Shiro open post

[blacklions]

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Centaur!Shiro

[blacklions]

[ the worst thing about going from two legs to four was the altered balance, and also the constant stress of forgetting that he was so much taller now. taller, stronger, faster, bulkier; it had taken the better part of a year to get back to fighting trim and another to start winning in the arena. for all that he was a favorite of the druids, the prototype they had used when they began their mass alterations on the enslaved human populations, he was only one of many gladiators fighting in the emperor's arenas.

in his stall between fights he was kept harnessed and chained, a constant stream of stable slaves attending him for every need. they trimmed his hooves, brushed his coat and hair, fed him, watered him, washed him, massaged him, even pleasured him while he remained under bit and bridle, champing restlessly at the flexible roll of leather between his teeth and stamping his hooves. there were so many places on his body he could no longer reach himself, even if he weren't harnessed. the straps itch and chafe and all he can do is rub against the stall walls, trying to shift them, while the stable attendants are alternately frightened of his rumored ferocity or too bold with their touches, fascinated by the sight of his penis sliding free from its black sheath. most of the other earth slaves had been changed into more submissive forms, half-cats and dogs and fauns, some only with the additions of fluffy ears and tails. nothing as large and potentially dangerous as a half-horse like shiro.

of course, something like shiro wouldn't be wasted as a stable attendant. they would be gladiators or soldiers, making their way like shiro, capitalizing on combat ability.

he switches his tail restlessly as another unwanted roil of heat slides through his belly. before the thought of getting sexually aroused after a gladiator match would have been appalling but now it's simply life as usual, lifting and replacing his hobbled hooves in the same locations. he can hardly move for how he's been tied today, can't touch himself or rub on anything, all he can do is flex his muscles and bounce his cock against his belly, grunting behind his bit as he pleasures himself humiliatingly. ]

Galra Keith

[mosthumanblade]

[ Keith isn't surprised that the others have trouble accepting that he's Galra and still himself. After all, he'd had enough trouble coming to terms with the idea himself, unable to speak the awful suspicion dwelling in his thoughts until he was forced to confront it at the Marmora base. He'd been forced to confront a lot of things that day, left shaken and bruised and with more questions left unanswered, but he'd made his choice. He'd chosen Voltron and the fate of the universe over finding out more about himself, his past, his parents, and it seemed like giving up had been the right thing to do, for once, because it meant choosing a different fight.

He'd left the Marmora base with Shiro, and Red, and his awakened blade, and a suit that they said would help him to master awakening the blade and connect with his Galra nature, and eventually unlock the very answers he'd been about to give up on finding. It fit snugly under his Paladin armor, looking a little strange but not interfering with anything.

And then he'd gotten back to the Castle, and seen the looks on all their faces when they heard the truth. Allura was the most obviously affected, and he'd been expecting it - he'd been afraid of it, but there was nothing he could do. She deserved to hate him, after everything the Galra had done to her, taken from her, even if some Galra really weren't like that. It was the way the others reacted to him that really stung, the way Hunk started calling him Galra Keith like he was a different person, the look in their eyes even when they were saying that it didn't matter betraying their uncertainty about him now.

It was how Shiro's gaze faltered when he looked at him that hurt. But the Galra took his arm from him, tortured him, so it wasn't as if Keith deserved more, was it? He could still play his part in the team, prove to them all that he was still the same person, that he was still Keith, that they could trust him.

Then Red growled at him.

He was having trouble syncing up and forming Voltron, and then Red growled at him, and on top of the looks and the whispers and the way he felt frozen out of things, it was too much. He turned to the only people he thought he could - the people he didn't necessarily like or trust, but who might know how he felt in this moment, might have the answers he needed. The Marmora. They'd told him that they didn't know everything about the Lions, but that it was possible that his internal conflict over who he really was could be disrupting the bond, and that he should come back to their base and learn more about Galra culture until he understood himself. He was pretty reluctant, at first, but he needed to do whatever he could to re-establish his bond with Red. The others tried to caution him, but... well, of course they would. They didn't trust the Marmora fully, because they were Galra.

Just like him.

That's how he ended up back with the Marmora, flying there in a pod with supplies this time, determined to learn more about himself and all Galra this time. But it was tough - they were still secretive, even if they welcomed him as one of their own this time, and he had to fight to prove himself even here. Had to spend long hours training and fighting and studying, in his suit. Slowly, he opened up to them about how the rest of his team had lost their trust in him, with self-deprecatingly grumbled comments at first. They'd shared knowing looks and told him that that... probably affected his ability to pilot Red, too. It definitely affected his ability to form Voltron, so there was no point in rushing back until he was sure he'd fixed things, no matter how often they might try to call him back.

It didn't seem like they called that often, though.

One day, Kolivan had come to him, done something with the suit to let him see Shiro - or a projection of him, anyway. He'd talked lowly about how they knew what he wanted, even if he didn't know it himself; how this was the only way he could have that, because he'd seen it himself, how his true nature had driven a wedge between himself and his friends. He hadn't wanted to listen at first, had yelled and pushed Kolivan away.

