#‘who was that barely dressed cadet who just handed me my ass over a piloting error?’ | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

capsized-heart · 5 years

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Warbirds

Pairing: Carol Danvers x Reader

Summary: Ships and planes and weapons of war named after women and dubbed she, her. Powerful, deadly. Yet, the real thing, the real body is demeaned and made less than man. When you and Carol are up in the sky and screaming through the air in your metal birds, they will see just how fragile you are.

Following Carol and Reader throughout their training in the Air Force.

Word count: 4.6k+

Warnings: smut, mild violence

A/N: It feels so good to post again! I’m so sorry I haven’t written anything in a bit, my finals this semester have been c r a z y, I’ve written 20 pages worth of papers and I still have one more left before I’m fully on winter break :’) but almost there!

I’ve had this idea for a while and....I honestly had too much fun with this. I did a lot of research and watched some documentaries on what trainees experience through basic training and I find military uniforms more attractive than I should so I didn’t hold back on this one.

Please enjoy my girl Carol!!!

“Wake up! Wake up! Open that day room door! Lights on! PT uniform of the day, PT shorts and shirt!”

The piercing voice of Dorm Chief Williams shatters the air. Fluorescent white blinds you, pulse thundering as you’re jerked from sleep, kicking off your covers. Your muscles scream, vision blurred and swimming and you stagger to your feet.

Cadets around you are already making their beds and changing into their gear. You reach for your own combat uniform, pull on the deep navy tracksuit with the reflective insignia of the U.S. Air Force glowing over your left breast.

You turn and see your bunkmate starting to stir. You feel your heart hammer in your throat and push at her shoulder.

“Carol. Get up. Hey, let’s go, Warbird.”

Williams, a tall and intimidating woman personifying dread itself, marches over to your bunk.

“Danvers, am I keeping you from your beauty sleep?” Williams barks with the most intensity you’ve ever heard from her at 0600. “Should I call the canteen and have them bring you breakfast since you’re so busy slowing down my whole squadron?”

Carol jolts to attention. “No, ma’am!”

“Then get the hell away from me and into gear. Now.”

“Yes, ma’am!”

Williams scowls, watching Carol fly to her post to dress before she turns on her heel and makes her rounds through the rest of the dorm. Finished with your own tasks, you help with Carol’s bed, smooth out her uniform, secure her hair in a tight bun. She gives you a tired smile.

“Fall out!” Williams calls.

You’re out the door in a minute flat. The short, sharp blasts of Reveille drive motion around you as you fall in line with the male recruits.

The morning is brisk, stimulating, turning your breath into puffs of steam as sweeps of indigo crack open the sky like the pearly, iridescent insides of seashells. It’s pretty, the color reminding you of waves and ocean.

Maybe you should have joined the Navy instead, Carol would say, a quick quip about how you would make such a charming sailor girl bobbing away on a ship. She always likes to tease you for your love of beautiful, superficial things.

From the moment you shed your civilian status, the Academy taught you to appreciate the little things in life; the glow of morning that tints the clouds with amber and cream as you watch the world from your cockpit. Chirping birdsong, a sort of secret you like to think that exists only between birds and Airmen, the few humans capable of sharing the sky.

You loathe how much Carol affects you, since day zero, the very start of BMT. How you can hear her voice in your mind this goddamn early.

Your MTI picks up a cadence and you match your step to the young men and women beside you, your wingmen. You feel unity, harmony beating through your bloodstream as you jog in time with your sergeant’s calls, the crisp air making you feel well rested and energized despite getting your usual four hours of sleep.

Moments like these that give you purpose, the indescribable excitement of being a part of something bigger than yourself. Of belonging.

“Lookin’ good and feelin’ good! Who are we?” Your drill instructor booms.

“USAF! Aim high! Fly, fight, win!” The squadron sounds off in unison.

You’re three weeks into BMT. Twenty-one days of primal shock, verbal abuse, blood, sweat, tears. Four weeks, twenty-eight more days until you graduate from the ranks of cadet, four weeks until your MTI awards you your dog tags and the title of Airman. The start of your career as a fighter pilot.

But until then, you’ll have to survive the next twenty-eight days.

