What if Keith really is part Galra, born and raised among them, human blood from distant relatives in his veins, a rare mutation that made his Galran parents have a human-looking child?

What if Shiro’s arm was crafted from steel and real Galran flesh, in a dark room with almost gentle touches from the witch, pressed to his body where his own pulse used to beat and where magic now haunts his new metal-breathing skin?

What if Keith is an orphan for a reason?

What if his last memory of his parents is their whispers of “safe, my sweetest child, you will be safe” as they push him into a capsule, the glass locking over his face before the tiny ship launches into space, and a witch’s magic floods over the face of the only two people he ever loved?

And what if Keith’s first reaction to Shiro’s new arm wasn’t shock, but a flood of recognition –

– because the energy that now pulses in his leader’s veins is what Keith used to call home.

The Black Lion’s Scar

“We’ll cut a new pair of lips into your skull,” the aliens had told him. “A bit deeper each day. A bit more each night. After every fight, boy, until we can see your neurons trembling behind that pathetic human flesh.”

They had kept their promise. For each night in the arena, another press of steel against his skin, a bit of blood smearing across his nose for his gladiator kills. When he escapes, he can still feel the metal scrape against bone for the first time in the night before.

One day, when they’re molten together as Voltron and flying home from a mission, he tells them through the connection. Shiro says it like this: that for each life they made him take and thus for each time he survived, they put a cut to his nose, widened the wound. The team is quiet after that. Shiro hears their hesitation, begs in his mind that they won’t ask.

“I’ll be more careful,” Keith finally says. “I won’t wave my sword around anymore when – I mean, it could remind you of – cause it’s just a bigger knife, right?”

Shiro doesn’t correct him.

How could he possibly tell them that the aliens hadn’t used a knife, because it would have been through Shiro’s skull in days?

They had taken a sharp wire, and they had touched it against the bridge of his nose in brutal softness until the skin just reddened, until the flesh deepened a millimeter, the tiniest brush of steel against him.

A wire had been their instrument and Shiro the bow to play it with, because one cut for every kill had to be done, and there were countless, endless, a myriad of lost lives that could only be painted on him with something as thin as that.

Shiro can’t count all the reasons why his bond with the team is unconditional in its trust, but there are three that come back to his mind every day.

His team looks at his scar, at the loss of colour and humanity in his hair, at the grotesque instrument of death where his warm hand used to be, and they see him as a leader, not a victim, not a fallen one.

Thus the first reason – they accept him.

His team made him earn their fierce loyalty, the trust of their purring lethal machines; they didn’t give him anything for free that he wouldn’t have wanted, but once he’d proven himself, they are there, always, by his side in battle and on the ground and through his nightmares.

The second reason – they give faith, and they take his.

His team may argue with him, drive him insane with worry and the urge to protect, but those four people and Allura and even Coran do something that the aliens took from him when they touch-carved his body into a weapon, when the human doctors strapped him down and looked at him like he was a monster.

The last reason.

When they fight, his words are not the law, but a guidance that the team tunes into the finest perfection.

When Shiro speaks a no about his own body or soul, away from battle and war, they take it as the no that it is, and nothing less.

Keith finds him on the hill before the house. The others are inside, waiting for answers, an explanation, but Keith touches Shiro’s shoulder and looks at him. They talk. Keith can’t begin to describe how much has changed, how he’s been searching while Shiro had been through unspeakable things that left his skin ashen and hair white and cost him flesh all over his body.

He still reaches for Shiro’s hand. “Let’s go inside,” Keith says, wants to pull him off that hill and somewhere safe, but Shiro flinches away from him. “What?”

“I’m not me anymore.” Shiro looks at the ground, left hand curled around his metallic wrist, knuckles clenching tight enough to lose all blood. “This hand isn’t mine. They put it there, I don’t know what it does, and if I’ll hurt people.”

Keith watches him for a long moment. Then, he says: “That’s stupid. Typical Shiro-thing to say, but still stupid.” This time he doesn’t give Shiro a chance to react. Keith snatches his hand, the cold and sharp-edged one, gripping it as hard as he can.

“Seems like I can still grab you and pull you out of things you don’t belong in. So I guess it works for a hand, meaning it’s yours and it’s you.”

He doesn’t wait for Shiro’s reaction. “C’mon,” Keith says, “they’re waiting.” When he turns to stumble down the hill, Shiro follows without a word, but his fingers squeeze Keith’s hand carefully. The metal is warm now.

Voltron’s Bond.

It’s Pidge who initiates the whole thing without even wanting to.

They’re all exhausted. The team building exercises did nothing for them, they still can’t assemble Voltron again, dinner tastes like slimy slippery goo and it’s so quiet except for the sound of their spoons against the bowls that Pidge can’t bear with it anymore. “I’m done for today. Night. I’ll be in my quarters.”

Everyone looks up, but nobody does anything to keep Pidge from leaving the table. They just watch, young eyes dark and tired, as a thin frame disappears through the door, outworn and hunched over like all of them.

Hunk is the next to stand up, five minutes after. “Pidge’s right. I’m done, too. See you guys tomorrow.” Then he stomps off. The silence around the table thickens, and it’s no surprise to Allura that the rest of the food stays untouched until one after another, the boys get up and nod at her.

It’s Keith next, quiet and with gritted teeth, fists curled by his side. It’s Lance, not even cracking a joke at her, worrying his lip between his teeth. And after he’s stacked the rest of the bowls and mumbled a quiet “thank you for the training today”, Shiro follows after them, having stayed for over an hour since Pidge vanished.

The night has fallen over the planet when Coran steps to stand by Allura’s side. She’d been watching the virtual model of the galaxy, counting planets that needed saving, but turns her head to him. “I don’t know how to get them to bond. They’re so young. They’re scared, and I can’t make their fate easier.”

Coran tilts his head and, for some reason, smiles. “You should see this.”

And she really should. Coran leads her to Pidge’s room, at the very end of the corridor, the door carelessly open. Allura prepares for a lecture about safety in one’s quarters and underestimating the enemies’s stealthiness, but Coran simply points into the room… and Allura can’t help but smile, too.

In a pile of blankets and pillows, the five paladins of Voltron are asleep.

Pidge lies in the middle, legs stretched out long, glasses somewhere on the floor because Hunk’s big hand cradles that fragile jaw and pulls both close against another. They had been drawn here, one by the other – Keith next, legs tucked to his own chest and curled up so tightly that he’s a tiny fraction of his usual temper and red-hot wildness. His nose touches Pidge’s back, and the strong arm around his waist that belongs to Shiro seems to be what holds him together. And there’s Lance, wedged somewhere by Shiro’s hip, head on his stomach and Shiro’s fingers calm in his hair.

Allura turns and closes the door again. She says good night to Coran, walking to her room in silence. She thinks about the paladin’s slow breaths. She thinks about Pidge’s fingers gripping Hunk’s shirt, Shiro’s fingertips reaching against Pidge’s back just below where Keith looked vulnerable. She thinks about Lance, looking in place, belonging, safe.

“Bonding, huh,” Allura whispers to the stars outside the castle. “I see.”