'My Dear Journal,
I would normally log a date to accompany my writings, (as I've learned from flipping through this story of my semi-present life), but I have no idea what day it is in terms of where I'm from. My friends from Earth, that I can only remember partially, have no clue either. My trust in numbers, (for they never lie), cannot save me now. I don't care much at this point, because I'm on stable ground. The odds have been stacked against me too many times for me to continue ignoring luck; I'm quite a lucky person, as I've come to realize.
It has almost been a week or so since the battle between Lotor and Keith, and the only contact between the Prince and I had been for an apology on his end. He cut all mental ties with me, and though he did admit to planting an explosive device on me before the fight, Pidge has successfully removed it under his instruction.
Lotor does admit that after reflecting on his actions, his mind was not in the same place as his heart. We both know I do not fully trust him, but after this, how could anyone? The good thing to note here is that he claims he's letting go, which occurred at the only time I wasn't begging or praying for him to do so.
Though, my week hasn't been with Lotor, it has been spent with Voltron, onboard the Castle of Lions. Getting to know the people I once considered friends all over again has been rather interesting. All of these people want to be my friend, no matter my past or how I may act- and I want to be theirs in return. I sit down with them a lot over conversations, meals and bonding times that have brought us closer together as not only friends, but as a functioning team.
Hunk is very kind. He's especially smart not only as an expert engineer but as a kitchen-based chemist. He holds skill in so many different areas of intelligence, it's quite amazing to know how many things he could teach me (and has so generously offered to).
Pidge's smarts are off the charts. (She taught me that phrase, just by the chance that I ever wrote about her specifically). In all seriousness, however, there is nothing that beeps or sparks that she couldn't work wonders on in minutes. Watching her work is miraculous, and being able to understand when she talks about it is almost as satisfying. I hope we grow closer in the near future, she's great company and a clever girl.
I don't know Allura very well. I know that she's the Princess of a fallen kingdom and that she despises Lotor with a flaming passion. Allura does carry a trait with her that I wish I had: moral intelligence. If I could solve problems quickly and cleverly like Princess Allura, maybe I could at last be perfect. She is beautiful as well, so I wouldn't mind possessing her physical traits either. I hope to keep her near as a friend, even as we shall eventually go down very different paths.
Lance is what I can only describe as "goofy". I find myself looking back and forth between the words cool and chaotic when describing him, depending on what he's doing. Lance, a few days ago, rode a skateboard that he purchased from the "Space Mall" in the past, for example. For a while he did look impressive doing so, right up until he nicked a small debris and dislocated his shoulder. Lance is probably one of my favorites to relax around, for his natural humor and humane friendship are refreshing once you slip out of the flirting stage. (I didn't last long there anyway; according to Shiro, who has always been brutally honest with me, I took everything he said much too literally).
Shiro, speak of the devil, is doing just as good as ever. He's considerate and humble, and I can vaguely remember him being just like this when we were cellmates not so long ago. Pidge and I work as a team when his arm needs fixation, and he is extremely kind in showing his gratitude for all things.
When I get lost in the trap of only having specific memories to hold on to, he sits down and tells me things he remembers from our days in the cell. Hearing things about myself that I don't even know is confusing to say the least, but he helps me through it emotionally on top of explaining it all to me. We will always be close, like brother and sister. Universe, end me instantly if I break the bond between myself and Takashi Shirogane.
Keith.
My goodness, where do I begin with Keith Kogane?
After learning that we were romantically involved for such a long time and my memories of it had been specifically removed, I was rather lost. I knew those feelings were true, something deep inside of me yearned for something I don't remember experiencing at all. However, I didn't want either of us to feel obligated to continue courting the other if we felt uncomfortable with it. I, for one, am only uncomfortable in the fact that I don't really know him- that is, not at the moment.
