Soul and Heart || Keith Kogane x Reader

The Rise of Voltron: Part 3

The hum of the Altean aircraft soothed Y/n's racing thoughts, fingers twiddling with her mom's idea of an unwavering mother-daughter bond. As the whirring of the spacecraft faded lowly to a stop, it was only then the half-Altean realised they had reached their destination. Having not discussed, well, anything, in regards to their retrieving of the White Lion, the two paladins were stuck at a difficult 'what-do-we-do-now?' situation. It wasn't as if the two were the most stubborn of the Voltron crew or anything.

Fishing into her pocket for the tracker lended to her by the Alteans, the device lit up with a single click, hologram of the planet springing into the air with coordinates of the Lion's general vicinity; Y/n could rely on 'feeling the vibes' as she'd dubbed them in locating her mother's pride and joy (and soon to be hers).

With a quick pat to her pockets in a final check, she turned to Keith. "Good to go?"

The Red Paladin hesitated, mouth opening in closing with reluctance before sighing in defeat. "Yeah," he muttered.

Their walk through a barren terrain was spent in silence, the only notable sound emanating from Voltron's tracker and the occasional scuffing of one or the other's boots.

Keith sharply inhaled. "Do you feel your Lion?" His shoes kicked a rock absentmindedly.

Y/n clenched the device in her hands just a fraction tighter. "No," she sighed. "Not yet, at least. I'm sure that once we get closer, I'll know."

The rest of their trek had been filled with a suffocating tension, one paladin constantly steering her mind to 'focus on the mission' and the other one step away from reaching out to the half-Altean and asking 'why?'. It was miserable, yet neither had the guts to speak a word on the matter; it wasn't as if they knew how without either party crashing and burning.

To the heavy relief of both paladins, a structure of sorts emerged from the lifeless plains of White's planet as the two picked up the pace. Finally spotting the building sent waves of alleviation through the half-Altean as if, up until this point, she had been suffocating and was granted the ability to breathe for the first time.

A simple metal tablet stood before the temple's entrance, engravings in a foreign language scrawled into it elegantly. At the centre, an achingly familiar slot for a certain tear-drop shaped stone drew Y/n in as she grew acutely aware of the increasingly bright pendant on her chest.

"Of course," the h/c haired girl half-sang. "Of fucking-course my dead mom is the key to the universe's greatest weapons."

Keith reeled back, blinking rapidly at the casual mention of Y/n's mother. "Care to explain?"

In one clean swoop, Y/n unclasped her necklace, pausing as the pendant hovered over its rightful place. "To be honest, I've always thought this thing was a useless piece of junk besides being a keepsake and the occasional magic Altean stuff," the White Paladin admitted, Keith holding back a startled laugh. "But my dad always told me it was the key to defeating the Galra."

"You just didn't think it would be literal?"

The girl huffed. "I didn't think it would be literal." Y/n slotted the stone into the tablet, ground erupting into a violent rumble as the two struggled to maintain their footing.

Both paladins snapped their heads up at the sound of heavy metal creaking, the doors of their designation opening wide.

With a nod of determination to one another, they made their way into the dark.

–

The inside was pitch black and seemingly endless. With the door stammering to a close on their immediate entrance, no light would meet them here and the tracker's glow had been utterly useless. Y/n trailed a hand against the eroded metal walls, calling out each twist and turn in a weirdly-fashioned time-passer. "I can feel White." she sighed. "It's as if she's behind every left and right we make– I don't understand." Every breath and step and syllable the half-Altean took, she did her best in keeping quiet. It felt as if Keith was a wild animal; one wrong step and he'd be spooked.