The FINAL chapter of A Little Death will come out March 15th, 2026
Keith’s mother visits him in his sleep. The crafty hands of somnolence mold her face out of hues of purple, yellow, and black. He knows nothing of her, not her stature, the tilt of her eyes, or her hair. Keith doesn’t know whether she’s covered in tufts of fur, like a bear, or is smooth like a seal. As a child, Keith would stand in front of a mirror and make a game of theorizing which of his traits belonged to her. He’d try to map these features onto this mystery woman. Sometimes, Keith would try to draw her. The pictures would come out all wrong. He’d take one look at them and understand that it couldn’t be his mother.
Keith doesn’t play that game anymore. He doesn’t have time to stand in front of a mirror, and he only draws during banal meetings. His art extends to spiralling scribbles and scrappy sketches of the other paladins and animals.
Dreams are different. His soporific fatigue leads Keith into a maze. He stumbles through, turning right and left and left and right, backing out of dead ends, and searching for a road. In one of these pathways, Keith runs into his mother. She is faceless.
can we talk about how crazy it is that keith's element as a paladin is fire and his dad, a firefighter, literally died in a burning building?-
ig his whole arc really was him overcoming his trauma cause wdym he finally accepts his role as leader after spending 2 years reliving his parent's love story and his childhood 🤨 i desperately need more from the space whale there's so much to unpack there i hate how they entirely skipped over his character growth
Keith panicking and sobbing so hard he just faints. I imagine when he laughs too hard he collapses but doesn't pass out. Not narcolepsy, he just can't get enough air to his brain.
I have a scenario I have started to write based on this comic wherein, Keith hits lance, and immediately offers anything to get lance to not tell shiro, he hasn't apologized because he doesn't verbally apologize, but he's still begging and pleading all the way¹ to where shiro and allura are, Keith looks at shiro's pissed face² and all he can see is the group home and more abusive foster homes³ and he just runs off to the farthest part of the castle he can find.
He's trying to be quiet, but his loud, ragged intakes of breath and how he chokes on his own spit as he hides his sobs are what get.him eventually found after lance has been appropriately calmed down⁴ and treated however as he hears the footsteps of shiro coming he starts hyperventilating so hard he collapses in whatever closet he's in, hits his head on like a shelf and then again on the ground.
Shiro tries to talk to him and it's very reminiscent of that one scene from itsv. And then eventually he gets allura to open the locked door through like an override thing idk and then shiro's like "oh shit" and carries him to the med bay, and he gets treated and when he wakes up that fear still lingers but it's been mostly replaced by embarrassment, not like "cringe" but like the kinda embarrassment that's like "man I should hide every emotion I feel harder because I need to 1) be mysterious 2) not burden anyone" y'know?
Anygays lance decides that to make it up to him Keith needs to replace all his bandages because he doesn't want to make coran do it every time and that Keith needs to properly verbally⁵ apologize in front of everyone on the ship (dick move from lance but also kinda deserved) (shiro and coran had to talk him down from keith doing all his chores for 2 months)
One day while fulfilling lance's first demand, Keith is sat on his feet⁶ between lance's legs on his bed while he bandages lance's eye. Lance was previously talking about something but now he's just focused on Keith's gentle hands and his even breathing. Until that breathing isn't so even and his hands start to shake, and he closes his eyes trying to hide how he's feeling and then he bursts out sobbing like aris's Keith sobbing post, and he tries to rush out of the room but lance keeps him there and pulls him into his lap proper and he wants to ask questions but he doesn't, he just tucks Keith's head into the crook of his neck and tries to help him calm him down until Keith falls asleep in his arms.
Another time Keith leaves a box of really prettily cut up alien fruit outside of lance's door, he does his laundry for him when he forgets, protects him more on to missions, sews up the holes in lance's jacket, gets him things that remind keith of lance, because that's how Keith and shiro⁷ apologize to eachother. Lance doesn't really get it and gets mad at Keith. He's like "why won't Keith just apologize to me out loud and why does he keep doing shit for me when I haven't asked" because it's not like he hasn't noticed the favors but in his family if someone started doing things for you it meant they wanted a terrible no good very bad favor from you so he's learned to be wary of that
and shiro is like "dude that's how he apologizes because he used to not apologize at all and just drown in his guilt because he didn't know how and then I was like "here's a way to apologize so you don't feel guilty forever" and now he does favors and gets people gifts" and lance is like "ohhhhh" and goes and talks to him about it but uhhhh Keith has lowk been spiraling a little bit because like he let his true emotions slip and now it's coming out like a flood
He can't stop fucking crying and he thinks it's so embarrassing, hes slumped in a shaking pile by his bed, overcome by a grief of which he hasn't felt since he was very little. He's turned it into anger for so long that he never let himself properly process it
Lance is like "I got ur apology I'm not rly mad anymore it's alright" but Keith sees the bruise on his eye and he is inconsolable, he's apologizing over and over and it's crazy bcuz he never does that who is this lump of tears and wth did you do w/ Keith. Lance doesn't know what to do so he sends in shiro and shiro brings hunk, and shiro is a little heartbroken because that is his baby sobbing so hard it hurts⁸
Shiro tries to help him calm down by talking him through it and hunk lets Keith lean on him, hunk brings him water and makes him food for when he's calm. Keith has a massive headache, when he calms down he almost passes out in shiros arms but shiro forces him to get up and food and at least take a 10 minute shower
And like, he's just very sad/mellow for the next few weeks as he regrieves
¹ not all the way, at some point (like in the comic) lance tells him to shut up and he does
² I imagine shiro would get properly angry at him, and communicate it to him when he does because Keith is kinda autistic and won't know that he is mad unless told or explicitly seeing his face angry(he's getting better about it)
³ this goes along w/ my hc of Keith having a more abusive foster home give him a floater rib and a messed up shoulder
⁴ a good 30-45 minutes of treating his eye and talking him through his emotions (usually shiro does not do this with Keith because he gets embarrassed about how he's feeling so shiro is a little out of his depth) not to say that lance is invalid in his feelings but it does display how he's still a teenager because he makes no effort to manage his anger or frustrated crying until he's been treated and Keith has been given a punishment
⁵ Keith does apologize to ppl he just does not verbally apologize (shiro attempted to explain this to lance but it just made him more dead set on making Keith apologize verbally)
⁶ like this
⁷ like I said in these comments, they are both asian and Keith has the triple whammy of being autistic and also living in Texas so like he's very emotionally repressed and has a hard time apologizing
⁸ ' "I don'," he sobs, " I don' know what's wrong-," he inhales sharply, yet shakily," with mehehe-," his speech devolves into painful sobs and wailing.'
I could write more but I think this is already around 1000 words which is wayyyy more than I usually write for these and the og premise has kinda gotten away from me so I'm gonna just leave it here
Tags: @heartsforjohnnycake plz tell me if you would like to be tagged in the future
a motorcycle lasts a lifetime if you ride it fast enough (VLD Keith-Centric)
Summary
Nobody has seen or heard from Keith in days. When Shiro finally checks his apartment, he finds a note that reads, "everything's fine, don't look for me." After all they had been through together, the paladins are both concerned and furious about Keith leaving them... again.
Or,
Keith disappears and the paladins hunt him down post-canon.
