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“C’mon, not right now,” Lance whispers, frantically jabbing at the controls on Blue’s dashboard. Nothing happens; not even a flash of light or any indication that she’s functional. Faintly, he can hear the fans running, but that’s all he has going for him right now. “The wormhole wasn’t that bad. Wake up, girl. Wake up.”
He knows without looking that even with Blue’s ability to maintain cabin pressure unaffected, the sheer force with which she was jostled around and squeezed by the collapsing wormhole did serious damage internally. Lance himself feels a dull ache from his definitely bruised ribs and swelling ankle, and his head and neck are killing him.
He groans angrily and leans back in his seat, popping his seat belt off and attempting to stretch the ache out of his bones. It doesn’t work very well.
This space war thing is bullshit. Some asshole fucked up their perfectly good teludav during a wormhole jump, and now he’s stranded in the middle of buttfuck nowhere in some random galaxy.
Excellent. Just peachy. Today cannot possibly get any worse.
“Blue, listen,” he says, feeling tears prick his eyes as he tries not to think about just how far his team must be. He hates being alone. “You gotta get up. We have to find everyone.”
His pleas are met by silence and darkness. He doesn’t know which is worse: the fear of being alone forever or the fear that his Lion -- his only company -- may be damaged beyond repair.
Unable to bring himself to stand, he just flops forward in the pilot’s seat, head in his hands, and wills himself not to cry until he understands the full extent of this dire situation. Instead, he tries his helmet.
“Hello? Is anyone out here? It’s Lance.”
Nothing. Not even static.
“Hunk? Shiro? Anyone? Do you copy?”
This goes on for -- according to the translator Pidge installed in their helmets -- ten minutes before he gives up and starts sobbing openly into his hands. It’s not that bad, he tells himself. They’ll find you eventually.
Get up and figure out where you are. Get your coordinates. Find resources.
He doesn’t. He just cries until he falls asleep again, wallowing in the self-pity that comes with the realization that he’s completely on his own on a foreign planet with no way of contacting his team and no way of leaving to search for them.
*
Dawn is much the same here as on Earth, just brighter. The star this planet orbits is closer and larger than the sun he knows and longs for, but waking up to the warmth of it shining in through Blue’s eyes is nostalgic enough to cheer him up.
Lance tries speaking with Blue again, but again receives no sign that she’s listening, or is capable of doing so. He finally hauls himself out of his seat -- yes, his ankle is sprained, but probably not broken -- and limps down the severe incline of the cockpit to pry open the emergency hatch and step outside. His helmet immediately begins running diagnostics.
“God bless you, Pidge,” he says to himself as everything is translated into English automatically.
Atmospheric Composition: 48% helium, 27% chlorine, 15.8% oxygen, 3.1% argon, 6.1% miscellaneous.
“Yikes,” he grumbles, not entirely sure he wants to try breathing whatever the fuck is happening out here. He has a suspicion that he might end up sounding like one of those annoying-ass chipmunks from those animated movies, if it doesn’t kill him.
It’s not a particularly impressive planet, although he’s lucky he landed somewhere that isn’t a barren wasteland. The thought of being stuck somewhere like Venus makes him shudder. The immediate area around his Lion is covered by spider-like plants in a dull grey-green, crunching under his boots, and out a couple dozen metres, scraggly trees with similar leaves sprout up. Further still, he can see a thickly overgrown forest with what appears to be a greater variety of plants. Hopefully, he won’t starve to death if his team never finds him.
But this has happened before, and they all turned out fine.
His helmet buzzes with static. He nearly jumps out of his skin, spinning in a tight circle and drawing his bayard before realizing it’s his own technology that’s making the noise.
“Hello?” he cries, desperate not to be alone, and he may just cry tears of joy when there’s a second stutter of static.
"...ce..? Lance?”
“Keith?! Holy quiznak! Are you okay? I never thought I’d actually be happy to hear your voice.”
“Where are you?” he sounds terrible, and not just because of the static. In all fairness, Red took a pretty solid beating right before the wormhole incident; Keith was left with less control over his Lion than any of them.
“I’m ... I don’t know. Um, there’s plants and the sky is kinda grey-ish yellow and the sun is enormous and orange and it’s really warm here.” Lance can feel his voice breaking more than he can hear it. “I know this is gonna sound really dumb but I’m so glad you’re okay. I thought I was gonna die out here alone.”
Keith pauses, and Lance fears they’ve lost connection for a moment before he speaks. Miraculously, he doesn’t take advantage of the situation to insult Lance (though, Lance isn’t being as antagonistic as usual). “That’s not dumb. I’m, uh, really glad you’re here, too.”
“Okay, I can’t do the heartfelt moment thing right now, sorry,” Lance says, trying to lighten the mood at the same time he tries to blink away the tears forming in his eyes. “I just,” he sniffles, “that was scary as hell and I never wanna do it again.”
