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Kevin makes a strong argument. Shiro does love dogs, and it's not like Kevin's asking him to get properly dressed or go take a shower first. But...

"I don't know if I should really be around animals like this."

"You really can't tell me that a bit of playtime with a small, adorable creature who can't contain its love for you just because you exist wouldn't make your heart at least a little lighter."

Kevin loves Shiro very much also, but his love is not fixing the problem because he is not a cute puppy. He is at peace with this fact of reality.

"Also, it's mac-and-cheese day at the soup place I showed you. We could get some to go on the way back."

Shiroooooo. Shiro, there's so much in the woooooooorld.

Kevin's trying really hard to cheer him up. He feels kind of bad about that, really. Because even though he enjoys puppies and mac-and-cheese and spending time with Kevin, when he thinks about fighting gravity to get out of bed and walk around town and interact with people, it just feels... insurmountable somehow. Which is ridiculous. He's done much harder things in much worse circumstances, he should be able to handle this. He should be stronger than this. The news Keith brought back with him has been difficult for everyone, he should be supporting the team and helping them through this and instead he's just become another burden and the guilt just makes him feel worse but he's so tired, he just doesn't feel up to pretending any more.

"Kevin, I'm sorry, I appreciate what you're trying to do, but--shouldn't you be focused on Keith?"

Whyyyyyy is Kevin the only person who seems to be unable to resist small and helpless things. Well, Edea can't. Edea understands him, at least.

Still, Kevin's steady gaze doesn't move away, and nothing in his expression indicates real disappointment. He remains where he is, one arm pillowing his head as he watches Shiro.

"You know, if you wish to stay inside, or for me to go away," he says, "you can just say as much. This heavy feeling, I get it. I don't talk about it, but I know it. Given the current situation, it won't trouble me to hear such things from you."

One must sometimes be very explicit with Shiro, he has learned. Kevin talks about this side of himself even less than he mentions his tendency to break things when frightened, if only because it's much easier to hide. But if Shiro needs to be told upfront that Kevin understands, it is how it is.

"I don't want you to leave." He feels bad about being such lousy company, but being alone feels even worse. At least Kevin understands.

After a moment of silence, he speaks up again. "...How do you deal with it, Kevin? Knowing that no matter what we go through or learn here, none of it's going to matter once we go home?"

Kevin considers this, one foot slowly and gently tapping the other one, fidgeting despite the heavy atmosphere. His silence is one that Shiro has seen many times before -- the thoughtful one he gets when he knows the answer, he just needs to string the words together. Because there are a lot of words.

"...I told you once before, right? In this world, we don't have to be who we are at home. I think you've assumed I was speaking of my past, but -- really, I was referring to my future." Reaching up, Kevin grabs one of Shiro's pillows and hauls it down. His elbow is not comfy enough. "Gilbert and Oz and a few of the others...they came from fifteen years ahead of me. Because of that, I know the role I need to play to help to save my own world, and the person I'll need to be to do it, and...I know how and when I'm going to die. That story, going home to live it out is something that's inevitable."

He rolls onto his back, so that he can idly play with a few of his hope lights. He wants to see how they'll react to all the extra gravity. Sure enough, they don't seem to want to float just now, but as Kevin conjures them they wander across the bedspread, looking almost predatory somehow. They're pale silver today, rather than their customary cheerful gold.

"It's true that, in my own world, Kevin Regnard of Empatheias won't matter. At home, 'Kevin Regnard' will be executed the minute his name is exposed, in fact, so I'll cut my hair and change my name to 'Xerxes Break' and become another man entirely. In this place, however, Kevin Regnard is everything. Bulat is dead at home, did you know that? In a situation like his, or like Keith's, now -- it's easy to say that this life here in this place is all that's left for them, and they've got to seize it. But it's true for the rest of us, too. This life is this life, independent of everything else. So, I always say to myself...being Xerxes Break, it can wait. Just now, I have other things I have to do."

He conjures another light, and somehow, it seems to wobble in the air for a few seconds, as though something were trying to pull it out of its own shape. Kevin frowns at it, but it settles, and he lets it go.

"...anyway, even if our souls never cross paths outside of this world...you really can't tell me that to sit here together like this, and to be Kevin-and-Shiro now, in this moment, is something that doesn't mean anything."

Shiro runs his fingers over the friendship bracelet tied around his right wrist. Of course it means something, he wouldn't have asked for the replacement if it didn't. But the fact remains that it disappeared the last time he went home and while he was gone, he didn't once feel its absence.

...He can't really expect Kevin to understand it, not when he's never gone back home in all the years he's been here. And... It hasn't really gotten to the heart of what's bothering him. This matters, but not in any way that can help Keith.

"It means a lot. But that's what the problem is. It'll all go away once I go home and there's nothing I can do about it. No matter what I learn here, I can't stop myself from making the same mistakes all over again. That's not something I can just treat like somebody else's problem, not with the way things are turning out."

"That's precisely what I'm saying, though. No matter what we learn here, our stories in our own worlds are written as they are, and that's that. And, if you were to go home and stop yourself from making whatever mistakes you're regretting now...you'd be rewriting his past, Shiro. You and I both know how that sort of thing goes."

It's true that Kevin doesn't understand, but even if he did, he wouldn't move from this stance anyway. To his mind, for Shiro to be able to use information he's gained here in his own world...that would be corrupting the timeline, and as far as Kevin is concerned, the timeline is sacred. That's something Shiro will understand about him, for sure. Even without the knowledge of his past, it's not uncommon these days for somebody to ask about changing things at home over the amulets, and he and Shiro spend enough time together that Shiro's bound to have seen at least one or two of the knee-jerk reactions Kevin has to such things in person. They aren't pretty, and that's what he thinks Shiro is getting at now. Preventing Keith's death.

