[I forgot that I had this chapter, so forget what I said, you'll get this instead.]

It took a while for the tears to stop.

Well, Keith thought it was a while; it could have been anything. A varga, a quintant, or a single dobosh; Keith wouldn't know, and he certainly didn't care. Not anymore.

Who cared about time when it never seemed to run out?

His muscles started to ache long before he stopped shredding tears, and felt too heavy to move by the time he did stop, leaving him stuck on the dusty floor, staring ahead at nothing, with a tearstained face and fingers that ached from a non-existent friction burn.

He could feel his chest rise and fall rhythmically, long, deep breaths that don't fit into the situation. His lips felt dry and his eyelids felt so heavy, making it hard for him to open his eyes every time he blinked.

He was tired.

He was so so so tired.

Maybe he could go to sleep?

Sleep until the desert was cold and blew with a chilly breath. Sleep until the caves collapsed onto the Blue Lion, making sure that nobody ever found her ever again. Sleep until the true darkness came, came to swallow him up and up and up until up went down and down went up again.

Sleep forever and ever and ever until ever ends.

What a funny thought.

He needs more than a simple sleep. Sleep only lasts for several varga, and that allotted time is usually painful for Keith to deal with, if he was even lucky enough to be sleeping during that time. He needed rest.

He needed it to stop.

Ha. The corner of his lip quirked at the thought of hope invading his mind.

He wasn't going to fall for that again.

Nope.

No.

Nada.

Keith screwed his eyes tight shut as he pushed himself up from the floor, the floorboards having imprinted onto his face, his tear tracks collecting the dust that had once rested upon it and his hair was better off not mentioned. The sudden movement after so long without it makes his head rush with blood, making him want to just collapse onto his bed and lay still until the rush passes.

The only thing stopping him from doing so was the glint of light out of the corner of his eye, indicating that his knife was still on his bed, the wrappings stopping the small purple glow from being seen from outside, hiding the secrets beneath the fabrics.

Picking the knife up, Keith brushed his thumb across the material, rough and grey with age, but not with enough force to nudge it.

You fight like a Galra soldier.

There was no way that he was a Galra- he wasn't purple, wasn't covered in fur, didn't have yellow eyes.

He wasn't a Galra, his father was human. His mother was-

He didn't know his mother. She had left long before he could remember, leaving behind a stupid glowing knife and probably some stupid alien DNA.

He wasn't a Galra.

-the screen underneath his hand flashing a bright red-

He wasn't a Galra.

His hands had become shaky, he should probably put the knife down before something bad happens, before he does something stupid. The itch was back, his skin was tight and his blood, his deep red blood, was running hot and fast under his skin. He gripped the knife harder, if to stop the shakes at least.

He needed to put the knife down.

He just wanted it all to stop.

No more dying. No more living the same eight god damn months until he died again, and again, and again.

No more.

Please.

He wasn't asking for much.

Was he asking for much?

This was all too much.

He readjusted his grip on the knife and held his breath as he slowly dragged the blade across the inside of his wrist, feeling weirdly numb to everything.

He took quick intake of air, and released short laugh as he finally -finally- let go of the knife.

Nice try.

The park had grown much darker from his previous visit, the sun (if there was even a sun) had been covered by murkier, more ominous clouds than before, the grass beneath his feet now dead and rotting. The silence was screaming at him, urging to leave, but he already knows that he's not going to be going anywhere, so there was no point in moving.

There was something missing from the scene.

Where were the flowers?

Scanning the ground, his eyes searches for the specks of colour in the monotone world, turning his body with his head when there wasn't any, just to make sure there wasn't any behind him, walking backwards just to make sure he wasn't standing on one.

One misstep back, and he was falling again.

He hated this feeling. He screws his eyes closed for their protection as he fallsHeyH through the air, feeling the way that it would whip and flick at his face and skin. The wind was holding his limbs still, his hair was all over the place, flailing uncontrolledly in front of his face, and it felt like he had left his stomach in the empty field.

He hated the sensation of falling.

He would hit the ground in a soon, hit it and die again and wake up on the floor in the shack again, like he always did when he fell.