Keith feels the same way and addressed it clearly, that he tried to think in my shoes. That was yesterday. We've agreed that if today's procedure works and we still want to work it out, we can. He is very kind in giving me the space I don't even have to ask for, and he promises that if months of forced romance to another left me vacant of a need for a partner, he'd rather see me happy than discomforted by his side. I am so grateful for him not only as a friend, but as a person for sticking to such values through such obvious and emotional frustration. Lance says often that I used to be his vice when he would get angry, that I was one of the few somethings that would calm him down. I hope I'm still up to the task, even if fate goes for the worst.
In case you're curious, my thoughtless journal, today I'm going through a procedure. According to Pidge, team Voltron has accessed my memories previously when rewatching bits of my life, and the machine they used should have made a safe "file" of my memories if it all worked correctly. There are factors of it that could restrict such a possibility, such as the malfunction of 10,000 year old equipment. I wouldn't blame something over 500 times older than me to make a mistake; it does happen to the best of us.
Wish me luck, dear journal, for this is the last page of recording my experiences that will happen for a while. Quite ironically, I'm at a loss for words.
I won't have access to this personal necessity for a long time. Thank you for being there for me in my times of need. Thank you to Keith for returning you to me over and over. I will keep you close to me, even if I can't shelf you next to the countless others back on our home planet. I'll make a new shelf. I'll start a new home.
Goodbye, Dear Journal.
Peacefully, I Conclude.
Y/n L/n.
.+*0*+.
"Y/n?" Shiro asks from outside the door, knocking gently. You delicately fold over the cover of the used journal, laying over the ribbon to keep it marked and strung together. A sigh of content leaves you, a feeling of peace. "Pidge is ready for you."
"Come in." You say, continuing to look at the small, leather-bound book in your hands. The door slides open, allowing Shiro to enter. The memories that went into this book are immeasurable, priceless, one of a kind- and you can't even remember participating in half of them.
Shiro places a hand on your shoulder. "Are you nervous?"
"I've never been nervous about anything." You lie, trying to put up another wall to keep out your fear. "You of all people should know this."
Shiro laughs and pulls your chair out of the desk, a silent way of making you set up. You oblige and look to the door, frightened by the unknown. Change has never been kind to you, but is it change if fate is merely giving you back what it's taken away?
"Are the others waiting for me?"
"Everyone is ready, yes." Shiro explains, walking you out of the door. "Pidge is ready for it to finally work, Allura and Coran are making sure everything is fully operational." He says, you nod. "Keith is on edge."
"If it makes him feel any better, so am I." You hum, knowing that you're minutes away from one of the greatest risks of your lifetime. "Maybe I should never have gone into a life of space exploration. I would be so much happier on Earth right now, writing about whatever I want; less mental trauma, more physical hobbies. . ."
"You don't mean that." Shiro says, nudging you. "You would have never met any of us. You'd be dating some boring guy named Chad or something, who works a boring 9-5 and likes boring books. Now you have lots of friends with different interests and passions; that's way better than anything Earth could have offered."
You agree, shaking your head as you walk down the hallway to the chamber Voltron once held you in. "At least the prosthetics were free. I still have student loan debt on Earth too- let's just never go back."
"Agreed." Shiro laughs, opening to door. Eyes turn to you, twelve of them. Just a month ago, you would look to the floor immediately at this kind to attention. Today, you greet them all with a nod. "Are you ready?"
"I've never been more terrified in my life, but yes, I'm ready." You say, stepping into the chamber where the pod awaits you. "I can't wait to remember you all again."
A cloud of love and support fills the room, yet despite it for a moment, you feel an unsettling feeling; that undeniable idea that someone is watching you. Though, in a room of people who are all looking at only you and nothing else, it has to be the feeling of someone either looking away purposely or staring you down like they couldn't bare looking away.
That outlier is quite clear. Keith stands outside the chamber, arms folded. Eyes intense, brows furrowed, and face creased into an expression of worry. You look at him, giving him a gaze of longing. He returns it, yet also looking as if he's trying to choke his smile down out of respect to you and the agreement you two had shook on.