"I know, Kevin. I know I can't do anything for Keith here. But.... I don't know if Keith told you about this, but they went to an alternate reality." 'They,' because it was while Shiro was still missing. "A place where history went differently. So it's possible we're not actually all from the same reality. We don't remember anything when we go back, so there's no way of knowing for sure. And it'd explain things like how Pidge keeps coming here from different points in time but she never remembers being here before, if it's a slightly different Pidge every time."

There's something undeniably desperate in Shiro's eyes by now.

"If that's the case, if it's really true that my future doesn't have to be his past, then it isn't really changing the timeline, right?"

"I've thought the same about Pidge."

It is absolutely a legitimate theory. There have been identical people from slightly different worlds in Empatheias before, the Millas being the example Kevin knows best. He's wondered it about his own world, the Abyss being what it is. It'd explain the wonky timelines they're confronted by sometimes, too -- Vincent showing up as an adult at first, only to be brought in as a child all that time later. Why? It haunts him, somewhat.

"But Shiro, if he is 'your' Keith, you will be changing the timeline. And if he isn't 'your' Keith -- who's to say things will even go the same way in your own world as it is? If you really are from alternate realities, for all you know, you already will figure out how to keep him from such a fate. You aren't going to know until somebody goes home and comes back with a story that's truly different, and to hold on to that sort of hope to get through is..."

Well, down that way lies madness, really. More importantly, though --

"...anyway...Shiro, you're so important to him. To talk in such a way, it almost makes it sound like -- you're saying you don't want him to be 'your' Keith, and for him to realize such a thing, he'd..."

Edited 2018-02-11 02:22 (UTC)

"It's not that I don't want him to be 'my' Keith. He's done so well for himself, even with the way things ended up. I'm proud of him, I really am. But, I... I don't want to be 'his' Shiro. I don't want to be the kind of person who takes the Black Lion away from him. I don't want to get taken by the Galra again, either. I don't want to just disappear on them. It feels like every time I hear something new about what's going on back home, everything's just getting worse, and I don't want to just let it all happen."

That old dark cloud of Shiro's is starting to gather overhead again, and the gravity's getting worse.

"I hate feeling like this. There has to be something I can do."

"Shiro, that boy is -- hnnnnnnnn."

There is a lot going on in this ramble and Kevin's not sure he's equipped to deal with it. But the bit about not wanting to be the sort of person who "takes the Black Lion away from him" jumps out. Given what he knows about Keith there's just...there's something really, really wrong with that part.

"...when you first brought him to me, he was a good swordsman, but it was painfully obvious to anyone who's grown up with a blade that he was untrained, Shiro. I understand he spent a great deal of time whacking away at some sort of robot dummy, but that's no substitute for a real teacher. When he went home I wondered if his time away from me would cause his skills to atrophy. Instead, after spending a year with the Blade of Marmora, when we trained again -- for the very first time he knocked me down. He hasn't kept me down but it's a matter of time. I suspect we'll be even by the middle of this upcoming year, and it's because he finally had formal training."

He pauses to take a deep breath. It's difficult to get enough air, with Shiro increasing the pressure this way.

"This business with 'leading Voltron'...he absolutely possesses those skills. I see them in him all the time, especially now. But they've been just as instinctive and unpolished as his swordsmanship was, and to be thrown into such a position so harshly, it was really no different than having him whack a dummy until he sorts himself out, you know? I can't...tell you that it's going to be okay. I don't exist in your world, that we know of; I can't see everything. But I can tell you that you didn't take the Black Lion away from him, Shiro. To hear it from him, he gave it back to you, and thus put himself in a position where he was better able to learn. I think that's exactly what he ought to have done. So if you're going to blame yourself for things you haven't even lived through yet, please at least don't blame yourself for that, alright...?"

Edited (oops this was December) 2018-02-16 06:05 (UTC)

"It's not just Keith, Kevin. The Black Lion isn't just a weapon. It's alive. It's intelligent. And it chose Keith over me. I should've respected that. Keith should have, too."

Ultimately, who pilots the Black Lion or not isn't actually their decision to make. The Black Lion's opinion is the one that matters, and as far as Shiro can tell, it made its opinion pretty clear.

"If Keith was just in the Black Lion where he belongs, then he wouldn't have...."

"Do you really think Keith of all people will accept others telling him just where he ought to be? God Himself could tell that boy he 'belongs' in the Black Lion and he'd argue, if it suited him."

Which is...eh. It makes Kevin happier than it doesn't, most of the time. Privately, he thinks that's a part of what will make him a good leader in the end, but what does Kevin know? He's a follower.

"Anyway, in the end, it allows you both to pilot the thing. Both of you think the other one 'belongs' with it. From what I hear, that Zarkon fellow thinks he belongs with it, and for a while it wasn't inclined to argue. If you ask me that lion sounds up to something."

"Don't talk about it like that. You don't understand." That's the firmest Shiro's sounded in a while. Enough so that he almost sounds like himself again.

"The Black Lion wants a strong leader for a pilot. Someone who--who doesn't do this."

He gestures to himself, moping around in bed all day at a time when arguably his team needs him the most.

"Have emotions?"

Yeah, no, Kevin just isn't all that impressed by this lion and he's going to be sarcastic. Sorry, bro.

"Look, war doesn't give you the luxury of having a proper sulk, I understand that. Even so, didn't somebody tell me that whoever's in Red is supposed to be your 'right-hand man'? If that's how things are supposed to be, Black isn't going to mind if Keith or Lance or whoever is obliged to kick you about the bum to get you back into shape from time to time. Since that's the case...maybe you ought to open that door and let the kids snuggle up on you a bit, hmm?"

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