You’ve learned more about yourself in these three weeks than you have in your entire life, your mind and body hardened with discipline. Broken down psychologically and physically and molded into the young woman your squadron needs you to be.

You and Carol are reminded of your womanhood every day. You and the others have to push yourselves harder, faster just to prove you can keep up. O’Neill, a petite little firecracker of a girl and fresh out of school, had gotten her period last week. You’d watched her wretch up bile after morning drill, the exertion and stress and cramps too much for her body to handle. The MTI had screamed at her, blue in the face, ordered her to drop on her stomach right there and crank fifteen pushups.

You cannot separate your femininity from your body, even in a military unit that declares that all are treated equal as soldiers. You are not an equal by default.

It’s belittling. Exhausting.

But you’ve shown that you can hold your own against the boys. You’ve learned how to shoot clean and fight with your bare hands, how to assemble, disassemble, and repair your M-16. You could do it in your sleep, the sharp click-click of a reloading magazine heard in your dreams.

This week, along with your usual physical conditioning, you have CBRNE training, MOPP training. You’ll be exposed to CS gas and simulations of biological warfare, your leadership skills put to the test.

You can do this. With Carol by your side, you feel like you can do anything. Little fledglings earning your wings, pushed from the nest, learning to fly when the ground is rushing up to meet you. Make or break.

Twenty-eight more days.

The gas is meant to simulate suffocation, they tell you.

“Masks off! Break the seal! Break, break, break!”

You’re already dizzy, head spinning from the chamber exercises when you stick your fingers in between the small space of your mask and pull hard.

The seal breaks with a sharp hiss.

Fire floods your eyes, your sinuses, down your throat, constricting tight like smoke and flames and hellfire. You taste fireworks, poison. Your eyes instinctively shut, blurry with tears and you cough hard, sputter, hear the echoes of other cadets hacking and gasping.

The simulation is meant to put trust in your equipment, to make you vividly remember that your mask and gear will save your life. And as you stand there with your lungs struggling to expand and the MTIs rounding on each of you in the hazy, cloying smoke, you believe it.

“Airman Recruit Danvers, Division 164!” You hear Carol pant somewhere in the fumes, along the walls of the chamber where you’re all lined up. You keep your mask raised above your head as instructed, waiting, suffocating in silence until it is your turn to state your name and division number. The MTIs move down the line with their masks still fixed. Haunting, weaving through the gas and toxins like plague doctors. The image of death. Vultures tearing fledglings apart with pointed beaks and white bone as you watch cadets choke on their own breath.

The primal impulse of fear trickles from your hypothalamus as the minutes tick on, until your lips and tongue buzz like fire ants, until you can no longer feel the tips of your fingers. You’re sweat-slicked and gasping when an MTI turns to you, screams for your identification.

You sound off. Your entire body is shaking, fevered. You are the last in your row.

You burst through the doors and out into the afternoon air with a stream of cadets behind you, taking flight as you thunder on the asphalt to the open courtyard.

You all cough, spit, clear out your lungs with curses and muted laughter as your squadron stands together beneath cotton clouds and blue sky.

Carol finds you in the mix, the few precious seconds where you’re not forced to fall in line. Seconds to catch your breath. Her skin is flushed and wisps of hair fall to frame her face, her bun messy. She grins and the two of you bump fists, playful.

Your cheeks redden, lungs tight with something other than CS gas. It’s strange seeing Carol disheveled when you’ve been so hardwired with self-control, down to how you’re expected to wear your hair, present yourself.

You like seeing her like this.

“Do we have confidence in that gear?” MTI Galloway emerges from the chambers and asks of you all.

“Yes, Chief!” You roar.

Carol calls you Phoenix after that, running so fast out the chamber and looking like a fire had been lit up your ass.

The nickname is fitting for a duo like you. Raptors, birds of prey, fierce and skilled and yet simultaneously embracing and shielding your femininity with unfurled wings.

Have women not been compared to birds in art and literature throughout history as a means to show fragility? Fleeting beauty?

Why not strength? Why ever not for sleeker attributes, or as hunters?

It’s curious. Ships and planes and weapons of war named after women and dubbed she, her. Powerful, deadly. Yet, the real thing, the real body is demeaned and made less than man.