He hated dying.

Opening his eyes, Keith took a gasp a breath as he tried to get a grasp of his surroundings.

Only, unlike what he expected, he wasn't in his shack. He was in that weird spacey place again, where he saw Shiro, and he was floating, was he floating? No, he was sitting, staring, watching. They were twinkling, the stars were twinkling, they were calling, shining, begging a for a visit, twinkling blue and yellow and red and green and so many other colours that be began to make his head hurt and Keith flinches, because for a moment he's next to an exploding star instead of just viewing them. He wants to look away from them, to get away from them because he doesn't want to die by star again, he doesn't want to die again, please not again, so he gets up and he starts to walk away from the stars, even if they were calling for him, even if they were begging him to come closer. He closes his eyes as he walks because he knows, at least subconsciously, he's not going anywhere, not really, but he has to go-

He bumps into something cold and metal.

Opening his eyes, Keith's view was obstructed by the metal paw of the Black Lion.

Weird.

This hadn't happened last time.

Shiro was there last time.

So why was his Lion there instead?

He understood why Shiro were there, at least, a little. He could feel the bond that being a Paladin of Voltron made, he could feel the others when they were fighting together, training together, controlling Voltron together. They were a team, and a really good one when Keith hadn't die too soon.

He would say that he had the strongest connection to Shiro out of all the Paladins.

He had no connection to Black.

Black was the distant lion, the one that would help Shiro in the middle of the fight, but at the bare minimum. She would do what it would take to make sure Shiro survived, making sure that the team got out of there, but she still felt distant, detached, in a unique way from the other lions.

It was like something was holding her back, making her hesitate and have second thoughts.

He stared up at the lion's face, careful to ignore the onslaught of twinkles of stars in his peripheral. He didn't want to know about the stars, he didn't care about them at the moment. They didn't matter, because for some reason the Black Lion was here with him.

Putting his hand on the cold metal, Keith wondered if he would be able to feel the energies of the Lion here. He could do it with Blue, to a small extent, seeing that that was how he found her in the first place, even if there was no proper bond between the two of them. He could do it a lot better with Red, actively feeling out for her core in the middle of a battle, in the middle of the night, in the middle of an awkward conversation that he wanted nothing to be part with, in the middle of a panic attack.

Red helped him through so much.

Maybe Black could help him too?

(Keith only laughed at the thought of it when he woke up again on the wooden floorboards. How could Black help him? Anyway, he wasn't about to put so much hope in something he knew was going to fail.)

Keith sighed as he walked off from Shiro and Pidge, missing the concerned looks he had gotten from the eldest, and into the labyrinth that was Sendax's ship. Didn't it at least have signs indicating where someone should go when they needed something? Or did they get a map of ship on the first day and were expected to have it memorised within a pheob?

Or maybe they did what he did every time he was on a Galra ship and run around like a headless chicken until you find what you're looking and hope that you don't get yelled for being late.

Shaking his head, Keith took a right, making sure to look down the corridor before heading down it, following the pull that Red gave off and ignored the way that his hands itched as he regripped his knife.

He hadn't been in the mood to temp a panic attack just yet.

Another corner, and he was in the hanger that Red was being held in. Like all the other times before, she was protected by the blue particle barrier and her red coat of paint, while old, reflected the pride she obviously felt for not giving into the Galra.

He smiled at the thought as he left Red enter his mind, ready to be judged again.

He always wondered if, one cycle, Red won't accept him to be her Paladin, leaving him for the aliens. It had yet to happen, but at this point, it seemed that anything was possible, so he hadn't completely crossed the idea of his list of 'things that could possibly happen' list.

Keith still got the impression that he had to do something to impress her.

Woman.

The sudden sounds of plasma guns brought Keith back to his surroundings, reminding him that he was still in the Galra ship.

It may have slipped his mind (again) that this happened.

Ugh.

Bringing up his shield and readjusting his hold on the knife, Keith wondered what he should do next. Did he want to open the air lock again? He swore there have been a couple of times where he didn't have to do that, other than the times where he had died of course.

He doesn't notice the plasma beam come towards him and hit him in the back side of the head.

