He had been staring at her for a long time. Nothing changed. He barely felt like he was breathing in this little world of misery that he had built for Red and himself.
No, this wasn't helping he needed... He needed... He didn't know what he needed but whatever it was it wasn't here.
Keith stood up on shaky legs and moved to the elevator robotically. The inside looked as it did before. Just as gray with turquoise markings that gave it the familiar Altean flair.
Keith looked at the door for a long time before he noticed that he hadn't pressed any buttons inside of the elevator and it took him an additional long moment to remember that he didn't need to, as it moved up and down in its own. It had a small screen to choose destinations with but Keith didn't pay it any mind. It didn't matter if it took him to the domestic part of the castle, the control room or even to some unknown part of the castle.
The elevator stopped when it reached a destination and almost closed again before Keith stopped it with a hand faster than his mind and stepped out of the elevator.
The hallway was better than his spot in front of Red but not by a lot. He had been living in the castle for a while but at this moment, this hallway looked identical to every other hallway in the castle.
Keith needed something. This wasn't just losing his friend. It wasn't just losing his purpose. It was both. It was everything. He just wished he knew how to make it alright again.
Keith was tired. There was problems all the time and not the kind he could just stab away. No this was worse than that and it was enhanced by the restlessness itching at his skin. His muscles streamed every day because of his sudden increase in exercise but the restlessness had never been satisfied without running or jumping.
Keith walked down the hallway in a daze. It wasn't exactly like he was unware of his surroundings. On the contrary, he was too aware and it and was feeling everything and then nothing as his mind just gave up on the overstimulation.
It was in that hallway that Hunk found him.
"Keith? Hey, man," Hunk said cheerfully but turned serious when he took a closer look at Keith. Hunk furrowed his eyebrows and briefly bit the inside of his mouth right in the middle of where his cheek and mouth started. "Are you okay?"
Keith looked up at him. He didn't say anything but at least some of the lost feeling inside of him must have shone through because Hunk didn't press for any answers. He instead just took a hold of Keith's arm and didn't comment when Keith was even clumsier in his mental absence and Hunk had to almost dislocate Keith's arm in order to keep him upright.
"Come, we're going back to the lounge," Hunk informed Keith who gave what could have just as easily been relaxing his neck for a moment as it could have been a deliberate nod.
Pidge and Lance was talking about something lighthearted when Keith and Hunk arrived but turned serious at the sight of Keith's wide and confused eyes that was seeing something beyond anyone else's ability.
"What's wrong with him?" Pidge asked in a loud and commanding voice.
"I don't know," Hunk mumbled as he concentrated on sitting Keith on the couch. "I'm going to contact the others."
"You do that," Pidge answered absentminded and scooted over to Keith to better let her eyes run up and down Keith's body to check for herself if he was physically hurt.
Lance got the same idea, moved right in front of Keith, and tried to catch his eyes with no luck. Lance squatted and was almost eye height with Keith but was still not successful in his quest to catch and hold Keith's eyes.
Keith wasn't trying to avoid Lance's gaze just as he wasn't trying to catch it. He simply couldn't get his brain to understand the information around him. His brain took it all in but somewhere between catching the visual and audial input and translating into something understandable, the information just got lost.
"I don't understand what could have left him like this," Lance complained only a hair width away from getting hysterical,
"He was just leaving to visit-" Lance stopped himself and turned to look at Keith. "Keith," Lance said in a hurried and slight hushed tone of voice.
Keith didn't show any indication that he had heard him and Lance took a hold of Keith's chin with one hand and laid the other on Keith's forehead so he could force Keith to look up from his lap without actually using too much force.
"Did something happen with Red?"
Keith's only answer was looking Lance in his eyes instead of slightly off to the side.
"Come on, man, you're have to give us something." Lance huffed. "Look, I know she hasn't like died and I get if it's personal since she's your lion but-"
"No," Keith interrupted. It had been barely more than a breath but everyone as heard it as clearly as if it had been a shrill siren.
"What? It's not personal? Then tell us," Lance demanded with a tint of impatience coloring his relief of Keith answering.
"I can't read your thoughts, Keith. If something's wrong with her you need to actually say it instead of acting weird and thinking we will know what's wrong with your lion," Lance sounded so tired that Keith would have believed that Lance just found this annoying and nothing else if Keith hadn't seen Lance talk so carefully and calmly to him only a moment ago.
"No," Keith repeated his last answer but this time fast enough for Lance to catch on.
