“SHHHHHH!!! Keep your voice down! We can’t let Hunk hear us.”
“Lance, what’s going on?”
“Keith, this is important. If Hunk asks you how spicy you like your food, tell him ‘not at all’.”
“What? Why? I like spi-...”
“Okay, first of all, no, you don’t. You think you like spicy food, but you’re just thinking of, like, salt and pepper.”
“Lance, this isn’t the time for the Superior Cuban Cuisine bit! This is serious!”
“Okay, she’s right. No matter how spicy you like food, you’re not gonna like it as spicy as Hunk makes it. He’s found some new alien spice thing and if we’re not careful, it’s going to be doomsday for all our mouths.”
“It can’t be that bad, right?”
“No, it’ll be that bad and worse! Please, Keith, you gotta hang with us here! If even one person says they want it spicy, he’ll go for it. Look at me: I’m small, pasty, and I get rashes just thinking about poison ivy. I can’t handle spicy food in general; I’m definitely not going to survive Hunk and Alien Spice #2,337!”
“Well... okay. For Pidge’s sake.”
“Why for hers and not mine?!”
“I... it’s Pidge. I mean...”
“Normally I’d lecture you on your possible sexism, but for now, I’m too relieved. Remember: no spice. Don’t like spicy at all. None of it.”
“Yeah, yeah, I got it.”
HOURS LATER
Keith was trying not to cry. Trying so. hard. This was FOOD and it should not be making him cry.
Lance was on the ground, trying to curl up protectively around his mouth, which really just meant he was going in circles. “Guardian Spirit of Fire! HELP ME!”
“IH DUHNUH WOR LIE DA’!” he managed to yell around his mouthful of pain.
Pidge had taken one bite and run out to “swallow a shower” or something.
“HOW DID THIS HAPPEN?!!??!?!!” Lance sobbed, both nostrils running.
HOURS EARLIER
“Princess! I’m making something new tonight, trying out a new spice I found. How spicy do you like your food?”
Shiro stares up at the Black Lion, regal and imposing in her hanger at the Castle. She towers over him in the vast, cold space of her chamber, filling it with the sheer sense of the power that radiates off of her, the same power that left him awestruck the first time he saw her.
Even after so long together, he feels awe in her presence.
He feels fear, too. He’s afraid of her.
Shiro stands before her, motionless with his arms crossed, and studies her. She doesn’t do anything except allow him to watch her, the bond between them present but quieter than before his most recent capture. She doesn’t reach out to him through it, doesn’t welcome him into her hanger. She doesn’t move, her eyes don’t glow, her systems don’t light up, she doesn’t do anything.
She just stays.
“You ejected me into space the first time we faced Zarkon.” His voice shatters the silence of the room despite how quietly he speaks. He keeps his tone steady, but there is a weight to the air once the words are allowed out, and Shiro fights to keep his gaze on her face. “He was hurting me—us—and I thought you were protecting me. You’d done it before.”
A muscle jumps in his jaw, and his fingers dig into his biceps before he can consciously relax. He’s so loud in such an empty space.
“You made me believe you were taking me from the Castle and tricked me into thinking we had left, but that was so we could strengthen our bond. You saved me from Zarkon then, too.” He frowns, and his fingers tighten. A sharp edge creeps into his tone as frustration and anger leak through his tight control. “Only, you let me fight first. I had to prove myself to you again, and then you decided I was worth it.”
He shakes his head and heat flares in his chest, “I’ve trusted you! We’ve done so much together—we got the black bayard back from Zarkon!” He can’t keep still any longer, his blood running hotly through him and driving him into an agitated prowl in front of Black.
“Every time I think we’ve bonded enough, something happens and we have to do it all over again. Do you not trust me? Is that it? Are all these tests to prove that I’m worthy of you?” He pulls to a halt and faces her, arms wide in supplication.
“What more do I have to do to be able to be the Black Paladin? What am I doing wrong?”
He’s suddenly cold. The anger that had been warming him leeching out of his skin and leaving only a chilly emptiness behind. He turns away from her, breathing hard. His headache is rising into a crest, pressing into the back of his eyes, and he pushes his fingers in a counter-pressure against them.
He had thought…
Shiro, you will pilot the Black Lion.
Defenders of the universe, huh?
Do you really think a monster like you could be a Voltron Paladin?
Shiro shakes his head sharply, once, as if he can erase the words from his mind as simply as an etch a sketch. As if it could ever be that easy. His gaze falls to the floor as resolve solidifies in his gut. His head throbs in time with his heart. He clenches his jaw and looks up. He can’t even tell if Black is paying any attention to him.
He pulls out his bayard—the black bayard and walks slowly, heavily to a table to the side of the room, his back to the Lion. He’s so tired.
“It doesn’t matter,” he says, injecting steel into his voice. It has all the strength of overworked metal. “I told Zarkon that what was most important between us was earning each other’s trust.” The bayard is smooth in his hands, elegant in its simplicity. He has no idea what shape it would take for him. “I’ve tried to earn your trust over and over again.” He sets the weapon down gently, his hand lingering over its sleek black and white lines. “But the thing is…”
He lifts his hand off the bayard and faces her, “I don’t trust you anymore.”
The Black Lion does nothing.
He waits, concentrates fully on the bond between them, on her looming presence before him. There’s no response.
He turns away. He’s so very tired.
“Maybe we can find you another Black Paladin. One you can actually trust. I hope you’ll let me pilot you until then, for the team.”
He strides forward with as much authority as he can muster, fighting the urge to bow his head as the pain in his chest overshadows the pounding of his temples. Say something, he urges, anything. Give me a reason to trust you again. Let me know what is so wrong about me.
The door hisses open as he approaches, the barrier to a new reality in which he’s not the Black Paladin anymore. For good, this time. He can’t go back if he steps through that door, or else Black might finally be what shatters him.
He’s steps away from the door now, hope a breathless flutter in his chest.
Three to go. The Black Lion tends towards a surprising flare for the dramatic.
Two. She might not realize how much this is hurting him.
One. The bond is quiet in the back of his mind.
The snick of the door sealing closed behind him crushes the wings of hope beneath its finality, and Shiro staggers to the wall beside the door where he can brace himself instead of collapsing to the ground like all his strings have been cut. One shaking hand finds its way up to clutch at his aching head. The world crashes down around his ears. Shiro sucks in a gasp, his breath ragged.
His chest feels like the impossible cold of a black hole.
The Black Lion is silent.
AN: So this wasn’t originally for @blackpaladinweek and was instead supposed to be something to break me out of a writer’s block on another fic. But, well, timing somewhat worked out so this is my (late) submission for Day 6: Duty/Choice (it also works for day 2: break). It’s also cheating a little, because this is Kuron more than Shiro to me, and not something I see happening in canon. It’s a big contributor for why I root so hard for the clone theory, though!
Anyway, thanks for reading! I might edit it and put it up on Ao3 at some point. Fun fact: this was inspired by the scene in Moana where she gives up the heart of the ocean, with some obvious changes to suite the circumstances.
