How Far I've Come (Keith x Reader)

☪︎ The Cost; Chapter Twenty-Eight ☪︎

Keith lie awake that night, mind drawn up tighter than his clenched fingers, right on the edge of numbing over. After what happened merely hours days, how is he supposed to sleep? How can someone expect him to relax, to rest his eyes when all he wants to do is see her again?

He flips from his side onto his back, looking up at the ceiling. Anyone else could see cold, gray steel, but he sees the same ceiling that she looked at when she was here.

She slept in this bed.

He kissed her in these sheets.

He jolts up, his eye bags heavy, his heart heavier. He drags himself out of those sheets, off of the bed, out of the room with that ceiling. With nothing but the clothes on his back and his blade, he scuffed his way through the halls, stopping outside her door.

When the doors opened, he stepped inside. He ran his fingers over the walls, dragging his feet on the floor until he sat tiredly on her bed. His hope is low.

What chance does he have, a mortal man, against a race that's been universally dominant for over ten thousand years?

Y/n pledged her allegiance to them.

To him.

He lays, carefully, on the bed. The feeling of her, the aura of what used to be, wraps around him like a phantom presence.

It's pathetic to him, how low he is right now.

He's a defender of the universe, a paladin of the almighty Voltron. Why is he letting his emotion, his energy, his decisions rest in the hands of someone who doesn't even remember loving him?

Why is he letting the life of one person effect how he can save the lives of trillions, quite likely more?

Why should I keep going?! He thinks.

He closes his eyes, brows knitting.

It's because she does that to Keith, and he wouldn't have it any other way.

It's because she deserves to be loved by someone who she loves back.

It's because what she is and what Lotor is making her be are drastically different.

It's because when Y/n was with Keith, with her friends- she was happy. Her eyes were brilliant, bright, and {eye color}. Now they rest a dull, orderly honey-magma.

It's because she deserves to be happy. It's because she deserves to be safe. It's because anyone should get a choice for love. It's because she loves Keith, she always has, and Keith loves her right back.

That's why he's going to try.

And yet, more questions ensue.

How? How will he get her back?

When? When will it be safe to try, for him and for her?

His knuckles clung tighter to the cold sheets, frosty and distant. Every second he lays awake, his eyes only continue to get heavier, tired to a point of torture. How can you sleep at night when for a time of too many, the person who held your heart in their hands disappears with it?

Keith teeters on the edge of consciousness and nightmares that night. His head grinds with the need to plan; an escape, a regrouping, a way to bring back what Lotor has taken away- memories and all else. Though, he has only enough willpower to imagine things that will never succeed, like true love's kiss or, in his deepest of thinking, going as far as torturing Haggar into reversing the incantation.