1000

.

   "It's a bright orange, I think it's nearly to a thousand degrees," a voice said from behind the screen of Lance's phone. He had fallen down a rabbit hole of people heating up knives and then cutting things with them. The easily amused teenager found it very entertaining to listen to the crackles and pops of various objects. There was only one question in his head, 'What about Keith's blade?'
   Keith's blade definitely wasn't made out of the same metal the knives on Earth were. This unknown metal to Lance is what gave the blade
its naturally (or unnaturally) dark shade of purple. Without hesitation, Lance decided to act on this amazing idea he conjured.
   Lance quickly proclaimed his experiment to his peers, Pidge and Hunk, to ask for their assistance in executing this mission. Pidge agreed to record, as long as it was with her phone, and Hunk agreed to get Keith out of his room long enough for Lance to sneak in and steal the blade. Once Lance infiltrated Keith's room, he would then steal the blade and put it in burning flame for about 5 minutes, or like the video said, until the blade is bright orange.
   Hunk took pride in his role and strutted over to Keith's dorm. He was so elated Lance had entrusted such a vital role in the plan to him, he didn't have any plan on what to say to lure Keith out.
   "Hey Keith, I need to, um, what should I... Oh! I need to show you this thing to blackmail Lance! It's his diary, and he totally writes about everyone including yo-" before Hunk could finish his sentence, the bay doors opened and Keith was standing in the doorframe.
   "Sure, I wanna write something in it." Keith said while fixing his hair.
   Hunk quickly began to panic, because if there was one thing Lance told him not to do, it was show Keith his diary. Hunk, weighed his options and decided that the consequences of Lance finding out Keith read it were not as exciting or nearly as interesting as seeing what the blade would do when heated up to a thousand degrees.
   Hunk pointed to the drawer in Lance's nightstand and stood watch in the doorway. As Keith opened the drawer he found a slew of items; a crumpled up gym wrapper, some potato chip crumbs, a pen that had 'Lance is the Greatest' engraved in it, and a small leather bound journal.
   The moment Keith saw the book he grabbed it and began to rifle through the pages. Keith very quickly grew bored of this "confidential" journal, because they were all about alien girls they had met, like Nyma. Keith grabbed the corner of the book and flipped through it so fast, almost as if it were a kineograph, scanning for any mentions of his own name. One passage stood out to him.
   "How does Keith always make his hair look so amazing all the time. I've never even seen him wash it, not that I WANT to see him in the shower, but still what is up with this dude"
   Keith smirked to himself and glanced up at the mirror facing him across the room. "Yeah, I guess it does look pretty good." He thought to himself.
With that, Keith decided that he had done enough snooping, and solidified his belief that Lance probably wasn't the sharpest tool in the shed. He then flipped to the back of the book, rotated it so it was upside down, and quickly scribbled, "We really do make a good team, oh wait- never mind, you don't remember."
    Hunk watched every move Keith was making, contemplating if he had to come up with a different diversion to stop him from reading too much of the diary. He was almost relived Keith didn't read the whole thing, because if he had, he had no idea how he would explain it to Lance. Hunk was trying his hardest to read Keith's facial expressions as he was reading, but aside from the smirk and checking his hair, he figured Keith didn't read anything too interesting.
   Keith then got up from Lance's bed and said, "There was nothing incriminating in there, mission failed. I'm going to go to the kitchen and get something to eat. You coming?"
  At first, Hunk contemplated whether or not he should go, especially knowing what the true quest going on at the moment was, but he hadn't eaten anything all day and food truly is his biggest weakness.
    While Hunk and Keith were in Lance's room, Lance and Pidge were already on the second to last stage of the plan: heating up the blade in the kitchen.
   "I'm pretty sure it's getting hotter, but it's not turning orange, it's turning... pink?" Lance asked while looking at Pidge. Sure enough, the lavender blade was morphing into a bright glowing pink. Lance decided to heat the blade a little longer, just to see what would happen, when suddenly Keith came in the kitchen with a face full of confusion.
   "Why the quiznak are you cooking my knife?" Keith asked, while looking completely horrified.  He quickly grabbed the knife from Lance, but as soon as he touched it, his consciousness was sent to a different plane of existence. He was in a black void, where pictures and videos were playing around him. They weren't new images that were surrounding him, they felt familiar. As if they were trapped memories within the blade itself. They were faded and hard to make out. He saw his dad, the shack, and then it all disappeared. It wasn't frightening, it was almost peaceful, and it felt like it was home.
   "How did you do that?" Keith asked exasperated.
     "Do what?" Lance was puzzled, because what everyone else saw was Keith's fingerless gloves wrapping around the handle of his knife followed instantly by Keith's eyes glazing over for a moment. .
   "Yeah Keith, what are you talking about?" Pidge stopped her recording and put away her phone.
   "I saw my dad, I've never done that by holding the blade before. It was like a collage of memories, I just don't know if they were mine or the blades. All I do know is they felt familiar." Keith said, trying to put together the pieces of what he just witnessed.
