. But that foundation is already cracked right through the middle, compromised by deception and deceit. You have no choice but to lay a new, better version together. Right now, you settle for laying a hand gingerly on Keith’s shoulder, pushing him gently toward the direction of the bathroom.

“You go shower first,” you say softly. “Then go to bed. We’re up early tomorrow.”

Keith nods dumbly, his expression closed off - yet still fragile, somehow, face blank and softly flaking like shale.

“I’m sorry, Shiro,” he says, so quiet you almost miss it, and then he’s turned away, disappearing into the dark safety of the bathroom.

You leave the motel room until you’re sure that he must be in bed, then jump back into the room, directly into the safety of the shower. Your scrub-down is brief and perfunctory, with a single-minded goal to deforest yourself as quickly as possible. Mud and sweat wash away in a thick, dark slurry, and when you squint into the spray you can almost imagine that all of your wrath and cruelty swirl down the drain along with it. The impulse to destroy is still thumbing through your veins, a vicious, destructive need that burns electric. For a moment, you consider jerking off, just to dull the edge; your fingers even make it halfway around your prick. But you’re still too self-disgusted, too loathsome, to even think about getting hard, and with Keith sleeping just next door -

He’s the object of your ire. He’s the reason you’ve lost control. And he’s just a kid, searching desperately for acceptance. You could give him that - you could give him the world - if for just one god-damn minute you could stop being an old, self-righteous bastard.

You finish your shower, dripping in recrimination. With the towel barely secured around your waist, you jump up to the roof of your motel, where you can sit and sulk in the black loneliness of night. And that’s where you stay for hours, looking out at the half-empty parking lot, and the inscrutable treeline beyond the narrow two-lane forest road.

It’s at times like this when you - when you really miss Adam. How steady and even-keel he could be, in the midst of your chaos that, at the time, was only thinly disguised as academic neuroticisms. Adam could weather the storm, you remember, without contributing to the hurricane-force gales. He could calmly guide the little rickety boat of your relationship to the other side. Could he be overly controlling at times? Yes, of course - but don’t even the best have their small faults? And he never made your blood boil like this, never spiked your heartbeat so high that you feared imminent tachycardia.

Keith, on the other hand. Keith.

You can’t seem to help the comparisons that come to you now, as you sit hunched on the roof of your motel room. They’re unfair, you know; Adam was a nearly full-grown man, and Keith has just grown out of being a boy. But you can’t stop the associations that come to you in the night. Neither can you help the sudden surge of recent memories. All from the last year with Keith, of every time you suspected something was wrong. Of every time you suspected you’d caught him in a strange, unnecessary lie. Every time he seemed to be laughing at his own personal inside joke. How did he know so much about hunting, right out of the gate? Why is he never phased by anything you throw at him? For fucks sake - the first time he saw a ghost, he helped you kill it. The first time he saw you teleport, he never mentioned it for nine fucking months. The first - the first morning you spent with him, you suddenly recall - how the hell did he know that you like seven fucking sugars in your coffee?

The moonless night sky presses down on you, the weight of the world pinpointed on your back. The gravity of Keith’s power is beginning to hit you with sickening force. Just how much can he foresee? And just how much of you does he already know?

Clearly, you didn’t know him; or not nearly as well as you thought. But only because you were fooling yourself, you realize, repeating comforting little lies to yourself every time you noticed something you didn’t want to see. You knew something was wrong. You knew Keith was different, abnormal, strange; only your desperate hope blinded you to the obvious.

And the obvious was this: Keith isn’t special. He isn’t innocent. He isn’t some precious, spotless victim to be sheltered from the evils of the world. He’s a freak like you. You knew. The truth was plain before your eyes. You embraced the lie because the reality was too terrible; you’ve always done this. And you always will.

***

You say goodbye to Ranger Whooster in the morning. It’s a terse ride up to the hospital where he’s being treated, and you feel every moment of it with acute sensitivity. While Keith’s never been much of a talker, he’s uncharacteristically quiet as he sits slumped over in the passenger’s seat. He perks up, however, once you actually pull into the hospital parking lot.

Ranger Whooster is propped up in bed, his entire left leg encased in plaster and suspended from the ceiling by a sling. Luckily, the other patient in the shared room appears to be napping, but you remind Keith to keep his voice down as you pull the privacy curtain closed.

Whooster’s looking the worse for wear, with dark purple circles under his pained eyes, but his expression lights up as soon as he sees Keith.

“Hey, look at you, kid,” he says, a smile peeking out from under his mustache. “Glad to see Shirogane didn’t get you killed, after all.”

“Ha, ha.” You force a wide grin as you wheeze up stilted laughter. “And, ah, how are you feeling on this fine morning, Ranger?”

The look Whooster levels at you is a whole lot less jovial.

“Like a monster broke my goddamn leg, that’s how,” he barks. “Don’t ask stupid questions.”

You elect to keep your mouth shut for the rest of the visit as you stand by the window, looking out on the hospital grounds as Whooster gives a play-by-play narration to Keith of how his search party also succumbed to the wendigo. All in all, it’s not really any different from your own experience, which is good to know; there wasn’t much more you could’ve done in the situation, as Whooster’s rendition proves to you. Keith seems entirely too invested in a story he already knows the end to, hanging onto every word of the Rangers story.

“What will happen to the park, though?” he asks hesitantly. “With all the eyewitnesses…how are you going to keep the real story hidden?”

The Ranger shrugs. “Folks will believe what they want to believe - and usually, that’s whatever helps make them feel safe at night. Those people you saved from the cave? They were having stress-induced hallucinations. Just a product of mass psychosis. And maybe there was a crazy man living up in a cave, abducting them off the trail - but they don’t have any proof.” He gives a little chuckle that you would describe as slightly creepy. “Aw, hell. Maybe we’ll throw poisonous, sulphuric fumes into the mix. Whatever we tell the press, that’s what they’ll run with.”

Keith seems overly impressed by this little speech. “It’s really that easy?” he asks. “To make all of that go away?”

Ranger Whooster nods gravely. “The Park Service takes care of its own,” he says.

You can’t help the way your stomach roils anxiously as you watch the way Keith looks awed by the older man, practically hanging off of his every word, like this guy’s his goddamn role model. You tell yourself it’s all in your head, and that works to ease your tension for a few minutes, but when Keith shyly asks if he can sign the Rangers cast, he looks up through his dark lashes at the man, eyes doe-wide - and okay, alright, that’s enough hero worship for one day.

“Hey, Kid, come on,” you say, as Keith’s finishing up his signature, “Why don’t we get going and let the Ranger recover, huh? Old man needs his rest.”

“Okay.” Your boy looks a little huffy, but he returns to your side without any fuss.

“I hope you get well soon, Ranger Whooster,” he adds, as he dawdles at the curtain partition.

Whooster nods in acknowledgment. “See you around, kid. Don’t get into too much trouble, now.”

“No, Sir!” Keith returns, and with a jaunty little salute, he’s stepping through the curtain and out of sight.

Which is too bad for you, because as soon as Keith is gone, the weight of all Whooster’s focus lands square on your shoulders. The look he pins you with is exacting; you resist the urge to squirm in your boots.

“You keep that boy safe, you hear?” he says. “Don’t know what business you got, dragging around a kid like that into all kinds of danger.”

“I never wanted to,” you protest weakly, “but he wouldn’t take no for answer-”

The Ranger cuts you off with a divisive snort.

“Yeah, I’m sure that’s how it happened,” he says.

But it is. It is. You stand there like an idiot, mouth hanging wide open as you fail to articulate how it all really went down, barely a year ago in the dim light of that grimy motel bathroom. Somehow, under the harsh consideration of the older man, all your arguments fall away. You feel like a child.

“…I’ll keep him safe,” you hear yourself say. Numb and rote, a promise to a stranger whose attention you don’t particularly want but whose high regard you suddenly, desperately crave. But even to your own ears, your words ring hollow.

Ranger Whooster certainly doesn’t look convinced.

“Hm,” he grunts, “’S’pose we’ll see about that.”

You turn your back on the man and practically flee from the room. Keith, who’s waiting for you in the hallway, casually leaning against a door frame, almost trips over his own feet as he tries to catch up with you. He barely keeps pace as you march for the hospital exit.

There is no destination on the horizon as you drive white-knuckled down the interstate; all you want to do is put all the space in the world between you and the entire state of Washington. You feel deeply unwell, down into the pit of your stomach. And the feeling, you’ve come to realize, is utter ashamedness. Last night was - not your best. That angry, bitter man you were indulging in on the rooftop of the motel sickens you. In the clear light of morning, and with five hours of sleep under your belt, it’s clear to you that your estimations of Keith’s character were uncharitable, and a great deal more than simply unfair. The things you contemplated, the thoughts you had about him -

Well. Thank god he’s not a mind-reader. Because if he was, you’re not sure Keith would still be sitting here shotgun with you, oddly quiet but cautiously bright-eyed. He keeps on stealing glances over at you, as though carefully gauging the volatility of your temperament. It’s a hateful thought, that this is your doing, and your fault.

“Keith, I’m…sorry about last night,” you say. It comes out pained, your vocal cords strangled tight by anxiety. “I shouldn’t have yelled,” you admit, “…and I regret what I said to you, back there. It was - out of a place of anger. And it wasn’t fair to you.”

But Keith shakes his head slowly, shaggy hair flopping over his earnest eyes.

“I lied to you, Shiro,” he says, “you had every right to be angry with me. I’d say it’s more than fair.”

You sigh heavily, frustration at yourself building up like hot steam and venting through your flared nostrils.

Out for five, and hold. In for six.

“I always knew you were hiding something, Keith,” you remind him, as gently as you can manage. “What, with your odd secrecy? Your sword? I knew you weren’t an average civilian Joe I picked up off the street. I just…chose to ignore it.”

Out of the corner of your eye, you can tell Keith looks doubtful.

“…I’m very good at it,” you admit quietly. “Ignoring the obvious. Pretending all of the big problems away. It’s not - one of my best qualities.”

It’s been an issue all your life, albeit not such a terrible one to have in the days of before. That’s how you understand your life, now, in terms of before and after. Before the fire, and After the fire. Before, when you were a top-tier Ivy League student with glittering career prospects and a bright future, and After, when you were nothing. In the time of Before, a big problem was a term paper that you procrastinated on until the week before its due date. A Big Problem was your eyesight. Such a little thing in retrospect, but didn’t you ignore it for so long, hanging all your hopes and dreams on an impossible career that you always knew was just out of your reach by a mere 16/20th? Still, didn’t you somehow blindly hope that the universe might bend to your whims - that NASA might make you the sole exception? If you were so bold as to insult the dead, you might even go as far as to say that your whole relationship with Adam could be categorized as a Big Problem - or a whole series of little problems that were never dealt with, always swept under the rug with a passive-aggressive brush - but that doesn’t bear thinking about. Adam belongs to the Before. You live in the wreckage that’s left over.

Keith hasn’t moved at all in the time you’ve been in silent contemplation. Even the rise and fall of his chest is barely perceptible to your eye, as though he’s trying to camouflage himself into the rest of the car. As though he fears attracting your attention.

You clear your throat painfully. “I’m also very good at - pushing away the people who mean the most to me,” you admit.

“You won’t push me away, Shiro.” The promise is automatic, almost rote, but you know Keith means every word of it. Even if he shouldn’t.

“Keith-”

But your boy bulldozes right over you, mouth set hard and sharp like flint. It’s clear he has something he needs to get off his chest.

“I know you’re mad,” he says, “about what I’ve…kept from you. Or, what I chose not to tell you. That was wrong of me, and I won’t try to make excuses - but I do want to explain.”

“…alright,” you say, “go ahead. I’m all ears.”

Keith licks at his lips nervously.

“You know how you found me by the side of the road?”

A black hole opens up in your chest, all your worst fears that you never knew you harbored, finally realized.

“Yeah?” you hear yourself say.

“Well, it wasn’t a coincidence, or whatever.” A pause. Then: “I was waiting for you.”

It takes a few heartbeats for you to fully process what you just heard.

“You were…?”

“I’d seen it enough times,” Keith continues, “the road signs, the weather, the flat landscape. Your car, driving up to me in the heat like a fucking mirage. I saw it practically every time I closed my eyes, as the date got closer. All I had to do was triangulate the data.”

Your hands clench into the arc of the steering wheel.

“…just how much do you know, Keith?” you ask quietly. “How much have you seen?”

“Not as much as you think,” Keith tries to reassure you. “The future - it’s drawn in sketches. When I get these visions, they’re harsh and fast. I don’t always know what I’m looking at. The glimpses I miss are usually bigger than the glimpses I see.”

You nod along woodenly as you keep a death grip on the wheel.

“And…can you change what you see?”

Keith hesitates just long enough for your heart to skip a beat.

“Like I said,” he says slowly, “you have to think of the future in terms of sketches. When it’s just dark outlines on white paper, those can be erased. But the more everything is filled in, with shadow and depth and color…that’s when I can’t change it. When I can see it clear as day, then the future’s set. What will happen…happens.”

You shake your head.

“I just…can’t wrap my mind around it,” you admit. “How do you - live with that? How do you cope?”

Keith shrugs, loose and indifferent. “That’s the way it’s always been,” he says. “My power - it isn’t like yours, Shiro. I can’t just turn it off and on. I take what I’m given.”

And, Jesus - isn’t that the truth. You look at Keith, your lean whip-cord of a boy, with his scoundrel’s face and honest eyes. He’s a bundle of hurts and contradictions: hands perpetually closed into fists that he can throw up against the world, heart flayed wide open. He’ll never get what he’s owed or what he’s worth in this life - and at such a tender age, he’s already made peace with it. He puts you to shame, you realize. Repeat ‘patience yields focus’ as many times as you like, but Keith’s apparently internalized that for years.

“You’re right,” you admit slowly. “Our powers are - very different, to say the least. I’m having a hard time imagining what it’s like for you.”

Keith shifts minutely in his seat.

“…you should know,” he says, “the visions have been getting stronger ever since I found you. They’re longer, and more vivid. More - colored in, you could say. It’s like my power reacts to yours, or is amplified by it. You know,” he says, with a half-shrug. “Like…resonance?”

“…which is not necessarily a good thing,” you realize.

Keith nods in agreement. “The future’s more solidified, when I’m with you. There’s been some things I tried to stop - but couldn’t,” he admits quietly.

The self-blame in his voice is painfully audible. You hate that you have a burning curiosity to ask anyway. Which civilian deaths in the past year did he see coming? Which tragic mistakes does he hold himself personally accountable for? You feel bogged down by guilt and doubt on your best days as a hunter; you can’t even begin to understand how Keith must feel.

“Our…‘resonance.’ Do you think it’s because we both have strange abilities?” you wonder aloud.

“Maybe,” Keith says. “But I’ve met other psychics before. They weren’t like you.”

Hmm. “That’s…curious,” you hedge. “Doesn’t that worry you? That my presence makes your power so - abnormal?”

Keith makes a face.

“Eh, well…not really?” he offers carelessly. “I wouldn’t say ‘abnormal.’ I don’t really see it that way,” he says with an easy shrug. “It’s just…special, that’s all. But you’ve always been special, to me.”

You frown. “And how’s that?”

“Well, you’re the only person I’ve had so many visions of,” Keith relays haplessly. “With most people, I might get one or two, and then the vision resolves itself. But you - hell, you’ve been with me for half my life, Shiro.”

And -

“I’m sorry - what?” you wheeze. “What do you mean, half your life?

Keith blinks.

“Oh, well, yeah,” he says, “I thought I made that clear. I’ve watched you through visions for, like, ever. Since ‘93, at least.”

“Since ‘93,” you repeat dumbly.

“Yeah,” Keith confirms. He looks a bit sheepish now. “I watched you for a long time, Shiro. That’s how I knew so much about you - about your real job, about your power. I watched you go on cases for - years. Watched you risk your life for strangers. God,” he says with a rough chuckle, “I watched you for hours, just driving this car, man. Fixing her up. Taking her cross country as you took on each new case, alone.

“And then one day - one day, I saw us, together - saving people, hunting things. Jesus Christ, Shiro, that was the best day of my life,” he admits, with a wet little laugh. “And when - when things got bad, at school or - in the homes - I’d watch us in the future, and I’d know everything was going to be okay.”

And then, just like he hasn’t completely upended your entire universe - Keith curls up in his seat, looking for all the world like he intends to take a nice, long nap.

It requires all the fortitude you possess in your body to keep the car on the road. Practice your breathing as you keep the wheel steady, hands clamped down so hard into the leather upholstery that you’re not sure you’ll ever be unable to uproot them.

Well, a snide little voice says, at least you finally know where his idolization comes from.

It’s been a question you’ve carried for so long; whatever did you do to earn his unrelenting, unwavering devotion? And now, at long last, you have your answer: you’ve done nothing. Keith offers his loyalty up to you like a devotee to their patron god, and you’ve earned none of it. You’ve just been lucky enough to stumble upon a lonely, traumatized little boy, who may or may not be an orphan, who grew up watching shadows of the future, who imprinted on the first stable authority figure he saw. Now, he’s ready to lay his life down for your cause, and because of - what? A sick, self-fulfilling prophecy?

If all of what he just told you is true, then free will is one big fucked up cosmic joke. What capricious god saw it fit to give Keith over to you on a silver platter? Who filled his head with visions that would bind him, irrevocably and unconditionally, to you? You, of all people - with your avarice and your petty rage, your bitter, dashed dreams? You, born with the world as your oyster and a silver spoon in your mouth, you with your desperate, grasping need to be loved, and your terminal fear of being known? You don’t deserve Keith, you realize numbly. You don’t deserve his steadfastness, or his forgiveness. You don’t deserve any piece of him. You’ve always known this, of course, but now - now you understand.

You’re terrified of the day that Keith comes to understand this, too.

For now, that reckoning is a ways off, thank Christ. You take a perverse pleasure in knowing that the future is a tragedy another man named Shirogane Takashi will need to endure. For now, in the present, Keith looks at you like you hung the moon and stars. He listens to you like you’re the last voice on earth. He has you so high up on a pedestal, you’ll never be able to climb down.

You’ll fall, instead.

Again, that day is a long way off; you can take a meager solace in that. But you will fall. You don’t need visions of the future to be able to predict that; just the inner knowledge of who you are, and who you have always been. One day, you’ll be cast so hard and fast off of your undeserving throne that your trajectory will burn white-hot like the tail of a falling star, and Keith will be forced to watch as you take all his hope and faith along with you.

***

III. NOW:

Over the next week, you review the data you managed to record from your summoning ritual gone sideways - and what you get is a whole lot of nothing. The audio recordings end up being useless; they hold only the hiss of static background noise and your own voices, made tinny and distorted by the equipment. You listen and re-listen to the tape anyway, retracing the same conversation over and over again. Each time you come up empty.

The images aren’t much better. Any video from the barn is all scrambled, corroded by spiritual activity. The pictures you took come out only slightly better; with them, at least you can get some visual of the barn interior, but the lens is crowded and disrupted by - orbs, you want to say, although they’re far too numerous and small, shattering and distorting the composition of the photographs with their pixelated swarms. They hardly do the real thing justice. When you close your eyes, you can still imagine the strange, alien beauty of that white-green ambient light that bathed the entire barn with its cold glow. Faerie light, you’re tempted to say, even as you chastise yourself for romanticizing a danger you cannot name, or understand.

Though the data is a lost cause, you and Keith apply yourselves to it all the same, camping out in your current motel room as you pour over all the information you’ve amassed.

On the third morning, while Keith is listening to the audio yet again, it occurs to you that you have yet to have a promised conversation. Normally, you’d be loathe to have this sort of talk, but 12-font Times New Roman words have been swimming through your vision for the last few hours and at this point, a confrontation is infinitely more preferable than reading one more dry, jargon-filled meteorological report. You toss your folder away from you and off the bed; it explodes when it lands on the floor, papers scattering everywhere. From his hunkered-down spot on the opposite queen, Keith looks up at you, more befuddled than wary. Well, that will soon change.

“Keith,” you say, as casually as you please, “we never revisited what happened at the seance.”

You’ve been watching him like a hawk, so you can clearly see how Keith freezes up the instant you mention the s-word. He relaxes a fraction of a second later, so naturally nonchalant that anybody might be fooled by his performance. But you’re not just anybody.

“I promised you that we’d talk about it,” you remind him gently, “and I do hate to break a promise.”

Keith looks like he wants to retort with something unkind, though he reigns it in.

“But do we really need to?” he asks, almost plaintively.

You pin him with a look.

“I want to understand,” you say. “I know you were…editing the truth, back at the Castle. But it’s just us now. You can tell me what really happened.”

Keith sighs. Rakes a hand through his hair before he seems to acquiesce, throwing his laptop and headphones away from him.

“It’s like I told them,” he says, “I could hear chatter. And it was indistinct. But I didn’t need to understand the words to know their intention. Whatever we were listening in on, it was - malevolent.” He sighs, shaking his head. “It wants to hurt us, Shiro. I can’t stress that to you enough.”

You frown. Keith seems to really believe what he’s telling you, but it just doesn’t make sense. You can’t wrap your head around it.

“We haven’t been hurt yet,” you point out. “Quite the opposite, in fact. And it’s had plenty of opportunity.”

“Yet,” Keith emphasizes. “It hasn’t hurt us yet. I think - this thing, that’s glommed onto us, to you - it’s like a cat, playing with its food. It hasn’t hurt us yet, that’s true. But that’s because it’s biding its time. And in the meantime, it gets a kick out of watching us scamper around like rodents. It enjoys our fear.” His eyes are big and sapphire-blue in this light, fairly shimmering over with earnestness as he asks, “Do you…understand what I’m saying?”

You’re not sure you do. And Keith has always been the paranoid type, seeing enemies where there aren’t any.

“That’s a very pessimistic take on all the evidence,” you decide.

Keith snorts.

“And when has the power of positive thinking ever worked out for us?”

He has a point.

“…you have a point,” you concede. “So what, we’re just God’s favorite people to fuck over?”

Keith gives a shrug, settling back into his seat. “Or his least favorite. Take your pick, really.”

You groan, rolling over on the bed until you can reach for your discarded research.

“We’ll give this a full week,” you tell Keith, “and if by then, we still don’t have any better leads, we’re blowing this shit-hole and going on to the next case.”

“This problem won’t disappear just because we skip town,” Keith argues.

“Oh, I’m sure it won’t,” you agree, “but we can’t spend all our time and energy focused on a problem that’s, at best, existential. We still have to live our lives, Keith. Right?”

Keith looks undecided, like he desperately wants to gnaw this argument down to the bone. He can get like that sometimes, becoming overly obsessive with a case or a project, so much so that in the past you’ve often worried slightly for his mental health. Maybe it stems from his childhood, but Keith doesn’t know how to dial back his energy. And it can be a heady thing, to be the object of that much obsessive interest - but it can also be disconcerting.

You get up from the bed, walking around the foot of it until you can sit down on the edge, closer to your partner. Reach out to take his hands within your own.

“I don’t know what’s going on,” you admit. “All I know is that I got a second lease on life - here, doing what I love, with you. I’m not going to waste it.”

Keith bites his lip at your words, flesh tender and bloodless under the sharp fang of his incisor. You give his hands a firm squeeze.

“Let’s forget about this for the night,” you suggest. “Get some food, some rest; leave all this for later. Our problems will still be waiting for us in the morning.”

Keith nods in hesitant agreement, all the argument seemingly drained out of him. It’s difficult for him, to lay down his flight or flight instinct, but you can see him trying, valiantly, for you. But it will come with practice; you should know. You’re no stranger to coping with existential threats hanging over your head, after all.

You turn in early for the night. All of your papers and books, your laptops and recording equipment, get shunted off onto the queen bed that you won’t be using. You’ll hit the books again tomorrow - not that it’ll do you any good. You’re already mentally preparing to put this case onto the back burner, at least for a while. At least until you can gather new evidence. For now, though, you and Keith share a peaceful if mediocre dinner at the bar across the street, then retire to your motel room. Out of the two of you, Keith is the first to fall asleep. His slumber is twitchy, shallow, no doubt plagued with scattered, broken images of the future. You don’t wake him up, instead opting to pet a line down the ridge of his spine with one hand as you hold a novel in the other. By the lamplight you’re reading under, you can watch as his body relaxes under your persistent touch, soothed by the physical contact. It’s better than nothing. You could wake him - but if you woke Keith up every time he had a nightmare, he’d never sleep. Instead, you stand guard over his dreams, one hand carding through his hair until at last you, too, need to succumb to the death of sleep. Dogear the page you left off on, turn off the lamp. Roll onto your right side, so you can keep an eye on Keith as your eyes steadily close. One hand still caught up in raven feather-soft locks, strands of obsidian entangled through your fingers.

