VR/college AU Part 16!

Cute!

((Happy Birthday From Monster Sides To All The Sides of Thomas Sanders!))

KURO WEEK - DAY 3: Mirror / Reflection

He hated his reflection. So much.

For it was the only tangible evidence of his shortcomings.

He would never be the Champion. He would never be Shiro. He would never fight like the gladiator he’d seen on screen so many times. Violent. Vicious. And with cruel precision. No signs of remorse on the hard lines of his face.

There had been times when he’d wished he could be like that, just to make the feeling of dread and terror stop. Some nights he had wished he could be as cold and indifferent as his original. So nothing would get to him. None of the things, they made him endure in the arena, would leave his mind broken in their wake, ever again.

He wanted to be like the Champion.

… wrong…

He wanted to BE the Champion.

So Kuro made sure he’d become the Champion.

Body and soul…

He broke the mirror in his cell.

He took a shard and looked – really looked – at himself, his reflection staring back at him through shattered glass. There was fear in his eyes. He let his gaze linger for a moment, taking in the most prominent indication that he was not the Champion. His eyes and his scars.

His scars…

They’d been there since the day he’d opened his eyes to this world. They weren’t his, though. For all he knew, they were Shiro’s. The fading lines on his own skin were mere echos, fading copies of wounds the Champion had received during his fights. They were signs of victory, signs of survival and power. But they weren’t his. He hadn’t bled for them.

To become the Champion he’d have to endure his own pain, get his own scars.

He’d become the Champion. He had to.

Body and soul…

And he’d start with the body, deepening the almost faded scars littering his pale skin. For now, they were the Champion’s – but he’d make them HIS.

___

Okay, so, uh… I have a feeling, that my entries for the @kuroweek turned out much darker than I expected? o_o But I kinda like it that way? Because it gives me the opportunity to dive into different aspects of my precious bean’s personality and past. He’s more than just the funny, little fool that likes to give Shiro shit. But he has suffered, too. He has struggled to finally come to terms with himself and the circumstances of his existence. And most important: He has learned to recognize himself as an indivual person - and to love himself for the way he differs from Shiro. ♥ …But for now we’ll stick to the angsty stuff. :3

KURO WEEK - DAY 7: Scars

One day, while lounging in one of the observation decks, Lance had asked him about his scars.

Not the “what happened?” kind of question one would expect. No, Lance had known better than to ask this particular question. It was quite obvious what had caused most of Kuro’s scars.

Instead he asked: “Do they still hurt?”

That left Kuro pretty much at a loss of what to answer. Because… what was that supposed to mean? What was the Blue Paladin really aiming at?

It had taken longer than he’d ever admit to understand the true meaning of what Lance wanted to know. And when he did, he was even more confused. Because no one had ever cared about Kuro’s well-being, physically and mentally alike. He’d been put trough fights over and over again. No one had cared for the countless cuts and bruises, the abrasions and bite wounds. He’d been used as a vessel for the Black Lion and the Red Paladin. It helped them to escape in the end… But he’d felt more lost and torn than ever, afterwards. He’d felt raw and so alone. That feeling had only grown worse, when they’d returned to his new home – the Castle of Lions. The Princess, as well as the other Paladins had been wary of him. No one trusted him at first, no one really wanted him to even be on that damned ship. Well, except Shiro of course. And Keith and Lance, who’d found and rescued them.

No one really seemed to care that all this left scars on Kuro, that ran deeper than just skin and muscle. No one seemed to acknowledge, that he was human. That he was a living being that could suffer and hurt in more than one way. Or maybe they were just too busy tending to their own wounds…

Until now.

And here he was, trying to put into words what it really meant, to feel all of this; to laugh and be silly, but at the same time still be aware of the wounds that no scar tissue in the world could fix.

Well, to be honest, Kuro had never been good with words. So he opted for a “Sometimes” and a half-hearted shrug - for good measure. He’d seen Shiro do this and it seemed to work, at least for Keith.

“Mhm”, Lance, on the other hand, didn’t seem all that convinced. “They look different from Shiro’s.”

That was a statement. And one Kuro hadn’t expected. What he hadn’t expected either, was the stinging sensation that came with it. Like ice shards being pushed into his chest, it cut something inside of him open.

“That’s true….”, he agreed. “They do look different.”

“Why?”

It seemed like Lance had picked up on the sudden change of mood. But he asked anyway, because he knew this was something, that had been eating on the Galra-hybrid ever since he had set foot on the Castleship. And if he didn’t talk about it now, it would eat him up one day.

At least it was Lance who asked him. He liked the Blue Paladin. A lot.

“Well”, Kuro heaved a sigh. No turning back now. “You know, I like to believe that scars are like letters on a screen. They can tell stories about us like nothing else can.”

“Stories?”

Lance didn’t take his eyes off the beauty that unfolded right in front of them. Gas clouds and foreign constellations lit up the observation window. A whirlwind of color and light that bloomed like flowers in a sea of darkness and emptiness. But the way the other man leaned closer indicated he was listening intently.