   "Well, maybe it's because it was hot," Hunk said with a mouthful of food, "Hey don't look at me like that! That's the only variable that's different from any other time you've held the knife isn't it? Maybe you just need to heat it up more often."
    Keith had a lightbulb moment, "You're right Hunk, that is what it is!" Keith quickly ran to the airlock after he put on his armored suit. The rest of the gang, confused on what he was going to do, followed him, up until he went out into space.
   "Tell me he's not," Pidge began.
   "I have a feeling he is," Hunk replied.
   Lance said nothing, as he didn't understand what was going on.
   Keith pulled back his arm and threw the blade like a boomerang into the closest star. He watched as the blade made its way with a lot of velocity to the star before it was caught in its gravitational pull, and vanished faster than anyone could see. They waited for a little bit, as if it would have come back out and into Keith's hand like a literal boomerang.
   When Keith came back the first thing he heard was Lance yelling, "What the quiznak, Keith?"
   "Why would you just throw you blade you got to keep for risking your life, into a star?" Lance continued.
   "I figured it was the biggest source of heat we have right now." Keith replied while shrugging his shoulders.
  "Yeah but you don't do that, Keith!"
    Suddenly the castle began to shake. "Paladins!" Allura said on the intercom, "the nearest star to us has abruptly died, resulting in this mass explosion. The castle will be shaking but we'll be fine."
     "Good job Keith. You blew up a freaking star by trying to remember a memory that may or may not be yours. A plus," Lance said huffing and crossing his arms.
    "Yeah? Well at least I'm able to remember-" Keith began to retaliate when suddenly he turned and saw an object coming towards them from the star, "Uhhh guys.... Allura has the particle barrier up right?"
     "I don't think so," Pidge said turning to see what it was.
     There was a large black object spinning uncontrollably while coming closer to them at a rapid speed. After some slight panic from the crew they realized the object was actually the black paladin, Shiro. Had he been inside the star ever since he disappeared? In his right hand he was holding Keith's blade, it was an even brighter pink at this point. While he was wielding the blade he was sent to the same black void Keith was, and with the extra heat from the not so alive star anymore, he saw the entirety of Keith's life as a child.
   Shiro watched this child in the memories grow up (in what felt like real time but was actually just fractions of a second). Shiro watched in horror as the last memory he saw showed him who these memories belonged to. As he realized it was Keith's memories that were embedded into the soul of the blade, he began to have a mental breakdown, because how could such a small, innocent child, be forced to grow up so fast and so unaware of who he truely was for so long. He began to sob uncontrollably as his body was hurled at unfathomable G forces towards the castle.
   "Guys look it's Shiro!" Hunk said as the black dot became more clear. The gang began to wave and holler, but Shiro couldn't hear them over his shaking sobs. Shiro's destined line of travel ended up heading to where the control deck was and hit the reinforced glass face first, scaring the life out of Coran and Allura.
    His face wet with tears, and his upper torso being soaked didn't allow him to have a good grip on the freshly polished glass and he began to slowly, but not gracefully, slide off the window out of everyone's sight.
    His abrupt impact with the window resulted in the blade getting knocked out of his hand and back into space. It began to drift away at a significantly slower speed than what Shiro originally traveled at, when suddenly the Red Lion left the ship. She was flying on her own to retrieve her pilot's blade. She saw there was an object she could launch herself from to get there even faster, but as she approached, she saw it was Shiro, who was still having a very rough mental breakdown. That made her jump on him full force to get to the blade faster, possibly thinking to herself, "Oh brother, rub some dirt in it."
   When Red came back with the blade for Keith, she saw Lance walking next to Keith with his arms crossed and Keith looking kind of awkward and adjusting his hair again. Red sat down holding the blade in her mouth with he tail wagging, waiting for her pilot to notice she retrieved his prized possession for him.
    "I, um, wanted to say that I may have skimmed through your diary?" Keith said while brushing his bangs out of his eyes.
    Lance's froze in place as his heart skipped a beat. "How. Much." Lance couldn't decide if he should be livid or if he should feel embarrassed.  
   "Oh I only read about your crushes on aliens we encounter on missions though, which really isn't  secretive," Keith replied throwing his hands up in defense.
   Lance sighed and laughed, "Wait really? You must have a short attention span because that's like the first three pages."
   "Okay well you write down every train of thought you have so it's not my fault I got overwhelmed. I did end up just flipping through it to see if I was in it at all and all I saw was you asking about my hair," Keith joked with him, and he yet again, adjusted his hair.
   "Oh," Lance said quietly, "wait, you got to that page but not to page four? I could have sworn I talked about your hair on page 27!" Red's tail stopped wagging at this point, and her ears turned back in confusion.
   "Why do you know the pages of your diary by memory?" Keith looked perplexed at Lances sudden frustration.
   "DUH, cause I wrote it? You must not have been paying any attention because I also numbered them all too, but now that I think about it, there are those two intro pages explaining who's diary it is so maybe the numbers are off"
   "Wait, what's the fourth page about?" Keith was suddenly extremely intrigued.
