Quill – 4 things the team never talked about, post abduction, in Imagine Knowing 'verse, and one thing they did.
Somehow, after… everything, someone had recovered his vid-corder. Lance replayed it endlessly. Allura and Romelle giggled like the girls they never got to be. Hunk and Pidge debated the merits of strength versus agility. Keith and Sven were twin dark-haired attendants, each with his own princess. Then came the distinctive noise of laser fire, the shock on Allura’s face, the vid-corder tumbling to the grass…
He’d called to Sven they’d rescue him; now he drowned in guilt, because Sven wasn’t coming home, ever. He knew it was Keith when someone settled next to him, but neither of them spoke.
For weeks after their release from Doom, Hunk was jumpy. He kept reliving the attack, their time in the cells – oh, so very different than that time under Zarkon, because they were separated, unable to work together to escape – and asking himself what they could have done differently.
The Lions were no longer needed, since the Alliance had traded Sven’s life for peace, but he worked on them all the time, trying to find some way to improve them enough to get Sven back. Keith knew what he was doing and why, but he didn’t tell him to stop.
He wondered if maybe sometimes the others felt like he did, that maybe they ought to show up at one of these meetings and take Sven back. Lotor wanted to keep him, Pidge told himself every time those thoughts came up, said there’d be all-out war if he couldn’t. And he looks okay… He wondered, but he never asked.
After they were married, Keith traveled with Allura to some of the conferences she attended. Most of the time he stayed on Arus; he was happier there than trying to remember long-ago lessons in diplomacy and knowing that he was as much a showpiece as a Prince Consort.
The only time he ever asked to go was when Lotor (never King Lotor, always just Lotor, because someone who’d done what Lotor had didn’t have or deserve any honor) would be there to represent Doom. Allura always agreed, knowing what his reasons were without his having to say a word.
Allura knew Romelle loved Sven; it was so obvious every time they looked at each other that only a blind person could have missed it. When she first heard that Romelle was going to marry D’neal, after having been back from Doom for only weeks, she was stunned speechless. Moments later, she called Romelle in a rage, demanding to know why. Romelle just stared at her, eyes wide and very blue, tears trickling down her cheeks. “I have to, Allura,” was all she said.
It was only months later, when she first held Alvian, that she understood, and grieved.