***

You dream of ambient light. You’re in the barn - alone, this time - and instead of the midday Arizona sun beating down onto the sheet-metal roof, the interior is bathed in the cool desert night air. Darkness, within the man-made structure, riddled with rust and rot and every other type of fleeting, human failure - but when the alien light begins to glow, the space is illuminated, made transcendent. The subharmonic drone returns, vibrating up into your bones and dancing along your jawline, electrifying the nerve of every tooth - but this time, it doesn’t hurt. Instead, as you continue to listen, the relentless sound begins to resolve itself into music, a song you could’ve sworn you’ve heard before, in the nostalgic haze of infancy, or from some deep, dark dream -

-S̶̨̯̱̬̜͚͓̅́͗̔̇̆͐͘H̵͇̖̝̬͒̏͐̐̽͌͐͊̚ͅÎ̷̫̞̭̫̦͍̇̓͂̓̚R̷̼̗̯̗̟͇͕̦͗O̵̰̳̍́͋̒̇̓̑̕ - 

- you wake up. Slow and groggy, then all at once, with a cold rush of adrenaline. Not in the motel room, where you would have expected to be. No, instead you find yourself sitting in Black’s driver seat, parked just outside of the room where Keith is still sleeping, blissfully unaware of your absence. This isn’t - unheard of, for you. There were times, when you were younger, that you would occasionally sleep-jump. A terrifying experience, to be sure, but rare, and luckily, never too dangerous. Still, the experience is acutely unnerving. You forgot how disconcerting it feels, to go to sleep in one place and wake in another, with no memory of the movement in-between.

Clearly, though, your subconscious mind was on a mission. You’re in Black’s driver seat, for one, key already slotted into the ignition. Engine off; she sits silently on the asphalt parking pad just outside of your motel room. Just beyond the gauzy curtained window, Keith sleeps - fitfully, most likely. You hate to leave him alone at night, but. You’re already here. Fully dressed, as it turns out, which probably means that your impression in the mattress has long gone cold. Might as well make the most of it.

You already have some idea of what your unconscious body was trying to do. After all, it’s been a thought in the back of your head for a week now, voiced only once before Keith shot it down with prejudice. But as you’ve already noted, Keith isn’t here right now. And if he doesn’t have the constitution anymore to do the distasteful things, the things that need to be done - well, you can bear that burden for him.

It takes you about an hour to find the perfect spot and make the proper preparations. You choose an empty crossroads on the outskirts of town, the intersecting dirt roads edged by tumbleweed and desolation. When you’re as ready as you can be, you walk to the center of the crossroads and dig out a small hole in the dirt and gravel, just deep enough to position a small box filled with herbs, bones, and your driver’s license. Then sweep the loose dirt back over the box, rising to your feet on stiff, cracking knees when the deed is done. It’s an unsettling task to complete; the last time you did this, four years ago, you royally fucked up your life. But this won’t be the same; you don’t intend to sell anything today.

The demon arrives between one blink and the next, slotting itself into reality without even a whisper of sound. The woman it wears is beautiful, dark hair and even darker eyes, curls pinned away from her face and cascading over her shoulders. She’s barely covered by a white slip, which, given the time of night, could have been her choice - but was probably the demon’s. Regardless of the clothing, she’s exactly your type when it comes to women - or men, for that matter. Tall, dark and handsome, wrapped up all pretty, like a gift meant just for you to open. The demon smiles at you, lips curving into a sensual smirk, as though it can sense the shape of your thoughts. But none of its charms have a hope in hell of working on you tonight - because for a terrifying moment, you can see its true face.

It happens so fast, there and gone again, that you almost think you imagined it. A brief hallucination brought on by stress. But no, no, you’re not going to second-guess yourself. You know what you saw. The breath you suck in is totally involuntary, a sharp intake of shock. It’s not what you see that scares you; you know that from behind the eyes of this lovely woman, a monster peers back out at you. What scares you is the implication - because the last time you could see the true faces of demons, your deal was a week out from coming due. You could see the true nature of the damned because you were about to join their rank.

Perhaps Keith is right, and hell has changed you. Irrevocably, in some ways. You squint your eyes at the demon standing in front of you, trying to force the change to happen once more, but the demon’s face stays stubbornly hidden from your sight. If this is a new, latent ability, it’s one you don’t have full control over yet. Your brow furrows as you squint a little harder -

The demon laughs. You’re startled out of your concentrated efforts by its ringing mirth, high and clear as a bell.

“Hail, Shirogane,” it says, “it’s an honor to meet you, really. But please, don’t bust a blood vessel on my account.”

You take an uncertain step back.

“You know me?”

The demon leers at you with a look that balances dangerously between disdain and adoration.

“It’d be hard not to,” it quips. “You’re a bit infamous now, you know. It’s not every day that a damned soul burns their way up out of hell.”

You - have no memory of doing any such thing. But that’s par for the course, you suppose.

“Well, good to know, whoever the hell you are. ‘Hail’ right back on attcha.” You don’t actually have a Texan accent, but sometimes you like to borrow Keith’s, for effect.

The demon laughs, with a few too many teeth to be genuine.

“You can call me Mercy,” it purrs. “Mercy Jones. Apt, don’t you think?” Then it gives a little twirl, slip riding up the woman’s toned, tan thighs as you hastily avert your gaze.

“This little number’s from Pensacola, Florida,” it sings. “Never even been west of the Mississippi before, but here we are, all the way across the country - just for you.” One hand plucks at the hem of the dress suggestively. “But there’s a first time for everything, isn’t there?”

Anger makes you grit your molars together as you bite down a snarl.

“I’m here for business, not pleasure,” you remind it sternly. “Certainly not for small talk.”

The demon clucks its tongue, dropping the coquettish act in an instant.

“Well, Master Shirogane,” it snaps, “what have you called me up for, then? I can’t imagine someone in your position would be so eager to deal at the crossroads again, right after pulling a ‘Get Out of Jail Free’ card.”

You make a show of cracking your neck and flexing your shoulders, as though “freedom” doesn’t really sit well with you anymore.

“Look,” you say. “Hell? Wasn’t that bad. I’d do another go around, honestly - if the pot was sweet enough.”

The demon’s lips curl in thinly veiled contempt.

“You really expect me to believe that you’re already back for more,” it drawls. “It’s been, what? Seven days since you got out?”

“Eight,” you correct, “and yes, I do.”

The laughter you receive is typical of a demon, entirely unhinged and cold to the bone. Although they wear the bodies of humans, the true nature of the demon is skin-deep. Scratch the surface, and it’s gore and sulfur all the way down.

The simple truth is that demons are addicts. Filthy little maggots that feed on the rot of the human race. They can’t help it: when presented with a new opportunity to feast, no matter how obviously suspicious the opportunity might be, they go all in. Demons wear rose-colored glasses, in a way, when it comes to humans; all they can see is their next hit of damnation. That’s why you know that, when you call, it will follow.

“Walk with me,” you command, as you turn on your heels. Half a heartbeat later, and you hear its footsteps behind you, gravel crunching on the ground as it hurries to catch up. Soon it falls in step with you, and you take that as your signal to begin.

“I’m looking for some information,” you tell it, “and while, yes, perhaps I’m not willing to pay the full price, I’m sure there are many other things I can offer you in return.”

“Such as?” The demon lifts one imperious eyebrow, arms crossed tight over the woman’s chest. “I’m not running a charity shop out here,” it informs you snidely.

“How about the Colt, for instance?” you suggest. “I’m sure that will fetch a high price. Although perhaps you have some…alternate form of compensation in mind?”

You keep your insinuations purposefully vague; demons do love corruption, after all. Let this one bait its own hook by imagining its own perfect temptation. Out of the corner of your eye, you watch as the demon licks its lips, a subconscious tick of lightning-fast famine. You suppress a smile.

Negotiations are well underway by the time you lead the demon over to the water tower. It doesn’t even look up when it follows after you, off the road and under the shadow of the reservoir. Really, like taking candy from a baby. You almost feel guilty.

***

Keith catches you on the seventh night. Not the seventh consecutive night, mind you; you aren’t so brash as to think you can get away with that level of industriousness. It’s been several weeks since you started this unpleasant business. You’ve tried to space the nights randomly, and then only venturing out when you’re sure that Keith is dead asleep. You certainly don’t look forward to these extracurriculars, but - it has to be done. One way or another, this is all for the best.

On this night, however, the gig is up. You hear the motorcycle before you see it, which gives you time to step back beyond the Devil’s Trap and put down your rosary, as though that will somehow lessen the burden of evidence against you. A few seconds later, and Keith comes storming into the abandoned building where you’ve set up shop. The wooden door is kicked in so viciously that it nearly flies off its hinges; then boots pounding across the floor as a whirlwind of righteous anger closes in on you. You turn to face your accuser.

“Let me guess,” you say, “…a vision?”

“I’ll give you a fucking vision,” Keith promises, fists clenched and teeth bared as he growls, “Shiro, what the hell do you think you’re doing?”

“Yeah, Shiro, what the hell do you think you’re doing?” the demon parrots. It spits on the ground between you, a glob of bloody saliva trailing down from its split lip. You ignore its antics as you sigh, wiping your hands on a spare rag.

“What does it look like, Keith?” you ask tiredly. “I’m doing what needs to be done.”

“And have you had any success yet?” Keith demands. When you pause a little too long to answer, he snorts. “No? Yeah, I didn’t think so.”

“These things take time, Keith. We’re not going to hit the jackpot on the first or second try.” Or even the fifth or sixth, but you leave that unsaid.

Keith scoffs. In his rage, he’s practically incandescent, a living flame of divine wrath.

“The entirety of the modern world is moving away from torturing prisoners,” he spits, “and you know why? Because it doesn’t fucking work. And especially not with demons. These sick fucks,” with a wide gesture to the one currently tied down to the chair, “they get off on it! This one’s probably having the time of his fucking life right now!”

The demon, of course, takes that opportunity to delve into some theatrics. It begins to sob hysterically, crocodile tears pouring from its stolen eyes as it miserably looks up at Keith.

“Pluh-plu-ease, S-s-sir,” it warbles at him, “I don’t know what’s going on, I swear! I don’t kn-know anything-”

Keith’s face twists into a mask of absolute disdain when he snaps back to face the demon.

“Shut up,” he hisses at it, disgust dripping from every syllable.

Miraculously, the demon follows his order, its jaw snapping shut without any further peep of protest. Which is a nice reprieve, but you doubt the longevity of this newfound silence. This is no doubt just another part of the demon’s sick game to try to trick you into believing that it’s released its control on the human host. Which, as both Keith and you have learned the hard way, is complete bullshit. Even when a demon seems to let the human ‘front,’ it’s a lie. Possession, in its fullest form, is a complete and total lock-down, and the most a human host can do is watch on in silent horror as they’re taken along for a joyride which will most likely kill them. Though you can’t help but hate the demon, you do pity the man. The poor sod looks like a paper-pusher just out of the office, on his way back to his loving wife and 1.5 kids after a long day’s work - never to arrive home. Instead, he was swept up by an unknowable evil force, and then dumped on your doorstep. A very bad day for him, all in all - but just another Tuesday for you.

You turn back to Keith, urge his eyes to connect with your own. When they do, you almost regret the wish; his eyes are swimming over with emotion when he says, “I thought we agreed not to do this, Shiro. I thought we agreed that this was cruel, and time-consuming, and ultimately pointless, because it hardly ever fucking works.”

“We did,” you admit in a murmur, “…but it wasn’t the right decision, Keith. And I figured that what you didn’t know couldn’t hurt you.”

“What I didn’t know…couldn’t hurt me?”

Immediately you know where Keith’s mind went, and how those were the exact worst words to say. You scratch uncomfortably at the scruff of your undercut.

“Yeah,” you offer weakly. “Plausible deniability, if you like.”

“If I like. Wow.”

Keith scrubs a hand across his face, fingers stopping to pinch the bridge of his nose between two fingers. It’s a gesture you know he picked up from you. You’ve shaped him in so many ways, throughout your time together. You’d like to think your influence still reigns. That Keith still bows to your authority. But he grew and changed during the two years you left him for retirement; this last year in hell has only emphasized that new, painful individuality.

When Keith looks back up at you, you’re prepared to suffer his rage. To your surprise, the look you receive instead is sympathetic, borderline soft.

“I don’t want to fight with you, Shiro,” he says quietly. “And I don’t want to be angry with you. Or for you to be angry with me. I want us to always be on the same team.”

“We are on the same team.”

Keith shakes his head. “How am I supposed to know that, when you hide things from me? When you sneak off behind my back? When you do things we expressly agreed not to do?”

You scoff. “So I’m in trouble for, what? Pursuing the truth? You were the one who was all gung-ho for getting answers at the Castle. Hell, you ran off to do your own sketchy ritual - which didn’t work. We need to go back to the basics,” you argue fervently. “To the tried and true. These little slime-balls,” with an offhand gesture to your mute, bound guest, “they know what’s going on. Or if they don’t, then they know a demon who does. It’s only a matter of time,” you stress, “before we finally find the one that squeals.”

Keith pretends to consider your argument for half a second. Then he sighs, and the look he levels you with is too tired and soulful to be anything less than genuine.

“In the year that you’ve been - gone, I’ve learned more about demons,” he tells you quietly. “I’ve learned a lot more. Hell, I’ve learned more about the supernatural world on the whole. I’ve seen things that would be hard to believe - even for a hunter,” he stresses. Eyes wide and haunted, an electric sapphire charge that burns into your own retinas.

“…what are you trying to say, Keith?” you hedge.

Keith laughs miserably. “I’m trying to say that the worldview we had, about demons, spirits, the other side - it was severely incomplete. These forces at play, that Allura tries to commune with, that follow us - they’re more alien than human. They’re eldritch forces, Shiro. Untamable, unknowable, uncontrollable - and demons are a small fraction of that power.” He lowers his voice, as though that will stop your guest from listening. “Demons - they may speak like us, they might look like us, when they’re wearing a human - but they’re not like us at all. They don’t think like us. They don’t abide by our rules. You can’t make one tell you the truth. You can’t order it about. You think you’re in control of this situation, but you’re not-”

“I can trap a demon in a devil’s trap,” you argue, “I can exorcise it from the body it’s stealing-”

“But not by your own will,” Keith insists. “Not under your own power.”

“Then by who’s?” you demand. “What, are you - are you trying to say we’re being controlled by something? That we don’t have free will?”

“No!” Keith shouts. He looks like he’s mere moments from tearing his own hair out, or throttling you. “Why in fuck do you always jump to that conclusion?”

“Because it sounds exactly like you’re saying that we don’t have free will!” you exclaim. “Which the newest neuro-scientific evidence supports, by the way-”

“I’m not talking about biology, or neurons, or whatever!” Keith snaps. “I’m talking about higher powers! There are higher powers at work here, Shiro-”

“And what the fuck is that supposed to mean? ‘High powers?’” You can’t help your derisive scoff. “What, do you mean like - the Force? Destiny?”

Keith stays stony-faced and silent. You feel a pit opening up in your stomach, a pinpoint of super-density.

“Oh, come on, Keith. You don’t believe in that kind of mumbo-jumbo,” you insist. “You don’t believe in fate, or, or god-”

“No, you don’t believe in God, Shiro!” Keith’s voice rings out harsh and sharp like the crack of a whip. His eyes are alight with unholy fire when he hisses, “You don’t know what I believe.”

And - there is no comeback to that statement. No argument you can cook up that will prove your point because after three non-consecutive years of abandonment - you don’t know Keith. Not anymore, not really - certainly not as well as you once did. To claim intimate knowledge now, when you’ve hidden so much of your own self in turn-

Your gut roils with shame. You feel sick. Suddenly, the devil’s trap, the instruments of torture all laid out on the table, the hapless victim bound in rope and demon possession, sitting in the center of it all - it all seems like such a terrible idea that you can’t fathom how it was yours. Is this the work of your hands? Pain, and fear, and fruitlessness?

Keith seems to sense your changing perspective, because his fierce scowl smooths over into gentle concern.

“…Shiro?” His voice sounds hesitant, and very far away.

“Yes?” So does your own voice. You listen to it, disembodied, as you wonder how it can sound so calm when you feel anything but. Listening to Keith is infinitely better; you grasp onto his voice, as though it’s the only tie left keeping you bound to planet Earth.

“I don’t want to fight you, I really don’t,” he’s saying quietly, almost begging. “Just, please - no more of this?” A weak gesture to the chaos you’ve wrought. “Will you trust me when I say I know what I’m talking about? Because I promise you, this stuff - it’s no good. Not for you, not for him - not for anybody.”

You swallow around a painful lump in your throat.

“Alright,” you agree. “You win. No more interrogation.”

Keith immediately looks relieved. “Thank you,” he breathes. And you can tell that he is, genuinely thankful that you’ve finally decided to listen to, and heed, his words.

“…let me just - deal with all this,” you say tiredly, with a vague gesture to the demon, who’s begun to rock violently back and forth in its chair, desperately testing its bonds as it snarls silently up at you. It won’t escape, and soon, it will be on a one-way trip to hell, forced out of the host’s mouth in a trail of black smoke and bile. You reach for your copy of the Roman Ritual you have set on the table, but Keith steps up, one hand reaching out to stop you.

“Let me,” he says, “I could…use the practice.”

“Sure?” You take a step back, willing to let Keith perform the exorcism instead. It’s always a good idea for a hunter to recite it from memory when they can - keeps them sharp. You stand back to watch, one hand still on the book just in case, but you trust Keith’s ability; he’s had the Ritual memorized backward and forwards for years now, long before he ever met you in the flesh.

So you’re taken aback when Keith stands before the demon, stretches out his right hand, and closes his eyes. His lips begin to move, whispering under his breath, and though you try to strain to hear the words, they’re mostly inaudible - but the ones you do manage to catch sound like absolute gibberish. Not Latin, not Ancient Greek - not even that strange, alien language he was using back at the barn.

“Keith-?”

It happens so quickly that you nearly jump out of your skin. The demon, who’d previously been glaring daggers at Keith as it writhed in its bonds, suddenly arches its back in a violent bow, the muscles in its neck pulling painfully taut as its mouth opens in a silent scream - but instead of sound, a thick swirling funnel of black smoke spews from its throat. You watch in stupefied shock as the demon is wrenched from the host’s body at a record-breaking pace, the true form of the demon blasting through the windows of the building and out into the night.

The body sags in its bonds. Keith drops his hand, and slowly, slowly, opens his eyes. You don’t check your watch, but you know for a fact that the whole ordeal took less than fifteen seconds.

Holy fucking shit.

“Goddamn.” You shake your head as you approach the limp body; the pulse is weak and thready, but there, barely, a proof of life and victory. You turn back to Keith, eyes narrowed, suspicion newly-kindled in your gut.

“…that wasn’t the Roman Ritual. Or any other exorcism ritual I’ve ever heard of,” you say slowly. “Who’d you learn that from?”

Is it your imagination, or does Keith suddenly look incredibly shifty? You watch as he shuffles from foot to foot, eyes not quite meeting your own when he says, “Uh, you know. Another hunter I met when you were…gone.”

“You mean when I was in hell?” you clarify sharply, and Keith flinches.

“Yeah.”

You nod slowly as you take this in. “And would I know this hunter?”

“Uh - no. No, you wouldn’t, probably. She liked to keep to herself.”

“Well, you never know. I’ve been running in these circles for a long time,” you point out. “What was her name?”

You phrase it as a question for the sake of politeness, but Keith knows an order when he hears one. Still, he seems inordinately reluctant to give it up.

“…her name was Acxa,” he says eventually, “but don’t bother looking into her, Shiro.”

“And why not?”

A hard look comes over Keith’s face, his brow set low, eyes bright with a new emotion.

“Because she’s dead,” he snaps. “She’s-” And then breaks off, like he can’t bear to say more. He looks away from you then, gaze still swimming with this strange, tender pain, and you realize you’ve blundered into a topic you have absolutely no idea how to handle.

“I’m - sorry. For your loss.” The words sound wooden and insincere when you hear them, and you hate yourself immediately for the vice-grip that tightens around your heart. Because Keith is allowed to have friends, to have other people outside of your orbit. Of course he is. You’ve always encouraged it. And now that he’s seemingly lost one of them, the idea alone fills you with-

“We need to get him to a hospital,” Keith mutters, attention turned back to the man still tied to the chair. He’s out cold, probably from shock; a visit to the hospital certainly won’t hurt. Keith takes a step into the devil’s trap, but you beat him to the chase. You’ve already jumped the space, cutting through the man’s bonds with a knife and hefting his dead weight over your shoulder in a fireman’s carry.

“I’ll do it,” you volunteer. Keith looks skeptical.

“Can you jump that far now?” he asks doubtfully. “To a hospital you’ve never even seen before?”

“Sure,” you say easily, with more confidence than you actually feel. “I did it at the barn, didn’t I?”

“…yes,” Keith admits begrudgingly.

“So I’ll do it again. Take Black back to the motel; I’ll meet you there,” you promise.

Keith gives you an unreadable look, but he nods once.

“I’ll see you there,” he confirms.

The jump to the hospital while dragging along another person isn’t nearly as difficult as you remember it being with Keith. A maturation of your powers, you suppose, although you’re certain your very recent resurrection also has something to do with it. Either way, the trip goes without incident, and you manage to hand the unconscious man off to the emergency room staff and then jump away before anyone can pin you down for questioning. When you get back to the hotel, it’s just in time to hear Black rumbling into the parking lot. Keith tramps in a few moments later, looking worse for wear than you remember.

“You need to get some sleep,” you tell him as he comes in the door.

Keith nods dispassionately. You have the sense that he didn’t really hear you at all.

You clear your throat loudly as you shuck off your leather jacket.

“Keith.”

Finally, he turns to look at you.

“Uh. We good?” You want to smack yourself as soon as the words come out of your mouth. Of fucking course not. You know he’s still pissed at you. But you can’t help the need to beg for his well-regard all the same.

Keith doesn’t look angry, though - if anything, he just looks tired. Bone-dead tired. As though the fire that usually burns and sparks behind his strange, alien eyes has all been used up, only ash and ember remaining.

“Sure,” he says. “We’re good.”

He doesn’t speak to you for the rest of the night.

***

Three days after Keith starts giving you the silent treatment, you call Pidge. For intel reasons, first and foremost, but it’s also nice to hear the voice of a person who doesn’t want to smack you over the head with a sledgehammer. You shoot the shit for the first several minutes as she updates you on what’s going on with the rest of the Paladins, but eventually, you have to get back to business.

“So,” you hedge, “any updates you can give us from your software program…thing?”

Pidge snorts. “As it so happens, I can. But boy-howdy - it’s not good, I can tell you that much.”

“What do you mean by that, exactly?”

“I mean that I’ve been cataloging any demonic omen on your travel path based on the satellite data from your cell phones and, based on your projected movements - well, it looks like you’re being stalked, Shiro. By something demonic. All the omens are there.”

You feel a pit open up in your stomach. “Can you give me specifics?” you ask.

“Sure thing.” A pause as, over the line, you hear Pidge clacking away on her keyboard. “Two days ago, you were in Colusa, California, right?”

“…Yes?”

“Cattle mutilations,” Pidge declares. “We’ve received a whole batch of reports from that area. What about Ridgecrest? You were there, too?”

“Last week,” you confirm. “We left on Sunday.”

“Well, a freak hail storm ravaged that entire county the day after you skipped town,” Pidge informs you. “And then there’s Reno, Nevada. Rolling blackouts citywide.”

“I know about that,” you tell her, “we were there for it, unfortunately.” God, had that been the hottest two days in any motel room of your life. When Keith started walking around in only his boxers, you knew you had to get the hell out of dodge before you lost what little remained of your sanity.

Pidge sounds a little too gleeful when she informs you, “Well, guess what? Power’s still not back. At least half the city’s off the grid.”

“What? It’s been over a week.”

“I know. That’s why it’s on the list,” Pidge says. “Now, any one of these signs would have been disturbing on its own, but put them all together, and…”

“It looks like we’ve got a demon on our tail,” you finish.

Aw, Christ. This isn’t good. You sigh, rubbing absentmindedly at your undercut.

“Anything else?” you ask wearily. “Can you give me some good news, at least?”

“Sorry, no can do,” Pidge quips, “I’m in the business of empirical data, not good news.”

“Right.” You stifle a groan as you pinch the bridge of your nose. “Any other omens we should know about?”

“Let me see…” You can almost imagine Pidge hunched over her computer and her spreadsheets, coke-bottle glasses reflecting the dim glow of the screen into two perfect half-crescents. “Hmm…just to rule it out: you weren’t anywhere around Bakersfield, were you?”

You frown as you struggle to think back.

