Do you ever just start remembering how Keith, during ones of the hardest trials and bone dead exhausted and wanting comfort, wasn't desperate to his mother or father, despite the fact that the whole reason he was there was to find answers about them and himself, but that he was desperate to see Shiro? And then you start hurting and you're down for the count for the rest of the day? They love each other so much and I can't handle it.

ok thanks for breaking me. honestly i was thinking about this yesterday and crashing people’s dms about it, because i’m pretty sure the blade of marmora was shiro’s trial as much as it was keith’s, if not more.

half of this episode is from shiro’s perspective, and every scene has some variation of this exchange: shiro implying that keith will never give up the knife, and kolivan assuring him that if that’s the case, keith will die. the one being tested here–either literally or from a narrative perspective–is shiro:

at the start of the episode, shiro is in a really bad place with keith. he tells keith he needs to get himself together if he’s going to lead the team one day, implying his own loss–which he knows will hurt keith, and then he doesn’t have keith’s back in a dangerous situation. like just look at how this scene is framed:

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