"…part of the Blade…"

"…Paladin, it's impossible…"

"…go planet side...Central Command…"

"…But the Emperor…"

Keith groaned as he came to, frowning as he brought his left arm closer to his body, feeling dead, useless and probably broken. Looking around, he noted the same purple colour theme as with every Galra ship, the small room he had been moved to, two meters by two by the looks of it, with solid by unidentifiable metal, cold to the touch.

Not only did he survive a hit to the head, a first for him, but he had also been captured and place in a cell.

How fucking typical.

He was pleased to note that he was still wearing his armour, though it seemed that both his Bayard and his knife, as well as his helmet had been taken away from him, leaving him completely weapon less and with no way to contact the rest of the soon to be team.

He had never done this before. It had never happened.

He was totally out of his league for this.

He could feel himself begin to panic more, take in shallower breaths, feel his heartbeat speed up, his thoughts become completely uncontrollable, but his mind completely detached from everything else.

This time, Red wasn't there to help him. He couldn't feel her in his mind, the comfort blanket that he had grown so used to after leaving the desert.

He relied on her too much.

Unconsciously, he dug his nails into his left arm, deep enough to go through his flight suit (something that should be impossible), deep enough for it to bleed, deep enough to watch the blood trail out of the wound in an almost sluggish way.

It was almost calming to watch it act like a river making its way towards the sea.

How sick was that?

Keith looked up at the whoosh of the door, squinting at the new source of light, only to feel his stomach drop as he watched two masked figures walk into the room.

Druids.

He didn't know a lot about them, only that they were most of the reason for Shiro's arm and that you do not want to fight them, though he had gotten that from first-hand experience rather than word of mouth.

"So, this is the little half-breed that was able to invade the ship?" Keith leaned back more into the wall of the cell, desperately wanting to get away from the creatures in front of him, his mind hanging onto the words they said.

Half-breed?

(He wasn't a Galra.)

(You fight like a Galra soldier.)

(He wasn't a Galra.)

"Yeah, we haven't heard back from Central Command yet, but they'll be interested as it seems that he may be the Red Paladin as well as a Blade member." The masks that they wore were creepy, with six eyes that made it as if they were staring deep into his soul, trying to find all the secrets to his life without having to ask and long dark robes hat reminded Keith of a child on Halloween, pretending to be the Grim Reaper.

He kept his hand over the self-inflicted wound as they inspected him closely, hoping that they wouldn't notice the small streams of blood in the gloom. Instead of going for his arms, the one closest to him goes for his ears, pulling at them and inspecting them with an unchecked curiosity, causing Keith to cry out in alarm and shock than plain.

"Strange. I've never seen a half-breed with such weird ears before." They muttered, twisting them around so they could see the back of them, making Keith grit his teeth, not wanting to shout out more. He was frozen, stuck in the position, and even though his biggest desire at that moment was to kick the fucker with all his might, his limbs were heavy, as if made of lead.

"Makes you think of what we could do with him, doesn't it?"

As soon as they had come, they were gone again, leaving Keith more edge than before.

There was no way he could stay here.

Sitting up, Keith tried to put his weight onto his legs, trying to stand up. Only, 'tried' was the key word, for, as soon as he did put his body weight onto his legs, they gave, leaving him back where he started, out of breath and stranded on the floor.

He was tired.

He was so so so tired.

Maybe he could go to sleep?

A small laugh escaped him at the thought.

Sleep?

He wasn't entitled to that simple luxury.

Rest?

As if.

What he needed, was to get out of here.

He needed to die.

No more.

Please.

He wasn't asking for much.

Was he asking for much?

Intaking a breath of air, he quickly bit down onto the wrist of his left arm where his nails had previously been, biting down deeper and deeper, feeling the blood rush from the self-inflicted wound and into and around his mouth, making him accidently swallow some of the liquid.

Throwing his head back towards the wall, he released short laugh as he as he tasted his own blood in his mouth, feeling it drip from his mouth, feeling weirdly numb to everything as he watched the blood pump out of the wound at what should have been an alarming rate, but only made him feel calm.

Nice try.