“Uh, not really. We bypassed that city, by a few hours out,” you tell her. “Why, something happen there, too?”

“Looks like. A man was just found dead in a river, completely exsanguinated.”

“Jesus.”

“Yeah,” Pidge agrees. “Vampires, most likely, but a satanic ritual can’t be ruled out. Either way, it doesn’t look related to your little problem.”

You sigh heavily. It’s a day in the other direction, but you have to offer. “Want us to double back? Check it out for ourselves, just to be sure?”

“No, no, that’s covered,” Pidge reassures you. “From what I’ve heard, the Garrison already sent out a field team.”

Well, that settles that question. “I think we’ll let them handle it, then,” you demur.

“Yeah, I thought you might say that.” You think you hear a snicker in her voice, which you elect to ignore.

“Thank you,” you say instead. “This is a ton of hard work, Pidge, and it means a lot to me. Keith, too. I’ll update him on all this when he gets back.”

“Speaking of which…,” Pidge drawls, “how are you and Keith, together? And I don’t mean together-together,” she adds quickly, “but like - together? As in, after so long being apart?”

You don’t think you understand half of what she just said. You also have a sneaking suspicion that, whatever you say, won’t be for her ears only. It’s not hard to picture Lance and Hunk huddled around the receiver with Pidge, craning their necks as they listen for juicy gossip.

“We’re…good,” you say carefully. “I mean, it’s been an adjustment, obviously. Keith’s been having a harder time than me.”

“Yeah, I bet,” Pidge snorts. Her voice comes off a bit waspish as she says, “No offense, Shiro, but what you did to him? Hiding your deal? Lying like that to him for three years? That was just fucking cruel, man.”

“…I know, Pidge,” you say quietly. “Trust me, I know. I’ll regret it for the rest of my life.”

“Good. And, hey, next time you need help - you can always come to us. You know that, right?” She sounds so quiet, so sincere; a visceral reminder that Keith wasn’t the only one you hurt.

“I know,” you assure her. “We’re a team; I intend to make good on that going forward.”

“That’s what I like to hear,” Pidge agrees. “Anything else before I let you go?”

“No, I think that’s - oh, wait. One last thing, Pidge.” You clear your throat awkwardly. “Has Keith ever…mentioned someone named Acxa to you?”

“Acxa? Is that a girl?” Pidge’s voice is fairly bubbling with glee. “Oooh, does Keithy-cat have a crush?”

“That is not of import,” you bark out. “I’m asking strictly for case-related reasons.”

“Well, somebody’s jealous,” Pidge simpers.

“Pidge. Seriously. Answer the question.”

A rush of static as she sighs over the line.

“Look, it’s like we already told you, Shiro,” she says. “We didn’t hear anything from Keith in the time you were - gone. He didn’t call, he didn’t visit. If he met a girl, or made a new hunting buddy, well - he didn’t tell us.” She sounds bitter about the admission.

“Okay. I believe you. I’m sorry I pushed. But could you just - keep an ear on the ground for me? If you hear anything through the grapevine about this girl…”

“You’ll be the first to know,” Pidge assures you. “Although…you do realize Keith’s a big boy now, right?”

You shift uncomfortably in your seat. “What’s that supposed to mean?” you demand.

“It means that when young, virile men reach their sexual maturity-”

“Ugh, Pidge!”

“Hey, I don’t claim to understand it,” Pidge says, “I just know that it happens.”

“Well, that’s not what I’m worried about,” you insist. “Keith’s his own man. What he does in his own time is his business. I’m just worried that some of the friends he might have made in this last year are…of a nefarious sort.”

“Alright, alright,” Pidge relents, “I’ll keep all my feelers out. If we hear anything out of the ordinary, I’ll let you know.”

“Thank you,” you breathe.

“Oh, by the way…” Over the line, you can hear papers rustling as Pidge rummages through her disaster zone of a workspace. “…I know now is probably not the best time for a new case; you obviously have a lot on your plate right at the moment…”

“No, no, go on.” You’ll take any distractions right now, to cool Keith’s ire and get you out of the doghouse.

“Well, there’s been a few strange reports coming out of Concrete, Washington,” Pidge informs you. “Several Bigfoot sightings? And at least nine missing persons, all within the last week.”

“That does sound abnormal,” you agree. “But we’re nowhere close to there, Pidge. Can’t you contact any other hunters in the area?”

“Already did,” Pidge says, “and they’re all already working their own cases.” She pauses. “Would it help if I told you that there’s also been a ghost haunting the locker rooms in a women’s health facility?”

That raises an eyebrow as you ponder the bribe. Maybe in your earlier days as a hunter, you would have jumped on that information with eagerness. Now, though, you have to say - it doesn’t hold that much appeal. Your short breath of silence must be answer enough, because Pidge tries again.

“Please, would you mind checking it out?” she wheedles. “Allura had me reach out to every other hunter in the area, and there really are no other options. You’re our last resort.”

“I don’t know, Pidge -”

“What, do you want me to beg? Oh, ‘help me, Obi-wan Kenobi, you’re my only hope’?”

You chuckle at her verbiage. “Well, when you put it like that…how could I say no?”

***

You hand Keith the details of the new case as a peace offering, all your research and relevant articles bundled up into a manila folder, tied with a twine bow. Keith raises one dark eyebrow as he takes the package from your grasp, and then you have the pleasure of watching him silently peruse through the pages

“This doesn’t make us alright,” he warns.

“Of course,” you agree. Then take delight in the slow look of excitement and wonder that begins to crawl across his face as he continues reading.

“Is this…a real bonafide Bigfoot case?” he says, with something akin to awe in his voice. You smirk.

“Come on, Spitfire,” you say. “It’s time to put one down in the hunting history books. You ready to go catch yourself a Sasquatch?”

The grin Keith gifts you with is incandescent with childlike glee.

“Absolutely.”

Unfortunately, the history books will have to wait; to Keith’s everlasting devastation, it quickly becomes clear that a potential Bigfoot isn’t the issue that’s been plaguing the sleepy little town of Concrete, Washington. You learn this at Audrey’s house when you’re confronted with her teddy bear that she wished alive - into a giant, clinically depressed menace to society.

Against your better judgment, Keith decapitates the bear. When even that doesn’t stop it’s bitching and moaning, you set the thing on fire. Audrey is very put out with you.

“Look, little girl-”

“-Audrey!-”

“Look, Audrey. We couldn’t leave you alone with that thing,” you point out. “And we couldn’t let it continue to burglarize the local liquor stores. Now - you’re gonna tell us exactly where you found this wishing well.”

Audrey throws a Fisher-Price teapot at your head. Ah, well. Some battles you win, and some you lose.

You do, in the end, manage to extract the information you need from the nine-year-old, but only after you’re blackmailed into buying her a brand-new teddy bear from Toys R Us. Afterward, you take her to McDonald's.

As soon as you step foot into the fast-food franchise, you’re absolutely sure that all eyes in the establishment are glued firmly to your motley little crew. And it must make for a strange picture, a little white girl sandwiched between two Asian men who are very clearly not related to her. You resist the urge to fidget under the questioning gazes. Keith, as always, seems unbothered by the perceptions and judgments of other people; he holds Audrey’s little hand within his own as he leads her over to the counter and helps her make her order. Patient, quiet, kind as he walks her through the steps, letting her assert herself, gently encouraging when she becomes too shy. He’s frighteningly good with kids; you’re so used to seeing the deadly blade of him unsheathed that you sometimes forget about this softer, more domestic side. But it exists, in all its tender beauty; you do your damnedest to keep your greedy eyes from swallowing him whole.

A fruitless endeavor, because you can’t keep your gaze from magnetizing back to him. Keith, it seems, is oblivious to your sick fascination, but clearly the older lady in the next line is not, because she tisks audibly and shakes her head at you.

“It’s not like that,” you stutter.

Like what?

“We’re just her uncles,” you try again. Then immediately flush, because doesn’t that sound soo much better? At least neither you nor Keith have mustaches.

You sit down in a booth to eat your lunch, but it isn’t until halfway through the meal, when Audrey gets up to go to the bathroom, that Keith calls you out on your behavior.

“Come on, Shiro. Loosen up, yeah? You’re starting to make me nervous,” he says with a wry smile.

“People are staring at us,” you point out.

“Yeah, because you’re tweaking out right now,” Keith argues. “What’s got you so antsy, anyway?”

“Oh, I don’t know. Two full-grown men out with a little girl who’s clearly not theirs,” you shrug. “It’s gonna raise suspicions. You know we’re supposed to fly under the radar.”

Keith shrugs nonchalantly.

“Hey, we could be married, for all they know. Audrey could be our adopted daughter.”

“Don’t be obtuse, Keith,” you snap. “Besides, gay marriage isn’t even legal in this state.”

“Maybe we’re from Massachusetts.”

You let out a snort of derision. “Oh yeeahh, we really sound the paahrt,” you tease meanly. “Wan me t’get the caah, sweetie, while you wait for aah little cannoli?”

Keith doesn’t even crack a smile at your exaggerated accent. He looks, if anything, more morose than ever.

“Would it really be so bad, being married to me?” he asks, voice dead quiet.

You immediately sober back up.

“That’s not the point, Keith, and you know it.”

“Then what’s the matter?” Keith pushes. “Are you really that worried about being identified to the cops? Or is it something else-”

Thankfully, this is the point in which Audrey returns from the restroom, effectively ending the conversation. You send up a silent thanks to every nonexistent god for saving you from that particular no-win scenario.

With Audrey’s help, it’s easy to find Lucky Chin’s, the Chinese restaurant with a fountain that’s spawning wishes like horses. You drop Audrey off at a neighbor’s house since her parents have, apparently, wished themselves away to Bali. Then you go back to the scene of the crime and promptly shut down the whole establishment with a slew of half-concocted health violations. From there, it isn’t hard to drain the fountain and find the one coin at the bottom that is not like the others. Unfortunately, besides possessing the unique quality of granting wishes, the little motherfucker is also welded to the bottom of the fountain.

After multiple failed attempts to pry it up, you both take a second to regroup, panting from exertion. But after you’ve both caught your breath, a diabolical idea catches hold of you. With a grin, you reach into your own pocket and flip Keith a quarter. The look he gives you is downright scandalized.

“Oh, come on,” you goad, “aren’t you at least a little tempted?” And then, when it seems like Keith’s curiosity has gained a brief upper hand: “Think of it. Your greatest, most secret wish coming true. Wouldn’t you want that?”

Keith pales and flushes at the same time; it’s almost dizzying to watch. But he regains composure quickly, face schooling itself into drawn, dispassionate stoicism.

“No,” he denies, with a shake of his thick, shaggy bangs. “It wouldn’t be real. I couldn’t trust it.”

“But if you could have anything?” you push. “Anything at all. What would it be?”

Immediately, you know you’ve struck a nerve. Keith’s face turns hard, jaw set and eyes aglow with violet wrath.

“Everyone that has ever hurt you - I’d want them to be destroyed,” he admits slowly, quietly, with a deadly truthfulness in his tone. “I’d want them atomized. Stripped from the fabric of the universe. Every person, and spirit, and demon, and - and thing - that ever hurt you - I want their absolute destruction.” He shrugs. “…but I guess I’d settle for Lilith’s head on a plate. Bloody.”

Jesus Christ.

Sometimes - even after years of stalwart loyalty - Keith’s affection still takes you by surprise. Still scares you, if you’re being honest. The fervor of his protective instincts has always leaned heavily towards cold-blooded vengeance.

“…we could make that happen,” you say slowly. “Sans magic coin wish. We could hunt her down, if you wanted. Hell, I’ve got a bone to pick with Lilith, too.”

But Keith just shakes his head.

“No,” he says. “No, there’s - no point, now. It wouldn’t be worth it.” But all the same, he sounds regretful. You decide right there and then, that if the opportunity ever presents, you’ll take care of it yourself. Burn the bitch up from the inside out - for both you and Keith. Of course, you’d need to fix the Colt, first; it’s functionally useless right now, all of the special-made bullets used up last year while you were dying and Keith was shooting wildly at hell-hounds, but with enough tinkering-

A glint of metal catches your attention. You manage to snag your quarter out of the air, thrown back at you by Keith, who gives you a considering look.

“What about you?” he asks. “If you could make one wish: what would it be?”

You swallow convulsively. What a question, eh?

How can you say that you regret every decision that you’ve made for the past four years? That you wish you could take all that time back - but that you know, without a shadow of a doubt, that you still would’ve made the same damning deal? How can you explain that the path to hell is paved with slippery cobblestones that give no traction for you to climb your way back out? Good intentions have nothing to do with it, because your intentions have never been good, when it comes to Keith. They have only ever been desperate, selfish, and thieving. Because if you could wish for just one thing-

You toss the coin into the well.

“I wish…for a really good sandwich,” you declare, then grin wide at the scandalized look Keith is giving you. “What? I’m still hungry.”

A minute later, and you have definitive proof that the magical coin inside the fountain works when a delivery man from Subway shows up at Lucky Chins. Several hours later, and bent over a toilet bowl, you have very definitive proof that the wishes go bad.

“Very bad,” Keith muses as he watches you press your forehead to the cool porcelain bowl. “But luckily for you, I know how to fix this.”

In the hour you’ve been curled up in the fetal position on the bathroom tile, Keith’s managed to scrounge up some information on the strange coin. It’s Babylonian in origin, engraved with the image of Tiamat, the god of primordial chaos. Created by ancient priests as a weapon to level entire cities; all the saboteur needs to do is toss the coin into a central well, and wait for civilization to crumble in on itself.

“And the only person who can remove the coin is the person who made the first wish,” Keith says, “but I think I’ve got that covered, too.” He pulls out a newspaper with an engagement announcement, between one Wesley Mondale and Ms. Hope Lynn Casey - a mismatched couple, if you’ve ever seen one.

“…they say opposites attract,” you offer feebly, just to play devil’s advocate.

Keith smirks, although it looks more like a grimace.

“Not this opposite,” he says. “What do you say, should we pay the happy couple a visit?”

“It would be my pleasure,” you quip, and then retch up the very last of your stomach acid.

***

Visiting the lovebirds only confirms your suspicions: Wesley Mondale has been a very naughty boy.

“Not to mention that this makes you a fucking rapist,” Keith points out scathingly, as you drive yourselves and Wes back over to Lucky Chin’s.

“Whoa, whoa!” In the backseat, Wes holds his hands up, as though he can manually fend off abuse accusations. “I am NOT a rapist! I love Hope! I would do anything for her-”

“-anything but let her make her own decisions?” Keith spits back. “You’ve stripped her of her free will, you fucking asshole! The worst violation anyone could experience - and you have the audacity to say you love her?”

“Keith-” Your attempt to diffuse the situation is lost in the argument.

“You don’t understand!!” Wes shouts back. In the rear-view mirror, his face is flushed a concerning beetroot color. “But how could either of you understand, am I right? Good-looking Chads like you have no fucking idea - you’ve always had it easy, just because you happened to win the genetic lottery!”

“…neither of us is named Chad,” Keith says.

You groan. The ridiculousness of this situation is driving your blood pressure up to unhealthy peaks.

“Believe me, Wes - neither of us have it easy,” you tell him firmly, as you begin to pull into the restaurant parking lot. “We never get what we want. In fact, we have to fight tooth and nail just to keep whatever it is we’ve got. But you know what? Maybe that’s the whole point. If everyone got everything they wanted, the entire world would go insane.”

“Yeah, about that,” Wes snarks. “Everything in this town looks pretty normal to me. Where’s all that insanity you were talking about?”

He has a point. The drive to Lucky Chin’s has been entirely devoid of naked invisible perverts or little boys with hulk-levels of super-strength. Hard to argue your own point when everything seems so normal right now.

Luckily for your pride, this is the exact moment in which your car is body-slammed by a giant flaming teddy bear. Black goes skidding from the impact; then, it’s a mad scramble to evacuate the car, and when you get a clear view of your assailant, you can see the large, messy stitches where the bear’s head was reattached to its body.

This is why you hate your life.

“Go! I’ll hold it off!” Keith shouts. “Get that fucking rapist to the restaurant!” He already has his knife in hand, and in a flash of light, it’s extended to its true form and length. The last thing you see before you jump Wesley into the restaurant is the image of Keith, all elegant sharp lines, going into toe-to-toe melee combat with a fluffy, fiery combatant who’s three times his size - and, apparently, immortal.

Wes drops to his knees as soon as you re-materialize, retching up his dinner onto his shoes. Still, he tries to make a bolt for it as soon as he gets his legs under him. None too gently, you catch him by his shirt collar and throw him back onto the floor.

“Ah, ah,” you mock, “Come on, now. Fun’s over. Time to pull the coin, Wes.”

The man in question cowers before you on the tile, a pathetic mess of tears and other, less palatable bodily fluid.

“But why? Why do I have to do this?” he laments wildly. “Why can’t we just get what we want!?”

Maybe it’s because your attention is split between dealing with Wesley and worrying about Keith, but you don’t notice that you two aren’t the only people inside Lucky Chin’s until it’s too late.

You feel the change in electrical fields before you hear her light footstep as she emerges from the shadows of the room. You turn just in time to see her right hand already up, index and middle finger aimed straight at you, thumb cocked vertical. The look on Hope’s face is worse than empty; she’s a shade of a person, a canvas stripped bare, completely devoid of any vitality. Like no one’s home. Still, a singular tear trails down her face when she speaks to you.

“Bang,” she whispers.

The current of electricity is a barely-contained lightning strike, sparking off her fingertips and galvanizing the air with fractals of white-hot rage as it races towards you. You’re able to appreciate the beauty of it, at least, as time slows down around you, the way it always does preceding a jump - but you’re not gonna make this one in time, you can feel it. Because you’re the object of Hope’s wish, you realize. She wants you to be dead, and so you will be. For such a small thing, the power of the coin is absolute. And in this moment, you know: there is no power greater-

Arms wrap around you from behind, locking around your torso, and then you are yanked into infinity.

White. That’s the first thing that registers. Complete and total whiteness eclipses your vision. For a moment, you wonder if you did manage a jump, and to Antarctica at that. But then, the white begins to shimmer with patches of iridescence, like shafts of celestial light, and the arms give a tight, reassuring squeeze around you. That’s when you realize you’re still falling through the abyss - except this abyss is entirely unfamiliar to you. You’ve never seen a place so beautiful, or so alien. And traveling under a power not your own, all you can do is stare in rapt fascination as you fall backward through the antithesis of your dark, eternal void, held in the arms of a stranger.

But you should’ve known. And you do know, a millisecond later when you reappear on top of the restaurant’s roof. Of course it wasn’t a stranger. Of course.

The landing isn’t good. You break away from each other due to the violence of it, both of you falling to your hands and knees on the hot black flat-top roof. But you quickly get your legs under you, then watch as Keith wobbles to his feet like a newborn fawn. Then looks to you, chin tipped defiantly upward. Not a shred of confusion or fear in his expression as he regards you. As though stealing your power for his own was the easiest and most natural thing in the world.

You don’t say anything. Neither does your savior. Together, you both climb down from the roof, and back into a world where wishes don’t come true.

***

All’s well that ends well, as they say, and for the most part, that seems to hold true for this case. Watching his brainwashed girlfriend attempt to murder a man in cold blood was evidently enough for Wesley to have a change of heart, because he removed the coin from the well immediately after. Looks like everything is once more right with the world - or close enough.

“So I save the day, and I still don’t get the girl? It’s not fucking fair, man,” Wes complains, as you give him a lift back to his house.

“No, it’s not,” Keith agrees too easily. “If life were fair, then you would be in a prison cell for sexual assault.”

“But we don’t always get what we want,” you chime in, and god does it feel good to be on the same side of an issue for once.

That feeling, of course, is short-lived. On the ride back to the motel, the tension is so tangible that you could garrotte someone with it. You don’t want to be the one to disturb the silence first, but when push comes to shove, you’re a weak man; you break under the torture of it.

“So,” you say, “that little thing you did back there. That was new.”

Keith gives an awkward, self-conscious shrug; he’s lost the earlier bravado, now looking so meek and withdrawn from where he sits shotgun.

“I’ve…done it before,” he says simply.

“Since when?”

Another halfhearted jerk of his shoulders.

“Just once. A long time ago. It doesn’t matter.”

“No no no.” You wag a finger in his general direction, hating that you feel so much like a substitute teacher. “You don’t get to have it both ways, Keith. You don’t get to demand truthfulness from me, and then keep your own dirty little secrets.”

“It’s different, Shiro-”

“No. It’s hypocritical, is what it is.”

Keith grinds his teeth together. He hates hypocrites, after all. It must be uncomfortable to realize that he is one.

“…it was in Saginaw,” he admits eventually. “Saginaw, Michigan.”

It takes you a second to place the name of the town within the landscape of your memory, but when you finally do, it’s like a precision kick to the nuts. Of all the answers he could have given, and it had to be Saginaw. The road swims before your eyes as you fight down a wave of nausea.

“You saved my life that day,” you murmur. “And I never thought about how you got there so quickly…”

“I was scared,” Keith admits. “I was real shaken up. I didn’t want to believe it had happened, so I just…let myself forget.”

A lot of traumatic things happened that day, you recall. Among many factors, it was the first time Keith ever killed another human. It was also during that case that you first began to piece together Azazel’s grand plans. In short, a bad day for everyone.

And now - to learn it was much worse than you could have ever imagined? Well, it almost makes you want to laugh.

You don’t laugh; you have the feeling that if you start right now, you might never stop.

“And you never jumped again - until now?” you confirm.

“I never tried again,” Keith says. “Hell, I didn’t even try the first time. It just happened. Adrenaline, maybe. I was desperate.”

“And this time?”

“I didn’t try, but…I didn’t not try, either,” Keith admits hoarsely. “It was just…something I suddenly knew I could do.” He glances at you from out of the corner of his eye when he adds, in a low hush, “I could do it again, too, if I needed; I can feel it.”

Is this what it feels like to have a stroke? You desperately grapple for words, any words, that will do this revelation justice.

“But - how?” you finally sputter. “That’s my power. How can you have both yours and mine?”

“Your powers have gotten stronger since you came back,” Keith points out, with a new bite to his tone. “I guess mine have, too.”

“But there’s a logical reason for why I’m different now,” you argue. “Being miraculously resurrected? It kind of makes sense why my powers would grow. But what about you, Keith? Huh? What’s changed for you in the last year? What have you-”

You cut yourself off. But the question is loud and clear, an unspoken accusation that you’ve levied at Keith ever since you dug yourself out of your own grave.

“Never mind,” you mutter. “Forget it. We’ll…talk about this later.”

Keith nods mutely, gaze fixed firmly on the dashboard. You continue driving, the inside of the car coated in a thick layer of terrible silence. The inside of your head is anything but. Keith. The intrusive thoughts of him fill your mind, exciting your nervous system into an irrational, hysterical dread. Keith. You imagine gripping his shoulders and shaking him as hard as you can. Keith. You slam him up against the wall of the motel. What have you done? He tries to jump away, but you’re stronger, faster. You certainly have more experience. You hunt him down mid-flight, slamming into him so hard that you’re both ejected from the abyss, rolling across the ground in a tangle of limbs until you gain the upper hand again and force him down, forearm across his pale, soft throat. What have you done-?

“Shiro?”

You blink, and Keith’s voice anchors you back to the moment. The car is parked outside of your room. You’re still sitting in the driver’s seat. Keith stands by your door, peering in at you with concern.

“Shiro, are you alright?”

“Yeah, yeah. I’m fine.” The fantasy dispels itself completely as you blink again, rapidly, clearing the cobwebs from your brain. You snag the keys out of the ignition, and with a push of the door, you’re out of Black and following Keith into the motel room.

Keith immediately collapses onto the bed.

“Need t’ recharge,” he mutters, before pulling a pillow over his face to block out the light.

“Sure. Me too.”

You sit down on the unused bed, still expertly made, duvet corners sharp and tucked. Unlace your boots before kicking them onto the floor. And you try to fall asleep, too. You really do try. But if you can’t, if the peace and darkness of sleep is as elusive as an unfaithful lover, if you spend the entire three hours Keith’s unconscious just staring at him, and the way he sleeps, and breathes, and drools into the bedding ever so slightly-

Well. That’s your business - and no one else’s.

What have you-

***

IV. THEN:

“-done in there yet?” Knuckles rap sharply on the bathroom door as Keith’s voice carries through the thin barrier. “Come on, old timer, we’re going to be late for this stupid thing if you take any longer.”

You add the last dab of pomade to your hair before wiping your hands on your towel. Then finally throw open the bathroom door to present yourself to Keith on the other side.

“Well, what do you think?” you ask, as you step out of the dim motel bathroom.

Silence as Keith stares at you. You can’t help fidgeting under his scrutiny, needlessly adjusting your cufflinks.