“Yes”, he continued. “Shiro’s scars for example. They tell stories of battles fought well, of victories and courage… The will to live. And above all… They write ‘love’ all over him. In every possible way. Because everything he did, every time he killed, every time he survived… he did it in the name of love. He did it for Keith, for you, for his home planet. He did it for himself as well as for the whole universe.”

A moment of silence followed his little speech.

“And… what about your scars? What kind of story are they telling?”

Kuro thought back to when he’d cut himself with a shard of glass, in order to become more like the Champion. He thought back to every single scar he gained as a trophy, a sign of victory and strength, throughout his time in the arena. And to all the scars he’d gained in the labs… as punishment for simply not being enough.

“… Failure.”

“What?”

“They tell stories of failure. Because all I ever fought for, was an illusion. A lie. I always fought to become something I’m not. Something I’ll never be. And I failed… over and over again.”

__

Okay, okay, okay. I swear, this is the last time my poor bean has a sad. I promise, the last day of @kuroweek will be way happier. :3

Also: tomorrow is kind of a continuation to this one. So prepare for some luro content ♥

Beep boop another fan animatic.

Betrayal

read it on the AO3 at http://ift.tt/2sz4dPa

by rinthegreat

He’d been so gentle – as if he were afraid one wrong move would break Lance. Lance can’t see any of that gentleness now.

——–

Kuro Week 2017 Day 4: Betrayal

Words: 1578, Chapters: 1/1, Language: English

Fandoms: Voltron: Legendary Defender

Rating: Teen And Up Audiences

Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply

Categories: M/M

Characters: Lance (Voltron), Kuro (Voltron), Shiro (Voltron), Keith (Voltron)

Relationships: Kuro/Lance (Voltron), Luro - Relationship, Lance & Shiro (Voltron), Shieth if you squint

Additional Tags: Violence, not graphic imo though, Betrayal, Major Character Injury, Blood, Mild Dissociation

read it on the AO3 at http://ift.tt/2sz4dPa

⌛️ Speed PAINT: Here | More about VLD Fix it AU: Here

Two years after the war, Hunk traveled through the space to expand his culinary skills. At the same time, he worked with Shiro as a diplomatic at the Atlas. Both played a big part to motivated other planets to join the Galactic Coalition.

Years later, he became Earth’s Ambassador.  Elected for his political skills and for his cultural knowledge of various species in the universe.

He didn’t stop cooking. Even with his busy schedule as Ambassador, he opened a gourmet restaurant. Famous for his delicious recipes from around the universe.

Magic

A little late, but I’m officially in love with these two, and I cannot scream enough at @theprojectava for all the amazingness of the stories she has woven for Kuro here during this week! They have been absolutely wonderful and I hope everyone has loved them as much as I have for they are beyond deserving of that!

Magic happens when a smile spins more hope than starlight.

Magic forms when a hand reaches out and calls your soul back to the home it never thought it had.

Magic burns warm beneath skin and puts a tumble in your blood flow, so much that your heart has to race just to catch up with the breath trying to fill your lungs.

It’s that odd flash of feeling lighting up your brain and sinking into your cells, reminding you that there is infinitely more to all that you are than the world you’ve known has ever told you could be.

Kuro doesn’t know what sort of tricks Lance is pulling, but he knows that there is something unearthly in the way Lance moves against him. His whole body has gone stiff, prepared for war though Kuro doesn’t know against who or what exactly. But, the anticipation is there, putting steel into his muscles and reminding him that so rarely is there a thing called peace, even during his downtime. He hasn’t gotten used to the Castle just yet in that regard, still waits for the time when pain will creep into his sleep and the nightmares will infuse their logic into his dreams until he can’t tell them apart any longer.

He still doesn’t know what it means to fight for the greater good, only that fighting is what he had been made for, and in fighting, comes injury and loss. He waits for both like a prisoner the jury’s verdict over the crimes against his own humanity.

How does one salvage their heart from themselves?

Magic.

His shoulders are the first to give up their tension, relief cascading down his limbs like a river seeking its resting place in the sea. Bit by bit, he falls into silence and marvels at the way a human touch can unravel the hurt and the expectations held by his body. Lance’s fingers trace along the edges of a scar, and while Kuro could tell him the story of that particular one, Lance doesn’t ask. He simply lets his fingertips walk the outline of it as if coming to know its shape and the story it held by touch alone. The same way one can look at a crater gouged into the earth, and know, without hearing its tale, that something of a small disaster took place here. It left its mark, and still the world continues to move, still a heart continues to beat.

Life is tenacious if nothing else.

As Lance slides his hands around to his stomach, Kuro feels the tension threaten again, rising dark as shadows at sunset, only to find it reduced beneath Lance’s laughter. The sound is soul-saving. It’s the hand pulling him to shore after months of near-drowning in the inky seas he called himself. Lance’s laugh, warm and light against his shoulder, reminds Kuro that there is something solid of himself worth building a future upon.

Reaching down, he slides his hand along Lance’s, slowly sinks his fingers into the space between the Blue Paladin’s.

Come home shouldn’t be this easy, but with Lance, somehow it is.

And as Lance’s lips continue to drift along his skin, luring the pain from body and thought alike, Kuro starts to wonder where the magic really is.

Art by Léa Pinto