Masks

Keith 2

Keith grows up hearing stories about his mother, how she was very beautiful and very powerful, a tall, elegant woman from another culture. And the pictures of her confirm some of this, as the figure standing next to his father in the pictures is a good foot taller than him, and her posture indicates that here is a woman who has never moved with anything less than grace, but as for the beautiful part... that he has to take his dad's word on. Because he's never seen her face.

"She was from a different culture," his dad explains as they look at the album together, "They cover themselves there, and only show their faces to the people they really trust or their families."

As a child Keith nods solemnly and stares at the pictures, memorizing the decorative mask his mother always wore, the elegant oval of stone grey with pale violet stripes and circles that indicate not Role but Identity. When he's older he does his best to learn which culture, exactly, his mother was from, but though he finds several that dress similarly or wear decorative masks in public, he can never find any that dress or look exactly like her. Even the eyes of her mask are filled with tinted lenses, so the pupils and irises remain invisible.

"They were like fire," his dad says when asked, "Or the sun, they burned so bright."

As he gets older, Keith begins to examine the pictures more closely, checking the lines of her clothes for just the slightest glimpse of her skin. But even beneath the loose outer robes of dusty blue, faded indigo, and shadow green there is a layer of more fitted clothing and gloves, and he never finds even a sliver of exposed flesh.

"You got this from her," his dad tells him, running a gentle finger over the purple birthmark covering the outer edge of his left hand, "And the one on the back of your neck."

When as his hands are big enough, Keith starts wearing fingerless gloves as often as possible, and keeps his hair long-ish. It was part of his mother's culture to cover their skin, so he covers the bits he got from her, in respect and in memory. He looks at her pictures still, though, and wonders what her face was like, what her true mask was.

"A Warrior, I think," his dad smiles when Keith asks, "Your mother was a born fighter, the finest I ever saw. You move like her when you train."

Keith always hates Phys Ed when he's in regular school – what's the point of learning sports when you could be learning to fight with swords or daggers or convenient bits of rock? The first time he disdainfully mentions this to a teacher his dad gets called in and has to really emphasize wooden, wooden blades, of the practice sort, mixed martial arts, part of their culture, and a few other things before the principal stops being upset (after which the lessons on being sneaky start). It's one of the best things about the Garrison – Phys Ed is replaced with combat training, which is so much better and adds some diversity to Keith's skill set. Sometimes, when he's at the cabin, his home base while he's learning to be a pilot and to which his dad dutifully returns during holidays, he stares at the night sky and wonders if she'd be proud of how he fights.

"She was beautiful in battle," his dad would always murmur when it was late and they were looking at the stars together, "I'd never seen anyone like her before, so completely different from everything I knew."

Sometimes Keith draws pictures when he's still small. Of him, his dad, and his mom as a family, of his mom teaching him to fight, of what his mom might look like behind her decorative mask. Short hair and small ears, like his dad has told him (he doesn't know why his dad made a point of it to mention her ears, but he always does, so Keith makes sure to draw them). Skin colour is harder – his dad says she was dark for her people, but Keith doesn't know what that means without knowing where she's from, and that's one detail his dad never shares, claiming she never exactly said.

"She loved you," his dad reassures him, as often as Keith asks, "She loves us both. But she had to go – she was needed elsewhere, and I couldn't follow. Wanderers don't make for great soldiers, and we didn't want to risk you. I can't promise she'll ever come back, or even that she's even still alive, but I can promise you this – she loved you so much, and she wanted you to grow up free and happy. No matter where she is, I know that hasn't changed."

Regardless of her, his dad definitely loves him – the cabin in the desert wouldn't be a thing otherwise, the home base that, as an Explorer, Keith needs and which his dad's truck can no longer be while he's attending the Garrison, and which the Garrison itself cannot be. It's surreal to see his dad in the same setting but not living there so many times, but also appreciated. In the same way, Keith appreciates his dad's conviction that Keith will find the culture his mother came from, one day.

"I might trip over them one day by mistake," he says, laughing at his own roving nature, "But you seek things out. They're not a very social lot, from what she told me, but it's part your culture, too, and you're smart when you remember to be. Keep looking, you'll recognize it when you see it."

Keith knows from the moment he sees Ulaz in the corridors of the Castle, knows in a silent way that he won't allow himself to hear. The knowing gets a bit louder, though, with each step further he takes into the base of the Blades of Marmora, as he sees more tall, graceful warriors covered from head to toe, sees the masks marked in patterns that are familiar to him, even though he's only ever seen one other like them before, and that one made of different materials, marked not with Role but Identity. Even before Kolivan speaks and reveals the secret of his dagger/sword, the knowledge echoes in Keith's ears that this is what he has been seeking for so long.

He has found his mother's people.

OoOoOoOoO

Guess who noticed that each Blade of Marmora has their own individual pattern on their mask and went "hey, I can use this," and then went on to do some world-building around it?

I think the paladins and Matt are all faster at being able to recognize individual masks among the Blades than Coran or Allura, as they have all grown up on a world where people have multiple faces (in a way) and are more used to that kind of facial recognition as a result.

Explorers, in this at least, travel all over the place, but tend to have a 'home base' they return to from time to time in order to rest or store certain things. The location of this base can change, but there almost always is one. Wanderers, in contrast, are generally nomads, regardless of whether or not they were born to a nomadic culture. They'll stay in one place for a time, then move on, and if they come back they'll stay in a slightly different part of the place than they did previously.

Where is Keith's dad during the 'present' in this AU? Either continuing to ramble around Earth, looking for/with Keith's mom, or dead as of partway through Keith's tenure at the Garrison. One of those three. More details either when the show tells us or it becomes really relevant to the story.

Since it's not obvious, I'm headcanoning that Keith's mom is of the same subspecies of Galra as Ulaz, but of a different race than him, as I'm pretty sure the Galra have multiple subspecies in a manner similar to foxes or cats (accounting for the extreme physical differences between some of them, such as Antok, Ulaz, Thace, and Zarkon), but also multiple races within those subspecies (accounting for the more subtle differences between some of them, such as Thace, Sendak, and Prorok). So, Keith's mom in this universe has a similar build to Ulaz, but a much darker colouration and possibly different skin/fur patterns. She didn't dress exactly like a member of the Blades anymore, but her clothes were based on that in combination with certain human styles from various cultures.