“What?” you say finally. “Suit doesn’t fit? It has been a while since we used them-”

“Oh shut up,” Keith grouses. “You know you look good.” He gestures weakly to your tux, which was creased and wrinkled from storage before you took the iron to it just hours earlier.

“You can pull off anything,” Keith continues. “I’m the one who looks like I raided some rich fucker’s laundry basket.”

You allow yourself a moment to look Keith over head to toe. The suit he wears is a rich, deep purple color, a linen modern fit with peak lapels that Keith salvaged from a second-hand store two states over. As such, it has a worn quality to it, but nothing that couldn’t be dismissed as years of loyalty to a favored garment. You were surprised by his choice at first, though you shouldn’t have been; Keith is a consummate artist, with an artist’s soul. Of course he would be drawn to the more avant-garde option.

“That’s only because you’re not confident in it,” you say finally. “You let the clothes wear you.”

“Yeah? Well, how do I stop doing that?”

You frown as you pause to think for a second, taking in Keith’s chagrined stance, the self-conscious slump of his shoulders. “Imagine I’m about to attack you,” you suggest. “How would you stand, then?”

Instantly, Keith stands to his full height, shoulders squared and one foot slipping back until he’s reached a perfect fighting stance. Not quite the demeanor that is befitting a five-star restaurant, but he looks confident and dangerously in his element.

“That’s better,” you praise. “…now just keep that same attitude through the rest of the night, and you’re golden.”

Keith huffs. “I still don’t get why we’re doing this,” he mumbles as he follows you to the door.

You grin at him. “It’s a surprise. You’ll like it…I’m pretty sure.”

***

The secluded mountain town of Telluride, Colorado isn’t particularly known for its culinary prowess, but it is known for its luxury ski resorts - which come complete with 4-star Michelin restaurants. And after finishing up a particularly grueling werewolf hunt, you and Keith are owed a bit of fine wining and dining, if you do say so yourself. You’re especially pleased to note that, when you do walk into the restaurant, you fit right in with the other patrons. Just two young, wealthy men - brothers, maybe - on an extended vacation at the lodge.

You don’t bother with a smarmy smile for the hostess as you stroll up to the podium. Sometimes, it’s better to go for pure, unadulterated confidence, the type that rolls off of the other patrons in heady waves. After all, they’ve never known heartache or rejection, not a worry or care to give their ego pause; they were born with a silver spoon in their mouth, and they’ll be happy to suck away on it until the day they die. You should know; you still savor the metallic aftertaste on your own tongue.

You tell the hostess: “We have a reservation. Two for Armstrong.”

She consults her notes, then flashes you a demure smile.

“Your table is ready. Right this way, Mr. Armstrong.”

You allow her to lead the way, catching Keith’s gaze in the process. He quirks an amused eyebrow.

“Mr. Armstrong? Really? You’ve always said that name is too obvious,” he accuses.

“Well, it’s a special occasion,” you murmur back, barely able to restrain your grin.

“It is?”

“Mm-hmm.”

Keith accepts this explanation, although you can see from his thoughtful frown that he hasn’t quite let it go. It isn’t until you’ve sat at your table for two, napkins folded over your laps, that he broaches the subject again.

“Okay - what’s going on? I don’t get the angle,” Keith confesses in a hushed whisper. He casts an uneasy glance around the room. “Who are we here to tail?”

“What? No, no - there’s no angle, Keith,” you say with an easy laugh. “No case.”

“No case?”

“None whatsoever,” you confirm. “We’re here for pleasure, not work.”

Keith’s glower deepens; he’s still clearly discomfited by the notion that this outing might be purely recreational. He takes another skittish look around, at the casual opulence of the haves displayed so grandly before you.

“So…what’s the special occasion, then?” he asks, brow quirked into a divot of honest befuddlement.

“You don’t know?” Now that surprises you. Although perhaps, with his mind so occupied with the future, Keith doesn’t take note of important, sentimental dates. The idea that he truly hasn’t made the connection fills you with a kinetic kind of glee; you can’t wait to see the look of realization on his face when you tell him. You allow yourself a genuine, private smile, soft and heavy. Keith shivers and curls up under your warm regard like it’s a cozy fall sweater.

“Two years ago to the day,” you announce, “I picked your scrawny ass up off the side of the road. I figure we should celebrate.”

“…We didn’t celebrate last year?”

“Maybe not, but we should have,” you decide. “This is a special day, after all. It’s like our anniversary.”

Keith reddens furiously, a spike of color high across his nose and cheekbones. You can’t help but roll your eyes at his reaction.

“Oh, you know what I mean.”

“Yeah, I do.”

Something about how the words flip off his tongue, so laden with ill humor, almost spiteful - well, it perks your interest. And what’s that supposed to mean? - you’re about to ask, but just then a waiter arrives at your table to take your drink order.

“The best champagne you have,” you tell him.

When he leaves, Keith leans in slightly, a worried look pinching his young, open face.

“We’re not going to dine and ditch, are we?” he asks you.

“What-? No!” you sputter. “Why would we do that?”

“It’s just, this place seems really swanky. You know - not our usual style,” Keith mumbles.

You wave off his trepidation. “Don’t worry about it,” you say, “I’ve got this covered.”

“Yeah, but-”

“Keith. Money isn’t an issue,” you stress, voice pitched low and as commanding as possible. “I promise, we’re good.”

Keith doesn't look mollified, exactly, but he does drop the point. The tension, however, remains on his face, creasing into thin lines around his mouth and eyes, aging him beyond his years, and you feel a little frisson of guilt. This is a conversation you should’ve had much earlier in your partnership, one that will become more difficult to have the longer you let it go unaddressed. Because the truth is, while you and Keith live it rough, scraping and skimping, surviving off of your ill-gotten gains - you don’t necessarily have to. There are off-shore accounts you can tap into, and have, in the past. You’ve never truly been in danger of going hungry. But in the lonely, lonesome years before Keith, when it was just you on the open road, you got used to a certain bare-bones, rustic lifestyle. Eschewing comfort felt like a rebellion, and a punishment, self-righteously inflicted as it was. And once Keith entered your life, it seemed natural to continue on as you had been. You’ve grown to regret that omission recently, though. It feels like a dirty lie, to affect destitution, when you have several nest eggs that you’re sitting on - even worse, because you know that Keith came from difficult circumstances. Hiding your means from him seems like an insult somehow, another secret you’ve kept up as a shield between the two of you, and yet - the thought of revealing your wealth makes you balk, now. It would just be another self-inflicted barrier, another uncrossable chasm, between you and the boy you so selfishly want to keep close.

“What’s wrong?” Keith asks. “You’ve gone quiet.”

“Nothing. Just - thinking,” you tell him.

The champagne arrives just in time to stop you from another internal spiral. You raise a flute, and Keith mimics you, delicately clinking the rims of your glasses together.

“To our partnership,” you declare. “May we have many more years ahead of us.”

Keith smiles “We will,” he promises you, and you feel a vein in your temple throb.

“See? That. That right there.” You point a playfully accusing finger. “Jesus. You do that all the time. I can’t believe how fucking obvious it was.”

“Do what?” The look Keith gives you is wide-eyed and guileless.

“Now, now. Don’t play dumb, Spitfire,” you chide harshly.

“No, really - what am I doing?”

Keith’s eyes grow even wider, his pout dropping open in bafflement - and, okay, now he’s convinced you. Sometimes Keith really just is that oblivious.

“That little thing you do, where you - say something leading,” you explain. “For the longest time, I was sure you were always making jokes at my expense, and the punchlines were just sailing over my head.” You shake your head despairingly, “But now that I know - god, Keith, you’re fucking hilarious.”

Keith squints dubiously at your open mirth. “…You’re making fun of me, aren’t you.”

“What? No! No! I -” You sigh as you try to course-correct. “All I was trying to say is that - I’m glad you don’t hide things from me, anymore. I’m happy that I can be in on the jokes, too.”

Keith nods as he processes your words, his eyes alighting with faint mischief.

“To be fair,” he says, with a growing dangerous smirk, “I wasn’t really trying to hide anything. It’s not my fault that you’re just woefully unobservant.”

You cluck your tongue in light disapproval as you reach for your champagne glass again.

“Ah, so you’re of the school of thought that lies by omission are not, in fact, lies.”

Keith shifts forward, placing both elbows on the edge of the table as he leans into you - which is terribly uncouth, though you’ve resolved not to mention it. “I wouldn’t say that, exactly,” he muses aloud. “Lies by omission are…because you don’t want to hurt someone. You want to keep them safe. You - you really care about them.”

You can’t help the wry smile that your lips twitch up into, only slightly bitter around the edges.

“Ignorance doesn’t guarantee you safety, Keith,” you remind him gently. “I learned that the hard way. Hell, so did you. Or you must’ve, when you were younger.” A thought occurs to you then, uncomfortable and prickling, but you would be a hypocrite to keep it silent now.

“Your power…it changes the way you think, doesn’t it?” you hazard carefully. “The way you see the world, the way you experience reality - it’s completely different from the rest of us mere mortals.”

“I wouldn’t say…”

You raise an eyebrow, daring him to continue down that line of falsehood. Keith huffs in defeat.

“Alright,” he admits, “maybe a little. I remember how I was like from - from before, and…I guess you’re right. I see things different now. But - doesn’t everyone?” he counters. “Everyone grows up. Everyone matures, in their own way.”

He has a point. And yet, he’s conveniently managed to dodge your own. You can’t help your rueful smile.

“Sure. Everyone changes,” you agree.

Keith mirrors your tight smile, his knuckles whitening as they grip harder over the stem of his glass.

“But not us, right? We’ll stay the same, in all the ways that matter,” he murmurs, near-fervently. “Like you said: partners.”

“Of course. Partners,” you echo. “For as long as you’ll have me.”

Keith seems to be satisfied with that; he eases back into his seat with a loose bonelessness that you rarely see. He looks good like that, languid and regal, with all the easy confidence of an insolent little prince. You wish you could witness him like this more often. For that reason alone, you do your best to steer the conversation back into safer waters. Which is easy enough, because all you really need to do is to ask Keith about the newest rabbit-hole conspiracy theory that he’s been venturing down lately, and he’s off, special-interest dumping about Area-51 to his heart’s content. You owe your waiter a generous tip, because he saves you not too long into the deluge by returning to your table with two small plates, a single raw oyster cracked open and placed on each, served to you with a flourish.

“We didn’t order this,” Keith states with his usual off-putting abruptness. The waiter, bless his soul, is a consummate professional, taking it all in stride.

“Of course, Sirs. Compliments from the chef.”

Keith throws you a questioning glance. You motion for him to hold his questions with a slight wave of your hand.

“Thank you,” you tell the waiter. Then, once he’s left, turn to Keith and say: “It’s an amuse-bouche. It’s meant to excite the palette, get you ready for the courses to come.”

“Courses? Plural?”

“Well, of course,” you grin with a wink. “We’re living high on the hog tonight.”

Keith rolls his eyes as he picks up the wrong fork.

“Just so you know, you’re way too young to be using dad jokes as often as you do,” he tells you. “Hell, you don’t even have a kid.”

“I’ve got something better than a kid,” you remind him with a fond smile. “I’ve got you.”

“Yeah,” Keith echoes, with a strange little wobble of his voice. “You’ve got me.”

Eating the amuse-bouche turns out to be an unexpected trial in and of itself. You slurp yours down with no contest; you’ve always loved seafood, and raw oyster is no different. Keith, on the other hand - you watch him eye the oyster before him with deep suspicion written into his brow. When he finally takes up the correct cocktail fork at your gentle prompting, he looks like a man being led to the gallows.

“It’s just salty, that’s all,” you cajole.

“It’s slimy. It’s gray.” Keith gives you an unimpressed look as he pokes the offending item with a covert finger. “It’s the consistency of snot.”

“Keith. No manhandling the food.” Keith drops the offending hand reluctantly; you give him your best puppy-eyes, a brutally effective weapon that you only utilize under the direst of circumstances.

“Eat it for me,” you say.

Keith glowers. “Fine,” he snaps. “But you let me drive us back to the motel.”

“Deal,” you say instantly.

Maybe you should’ve just dropped the whole thing, because the moment Keith gets the oyster into his mouth, he almost spits it back out again, one hand flying up to cover his mouth as he starts to heave.

“Come on, Keith, swallow,” you order.

Keith flushes, sputters, almost chokes, but manages to get the rest of the oyster down, his throat working painfully through his disgust.

“That was the worst thing I’ve ever eaten in my life,” he declares as soon as he can speak.

You laugh. You can’t help yourself. Peels of genuine mirth, a full-bellied chuckle that shakes you apart from the inside out.

“Yeah, yeah. Laugh it up,” Keith grumbles. “I’m glad I can give you some joy in your old age.”

But it brings you such a sense of pleasure to show Keith the world - whether that’s in the backcountry or a four-star Michelin restaurant. Your boy’s lived vicariously for so much of his life - usually straight through you, as you’ve so recently learned. It brings you the greatest joy to give him memories of his own. And if that includes wining and dining, well, you’re happy to make that sacrifice.

You end up ordering for the both of you, since Keith is still hemming and hawing over the menu options. He throws you a pathetically grateful look when you take the choice, and the menu, out of his hands. You get the tuna tartare for yourself, and the beef carpaccio for Keith. For the second course, A5 wagyu steak for you both - medium rare. Anything more than that would be akin to a war crime. Keith isn’t picky, at any rate; he never is, when it comes to food, always gobbling up whatever’s in front of him with gusto. But you watch as, this time, he tries to pace himself, savoring the courses as they come.

You’re waiting for dessert options, Keith looking sated and full and finally semi-at ease, when you happen to glance back at the entrance of the restaurant - and any ounce of relaxation you’d attained during the evening immediately evaporates from your body.

“Shit.”

“What?”

“We’ve got trouble,” you murmur. “At your four.”

Keith surreptitiously cranes his neck in that direction as he pretends to give a lengthy stretch of his arms.

“The two guys by the door?”

“Yeah,” you confirm. Just by the entrance, two white men in over-large black windbreakers are standing close to the welcome podium, dark shades obscuring their eyes. They look hilariously out of place, and the way they’re scanning the dining room sends frissons of unease down your spine. Whether they’re local law enforcement, private investigators, FBI agents - hell, even fellow hunters - it’s not worth it to find out.

Keith nods, clearly in agreement with your assessment.

“…so what was that about not ditching?” he needles you.

“We’re leaving money,” you protest, already rifling through your wallet and pulling out a wad of cash. You ease your weight onto the balls of your feet as conspicuously as you can, readying yourself for a quick dash if need be.

“Get up now; go to the bathroom,” you order Keith. “Don’t run.”

“Not my first rodeo,” Keith retorts, but he gets up slowly, casually, folding his napkin and laying it over the back of the chair like you taught him. You watch as he walks through the sea of tables with a steady gait, and then you shift so that you can get an eye on the entrance once more. The two men still don’t seem to see you - but now one is conversing with the hostess as the other continues to scan the crowd. You attempt to hunker down as far as you can without drawing any excess attention to your movement, but that’s not exactly easy, considering your size; you settle for slowly sliding your ass down in your chair, legs splaying out under the table as you shoot for an image of drunken drowsiness.

Your aim is to let at least a full minute elapse before you get up to follow Keith, a staggered exit. But time is not on your side tonight. Before you even get to 45-Mississippi, one of the two men clearly spots you among the crowd. He gives his partner a tug on the sleeve, directing the other man’s attention over to you.

Goddammit.

The really annoying thing about all of this? The little detail that just grinds your gears? You could easily escape. It would be faster than blinking, simpler than breathing - just a quick jump between here and freedom. But - great power comes with great responsibility. That, and the Garrison would skin you alive if they ever caught wind of you so casually utilizing your power around civilians. So here you are instead, pretending that you suddenly need to piss, too, and booking it through the tables, your gait turning into a light jog as you draw closer to the back of the restaurant.

Heavy feet fall behind you. You pick up the pace.

“Stop! Police!”

Now you break into a flat-out run. Distantly, you recognize the sound of tables being overturned, glassware breaking, the shocked screams of a female patron and loud, vicious expletives, but you don’t look back. Especially not when the fire alarm starts to sound, followed quickly by the main lights shutting off in the room; confused pandemonium sweeps through the entire dining room as panicking diners begin to rise and hurry for the front exit. You shoulder your way through the crowd, a fish against the current, until you burst from the throng of people and through the double doors of the kitchen, whereupon you immediately run into a cart of dishes and send two stacks of them crashing to the ground.

“God-fucking-dammit!” You clutch your injured knee, halfheartedly hobbling around one of the prep stations and towards the first emergency exit you see, when the double doors behind you slam open again, and you whip around to see White Man #1, gun drawn as he frantically scans the room. When he finds you, he trains his weapon immediately, albeit with a slight wobble of - fear?

“Shirogane!” he shouts. “Hands up, you fucking freak!”

Fuck it. You grasp the first thing off the cart that you can touch, and with as much torque as you can manage, fling a freshly cleaned saute pan at the guy’s head. He barely ducks in time, cursing as the gun slips out of his grasp and skitters across the floor. You’ll take what you can get, using that half-second of misdirection to throw yourself headlong into the void.

Your exit is less than elegant, a flail of limbs as you fall out of the void and roll onto the asphalt outside of the restaurant. Black’s idling five paces in front of you, passenger door thrown open. You scrape yourself off your ass, limping to the car and falling into the leather seat.

“Hey, Earth to Shiro: put your seatbelt on,” Keith grouses, as he throws the car into drive. You comply with a groan; somehow, in your chaotic escape, you also managed to tweak your right shoulder. Keith gives you the side-eye as you wince and rub at the muscle.

“You okay, Old-Timer?”

“Sure. Just, you know - old.” You give your shoulder one last slow rotation for emphasis. “I’m assuming that was you?” you add. “With the lights and the fire alarm?”

Keith raises one hand up in response, palm out. His skin is dyed a bright blue that, you know from personal experience, won’t wash off for at least a week. You rub a hand across your mouth to hide your fondly disapproving smile.

“Let me guess - you saw all that coming?” you hazard.

“Mm, more like a feeling.”

“A feeling, huh?”

“Yeah. That you can’t be covert for shit.”

“Hey, it’s my height,” you complain. “There’s only so much I can do.”

“Ah, yes. The burden of having the physique of a Grecian god,” Keith snarks. “How could I forget?”

“Jesus,” you hiss, bracing your hand against the car door. “Take the curve a little faster, would you?”

From where he’s lounged proudly in the driver’s seat, Keith flashes you a wicked smile. “You only had to ask.”

“Keith!-” You grit your teeth as Black accelerates into another curve. “I think we lost them,” you say, when you can work your jaw freely again. “They’re not gonna give chase.”

“How do you know? You psychic too, now?”

“They weren’t law enforcement,” you say, ignoring the jab. “Too disorganized, too unprofessional.” Not that real law enforcement have ever been consummate professionals, in your experience, but - “The one who caught up to me, he…struck me as hunting material,” you say vaguely.

“Great,” Keith mutters. “So we’ve got hunters on our trail? We haven’t even done anything that bad recently.”

You sigh, pinching the bridge of your nose with aggressive force. “This is why we work alone, for the most part,” you point out. “Hunters aren’t known for being the most level-headed. Or the most accepting.”

Keith hums in sudden understanding; his knuckles tighten over the leather steering wheel, pale skin and fine bone jagged against the black.

“Fuckers,” he hisses. “Cowards. Fucking cornering us when we’re surrounded by civilians. I should turn this fucking car around, meet them in the parking lot-”

“Or,” you break in, before Keith can spiral further down his wounded-honor fantasy, “instead of getting ourselves shot at for no good reason: how about we forget about them, and continue to enjoy our night? We haven’t finished what we started.”

Keith throws you a highly incredulous look. “…finish what we started?”

“Well, I did promise you a full-course dinner,” you remind him pompously. “And I believe that means dessert.”

You watch Keith’s shadow-hooded eyes as the lust for vengeance wars with the desire for more food. Luckily, he’s still a growing teenage boy - you know which will win out.

***

The first thing you do is go back to the motel; luckily, no one’s waiting for you there, and it doesn’t seem like any intruders were poking around in your absence. It takes all of five minutes for you to vacate, bags slung haphazardly into the back seats, and then you and Keith are on the road again. You swing by a gas station to refill, and while Keith’s occupied at the pump, you purchase the ingredients you’ll need at the service counter. Then it’s back to the open road. You put at least an hour between you and Telluride for safe measure, Keith drowsing in the shotgun like usual, as carefree as a cat in sunshine - but somewhere near after midnight you ease off the gas pedal, and begin to scan the road for spots to stop. It doesn’t take too long to find a highway rest stop, just outside of Norwood, lot mostly empty and building unattended. You park as close to the woods as you can, and then you and Keith tramp into the darkness, not too far away from the noise of the highway, but just off the beaten path enough where you can build a fire without anyone crawling up your ass about it. Keith watches as you build the kindling, then the tinder, and helps you find larger sticks to add on once the tepee catches. Then you pull out the graham crackers, the Hershey’s bar, and the marshmallow packet that you picked up at the gas station.

“As promised,” you say with a grin. “Our final course of the evening: good ol’ all-American dessert.”

Keith watches with rapt attention as you spear two marshmallows straight through their middle, his eyes aglow under the flickering firelight.

“I’ve never made s’mores before,” he says offhand, almost shyly, when you hand him a stick. And you’re sure he doesn’t mean to, but it’s these little confessions that wound your bleeding heart and rip it open, a silent massacre within your chest cavity. You smile through the ache as you reach out to ruffle Keith’s mop of dark hair.

“Well, there’s a first time for everything,” you proclaim. Then sit back to watch as Keith eagerly thrusts his marshmallow much too low into the campfire, laughing at his expense when he promptly sets it alight. He has more luck on the second try, although his marshmallow still comes out fairly black, bubbling up with utter carbonization.

“You know, this is the best meal you’ve ever put together,” Keith tells you through a mouthful of cracker as he polishes off his s’more. Because, yes, har har, you’re a terrible cook, aren’t you just so clever, Keith -

You roll your eyes, trying to huff off your irritation. “Well, since we were so rudely interrupted…”

Keith licks marshmallow residue off of his fingers with an obnoxious smacking sound. “Yeah, about that,” he says. “Do you think they were Garrison?”

You scrub a hand over the prickles of your undercut as you pretend to give it some serious thought.

“…no, no. That wouldn’t be their style,” you say. “They have a code, of sorts. Public confrontations and civilian witnesses are strictly off-limits.”

“Could be two agents going rogue.”

Now that really makes you laugh. “Garrison Agents don’t have enough imagination to even consider insubordination.”

Keith raises one dark eyebrow. “Except for you?”

“Yes, well - I’m a special case,” you demur.

“Yeah. Very special.”

You swat at Keith with the sticky end of your s’more stick. “Brat,” you mutter affectionately.

“Nerd.”

You lapse into comfortable silence as Keith polishes off his first s’more and begins prepping his second. It’s a trip, to watch those hands work, skewering another marshmallow with a gentle control that implies tamed violence. He’s a bundle of contradictions, your boy, and many of those are due to the life he lived before he met you. But sometimes, you can’t help but think - the danger, the violence, the sharpness and the secrets, wrapped up inside such a young, tenderhearted man, well - your influence can’t have been helpful, to say the least. What would Keith be, if he’d never met you? - you wonder idly as you watch him bite into his second s’more, graham cracker dust crumbling from his fingertips. But then, it’s a moot question; it was his power, not yours, that brought you together. And it’s beyond your power to let him go.

“I’m glad I found you first,” you murmur, mostly to yourself as you watch Keith lick melted chocolate off his fingers. But he hears you, pausing mid-swipe of his tongue, head cocked in curiosity.

“What do you mean?”

“Well, it’s just…lucky,” you reflect. “That we came together. That someone else didn’t scoop you up.”

“Well, we were kind of predestined,” Keith says with a sardonic smile. “But…what do you mean, someone else?”

You decide to quit playing the role of mysterious mentor. “Someone like the Garrison,” you tell him bluntly. “If one of their operatives had ever come across you, well - they’re not very big on catch and release. They would’ve kept tabs on you for the rest of your life, at the very least. But more than likely, they’d have taken you back with them.”

Keith frowns. “You hardly ever talk about the Garrison,” he says quietly, after a moment’s pause. “Is…that what happened to you? Did they - take you?”

You snort humorlessly. “Oh, it’s not so sinister as what you’re imagining,” you reassure him. “They - tried, I suppose. Tried to detain me, at least. But they quickly realized that was an exercise in futility - for obvious reasons.” You gesture vaguely around yourself, as if to illustrate your space-warping ability.

