Unknown

Keith

Keith has successfully avoided Lance, Pidge, and Hunk since Wednesday, and has almost equally successfully dodged all of Matt's sad, disappointed looks as well. His fight with Lance may have been pretty tame, something that could be fixed with a lot of time and a heartfelt apology. And he does want to apologize. To somebody who doesn't know the truth, it must have sounded seriously harsh. But he can't bring himself to face Lance again, and it's not like he's going to come looking for Keith after he'd seemingly gone after Unknown like that.

But what else could he have done? Lance had been scarily close--practically one clue away from realizing the truth. And despite everything he's said to reassure Unknown, Keith is still terrified of being found out.

But going back to his lone-wolf lifestyle after a few weeks of actual human interaction is exhausting. Every day after his shift at the library, he drags himself home (doing his best to catch the bus that Hunk isn't on) and hides away in his room for a few hours of silence. He actually gets some use out of the punching bag in the garage, beating it recklessly until his mind is blank and only stopping when Acxa steps in front of it and demands he take a break.

His homework gets done during lunch and study skills, since he refuses to help out with Theater Arts anymore. Shiro look concerned when he spends most of eighth period angrily typing about the Agricultural Revolution, but he ignores that in favor of changing the background color of every slide from the blue that reminds him of Quentin's obnoxious hair to a nice, dark purple.

He hasn't seen Lotor since Wednesday, either. Coran has them all finishing their presentations outside of class so they can work on a different, smaller, individual project during class time. Acxa hasn't had any of her Princes ("Nobody calls us the Princes") over, either, which means he's been able to not think about the fight and how it had possibly, at least partially, (definitely) been Lotor's fault. He doesn't know how to feel about it.

His luck runs out on Friday, when he sees Lotor waiting outside the library doors at the end of the day. Keith almost turns around to leave, because screw his after-school commitments, he doesn't want to talk about what happened before. But he figures that running from Lotor is cowardly, and he's had enough of being a coward this year.

Lotor straightens up when he sees Keith, taking a few steps forward to meet him and confirming Keith's suspicions that he was waiting for him.

"Do you have time to talk?" Lotor asks as Keith walks by him, quickly falling into stride.

"I don't know why we'd need to," Keith says, pushing open the library door. Lotor follows him inside.

"I just want to apologise," Lotor says, sounding sincere and genuine and more straightforward than Keith's ever heard him. "You don't have to listen, but I'm going to speak."

"Fine." Keith drops his backpack onto the floor, sits down behind the desk, and fixes Lotor with a blank stare. He doesn't want to blame Lotor--they'd actually started getting along, before Quentin came along--but he knows that it's at least partially Lotor's fault, even though it hadn't been intentional.

Lotor takes a second to collect his thoughts, during which a few students point at the two of them and whisper. Keith fights the urge to glare at them.

"Firstly, I'm sorry about the scene I caused earlier in the week. I know I've somehow gotten a reputation, and it doesn't always make it easy for me to make friends."

"Okay."

Keith waits expectantly, trying to soften his expression. Lotor and his group must be under a lot of pressure from their teachers and their peers; he'd never thought about that before. They are kind of like the celebrities of the school, which makes them easy targets for people like Quentin.