#except. he can't do it. not when he knows it'll doom shiro

[discordiansamba]

thinking about temporal shift, and about how the black lion of the past acknowledges future!Keith, but it's been so long since he's been the red lion's paladin that it doesn't acknowledge him. It doesn't help that in his future, the red lion was destroyed relatively early on, so its simply been non-existent for hundreds of years.

seeing the red lion again stirs something in Keith, though. So is seeing Black, whole and intact, and not just the wrecked remains of it that they managed to salvage and eventually repurposed into the ship he used to slip through time. He didn't think he'd still have a link to this time's black lion, especially since his past self hasn't connected with it yet.

He mostly keeps his head down. Tries not to call attention to it. The paladins of the past probably wouldn't react well if they learned their mysterious time traveler had a connection to the black lion, especially not with Shiro still fighting with Zarkon for full control over it. Besides, Shiro needs to bond with black on his own. He can't help with that.

(Which is... weird to think about. The Shiro in his memory is always older than him, but now he's the older one and Shiro just seems so young.)

But when the time comes, and Voltron has their climatic showdown with Zarkon, just once does Keith intervene. As Zarkon drags Shiro into the astral plane to finish him once and for all, his killing blow is stopped by a third party. The Galran Emperor is forced from the astral plane, though he escapes with his life.

But more importantly, so does Shiro.