“Then why’d you go with them?” Keith asks, with such genuine confusion that it throws you off-kilter. It’s because you’re so used to him already knowing, you realize, so much of your life laid out before him in intimate detail, like a painstakingly rendered map for his easy perusal. Only a little over a year since the Big Reveal, as you’ve taken to calling it, and it feels almost natural now, for Keith to know your past, your habits, your likes and dislikes, better than you do.

“…I went with them because I had no one else to go to,” you say, throat hoarse with honesty. “I knew the supernatural world existed - I’d seen proof of it. I’d been touched by its evil, marked - but I needed more than that. I needed knowledge. The Garrison was happy to provide.”

Keith hums in acknowledgment; you can almost imagine him filing that new piece of information away in the vast library of Shiro that he keeps. “From what all you’ve told me about them, I’m surprised they didn’t try to dissect you,” he says, with a rueful smile. You feel your own lips twitch in answer.

“Looking back, I’m surprised, too,” you admit. “But Commander Iverson saw something in me, I guess. He took me in, treated me just like any of the other recruits. I’m - grateful, for what he did for me. I was a bit of a mess back then.”

“But you still left.”

“…yeah.”

“Why?”

“They were…very black and white in their thinking,” you hedge. “More so than even your average hunter.”

“They never trusted you.” Keith hazards, and you nod slowly.

“That’s the main reason I left the Garrison,” you confess. “They always saw me as more of an asset than a person. After a while, I realized - all of the information at my fingertips, all the knowledge I was given, the weaponry at my disposal - it wasn’t worth the cost of being seen as less than human. I didn’t want that for myself. I - would never want that for you.”

Because you know instinctively - the Garrison would crush Keith. They would take all of that fiery, untapped potential, all of that rage and loyalty and kindness, and compress it down into super-massive nothingness. No, it’s unthinkable, that their cold, dispassionate hands might have shaped Keith in another life, molded him, broken him down into his basest parts only to reconstitute him as a weapon for their use. Much better, for you to keep him instead.

“I’m so glad I found you,” you admit aloud, once again, and more emotion bleeds into the words than you meant. “Or, that you found me. I know that I - reacted poorly, at first, when you told me about your power, but Keith - you must know how thankful I am that we’re together. Because I’ve never found anyone else who understands me so completely. We’re - kindred spirits, you and I.”

Keith quirks an eyebrow, the corner of his lip twitching in amusement. “Kindred spirits, huh?”

“Well, you know what I mean: we’re the same, fundamentally. Cut from the same cloth. Like - brothers, in a way.”

“In a way,” Keith echoes quietly. For a moment, you can’t parse the expression on his face, whether he’s happy or uncomforted by that declaration. The firelight plays across his features, casting his inner thoughts in dappled shadow. But when he speaks again, his voice is measured, thoughtful.

“What are the chances, though? That it’s just us?”

“What do you mean?”

“…well, we can’t be the only ones,” Keith says slowly. “There have to be others like us out there.”

“We’ve both met psychics,” you remind him. “I knew this one psychic woman, out in Kansas. Her name was Missouri, ironically-”

But Keith shakes his head.

“No, they’re not like us,” he insists. “A normal psychic? They can talk to spirits. They have ‘feelings’. Maybe they can scry up a semi-accurate answer every once in a while.” His eyes burn into you. “But they don’t get visions every single time they close their eyes at night. They can’t see the future like I can. And they definitely can’t jump through the fabric of space-time.”

“…you do have a point.”

Keith gives you a vaguely haughty look, as though to say ‘well, of course.’ Little brat, you think, with a fond shake of your head.

“Then again, even if we ever did meet another person like us,” you muse, “who’s to say we’d even know? It’s not like we go announcing ourselves proudly to everyone we meet.”

“I’d see them,” Keith says, resolute. “I’d know.”

It’s not even arrogance, because he’s probably right. It still amazes you, how intricately Keith’s power seems to work. Of how haphazardly his sight comes and goes, how violently it visits itself upon him. How he bends it and trusts it in equal measure. He fears the future, but never his own ability. What you wouldn’t give, to possess that same steadfastness.

You know that Keith doesn’t understand your own scrupulosity when it comes to your abilities. He thinks it’s some guilt complex that you carry, which isn’t wrong - but it’s not the full truth, either. And how can he understand, without the added context of your own memories?

And suddenly, it hits you like a freight train, the urgent need to regurgitate your deepest, darkest secrets. You have no chance to get ahold of yourself; the words are already pushing up your throat, slipping through the cracks of your teeth before you even know what to say.

“I should tell you - I feel like I should tell you - because we should be on an equal playing field, at least when it comes to our abilities-” You grit your jaw, re-center through the pain, and try again.

“You know I don’t trust our powers,” you say. “You know that I think they’re - unnatural. Maybe even - evil, in origin. But I’ve never told you why.”

Keith says nothing, just watches you with unblinking focus.

“It’s because of how my power activated,” you tell him. “The circumstances behind it. It - wasn’t so dissimilar to yours, actually - which is partly why I’m suspicious. There was a fire, too. In my life. There was a fire, and people died.”

Your voice chokes up on the last words, cracking like you’re a teenage boy all over again. Keith frowns in sympathy.

“You don’t have to if you don’t want to,” he consoles you quietly. “You don’t have to say it. I already kno-”

“Don’t,” you plead. “Just - don’t. Please. I need to tell you this. Out loud, in my own words.”

Keith nods and, blessedly, stays silent.

“I had a…friend, in high school,” you begin. “My parents were - old-fashioned, you could say. They expected the best from me, so they gave me the best - and that included sending me to a prestigious all-male boarding school when I began 9th grade. And that’s where I met him. Adam.”

And oh, boy - saying that name, aloud, to the one person you’ve been at all close to in all the years since - it’s enough to give you vertigo. You swallow around the sudden excess of saliva, a prelude to nausea, your throat clicking with painful tightness as you grasp desperately for the right words. Keith only watches, dark eyes filled with curious hunger.

“Adam was my roommate,” you continue. “We were randomly assigned together, and frankly, when I first met him, I didn’t expect much. He was - quiet, and bookish, and so, so serious, all the time. I never saw him crack a smile, in the beginning.”

And you can see it in your mind’s eye, like it was yesterday: Adam with his perfectly coiffed hair, his white button-up shirt that he insisted on ironing in your dorm room every day, the look of disgust he would give you as you cracked open a can of spam and ate it straight from the tin while studying together in the library. He had such a classically handsome face, was so fussy and fastidious, the soul of a sixty-year-old professor trapped in the body of a child. But his eyes: those soulful chocolate brown eyes, glinting with good humor and wicked intelligence - you can remember that best of all.

“I didn’t know it at the time,” you admit, “but Adam would become my best friend. My brother, in everything but blood. We just - got along, you know? Once we ironed out our differences, we discovered we were more alike than dissimilar. And we began to spend all our time together, willingly, whether waking or sleeping. We ate together, we studied together, we shared most of our classes all four years. We were even both into the same niche sport. God, we must’ve spent thousands of hours together on the floors of the piste.”

Adam, in his white uniform, sweat beading on his brow, bangs already beginning to curl up from the humidity as you both took a short breather to chug water in between training matches. His smugly triumphant smile every time he landed a point against you; the unhappy little divot that would form between his eyebrows much more often whenever you scored your own. Bittersweet nostalgia sweeps through you at the memory of his poor sportsmanship.

“We both ended up applying for Berkley,” you continue, “and we both happened to get in. It only made sense that we share living quarters going into college, too, so we went in on an apartment together. And then…” you smile drops away. “A month out from our high school graduation…my parents died in a house fire.”

Keith makes an instinctive noise of pain, somewhere between a breath and a groan. His empathy tastes like ashes in your mouth. Swallow the acrid residue down, and force yourself to continue with the story.

“I was - devastated,” you admit quietly. “I almost didn’t finish the term. If it hadn’t been for Adam, forcing me out of bed, dragging me to finals, making sure I fucking ate - I don’t think I would’ve made it. He was my rock, during the aftermath. He was my reason for continuing. He convinced me to keep pursuing my dreams at Berkley. He was the strength that kept me going. And while that first year of college was one of the most painful of my entire life…he made it all worth it. We were living together, chasing our dreams together. We were - happy.”

The silence that surrounds you when you stop talking is as terrible as it is absolute. You almost wish that Keith would stop you now, tell you that he doesn’t need to hear what he surely already knows. Save you the agony of your memories, and fumbled linguistic abilities. But he doesn’t stop you. He just waits, patiently, as you gather yourself back together, emotions bundled and culled, like wheat for the scythe.

“Almost a year to the date that my parents died…I stayed late at the university library. Studying for…some test. I don’t even fucking remember what class it was for,” you say with a hateful scoff. “What I do remember is that it was dark, when I walked home. The apartment was dark, too. I remember thinking that was odd - Adam never liked dark rooms; they unnerved him. He’d turn on every lamp we owned when he got home - didn’t matter if he wasn’t using the room, he’d turn the lights on anyway. But it was so dark when I got home; I assumed he was out with friends, or at the gym, maybe. I was tired, so I went to our - to the bedroom, just splayed myself out blindly, laying on my back. I was so tired, I was going to go to sleep just like that, not even bothering to change. But then…then something hit my forehead. Splattered onto my skin. I opened my eyes and looked up.”

One of Keith’s hands has found its way to your own; he grips on with enough strength to anchor you into the moment so you can finish what you started, say what you need to say.

“…Adam was pinned to the ceiling above me,” you croak. “Like a butterfly. His mouth open, trying to - to scream, or call for me, but there was no sound. Just - blood. So much blood. All over his white, starched button-up - he’d been ripped open, and he was bleeding out, right in front of me, above me, onto me - and then the whole room burst into flames. They bloomed out from him like a flower. They consumed him. They rolled over the ceiling like an ocean, and the heat -”

You lose your voice. You lose your words; they escape you, like so many electrons, overcoming the gravity of your nucleus in a white-hot fission of atoms. Keith just looks at you, with wide, wet eyes. So full of liquid starlight, all the anguish in the world could be drowned inside of them.

“Shiro,” he breathes.

“…that was the very first time I jumped.” You admit it like a dirty secret, half-hushed and half-sobbed. “One moment I was in our bedroom, surrounded by fire, watching my best friend die in front of me…and in the next, I was outside, vomiting my guts up. In the cool night air, an entire three blocks down the street. I could see our whole rental go up in flames against the night sky.”

The silence returns, broken only by the occasional nighttime sound. Crickets in the grass. Owls in the wood. Keith continues to watch you, to sit in the silence with you, and even that is a mercy you don’t deserve.

“…so now you know why I don’t trust our powers,” you say quietly. “The circumstances behind how we got them are - suspicious, at best. And the very first time mine activated, it was for something - terrible.” Something for which you can never forgive yourself.

“Your power saved your life,” Keith says softly. You nod along in listless agreement.

But was it a life worth saving?

A sharp intake of breath; belatedly, you realize that last thought was realized aloud. When you look over to him, Keith is illuminated by indignation.

“Shiro-” But you cut him off before he can launch himself into a rant.

“Was it a life worth saving?” you ask him, quietly, steadily, a point-blank execution. “Is it right, for me to continue living, when better people than I have died? Innocent people, Keith.”

“You’re innocent,” Keith argues fiercely.

The look you give him is withering.

“I’ve killed people,” you remind him. “Not just monsters, Keith: humans. I’ve gotten people killed, too - civilians who trusted me, hunters who put their faith in me. I’ve stolen, I’ve lied, I’ve cheated. There isn’t much I haven’t done.”

“But that doesn’t mean that you deserve to die-”

“By all rights I should be dead,” you hiss. “These powers we have? They’re unnatural, Keith. We shouldn’t have them. You have to know that. We haven’t found anyone else like us - and why do you think that is? Because we’re freaks of nature, Kid. And the awful truth is, that if we were like everyone else - if I was like Adam - I wouldn’t be alive today. I would’ve burned up with him. I should’ve. I should be-”

You don’t even see the slap coming, Keith moves so fast. All you can compute is the whiplash of your neck, and the harsh sting across the entire left side of your face. Through the watering of your eyes, Keith’s rage radiates out from his face like the halo of an avenging angel.

“Don’t you - ever - say that to me again,” he growls. “I mean it, Shiro.”

You bury your face in your hands.

“I’m sorry, Keith,” you choke out. “I never meant to imply that you should’ve died-”

“I don’t fucking care about me,” Keith hisses. “I care about you. And I swear to God, if I ever hear you talk about yourself in that way again - about deserving to - I’ll fucking kill you myself, you hear?”

You nod miserably, the only answer your body is capable of right now. You feel defeated. You’ve been defeated, by memory and by loss - by Keith. You’ll do whatever he tells you, in this rare, open moment. You’ll be anything he wants, give him everything he desires. Your life, your promises, your wretched, hollowed-out heart - although you can’t possibly understand why he’d want any of it. All you have to offer is destruction.

But, because he’s a good man - the best you’ve ever known - Keith doesn’t ask. He won’t push his advantage. Instead, he reaches out to draw your face up away from the dark cradle of your hands, back into the light. Fingertips skim the heated skin of your reddened cheekbone. A tender, wordless apology, given in the ghost of a touch.

“…Thank you for telling me,” he says softly, at long last. “About your parents. About you and Adam. And about - what happened. And for what it’s worth…I didn’t know. I really didn’t.”

“No?” You don’t mean to sound so resentful; it leaks out anyway, in pitiful rivulets. But Keith takes your ire in good stride.

“Really, no, I didn’t,” he says. “But, well - I had theories. I can make an educated guess every once in a while. And…I agree with you, to some extent.”

You blink in utter bafflement. “You do?”

Keith gives you the look. “Not about our powers being evil,” he stresses, “but you’re right: our pasts are too similar to be coincidence, too suspicious to be natural. Someone did this to us. Someone gave us these powers, and burned up our families - burned up our lives. And one day - we’ll find them. We’ll find them, and we’ll destroy them. We’ll get justice for your parents. For Adam.”

In the dying firelight, his earnestness burns supernova. You don’t know what to do, with all of this misplaced devotion, handed over to you on a silver platter. You could declare a new crusade, and Keith would bear you away to the Holy Land right now, all of his ability and power bent to your cause and whim. He would be anything you want, give you anything you desire. All of him, offered up for your salvation.

“…I don’t want justice,” you hear your voice say. “What I want is - vengeance.”

“Then we’ll get you your revenge,” Keith promises, as easy as anything. A promise made with lips still sticky with s’more residue, a pact made hand-in-hand with chocolate-smeared fingers. The dying fire beside you, the only witness to your new oath.

Sometimes, very rarely, you wish Keith knew you in the way Adam did. On nights like this one, for example, when you push your advantage, and Keith so willingly signs himself over to your cause. It was Adam, you suppose, that knew you best, because Adam saw you for who you really were - and you’ve never been a good man.

***

V. NOW:

You wake up. To the sound of the soft shuffling of boots across carpet, the click of a lock, then the quiet open and shut of the motel door. Crane your head from where you’ve buried it in your pillow so that you can catch sight of the red digital clock face. It’s not even 4 AM, and Keith’s left.

He’s been doing that a lot lately. Leaving in the middle of the night. Going off on his own during the day. Receiving phone calls at odd times, then disappearing for hours on end. Not that you need to know where he goes every hour of the day, of course not. But there’s an air of secrecy that permeates the room, now, each time Keith returns from whatever clandestine excursion he was on. You don’t know what to make of it.

Keith returns just before 7 AM, slipping back through the motel door and closing it oh so softly and slowly behind himself. You pretend to still be asleep, eyelashes feathered together as you watch him through the slit of one eye. In the weak morning light, he looks almost sickly: purple shadows hollow out his under eyes and flush across his cheeks, seem to stretch down the corded lines of his neck, an almost lilac undertone to his pale skin. You resolve to make sure that he eats more throughout the day, and sleeps more, too. Maybe you should swing by a drugstore after breakfast, buy some iron supplements. Or some magnesium. Vitamin C? Fuck it, you’ll buy them all. Money’s no issue; only Keith’s willingness to actually swallow what you give him -

Goddamn.

You’re painfully hard against the mattress, lazy morning wood transformed into a fully-fledged boner by that single errant thought. You grit your teeth silently, even as your hips surreptitiously grind themselves into the bedding, a mind of their own, undulating in stilted, shameful, half-aborted motions. As Keith shucks off his jacket, completely unaware of your covert degeneracy.

No. No. Bad-wrong. Don’t even think about it. With herculean effort, you still the slight motion of your hips. Then wait a few moments as Keith is preoccupied with slipping silently into the perfectly made adjacent queen bed; he’s so focused on his task that he hasn’t even realized that you’re awake, much less that you’ve been humping your own mattress. Which - thank god for small mercies.

You pretend to wake up about ten minutes later, stretching theatrically as you give a resplendent yawn. Across from you, Keith is also in the process of “waking up;” he snaps peevishly at your obnoxious rustling, as though you’ve rousted him from rem cycle, which - it’s Oscar-worthy, really. The sleep-rumpled appearance, the grouchy glare- if you didn’t know better, you’d apologize for disturbing him.

“Why you over there?” you ask as Keith starts to get up. “This bed not good enough for you anymore?” You thump it for good measure and watch as Keith’s eyes refuse to meet your own, as he scratches at the back of his neck.

“You run too hot,” he mutters.

“Oh, really? Never bothered you before.”

“Yeah, well, it bothers me now,” Keith insists. “You’re like a fucking koala in the middle of the night, Shiro. You grab on and don’t let go.”

“Maybe I don’t want you wandering off,” you suggest, and oops, yep, there’s a little bit of steel in your voice now, an underlying bite to the playful banter.

“Where else would I go?” Keith responds. So guileless and open, even a little indent between his brows to indicate his genuine confusion. Your fingers twitch with the urge for violence.

“I don’t know. You tell me.” You say it lightly as you roll out of bed, throwing the comforter off of your body. You’re sick of playing this game, begun so soon after your dual promises of honesty. You decide to shower now, a good excuse to get some space from Keith, where you can brood in privacy. The bathroom door slams shut with a little more force than you meant to use.

It happens again several days later, this time during the afternoon when Keith goes off the grid for two solid hours. Not that you’re worried. Not that you desperately need him during that time, but - still. It would be nice to know where he goes. Especially when he seems intent on you not knowing.

You confront him about it when he gets back to the motel room, trudging through the door with an exhaustion that can’t be explained away by several hours of sightseeing.

“So what were you up to?” you drawl lazily as you watch him toe off his boots and shuck off his hand-me-down red leather jacket. Your hand-me-down, as it so happens. Keith shrugs as he collapses down into the opposite bed.

“Just chasing down a lead,” he demurs.

“Oh? Really? And do you have anything to share for the class?”

“Uh - no. It didn’t pan out.”

How convenient.

“Well, let me know if you find anything,” you tell him breezily. “I’ve been scrounging through the chat rooms all day. No luck so far.”

Unlike Keith, you actually do have visual proof of your investigative activities. The bed before you is spread out with books and papers, and several tabs are running on your computer, each on a different website that you like to use to monitor supernatural activity. Almost all of them run and moderated by amateurs and armchair enthusiasts, although there are several that you know for a fact are Garrison-affiliated. On the non-affiliated sites, you have to be more careful, but even then there are a few accounts that you’ve been able to verify are actual hunters like yourself. Between these newer methods, and the old time-trusted local newspapers, it’s only a matter of time before you get a hit.

“Where’re your reading glasses?” Keith asks suddenly, apropos of nothing.

“In my bag. I don’t need them anymore,” you say, with a bit more spite than is probably justified. After all, it isn’t their fault that your bum eyes which held you back all your life have magically healed after your resurrection. If anything, you should be thankful. Just another little miracle to add to your continued existence.

You can’t find it within yourself to feel very grateful at the moment.

Keith elects to ignore your histrionics; he throws himself into research as well, side-by-side with you. It could almost be considered companionable.

Thankfully, you do find a case to latch onto several days later, which saves you from any more directionless drifting, camping from motel to motel down the interstate. A string of men murdering their wives, all self-contained within the small town of Bedford, Iowa. Not the most salacious possible case, but the potential for more is better than nothing, and you need to focus on something else other than your own relationship problems.

You clear out of the motel you’re currently squatting in early during the morning, dragging your duffels and backpack and books back into the Impala. Keith meets you outside after returning the motel key, and he helps finish the transition. Somehow, though, you’ve still been stuck with the heaviest bags - including Keith’s duffel.

You’re not sure what possesses you in the moment, but suddenly the excess bags are on the ground, and you’re swinging Keith’s duffel as hard as you can, releasing the strap, and letting it sail out of your grasp and up onto the roof of the motel.

“Shiro! What the fuck, man?”

Keith is incensed. The books he’s been carrying get thrown to the wayside as he gesticulates wildly towards the roof. “I fucking need that, dude,” he hisses at you.

“Well, I guess you’ll have to go get it, then,” you say as you load the last of the bags into the car.

“And how am I supposed to do that?”

You slam Black’s trunk with a touch too much force.

“Why don’t you take a wild fucking guess.”

Keith is baffled; he stares at you wide-eyed and slack-jawed, clearly trying to puzzle out your intentions. When the penny finally drops, he’s just as scandalized as you imagined he’d be.

“No. Shiro, no! There’s people around! I could be seen!”

“So you could do it again. If you had to,” you muse.

“If I had to, yes. Didn’t I already tell you that?”

You shrug. “You made it sound like it was an adrenaline thing. A life or death thing.”

“It is! Sometimes. But I figured - I know that I could-!” Keith practically growls, frustration bleeding out of him in raw waves.

“You want proof?” he demands. “Is that it? Okay, well here’s-”

And then you watch, as Keith disappears and then reappears on the roof, slipping through the seams of the world as easily as breathing. He snatches up the strap of the bag before disappearing again, popping up in front of you once more without even breaking a sweat.

“-your fucking proof!” he finishes, throwing the duffel squarely into your chest.

You falter back a step, winded from the impact and the shock. The quickness, the level of control, the fluidity - it’s like nothing you’ve ever seen before. It’s out of this world. It is, frankly, unfair.

“…was that your first time? Doing it on purpose?” you ask slowly, and with each syllable you dread the answer you’ll receive.

Keith glares at you, as though somehow all of this is your fault.

“…yes,” he grits out.

It’s instinct to throw the duffel back at him, so hard and quick that Keith nearly bowls over from the force of it.

“Wow,” you say, “that’s really impressive, Keith. Just how the hell did you manage that? First you steal my power, and now you’re utilizing it like a pro. No training, just - what? Talent and instinct?” you sneer. “Now how do you think you’ve managed that? How do you have what’s mine?”

Keith meets your energy and matches it, baring his angry smile, eye-teeth glinting in the early morning light.

“I don’t know, Shiro. Maybe it’s because we’re soulmates. You ever think about that, huh?”

The statement is so ludicrous that it brings you to halt, all your spontaneous anger draining away in the face of Keith’s aggressive sentimentality. You try to scoff away the idea, and almost choke on your own tongue.

“Don’t be stupid,” you get out. The words feel flat in your mouth; they die in the air as soon as they’re uttered. You scrub a violent hand through your undercut as you drown in your own impotence.

“Just…stop screwing around and get in the car. We’ve got an active case on our hands,” you remind him weakly.

Keith follows your order without arguing for once, throwing his duffel into the backseat and slamming the door with a carelessness that borders violence. You don’t have to say anything; just a look is enough to chastise him. Although he doesn’t look particularly chastised. Just surly, and misunderstood.

He’s lying to you, a little voice whispers, in the back of your head. You barely manage to contain your derisive snort.

Of course he is. He’s made in your image, after all - and he learned from the best.

***

Next evening, and you do what you always do when you’re on the rocks with Keith, which is to call Allura and annoy her with your pedantic bullshit. It’s only when you hear her yawn into the speaker that you realize how late into the night it is.

“Shit, did I wake you up?” you ask, “I’m sorry, I can call back later-”

“No, no,” Allura assures you. “I was just in bed reading. You know I always have time for you.” Her voice dips into a playful tone. “So, in the doghouse again, are we?”

“Har har,” you snark, “but, uh…why do you say that?”

Allura laughs. “You only call me this late at night when you need a shoulder to cry on, Shiro. And as far as I know, Keith is the only boy that makes you cry.”

“I do not cry,” you say indignantly. “Not that I’d be ashamed of it if I did. But I don’t.”

“Hey, crying’s sexy!” a voice says in the background. “We stan a king who’s secure in his masculinity.”

It takes you a second to place a face to the disembodied voice, but when you do…

“…is that Lance? Am I on speaker-phone?” you ask Allura. Then a new thought dawns on you. “I thought you said you were in bed,” you accuse.

Allura sighs. “I am,” she says.

“With Lance? With Lance? With Lance?”

