COWT; VOLTRON; SHEITH; LOVE IN THE TIME OF BLIGHTS
Titolo: Love in the time of Blights
Fandom: Voltron
Pairing: Shiro/Keith;
Word Count: 4533 (Fidipù)
Rating: SAFE
Warning: Canonical mistreatment of an entire category of people
Riassunto: DRAGON AGE AU CON TEMPLAR!SHIRO AND MAGE!KEITH
Disclaimer: Questi personaggi non sono miei. Per nulla. Figures.
The first time they meet Keith is a scared little kid and Shiro isn’t as little but he’s plenty scared.
He didn't go into the templars out of belief, he does believe in the maker, but it’s not the driving force of his life. He doesn't believe all the mages should live like this, but he also knows the danger they pose (his entire village was destroyed by a demon possession when he was five). He just doesn’t have anywhere else to go.
Shiro is just out of his training, new lyrium coursing through his veins, when Keith is brought to the Circle.
The Garrison, how their tower is called, isn't a bad place to be, all things considered. Shiro has heard, in his life, horror stories in regards of circles and mages treatment all around Thedas, and their circle isn't like that.
Keith itself is a statement of that, in a way.
Everyone was kept up to speed on Keith’s…. Situation. A child that was raised outside of the Circle all his life, without knowing his magical ability, at least until the day he was possessed by a Rage demon and had burnt his entire village before, and this is the mind blowing part, freeing himself from the demon.
The amount of willpower this eleven years old must have to do that is astonishing all in itself.
So the templars don't kill him, as they should have, and it might be mostly because they want to study him, understand how he could do it, but it's a kindness all the same. One that not many mages receive.
It's evident why Keith was possessed by a Rage demon the first time Shiro sees him. It's evident in the tight slope of his shoulders, on his barely controlled frustration and anger.
Keith is a passionate mage. If he wasn't this young they would have made him tranquil immediately. It's not something Shiro likes, he thinks that the Tranquils are more like zombies than anything else, but all his fellow templars have stories about happy tranquil mages - which is a contradiction all in itself for someone that can't feel emotions.
They show Keith where he’s going to sleep, where he’s going to eat, study, live and the kid doesn’t say a single word. It’s strange, because Shiro can see every single thing the mage wants to say, they’re plain to see in his face, but he doesn’t.
Shiro thinks that maybe Keith is scared that something is going to happen to him if he speaks out of line, and grimaces.
When the tour is over and they take Keith to his room Shiro stays back, lets the other templars go and he looks at Keith, trying to understand how to say what he has to say.
“Everything is going to be alright, okay?” he tries in the end, smiling. Shiro is 16 and in a life he never thought he could want, but it beats staying on the streets, stealing and dying of hunger, so in a way he knows what it means to take what life gives you, but Keith is 11, and he feels like he has to try and make it better for him “nothing will happen to you here”
And then Keith says something for the first time. His voice is steady, not like someone who’s scared, but like someone who has already understood everything there is to know.
“If you think that they won’t make me tranquil the moment I give them a reason to, then you’re delusional” he’s harsh, but honest.
Shiro had thought the same thing as well, but it feels wrong for a kid to say it, to limit everything he does because of that. But Shiro can’t really help him.
He can’t do anything for him.
“I won’t let them hurt you” he says, then, because it’s the only thing he can promise Keith. The only thing he has.
The kid looks at him and it’s evident he doesn’t trust him, doesn’t trust anyone, but Shiro is a stubborn jerk when he wants to be.
--
He says hi to Keith whenever he can, and the other doesn’t always say hi back, but Shiro doesn’t stop. He talks to him whenever it’s possible too, when he won’t get in too much trouble, and Keith looks at him like he doesn’t understand him.
He’s not making much friends with the other mages, and it’s possibly Shiro’s fault - after all having a templar paying attention to you isn’t a great thing in a circle - but he also hears what the other mages say whenever Keith isn’t there, how scared they are of him, of the demon that possessed him.
So Shiro doesn’t stop.
He says hi to Keith everyday, stops by his room when he finishes his rounds and just talks to him a little. And it goes like this for months before Keith stops him once and asks him why.
Shiro has to think about how to answer for a moment, because a careless reply might set him back in his relationship with Keith to the beginning, and he doesn’t want that.
So he looks around, makes sure that there’s no one that can catch them and just… starts talking. He tells him about his village, about the mage and the demon that destroyed his life. Keith looks sorry and guilty and pissed off, like Shiro is letting him down.
“And when I was alone, with my life in shambles” he says, trying to make Keith understand “everyone was saying how much they loathed mages, but it wasn’t his fault now, wasn’t it?”
Keith looks startled at that, so Shiro smiles, trying to be encouraging “I started wondering how scary it was to have your body possessed by something else, made to hurt and destroy. I don’t think the circle is perfect, but I don’t know how else to… help you.”
Keith looks at him speculatively from there on, buy he’s more open, he smiles sometimes, and Shiro is proud of himself.
--
When the blight happens they hear about it, their head templar goes to investigate, but they have specific orders not to move from the tower.
It’s dangerous outside and, during a blight, mage possession sky rockets. They can’t really put their mages into a position of danger. They have taken an oath.
Shiro wonders if maybe, maybe, he should try and join the Grey Wardens - he doesn’t really believe in being a templar after all - and he could make a difference outside of here.