"Could you hold this for me, please?" You say, stepping up to him slowly. Offering Keith your journal in request, you smile at him with empathy. He nods quickly and takes it swiftly in his hands, still focused on you and only you. As you've said before, in a room full of people staring at you, the only special look can only come from something passionate enough. While thanking him, you discreetly untuck a labeled spot in the journal, then push his thumb into the empty space between the marked pages. You make a quick bookmark out of his shivering hand.
Keith looks you dead on, head cocking a bit to the side in confusion, his eyes locked on yours with an inquisitive expression. You look right back at him, before dragging your gaze back down to the book, sliding the vice-like trap farther down his thumb, then looking back up at him slowly. He placed his other fingers along the cover of it, grazing over it gently as if implying to open it on the page you chose for him. You give him a short, stiff nod, confirming his assumptions.
Keith wants to ask questions, but your eyes fill him with answers. The way you looked at him, eyes deeper than just color and pupil, it screamed "Read this page. Before I see you again, before this all goes wherever fate may guide it, read it."
"Thank you, Keith."
"You're welcome." He says, feeling your fingers slip down his with grace. At last, you make it into the pod, feeling only slightly closed in when the glass contains you and seals you within. The pods are a place where sleep is naturally forced, however, and you slip peacefully and contentedly into a state of unconsciousness. The eyes of the team automatically drift to the board, where Pidge works a coded system entirely written in Altean. It looks strikingly similar to the way one would upload a digital file on Earth, only instead of written documents to a computer, it's forgotten memories to a person's active brain.
A loading bar of sorts appears, glowing blue amongst a white box. It seems to progress rather slowly, and after about a minute of staring, it's barely reached the human equivalent of four percent.
Keith turns to the journal with his thumb jammed in it specifically. The phantom, ghost-ish presence of your warm fingers lingers on his calloused, semi-gloves ones. It leaves only a fading heat that dissipates with time, reminding him of the task he'd been given. That being said, he pries open the journal to the page he was instructed to, but he finds a sudden distraction.
Shiro questions "should you be reading that?" at the same time Lance begs to him "tell us what it says!", causing him to fold it back over his thumb and turn so they can only see the cover. This is for Keith's eyes only, as far as he's concerned; he won't go about risking anything if he can.
"Y/n told me to read it. And by me, she did not mean you, Lance." Keith says, pressing himself up against the wall. The entry is dated back to your Garrison days, just before the Nix Mission. Keith coils into himself a little bit, remembering how hard those days were- it felt like when archers shoot a second arrow so accurately that it splits the first in two, only the bullseye hit was the dead center of his heart. There are distinct wrinkles on the page from fallen tears, round and crinkled and familiarly placed.
Keith remembers, those are most definitely his.
This is the page with which James had incorrectly read out loud that night, effectively wrecking Lance's party and making you downright miserable. The night you had a five minute crush on Lance. . .
It's also the very same page that Keith cried over when he ran to the desert after you were reported missing, spraying salted tears all over the crisp pages without a second thought of permanent damage.
"I think... for the first time in my young adult life, I think I may have found someone I wouldn't mind being with all the time. Some may call it forever."
A confession that was never supposed to reach his eyes, and now you show it to him with confidence. Isn't it nostalgic, to read something that made you so joyful and heartbroken at the same time that you couldn't even look at it afterward?
"I guess if all ends well for me, Keith would be my forever. Isn't that childish, dear journal?"
Keith looks up, a faint smile on his face. Knowing that he could have or lose all he's ever needed in the next few minutes or so is putting him on such an edge, he feels as if he's standing on the lethal edge of a knife, the business side of the blade.
"Halfway there." Pidge announces, and Keith looks back at you in the pod, who's floating effortlessly as if your very being defied the laws of gravity. Like watching birds in the sky, so fluently flying by as if it was their everyday version of a human's walk. Keith wasn't seeing doves or anything, but he did see beauty.
