As long as I’m alive, you will be a part of me

Rin is red as red can be, but there’s a touch of blue in her, a sense of maybe one day turning her cheek slowly to the waves, a sacrifice other than screaming-riot-rage, a softness in her smile, a gentleness—she is not gentle now. She is red as red can be.

Obito is green; he is invisible and he snorts and he’s salty; he grows plants and he snaps at people and he stomps through the castle at 3am, drunk off victory and whirring thoughts and caffeine. He is mint that refuses to die, regeneration, and vines absolutely everywhere—vines that dig into you and refuse to let go, vines watered by blood—

His blood is red and in another timeline he could be drenched in it, none of the soaring freedom and all of the rage–

It is for the best that Obito is smirky green.

Kisame is gold, yellow throughout him, and it’s not something to flinch away from, that he could be blue in another life. But yellow suits him, he’s yellow down to his bones, steady and strong. The blue is nice but too cold, too loud, too fluid.

Yellow is sturdy and unmovable and so is he, a staunch support, and he laughs with his whole belly and holds up the team, a leg the same way Zabuza is, though Zabuza’s support is more like hands to the shoulder, the hips, the pectoral—hands moving you like a current, bullying you into one direction or the other, wrestling you into something you need.

(Naps, mostly.)

Kakashi is of the spooky void, so connected to the psionic plain that nothing can phase him, probably. It keeps him big-picture enough that he can see where they’re going and direct them as a whole, which is why he’s driving. Probably.

Even if he is an absolute disaster of a person.

They’re a power ranger color wheel tipped over onto its side, and Zabuza is one of eight siblings, okay, he’s been the kid glued to the TV and the older one smiling indulgently, he knows what roles the power carves through you.

Even if piloting the lions is more like a Vulcan mind meld with the Force.

Kakashi’s been distancing himself, though, and Zabuza never had twisted up admiration that Rin and Obito had for the man, the small hero worship Kisame nurtured goodnaturedly.

Zabuza is wearing a color coded suit that probably gave him super powers and he’s in space, so if the others pick up his power rangers coping mechanisms in the meld, later, and decide to start shit, he’s going to throw someone out of an airlock.

The suit lets him breathe in space, so, they’ll be fine. Zabuza’s jet pack lets him navigate the overwhelming void and he tries to focus on fixing Kakashi’s dissociation rather than the utter garbage situation their fallout with Madara had engineered.

At least he fell out of the vortex with Kakashi.

He’s not worried, he tells himself, avoiding the debris. Space is always a nightmare re: depth perception, though, and a boulder clips him. He attaches his boots to it out of spite, mostly, and tries to orient himself in the void with no up, or down. 

He takes a deep breath and lets his thoughts calm down. If he can relax enough, the waves of his thoughts will smooth to still waters, and in the reflection—there.

A starry sky, a swirling galaxy. Somewhere distant and beyond, the burning wings of Rin—in her lion, then, and that’s something—and the strong mountain that is Kisame, the chittering leaves and agitation of Obito, and much louder, closer and deeper, the thrum of Blue’s heart.

The galactic impression is closer still, though, a star-burst of nebulae and curiosity, determination and weariness. Kakashi must feel him reaching because there’s a bristle of awareness, an intensification where he can feel what Kakashi’s feeling, an echo of injuries and emotion—and then that awareness triples because suddenly it’s right next to him.

Zabuza slams his eyes open and flinches back hard, hastily shutting off the alien mind meld when Kakashi’s so close. He doesn’t need the kind of intimacy and openness close proximity gives the connection.

“I forget you can teleport.” Zabuza says, wry. But relieved. So relieved he’s not alone in the void of space.

He can feel Blue moving closer, so that’s good.

“Any word on the Black Lion?” He asks Kakashi, who had merely hummed.

“I think he’s… back on the other side of the portal.”

Zabuza cursed.

“With Madara?”

“With Madara.” And Kakashi sounds ten times as bitter about it.

“Well, he’s got his particle barrier.” It’s a dim hope and they both know it. Where Red had stood up to their efforts for thousands of years, Red wasn’t up against the guilt tripping of her first paladin.

Cold comfort, imagining Black alone and listening to the spiel.

How long could he resist?

“We’ve got to get back to the others.”

Kakashi nodded, grim faced and shaken. He paused.

He turned in the endless vastness of space, in the asteroid field, and Zabuza could feel the ‘but first’ curling like real words across his jaw, like a touch through the suit.

Kakashi put his forehead to Zabuza’s and it was like there was no material in the way at all. It was amazing and scary all at once, to be so close in the vacuum. He wasn’t alone—to his bones he knew he was not alone, and that was the lovely aching part of Voltron, a reason to save the galaxy if freedom alone were not enough, if saving lives and liberation and hope weren’t enough—and he should have been checking his suit for air leaks but.

Well.