When you and Carol are up in the sky and screaming through the air in your metal birds, they will see just how fragile you are.

You hit the ground so hard that the air rushes out your lungs in a loud wheeze. You can’t breathe. Your face burns, ears ringing. You can hear the screams of your MTI. You’d rather die of embarrassment right here.

The rope dangles in front of you, fifteen feet straight up, still swaying from where you’d fallen, taunting. Physical conditioning for your Basic Expeditionary Airman Skills Training examination next week, fittingly dubbed the BEAST. Rope climbing and complicated field obstacle courses after you’ve crawled through miles of sand and dirt, navigated through tactical drills with your full pack of gear.

Your arms tremble, your entire upper body drained of all strength, skin biting from the sand. Weak, exhausted. Your palms raw from the rope. Tears of frustration sting at your eyes as your MTI screams out your surname in another bloodcurdling roar to get your ass up out of that dirt.

Yet, the low scoff of a nearby cadet is what piques your attention.

Dalquist. A boy a few years older than yourself with an ugly, crooked grin and sandy hair. A show-off, a boy who thinks himself a man. He smirks again with crossed arms, tuts his tongue as his eyes flicker over you.

“They’ll never let you fly.” He snickers.

Then, Carol is there beside you. She grips your waist strongly, shifting your weight and the two of you slowly rise together amidst the swirling dust. You draw in a shuddering breath.

Maybe he’s right. Maybe they’re all right. Maybe you don’t belong here.

You feel Carol’s muscles tense and manage to squeeze her arm in a silent warning. The entire squadron watches the three of you. The last thing you need is falling to Dalquist’s level and getting punished for it.

So she hits him with a reply quite enough only for the three of you to hear.

“You better hope not.” She rasps.

Your time in the classroom is a welcome break from the stresses of field training. You meet Dr. Wendy Lawson, an incredibly gifted and terrifying brilliant quantum physics scientist when she’s brought in to give you post-deployment training. She teaches you flight mechanics, squadron resources and financial management. You learn about her research on quantum energy.

Lawson is especially kind to you and Carol upon hearing your aspirations to take to the skies as fighter flyers. Her standards are higher for you and she encourages you to speak out when you’ve been too timid to respond to the whole class, the twinkle in her eye giving you courage, a voice for the first time in your life.

Together, Lawson and Carol work to coax you out of your shell.

The days trudge on. You throw Dalquist’s remark behind every new simulation you’re given, every mile, every pushup of your physical conditioning.

And it shows.

Your endurance and stamina have nearly doubled, bringing out new muscles in your back, your arms. You’re stronger than you’ve ever been, strong enough to grapple an unsuspecting Dalquist to the ground during field training. He stares up at you in humiliation and horror and you push him harder into the dirt, until your MTI snorts and tells you to let him up.

The mile and a half lap you take known as the Airman’s Run the week of your graduation is a breeze. Your body is familiar with the motion and exertion, the rest of the cadets who’ve made it through BMT with you dressed in new uniforms of pressed blue shirts and the trademark navy garrison cap.

Family and friends watch as your squadron marches in a parade of waving flag and timed step. Your heart swells with pride, with unparalleled accomplishment.

You’re finally presented with the Airman’s Coin and your dog tags. You’ve completed Basic Training. You are no longer a cadet, a trainee, but an oath-sworn member of the Air Force. Next weekend, you’ll be moved into dorms and officially begin your pilot training.

And then you’re free. For the first time in seven weeks, you are dismissed after the ceremony and to spend the rest of the weekend however you please.

Free time. Privacy. Privileges you took for granted as a civilian. You feel giddy, excited.

“We did it, birdie.” Carol’s voice sounds from behind you. You turn, her smile radiant as ever and mirroring yours.

She looks like she was born to wear the uniform, her shirt crisp and cap perfectly straightened atop her pinned back hair. Your pulse stutters, you find it difficult to swallow.

“We did it.” You laugh, a little too breathless with the way she’s looking down at you with that mischievous glint in her eyes. Her gaze catches your lips, a smirk tugging at the corner of her mouth.

God, so self-assured. So confident.

