Shiro's Leadership

183 5 4
                                    

Shiro sat in the kitchen and eating food goo that evening. Or was it already night? Shiro had been avoiding the others at dinnertime again that day even though he knew that at least Allura wouldn't be eating with the teenagers on the ship. He closed his eyes to better imagine that everything was fine as he ate the goo. It wasn't tasty but the consistency was okay and he had gotten used to the taste enough to find some joy in it. Shiro opened his eyes when he heard Lance shouting. It wasn't unusual for Lance to shout but the fact that he was shouting with real anguish was.

"You can't mean that you think we should just kill Keith!" Lance shouted.

"Lance, I'm sorry, but maybe it is for the best," a quiet voice replied. It took Shiro a couple of seconds to understand that it was Coran Lance was shouting at and not Allura as he had expected.

"It's not! I know you can find new paladins if we die, but would you really just kill us any of us off without a second thought? Pidge is right. If we aren't more important to you than that what's the point of even doing this!?"

"You are all important, Lance, and it would not be easy to replace any of you." Coran sounded genuinely pained but Shiro agreed with Lance. If they all were that easily disposable, what was the point of even having a team?

"But easier than just letting Keith have a chance! He hasn't even been in the pod for that long and you would already have shut it off if we hadn't protested! If it's so hard to replace us, why are you on the princess's side!?"

"I'm not on any side."

"Why not mine?" Lance asked in a fragile voice to different from his former, louder one. "Why won't you support us in this? Support me?"

They were both quiet for a moment. "Don't ask me to choose between you and the princess."

"You would choose the princess no matter what?" Lance asked as if he didn't know himself if he wanted the answer or not.

Coran's silence answered him anyway.

"I'm going to see Keith," Lance mumbled heartbroken and Shiro could hear Lance's dejected steps disappear in the hall soon after. Shiro wished he could go comfort Lance but he had neither the words nor the right to do so.

He looked down at his half-finished bowl of green goo. He wasn't hungry anymore and stood up to clean it before leaving for the training deck. Maybe this was the day he could finish a level without seeing Keith's face.

-------------------------------

Lance and Allura was glaring at each other from opposite ends of the control room when they all met the next morning. The icy silence made Shiro envy Lance for having such a warm jacket.

"I know it's what Keith wants," Lance broke the silence. He wasn't shouting but it sounded impossibly loud in the quiet room.

"You don't know that," Allura said dignified but with a sharp undertone.

"I think not dying is pretty high on his list despite how reckless he is!" Lance growled louder than before.

"You can't know how far he wants us to go for him." Allura had raised her voice too.

"And I never will if you kill him off!"

"What if this isn't what he wants. What if he wishes we would have given him peace long ago?" Allura tried to appeal Lance logically.

"Then he can jump into the void of space for all I care. At least it would be his choice!"

"You don't mean that." She looked at him as if he was an imbecile.

AdrenalineWhere stories live. Discover now