It was either put 100% of his trust in ten thousand year old tech, nor none. He couldn’t constantly worry about shit like that. He wasn’t Obito.

For a moment it’s only their breathing and Zabuza can’t tell if it’s over the comms or not.

“I love you.” Kakashi says, and kisses him.

It shouldn’t be possible, of course, but they live in each other’s skin more often than not, can feel gestures and brushes and drifting thoughts like sighs and laughter through a room, even unspoken, and really, the psychicness (the psychic vibration out of his skin and into the skin of four other people, sometimes) is the least weirdest part of forming a giant cat mecha in the middle of space and fighting aliens with it.

Except for how it’s not.

Zabuza shivers all over, thinking of Star Trek fanfiction and memory palaces, rose gardens and mental vaults. His mind is never so organized to be a place, a location, not something so solid as a thing. It’s oceans and oceans of tumultuous blue and Kakashi slips in and around him like they’re the same person in different bodies, like Voltron is another word for us.

On the fringes are Kisame’s molten gold, stalwart, unconquerable, the Yellow Lion like a mountain inside him; Rin’s leaping, dancing fire, red-hot steel and Red’s eyes staring back, daring anyone who doesn’t belong to them, the lion’s, to Voltron from touching her mind; Obito’s half-there-half-not jungle of plants and greenery, quicksilver flashes of foliary and the depths of machinery, circuitry, the Green Lion’s connection between life and technology and souls, quintessence, magic.

Here and now it’s like they’re spinning, while perfectly still; like they’re five people at once, or ten, and Blue’s there inside him even if she’s not there yet, a bone-deep thrum of claiming and one-ness, a connection that sits at the back of his mind and would never let go.

Kakashi is both part of it and not, a single person standing before the towering monolith of Zabuza-in-front-of-Blue, and then Black steps out of the ether, huge and majestic.

In his mind’s eye Zabuza can see all of this and none of it, phantasmagoria and pure feeling and a sense of the psionic plane heavy in him; Kakashi looks at him and Black looks through him but Zabuza is five people—or maybe ten.

He’s never been afraid of a Lion.

Even in the cavern on Earth he had known—known—somewhere under his skin that he was her’s, all her’s, and that had scared him, but not her.

Blue would never, ever hurt him.

And neither would Black.

“You tell Madara that he failed you,” Zabuza rasps, overcome with emotion. He looks through Kakashi’s connection to a lion older than his civilization. “You would never hurt Kakashi and he would never hurt you. That’s what makes a Paladin. Madara betrayed your bond and there’s nothing he can say to change that. And remember—”

Kakashi filled in for him as if speaking with Zabuza’s mouth.

“He’s not sorry.” Kaksahi hissed, furious to even think it. “He can talk all he wants but even now he doesn’t regret it and you can’t forgive him, Black. You can’t let him in.”

A rainbow of colors surged through them and Zabuza felt his forehead touching Kakashi’s, touching Black’s, thought of dragons and old movies and trust.

He could feel his own forehead from Kakashi’s point of view, from a very old metal lion’s, and from Blue’s and Red’s and Yellow’s, too. He felt Rin’s hand in his and Obito’s heartbeat, Kisame’s spine of steel. He felt Zabuza’s hand in his—in Kakashi’s—and the line between them blurred, just once.

“I love you, too.” He told Kakashi, afterward. “Did you ever watch ‘Sense8?’”

Kakashi snorted. It didn’t matter if he hadn’t watched it, because Zabuza had caught the first season when Kisame wanted to binge it, and Obito had watched all of it and the reboot, and the reboot’s reboot, so they all knew the basics.

“Thought there had to be eight of us?” The silver haired Paladin said, tiredly.

“Nah.” Zabuza kicked his foot out over the edge of an asteroid, Blue’s form looking very close in space but still miles away. Scale was hard in space. “Clusters can be any size.”

“We were not born on the same day.” Kakashi, finally, relaxed into the arm thrown over his shoulder.

“Nah, we’re not.” Zabuza pressed lips to his hair, except how he didn’t, because they’re wearing space suits. Kakashi felt it anyway. He was getting the hang of this.

It was funny how much it didn’t matter.

“Minato and Princess Kushina will have a portal to us in no time,” He reassured Kakashi, trying not to think of how, if Uchiha had his Lion, he’d cut through the entire lot of them and save the goddamn galaxy all by himself.

Kakashi looked at him with silver eyes, catching that. He hummed.

“Nah, you wouldn’t.”

Zabuza felt Obito’s frustration at the back of his neck, Rin’s anger. Kisame’s quiet fury that someone had hurt his family.

“Nah, I wouldn’t.” He agrees.

They’d always have his back.

Being a Paladin means you’re never, ever alone.

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Note: This is my KakaZabu Week 2019 submission. It’s a one shot. Don’t ask me to write more for this verse.