“Yeah, with Lance,” Lance snipes from the other end. “Hey, I don’t like your decided lack of confidence, Team Leader.”

“No! No. It’s…wonderful to hear! Just - unexpected,” you babble. “How did all of this…come to be, exactly? You two being together?”

Allura chuckles good-naturedly. “I wouldn’t say we’re together, necessarily. We’re…taking things slow. Testing the waters. We’re certainly not exclusive yet. We’re doing…what did you call it, darling?”

“Ethical non-monogamy,” Lance supplies.

“Ah, yes. Ethical non-monogamy,” Allura repeats happily. “You know, I understand that it’s very hip with the kids these days.”

You pinch the bridge of your nose to ward off a tension headache. God, do you feel old.

“Well, if it…makes you both happy,” you hedge. “I guess I just have a hard time wrapping my head around it.”

Allura laughs. “Well, Shiro,” she tuts, “that’s because you’re a serial monogamist.”

“And how would you know that? It’s been a very long time since I’ve been in a relationship. You don’t know what I get up to on the road,” you protest.

“I do know what you get up to, which is nothing,” Allura says pointedly. “Your conscience wouldn’t allow it. Not when you’re already so intimately involved.”

“Allura, I’m not with anyone,” you remind her.

“Aren’t you?”

It takes you an embarrassingly long few moments of silence to comprehend her meaning. When you do, you feel your whole body flush with horror.

“Allura!” you snap, “ that’s-” disgusting? “Keith is my- ” brother. Partner? Best friend. The child I practically fucking raised-

“Keith is Keith,” you settle on. Yes, that seems safest.

“Keith is Keith,” Allura agrees. “And what has our favorite little antisocial hunter gone and done to make you so upset this time?”

You have the sudden urge to smash your cell against the opposite wall, and by miracle of miracles you resist the impulse.

“Something happened on a case we just finished up,” you admit through clenched teeth.

“Oh? His fault, or your own?”

“No, it wasn’t anyone’s fault, nothing went wrong, it’s just - Keith has my power,” you blurt out bitterly. “He can teleport.”

An intake of breath over the line. Then a beat of silence.

“Well,” Allura says at last, “that is a new development.”

“That’s the thing,” you bite out. “It isn’t a development, not really. He says he did it once before, years ago - and he never told me. Not until now, when I literally caught him in the act. And I can’t shake the feeling, that - if I hadn’t witnessed it firsthand, he wouldn’t have said anything. If he could’ve gotten away with it, he would have lied to me again.”

“Now, Shiro, I’m sure you’re angry. This is…a lot to process - but I don’t think you’re being fair to Keith, here-”

“Fair to Keith?” you sputter. “Fair to Keith? Just two months ago, you were calling him a monster to his face, Allura - and now you’re worried that I’m not being fair to Keith? Why does everybody always take his side, anyway-?”

“Shiro.” Allura’s voice slices through your diatribe. “I know you’re upset and hurt. But you know Keith. You know he wouldn’t keep a secret like this just to hurt you. He’s many things, but a liar isn’t one of them. It’s not in his nature.”

“Lies by omission are still lies,” you mutter bitterly.

“Yes, they are,” Allura snaps back. “And may I remind you that you yourself are guilty of the exact same thing? Or did the hellfire burn away your memories of lying to all of us for three years straight?”

You feel shame color your cheeks; the tips of your ears are burning.

“I…you’re right. I don’t have the high ground with this one.”

“Not even a little bit,” Allura agrees pleasantly.

“I just - I thought we were trying to put this kind of stuff behind us. I thought we were done with keeping secrets. They’ve only ever broken us apart. I’m - committed to turning over a new leaf,” you promise. “I’m committed to change. And I guess I’m just hurt that Keith isn’t.”

Allura sighs into the receiver. You can’t see her face, of course, but you get the distinct impression that she’s rolling her eyes.

“Listen, Shiro. Keith can be impulsive, yes. He’s often resistant to teamwork, true. But I don’t believe he would’ve hidden something like this from you if he didn’t have a very good reason. Have you two…discussed this at all?”

“Uh-”

“And I mean a real talk: two adult men sitting down and having an actual conversation. Have you done that yet?”

“…”

“I’m going to take your silence as a ‘no’,” Allura says. Another beleaguered sigh rushes down the line. “Look, Shiro,” she says, “despite what you might believe, I am not your relationship counselor. You don’t pay me nearly enough for that.”

“…I don’t pay you anything.”

“Which is exactly my problem,” Allura tells you. “But I’m being serious here - you two need to talk to each other. You got yourself in the mess you did last time precisely because you thought you could handle all of your problems alone - and now you’re surprised that Keith does the same? He idolizes you, Shiro; you must know that. He mirrors all of your virtues, and all of your faults.”

“…you’re right,” you admit reluctantly, with a pained grimace.

“Of course I am, darling.”

Suddenly, a terrible thought occurs to you out of the blue. “Is…Lance still listening? Did he just hear all of that?”

“No, although I’m sure he would’ve loved to,” Allura says. “I kicked him out of the room as soon as I realized where this conversation was going.”

“Thank you. I - wasn’t thinking.” Keith is an intensely private person; he’d be loathe to find out you ever let his personal business be aired out with Lance in earshot.

“Though on a different note…” you hedge. “I do have a question for you. Have you ever heard of a hunter named Acxa?”

“Acxa? That’s quite a unique name,” Allura muses. “No, I can’t say that I have. Do you have a description?”

“…no, just the name,” you admit. “Although I think she’s around Keith’s age.”

“Well, I’ll keep an ear out for you. Is there a specific reason you want more information on this girl?”

“No! No. I’m just…curious. Doing my due diligence. Looking out for Keith’s best interest,” you ramble, your face burning as you do so.

“…right,” Allura says slowly. “…Listen, Shiro?”

“…”

“Rebuilding trust takes time,” Allura continues softly. “While it’s true that you two may have a…profound bond, you were absent from his life for a total of three years. He didn’t just go into stasis during the times you weren’t around: Keith’s lived his own life. He’s developed his own demons. Just because he loves you doesn’t mean he trusts you. And just because he trusts you with his safety doesn’t mean he trusts you with his heart.”

It’s painful to hear. But it’s necessary. Deep down you know that you’ve often treated Keith the way a child might treat their favored toy, playing incessantly with it for months on end, only to abruptly shelf it in favor of something else. Keith deserves more than your capricious attention; he deserves your deep and utter devotion, his own abiding fidelity reflected back upon him.

“All I want to do is keep Keith safe,” you tell Allura.

And to keep him mine. But that part goes unsaid.

***

Bedford, Iowa has a population count of 1,503 and is in the middle of Bum-Fuck, Nowhere. All you can say is thank god there’s a strip joint.

That’s not what Arthur Benson is saying, right now. Because if he hadn’t gone in, just that one time, he would never have fallen in love with the stripper - and then been arrested for the homicide of his wife.

“Well, I hope this magical stripper was worth it.” Beneath the interrogation table you sit at, Keith gives you a swift and discreet kick to your shin.

“Jasmine,” Arthur corrects you, a bit sharply. “Her name was Jasmine.”

Across from you both, Mr. Benson makes for a sorry sight. With hands handcuffed together in front of him, bloodshot eyes, and sad, drawn face, he does truly look the picture of repentance. Keith, you can tell, remains unmoved by his plight.

“Tell us about this Jasmine girl, then,” he orders.

Arthur gets a distant look in his eye. “She came right up to me. And, I don’t know…she was just - perfect. She was everything I ever wanted.”

“Well, if you pay enough, anybody will be anything,” you point out dryly. But Arthur is lost in nostalgia, his gaze far-off and love-lorn.

“No, it wasn’t about the money,” he insists. “It wasn’t even about the sex. It was…I don’t know. Transcendent connection. What people mean when they talk about soulmates, maybe.”

“…uh-huh,” you drawl.

“Did your wife find out about the affair, then?” Keith asks brusquely, all business and no fun. Arthur shakes his head miserably in response.

“No, she never had a clue.”

“Then why the hell did you kill her?” you demand.

“For Jasmine,” Arthur insists. “She said we’d be together forever. If only my wife was…” He shrugs helplessly. “Afterward, me and Jasmine were supposed to meet up, but she never showed. I don’t know where she lives, I don’t know her last name - I don’t even know her real first name.”

Arthur slumps over in defeat; you watch as he tries to bury his face in his hands. It’s a futile endeavor, with his handcuffed hands tethered to the table as they are, but it makes for an entertaining struggle. “God, I’m such a fucking idiot,” he moans.

“You didn’t tell the police any of this?”

The look Arthur manages to shoot at Keith is somehow both withering and soulless.

“What for? The stripper didn’t murder my wife - I did. And I know what I deserve,” he admits, eyes becoming unfocused as he stares past both you and Keith, into the vacant beyond. “If the judge doesn’t give me the death sentence, I’ll just do it myself.”

Your interrogation concludes shortly after that, Arthur’s usefulness to the case crawling to a halt. As you duck out of the police station and walk to the Impala, you give Keith a playful nudge of your elbow.

“Did you hear that back there? They were soulmates,” you tease him gently. Keith glowers anyway.

“I knew you were gonna mock me for that,” he mutters.

“Then why’d you say it?”

“Because -” But Keith bites his lip, abandoning whatever he was going to say. He flips you off instead as he slides into Black’s passenger side.

“Oh, right. Very mature.”

Keith continues to sulk next to you as you drive back to the motel. He pages through the dossier he’s been building, fingers drifting across the page as he reads, lingering over certain words.

“Huh,” he says after a while.

“You gonna share with the class?”

“All of the women have Disney Princess names. Jasmine, Belle, Aurora-”

“Didn’t peg you for a Disney Princess fan,” you quip.

Keith gives you the stink eye. “I’m not,” he protests, “but I grew up in the 90’s, not under a rock. Stick to the point, will you?”

“And what’s the point, exactly?”

“Well, don’t you think that’s a little suspicious? How many strippers from the same joint do you think would name themselves after a Disney Princess? Like, statistically?”

He’s right, that’s too big a coincidence to ignore; a spell or cursed artifact can be ruled out of your hunt.

“So we’re definitely looking for the same girl,” you conclude. “With a sick sense of humor, might I add. You thinking Skinwalker?”

“…maybe.”

Keith is checking his phone again, as he’s been doing semi-obsessively for the past several hours. It grinds at something tender and fragile within you; you grasp for the first conversational starter that you can think of to draw him out again.

“So. Disney, huh?”

“…yeah?”

“What’s your favorite Disney movie, then?”

Keith raises an unimpressed eyebrow. “Really? We’re in the middle of a case, and this is what you want to talk about?”

“…it’s good to just - have a conversation every now and then,” you argue. “We don’t always - talk as much as we should.”

Keith squints at you like he’s looking for the catch. “Tell me yours first,” he demands.

“Uh…” You fumble desperately for a title that comes to mind. “Treasure Planet, I guess.”

Keith snorts. “Yeah, I should’a known,” he says. “Space travel and pirates - how could you resist?”

“Oh, yeah? Well, what’s yours, smart-ass?”

You just happen to be glancing over to make a right-hand turn: that’s the only reason you catch Keith’s face turning red, a bright flush of blood warming his high cheekbones and spanning over the bridge of his nose.

“…it’s Mulan,” he mutters.

For some reason, you assumed he would say the Lion King. But his answer tickles you; you let out a sharp bark of laughter as you give him a playful nudge with your elbow.

“Mulan, huh? Why - you got a thing for warrior princesses?”

Keith gives you a look like you’re stupid. “Yeah, that’s the reason,” he says, and goes right back to ignoring you.

Things stay icy for the rest of the day, but Keith starts warming back up when it’s time to check out the strip joint. You get there before opening, parked in the back lot by the employee entrance as you stakeout who’s coming and going.

“Put those goddamn binoculars away,” Keith tells you, as he tries to snatch them from your grip. “You look like a fucking perv.”

“They help me see,” you argue. “I just got my eyes fixed; I don’t want to over-strain them.”

Keith grumbles about it, but he doesn’t try to steal your binoculars again. Instead, he fiddles with his phone, flipping it open and then snapping it shut again and again. And again and again and again-

“Can you quit with the fidgeting?” you demand.

Keith huffs, but snaps the phone shut a final time, his hands twitching in his lap.

“I’m waiting on a call,” he says, by way of explanation.

“Sure.”

“…I am. What do you mean, ‘sure’?”

“You’ve been taking a lot of calls lately, is all,” you note, as nonchalant as you can manage. But Keith senses the animosity.

“And what’s that supposed to mean? I can’t talk to anyone who isn’t you?”

“No! What? That’s not-” You take a moment to compose yourself. “I just meant, that I’ve been feeling very out of the loop lately,” you say through clenched teeth.

Keith is quiet for a moment. Then: “I’m waiting on a call from the Castle,” he says. “I reached out; they might have some information that’s useful to us.”

“You reached out to the Castle?” Now that’s the most suspicious thing you’ve heard so far.

“Yes, I-” But Keith’s cut off by his own ring-tone; Eye of the Tiger blares through the car, until Keith flips up the screen and answers.

“What’ve you got for me?”

“Put it on speaker-phone,” you demand.

Keith rolls his eyes, but ultimately acquiesces. You jolt as Lance’s shrill tenor suddenly blasts through the speaker.

“What’s up, losers? Your bitch-asses called for aid, and the Castle shall answer!”

“…I want to speak to Allura,” Keith says.

“Was that a Gondor reference?” you ask in bewilderment.

“Ah, I see we have a man of culture here on the line,” Lance simpers. “But no can do, Keithy-kat. Allura’s services are in high demand, as you’re well aware - so you’ll have to deal with the next best thing!”

“Great. Put Hunk on the phone.”

“Ha ha. But no, seriously - I’m the best you’re getting right now. This happens to be my area of expertise.”

“Because the murderer is a stripper?” Keith asks.

“Because my area of expertise is love,” Lance snaps. “Look, out of all of us Paladins, who’s actually managed to bag a hottie? And not just a hottie, but the one person they’ve been pining after for years?”

“…remind me again how you managed to trick Allura into this open-relationship bullshit?” you ask.

“Fuck you, too, Shiro.”

“Allura’s dating you? You?” Keith gapes.

“We’ve consciously decided not to put a label on it!” Lance practically yelps. “Look, do you want my help or not?”

“Sorry. Yes, please continue, Romeo,” you sigh.

“Well,” Lance sniffs indignantly, “as I was trying to tell you, you aren’t dealing with a skinwalker here. Most likely, you got a siren on your hands.”

“…A siren? Like from Homer’s Odyssey?” Keith asks. Then crosses his arms when surprised silence reigns over the line. “Hey, I read,” he mutters.

“Well, mullet-head, it seems like looks can be deceiving - which, incidentally, is part of the siren’s whole M.O.,” Lance tells you. “This bad boy can change its shape depending on the preferences of its prey. Like, it can literally read minds.”

“So this fucker could be anyone?”

“Yep.”

“Hold on a second,” you say, “according to the lore, sirens were supposed to entice people through their song - luring reckless sailors to their deaths. So how does that square with a bunch of strippers swinging around on metal poles?”

“…maybe there’s a karaoke night?” Lance hazards. “Look, man, your guess is as good as mine. A siren’s song might be more metaphorical than literal. It might even be chemical. Pidge thinks it’s some kind of neurotoxin.”

“Great. So how do we kill it?” you ask.

“…we’ve got a theory. A working theory. You’ll need a bronze dagger, covered in the blood of a sailor who’s under ‘the spell of the song.’”

“…that’s so helpful, Lance.”

“Hey!” Lance sputters. “That’s a lot better than what you had five minutes ago! Scholarly research isn’t exactly easy, you know. We’re playing three thousand years of the telephone game, here.”

“You’re right, you’re right. Thank you,” you say, with as much sincerity as you can muster. “Your advice has been invaluable.”

“Hey, they don’t call me Loverboy Lance for nothing.”

“Nobody calls you that,” says Keith.

“Hey-!” Lance’s squawk is cut off mid-breath as Keith hangs up the phone.

“Well, we’ve got a bronze dagger in the trunk,” you say. “So all we need is the blood.”

“And to find the damn thing first. We need to trail it back to its lair,” Keith reminds you.

“So…do we dare venture into the hunting ground?” you ask with a smirk.

Keith’s gulp is comically loud and endearingly genuine.

“…we’ve seen worse,” he mutters.

***

Sometimes, in your more selfish musings, you like to imagine that Keith just sprang up out of the ground fully formed, moments before you came barreling down that back-water dirt road in the summer of ‘98. It’s an insidious temptation, to think that he was made, perfectly and wholly, just for you. But Keith is his own man now, with his own personal history and agency; it’s imperative you keep that in mind.

Which is really hard to do at this current moment. In the dank, choking atmospheric sin of the strip club, Keith stands out with all the tender skittishness of a nubile innocent. Which is certainly - beguiling, in a way. It speaks to a certain lack of experience. And while you’ve never known Keith to have any affairs while on the road with you, you’ve always secretly wondered about the time you missed. Did he take lovers then? Did he romance them and leave them, a trail of broken hearts in his wake? It’s been a subject that’s both intrigued and haunted you in equal measure. But watching Keith now, it’s clear that your worries were unfounded, restricted completely to the realm of fantasy. The reality is that Keith is a fish out of water among these women; he flinches from their advances, can’t even meet their eyes. The singular male stripper he avoids, too, maybe more than he avoids the girls, using your bulk as a wall to hide behind. It’s - comforting, to know that for all the years you’ve missed, Keith is still the same in the ways that matter most.

But that can have its drawbacks, because only four hours into your stakeout, and Keith is begging you to leave.

“It’s not here,” he practically whines. “Please, let’s just go.”

“We don’t know that for sure.”

“I know,” Keith says stubbornly.

You cross your arms in exasperation. “You know? Or you know?”

“If it was here, I would’ve seen something by now,” Keith insists. “So I guess I know. Is that a problem?”

“No, not a problem. I’m just so glad I can trust your intuition,” you say, voice sharp. Keith visibly wilts.

“Please?”

His desperation to leave pulls at your heartstrings; you sigh as you acquiesce to his wishes, calling the bartender over to settle your tab. But it’s worth the inconvenience, to see the way Keith visibly unwinds once he’s exited the strip club and out in the cold fresh night air. He breathes it in with eyes closed, a peaceful almost-smile on his lips. You tug gently on the hem of his shirt to get him moving again.

“Come on,” you chide, “we can’t stop in the middle of the street.”

You lead him by the same handhold, towing him towards the dive bar that sits directly opposite the club, on the other side of the avenue. As soon as you enter, you feel right at home. Low lighting and a crowded bar, sports games on every screen, a pool table nestled in the corner. The floors stick and squeak under your boots, tacky with spilled beer and general grime.

“This is better,” Keith breathes once he’s plopped down on a barstool. The tension has left his shoulders, over-stimulation draining into quiet tiredness.

“Much better,” you agree as you reach for the draft list. Nothing has ever been a better balm to a night of fruitless hunting than sharing a beer with your obstinate partner. You order a coffee stout, hiding a smirk behind your hand as Keith orders a hard cider.

“Really? Angry Orchard?”

Keith shrugs easily, giving you a lop-sided smile. “Everyone has their vices.”

You shake your head. “And here I was hoping that my superior tastes had rubbed off on you.”

“Superior taste?” Keith scoffs. “Yeah, keep dreaming, Mr. Seven Sugars.”

It’s almost too easy, to slip back into such comfortable banter; you could easily let yourself forget your suspicions, or Keith’s rightful grievances. But Allura’s right - you can’t continue to go on like this, despite how tempting it might be. If you and Keith are ever to fit back together seamlessly, like you once did before, then you must know each other, truly and deeply, inside and out. And unfortunately, that requires talking.

“Hey, Keith,” you say, “remember when I took you out to that four-star restaurant? Out in Telluride?”

“Yeah,” Keith says with a snort, “How could I forget? That fancy steak you ordered gave me the runs for two days.”

“…it was very rich,” you concede. “But we had fun, right? Before all of the running, and escaping, and - other stuff.” You wave your hand to vaguely encompass the more emotionally charged moments of that night.

“That was the first time you told me about your past,” Keith adds quietly.

You remember. God, do you remember. The memory of your total, abject honesty still burns like a cauterizing wound, even after all these years. It’s a moment of weakness you can’t take back. Worst of all, you wouldn’t even want to. You lick your lips, a futile effort against the sudden dryness of your mouth.

“It’s - good,” you say. “When we talk about things, right? It brings us closer together.”

“…sure?”

“So we should do it more often,” you declare. “Do this more often. Just sit together and…talk.”

“But we talk all the time,” Keith says with a slight frown. His confusion is so plainly genuine that you have to fight down a half-hysterical laugh.

“We do,” you concede. “But not always about the important things. Not about what’s weighing on our minds. Or on our hearts.”

And now Keith’s looking at you with suspicion. “What are you trying to say here, Shiro?”

Fuck it. Sometimes he can be so obtuse that the only way to get your point across is to speak as plainly as he does.

“We need to have a conversation, Keith,” you say. “A long overdue one. About why we’re still keeping secrets. About why we can’t be in the same room together for two seconds before one of us is pissed off. We need to lay all our cards out on the table.”

There, you’ve said it. Concise, heartfelt, direct. Exactly what’s needed to be said for the past two months, finally out in the open. Personally, you think you’ve done a pretty good job - but Keith clearly doesn’t agree. He raises one dark eyebrow, expression taking on a distant skepticism.

“We need to ‘talk’,” he feels out slowly.

“You don’t think so?”

Keith sighs. “Yeah, sure. Whatever.”

“Sure, whatever?”

“Whatever you want, Shiro.”

It’s said with such nonchalance, such utter disregard for your effort. You feel a vein jump in your neck.

“Keith!-”

“Shiro!” And now Keith’s mocking your tone, real anger flushing his pale features, lips drawn into a sneer as he says, “What the fuck do you want from me, huh? What do you want me to say?”

“I want you to tell me the truth,” you demand. “About where you sneak off to at night when you think I’m asleep, and who you’re calling all the time. About why you have my power, and why you never told me-”

“Oh, fuck you.” Keith is almost hysterical with silent laughter as he shakes his head, wiping away an arrant tear. “You want to know why I sneak off? You really want to know why I can’t bring myself to sleep next to you anymore? It’s because your presence is suffocating, Shiro. I can’t breathe around you. You take up my entire life, and all my thoughts, and it’s still never enough. You still want more.”

You open your mouth immediately to respond, but Keith doesn’t let you get a word in edgewise. “I would give you everything; I would give you the world,” he tells you quietly, “but you wouldn’t do the same. Your affection is always conditional. I live every day in the fear that this will be the day that - that I become expendable to you.”

You’re absolutely gob-smacked, mouth hanging open like a village idiot. You shut it with a snap as you desperately grasp for a string of words to put together. “Keith. That would never happen-”

“It’s happened before,” Keith says simply.

“So this is about me dying,” you demand. “I said I was sorry, Keith. I thought we moved past that.”

“‘I said I was sorry?’ ” Keith mocks you with an ugly laugh. “You’ve never fucking apologized for that, not sincerely, not in any way that really mattered - and you know what the worst thing is? The worst thing is, I don’t even want you to apologize, because I know it wouldn’t be genuine!” He shakes his head, before draining the rest of his cider in a last aggressive swig. The bottle is slammed back down onto the bar again when Keith turns back to you, a finger raised in condemnation. “You’re always accusing me of thinking I ‘know better’ - but guess what? I actually do, Shiro! I actually, literally do! You’re the one who would rather die than wound your own pride by admitting you were wrong! You don’t regret lying to me - or dying and going to hell - because you still think you’re totally justified in everything that you did. And it kills me to know that you would do it all over again.”

The silence that follows is a devastation. You can only watch as you feel the earth split open at your feet, creating a gulf between the two of you that not even a teleporter can cross.

“Keith-,” you begin, but Keith is already getting up and throwing a couple of crumpled bills onto the bar.

“I’m gonna figure out a way to get the blood we need,” he tells you shortly. “Don’t wait up.”

“Keith-” But Keith holds up a hand, a silent command for your silence.

“You know what, this was a good idea,” he tells you. “I feel a whole lot better. Good talk.”

You watch as Keith stalks out of the bar, his back stiff with anger. He disappears into the night, just outside of your vision. For all you know, he jumped into the ether as soon as he was out of eye-shot. For all you know, he could be blocks away from you. No, no - for all you know, he could be halfway around the world. Keith’s never told you the limits of his radius when it comes to teleportation. Perhaps he doesn’t even know himself.

Or maybe he does know - and he just hasn’t shared it with you. Why should you trust that he would?

Why should you trust him in anything?

Maybe, a snide little voice whispers within you, because he’s your ‘soulmate.’

