“Hey, guys! Were you worried?”
Allura’s was the first and the only thing Keith saw as she walked towards him after alighting from her fighter. He had to fight back the surge of emotion he felt at the sight of her beautiful face, delicately flushed with pride. Her face was wreathed in a cocky grin, and blue eyes full of challenge flashed into his.
It was he could do not to embrace her and make sure she was real.
“What in the hell were you thinking?” he ranted instead, raking a hand through his unruly hair to keep himself from touching her. “Weren’t your instructions to get in, do messenger duty, and get out? Where did Dad say you had to hop into a fighter you had never even seen before? What did I say about - ”
“And I was worried about you, too, Captain Mother Hen,” she said with a soft laugh, putting a finger to his lips to stop his tirade, not offended at all by his ranting. Yes, she was beginning to know this man very well. “Now can you skip the lecture and tell me how well I flew?”
Keith’s flabbergasted expression earned a laugh from the entire team. Finally, he allowed himself a smile. “Foolish as it was, Princess,” he conceded, allowing himself to brush a lock of hair away from her face even when all the others were watching them, “you sure did me proud. That was great flying.” He grinned mischievously as he peered at her flight overalls. “Where did you lose the slave costume? I was planning to show it to Nanny to give you a grounding – at least it would keep you legally safe for a while.”
She stuck her tongue out at him playfully. “Just for that I’m not going to introduce you to my incredible co-pilot.” She stepped aside and theatrically held her arm out to the petite figure coming up behind her.
“Princess, I don’t think I’d need any introduction to wangle a hug from my own son,” Katherine said, her voice husky with emotion. Katherine smiled, her emerald eyes darkening to forest-green as they took in Keith’s tall form, his broad shoulders, his dark, unruly hair, and his familiar dark eyes set in a face so different from the eleven year old she had left behind yet so poignantly the same.
“I’ve missed you, son.” She held out her arms towards him, and after a moment’s hesitation, he stepped into them. “I love you, my little man,” she whispered in his ear, tears flowing freely down her cheeks. “You make me so proud.”
“I love you, too, Mom,” he whispered back as he embraced her. “I love
you, too.”
Keith stepped out unto the balcony just off one of the ballroom’s huge doors, away from the cacophony of noise. He leaned against the balustrade and took a deep breath of the cleansing Aidel air.
He and the rest of the team were due to fly back to Arus as soon as the victory celebration was over, but from the noise level and the music inside the ballroom behind him, it appeared that they would not be going home for a long time.
As soon as Zach took control of the communications room, he had contacted Galaxy Garrison, who promised to send in troops to help in rebuilding infrastructure and include Aidel under its blanket of protection. After locking up Erinol, who was going to be judged before a revolutionary tribunal at a later time, and offering amnesty to fortress soldiers who were interested, the rebels had decided to celebrate their victory – raiding the stores of food in Erinol’s large kitchens.
Despite the jubilation, there was the awareness that much rebuilding had to be done and there were many wounds that needed healing. But this victory had given the Aidelians a pride in themselves and in what they could do, and it was one factor that would make the difference in the planet’s future.
Keith smiled to himself. They had done a good job here, but this was not Voltron’s victory. This belonged to the Aidelians.
“They’re beginning the dancing inside,” a woman’s teasing voice informed him. “Don’t tell me that in your old age, you’ve decided to take after your father with regards to dancing. I won’t stand for it.”
Keith laughed softly and turned to face his mother. “I wouldn’t even consider it,” he replied, leaning against the balustrade on his elbows and seeing her once more in his mind’s eye that last night, in her emerald green dress as she served them cake and danced with his Dad. It seemed an eternity ago, and yet here she was, still looking the same as he remembered. “Will you, Dad, and the twins be going back to Earth now that Aidel is free? Uncle Hawke can have a ship sent for you.”
Kat shook her head, her red-gold curls back in their resplendent glory
brushing against her shoulders. “No, at least not yet,” she said, smiling.
“The people of Aidel have asked us to stay. They want your father to continue
leading them. It may be trite, but home is where the heart is, and now
that we’ve found you once more, there is nothing more calling us back to
Earth except our past. This is our home now, Keith. This is where we belong.”
She met his eyes, and he saw that there was an expression in hers that
were inscrutably sad. “In the same way that we know Arus is now your home.”
He didn’t deny it, and he couldn’t hold back the small smile that hovered
upon his lips when she had mentioned Arus. She was right. And he was longing
for home.
“I’ve kept our house and our land on Earth,” he told her instead after a long pause. “My stipend from the Alliance goes directly to maintaining the property. I have a separate salary from the Castle treasury… not that I need much money anyway.” He smiled. “It would be nice to go home there every now and again. Show the place to the twins someday when you visit Earth again.”
Kat nodded her approval at his plan. She marveled at the tall, proud man before her, heart bursting with pride at everything that he had become – even without them. There was so much to catch up on, but she knew that he had to go soon and that catching up would have to wait. Yet, she couldn’t resist asking, “What… what was it like for you?”
He frowned, staring into the darkness for a long moment before replying, hesitant to utter words he knew would hurt her. But he couldn’t lie. “It was… very difficult to be alone,” he confessed with a sigh. “There were so many times when I felt so lost. You were all I had, and when the both of you were gone, it felt that I didn’t belong anywhere. I didn’t know what it was or whom it was I had to live for. I think I almost hated you then. Because you left me.”
In a hushed voice, he told her in a few sentences what he his life had been like after they had disappeared, how he had pushed himself in the hopes that someday he would be the one to find them, and Kat’s heart ached for him. At least she and Zach had had each other. And then there were the twins.
“We would have gone back if we could have these past ten years,” Kat said, her voice breaking. “And we would have found you no matter where you were.”
“You don’t have to justify anything to me, Mom,” Keith soothed her, laying his hand on her shoulder. “I understand your decision and I don’t doubt that you and Dad made your choices because you believed that they would be the best for me. What’s important is that I’ve found you now and that you’re not so far away after all.” He grinned down at her. “I will visit, you know. I might even take the twins off your hands every now and then.”
Kat put her hand on top of his and smiled up at him gratefully. “What’s important is that now you won’t need to bow to your father’s brute force when he forces you to join in when you gang up on me,” she said playfully. Keith laughed at the memory her comment evoked. “Well, son, what do you say you give your old Mom a spin around the dance floor before you go back to your rightful partner? I promise to let you go after one dance.”
Keith raised his eyebrows at her before he bowed to her and kissed her
hand. “My lady, may I have this dance?” he formally intoned. Kat laughed
as, at her nod, he gallantly took her into his arms and spun her into the
ballroom amidst the swell of people, making their own joy.