Honestly, you could use a little of that confidence.

“What do you say we get out of here? Go see what this city has to offer aside from base?” She says.

Your knees nearly buckle. You have a feeling that you know what will happen off base, at least, what you hope will happen.

Technically, you wouldn’t be breaking protocol.

And with the two of you buzzing with adrenaline and boosted egos, how can you even think of saying no? You deserve to celebrate.

You leave Lackland Base and head to downtown San Antonio for the rest of the weekend, for two whole days all to yourselves.

You visit the River Walk and explore as much of the fifteen-mile long city park as you can, strolling along the banks and gorging yourselves on street food and local cuisine. No curfew, no officers screaming orders, just the two of you leisurely enjoying a Friday night beneath a soft sunset and twinkling fairy lights.

You have dinner and drinks at a quaint little steakhouse with a live band and music, the musicians donning cowboy hats, boots, chaps and all. It’s corny. It’s absolutely perfect.

The lime juice is sharp and bitter on your tongue as you throw back your third shot of tequila, lap up the salt you’ve sprinkled over your knuckles. Carol isn’t far behind you. Pretty soon, the tavern lanterns swim pleasantly before you and you sway gently to the music in your seat, blissed out, flushed, content.

Carol’s fingers fondly brush your cheek and she laughs, her eyes crinkling and you think it’s the most beautiful sound you’ve ever heard. You grin back, a bit too eager and lopsided, lean across the wooden table to grasp her hand.

You drag her to the attached karaoke bar next door and slide a few quarters into the jukebox before she can stop you. The two of you belt out your renditions of Nirvana, Heart, Elastica. Your blood is warm and Carol dances beside you with wired microphone in hand, laughing so hard you’re both crying, pulse pounding behind your temples until finally the jukebox clicks with the last of your change and the next requested song is queued up.

The hotel you check into is just down the street and you practically fall through the doorway trying to get each other out of your uniforms. It’s jumbled and chaotic as you slip out of your combat gear, tripping over boots and pants as you finally touch overheated skin, giggling like children.

Disorderly when your lips meet, her hands coming to cradle your face, holding you still with a low groan, a grip that surprises you. It heightens the flush of alcohol sitting in the pool of your lower belly as you kiss her back, wind your arms around her.

You gasp when she tightens a hand in your hair and pulls, mouth ravaging the skin of your neck with tongue and teeth. She walks you blindly until you’re flush against the wall, turns you around with her frame pressing hard against your back.

Her fingers are sure and true when they cup, caress your heated flesh, not an ounce of hesitation in her. You keen, circle your hips hard into her as she works at unraveling you, forearm circling your neck, leaning to put her lips at your ear, breath hot.

“So pretty. My birdie is so pretty.”

It’s been so long since you’ve last been intimate. The military discipline over your physique has made you forget what it’s like to treat your body with love, to feel pleasure, to be touched by a young woman you’d do anything for.

“Let’s see you fly high, hmm?” She breathes. “You want it faster? I wanna see my little birdie soar. Can you do that for me?”

It’s so easy to let go.

Your flesh clenches around her and you sigh, your entire being quivering. Carol braces you, holds you close as you tremble with aftershocks, burning and burning.

Your world is hazy, melting when Carol leads you to the bed and hoists you on top of her, thighs straddling her lap. The liquid courage returns, coy when you grasp the cool metal of the dogtags between her breasts and yank her forward for another breathless kiss.

Her arms are strong, hard with muscle and hands splayed against the naked skin of your back as she coaxes you to earth shattering heights again and again. Until the grey light of day.

Sunday morning, you sleep in until ten o’clock, roused by streaming sunlight and birdsong. Peaceful quiet, a treat in itself with Carol’s arms lazily draped around you.

Your stomach drops when the sergeant cracks open the C-17 door and the atmosphere shrieks into the aircraft. Your gear is heavy, you’re sweating hard, and your Airborne Division is about to jump. You find it hard to breathe and try not to lock your knees, try not to faint. Gut wrenching, everything inside you screaming that this is suicide. Leaping from a roaring aircraft with nothing but a kevlar sac to break your fall.

You see the Airman in front of you subtly cross himself, pretending to scratch his chin.