He’s strong and he’s been trained to fight - mages more than anything else - but he’s seventeen and young, he can be of service.
No one knows how many Grey Wardens are still alive after the battle of the Korcari Wilds, but there has to be someone, and he could find them.
He has almost made up his mind when he finds Keith, looking out one window, with a pensive face.
He goes to him, and smiles a little.
“Everything alright?” he asks, and the other doesn’t even startle. Shiro isn’t as stealthy as he’d like, especially not with his templar armor.
“Yeah,” Keith says, looking at him “I was just thinking. Would they allow us to fight, if the Darkspawn arrived here?”
Shiro stops, surprised. They are far far away from the mines, and unless there is a full blight it’s doubtful the darkspawn could arrive here, but… but.
No mage is allowed to use magic without direct supervision, they train under strict control, and no one is really used to fighting.
The templars are here to protect the world from the mages, but also the protect the mages themself.
Shiro is here to protect them.
“They won’t come here” he says, with a conviction he doesn’t have “and even if they do, I won’t let them hurt you”.
“You always make promises you can’t keep” Keith says, with a little smile. It’s the second time Shiro has promised him the same thing and meant it every time.
So Shiro doesn’t join the Grey Wardens, doesn’t leave the circle, stays there with Keith.
And when the blight is destroyed they hear it from the grapevines, glad it’s over.
--
They get closer as times go by, him and Keith.
Keith becomes even more estranged with his fellow mages, because he’s stronger than them, stronger than anyone at his age, probably. His magic responds well to the fire element and no one talks about Rage demons and burning cities, but everyone thinks about it.
Everyone is scared of Keith, so Shiro spends all his time with him. He searches for him after his shift, eats with him, talks with him. It has gotten him into trouble with the Knight Commander a lot of times, but he doesn’t care.
Keith looks grim when he’s alone, like he’s thinking about things that are too deep and too heavy for him. Shiro just want to make him laugh.
They spend five years like this, and when Keith is sixteen Shiro realizes for the first time that what they’re doing might not be the healthiest relationship all around.
Because Keith sometimes gets this shy expression, this private smile, that Shiro understands all too well.
Sometimes when Shiro hugs Keith, and he does so frequently because by the Maker he deserves hugs, it’s hard letting go, and Keith clings to him a little more every time.
Keith is 16 and Shiro is 21 and it’s… that’s not even the main problem. Shiro has a position of power over Keith. He doesn’t want to have it, he makes it his mission to not have his templar status hang over their head when they talk, but it’s still there.
He’s a templar and Keith is a mage, and there’s nothing they can do to change that.
The circle is like poison between them, a clear line that divides them and chains them with invisible strings.
One day Keith looks at him, when Shiro removes his hand from the other’s hand too fast to be normal, and asks, a little sad “We won’t never be equal, won’t we?”
And Shiro doesn’t know what to say. For him they are, but he knows that saying that doesn’t make it true at the eyes of the rest of the world and they don’t have the freedom to just forget about others.
So they don’t let their touches mean anything, they smile and spend all their time together, but they always remember that there are some lines they can’t cross.
It’s hard and it’s sad, but it’s the life they have and they know how much of a gift it is all the same.
--
Shiro is 22 when the rumors about the news of Kirkwall reach their circle. The chantry explosion, the champion… the mage.
The Knight Commander tells them that they can’t let the news reach the mages, that uprising have been popping up left and right in all the region and that templars have had difficulties in keeping the calm. It’s frightening, in a way, that their world is changing so fast, spinning out of control, but it’s shows how much their system is flawed.
“Maybe we could find a way to change some things… before the uprising comes here” he tries. Even with his “fraternization” towards a mage (and Shiro had to stop himself from punching someone when one of the templar had said “We understand. They’re probably animals in the sack, right? All helpless without their magic”) he has climbed the ranks inside the circle and his words are listened, most of the time.
This is not one of those times.
They scoff at him, tell him he’s too close, that his little mage pet has clouded his judgement, that everything works fine.
“Why do you think they are rebelling?” he asks, raising his voice “this isn’t the way to help them!”
“They need to be controlled!” the Knight Commander says, livid “and I suggest you stop right this second, Shirogane”
He fumes, but he does, because he can’t be send away now, not if he wants to protect Keith from what is going to come.
--
Someone overhears them, because of course they do, and soon the entire circle is lost in chaos.
Rumors of the uprisings, of the free mages that have fought and conquered their templars captors spread like wildfire and it’s too late to do something to stop it now.
A templar cornes a kid that had used his magic when he shouldn’t have, and one of the other mages had reacted.
It goes all to hell from there.
Templars train all their life to resist magic, but there’s nothing that can make you immune to it, so it’s a nasty fight. The mages are at an advantage, since there are more mages than templars in the circle, but at the same time Templars are stronger, faster, more trained.
Shiro tries its best to run between all the fighting and goes on trying to shield itself. He had told them, he had warned them all, and now he has to find Keith and…
He hasn’t thought that far, if he’s honest with himself, he only knows that he has to find Keith and make sure he’s safe.
