Chapter Text
Keith
I never asked for this kind of power. You can ask anyone who knows me well (so, essentially, my brother. And maybe Pidge) – if I had had a choice, I would have told them where they could shove their Chosen One crap.
Don't get me wrong, it's not that I don't like magic. I love it, in fact. But I would probably love it a lot more if I could cast anything without feeling like I'm burning alive from the inside out, like there's a nuclear power plant exploding through my veins, a Michael Bay film in my lungs. If I could just cast a simple spell, a nice Warm kitty, sleepy kitty, purr purr purr to make my bed warm and cosy on a chilly autumn night without, you know, setting the whole thing on fire. And possibly the entire building along with it. Never mind that the building is made of ancient, solid stone.
You might have guessed it by now, but big surprise, my magic is fire. Explosive fire. My teachers keep telling me that if I just got a grip on my temper, I might be able to control all this undeserved power. Well, fuck you, Iverson. You might as well go tell a riled-up bull that he would make a nice docile pony-replacement if he just took a deep breath.
I will hand it to the staff that I might have... a bit of a temper, that's true. I've been working on that. As Shiro likes to remind me Patience yields focus. Which, at this point he's all but chanted that turn of phrase at me so often it should be a spell in its own right. It certainly does wonders to focus me when little else will. BUT I wouldn't fly off the handle half as much as I do if there weren't certain certain constantly aggravating factors around all the time.
Prime example: My roommate. Lance bloody Espinosa. His full name is some meters-long bullshit that probably sounds just as pretentious as all the other names of the pompous magic aristocracy around here. Which is basically everyone except for me, Shiro and Pidge. Even Hunk, nice guy as he is, stems from some centuries-old Samoan High Family or something that has been The Magic Shit in their region for as long as they have accounts to go back through. Point is, I wouldn't know because Lance guards his full name like a watchdog guards his favourite stick. Even in a world where words have as much power as they do in the magic community that is a whole unprecedented amount of paranoia. But for some reason that is the one thing he doesn't flaunt around to impress the nearest girl with, unlike literally everybody else.
But I digress. What I meant to complain ab- I mean, say, is that no sane person on Earth could be expected to be forced to be around Lance near-constantly and not lose their temper. I don't know how Hunk does it, I think he might be an actual saint. Lance is infuriating. For all that his spell-work is actually surprisingly elegant when he actually pays attention – unlike mine. Elegant magic requires a way with words which... well, I don't have, let's leave it at that – for all that, he's actually pretty low on power. I've heard Prima Hearthwood say that in the old days, before Allura's dad, Alfor, brought on the changes that made Altea the modern place it is today, they wouldn't have allowed people like Lance in. That it's a miracle the gates even recognise someone so weak as a magical being and allow him entrance.
Needless to say, Prima Hearthwood is an elitist prick. I might have singed off her eyebrows a little bit on purpose in fifth grade. Whatever, no one had proof. Not even Shiro. Despite the fact that his disapproving looks following me around everywhere for a week were enough punishment in itself.
The point is, Lance won't stop talking. Ever. He's boasting about like he's the hottest shit that has ever graced the halls of Altea. He's flaunting himself around like a social butterfly and has everyone under his thumb when really he is just a vain prick who will flirt with everything that moves. He couldn't heat up cold toast if he tried most times and blocks our shared bathroom for hours every morning instead of learning for the lessons. He barely has any magic to speak of and yet he always has a small following, like he is some kind of low-key rock star.
And no matter what Pidge says, I'm not upset because I'm obsessed with Lance and want to know everything about him and don't like to share his attention. I have too much of his attention most days. I'd be perfectly happy if he were gone from our room even more often than he is. Shut up, Shiro, it's not a crush, nor is it actually adorable, really.
Let me tell you about the stupid imaginary rivalry he made up in our first year that has defined our entire relationship to this day, almost eight years later. Then you'll see how annoying he is, what I actually have to deal with day-in, day-out.
Imagine this: It's the first day of the new school year. All the young kids are excited and waiting for the Crucible to pick the person they'd be living together with for the next seven to eight years for them. It's an actual Crucible, some age-old traditions, and the head of school lights a ritual fire and chants some ancient spell. The older kids are bored out of their mind and just watch in hopes that they'll get a scandalous pair that'll tear each other apart on the first evening. It happens occasionally, no one could explain to me to this day how the fuck the Crucible actually chooses. Some days it seems to be out to match a pair that spells chaos from the get-go.