You feel like you’re going to be sick.

Fingers grip your waist. Carol stands beside you.

It’s too loud for conversation, the air and engine pressing down on your eardrums with tight pressure, but she gives you a nod, another squeeze of your hip. Her lips mouth a single word.

Fly.

Then, the men in front of you are rushing towards the yawning mouth of the plane and you and Carol are running together, side by side, fearless. And then you jump, spreading your arms, dive like hawks.

The sky is a dome of robin’s egg blue, sun shining and tipping the edge of your gloved fingers with liquid gold. You fall fast, hard. Wind rips through and around you, weightless as gravity pulls you to earth.

Pulse ramming, pure adrenaline, ten agonizing seconds of freefall. You pull the pin and your parachute deploys, rocking you backwards as the fabric unfurls and catches the air. You grip your harness tight, float through the heavens and watch as dozens of parachutes dot the horizon around you.

You whoop, shoot Carol a “hang loose”, smiling wide, goofy and vibrating with excitement.

Her laughter carries across the sky.

You’re there beside her when the two of you are promoted to officer rank. First in your class, looking out over a sea of grim, bored looking faces that stare back at you with quiet hostility.

Your officer uniforms are sharp, handsome. Crisp navy suits decorated with shining medals and visible proof that you have fought tooth and nail to be on the stage where you stand now. You wouldn’t want anyone else here with you but Carol. Your wingman. Your everything.

Your names are called and you rise together in unison as Senior Airman Dalquist pins your new patches to your uniforms.

Weeks later, you learn that Dr. Lawson’s plane has gone down. It punches a hole straight through your chest, wrenches up your insides when the news is broken to you.

After BMT, you’d lost contact with her. You wish you could have told Lawson that you’ve done it, that you and Carol are dominating the skies.

And now she’s missing.

You’re in the hangar and up in the air before anyone can stop you.

The crash site is still smoldering when you touch down at a hidden lake surrounded by a halo of pine and sand. You and Carol rip off your helmets, jump out of the cockpit as soon as your wheels are on solid ground, racing towards the wreckage of an eerily familiar F-16 Fighting Falcon.

Lawson lies slumped forward, still strapped into her seat. The glass of the cockpit has exploded all around her, leaving her open and exposed. It looks grim.

“Doc?” You say. Your voice shakes a bit, but you quickly will all fear out of your mind, take a deep breath and allow your body, your muscle memory to take over. Let your training come back to you.

You push back at her helmet visor, sit her upright. Press three fingers against the artery of her neck.

Cold. No pulse.

Then, you see the smoking hole in her chest, where plasma energy has burned through her jacket and blood drips bold and blue onto her lap.

You exhale hard, ignore the strangeness of the latter to check Lawson’s dashboard for any working electrical machinery. No luck. All fried, all scrambled from the crash.

“Carol, we need pararescue stat. Get them here.” You order.

Carol nods wordlessly, composed, turns on her heel to radio them from your own plane.

You brace yourself against the frame of the cockpit, hang your head in shock. You can’t bear to look at Lawson like this. You don’t want to remember her like this.

In those tense moments of silence, a soft, strange humming reaches your ears, seeming to emulate from the F-16 itself. You take a step back to fully survey the wreckage.

The crash has exposed most of the plane’s wiring and paneling, including the engine. Though, this is no engine like you’ve ever seen.

Monstrous, pulsing with blue light and an aura that draws you closer, pulling at your curiosity. It distracts you long enough for you to almost miss the approaching silhouette of a man from behind the suffocating smoke.

He’s dressed in a bizarre emerald jumpsuit with a blazing yellow star in the center of his chest. His step is charismatic, unfaltering.

And what scares you most is the unholstered gun in his hand.

Carol calls your name in a frantic shout.

You put two and two together. Lawson’s killer.

“We have no interest in hurting you.” He tells you, finally pausing at the crest of the crash site. His voice is surprisingly charming and it sends a chill straight down your spine.

We?

You’re afraid. Your old commanding officer, one of the strongest women you’ve ever known, lies shot and killed with blood the color of toxic waste. Her engine looks foreign, otherworldly. Your mind begins to race.