He is hit by a freezing spell and a thunder spell, but they aren’t strong, not enough anyway, and he pushes through. He thought he had made it clear to the mages that he wasn’t a threat, but maybe the hatred and the pain in them is too strong and even his benevolent attitude was perceived as conceited. He doesn’t know how they could it let it go this far.
In the end Shiro finds Keith in one of the recreational rooms, while he pushes out a templar and blasts a fireball at another. Keith is passion and so much anger bundled up into a singular man that it almost takes his breath away. He’s a kid, it’s sad that a kid has this much rage inside of him.
All his instincts tell him that Keith is dangerous, that he’s too volatile, that he’s going to be possessed soon. Maker, how bad has it gotten.
“Keith…” he tries to get his attention, but his friend is too focused on fighting, protecting himself, that he launches another spell in Shiro’s direction without thinking.
Shiro doesn’t even shield himself and when the fire hits his armor it hurts, much more than any other spell did before. Keith was always the strongest of them all.
“Shiro!” Keith screams, with panic, and runs in his direction.
Keith has been fighting the other templars, he can see at least three of his comrades on the ground, hopefully knocked out and not worse. Keith wants to leave.
It’s a sudden realization and Shiro doesn’t know why it took him this long to figure it out. It’s obvious, after all there would be no reason for Keith to actually stay in a place where everyone is scared of him, where one slip up would mean the complete suppression of his whole being.
It still hurts, it feels like a betrayal.
“I’m fine” he rasps when Keith kneels by his side. It’s true, his body is fine, he doesn’t think the rest of him is.
Keith is going to say something else when other mages burst through and immediately focus on Shiro. They look ready to attack, but maybe some of his kindness stuck in the end.
“We need to leave” one of the mages say and Keith hesitates, looking at Shiro.
“Yeah, yeah, we…” Keith starts, but Shiro knows that he can’t go. He thinks Keith knows it too. The stairs to the exit are three rooms down and this is the only entrance.
He can’t go with Keith, how would it look? A templar escorting the revolting mages? No, they need to do this on their own.
The only thing he can do is help Keith, like he swore so many years ago.
“Keith,” he murmurs, smiling “I won’t let them hurt you”
Keith looks startled at that and then he chokes on nothing, doing something that’s half laugh half sob. Maker, what they had, the fleeting moments in the circle, stolen minutes, are all they are ever going to get and it hurts, but Shiro will value them forever.
He gets up again and nods toward the other mages.
“Go,” he orders them, trying to sound commanding “I will keep them here as long as possible”
The mages look surprised, a little awed maybe. He only has eyes for Keith.
He hopes that his eyes are saying it all, because there isn’t time to do anything more. When Keith brushes past him he caresses his armor with his hand, and the little bit of fire on his fingers are enough to give him a pleasant tepor.
Shiro has kept his promise and that has to be enough, he thinks, while the mages slip through the doors.
--
They kick him out of the order, which is franky surprising, because he didn’t think he would have survived the night.
That doesn’t mean he leaves unscatted by the encounter and he misses his arm everyday, a phantom pain that will never disappear, but by the time they had incapacitated him the mages were long gone.
It’s enough. It has to be.
He doesn’t think about Keith, tries to find a way to live his life outside of the conflict that’s brewing inside Thedas, but every time he hears of another battle, he fears for Keith.
Can’t forget him not even when he tries.
--
Two years later, after the rift opens in the sky, he joins the inquisition. Cullen was a respected templar in his youth, which isn’t always a good thing, but Shiro knows that after Kirkwall he has matured a lot.
So when Cullen comes to him, Shiro follows.
Haven is a lovely city, but the fear, the budding anticipation, the dread is palpable all around. There are demons spawning all around the region and all their fights seem meaningless when more are coming out of the rifts any second.
They say the inquisitor is send by the maker to redeem them all of their mistake, but Shiro doesn’t really believe it. He has talked with her two times and she had seemed like a normal person, a little sarcastic when put in a corner, but pleasant.
Shiro is in the inquisition because it’s the right place to be, because he wants to help, the way he couldn’t when the Blight came. He’s 24, almost 25, and he’s tired.
He fights with a sword, but no shield (since he doesn’t have an arm to carry it with) but he does what he can. His training and lyrum consumption make him stronger than the average fighter, more resistant to demons.
He gives it everything he has.
At the same time it comes as a surprise when Cullen tells him he’s going to follow the Inquisitor to Redcliffe, where the majority of mages has taken refuge. Cullen tells him that if the mages attack they would need a templar for protection, and Shiro looks at him, surprised.
He thought that everyone knew why he was kicked out of the templars, that his loyalty to Keith was well known between his comrades.
“I trust your judgement,” Cullen tells him, in the end “every other templar would be biased, maybe attack the mages before the time calls for it. You…”
Shiro gets it then, so he nods and follows the Inquisitor and his strange group of friends.
He tries not to think about Keith in Redcliff, tries to remember that anything they might have had was probably forced and clouded and now Keith is free and has probably found someone better than him.
He fails.
So when Fiona welcomes them to Redcliff with an harsh tone and poor concealed worry, he doesn’t pay much attention and just looks around. He doesn’t see Keith anywhere, but it’s a big city, maybe he’s somewhere else… maybe...
Then there isn’t really much time to check when the Tevinter Magister comes.
So Shiro just fights with everyone else, tries to stay alive and understand all this… time magic, but it’s far too complicated for him.