But the longer he stays here, the more desperate he becomes to see that gentle, trusting look that used to be in Shiro's eyes when he saw him, and the more powerful the illusion the suit creates. Until he finally breaks down in Shiro's - in Kolivan's arms, and he knows it's wrong but it feels right. Maybe this is the only place he belongs, even if he has to wear a mask to hide his freaky face, even if they're hard on him and keep their secrets closely. At least they're giving him a chance to prove himself, while it feels like he's already lost his chance with the Paladins. ]

[blacklions]

[ he remembers falling.

the wound in his side is on fire, and he can feel the shakiness through his connection with black-- he doesn't know how zarkon did what he did, why the lion would let him, but he can feel that things have changed. alarms blare in his ears and the controls are unresponsive in his hands, and he can see the red lion being tossed around like a feather in a hurricane. he wants to get black to grab her, to hold onto her so shiro can hold onto keith, but they're both being pummeled in the maelstrom.

he's yelling keith's name when everything goes black.

re-entry wakes him up. the cockpit is dark, running on emergency power, everything faintly lit by a hellish red glow as they fall through the sky. he gets the impression of clouds, of blue and black sky, and the lights of some kind of civilization below. this time it's not a desert. this time it's an expanse of black water rushing up at him. he tries to fire thrusters, to get black pointed in the right direction to absorb the brunt of the impact, but she's tired and hurt and exhausted and so is he, and the impact shakes him back into the dark. ]

dragon!shiro

[blacklions]

[ the cadets, both human and dragon alike, stare and whisper quietly whenever they think he isn't paying attention, some of them overt enough that they gossip even when he looks directly at them. it would be irritating or even disheartening if he wasn't already used to it; he's been back with the garrison and the corps for over six months now, and has had every opportunity to endure being stared at and poked and prodded and interrogated and tested, until the commanders couldn't think what else to do with him but let him lecture the cadets.

it's a waste, of course. he'd been a combat dragon before the mission to kerberos, under nine tons but a solid middleweight fighter, and now, after the galra experiments, he is impossibly over ten tons, his shoulders broader, his entire conformation subtly altered. adult dragons stop growing like all species and shiro had already reached his full growth long before kerberos, but whatever the druids had done to him had turned him into a heavyweight. they had, horribly, amputated his wings and given him impossible metal ones, white and red, with glowing blue points almost like feathers. They should have been too heavy for him to fly with, and for his shoulders to support, but they were so light he could almost forget they were there, and the metal itself nearly impossible to break. they didn't function like regular dragon wings; shiro had been forced to learn to use them in the galra gladiator arena. there were other changes, too, ones that he'd been too anxious about testing, but he thought he healed faster, needed a little less food, a little less rest than other dragons his size. he felt strange in his own skin, as if it didn't quite belong to him anymore.

but he understands the commanders' caution; he was a pow, when dragons almost never escape galra captivity, and he'd come back without his captain or his crew, which is even more unheard of, and horribly mutilated to boot. dragons that lost their captains sometimes ran wild and got themselves killed in suicide attacks, and were considered unreliable even if they managed to take on a new captain. putting him out on the battlefield with a new crew would be risky at best. shiro hadn't been able to bring himself to consent to a new captain, even though he could certainly carry bombs or a gunnery crew, but garrison didn't like to believe that dragons were intelligent enough to give orders themselves, and preferred to have a human captain aboard. the corps knew a little better, enough to argue that shiro could certainly be useful as a teacher.

so he can't complain, even when he hears the reports coming in of galra attacks on their outposts and the other bases established here on altea. the galra are slavers, and prefer to attack on the ground with infantry and their great war beasts, half animal and half metal, rather than shell planets from orbit with their fleets, which is the only thing that's allowed humanity to defend their scattered colonies. shiro's limited understanding from his captivity is that this was on the very edges of the galra expansion, which was why they weren't being bombarded daily by new cruisers dropping off thousands of troops.

all he can do for now is be obedient, and teach his classes, and hope that there are no disasters until he's cleared for the field again. he's been shunted into what the corps refer to as irregulars, made up of the handful of older dragons that had lost their crews or had never taken captains in the first place, and displaced crewmembers waiting to be assigned to new dragons. the cadets are a little shy of them, knowing that this could be their fate if they didn't bond with a hatchling by the time they graduated. there was nothing wrong with being on a ground or gunnery crew, of course, there were a million other jobs that needed to be done around dragons that weren't being a captain, but cadets usually had inflated ideas of fame and fortune around becoming a dragonrider.

almost worse than the cadets that whisper behind his back are the ones that try to make up to him, seeking him out for extra advice, extra training, usually transparent with their intentions when they ask him tentatively if he'd thought of taking on another captain. they ask if he wants to talk about it, they ask about his wings, and he puts them off with tactful excuses, or finds something else that he needs to do. the hatchlings are more respectful due to his size, for the most part, although there are one or two that don't have anything resembling common sense because shiro refuses to snarl at them like an animal and use his teeth. he knows exactly what garrison command would think about reports that he had "attacked" anyone, even an obnoxious hatchling that was well used to being nipped and chased and playfully clawed by their own yearmates.

keith doesn't ask. keith is the only one that lets him sit in silence, and doesn't try to fix him. he can't say that keith hasn't changed at all, in the year he's been gone, but keith doesn't act like shiro has changed beyond recognition, and it helps to have someone that actually knew matt, and was friends with him. matt hadn't been present at shiro's hatching, and they'd met when shiro was resigning himself to never having a captain at all and living without that special, intimate bond he'd heard about. shiro and matt had been friends, and they worked well together, even if their connection wasn't the deep visceral emotion he'd been led to expect. it still hurt, to think of matt and the rest of his small crew being swarmed by snarling creatures and torn away from him, calling his name in terror like he thought shiro could still rescue him. ]

Uh, professor? [ one of the cadets calls, even though shiro isn't really a professor, and he realizes he'd paused in the middle of his lesson, wings drooping, staring in silence at the wall of the huge bunker he was projecting his visuals on. he shakes himself and meets keith's eyes, dark and concerned, for just a moment before he forces himself to continue. ]