“The energy core. Where is it?” The man asks and brandishes his gun. You force your breathing to steady, to find a sense of calm. You have to focus. Questioning will make him irritable, panicking will get you killed.

Intuition is enough to tell you that the core is not to leave in this man’s hands by any means.

You catch sight of the glinting handle of a pistol resting between Lawson’s knees. You flicker your gaze away and to the proximity of the engine. Then, you look to Carol.

Her eyes shine with tears in the shimmering heat. Her body is tense, drawn tight like a bow, fight-or-flight. You fear she’ll run to you, that she’ll get herself killed trying to protect you. If the roles were switched, you know you would do just that.

So you act before she has the chance to. In one fluid motion, you draw Lawson’s gun and fire a single shot at the exposed engine.

It explodes like heat and magma. Azure energy engulfs you in a millisecond. Like lightning striking your bones, fire that scorches through your entire being and condemning a blazing death of unbearable, burning power, collapsing like a supernova reborn.

Your nerve-endings detonate, a fusion of flesh and skin and pyro that incinerates you to your very core, destroys you from the inside.

You scream, high and horrible. You’ve never felt such pain.

Your eyes ignite in crimson, red hot, flaring with light. Everything inside you rushing upwards and expanding until your mortal frame can no longer contain this threshold and you burst, combust with starfire.

The blast hits Carol next, lifting her up and dissipating, coiling like mist through her skin in synergy. She glows like an iridescent comet, blue light rolling off of her like water and waves, her own eyes flaring turquoise, then white.

When the two of you hit the ground, trees and sand bend and blow around you, knocking the man unconscious as the inertia from your combined energy throws him backwards.

You cry out as you try and hold yourself, crumpled. You are charred, your body humming with poison, radiation and flame, eager to crackle out of you at your slightest impulse, eyes still flaring powerfully.

“I-It hurts..” you gasp weakly.

A true phoenix. Broken and born from ashes.

Carol is there cradling you as tears leak down your face. Wisps of magenta and teal ripple around her with every movement, glittering with cosmic potential, like she contains her very own galaxy. Achingly beautiful.

“I know, birdie.” Carol murmurs as you choke, sputter from the pain. “Fight it. Give it to me.” She says and reaches for your hands.

Carol yelps softly when you push a bit of your glowing gold into her, as she trades starpower for fire and you watch the cage of her chest bloom like a lantern, veins and eyes rimming with ember. She does the same, giving you the moon and stars and the gleaming, lavender milky way.

You let go and Carol gasps as she absorbs a new piece of you. Your mind clears, the pain nothing more than a dull ache.

Exhaustion and shot nerves finally set in as the two of you lie there, quiet enough to hear the wind whistling through pine. You throw your arms around her, your kiss tasting like tears and sand and flushed sunlight.

Carol braces you against her, hoists your arm around her shoulders and lifts you upright. Side by side until the very end.

Then, you take to the skies, blazing like comet streaks and crimson hawks.

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kotoriqueen · 7 years

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Keith’s Birthday Week Welcome to Keith’s Birthday Week, where I write the prompts the day they come out and angst is everywhere! (Disclaimer: bring tissues because I wish I had them when I was writing these prompts out.)

Day 1 | Day 2 | Day 3 | Also on AO3!!

For once it’s spoiler free.

“I see a pilot before me with a promising future.”

“How can you be so sure?”

A shrug. “A gut feeling.”

---

He enrolled into the Garrison. Got in with no trouble. Apparently Officer Shirogane saw something in him he didn’t see himself, and put in a good word with the higher ups. Keith barely remembers how they met now, he just knows he has a lot to thank Shiro for.

Young Keith would have never thought there was a future for him. His life was filled with disappointments, so he never saw the point in getting excited for the future and daydreaming of future occupations he could have like the other kids. Some kids wanted to be teachers, or doctors, or chefs. Mechanics, astronauts, or firemen. Keith? He just wanted to mean something to someone. To have a family to go home to at the end of the day and unleash all the stress he has from school or work and have them comfort him.

All he had was Shiro. And if it wasn’t for Shiro, he wouldn’t be where he is now.

---

“Shirogane isn’t here to save your rear this time – there’s no future for you if you don’t learn some discipline!”