In the end they win (Dorian and the Inquisitor talking about an alternative universe destroyed by red lyrium) and the mages decide to help them in closing the big rift over Haven.
They go home and Shiro pretends he isn’t disappointed when he doesn’t stop Keith anywhere.
--
The mages have arrived that evening, but Shiro has stayed far away from the part of the city where they reside. He doesn’t think his presence would be accepted.
He’s seated outside of Haven, watching with morbid fascination the big green monstrosity in the sky.
He worries for Keith. Maybe he died in one of the battles before the conclave at the temple of Ashes, before the world descended into chaos. Maybe he’s still alive somewhere, getting attacked by demons. Maybe the templars have him.
He worries.
“Shiro?” someone whispers, behind him, and Shiro recognized the voice, has thought about it for the past two years.
He turns so fast he has whiplash, but doesn’t care. Keith is there, looking at him like he can’t really believe it.
Maker’s breath.
In the two years they haven’t seen each other Keith has become taller still, even if he’s still a foot shorter than Shiro, and has let his hair grow.
He looks the same and yet so much different.
Shiro is left speechless, but Keith apparently doesn’t need words before he runs towards him. He stops just in front of him, hesitating.
Shiro knows he shouldn’t, but he can’t stop himself and he closes the space between them, engulfing Keith in a hug with his only arm. It doesn’t feel like enough.
He wants to take Keith and never let him out of his sight again.
Keith clings to him like a lifeline, and he’s murmuring something like “Shiro, Shiro. Maker, your arm”
He doesn’t care.
“I searched for you but…” Shiro whispers, like a confession, like a criminal “I thought maybe you weren’t in Redcliff”
Keith shakes his head, “I was on a mission. When I came back they told me the Inquisitor defeated that Tevinter asshole. And then they talked about you, because there were some mages from our circle and I… I was always so worried”
Shiro smiles, because this is enough, knowing that Keith is alive, knowing that he’s safe here in Haven. It’s all he wanted.
Tomorrow they will close the breach and then they can start working on a way to make a better Thedas for mages and templars alike.
He forces himself to let Keith go, because it’s the right thing to do, and smiles at him, trying to pretend that he doesn’t still want to kiss him. It’s an urge that never went away, in the end, but Keith had lived his entire life a prisoner of the circle and even if Shiro had tried to make it better he had been one of his captors all the same.
“We’re equals now” Keith tells him, then, and his eyes are focused, ready. Shiro remembers that afternoon, years and years ago, and nods, because he’s proud of Keith and the mages, of what they have done. He’s proud of them for thinking about their future.
“Maker, how can you be this dense” Keith mutters, then, a little angry and pushes forward to kiss him. It’s not a tentative kiss, it’s forceful and sure, with a fiery passion that is so Keith that Shiro has no other choice than kiss back.
“I…” he has to say, when they stop to breath, “are you sure?” he asks, because he has to know, because his entire kind has been so cruel to Keith, to all mages, and he doesn’t want Keith to stay with him out of some kind of… retribution because Shiro had been kind to him.
Keith only scoffs, bringing them together more firmly “Fuck yes”.
It’s all he needs to know.
--
Nothing ends so easily.
They close the breach, but the templars attack that night with Corypheus and a dragon, and Shiro can’t almost believe his eyes. Another archdemon? There can’t be a new blight so soon, can it?
In the end they don’t have time to worry about it because Haven gets destroyed, trampled under the merciless fury of their enemies. They lose so many people and Shiro makes sure he doesn’t leave Keith’s side.
But they survive and they thrive, the inquisition becomes a force to be reckoned with and they fight.
They fight against the whole templar order, subdued under Corypheus rule, slaves like the mages were before. They fight the swarms of demons that escape the fades, invade their world. They fight other giant dragons, because that’s just their life.
They don’t always win and Shiro will forever bear the marks of their losses, of the red lyrium that almost consumed him when he’s captured by the templars, force fed the poison until it was almost too late. He will never get rid of it, but it won’t kill him, his resistance to natural lyrium an ally in this fight, and it helps him, in a way, he has to counter the effects with normal lyrium, but they make it stronger, faster.
(Keith had saved him, blazing in like the flame of fury with some of his fellow mages and then had nursed Shiro back to health, swearing that if Shiro even tried to die he would use necromancy to bring him back and kill him again).
They win, they lose but in the end they defeat Samson and Corypheus and close the breach for good. It’s an anticlimactic fight, all considered, but no one cares, too giddy now that they are safe.
Keith comes to him the night of their victory, the first day they are really free, and kisses him under the blue (only blue, no green in sight) sky. It feels right and pure and like what he was always looking for. He remembers the kid, the angry silent kid he had met in the Garrison, with his attitude and closed off nature, and he’s so glad that he could keep his promise, that he could keep him safe all this time.
They aren’t naive enough to think that there won’t be problems along the way, that mages rights will be recognized immediately, but tonight is about freedom, is the power achieved by working together toward a greater goal.
“I think I want to stay with the inquisition” Shiro admits, because it feels like his place, like a way to make good, to help all the people that need him. Because Corypheus might be dead, but there are new threats everyday.
Keith looks at him, with a glint in his eyes, like he can read Shiro like a book and smile, caressing his cheek “Okay. I will stay as well, I won’t let anyone hurt you” he promises and they both smile.
