SKIN BOUND (DROPPED/UNFINISHED)

5

Look, I'm sorry if you really liked this story and if you were looking forward to a legitimate update or a more complete ending. I'm just going to post everything I (sort of) had planned.

I just want this story done and over with. I'm sick of it. I find it difficult to write about a ship that I'm not even interested in. I'm tired of Klance being shoved down my throat whenever I go on any social media platform and I'm just tired of the ship in general.

I haven't edited this for weeks, months so it's not good. My writing is just shit.

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Keith found happiness.

"Keith," Lance looked into his eyes, what was he searching for?

"Keith- I think," his blue, so-blue eyes, stared into every pore of his face, Keith could feel it. Keith felt like each fragment of his skin burn red or maybe even purple-- he didn't know but he felt it.

"I think I'm in love with you."

His skin tightened, Keith didn't know that could even happen, the fleshy cage was closing in on him. His lungs kept him from breathing, everything just felt a little too tight. Breathing never seemed so hard till then.

"Keith?" Lance gently took hold of Keith's arms. He could hear panic grow in Lance's voice as seconds passed with no response.

Keith grasped onto the hems of Lance's new, but well worn, jacket and pulled him into his embrace. He couldn't smell the old scent of cinnamon Earth that used to cling onto Lance's old jacket. Keith missed it. He looked up to see Lance's wide blue-- very, very blue-- eyes staring at him with shock. Keith hadn't said a word, he wondered if Lance could tell through his sudden embrace what he felt.

Keith smiled at Lance, Lance fumbled a little but smiled back at Keith with relief. Paladins and their telepathic bonds, right?

But Lance didn't know that, for the first time, Keith felt boundless against his skin.

Before the final battle--

The team wrote letters to themselves, to others, or of the historical moment soon to occur. It came as an idea of happiness, in hopes of leaving behind all stress and anxiety in the words they'd leave behind on paper.

It was a small activity, yet there was a trembling fear in Keith's hands as he wrote.

This would be his last words before battle, and it could be his last after the battle. But who knows the outcome, who knows who survives and who dies.

So he writes a letter for all of them.

In the final seconds of battle.

Keith was no omnipotent force. He couldn't see the tilting of the earth's axis from light years away or the constant shifting of the battle around him. Nothing was in his grasp other than the Red Lion's handles, red swerving under his control and took each blast in the calculated motions of his hands.

A blast, searing and painful, struck the Red Lion and went through her protective exterior. He could feel the burning sensations, the gaping core of the lion, as her life force started to fizzle into nothingness.

"Red," Keith grunted, pulling and pushing the handles. "Red!"

Lights that illuminated his vision began to flicker inside the cockpit, slowly dimming to a faint red then to pitch black. She didn't respond to him, no matter how many times he'd shout her name out loud or mentally.

"Guys, Red isn't responding," Keith spoke into his comm. "I don't think she's okay."

He kept twisting and pushing the handles in hopes of triggering some response. He smacked the panels, he pushed every button he could feel under his hands. He was blind inside the cockpit.

"No, no," he tried again, pulling Red's handles back. "Come on."

Inside Red, he felt the churning of emotions, things he wished he'd never understand as she told him, or showed him, that this was where she must leave him.

"I'm so sorry, I'm so--" Keith choked out a sob. "Sorry."

No one responded, maybe this was what he deserved for killing the strongest weapon in the universe. They would never be able to form Voltron again. His fault, forever his fault.

The floor beneath Keith's feet began to move as his chair flung him backwards, and out of the cockpit. His helmet automatically covered his face as the Red Lion threw him into space.

He desperately flung his arms to latch onto something for stability but he continued to tumble in circles. A few thrusts of his jetpack only made his spinning accelerate and all he could see was the flashing of explosions around him and the Red Lion moving further away from his vision.

Keith screamed out to the lion hurtling towards the burning blue suns. In his head he could feel the sizzling of her life force, blowing her remaining energy to him; this was her farewell.

"No!" he yelled, scrambling and flailing his arms about.

Keith spun uncontrollably into debris from destroyed galra ships around him. He frantically looked for the Red Lion, trying to see her figure amongst the two gas giants. His rotation slowed as ruins of fighter jets hit him. In between rotation. he'd missed the Red Lion being engulfed by scorching flames. The flames weren't even red, red like the fire he and his lion embodied. She didn't deserve this death.

But he couldn't die there either, he couldn't follow the same fate as Red. He needed to survive, he had so many plans and for once he was looking forward to living, to belonging to a family he never had. They would have to win without Red.

"Lance!" Keith yelled into his helmet. "Pidge, Hunk, Shiro!"

He screamed again, "I'm outside of Red!"

Silence came in response to his cries.

"Please, I'm sorry," Keith spoke helplessly. "Just anyone--"

A Galra cruiser appeared in his vision, an unsightly purple. Its canon locked onto his position. Him, the prey.

"I need help right now!" Keith twisted his limbs with no avail. The jetpack was practically destroyed from the crashing debris.

"Someone?"

He couldn't see through his blurry tears but he could feel the heat of the canon in his bones.

Nothing would save him, no one wanted to save him. What did he do so wrong.

"I'm sorry. But, God, please!"

The canon shot out.

"Please!" He sobbed, skin binding onto the searing light.