The day it matched Lance and me was one of those, the gawpers got lucky that evening.
I still don't know what exactly happened to make it all go wrong so immediately. One moment I'm feeling the pull my brother has told me about. He never mentioned that it feels like I'm made of iron and there's a giant magnet right next to me. And then I look up and all I see is wide, deep blue and a face with skin so well-kept and clean it even shows on an eleven-year-old (and which eleven-year-old has a bloody skin care routine?) and equally cared-for hair that falls into his face a little in silky-soft looking strands. I feel my whole world shift and my heart is beating hard and then-
And then Lance (I didn't even know his name back then) pulls a face as if he's just bitten into a mouldy lemon (don't ask how I know that taste. It was a dare, okay. I'm not good with impulse control. As you'll see). The first thing he ever said to me was "why did it have to be you?” With such despair in his voice that for the briefest second, I actually felt bad for forcing him to live with me. Even though it was not my fault at all and I didn't even know him, so what could I possibly have done to make him hate me already?
Remember that part about me having no impulse control and maybe a bit of a temper? Yeah...
I tried to swing a punch at him.
We were separated really quickly and didn't really get in more than a little squabbling and yelling and thankfully I left my knife where it was but that was the terrible start to the next seven years of my life.
Because guess what? You can't really change roommates in Altea. Allura rattled down something about learning to create and maintain a lasting bond of comradeship or something like that. I tuned most of it out, to be honest, too busy pouting over the fact that I wouldn't get rid of Lance that easily.
You might ask yourself, isn't that dangerous? As someone who is potentially part of the normal, sane world outside of the weirdness that is Altea. If people hate each other from the start, isn't there potential for violence and actual harm being done at some point? Won't the fact that you can't escape make you resent each other even more?
I'm with you on the second one, Lance seems to hate me more every day. But the other one Altea took precautions for, which is the reason why throwing a punch at Lance was A Really Big Deal and got me suspended for my first week at school, to Shiro's eternal disappointment.
To avoid antagonistic roommates just offing each other in their sleep on school grounds, the rooms are enchanted with something called the Roommate's Anathema. The Roommate's Anathema teleports you away from school grounds the moment you make a move to hurt your roommate while in your room. It's a little more lenient when you are younger but after the first two to three years you get kicked out straight away for good if you so much as slap them in the face.
To be honest, I'm kind of impressed that neither Lance nor I have been expelled yet.
Maybe it's because much as we're both challenged when it comes to magic, albeit in very different ways, there's one thing we seem to have in common: We're really passionate about it. Lance always pushes and pushes to get better, to make the maximum out of what little he has been given naturally. I can see the sweat on his forehead during more challenging lessons. He always pulls them off feebly, but flawlessly, but I can see how much effort it takes, right through his usual boasting. The very obvious worried looks he gets from Hunk sometimes during those lessons, when he thinks no one is looking (they're both really bad at subtlety), are telling enough. So yeah, while he might be a vain prick, he actually puts a lot more into his magic than most of the others. He kind of has to, to keep up.
As for me... Much as magic doesn't seem to love me (or maybe it's loving me too much?), I'm still fascinated by it. I grew up in the normal world with just my Dad and Shiro, never met my Mum. Dad didn't really talk about her much, either, but I'm assuming that maybe she was the one with magic blood. I've been told that it's near impossible for a magic user to be born to normal parents, and definitely not one as powerful as me. The most powerful magician in the known world, born to normals? Even in the nowadays way more progressive halls of Altea, unheard of.
So imagine being that kid that never knew there was such a thing as magic, no Mum, Dad increasingly too busy to actually take care of the kids. First I resented Altea and magic – they took Shiro from me for most of the year, and I was left basically to my own devices. But when I was finally allowed to attend myself? My powers weren't the only thing that lit up like a sea of Christmas trees.
One day, I was just a basically orphaned kid with anger management issues looking for a fight, caught in the drag of the normal world. And then I come here, and not only am I something special for something other than my attitude? But I also can do magic. I know it's not impressive to all the pompous asshats here who were raised on it like it's breast milk. But... magic. I can make myself impervious to rain, I can make teacups float when I accidentally knock over a table (if I'm very careful and don't catapult them into the ceiling instead), I can repair that collapsed bookshelf. Magic. What's there not to love?