It’s a ridiculous idea. No, Keith’s not your soulmate. He’s your-

He’s your…?

Just like with Allura, there are no adequate words to describe what Keith is to you. A darker, wickeder part of you laughs at your futile struggle to give what you share with Keith a name. If he’s not your soulmate, then what is he, really? A stray you picked up off the side of the road? A boy you refuse to let grow into a man? A white-hot comet across the night sky, forever outside of your event horizon, passing you by like a ship in the night?

What is he, if not your greatest failure?

You tense, gritting your teeth against this sudden, intrusive thought.

It doesn’t matter - he’s mine, you spit back viciously. If nothing else, he’s mine. He was mine at first sight, mine before he ever knew me. Mine first; mine always-

“Trouble in Paradise?”

You’re knocked out of your spiraling inner diatribe by a warm, hearty voice. And because you’re a miserable old misanthrope, you have half a mind to tear into whoever tried to draw you out of yourself. But then you blink, your eyes refocusing on the man who’s just slid in to take Keith’s vacated seat, and - holy hell. He’s a looker, for sure. Strong, broad shoulders and a square, sturdy jaw. Sun-burnished skin, dark blonde hair just on the long side of socially acceptable. In two words: unfairly handsome. So handsome, in fact, that it takes you a moment to process his words. When you do, you instantly feel your cheeks set aflame.

“No, no, we’re not - like that,” you mutter.

“Hmm. Could’a fooled me,” the man says, then grimaces. “Sorry, I don’t know why I said that. I swear, I’m not trying to pry.” He shakes his head as he laughs at himself. “Sorry, let me start this over again. Hi. Nick Munroe.”

“…Ellison Onizuka.”

You nod your head as you meet his offered bottle with your own, a clink of glass signaling your awkward toast. But at the sound of your borrowed name, Nick’s brow furrows in confusion.

“…like the astronaut who died in the Challenger explosion?” he asked bemusedly.

Well, shit.

“Uh - yes. Exactly like that,” you croak.

Nick whistles low. “Hell of a namesake,” he says. “But hey - the man died doing what he loved. Most of us won’t be able to say the same.” His eyes grow distant, glazing over as he seems to be caught up deep in thought. “Some men never die,” he murmurs, “and some men never live, but we’re all alive tonight.”

“Charles Bukowski. 1813-1883,” you say, in half-disbelief. Nick blinks, and looks at you with newfound curiosity.

“You read Bukowski?”

“He’s one of my favorites,” you admit, as you reach into the suppository of your own mind. “…not being able to love fully they will believe your love incomplete and then they will hate you and their hatred will be perfect.”

Nicks blinks again. “The Genius of the Crowd. Good memory you got there,” he praises. “It’s refreshing to meet another Bukowski fan. We’re a bit hard to come by, nowadays.”

“Really?” You’re a bit lost when it comes to the current opinions of the literary community; the last time you had enough time and energy to devote to your armchair pastime was nearly a decade ago, when you were still a prep school student with Ivy League dreams.

“Yeah, there’s been a bit of a backlash against Bukowski in the past few years,” Nick tells you. “Something about him being a self-hating alcoholic womanizer who attracts a similar readership?” He shakes his head with a laugh. “And I’m quoting someone on that. But you’ve got to be able to separate the art from the artist. Don’t you think?”

“Absolutely,” you agree readily. “The essence of the human condition is profound imperfection. If we can’t handle that truth, then we don’t deserve the art that derives from it.”

Nick’s really smiling now, a sunny grin that breaks over his entire face. “God, it’s like you read my mind, Ellison,” he says. “Eli? Can I call you Eli?”

You feel yourself flush.

“I’m sorry, I kind of - lied about that. Ellison Onizuka’s an alias. Obviously,” you add, chagrined.

“An alias, huh?” Nick’s grin widens, his voice taking on a teasing lilt. “You in some kind of trouble?”

“Nothing like that, I’m just - a habitual liar,” you admit with a self-effacing laugh. You take the opportunity to extend your right hand. “Takashi Shirogane,” you tell him. “But my friends call me Shiro.”

“Shiro, then.” Nick returns your firm handshake. “It’s good to meet you. Just passing through, I take it?”

“Uh, yeah. On a road trip with my - brother.”

Nick glances at the door. “The guy I just saw leave?”

“Yep,” you confirm. Then, at his questioning look: “Keith just - needs to blow off some steam.”

“Don’t we all,” Nick says amicably. “So… Onizuka, huh? That’s a bit of a niche choice.”

“Yeah…” You scrub at your undercut in embarrassment. “I have a thing for astronauts.”

Nick waggles his eyebrows playfully. “A thing?”

“…I wanted to be an astronaut,” you admit with a rueful smile. “Didn’t work out, obviously. But the passion’s still there.”

Nick hums thoughtfully. “So, what stopped you? From achieving your dream?”

His forwardness throws you; you sit back, wrong-footed, and with half a mind to tell this nosy stranger to fuck all the way off. But Nick’s demeanor stops you; he looks so genuinely curious, like he’s hanging on your next words. As though he’s truly interested in hearing what you have to say. You relax again, shrugging as you fumble for the most honest answer you can give him.

“There were…things holding me back.”

Nick makes a show of giving you an appreciative once-over, not the least bit shy with his attention. “Really? You?”

You feel yourself flush even harder.

“…I’m not as tough as I look,” you demur.

Nick hums. “Looks can be deceiving,” he agrees. “So, ‘Onizuka’ - what’s so great about the empty vacuum of space that you wanted to shoot yourself into it?”

He doesn’t know it, but he’s just opened the floodgates. Before you can even think of stopping yourself, you’ve leaped headlong into your favorite subject. And for almost thirty minutes, Nick lets you lecture him to your heart’s desire, on everything from the feasibility of solar system exploration, to the chemical makeup of the gas giants, to the physics of black holes. And when Nick still doesn’t seem to balk or tire, you dust off your favorite little pet theory: that the entirety of the known universe is itself contained inside the singularity of a black hole.

“Imagine it this way: our universe is a matryoshka doll, inside another doll, inside another doll. But every matryoshka doll is actually a black hole. And every black hole within our own universe also contains another black hole, and so on, and so on…” Nick leans in with interest as you feverishly draw a crude diagram on a bar napkin. He watches you with a bemused smile.

“So how would we go about proving this theory?”

“…well, there’s the trouble,” you admit, deflating a little as you sigh. “The nature of a black hole is to bend space-time; with that much gravitational pull, nothing gets in, and nothing gets out. Human technology would need to be highly advanced to even think of being able to see through to the other side. For all we know, it’s impossible. Just one long unbroken chain of lonely universes, encased inside each other but never touching. Never being able to even know of the other’s existence.”

It’s a bit of a downer, when you put it that way. Nick frowns, as though he, too, senses your sudden, esoteric sadness.

“You really think reality is just…singularities within singularities? Loneliness within loneliness?” he asks softly.

“…That’s the theory,” you admit. “It’s black holes all the way down.”

Nick regards you for a moment, blinks, then shakes his head. “…Huh,” he says lightly, “I think I preferred turtles.”

You didn’t expect that. God knows why - you practically set him up for that terrible attempt at a joke. But for some reason, Nick’s words strike you as absurdly funny. Corny, yes, and obviously meant to raise your mood, but you can’t help yourself: you laugh. Your laughter rings out across the bar, so loud and sudden that it half-startles you. Across from you, Nick looks terribly pleased with himself that he’s thrown you out of your funk; he gives you a goofy smile, tongue slipping between his teeth, and now he’s laughing along with you, hearty and soul-warming, camaraderie with a stranger. God, but does it feel good to laugh again. You haven’t enjoyed yourself this much since - since? You feel your mind beginning to wander, casting back for the last time you and Keith just sat together like this without it turning into a fight. And hell if it doesn’t feel like a long way back -

“Woah, buddy-,” Nick’s voice draws you back into the present. You refocus on his handsome face, his sweet easy smile. On instinct, you smile in return

“What’s up?”

Nick’s grin turns conspiratorial. “Hate to tell you this,” he says, “but I think you’ve been drinking out of my bottle this whole time.”

You frown, looking down at the bottle held in your right hand, and - goddamn it if he isn’t right. Instead of your rich coffee stout looking back up at you, it’s an IPA.

Now that’s strange. You hate IPA’s on principle. They’re the lazy micro-brewers’ choice, over-hopped, over-priced, and under-flavored, a relic of British imperialism now rebranded for the hipster consumer. Moreover: they taste like shit. You grimace as you finally register the bitter aftertaste in your mouth; how the hell you managed to drink so much of it without noticing is truly a medical mystery.

Nick must guess your thought process, because he laughs again, a good-natured chortle that warms you from the inside out as he reclaims his borrowed bottle.

“I don’t normally drink these,” he assures you. “But I like to try one out, every once and a while, just to see if my tastes have changed. But they never do. I like what I like.”

“Yeah,” you agree, half-listening to his words. You’re still trying to figure out how you made that mistake, accidentally picking up his bottle instead of your own. The past few minutes are slightly hazy in your memory, which - is weird -

“You know, I just had a thought.” Nick’s voice calls your attention back to him. He fiddles with the label of his bottle as he regards you pensively. “Sharing a bottle, or a glass, it’s kind of like sharing a kiss, isn’t it? Placing your lips where someone else’s just were, your tongue against the glass, their saliva seeping into your mouth…” You watch as Nick’s own tongue darts out to touch the bow of his upper lip. “No homo, though,” he adds, with an easy laugh.

“Yeah, no homo,” you echo faintly. The beer must already be getting to you; there’s a dull buzz in the forefront of your brain, turning your thoughts heated and hazy. Suddenly, Nick reminds you of Adam, in a way. Or perhaps Keith. Maybe a perfect amalgamation of the two, tall dark and handsome, with kind eyes and a razor smile. Not in any quantifiable way. Not in a way you can explain. Nick clinks his newly reclaimed bottle against your own, and it might be the extra hops, or dim bar lighting, but - he looks good. Like, really good. He looks like he could be a new lifelong friend. He looks like your future. He looks like everything you ever wanted.

***

Things get a little hazy, after that. You remember leaving the bar with Nick by your side, both of you sliding into Black, then the blur of signs and stoplights as you drive through the bleary night. You remember getting back to your hotel room and sitting there in the dark, waiting.

You remember Keith coming through the door.

“…Shiro?”

Through the blur and heat of emotion, you can just make out his wide, wild eyes. He sounds so uncertain. Scared, even.

Good. He should be.

You have him up against the door, knife to his throat before he can even move. Vaguely, you realize you must have jumped the space between you. But your body seems so disconnected from yourself right now, a tool in someone else’s hands.

“Finally! We were getting so bored, waiting for you to come back,” Nick drawls from behind you. “I was just thinking up other ways we could keep ourselves…occupied.”

“Don’t you fucking touch him!”

Keith spits the words out so violently that he draws his own blood against your blade; you watch, enraptured, as the bright sanguine liquid dribbles down his pale, almost lilac throat.

“Ah, ah: careful,” Nick warns. “Wouldn’t want Shiro to hurt you prematurely, now. Not when we’re all going to have so much fun together.”

“Shiro won’t hurt me,” Keith retorts.

“Oh, he will.”

But Keith’s not backing down. “It wouldn’t be him - not really,” he insists. “It’s not his heart, just his body. You’ve poisoned him.”

“…is that what you believe?” Nick asks, with genuine curiosity. “No, no - it’s what you want to believe.” Then he sighs, his voice filled with pity. “If you must know, I haven’t poisoned him, not really. I’ve just - brought out what was already there. I’ve given him what he needed. And just so you understand - it wasn’t some bitch in a g-string.” He gestures to himself, his current body, so expertly tailored to your tastes. “It wasn’t even you. It was - something you could never be.”

“Fuck you,” Keith spits.

“Mmm. Fuck me is right,” Nick hums, “but you know what, Keith? I understand your jealousy, I really do. Shiro loves me; he’d do anything for me. And I gotta tell you, that kind of devotion? Watching someone kill for you? It’s the best feeling in the world.”

Despite the blade against his still bleeding throat, Keith scoffs.

“Oh, wow, so you really are that pathetic. You gotta roofie people just so they love you?”

“That’s such an ugly description of what I do,” Nick says, not without a little venom. “But the real thing - it takes so much time and effort. Don’t you think so, Keith? To initiate the dance? To hope, and chase, and wait? All to be disappointed in the end?”

Keith growls.

Nick finally comes into your peripheral; he’s smiling a wide, sharp smile, teeth perfectly white. “Now, I’m immortal,” he continues. “So sometimes that’s the game I’m willing to play. I don’t have a countdown on my lifespan that I’m desperate to beat. But - eh,” he gives a loose shrug. “I get bored. Like we all do. And I want to fall in love again. And again. And again…”

“I’m gonna kill you,” Keith intones. It sounds like a promise.

Nick’s grin widens. “I like you, Keith. I really do,” he says. “And that’s why I’m gonna give you a chance. You get through Shiro, and you’ve got your opportunity.”

You watch as Keith’s face pales.

“You’re gonna make us-”

“Fight to the death, yes. And whoever wins, well,” Nick opens his arms up wide, “they get to stay with me forever.”

“Oh, wow. What a reward.”

Nick’s face twists in a spasm of rage; he snaps his fingers, and instantly you know that means to release Keith from your hold and step back.

“You know what? I think we need to clear the air,” Nick announces. “I couldn’t help but overhear you two at the bar, and you, Keith, got to say your piece. But you ran out before poor Shiro could get a word in edgewise. It’s about time we rectify that, don’t you think?” He gives you an encouraging nod. “Well, go on, love. Don’t be shy, now.”

Your body moves to take center stage, shoulders square as you face down your opponent.

“…I don’t know when it happened,” you hear yourself say. “Maybe when I was in hell. Maybe while I was in retirement. Or maybe…while I was staring right at you. But it’s like I don’t even know you anymore,” you conclude. “My Keith? My Keith’s gone. He has been for a while.”

“Shiro-”

“No! Don’t Shiro me,” you snap. “It’s my turn, remember?”

Keith nods, more out of abject fear than acquiescence.

“You know, I’ve always tried to do right by you,” you reflect. “Always tried to be whatever you needed me to be: big brother, father, friend, mentor, confidant - and it was never enough for you, was it? You always want me to be better, perfect, more. You want me to be your protector - but when I do protect you, when I do what needs to be done, you pout and bitch and moan. You want me to be your comrade-in-arms - but when shit hits the fan, you go off on your own to fuck everything up. You call me the best man you’ve ever known, but then you never listen to me, never take my lead - always think you know best. You want me to be it all-!”

“That’s not true, Shiro!” Keith breaks in desperately, “I only ever wanted you to be-!”

“Don’t you fucking lie to me!” you snarl. “That’s all you are, aren’t you? A liar. A cheat. A little sneaking thief. A creepy fucking voyeur. A wannabe master manipulator, always holding all the cards - and you know what, Keith?” You laugh wildly, caught up in the high of your own explosion. “I used to blame myself for your faults - but I can see clearly, now. You had all those faults way long before I ever met you. You were always this defective. You were always a freak.”

“Shiro-!”

“Your parents had the right idea, dying like they did,” you mutter feverishly. “I should’ve abandoned you, too, left you on the side of the road like the trash you are. They saw you were broken. Worthless. I should’ve seen it, too. But no, I’m the one who wanted to settle this like men, have a conversation-”

-you’re cut off when you take a sucker punch directly to the nose. Hear a crack, feel a splatter of blood down your face -

“- you want a conversation?” Keith rages, as he winds up for another swing. “I’ll give you a fucking conversation!”

Then you’re fighting.

You won’t let your pride get in the way of admitting that, at the beginning of the brawl, Keith has the upper hand - but that’s because he caught you off-guard. For some agonizing reason, you were still expecting him to play fair. But you have muscle mass, height, and experience at your advantage; you intend to press it. It takes a few creative hits, and a few underhanded ones, but soon, the tide begins to turn. You can see a glint of fear worm its way into your enemy’s eye.

“Shiro-,” he begins to say-

And you tackle him through the wooden motel door.

The body under you wheezes and gasps, clearly winded from the force of the impact. You aren’t too much better, staggering to your feet as the man on the ground flails before you, crawling like a dog as he tries to retreat. Take a steadying breath, then clench your hands into fists as you close in for the final decisive blows. Watch with muted curiosity as your prey raises one weak, trembling hand to ward off your advance.

“Shiro - stop,” he begs.

For some reason, you almost do. Your feet stumble, caught in the push and pull of two conflicting tides. You surface for a moment with a gasp, before being plunged back under, towed by the riptide of venom in your veins. Watching as the light of the surface grows more and more faint-

Are we really going to let this pathetic little maggot tell you what to do?

It’s an alien thought, an alien voice outside of your own - only no, wait a minute, it is your voice. Your voice, cutting through the love-struck haze you’ve been drowning in.

Are you really going to let this abomination kill your brother?

And the answer, resoundingly, is: NO.

You wake up. Slam back into your body with all the force of a freight train. On the floor in front of you, Keith instantly recognizes your return because he jolts, eyes wide as saucers, expression caught between a Mexican standoff of disbelief, hope, and fear.

“Shiro?”

You smile. Then turn around, to where Nick watches you, panicked desperation newly written all over his stolen features. And for a moment, you can see his true face.

It’s a hideous thing, visage decrepit and twisted, eyes milk-glazed and nearly unseeing. But you swear you can see its deadened pupils widen in horror.

“No, no,” it mutters, “that’s impossible…”

“Well, through the power of friendship, all things are possible - so jot that down,” you quip cheerily. Then punch through the firebox that’s hung on the wall next to you, an ax clenched tight in your extracted fist.

Nick turns tail on a dime. Runs right back into the hotel room, as though he plans on jumping out of the two-story window. But that’s okay - you can jump, too.

You kill the Siren. In a rage-induced red haze, electric hatred sparking and singing up your every nerve, washing away the last of the Siren’s influence. It screams. Its blood sizzles and burns. When it falls, mouth agape, its body collapses with a thud, and the glamour is broken - revealing the twisted husk beneath the shell of humanity it dressed itself in. You bury your ax in its abdomen for good measure.

“…Shiro?”

The voice calls you back to yourself, out of your storm of violence. Keith’s voice. You forgot about him, in the heat of the moment - but now you look to see him still sprawled on the floor in the hallway, watching you with such earnest concern. Jesus, his eyes - they break your heart and try to drown you all over again. Immediately, you jump back to his side.

“It’s me, it’s me,” you confirm. Bundle him up into your arms, despite his hysterical protests, only stopping when you hear him howl with pain.

“Shit, shit, shit,” you quickly release Keith, searching him frantically for the injury, and -

Well. It’s bad. He’s got a split lip, a laceration along the hairline, the beginnings of a black eye. Worst, he’s holding his left arm at an unnatural angle.

“Jesus Christ, Kid,” you whisper, but Keith clumsily waves your panic away with his good hand.

“It’s dislocated, ‘sall,” he grunts, then spits out a glob of blood onto the floor. “Just set it, an’ I’ll be fine.”

“Come on, let’s get out of here,” you urge gently, an arm already extended to help Keith up.

You do the deed as quickly and painlessly as you can, rotating the injured arm until, with a pained gasp, Keith’s joint slides back into its socket. The relief on his face is immediate, a flush of vitality infused back into his pale, sweaty face. Once Keith is steadier on his feet, you venture back into the motel room, gathering your belongings as quickly as you can. When it’s time to leave, you steer Keith around the corpse on the floor, past the shattered glass coffee table that you don’t remember breaking, past the hole in the wall where a missed punch landed, smashing straight through the drywall. Too big of a hole to be Keith’s fist - so it must have been your own.

Speaking of Keith - he winces under your protective hold as you guide him down the hallway, and you realize you’ve been gripping his shoulder too tightly - the shoulder that you just reset.

“Sorry, sorry,” you mutter, instantly releasing the muscle, and when you do, you see the purpling bruises around his neck for the first time.

Sometimes you don’t know your own strength.

***

Don't you fucking touch him!-

- something you can never be-

- singularities within singularities-

                                                   - stay with me forever-

- Shiro?

You wake up. Instantly, you know something is wrong.

It’s the sound of silence that unnerves you. No gentle breath beside you, no rustle of sheets or soft whimpers borne from nightmare. Not even a hint, this time, that Keith might have just slipped outside the motel door. He could be anywhere, you realize numbly, as you rise from your long-unshared bed. He could be anywhere in the world, and you wouldn’t be able to do a damn thing about it.

Except-

Maybe you’re soulmates. Entangled particles, so inextricably bound together at the quantum level that whatever happens to the one, happens to the other - even if they’re separated across vast distances, over all of time and space. Change the one, and the other changes in kind. Destroy one, and you destroy both. Because they’re not really separated at all; they exist in superposition, occupying the same point of existence, on a realm in which space and time are figurative concepts meant only for lower mortals. But for you -

You close your eyes and reach out. Search for your own heart, your own soul, beating in another’s chest. Across the miles of night, of urban and rural wilderness, until you find that answering flame, the mirror image of yourself. You jump without a second thought-

And reappear at a crossroads. Under a canopy of foliage by the gravel roadside, somewhere in the countryside, under the moonlit night sky. You slip out of the void and into the darkness, so seamless and silent, that the two figures who stand in the middle of the crossroads don’t even register your existence.

And that’s where you find Keith, with the woman.

She stands about his height, perhaps a few inches taller. Angular body, pointed chin - a blade in human form. Even her hair, shorn into a sharp bob that brushes against her jawline and falls into her eyes, gives her an air of danger. She matches Keith, in a way. You can see why he’s drawn to her.

And he is drawn to her. Attracted, even - you watch with unblinking eyes as the distance between their bodies eclipses the causal bounds of friendship. As your boy leans further into her space. As he looks at her with - with -

They’re talking together, voices low, as though they fear being overheard. The woman has just said something, her features writ with genuine concern.

“I can handle myself. Don’t worry about me,” you hear Keith respond.

“You know I can’t help myself.”

You watch as one of her hands rises up to touch his right cheek, thumb smoothing over the skin in what can only be called a caress.

“One day, your luck is going to run out,” she whispers softly.

You hear Keith snort in response.

“Hasn’t yet,” he counters, tapping a finger to his temple. “Besides, I always got a trump card.”

The woman hums, neither in denial nor confirmation. But her head cocks to the side as she studies him, her hand laid against his cheek for a moment longer before she begins to draw away.

You watch as Keith chases her touch.

“I was worried you were dead,” he whispers. “You didn’t call. You didn’t speak to me.”

“If I were to be vanquished, you would feel it. Here.” For emphasis, the woman places her palm on his chest, right above his heart.

You watch as Keith leans into her touches. As he moves to press his forehead against her own.

“Don’t scare me like that again,” he begs.

“Only if you promise the same.”

They look near-extraterrestrial, illuminated as they are by the stolen light of the full moon. She even has the same pale skin as Keith, you realize with dismay, shaded an unearthly lilac hue by the cover of night. And, in your dismay, you can only watch in silence as Keith reaches to take her hand, pull it back towards his face until her wrist is gripped between his fingers, mere inches from his lips.

“I promise I’ll always try my best,” he murmurs, and the woman’s answering smile is as fleeting as it is sad.

“I suppose that’s all I can ask,” she agrees.

She doesn’t pull back her wrist. Keith doesn’t release it. His breath must be ghosting against her skin, a phantom of intimate touch. You watch, as Keith inclines his head, his eyes still locked on hers, a silent inquiry. The woman sighs.

“Take what you need,” she commands.

And you continue to watch, as she folds him up within her arms, as their bodies embrace, as her eyes glaze over with pleasure-

As his lips fasten to her wrist -

In a blink, they’re gone. Vanished into thin air. Only you, now, left at the crossroads by yourself as the night unravels around you. Inside your chest, a super-massive implosion of gravity, the only universal constant. A black hole within a black hole. Loneliness all the way down.

***

VI. THEN:

Here’s the thing: you’ve always had doubts. About yourself, your power - about your inherent worthiness, or lack thereof, for any permanent goodness in this broken world. But those doubts rarely extended outward beyond yourself. They rarely cast themselves upon others, on the people you cherished; perhaps, only, in extremely charged circumstances. And while you’ve had a few of those intense moments in regards to Keith, over the last three and a half years, those doubts are quick to flare and fade.

But you can remember when that changed.

February, 2001. You’ve been traveling with Keith for a good few years now. You’ve known about his gift for just over two. It fascinates and worries you in equal measure, but Keith’s foresight has saved both your asses on so many occasions that you’ve come to rely on it, just as you do with your own gift, wholly and without reservation. So when he says he’s having visions of a violent psychic in Saginaw, Michigan, you hop into Black, driving the I-75 all the way up from your last case in Kentucky.