"She's not your lion?" Lance asked for clarification. His voice had dropped in a show of his disbelieve and his flat eyebrows and heavy lidded eyes underlined the show of emotion.
"Not my lion," Keith confirmed.
Heavy footsteps banged on the metal floor and Hunk came back slightly out of breath. "Did you figure out what was wrong with him?"
Keith hadn't even realized Hunk had left but Lance and Pidge seemed to have because they didn't even bat an eye.
"He says the red lion isn't his anymore," Pidge said simply but with an edge of confusion and slightly narrowed eyes as she looked searchingly at Keith.
"Can the lions do that? Just suddenly reject a paladin?" Lance asked with less skepticism than before and more disbelieve and compassion.
"I don't know," Pidge answered and Hunk nodded in agreement.
Not even a tick passed before Coran, Shiro and Allura arrived entirely out of breath. Lance stood up and looked at the three entering the room.
"Can a lion just reject a paladin?" Lance redirected his former question to Allura, and probably Coran too, before the three arrivals even had had a chance to see who was in the room with them.
"I don't know, Lance," she answered. It wasn't quite regal but it was impressive how quickly she composed herself after hurrying through the castle. "It hasn't happened before... Except with Zarkon." She sent Shiro a side-look but his attention was entirely on Keith who still looked out of it.
Shiro seemed to be almost as far away as Keith felt he was. Probably with even more guilt that Keith should stop before it could fester but he had enough on his own plate and he wasn't sure he could say that Shiro had nothing to do with this and not make it seem like as big of a lie as it possibly was.
But Shiro being guilty was almost the new norm so it wasn't raising too many alarms besides the annoying and constant want to make his friend feel good. What should have been normal but wasn't was Coran's and Allura's non reaction. It actually scared Keith a little bit that they could just not feel anything to Keith's world falling apart one giant piece at a time.
"Red apparently wanted in on the abandonment. Can she just do that?" Lance asked more specifically in order to give Allura and Coran some chance of knowing what they were answering about.
"The red lion is temperamental. It needs a paladin that relies on instincts," Allura recited from what she had told them the first time she had met the paladins.
"Well, I say it's stupid," Lance said and crossed his arms. Keith didn't want to say anything, he still felt too lost and just sad, but if he had said anything it would be how much he agreed with Lance. This was stupid. Stupid and just the cherry on top of shit flying Keith's way.
Keith felt like his life had become a desert with no life and when there finally grew something there, it turned out to be a fungus that killed all chance of life around it like some kind of evil penicillin.
"Perhaps the red lion can feel a difference in Keith," Allura suggested. Or it sounded like a suggestion, she even put in some innocent widening of her eyes for the briefest time possible, but Keith knew it was just her way of informing them with the lowest chance of awakening anger in anyone.
"Great," Pidge mumbled sarcastically and looked to her left into nothing but air.
"I don't think Keith's that different," Hunk told them and sent Keith long and concerned looks. He looked up at Allura again. "So we're just going to have to wait and see?"
"No," Allura denied with a shake of her head. "We have been inactive for far too long. It's only a matter of time before we will be attacked and the Galra Empire only grows stronger the longer we let them conquer planets uninterrupted."
"Princess, I-" Shiro started and hesitated when everyone's eyes fell on him. Keith couldn't remember seeing Shiro that insecure since Shiro came back from his first mission after he graduated. "I don't think it's smart to involve anyone else right now. We're unstable already."
Allura nodded. She seemed a little cold but Keith couldn't see any disagreement in her at Shiro's words. "That is true, but we can see if the red lion will accept any of you-"
"Good plan. Not like that would just leave our lions without anyone then," Lance interrupted loudly but was ignored by Allura who continued as if there hadn't been said a single word.
"- and both Coran and I are quite capable of flying the lions too."
Replaceable. Keith had turned completely replaceable. He knew it was true in a way and hadn't that been a reason that he hadn't regretted his suicide attempt the moment he had launched himself into space?
He was just another mouth to feed. Just another person to keep around because he had nowhere else to go.
It shouldn't have hurt this much. It shouldn't have been a familiar thought to have. More than everything else, it should have hurt less that he had been used to being just that. It should have felt just as going home felt. Keith should have felt as his Garrison roommate after Shiro had felt when he said he missed being picked on by his big brother. That it was annoying while it happened but now that he had been away from it, it felt good and he enjoyed every annoying second.
"Keith? Are you okay?" Hunk asked suddenly a lot closer to him. Keith glanced at Hunk's friendly face before he looked sideways and down into the space next to his thigh. "No one's going to take Red away from you."