   "Well since you've already read the other pages, I might as well tell you. Basically it's just me talking about an alien on our team I have a crush on," Lance said blushing and slowly getting closer to Keith.
   Red's jaw dropped, and the blade made a low CLANG on the metal floor of the ship. Lance was startled by the sudden loud noise, but Keith still was oblivious to his lions presence in the first place.
   "Wait, Allura or Coran? Do you have a thing for Coran?" Keith asked semi joking, as everyone knew Lance had a crush on Allura for the longest time. Lance laughed in response. "No, but a different guy alien on our team." Red suddenly extended her tail behind Keith, almost as if she was ready to pull him back in case something happened.
     Keith paused for a minute and thought about what he had just heard. They locked eyes for a moment as Keith was putting the pieces of the story together, admittedly very slowly. Suddenly he felt a force push himself into Lance, and suddenly their faces were almost touching.
   Red pulled her tail back away from Keith thinking to herself, "My work is done." As she departed back to her hangar she noticed that the blade was no longer pink anymore and was making its way back to normal colors again.
   Lance and Keith were so close at this point, Keith didn't even care about the knife anymore. The boys were practically just breathing on each other.
   No words were being spoken, just the two of them staring into each others eyes while all around them outside the ship was just the celestial universe. Keith couldn't take the tension anymore and grabbed Lance's shirt collar and pulled him into a kiss.
   Lance felt himself grab Keith tighter and had no intentions of letting him go this time. Keith had a hand on the side of Lance's face at the same time Lance's hands found their way under Keith's shirt.
   While in the midst of making out, Lance whispered, "I was right, we do make a good team."
   This caused Keith to pause and lean back a little, "you do remember."
    "If you had read page four you would've known," Lance mocked. Lance was about to go in for another kiss when suddenly he had a vision of his own. Somehow when he was holding the blade and heating it up he didn't have any visions, but the moment he was finished with kissing Keith it activated.
   The vision was simply just a coordinate at first, but as Lance tried to focus and look at it, images started popping up. It was Shiro's location, and along with it Shiro had accidentally sent some of Keith's memories he saw while holding the knife.
    Lance swiftly kissed Keith one more time and whisperer, "I know where Shiro is," and grabbed his hand. The duo made their way to the control room faster than Shiro was ejected from the star.
   "Princess! Me and my bro Keith know whe-"
   Keith instantly dropped Lance's hand, and slightly pushed him away from him.
    "Bro? You just hand your hand in my shirt and your tongue in my mouth, and you call me bro?" Keith said, a not so slight hint of anger in his voice.
   "You what!" Allura yelled grabbing Lance's ear, "you simply cannot make careless mistakes like that!"
    "Ow ow ow, okay, okay. Keith, the love of my life, my better half, my soulmate, my true love, my significant other, my Prince Charming, and I have the location of Shiro and thought you should know." Lance said while making eye contact with Keith still.
  "I can't believe this," Keith muttered as he pinched the bridge of his nose before crossing his arms and walking away.
   "What the quiznak is wrong with you?" Allura yelled and smacked Lance's arm. "You've got a real unnatural talent for talking to aliens you know."
    Allura put in the coordinate and set the castle to go and pick up Shiro. The black paladin was so dehydrated at this point he had gone unconscious and was slowly rotating in the void of space.  
   Lance was running in the halls after Keith yelling, "Babe I'm sorry, wanna talk about it?"  Keith was just upset they got out in the door like that in front of the princess without having discussed about it prior. Pidge was already on navigation duty in the cock pit when Lance barged in, and the moment she saw they were holding hands, her phone was somehow on record again.
   Hunk was giving Coran test tastes of all of the different foods he had prepared for lunch and nearly shattered a plate when he saw Lance groveling for Keith in a panic.
   When Shiro finally was retrieved and got on board, Coran accidentally spit food all over Hunk, Pidge panicked and accidentally broadcast the recording she got of Lance groveling onto the projection in the middle of the control room as if it was meant to welcome Shiro back.
   Shiro stood there, undeniably confused and slightly concerned, as we watched the video footage of what had happened within the last 10 minutes prior to him being back on board. Just as he was about to ask if this was a prank, Lance sprinted past him and was ducking behind one of the chairs in the room. He wasn't coming to welcome Shiro back at all, he was running away from something. As Shiro turned his head to see what the danger was, we was met with a very angry Keith, who now had his bayard.
   "Baby! Darling! Sweetie? PLEASE STOP I DIDNT MEAN TO MAKE YOU UPSET!" Lance was yelling as he was climbing over the computer controls to get away safely.
   Keith was also yelling, he was saying repeatedly, "You remembered the bonding moment and then put me in the bro zone! AFTER YOUR TONGUE WAS IN MY MOUTH!"
   "Would it help if I put it back in your mouth?"
Instantly, Shiro ejected himself back into the void of space.

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Authors Note:
Yes this was updated 8 years later.
No I will not explain.
Thank you for your patience and understanding.