Forget The Past

Shiro's Love

"Some things are best left to the imagination. At least that is what my mother always told me. I found Keith in the desert. I had gone on a ride to clear my head after a long shift at the Garrison. There was this shack, abandoned and falling apart. I had the sudden urge to explore this shack. I still don't know what it was. Luck or coincidence, whatever it was, I entered this shack in the middle of nowhere. I expected dust and old furniture. That was not what I found. I would have never thought someone could do something from the darkest nightmares."
Shiro paused as he started to tell the tale of how he adopted Keith to Team Voltron. The silence of the team encouraged him to continue.
"Keith wasn't in the shack, yet the walls were stained with his blood. I saw pictures of the abuse he suffered pinned to the wall. The instruments of the pain on display for all to see. There was an old TV in the corner. It had many recordings of what had happened. The whippings, beatings, canings, and many more forms of punishment. The worse part would've been the mad ravings of the man. He was ruthless, demanding Keith tell him where this giant alien weapon was or why Keith had come to Earth. A map appeared on the video, along with mocking commentary. 'Our final family video! Maria would have loved this, ain't that right kiddo?' The camera flipped views to show Keith chained to a post I front of a cave. The map even showed where Keith was about to be abandoned. The man had laughed before slapping the boy and the video ended. I believed that I had just witnessed the murder of a child before I compared the dates of the video with the date of that day. I calculated that it had been about four days since the video had been recorded. I raced to my bike after checking the rest of the inside of the shack. Someone's foot was sticking out of the side of the shack. How I had not noticed that before was beyond me. I took a look and found the man from the video, dead with a gun in his hand and a bottle of Scotch still in his other hand. I had vomited before sprinting to my cycle." Shiro looked up to gage the responses of the others to the story he was telling.
Princess Allura was listening with horror and disgust showing for the man who had hurt one of her paladins. Hunk was looking as green as the mold on Shiro's fridge. Pidge seemed to have been crying. Coran looked as if he would kill this evil human male if he could. Lance had twin rivers of silver tears finding their path along the pull of gravity.
Shiro, himself, was in tears. He wanted nothing more than to hold his son. He had always known that Keith was different than normal children. He grew rabidly in the past five years, maturing almost to the same point his body was at. Shiro's heart ached for his son. A light touch on his real arm brought him out of the clutches of his thoughts.
"Shiro, it's okay if you don't feel like telling us the rest of this tale." Lance's soft voice registered in Shiro's mind.
"I love him more than life itself, Lance. I spent months by his bedside reading to him, singing, talking, and generally just being there for him. He was in a coma the whole time. The doctors pulled the plug multiple times yet he continued to fight for life. He woke up a week after I got permission to adopt him should he survive. I had stepped out of the room for a few minutes to grab some food. Apparently he had ripped out all the tubes and monitoring devices, setting off a bunch of alarms. I had only just gotten three doors down before I heard the alarms and raced into his room. He tried to make himself small. His eyes were so wide and terrified. I lifted him up and started to rock him while holding him close. From that day on, I knew I would love him no matter what. He would always be my son. I need him back. He's the only thing I fight for."
Shiro sounded like a broken man in that moment. Hunk did what he did best. He huffed the broken man. The rest of the team joined the hug, pretending not to notice the sobs from the precious fluffy marshmallow.