VOLTRON ONE-SHOTS

Keith x OC - Numb Confusion

Word Count: 1,996

Taking place sometime in between Keith listening in on the Kerberos problem and him confronting Shiro about it (taking place in the flashback(s) in episode one of season seven) if that made any sense.

...

The dorm room was silent, his roommate was hopefully not expected to be back for another hour or so and Keith gratefully took the silence as an opportunity to just sit and ponder the past few days of his life.

He was pretty sure he had been awake for them, but some part of him still held on to the possibility that he was still laying in bed in the foster home dreaming.

After all he's been through, he doesn't quite want to push that out of the realm of possibilities just yet.

Keith hugged his knees tighter as he pressed his back further against the wall, his bed squeaked in protest to his movement, but Keith didn't really care by that point anyway as his brows furrowed in confusion of how he could have possibly gotten this far into the Galaxy Garrison without being sent home.

Of course, he already knew the answer to that, somehow, someway, Shiro was just refusing to leave him alone. The guy didn't want to see him get kicked out, but he also wasn't willing to keep Keith there by force if he really didn't want to be there in the first place. Keith really didn't know what he wanted, so he was willing to at least try the Garrison for now. With the threat of getting kicked out gone, he could at least learn something while he was here.

His mind skipped again to the overheard conversation he had walked in to just a couple hours before and, for some reason, a lone shiver ran down his spine.

From the heat of the argument, Keith could at least guess that Commander Holt wasn't going to take "no" for an answer, Shiro would be going on the Kerberos, and the man seemed pretty happy about the prospect of going on another mission into space.

But it was the leading argument that got to him the most. Shiro was sick. At least, that's how Keith took it, he wasn't really sure what was wrong with him besides the point that something was wrong.

What did they mean by his "condition"? Was it serious? Could-

He swallowed thickly at the next thought.

-could Shiro be dying?

That was something he hadn't really thought of until now and Keith felt his throat close up at the possibility now facing him.

It was obvious Keith didn't want to face the threat of another death in his life. One's enough for him, and to top that off with his mom leaving him before he was even a year old, Keith didn't want to go through a repeat of that again. But he couldn't just abandon Shiro either, Keith wasn't exactly sure that he could get him to leave him alone, and some part of Keith didn't really want to forget all about him either-

The door creaked open at that point, and Keith buried his face in his knees when a hand reached over and turned the light on. A girl, probably at least a year older than him then slipped into the room, brushing her dark brown hair out of her eyes to properly fix him with a stare.

"Honestly, Kogane, you need to learn to turn a light on, at least a lamp, I mean, how can you even see anything in here?"

Keith groaned into his knees, "Amanda, leave me alone."

"No can do."

Keith peeked up to see her crossing her arms with a set look on her face. No, they aren't always like this, they actually get along pretty fine, maybe a little more than fine, but Keith wasn't in the mood for anything like that today, right now, he just really, really wanted to be left alone. "What do you want?"