Fandom: Voltron
Pairing: Shiro/Keith;
Word Count: 4533 (Fidipù)
Rating: SAFE
Warning: Canonical mistreatment of an entire category of people
Riassunto: DRAGON AGE AU CON TEMPLAR!SHIRO AND MAGE!KEITH
Disclaimer: Questi personaggi non sono miei. Per nulla. Figures.
The first time they meet Keith is a scared little kid and Shiro isn’t as little but he’s plenty scared.
He didn't go into the templars out of belief, he does believe in the maker, but it’s not the driving force of his life. He doesn't believe all the mages should live like this, but he also knows the danger they pose (his entire village was destroyed by a demon possession when he was five). He just doesn’t have anywhere else to go.
Shiro is just out of his training, new lyrium coursing through his veins, when Keith is brought to the Circle.
The Garrison, how their tower is called, isn't a bad place to be, all things considered. Shiro has heard, in his life, horror stories in regards of circles and mages treatment all around Thedas, and their circle isn't like that.
Keith itself is a statement of that, in a way.
Everyone was kept up to speed on Keith’s…. Situation. A child that was raised outside of the Circle all his life, without knowing his magical ability, at least until the day he was possessed by a Rage demon and had burnt his entire village before, and this is the mind blowing part, freeing himself from the demon.
The amount of willpower this eleven years old must have to do that is astonishing all in itself.
So the templars don't kill him, as they should have, and it might be mostly because they want to study him, understand how he could do it, but it's a kindness all the same. One that not many mages receive.
It's evident why Keith was possessed by a Rage demon the first time Shiro sees him. It's evident in the tight slope of his shoulders, on his barely controlled frustration and anger.
Keith is a passionate mage. If he wasn't this young they would have made him tranquil immediately. It's not something Shiro likes, he thinks that the Tranquils are more like zombies than anything else, but all his fellow templars have stories about happy tranquil mages - which is a contradiction all in itself for someone that can't feel emotions.
They show Keith where he’s going to sleep, where he’s going to eat, study, live and the kid doesn’t say a single word. It’s strange, because Shiro can see every single thing the mage wants to say, they’re plain to see in his face, but he doesn’t.
Shiro thinks that maybe Keith is scared that something is going to happen to him if he speaks out of line, and grimaces.
When the tour is over and they take Keith to his room Shiro stays back, lets the other templars go and he looks at Keith, trying to understand how to say what he has to say.
“Everything is going to be alright, okay?” he tries in the end, smiling. Shiro is 16 and in a life he never thought he could want, but it beats staying on the streets, stealing and dying of hunger, so in a way he knows what it means to take what life gives you, but Keith is 11, and he feels like he has to try and make it better for him “nothing will happen to you here”
And then Keith says something for the first time. His voice is steady, not like someone who’s scared, but like someone who has already understood everything there is to know.
“If you think that they won’t make me tranquil the moment I give them a reason to, then you’re delusional” he’s harsh, but honest.
Shiro had thought the same thing as well, but it feels wrong for a kid to say it, to limit everything he does because of that. But Shiro can’t really help him.
He can’t do anything for him.
“I won’t let them hurt you” he says, then, because it’s the only thing he can promise Keith. The only thing he has.
The kid looks at him and it’s evident he doesn’t trust him, doesn’t trust anyone, but Shiro is a stubborn jerk when he wants to be.
--
He says hi to Keith whenever he can, and the other doesn’t always say hi back, but Shiro doesn’t stop. He talks to him whenever it’s possible too, when he won’t get in too much trouble, and Keith looks at him like he doesn’t understand him.
He’s not making much friends with the other mages, and it’s possibly Shiro’s fault - after all having a templar paying attention to you isn’t a great thing in a circle - but he also hears what the other mages say whenever Keith isn’t there, how scared they are of him, of the demon that possessed him.
So Shiro doesn’t stop.
He says hi to Keith everyday, stops by his room when he finishes his rounds and just talks to him a little. And it goes like this for months before Keith stops him once and asks him why.
Shiro has to think about how to answer for a moment, because a careless reply might set him back in his relationship with Keith to the beginning, and he doesn’t want that.
So he looks around, makes sure that there’s no one that can catch them and just… starts talking. He tells him about his village, about the mage and the demon that destroyed his life. Keith looks sorry and guilty and pissed off, like Shiro is letting him down.
“And when I was alone, with my life in shambles” he says, trying to make Keith understand “everyone was saying how much they loathed mages, but it wasn’t his fault now, wasn’t it?”
Keith looks startled at that, so Shiro smiles, trying to be encouraging “I started wondering how scary it was to have your body possessed by something else, made to hurt and destroy. I don’t think the circle is perfect, but I don’t know how else to… help you.”
Keith looks at him speculatively from there on, buy he’s more open, he smiles sometimes, and Shiro is proud of himself.
--
When the blight happens they hear about it, their head templar goes to investigate, but they have specific orders not to move from the tower.
It’s dangerous outside and, during a blight, mage possession sky rockets. They can’t really put their mages into a position of danger. They have taken an oath.
Shiro wonders if maybe, maybe, he should try and join the Grey Wardens - he doesn’t really believe in being a templar after all - and he could make a difference outside of here.
