Fusion. A Klance Fanfiction

Chapter 20

The universe wasn't prepared to wait for the paladins to recover from the shock involved in defeating an evil witch so things carried on as usual. Keith continued with his routine, getting up in the early hours so he could train on his own before the others woke up. A single day after the victory, Keith was standing in the training room, fully clad in his paladin armour whilst wielding his sword. He had sweat dripping down his forehead as he swerved to the right to dodge the attack of one of the bots. He swung his sword forward to hit the enemy, slashing through its body so that it faded into nothing: defeated. Not sparing a moment to breathe and bask into the victory, Keith yelled out for the next level to start.

Once the bot had formed in front of him, wielding its own broadsword, he raced forward to attack. Their weapons smashed into each other, ringing a loud shing through the air. Keith grunted before racing ahead a second time, bending down slightly to slash at the bots legs. As the robot hadn't seen it coming, the sword came in contact with its armour and it fizzled into nothing.

"End training sequence." A voice said and Keith was well aware that it didn't belong to him. He swerved around to see Pidge standing by the door with a tablet in her arms, eyebrows raised as the impression at Keith's fighting skills lingered.

"Why'd you stop it? I was going to beat my record." Keith mumbled, dropping his arms down to his side but not retracting his bayard. The sword hung down passed his knee; heavy to anyone who hadn't trained with it before.

"Allura wanted me to make some edits to the system. To do so, no one can be training. It's kind of a hazard when I'm distracted with coding."

"Oh, okay." Keith lifted his arm up to retract the bayard but he didn't miss Pidge's tiny flinch. It was so small that he would have missed it if he blinked but he had definitely seen it. "Pidge, I-" He started, though he had no idea how to approach such a situation. He had never been very good at comforting people and he didn't think it would be a skill he ever acquired.

"Sorry. I- I have to code this before Allura gets on my case about wasting time." She sent Keith a wide, bashful smile. Keith couldn't tell whether it was genuine or not but he assumed it wasn't based on Pidge's previous reaction.

"Are... Are you scared of me?" The question went unanswered: Pidge had put her headphones on and hadn't even heard it. The green paladin's eyes thinned as she started to type some things on the screen whilst biting her bottom lip in concentration.

-

Raising his clenched fist, Keith knocked on Shiro's door. He stepped back and waited until the door flew open to invite him inside the room. Shiro was sat on his bed with a book in his hands, the cover torn and frayed as if he had read through it a million times. As Keith got closer, he realised the writing wasn't even in English; instead it was composed of a series of different symbols. It took an embarrassingly long moment for it to click in Keith's brain that it was Altean. "I didn't know you knew Altean?" Keith murmured, trying to hide the disappointment in his voice that Shiro had never spoken to him about it. Once upon a time, they would have told each other everything.

"Allura has been teaching me. I'm really rusty on it but I'm getting there." Shiro replied, closing the book and placing it onto his bedside table.

"How come you never told me?"

"I've only started learning recently since... since everything that happened with you. Allura suggested that it might help distract me from it all." Shiro pursed his lips and nodded, feeling awkward around Keith for the first time since they first met.

"Oh... Are we... Are we okay?"

Shiro's gaze flickered up to meet Keith's before diverting away again. "Why wouldn't we be?"