“Then I quit! I’m leaving!”

“Suit yourself! Whatever it was Shirogane saw in you, sure as hell isn’t there now!”

---

When he leaves the Garrison, he has little no belongings. Shiro doesn’t have any family close by, so with Keith being the closest person to Shiro, he was given the responsibility to take Shiro’s things; clothes, knick-knacks, books – several things that reminded him of Shiro and only made him regret leaving the Garrison. Whatever Shiro saw in him, Iverson was right: It’s not there now.

Keith knew he shouldn’t have kept his hopes up for the future. And yet, he did, and where did that get him? The only person who believed in him going missing. The only place where he believed he could have a future turned around and bad mouthed Shiro as if he was nothing. Shiro was their star pilot! It made no sense why the Kerberos mission failed because of a pilot error.

Whatever. If the Garrison was trying to sweep their own fuck up under the rug, Keith didn’t need to get his future from them. (If there was still a future out there waiting for him, anyway. Which he doubts.)

---

“Keith.. if I don’t make it out of here.. I want you to lead Voltron.”

---

“You have to learn some discipline if you want to lead the group someday.”

---

After all this time – after all his screw ups.. Shiro still had that same faith in him as he did when they first met. And yet, Keith can’t see himself being the leader of Voltron. He can’t see Shiro disappearing from his life again. Nothing was going to happen Shiro – not if Keith could help it anyway.

Leadership isn’t a quality Keith thinks he has. He knows the Black lion needs a pilot who is a strong leader, and she let him in when Shiro was in trouble, but it was only because Shiro was in trouble. After all, the lions look out for their paladins in their own ways. Like how Red always came to his rescue if something was wrong. If he so much got a paper cut on the damn castle, Red would roar as if someone harmed her cub before Keith had to calm her down and tell her he was fine.

He doesn’t see himself as Voltron’s future leader. And if he can help it, that day will never come.

---

“I’m being completely serious when I say, I do NOT want you to lead me anywhere!”

“I don’t want to be the leader! That’s just what Shiro wanted!”

---

“Shiro wanted you to be his successor, didn’t he?”

---

If he didn’t open his mouth, maybe they’d still be looking for Shiro. Maybe they could have found him, brought him back, and put him back in charge. The future came by fast, and as much as Keith tried to change the fate of the universe, to where Shiro was still there, it came back to bite him in the ass because now he has to lead Voltron.

He knows nothing about being a leader. And when Black ignores everybody but him when they are trying to reawaken here, he begs and pleads her not to do this and to choose someone else.

The future just knows how to make him miserable.

---

“The war is over, thanks to all the paladins efforts, and the help of everyone in the universe.

We couldn’t have done it without you.”

---

Shiro’s back. Pidge got her family back. The Galra are conquered, and the planets are Galra free. They need to rebuild, but with the help of Voltron, it shouldn’t be a problem. After that, everyone would be going back home to their families. They talk of they can’t wait to see them again, how they can spend holidays with them, and wonder how much of the past they missed. Wonder what the future holds for them now that Voltron won’t be needed anymore. Will they all stay friends? Will they keep in touch? Only time could tell.

But knowing how much the future has disappointed him so far, Keith doesn’t see him being able to keep in touch with anybody. He sees himself staying in his shack, keeping out of touch with everyone as they go back to their families. Without a doubt the government would find out he’s part alien and would want to run tests on him. Purple splotches had formed on his skin over the years, which Coran and Allura assume it’s from stress and multiple injuries. The healing pod couldn’t make those marks go away, but thankfully enough, he’s able to hide them under his clothes, with only some peeking out from underneath his collar or from under his sleeves if his jacket isn’t present.

“So,” Shiro suddenly says, a hand landing on Keith’s shoulder making him jump. “I guess we’ll be staying with the Holt’s.”

Wait. What?

“Sam says Iverson’s going to have a heart attack for saying we’re dead,” Shiro continues. “I’d love to see the look on his face when he realizes a dead person and four cadets saved millions of lives including the ones on Earth.”

“We’d probably end up becoming instructors,” Pidge chimes in. “Now that will be interesting.”