"How did it get so fast? It was going slower than Haggar on wet concrete just a second ago." Lance says, rubbing his chin.
Pidge swivels around in her chair, pushing up her glasses to see him clearly. "Those were old, almost unattainable memories, from the moment she was born and all throughout her toddler years. The more recent a memory is, the easier it is to remember it. Remembering things from when you were a newborn is almost impossible, but something has to go up eventually."
"Ahh, okay. Thanks." Lance says, looking back at the bar. "Hey, it's almost done!"
Everyone looked back so hard that it almost gave whiplash to an entire group of legendary defenders. The bar was beeping for a successful and complete upload, and like all other pods on the Castle of Lions, your opened instantly; no time for anyone to run and grab you.
Bonk.
"Y/n!"
You blink a few times, cheek pressed against the cold floor you're flat against. "Hm?"
Looking up, it's pretty clear that the group had let a specific person come to you first. He falls to his knees, trying to lift you up off of the floor when you hesitate. "Wait."
"What?"
"W-who are you?" You ask, looking fearfully into the eyes of the stranger with raven hair. The tension becomes so thick, you could break it over your knee. It fills and intoxicates the room, making it suffocatingly awkward. His eyes shrink in fear, in disbelief. "Where am I?" You ask.
"You don't recognize me? Are you being serious right now?" He sputters, hand stretched out in utter shock. Shaking your head, you take his arm quickly, hoisting yourself off of the ground.
"No, I'm only kidding." You say, erupting into laughter at the joke that only you found funny. The room sits silently in relief, but you can tell that they weren't pleased with the little stunt. "Sorry. Can you imagine if the author made these guys sit through another thirty chapters of nothing but my mental torture?"
Keith drops his head in relief, his hand still holding yours even after he had helped you up- though, you're not sure how subconscious it is. "Do you... remember everything? Are you okay?"
The entire cluster of people looks at you hopefully, their eyes like lasers boring into you with expectancy. "I'm pretty sure?" You answer unsurely. "I don't know. Ask me something? Something I didn't know before."
"What were your last few days at the Galaxy Garrison like? Before the kidnapping?" Pidge asks, and you can tell that there's a knot of suspense in her core- this would prove if it all actually worked, which you would owe mostly to her for putting everything back in there.
"Well, they were hard. Not only did I get publicly humiliated for all of the wrong reasons, but I also had to man up and leave most of you guys." You say, shrugging. "Though, it was kind of funny hearing Keith's absurd excuses. The things he would make up..."
Lance pushes his way to the front, gaining attention faster than ever before. "What kinds of things?"
"He told me that he had a sickness that could only be cured if I stayed on Earth and helped him study for his exams once." You chuckle, noticing a heated embarrassment on creamy skin. "Or when you said you'd never talk to me again! Look where that got you—"
Keith sighs, putting a hand up to halt before you can continue. "They get it. I think that's enough."
"Sorry." You shrug before looking down. His thumb strokes gently up and down your knuckles, and at that point you realize that you're still joint at the hands. "Leaving Earth was one of the hardest things I ever had to do, and you were the only one who came to tell me goodbye before I took off. You were the only thing tying me down to that lonesome planet. Thank you."
"Anytime." Keith says softly.
Lance does a dramatic face of disgust, waving his hand at his nose. "It reeks of tension. I can't stand by and watch this like I'm chopped liver or something." He says, turning to leave the room entirely. The group seems to follow in tandem, drifting out one by one after quick embraces and warm welcomes back to the team.
Keith doesn't go.
"Y/n, you can tell me what you're comfortable with whenever you want." He says, looking to the floor with anguish. You and him both know that eye contact would be something else, and to discover what that is would be an adventure you may not be ready for. "Partner or not, I'm always going to be here if you need me. Alright?"
Keith turns to trickle out, but your finger finds it's way to his hand, tugging back gently on his glove. He hesitates, turning back around with a raised brow. "Hm?"