He’s strong and he’s been trained to fight - mages more than anything else - but he’s seventeen and young, he can be of service.
No one knows how many Grey Wardens are still alive after the battle of the Korcari Wilds, but there has to be someone, and he could find them.
He has almost made up his mind when he finds Keith, looking out one window, with a pensive face.
He goes to him, and smiles a little.
“Everything alright?” he asks, and the other doesn’t even startle. Shiro isn’t as stealthy as he’d like, especially not with his templar armor.
“Yeah,” Keith says, looking at him “I was just thinking. Would they allow us to fight, if the Darkspawn arrived here?”
Shiro stops, surprised. They are far far away from the mines, and unless there is a full blight it’s doubtful the darkspawn could arrive here, but… but.
No mage is allowed to use magic without direct supervision, they train under strict control, and no one is really used to fighting.
The templars are here to protect the world from the mages, but also the protect the mages themself.
Shiro is here to protect them.
“They won’t come here” he says, with a conviction he doesn’t have “and even if they do, I won’t let them hurt you”.
“You always make promises you can’t keep” Keith says, with a little smile. It’s the second time Shiro has promised him the same thing and meant it every time.
So Shiro doesn’t join the Grey Wardens, doesn’t leave the circle, stays there with Keith.
And when the blight is destroyed they hear it from the grapevines, glad it’s over.
--
They get closer as times go by, him and Keith.
Keith becomes even more estranged with his fellow mages, because he’s stronger than them, stronger than anyone at his age, probably. His magic responds well to the fire element and no one talks about Rage demons and burning cities, but everyone thinks about it.
Everyone is scared of Keith, so Shiro spends all his time with him. He searches for him after his shift, eats with him, talks with him. It has gotten him into trouble with the Knight Commander a lot of times, but he doesn’t care.
Keith looks grim when he’s alone, like he’s thinking about things that are too deep and too heavy for him. Shiro just want to make him laugh.
They spend five years like this, and when Keith is sixteen Shiro realizes for the first time that what they’re doing might not be the healthiest relationship all around.
Because Keith sometimes gets this shy expression, this private smile, that Shiro understands all too well.
Sometimes when Shiro hugs Keith, and he does so frequently because by the Maker he deserves hugs, it’s hard letting go, and Keith clings to him a little more every time.
Keith is 16 and Shiro is 21 and it’s… that’s not even the main problem. Shiro has a position of power over Keith. He doesn’t want to have it, he makes it his mission to not have his templar status hang over their head when they talk, but it’s still there.
He’s a templar and Keith is a mage, and there’s nothing they can do to change that.
The circle is like poison between them, a clear line that divides them and chains them with invisible strings.
One day Keith looks at him, when Shiro removes his hand from the other’s hand too fast to be normal, and asks, a little sad “We won’t never be equal, won’t we?”
And Shiro doesn’t know what to say. For him they are, but he knows that saying that doesn’t make it true at the eyes of the rest of the world and they don’t have the freedom to just forget about others.
So they don’t let their touches mean anything, they smile and spend all their time together, but they always remember that there are some lines they can’t cross.
It’s hard and it’s sad, but it’s the life they have and they know how much of a gift it is all the same.
--
Shiro is 22 when the rumors about the news of Kirkwall reach their circle. The chantry explosion, the champion… the mage.
The Knight Commander tells them that they can’t let the news reach the mages, that uprising have been popping up left and right in all the region and that templars have had difficulties in keeping the calm. It’s frightening, in a way, that their world is changing so fast, spinning out of control, but it’s shows how much their system is flawed.
“Maybe we could find a way to change some things… before the uprising comes here” he tries. Even with his “fraternization” towards a mage (and Shiro had to stop himself from punching someone when one of the templar had said “We understand. They’re probably animals in the sack, right? All helpless without their magic”) he has climbed the ranks inside the circle and his words are listened, most of the time.
This is not one of those times.
They scoff at him, tell him he’s too close, that his little mage pet has clouded his judgement, that everything works fine.
“Why do you think they are rebelling?” he asks, raising his voice “this isn’t the way to help them!”
“They need to be controlled!” the Knight Commander says, livid “and I suggest you stop right this second, Shirogane”
He fumes, but he does, because he can’t be send away now, not if he wants to protect Keith from what is going to come.
--
Someone overhears them, because of course they do, and soon the entire circle is lost in chaos.
Rumors of the uprisings, of the free mages that have fought and conquered their templars captors spread like wildfire and it’s too late to do something to stop it now.
A templar cornes a kid that had used his magic when he shouldn’t have, and one of the other mages had reacted.
It goes all to hell from there.
Templars train all their life to resist magic, but there’s nothing that can make you immune to it, so it’s a nasty fight. The mages are at an advantage, since there are more mages than templars in the circle, but at the same time Templars are stronger, faster, more trained.
Shiro tries its best to run between all the fighting and goes on trying to shield itself. He had told them, he had warned them all, and now he has to find Keith and…
He hasn’t thought that far, if he’s honest with himself, he only knows that he has to find Keith and make sure he’s safe.
He is hit by a freezing spell and a thunder spell, but they aren’t strong, not enough anyway, and he pushes through. He thought he had made it clear to the mages that he wasn’t a threat, but maybe the hatred and the pain in them is too strong and even his benevolent attitude was perceived as conceited. He doesn’t know how they could it let it go this far.