He starts climbing up Blue’s dented exterior, aiming for a better vantage point in the hopes of spotting Red, unlikely as it seems. “What can you see from where you are?”
“Sky’s blue,” Keith grunts. “Dark blue. Like Earth at night.”
“Oh,” Lance says, disappointed. “You think we might still be on the same planet? What are the plants like?”
Keith takes a deep breath and Lance can hear the screech of shifting metal before he replies, “There aren’t any. And the sun isn’t up right now. Just a couple moons.”
Lance sits by Blue’s ear and instinctively starts rubbing his hand back and forth over it, pouting at the scratched blue paint. Just his luck. “Maybe we’re on different sides of the same planet?” he suggests.
"...Maybe,” Keith says, strained.
They sit in silence for a while before Lance speaks up, almost timidly. “Is Red working?”
Keith snorts. “No. Nothing’s working at all.” He sounds a lot less amused by this than he seems to want to sound. “What about Blue?”
“I, uh…” he leans his ear against her head, relieved to hear the faint whirring of the fans still. “She isn’t waking up, but I think she’ll be okay.”
“Do you think you can fix her?” Keith asks softly.
“I mean, I can try. I have no idea what’s wrong. But I can figure it out.” He slides off of Blue and lands in the crinkling underbrush. “We’ve got enough rations to last us a while. I’ll get it figured out, come find you, and we’ll be off! Just like that. No biggie.”
He isn’t alone. Not really. He isn’t alone and that’s enough to spur him into action. He’s going to get his Lion back in working order, he’s going to rescue Keith -- they’re going to be okay. He takes several deep breaths and then crawls back into Blue’s cockpit, through the door at the back of the room and into the corridor that branches off into several other rooms. There are red emergency lights flickering on and off, as good a sign as it is a bad one; something remains functional enough to maintain some power. “I don’t remember which one is the engine room,” he says, just for the sake of keeping the conversation alive. “I can hear the cooling fans, so I’m gonna follow them and hope for the best.”
“...’Kay,” Keith hums.
“There’s a couple of broken wires out here, though. I don’t know which ones to reconnect.” He accidentally kicks a plate of twisted metal and jumps so high his head hits a low-hanging pipe. “Quiznak! Hold on, I’m gonna see what the suit says.”
The suit, thankfully, is synced with the Lion well enough to run diagnostics on all the carnage he’s witnessing. He gets an eyeful of flashing red and orange circles, pointing out all the issues that need immediate attention and how to handle them. “I swear to god, I’m gonna kiss Pidge when we find her.”
Keith barks out a tiny laugh that turns instantly into a hacking cough, and Lance is about to ask what’s wrong when the comm goes silent. “Keith? Hey! Keith, what happened? Are you okay?”
Once again, he’s stuck in silence. No more static, no more voice. “Fuck!” Lance screeches, kicking the piece of metal again, so hard it skitters into the wall and ricochets off to hit him in the leg. Breaker cover, his helmet supplies helpfully, alongside a diagram of where it’s supposed to go -- if it were still flat, that is, and not some crazy junkyard art installation.
“Keith!”
This is so stupid. They just had to go lose a battle like that. They just had to make a wormhole jump at the exact wrong time. He just had to land here alone, with only Keith’s unreliable ass for company, and his stupid Lion just had to go and lose power on him, because why the fuck not! The universe clearly hates him anyway.
What the hell else could possibly go wrong?!
Lance slumps down right where he is and puts his chin on his knees. Deep breaths, he tells himself, breathing in slowly through his nose. He isn’t alone. That’s what matters.
Fix Blue. Get Keith. Find the team.
A simple, three-step plan.
He pulls off his helmet to wipe at his eyes. Fix Blue. Get Keith. Find the team.
“You got this, Lance,” he says aloud, cramming his helmet back on his head as it continues to feed him instructions for repairs.
*
“Lance?” Keith calls, just as he’s digging up the appropriate tools from the supply closet off the engine room. He sounds worse than before.
“Keith! Buddy! Are you okay?”
“Um…” Keith swallows audibly. “Think my ribs’re broken.”
Oh. Lance’s arms go limp. “Like, how badly?”
“Um,” Keith says again. “Bad. Hurts to breathe.”
“Shit,” Lance grumbles.
"Shit,” Keith agrees.
He gathers an armful of equipment and dumps it into the toolbox. “Okay, I’m working on Blue right now. The engine is okay, which means this definitely isn’t as bad as it looks, and Pidge’s Altean translator is giving me diagnostics and instructions through the helmet, so I kinda know what I’m doing. You can hold out for a few days, right?” The mounting desperation in his voice pitches it higher as he finishes rambling, but he swallows and moves on anyway. “Red still has those nasty food goo rations Hunk put in there, right?”
“Yeah.”