It’s quite clear from the start that Max Miller is a troubled young man; Keith has glimpsed him practicing his telekinetic skills on small animals enough times for you to be absolutely sure he’s a few fries short of a happy meal. But using your sadistic psychic powers on furry little woodland creatures isn’t exactly a crime. So the problem is: what happens next?

Keith asks you that on the first day, right after you’ve checked into your motel room to recoup for a few hours. Driving nonstop for hours on end takes its toll on the body, after all, and you need at least a quick power nap before you charge off into danger. You stretch out lazily on your motel bed, laptop almost tumbling from your lap as you contemplate the problem.

“Good question, my young Padawan,” you muse. “Technically, this Miller kid hasn’t endangered, maimed, or killed any human beings, as of yet. And according to Garrison rules, that means there’s no license to kill.”

From his perch at the kitchenette counter, Keith frowns at you, suspicion writ over his face. “But you left the Garrison,” he points out, “so you don’t really have to follow their rules, do you?”

“Exactly,” you hum. “So you could say that we have a bit more wiggle room.”

“And what does that mean?”

“It means that we work the case,” you spell out slowly, “and if there’s a problem, we take care of it, one way or another.”

“…I don’t like where this is going,” Keith admits.

“You insisted on racing up here,” you remind him with a yawn, “and frankly, I think it’s a good idea. A violent telekinetic is bad news no matter which way you spin it.”

“Hey, I agree that something needs to be done about this,” Keith sputters, “But - we’re not just gonna gank this guy. Right?”

“Not necessarily,” you reassure. “Think of it like - a wellness check. We’re just dropping in on a fellow psychic. Say hello, see how he’s doing.”

“And if he’s - not doing well?”

“…then we might have to gank him,” you admit with a grimace.

Keith’s eyes have grown saucer-wide as he stares you down from his chair.

“Wouldn’t that be, like…illegal?”

“Keith. Most of the things we do are illegal.”

“Yeah, but-.” Keith swings his legs haphazardly as he fidgets, eyes glued on the floor. “This would be straight-up murder,” he says quietly.

You sigh. “Kid. We’ll try everything we can before we escalate to that point. But we can’t let this little nut job graduate from animals to people. He’s a serial killer in the making.”

Keith seems slightly mollified by that promise, and for what it’s worth, you do mean it. You take no enjoyment in killing people when necessity must - and there have been a few, rare instances in the past when the monsters you were hunting ended up being of the human variety. Each time, you put them down like the dogs they were, but there was no pleasure to be found, just the grim satisfaction that came with ridding the earth from one more stain of evil.

But Keith is still relatively new to this life; he hasn’t had to face those tough choices yet, or make those hard calls. You’ll do your best to ensure that he doesn’t start today.

Unfortunately, fate has other plans. That very afternoon, Max Miller’s father seemingly commits suicide in the middle of the day by suffocating himself inside his garage. Hours later, Max’s uncle is decapitated due to a tragic freak accident with a sliding window. You and Keith spend the next forty-eight hours desperately scouring for hide or hair of Max Miller and coming up empty. He isn’t at the house, or his job, or any of his known hangouts. And the worst part of it is that, at some locations, you just barely miss him, arriving minutes after he’s already left. It’s like he knows he’s being hunted, although you can’t imagine how. Finally, you’re thrown a bone, but at a cost; Keith has a vision of the next murder.

It happens in the car, just as you’re leaving the morgue for the second time; Keith suddenly groans, arching his head up into the headrest as he squeezes his eyes shut. He stays absolutely silent after that, still as stone. As you watch him from out of the corner of your eye, you have to marvel once more at your own impressive power of willful ignorance. Keith’s always done this, you’ve realized - and you always wrote it off as a migraine, or stress, or an unpleasant memory. Now, though, as you watch Keith silently grimace through the pain of the future, you can’t help but be amazed. He may not have told you the truth, but he never tried to hide it from you, either. You’re just a fucking idiot.

The visions never last very long. Less than five seconds, by your reckoning. But they always feel like an eternity, and when Keith finally resurfaces, blinking dazedly, he seems older, wearier, in a way that’s hard to quantify.

“So,” you say unsteadily, “we got a lead?”

Keith gives you a short, grim nod.

“The mom’s house,” he grits out. “He’s about to kill her.”

Ten minutes later, Black comes to a screeching halt out front of the Miller house. Keith is already out the door before you get her into park, racing up the sidewalk to the front steps. As soon as you get the key out of the ignition, you jump to catch up, not a damn given for who might see. You’re not letting Keith take the charge on this one.

The house looks dark on the inside, and after Keith rings the doorbell several times to no avail, you develop a budding hope that perhaps, just this once, he was wrong. Perhaps there’s no one home. But the other more likely option is that you’re already too late, and Alice Miller is currently bleeding out inside of her own home. You catch Keith’s eyes, and he nods just once as you slowly unholster your gun and keep it low. Out of the corner of your eye, you can see Keith’s knife hidden flat against the underside of his forearm. You’re in agreement, then, about what comes next.

Between the the two funerals, the morgue, the scenes of the crimes, and hunting for Max at all of his known hangouts, you didn’t actually get any time to change out of the ill-advised priest get-ups you donned earlier, instead just opting to throw jackets and coats over the whole ensemble when you needed a different disguise. It occurs to you now, as you break down the front door to the Miller’s house with one powerful kick, that perhaps you should’ve taken off the collar first.

It quickly becomes clear that your worst fears will not be realized; Alice Miller stands in the foyer, wide-eyed and shaking, paused mid-step with one hand outstretched, as though she was just about to grasp for the doorknob. Her gaze jumps wildly from you, to Keith, to the poor, assaulted door, back to you - and then to the gun in your hands.

“…Fathers?” she stammers out.

Well, shit.

“Ah…sorry about that,” you say, with your most disarming smile. “But you weren’t answering your doorbell. We were, ah…worried about your health.”

Alice nods dazedly, as though in shock. Her gaze is still trained on your weapon, and when she finally manages to pull her eyes away, she gives you a thin, stretched smile.

“…well, thank you for being so concerned, Fathers,” she says, “but I’m…doing the best I can, given the circumstances.” Her eyes glance back down to the gun you are desperately trying to keep as far down as your arm length will allow; then, they flit back over to the carnage you just created with your boot. She swallows, once, with a pained grimace. When her eyes meet yours again, one of her eyelids spasms briefly.

“…However,” she says stiltedly, “I’m afraid now isn’t a good time.”

Fuck.

Any slim hope you had that you were misreading the situation is completely crushed. Your luck is never that good. Keith’s vision hasn’t been evaded, only stalled; Max is already in the house.

As subtly as you can, you readjust your grip on the handle. Besides you, you can see Keith shift, ever so minutely, into a fighting stance.

“Listen, Mrs. Miller,” he says quietly, in a near-whisper. “…is your son home right now?”

Alice shakes her head, but her smile wavers considerably.

“Um, no - no,” she says. “Max…went out. I don’t know where. Why, do you…need to talk to him?”

“Well, ah, yes,” you say, “but you know what? We’d like to talk to you, too. Right now, if you wouldn’t mind.”

Alice gives you a watery, strained smile. “This really isn’t a good time-”

“Just for some spiritual edification,” you press meaningfully. “I promise it won’t take long.”

To your horror, a single tear begins to trail down Alice’s cheek. She shakes her head convulsively.

“I’m sorry-,” she warbles, “but as I said, now’s really not a good time - if you could please just leave-”

Keith takes a step forward, hands held out to her as inconspicuously as possible.

“Just for a few minutes,” he presses quietly. “Can you just - step outside for a second?”

Finally, you see the mask break: something like unchecked terror swims across Alice’s face. Her body coils, arms tensing as she just barely tips her chin down in an affirmative nod. You let go of the gun with one hand to hold your arm out to her, preparing to scoop her up and out of harm’s way as soon as she runs-

“No. She really can’t.”

The voice announces itself at the same time you hear a rush of air and then a heavy, wet thunk. Alice screams, high and strangled, but the sound cuts off into a gurgle almost as soon as it starts. You flinch as a fine spray of blood mists across your face, vision briefly obscured, but your right hand is already swinging up, grip strong and finger on the trigger, ready to hit your target dead-on as soon as you see him -

And the gun is ripped from your grasp, as easy and smooth as a knife through butter.

When you open your eyes, it’s to see Alice Miller’s body drop to the floor, dead, a knife protruding through her left orbital cavity. It was speared through the back of her skull with what must’ve been a preternatural amount of thrust. Near impossible to execute, except the only man who could’ve done it has just stepped out from behind the kitchen wall and into the shadows of the hallway. He steps up to just a few feet behind your own gun, which hangs before him in the air - trained directly on you.

You swallow down your own mounting terror.

“Hello, Max,” you say.

The smile Max gives you is barely perceptible, a minuscule tilt of the lips.

“Father Aldrin,” he greets you, then nods to Keith. “Father Shepard. Good to finally meet you both. Seminary let out early?”

Beside you, Keith lets out a wild growl. His knife swings down from its hidden position, already extended into a sword with a flick of his wrist.

“Keith!-”

It’s too late. Before he can even rush forward, Keith is sent flying with a lazy gesture of Max’s hand. You watch his body arch through the air, landing with a crash in the open coat closet. Luckily, the sword doesn’t hurt him in the impact, slipping through his limp fingers to fall by his side.

“Keith!” you shout. There’s no answer, no sound of cognition. From this distance, you can’t even tell if he’s breathing. “Keith!-”

“Don’t worry. He’s alive.”

With herculean effort, you quell the urge to run and check on your fallen partner. Instead, you force your attention back to the voice, back to Max Miller, who stands there so casually, hip popped to one side. His gaze is half-lidded when he looks at you, with all the insolence of a boy-king.

You lick your dry, trembling lips. “Just let me check-”

On the turn of a dime, Max’s face darkens over with rage.

“I said he’s alive,” he snaps. “His heart is beating. I can feel it. Right…here.”

He raises a loose fist up, clenched in the rough shape of a heart, fingers pulsing to mimic a double beat. You feel a wave of nausea pool in your mouth, every fine hair on your body raised upright, electrified with dread.

“If you hurt him-” you start to say.

Max laughs. It’s not a happy sound.

“You just don’t know when to stand down, do you?” he quips. “Not even when you’re…outgunned?”

You barely contain your snarl of pure rage.

Max holds up his hands, as though it’s a sign of goodwill.

“Hey, man, this isn’t going the way I planned, either,” he admits to you. “I wanted to get this dirty business done before you found me. I really didn’t want to rush it, but, well-,” and he sighs dramatically, his peevish tone morphing into one of almost spiritual nonchalance.

“Change of plans,” he concludes. “Now…why don’t we have that chat?”

It’s not a suggestion.

With another casual wave of his hand, Max slides a heavy china cabinet across the floor to stand in front of the closed closet doors, effectively sealing Keith’s unconscious form inside. It pains you more than you can say to just stand by and let it happen, but he’ll be safer there for now, and until you can deal with Max permanently, you need Keith out of his sights. But still - your fingers twitch with the urge to jump in and grab him, before jumping away as far as you possibly can. You’ve never tried to jump through the void with another person, but hell, there’s a first time for everything.

“If you hurt him-” you warn again.

“Relax, Padre,” Max drawls. “I just want to talk. This-” he gestures to the blockaded closet “- is just for insurance. You understand.”

The death glare you fix on him relays otherwise. Max shakes his head with a sigh.

“Come upstairs with me,” he says, “I’ve never been too good with blood. Makes me queasy.”

You ascend the stairs at gunpoint. Max follows from a cautious distance behind you, directing you into the master bedroom where his freshly murdered parents used to sleep. Which is a weird fucking place to have a confrontation like this, but Max has clearly already got some screws loose. When you turn back around to face your captor, it’s with squared shoulders and the best air of command and authority that you can muster.

“You’ve been busy, Max,” you intone.

The boy scoffs. “Yeah, tell me about it,” he says with an almost self-deprecating grimace. “I didn’t want it to be this way, you know. I wanted to space the deaths out more. Make them seem more natural. Let each of them stew in their own fear and grief for a while before I- shlick.” He makes a cutting motion across his throat with a finger. “But I had to move the timeline up.”

“You knew we were coming,” you realize. “Someone warned you?”

Max clucks his tongue in a patronizing manner.

“Good job,” he drawls. “He said you were the smart one. He said you would try to stop me.”

Alarm bells sound off in your head, a pervading cacophony that only grows stronger and louder. Whatever revelation you’re about to be witness to, it isn’t going to be good.

“…He?” you manage. “Who’s ‘he?’”

Max’s expression takes on a level of fanaticism that is, frankly, terrifying.

“The man with the yellow eyes,” he explains in a near-hush. “He calls himself Azazel. He told me about you, Shiro. And about Keith. He says we’re birds of a feather.” His voice deepens even lower, growing in fervor. “He was the one that showed me my powers. He came to me in dreams.”

The way he speaks sends your skin crawling, but you try your best, cloaking your voice in empathy and understanding as you hold your hands out, a conciliatory gesture.

“Listen, Max,” you say, “ this - yellow-eyes guy. You can’t listen to him, alright? I know it sounds crazy, but he’s - some sort of monster-”

“A demon,” Max interjects. “He’s a demon. He told me that, too.”

“He - what?” You are so out of your depth here. You don’t know what to say to turn this sinking ship around, but still you try, grasping at every straw within reach. “Max, listen to me,” you plead. “Demons lie. Demons are pure evil; they can’t be trusted. And the reason I know this is because it’s my job to hunt them down and kill them. And if a demon is telling you things, telling you to use your power, to kill your parents-”

But the boy before you shakes his head frenetically, eyes almost alight with glee.

“No, no - that was my idea,” he tells you eagerly. “Azazel only showed me my potential. He never told me what to do with it. He let me take the initiative. I chose to kill my family.”

“Max-” you try to draw him out of this rage, but he sneers at you, giving a languid shrug as he shifts his hands to his jean pockets.

“They deserved it,” he says, casually, simply. Like he’s relaying the weather. “Hell, they deserved more than what they got. I made it quick. God knows they never did.”

Christ, as if this couldn’t get any more tragic. You feel a pit open up in your stomach.

“Your family hurt you?” you guess.

You mean for your words to bridge the gap, to create a sense of understanding. But Max doesn’t receive them well. Immediately, his hackles are up as he gives you a sickly smile, bordering on the deranged.

“Hurt me? Hurt me?” he laughs. “Yeah. Yeah, I guess you could say that. They - hurt me. Or they just stood by and watched. Like the bitch downstairs. Kept her pretty little lips shut, while she watched daddy dearest beat me to a fucking pulp. For years and years, she just kept her silence and watched.” He chuckled abruptly. “An eye for an eye is just good Old Testament justice, then, right?”

It’s rare that this happens, but - this boy genuinely scares you. With his slight baby-face and delicate features, he should look wounded, young and tragic, not twisted by this hideous sadism that he wears now. You have the sickening feeling that, if you’d just found this kid a couple of months earlier, he would have been a vastly different character. You could have even saved him, perhaps, coaxed him back from the dark side. Now, it’s a futile effort - but with the stakes so high, you can’t afford to admit defeat.

“I’m sorry, Max,” you try. “I truly am. You didn’t deserve that abuse. No child does.”

A crack in the facade. For a second, you can see that abused little boy peering back out at you; it closes just as quickly, as Max seems to become haunted by memory.

“But…maybe I did,” he murmurs. “My father blamed me for everything, you know. For his job, for his life, for my mom’s death.”

You shake your head. “That was wrong of him,” you say firmly.

But Max cocks his head, his expression taking on a troublingly thoughtful slant.

“Was it?” he wonders. “He always said my mother died in my nursery. She burned up in a fire, pinned to the ceiling like a butterfly.”

You feel cold sweat break out all over your body.

“Pinned to the ceiling-?” you echo numbly.

Max gives you an awful grin.

“Now you’re starting to get it!” he encourages. “We’re a lot more alike than unlike, Shiro. All of us Special Kids. Azazel chose us for greatness - and he ruined our lives in the process.” He takes a slow step forward, then another, as though stalking you. The gun follows his movements, pivoting in the air to keep you in its sights, and before you’ve even realized you moved, the back of your legs have hit the bed. You have nowhere to go as Max continues his perverse gloating. “He killed my mother. He killed your mother, too. And your father. And your lover-”

You shake your head violently. “Shut up,” you hiss, “you shut the fuck up-”

“It’s all true, Shiro!” Max presses on. “You can’t deny it! Everything I’m telling you now is the god’s honest truth.” He lowers his voice into a fanatical whisper. “So you’ll know I’m telling you the truth when I tell you this: they were holding you back. Your parents. Your boyfriend. They were only keeping you from your true potential. That’s why they had to go. That’s why Azazel had to kill them - it was to make us stronger.”

Through the haze of your rage and grief, you spot the angle you can use to try to gain the advantage.

“You can’t really believe that, Max,” you croak. “When that demon killed your mother, he ruined your life. He set you up for the abuse. He probably stood by and watched, too, for all these years, just like your stepmom. He’s not the hero of your story, Max. He’s the villain.”

Max looks curiously receptive to what you have to say. You push your luck.

“We could team up,” you whisper encouragingly. “We can find him, Max, hunt him down together, kill him-”

But Max cuts you off as he steps yet further into the room.

“Oh, don’t worry, Shiro,” he says, “I’ll kill him. Because you’re right; he is the one who ruined my life. But,” and he flashes you a regretful half-smile, “I have to kill you, first. Because there can only be one of us, you see.”

“Only one of us?” you parrot dumbly.

Max scoffs, his face twisting up for just a second into something like anguish, a fleeting glimpse at what he’s truly feeling under all this bravado.

“Yeah. Azazel’s a sadistic son of a bitch. He made a whole bunch of his special children. But he only needs one.”

“You can’t take Azazel’s word on this,” you push. “Demons lie-”

“Oh, I know,” Max snaps, “But he’s not lying about this. You see - he likes you, Shiro. He likes Keith. He has a real boner for the two of you. He never fucking shuts up about it: Kogane and Shirogane!” He flings his arms out as he says your surnames, as though he’s an announcer at a boxing championship. “Brothers in everything but blood! He wants you to be the last two standing. He wants to see you fight to the death.”

Your heart is fairly pounding out of your chest.

“Why are you telling me all of this?” you demand. “Just monologuing for the hell of it?”

“Hmm, a little bit,” Max muses, “I’ve always appreciated a good evil monologue. But no, Shiro. This is more about seeing what I’ll be up against. You and Keith, you’re supposed to be the most promising children.” He makes a face. “Not sure I agree-”

There’s a thump downstairs, followed by a loud groan. Keith is waking up inside the closet, you realize - and Max must realize this, too, because he turns his head towards the staircase, distracted for half a moment. This, you know, will be the best diversion you’re going to get. You take your chance.

It’s just a jump to the left, three feet in front of you. Just on the other side of the way Max has turned, where you can reappear in an instant, before he even realizes you’ve moved. Blink back into existence with your left arm already wrapped over his forehead, your right just under his jaw. Coil, and twist. Snap his neck.

You jump. You - jump. Jump.

Max spins back to you, and any vulnerability that was previously scrawled across his face has been washed clean by white-hot rage. His lips are curled into a snarl, eyes sparkling with acidic mirth.

“You really shouldn’t have tried that,” he says

“You-?” your voice sputters in shock.

Max grins with all his teeth.

“Me-?” he mimics sarcastically. “Yeah, Shiro - looks like telekinesis trumps teleportation. I guess Azazel was wrong - about you, at least.”

As you struggle within his invisible grip, you realize just how little leeway you’ve been given. Max has you locked down in all the ways that matter. Your fingers can’t even wiggle a fraction of an inch. And to your growing horror, it’s getting harder to breathe.

“Max,” you wheeze out, “you don’t have to do this-”

“But I do,” Max argues softly. He steps even closer into your personal space, his eyes searching you over curiously, like you’re a bug pinned to corkboard.

“How to explain this?” he ponders, almost to himself. “You like Star Wars, right? Think of it like that. There’s a bunch of Jedi, okay? And they can all use the force - but there’s only one Anakin Skywalker. Only one Chosen One. Because that’s just the way the story was written. We have no control over that - just in how we choose to survive afterward. So you see,” he concludes, “it’s really nothing personal. I’m just looking out for myself. You’d do the same.”

“No, we wouldn’t,” you grit out.

Max grins. The vice grip around your lungs intensifies, paralyzing them in crushing stasis.

“You’re not as righteous as you like to think yourself, Shiro,” he murmurs. “You’re just like me. And I’m under no illusion of what I am.” He gives a little shrug. “I’m a fucking monster. But I’m a truthful one. Which is why you can trust me when I promise: when I get around to Keith - I’ll make it quick.”

Your mouth gapes open, desperate for sound, for air. No, you try to say, please, but although your mouth is allowed to gasp miserably, you can’t make a sound. You’ve lost all access to oxygen. You’re going to slowly, painfully suffocate right here, in this murdered couple’s master bedroom, expiring on their marriage bed, while your killer watches on in rapt fascination.

From somewhere downstairs, distantly, you can hear Keith screaming.

And then, suddenly, the pressure is released. You sag onto the bed, gasping desperately as your chest automatically draws in deep, pained lungfuls of air. Your vision blacks out for a second as a rush of oxygen reboots your dying brain, but even before your eyes fully open again, you know what you will see.

Keith stands just behind Max, his expression incandescent with rage, and in his hands, he holds out his sword, fully extended to its preternatural size - plunged straight through Max’s chest. No blood on the blade, and yet it curves straight out of his chest cavity, right above his diaphragm. Max gasps, and blood spatters down from his mouth. Another wet cough, his teeth bared in a gory mess, and another glob of something dark and oozing drips from his lips and onto the worn fabric of his t-shirt.

You watch dazedly as, almost like within a dream, the blade is slid out with a terrible, suctioning squench. Keith adjusts his grip on the pommel, then swings the blade in a high, horizontal arch. It hums in the air as it’s twisted around. A shing, then a deep, fleshy thwack.

The wounded man in front of you is decapitated with a heavy grunt. A spray of arterial blood catches you right across the brow, blinding you momentarily. You hear Max’s body tumble to the floor.

When you open your eyes, it’s to see Keith kneeling before you. He moved so fast, you dimly realize, that you didn’t even see him fly through the door. One moment he wasn’t there, and the next…

Whatever just happened with your oxygen-starved brain, Keith is clearly here now, solid and in the flesh. He kneels between your splayed legs, hands frantically touching your chest, patting at your face.

“-hiro, Shiro, Shiro-,” he mutters frantically, as though he, too, can’t believe that you’re really here in front of him. With slow, clumsy hands, you catch his wrists, try to calm his panicked movement.

“M’okay, Keith,” you mumble, with numb lips. “I’m okay. Promise.”

Keith’s eyes brim over with a heartbreaking cocktail of unchecked fear and relief.

“I did it,” he mutters nonsensically, “I can’t believe I did it, but you’re here-”

“Of course I’m here,” you assure, “Keith, you saved me-”

“But I didn’t!” Keith cries out. “I saw you die, Shiro! When I was trapped in the closet, I saw - he was going to kill you! I saw it so clearly-”

“Keith,” you try to stop his spiral into the abyss, but Keith shushes you hysterically, a hand flying up to press over your lips.

“It was like it was happening in real-time, Shiro,” he whispers urgently. “I’ve never been able to change something that was so certain. Never.”

He touches you, palming at your face and chest like he fears you might be a mirage. His pale face, spattered across by bright scarlet, is so painfully elated that you want to cry.

“But I did,” he tells you, “I changed it! The future was set in stone, and I changed it all.” When you don’t give any outward reaction, he shakes you, eyes burning with unearthly amethyst flame.

“Don’t you understand what this means?” he urges.

No, you don’t. You can’t seem to fathom the tectonic shift that Keith believes has just occurred, the myriad of possibilities that he sees opening up before him. You can’t see their individual threads, how those strings of fate twist and bind the whole universe into being - and can now be severed, as easily as bleeding. You can’t see the future like Keith can - only what’s in front of you. And what you see is this: you boy, fresh off his first human kill and covered in blood, wild-eyed with battle-lust, a near-savage grin broken over his face.

[ You see - he likes you, Shiro. He likes Keith -

- says we’re birds of a feather -

- the most promising children- ]

You’ve never feared the passage of time before. But now you will. You’ll fear the future, and what it holds, like you have never feared anything else in your life. And now that this fear has gripped your heart and your soul, it will worm its way inside, infecting every thought you have, every waking moment you share, every nightmare you will ever have to endure. It will ride you like possession. It will dominate your will. It will never let you go.

Keith has changed this, too.

***

He wants you to fight to the death

Q: How many times did I forget Shiro could teleport while writing this chapter?
A: Way too fucking many.