"Yeah, if they could, they would have taken a lion the moment they woke up instead of giving them to literal strangers," Lance supplied as he looked down at Keith. Someone like Lance shouldn't be able to but he seemed very big and strong as he looked down at Keith. Keith almost felt like a child and like it was silly not to listen.
"I know because I'm an adult," Keith's teachers had told him.
"Listen when the adults are talking, Keith," one foster parent after another had ordered.
Lance wasn't an adult. He was probably not even any older than Keith but he seemed to know what he was talking about and Keith found himself believing Lance despite not having believed adults for the sole reasons of them being adults since before he turned 6.
"It's not that simple," Coran said but seemed more like he was just trying to support Allura than actually believing what he was saying.
"Have you taken a lion from a paladin before?" Lance asked and sent eyes far firmer than Keith had ever seen Lance send anyone that wasn't trying to kill his team or innocent civilians. Keith looked up at those eyes mesmerized at how they seemed both fiery and cold.
"No-"
"And you don't know everything about the lions, do you?"
"The lions are mysterious creatures and-." Coran did try to get everything out and he talked faster in an attempt to do so but was interrupted by Lance once again.
"Jada jada jada," Lance snarked and made rude talking movements with his right hand. "Then you don't know." Lance shrugged in a rigid way that told a story of something far from nonchalance.
"Coran has done nothing to you, Lance," Allura informed him with a childish stubbornness that shone through the firm comment. "You do now talk to your fellow teammates that way. I'm sick of everyone splitting this team apart for things already done."
Kind of like Allura had barely looked Keith in the eye even once after learning that he was part Galra and that wasn't even something Keith had done. On one hand, he felt like he should tell her to get her own house in order before telling others what to do, but on the other hand, it would just be another thing to worsen the atmosphere. Besides, Keith wanted a resolution on what to do about Red and other problems and feelings would just have to come second to that.
"So now I can't disagree with you two either because you're so right all the time. Like when you-" Hunk put a hand on Lance's shoulder and sent him a look that told more than a thousand words about Lance not helping and this wasn't the time.
Lance took a deep breath. "Why do you think you can fly a lion if the guy the lion chose can't for some lame reason?" Lance sounded much more teenage-y and it made Keith less afraid about how much he had started to listen and trust the words coming out of Lance's mouth.
"My father was the red paladin!" Allura spit into Lance's face as if it was Lance that had ordered the death of or killed King Alfor.
"I'm sorry your dad is dead, really I am, but Keith's not dead and you can't just act like he is and try to find a new paladin before we even know if the mysterious lion even wants someone else. Maybe Red, I don't know," Lance widened his eyes, lifted the corners of his eyebrows closest to his nose, and puffed out his cheeks before continuing. "Maybe she thinks Keith has been through hell and deserves a break."
Keith knew it wasn't just that. He couldn't hear nor feel the red lion like he had before, but a break sounded nicer than he had ever thought it would.
"We can't stall anymore. We have already wasted too much time that we could have used on bringing down Zarkon," Allura argued and angered Hunk and Pidge. Shiro was angry too but besides giving Allura all kinds of unkind looks when Keith looked over at him, Shiro didn't do anything.
It started with arguments and ended with everyone just wanting to hurt the others with snide and mean words and Keith tuned it all out. He hoped this wasn't how the others had felt every time he and Lance had argued. He was nauseous just thinking about the words his friends told each other and couldn't imagine living with this feeling on a semi-regular basis.
In the end, Allura stopped the shouting by quieting herself down.
"Let's clear our heads and find a solution when everyone is ready to listen," Allura said with so little energy that the only way she could have sounded less energetic was if she had been dead.
"Hypocrite," Pidge mumbled but Keith was unsure if anyone else had even heard it. They probably had since Keith's head was swimming after all the harsh words that had been shared and the knowledge that Allura would defiantly be at least tempted to try to connect with the red lion if it took too long for people to calm down, and that knowledge didn't help Keith's mind from wandering into dangerous waters.
It would probably be best for the universe if Allura took over but Red was his just as he was hers. Or she was supposed to be his until his eventual demise but he doubted that her choosing to not be his would make him any less hers.
Keith dwelled for only another moment and made a decision.
He had lost her, no question about that, but he wouldn't just let her go like that. He didn't care if he acted like a child or a possessive boyfriend to the giant, red lion, she would have to look at him banging on her barrier every damn day until she was so tired of him that she either blasted him into nothing or she let him in again. Either way, Keith would be happy.