"I'm sorry."
He sighs, eyebrows furrowing with something you could categorize under disappointment. "Y/n, what in the world do you have to be sorry for?"
"For going on the mission even though deep down, I knew I should have stayed. With you. For getting angry with you when you tried to warn the team about Lotor and his intentions. For running away at the space mall instead of trying to help. Every time I could have trusted you I didn't, and it always put us- err, the team, in such hard places." You say. "So for that I'm sorry."
Suddenly, like sinking into the safety of a warm bath, you feel security around you. Keith's hugs; there's no safer place to be in the whole universe. He holds you tight and close, and if he could hold you any closer to him, you know he would try. "I chose greed instead of letting you do what you love, and I kept my mouth shut when Lotor threatened me because of that same problem; the fear of losing you.
"I decided to fight Lotor partially for my own pride instead of fighting for you- I let us both walk right into his trap. On top of that, I moped around and cried for days instead of trying to save you. For that, I'm sorry, for letting my wants come before your needs."
You shake your head into his neck where he holds you tight, disagreement obvious. "I don't want to hear it."
"I don't-"
You put a finger to his mouth, effectively shushing him for good.
When you pull away from his holds, he looks you in the eyes with a masked look. He wants to hold you again, to have you the way you were before the whole Lotor mess; but things are different now. Your experiences and struggles are unique. They sculpted you into different people, and you can't have things the same with factors that are completely different.
"I love you, Keith. And last I remember, we were in love then too, but a break would be nice." You admit. "Just... just a week or two to readjust to routine. Then we can talk again and see where we go from there."
Keith nods with a content sigh, pushing a stray hair behind your ear. "You really have changed so much since the Garrison. Once you were so logical and self-kept; look at you now." He smiles. "You really have grown so much."
"You sound like a dad." You laugh, causing him to fluster with a second round of embarrassment. He shakes his head, amused yet not.
Keith says, "I'm trying to be serious. The tables have turned so much."
"It is crazy to think about." You hum at that, leaning a bit into his touch when he pulls his hand away. "How Far I've Come."
You have to stretch onto your toes, but you curve around to plant a grateful kiss on his cheek. His hand flutters up to graze that spot, a heat blooms across his nose and to it's sides. "Let's go eat something." He says tightly, turning away.
"Please." You smile,
It's almost instinct to expect an arm to link to. Just a person to hang off of, to be their benefits while you eat, sleep and cry like a droid only capable of feeling the sadness to do the latter.
Instead, Keith gingerly grazes his hand next to yours, his pinky sneakily attempting to interlock with yours. "Is this okay?" He asks, and it's the first time you'd ever been asked anything of the sort in months.
You nod and hold his hand carefully, walking out of that chamber room with a newfound sense of freedom.
From this adventure, you learned so much. From the mathematics on how to land a million-ton spaceship to how to control a prosthetic foot after you were shot in the ankle and given a new, technological one in mere hours. Learning how to love, to falsely love, and to truly hate. Gaining a warrior status by the race that enslaved you, then (almost) a royalty one. What an adventure you've been through, and how unfortunate you've been to experience it without anyone you trust most of the time.
At the end of the day, you trust Keith. What you told him was true, you did need a small break from the whole idea of relationships. Though, it's mostly just to make sure you're fully forgetful of your time with Lotor before being with someone you do trust.
Once you know you can be happy and safe with Keith, which is almost completely guaranteed, you'll talk and make up. All you need is some time and the perfect moment. Who knows? Maybe it could be the corner you turn outside of the chamber room.
The future is unpredictable. Once upon a time, you though you would never find happiness in anything but words- and especially not in people. Now, you live your happiest moments surrounded by people. They love you and you love them.
Where you stood alone years ago, you stand with friends. Y/n's friends and Y/n, against the world.
Or, more accurately based of the future:
Keith, Y/n and Dear Journal against the universe.
How far will you go?
How far have you gone?
How Far I've Come.
end.