The only times I've ever seen anyone's eyes light up while doing magic around here were the first times the few who've grown up in the normal world used it – and Lance. He's the only one who grew up with magic who shows any true amazement at it still. Every time he manages something, no matter how feebly, that no one expected him to be able to pull off his eyes go wide and blue like the ocean on a summer day and they sparkle with excitement and pride. There's an honest smile on his face that pulls up the corner of his eyes just a little bit and makes them seem even warmer.
As you can see, living with Lance is obviously distracting because he's awful. He's so focused on this weird rivalry between us that he instigated, he won't let it rest for a minute. Every time I do anything at all where he can see me he's on me and bothering me about whether I'm planning to gain an “even more unfair advantage, you gotta let a guy catch up with you, Keith”. How am I supposed to work on my temper if I can't even sit down on the couch with a book for five minutes without Lance dangling over the backrest and getting in my face about what I'm reading?
I can't even escape it by avoiding our room. Lance is so fixated on the idea that I'm planning something nefarious to one-up him even further that he literally tracks me down everywhere. I once tried hiding down in the catacombs for a few weeks in our fourth year and he wouldn't rest until he found me. Shiro won't shut up about the 'prime of my emo phase', he's still quoting the dark days of my youth at every occasion. Pidge says she has reliable eye-witnesses that can confirm that Lance actually scoured the whole school grounds that year until he found me.
There is no peace and quiet around here. Sometimes I can't even hear what exactly Lance is nagging at me about. My heart is racing too loudly in my ears when he gets in my face like that. I just blurt out the first thing that comes to mind that is unrelated to what I really want to do – and that always without fail seems to be the worst possible thing to say in any given situation.
And this year it's going to be even worse because I don't even have Shiro to relentlessly tease me and disapprove of my life choices. He's finished his last year at Altea last year and won't be coming back. I know Allura all but begged him to stay as a teacher, but Shiro insisted that he wants to experience more of the 'real world out there' to broaden his horizons before he will consider coming back and working with 'impressionable young minds'.
Pidge has solemnly sworn to take up his slack, but it just won't be the same. Maybe I should have listened to Shiro after all and invested a little more time in acquiring more than one friend.
The door slams open before I have time to explore that thought further – and thanks for that, I'm an action person, introspection rarely does me any good. Shut up Shiro, you're not actually a therapist. It's Hunk, wide-eyed and panting, hair sticking up everywhere, sweat collecting on his brow. His eyes dart over me and to the other bed in the room, still completely bereft of its owners usual knick-knack, then back to me.
“Have you seen Lance?”
The room seems to be several degrees colder all of a sudden. Lance is always in early for every new school year. Lance never goes anywhere in the Castle of Lions without greeting Hunk first, my brain helpfully provides. My eyes dart to the empty, untouched bed.
I can't bring myself to say anything or even shake my head, but whatever my expression is doing seems to be enough to alert Hunk even further.
“I'm getting Allura.” There is a resolve on his face I wish I could feel and then he's turned on his heel and vanishing down the hall. I wish I could follow. But what would I even say? Hunk doesn't take Lance's weird rivalry thing too seriously and is always really nice to me. But I wouldn't call us friends at any rate and it would be really weird to come along to see the headmistress about my roommate who hates my guts being potentially missing.
I sink down on the bed and finally notice Lance's bedside table starting to smoulder when the first wisps of smoke curl up to the ceiling.
I wish Lance would burst into the room and get in my face about me ruining his things and how I should finally learn how to control my magic, since I've been unfairly gifted with so much of it. How I'm an embarrassment to the magic society.
I wish he'd clutter up the room with his odds and ends and block the bathroom for hours and never stop pestering me relentlessly unless he is out doing who-knows-what with his friends. (Stupid little Sherlock Holmes missions. He and Hunk once sneaked into the kitchen storage after midnight to investigate the case of the 'suddenly inferior meatballs'. Iverson caught them and they got suspended for two days.)
I curl up on my bed trying to breathe deeply like Shiro taught me and not set anything on fire. It doesn't help that I keep thinking that maybe a little bonfire would help with the sudden chill that settled over the room the moment Hunk asked his question.
It seems to get colder every time the one thing stuck in my mind like a mantra comes back on repeat. I bury myself in my warmest blanket but it doesn't really do much, the cold seems to be settling into my bones.
Where is Lance?