Instructors? Seriously? No way in hell the Garrison was going to allow a drop out like Keith become an instructor.

---

“The Garrison is now under new management – please welcome Princess Allura of planet Altea,

and her royal adviser, Coran.”

---

“And say hello to your new instructors -

Takashi Shirogane, Hunk Garrett, Pidge Gunderson, Lance McClain,

and Keith Kogane.”

---

“You look like a child playing dress-up in those instructor clothes, Pidge,” Lance teases as the paladins get together for a group photo.

Allura and Coran are present, as well as Pidge’s family, ready to take a group picture with the paladins as well. After the Garrison swept the Kerberos mission under the rug, and ended up declaring deaths of instructors and cadets when they had no solid proof, those higher up were terminated. And with the paladins having had saved Earth from the Galra, they had became new instructors, regardless of their knowledge they gained in the Garrison. Each one of them would teach their own subject, but they would also teach students piloting and hand to hand combat, if by chance they’d ever have to fight aliens themselves.

“Be quiet. You don’t look good with hats,” Pidge remarks, making Lance gasp in mock hurt. “Couldn’t we come up with our own uniforms? These look so boring.”

“Yeah, our paladin armor was a lot better,” Hunk agrees. “Can we like.. bedazzle it somehow? Maybe put our names on the back.”

“Now there’s an idea!”

Shiro chuckles as he watches the three of them talk about how they could make their uniforms look cooler. The Garrison trio was still a trio, whether as cadets or instructors. He takes a quick look around and realizes someone is missing: Keith.

“Uh.. has anyone seen Keith?”

---

Dear Past Keith,

The future has been good.. and bad for you. But mostly bad.

There’s been more disappointments than surprises,

but you shouldn’t give up on thinking of the future.

You lost people, but you gained several more.

You’ve been stressed, depressed..

You’ve felt like there’s no future for you..

---

“Hey, Mullet!”

Keith jumps from where he sat on top of Red; lions perched and surrounding the castle, where it’s parked behind the Garrison. He looks down, seeing everyone down below staring up at him.

“You’re not allowed to brood anymore!” Pidge shouts up at him. “Get your ass down here!”

“Katie--” “Pidge--”

“I’m not brooding!” Keith shouts back, interrupting the Holt’s and Shiro from scolding Pidge for her language. (It was just ass anyway. She’s said far worse in space.) “Be down in a minute!”

---

The future is terrifying to think of.

You might think it’s not worth thinking about.

But it’s worth thinking about.

Because you’ve gained amazing qualities thinking of what you could do in the future.

(Not to mention amazing friends, who stay by your side,

no matter what type of future lies for you.)

---

“Keith’s going to be co-instructing my leadership course,” Shiro says as Keith joins the group.

“What? I never agreed to that.”

“You’re telling me, that with the past you have experienced,” Shiro raises his eyebrow at Keith, arms folded over his chest. “you still don’t see that leadership quality in you?”

“I never said I didn’t see it,” Keith responds with a shrug. “Past Keith would have told you that you were crazy for thinking I had any leadership in me at all. I see it in me, and past Keith has learned a thing or two thanks to you. In fact, if it wasn’t for you, I doubt I’d be here where I am now. I have a lot to thank you for, Shiro, and I still don’t think I can thank you enough for all you’ve done for me.”

“Keith..”

“But, I still think you’re crazy, especially when you think I’m going to be a co-instructor for a course that’s ran by a six year old.”

The group goes quiet. Shiro groans and then they start laughing a little.

“Can we drop that!”

“At least future Keith learned how to joke,” Lance teases, a wide grin plastered on his face as he slings an arm over Keith’s shoulders. “Let’s see if he learned anything else--”

“What are you--”

“I say ‘Vol’, you say ‘Tron’! Vol-”

Keith goes quiet, wide eyes blinking at Lance, seeing the hope twinkle in his eyes. “Vol.. tron..?”

And then that hope dies, and Lance sighs loudly.

“Okay, can my course be teaching people chants? Because I feel as if that is really important.”

“No, Lance.”

---

Yeah.

The future is definitely something I’ll be thinking more hard about from now on.

#Voltron #keith birthday week #Keith (Voltron)

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