In the end Shiro finds Keith in one of the recreational rooms, while he pushes out a templar and blasts a fireball at another. Keith is passion and so much anger bundled up into a singular man that it almost takes his breath away. He’s a kid, it’s sad that a kid has this much rage inside of him.
All his instincts tell him that Keith is dangerous, that he’s too volatile, that he’s going to be possessed soon. Maker, how bad has it gotten.
“Keith…” he tries to get his attention, but his friend is too focused on fighting, protecting himself, that he launches another spell in Shiro’s direction without thinking.
Shiro doesn’t even shield himself and when the fire hits his armor it hurts, much more than any other spell did before. Keith was always the strongest of them all.
“Shiro!” Keith screams, with panic, and runs in his direction.
Keith has been fighting the other templars, he can see at least three of his comrades on the ground, hopefully knocked out and not worse. Keith wants to leave.
It’s a sudden realization and Shiro doesn’t know why it took him this long to figure it out. It’s obvious, after all there would be no reason for Keith to actually stay in a place where everyone is scared of him, where one slip up would mean the complete suppression of his whole being.
It still hurts, it feels like a betrayal.
“I’m fine” he rasps when Keith kneels by his side. It’s true, his body is fine, he doesn’t think the rest of him is.
Keith is going to say something else when other mages burst through and immediately focus on Shiro. They look ready to attack, but maybe some of his kindness stuck in the end.
“We need to leave” one of the mages say and Keith hesitates, looking at Shiro.
“Yeah, yeah, we…” Keith starts, but Shiro knows that he can’t go. He thinks Keith knows it too. The stairs to the exit are three rooms down and this is the only entrance.
He can’t go with Keith, how would it look? A templar escorting the revolting mages? No, they need to do this on their own.
The only thing he can do is help Keith, like he swore so many years ago.
“Keith,” he murmurs, smiling “I won’t let them hurt you”
Keith looks startled at that and then he chokes on nothing, doing something that’s half laugh half sob. Maker, what they had, the fleeting moments in the circle, stolen minutes, are all they are ever going to get and it hurts, but Shiro will value them forever.
He gets up again and nods toward the other mages.
“Go,” he orders them, trying to sound commanding “I will keep them here as long as possible”
The mages look surprised, a little awed maybe. He only has eyes for Keith.
He hopes that his eyes are saying it all, because there isn’t time to do anything more. When Keith brushes past him he caresses his armor with his hand, and the little bit of fire on his fingers are enough to give him a pleasant tepor.
Shiro has kept his promise and that has to be enough, he thinks, while the mages slip through the doors.
--
They kick him out of the order, which is franky surprising, because he didn’t think he would have survived the night.
That doesn’t mean he leaves unscatted by the encounter and he misses his arm everyday, a phantom pain that will never disappear, but by the time they had incapacitated him the mages were long gone.
It’s enough. It has to be.
He doesn’t think about Keith, tries to find a way to live his life outside of the conflict that’s brewing inside Thedas, but every time he hears of another battle, he fears for Keith.
Can’t forget him not even when he tries.
--
Two years later, after the rift opens in the sky, he joins the inquisition. Cullen was a respected templar in his youth, which isn’t always a good thing, but Shiro knows that after Kirkwall he has matured a lot.
So when Cullen comes to him, Shiro follows.
Haven is a lovely city, but the fear, the budding anticipation, the dread is palpable all around. There are demons spawning all around the region and all their fights seem meaningless when more are coming out of the rifts any second.
They say the inquisitor is send by the maker to redeem them all of their mistake, but Shiro doesn’t really believe it. He has talked with her two times and she had seemed like a normal person, a little sarcastic when put in a corner, but pleasant.
Shiro is in the inquisition because it’s the right place to be, because he wants to help, the way he couldn’t when the Blight came. He’s 24, almost 25, and he’s tired.
He fights with a sword, but no shield (since he doesn’t have an arm to carry it with) but he does what he can. His training and lyrum consumption make him stronger than the average fighter, more resistant to demons.
He gives it everything he has.
At the same time it comes as a surprise when Cullen tells him he’s going to follow the Inquisitor to Redcliffe, where the majority of mages has taken refuge. Cullen tells him that if the mages attack they would need a templar for protection, and Shiro looks at him, surprised.
He thought that everyone knew why he was kicked out of the templars, that his loyalty to Keith was well known between his comrades.
“I trust your judgement,” Cullen tells him, in the end “every other templar would be biased, maybe attack the mages before the time calls for it. You…”
Shiro gets it then, so he nods and follows the Inquisitor and his strange group of friends.
He tries not to think about Keith in Redcliff, tries to remember that anything they might have had was probably forced and clouded and now Keith is free and has probably found someone better than him.
He fails.
So when Fiona welcomes them to Redcliff with an harsh tone and poor concealed worry, he doesn’t pay much attention and just looks around. He doesn’t see Keith anywhere, but it’s a big city, maybe he’s somewhere else… maybe...
Then there isn’t really much time to check when the Tevinter Magister comes.
So Shiro just fights with everyone else, tries to stay alive and understand all this… time magic, but it’s far too complicated for him.
