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drabblesandthings-blog · 6 years

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Post Season 6 AU in which the clone’s memories didn’t merge when Shiro’s consciousness was placed together in the same body.

Rating: Teen Summary: Shiro is trying to come to terms with what has happened to him and piece his life together with Kuro as a passenger inside his head.

“I want to live.”

The words resounded clear inside his head, a call too distinct for him to think that it was his own thoughts forming the words.

Shiro opens his eyes and for once it wasn’t to the sight of an endless starry sky with a spattering of stars with the sky above mirrored in the surface below stretching on forever into nothingness. He’s surrounded by his friends and wherever they are it’s nearing twilight. They’ve finally found him and there’s tears in their eyes. Shiro would shed a tear too, but he’s too tired to do more than exchange a few words before sleep takes him.

He was aware of another presence inside his head, one with a fierce will to live. That desire was what swayed Shiro and to suggest the other version of him had no soul, that his memories were nothing more than a set of data that could be claimed and made his own, was unthinkable to him. Instead of doing as Allura suggested by asserting dominance they slowly learned to cohabit the body they shared.

This was easier said than done. Even his name had been a source of contention between the pair.

“Kuro?” Shiro had asked him incredulously. “That’s the name you’re going with?”

“I prefer it over being called ‘the clone.’ I also thought about Jiro,” Kuro offered as an alternative, sharing the story of where he’d used the name.

“Kuro” was the name that stuck however and so they were - one light, one dark. The others came to see it that way, with them being different sides of the same coin.

Shiro didn’t agree, but Kuro got some amusement out of it. He sometimes wondered about the subtle differences between them.

“I’ve changed, Shiro. We have the same memories - up to a point. We were bound to diverge eventually and you weren’t the one that was exposed to the Haggar’s poison.”

Kuro saw himself as a warped version of him and not a person in his own right, Shiro realized.

During his time in the Black Lion he’d caught fleeting glimpses of what was going on in the outside world, either through the Lion’s eyes or the clone’s. He wasn’t sure at times. At first Shiro had felt contempt for the imposter wearing his face and living his life. Kuro’s initial failure to pilot the Black Lion didn’t come from the Lion, but from Shiro’s refusal to put the life of his friends and that of other innocent people in his hands. It was only when he’d pleaded for help to protect them that Shiro knew he had the team's best interest in mind and that he cared about them.

“How does it feel?” Shiro asked him once during a quiet moment. He’d woken from a nightmare where he was floating and for a sickening moment he thought he was back inside the void in the Black Lion. He’d been kept safe all that time, but it had taken him a while to accept his fate. Kuro must have the same anxieties being trapped in his head.

“How does what feel? Being inside a guy?” Kuro’s voice was dripping with smugness, thinking himself exceptionally clever for coming up with that line.

Shiro sighed in exasperation. “You just had to phrase it that way.”

He didn’t need to explain himself or rephrase it when Kuro knew exactly what he meant with the question. Kuro had been buying time to put his thoughts together and his answer came a few moments later.

“You know what it felt like after you lost your arm? Before they gave you a replacement. You kept wanting to reach for something, forgetting that there wasn’t anything there to grasp with. It’s kinda like that, except with my whole body. I can still see and feel what you do, but I can’t do anything about it. I guess this is what it would’ve felt like if you got more ill and were stuck in a body you couldn’t control.”

Shiro was silent. An apology at this stage was pointless and Kuro didn’t want any of his sympathy either.

After some time had passed Kuro spoke up again. “What did it feel like … dying?”

There was none of the snark Kuro had the habit of using to mask his feelings from him. They hadn’t figured out a way to keep their emotions separate from each other yet. Shiro could feel the vulnerability in his question. There was a risk of Kuro fading away to nothing since they had no idea how all this worked or how long they had remaining for them to find a solution to their predicament. For all they knew the Altean magic could fade and their memories would meld into one without them having a say in the matter.

“I came to terms with it and I don’t intend for either of us to experience it again for a very long time,” was all he had to say on the matter. Both were understandably reticent go into detail and let the subject slide.

They still had a long way ahead of them.

#shirocest #takashi shirogane #kuron #vld kuron

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