In the end they win (Dorian and the Inquisitor talking about an alternative universe destroyed by red lyrium) and the mages decide to help them in closing the big rift over Haven.
They go home and Shiro pretends he isn’t disappointed when he doesn’t stop Keith anywhere.
--
The mages have arrived that evening, but Shiro has stayed far away from the part of the city where they reside. He doesn’t think his presence would be accepted.
He’s seated outside of Haven, watching with morbid fascination the big green monstrosity in the sky.
He worries for Keith. Maybe he died in one of the battles before the conclave at the temple of Ashes, before the world descended into chaos. Maybe he’s still alive somewhere, getting attacked by demons. Maybe the templars have him.
He worries.
“Shiro?” someone whispers, behind him, and Shiro recognized the voice, has thought about it for the past two years.
He turns so fast he has whiplash, but doesn’t care. Keith is there, looking at him like he can’t really believe it.
Maker’s breath.
In the two years they haven’t seen each other Keith has become taller still, even if he’s still a foot shorter than Shiro, and has let his hair grow.
He looks the same and yet so much different.
Shiro is left speechless, but Keith apparently doesn’t need words before he runs towards him. He stops just in front of him, hesitating.
Shiro knows he shouldn’t, but he can’t stop himself and he closes the space between them, engulfing Keith in a hug with his only arm. It doesn’t feel like enough.
He wants to take Keith and never let him out of his sight again.
Keith clings to him like a lifeline, and he’s murmuring something like “Shiro, Shiro. Maker, your arm”
He doesn’t care.
“I searched for you but…” Shiro whispers, like a confession, like a criminal “I thought maybe you weren’t in Redcliff”
Keith shakes his head, “I was on a mission. When I came back they told me the Inquisitor defeated that Tevinter asshole. And then they talked about you, because there were some mages from our circle and I… I was always so worried”
Shiro smiles, because this is enough, knowing that Keith is alive, knowing that he’s safe here in Haven. It’s all he wanted.
Tomorrow they will close the breach and then they can start working on a way to make a better Thedas for mages and templars alike.
He forces himself to let Keith go, because it’s the right thing to do, and smiles at him, trying to pretend that he doesn’t still want to kiss him. It’s an urge that never went away, in the end, but Keith had lived his entire life a prisoner of the circle and even if Shiro had tried to make it better he had been one of his captors all the same.
“We’re equals now” Keith tells him, then, and his eyes are focused, ready. Shiro remembers that afternoon, years and years ago, and nods, because he’s proud of Keith and the mages, of what they have done. He’s proud of them for thinking about their future.
“Maker, how can you be this dense” Keith mutters, then, a little angry and pushes forward to kiss him. It’s not a tentative kiss, it’s forceful and sure, with a fiery passion that is so Keith that Shiro has no other choice than kiss back.
“I…” he has to say, when they stop to breath, “are you sure?” he asks, because he has to know, because his entire kind has been so cruel to Keith, to all mages, and he doesn’t want Keith to stay with him out of some kind of… retribution because Shiro had been kind to him.
Keith only scoffs, bringing them together more firmly “Fuck yes”.
It’s all he needs to know.
--
Nothing ends so easily.
They close the breach, but the templars attack that night with Corypheus and a dragon, and Shiro can’t almost believe his eyes. Another archdemon? There can’t be a new blight so soon, can it?
In the end they don’t have time to worry about it because Haven gets destroyed, trampled under the merciless fury of their enemies. They lose so many people and Shiro makes sure he doesn’t leave Keith’s side.
But they survive and they thrive, the inquisition becomes a force to be reckoned with and they fight.
They fight against the whole templar order, subdued under Corypheus rule, slaves like the mages were before. They fight the swarms of demons that escape the fades, invade their world. They fight other giant dragons, because that’s just their life.
They don’t always win and Shiro will forever bear the marks of their losses, of the red lyrium that almost consumed him when he’s captured by the templars, force fed the poison until it was almost too late. He will never get rid of it, but it won’t kill him, his resistance to natural lyrium an ally in this fight, and it helps him, in a way, he has to counter the effects with normal lyrium, but they make it stronger, faster.
(Keith had saved him, blazing in like the flame of fury with some of his fellow mages and then had nursed Shiro back to health, swearing that if Shiro even tried to die he would use necromancy to bring him back and kill him again).
They win, they lose but in the end they defeat Samson and Corypheus and close the breach for good. It’s an anticlimactic fight, all considered, but no one cares, too giddy now that they are safe.
Keith comes to him the night of their victory, the first day they are really free, and kisses him under the blue (only blue, no green in sight) sky. It feels right and pure and like what he was always looking for. He remembers the kid, the angry silent kid he had met in the Garrison, with his attitude and closed off nature, and he’s so glad that he could keep his promise, that he could keep him safe all this time.
They aren’t naive enough to think that there won’t be problems along the way, that mages rights will be recognized immediately, but tonight is about freedom, is the power achieved by working together toward a greater goal.
“I think I want to stay with the inquisition” Shiro admits, because it feels like his place, like a way to make good, to help all the people that need him. Because Corypheus might be dead, but there are new threats everyday.
Keith looks at him, with a glint in his eyes, like he can read Shiro like a book and smile, caressing his cheek “Okay. I will stay as well, I won’t let anyone hurt you” he promises and they both smile.