“Okay. Okay, good!” Lance clatters along to the far end of the engine room, where his helmet is telling him to rewire a panel and unblock a few of the cooling fans themselves. “Can you work on Red, too, and try to get her running? I’ll probably have Blue finished before then, but it’s worth a shot.”
"Yeah.”
Lance runs back out into the hall and starts flipping off everything on the breaker, since he has no clue which one affects the wires he’s about to mess around with. The red light dies and his helmet reacts instantly by lighting up all along the top edge of the visor and illuminating the space around him. In the relative silence, he’s painfully aware of how laboured Keith’s breathing is. How did he not notice that before?
“Are you okay?” he asks for about the fourth time in an hour. Look at him, being a caring teammate and whatever.
“‘M fine,” Keith mumbles.
“You’re not gonna like, pass out on me, right?”
“No,” he growls with conviction, like it’s some kind of challenge Lance has proposed to him.
Lance snorts and pulls on a pair of slightly charred gloves as he sits beside the open toolbox. “Good. Otherwise I’d have to tell everyone you’re a huge weakling who can’t handle a couple broken ribs.” He starts following the directions his helmet is shooting at him, grabbing at frayed wires with trembling hands and trimming them down to a utilizable state. It takes more effort than it should because he can’t stop shaking, because Keith is hurt badly enough he isn’t being as rude as usual in retaliation and he sounds like utter shit and he’s stranded somewhere Lance can’t even see him. “Fffu --!” He drops the wire cutters and puts his hands over his ears and tries to seize control of his own body again.
“Are you okay?” Keith asks him, interrupting his downward spiral.
“I am peachy,” Lance hisses back, snatching up the wire cutters again.
“Mm. Sounds like it.”
“Shut up, mullet.”
“You need to chill,” says Keith matter-of-factly. “You’re fine.”
“I -- urgh! I am chill! I’m just … I’m just stressed because someone got his dumb ribs broken and I have no earthly clue where the rest of our team is and I don’t wanna die out here alone with your stupid mullet ass as my only company.” He waves the cutters around spontaneously as he speaks. It’s … easier to focus, when Keith is actually participating in an argument, so he spurs it on.
“Rude,” Keith murmurs.
“Whatever!” he hisses back.
“You sound like a bitchy teenage girl.”
“Get quiznakked.”
“Fuck you.”
“No. Let me panic in peace.”
“Thought you didn’t wanna be alone.”
“Better than being stuck with you as my only conversation partner. You don’t even know how to make a good joke.” He finishes connecting the wires as per the instructions rolling by on his visor and slides across the floor to where some of the fans have become jammed and bent by the force of the collapsing wormhole and the collision with this planet.
“My jokes are great.”
“No, Keith. No, they are not.”
“Whatever.”
“Who’s the bitchy teenage girl, now?”
“You can’t see it, but I’m flipping you off right now.”
“Then what’s the point of flipping me off?”
“I dunno! It has more power than words!” Keith cries indignantly.
Lance laughs out loud to himself as he unscrews one of the most damaged fans and starts bending it back into shape. “Okay, buddy. You keep telling yourself that.” Keith coughs again and his comm goes dead … again. “What the hell, man?”
In a couple of seconds, he’s back. “I’m flipping you off with both hands now, asshole.”
“Gee, thanks. I feel so honoured.”
Keith doesn’t respond for a couple minutes, the sound of his unstable breathing the only sign he’s even there, and Lance grows increasingly concerned as he moves onto the fan that has a large piece of debris jammed between two of the blades. He has to remove that one entirely as well, and slide the scrap of metal out before screwing it back in place and giving it a test spin. “Keith? You still with me?”
“Trying to sleep.”
“We literally just woke up.”
“You did; I’ve been up all night. Let me sleep.”
Lance rolls his eyes. “Whatever, sleeping beauty. I’ll be over here doing something actually useful.”
Keith just hums in assent and his comm goes dead again. Lance finds himself irate with this, for some reason he can’t fathom. It isn’t like he wants to listen to his dumb teammate sleep, he just … likes knowing he’s still there.
“Hmph. Whatever. Stupid Keith.”
*
“Lance.”
Startled from his ministrations on the section of wall that was busted open outside the room where -- he’s recently discovered -- a chunk of Balmeran crystal is powering the engine that runs the Lion, he hits the back of his head off the top of the hole he’s crawled into. “He wakes! I was starting to think you were dead.”
“Har, har.”
“How’re you feeling?”
Keith ignores the question. “The sun’s up.”
“Oh.” Lance feels his breath catch in his chest. He wants them to be on the same planet so badly. Neither of them can fly anywhere in the condition they’re in.
“It’s ... small. And yellow. Really pale.”
Lance curses under his breath and sticks his head back in the wall, using the light from his helmet to see in the otherwise pitch-black interior. Of course they’re not on the same planet.
Apparently, things can get worse.
Keith appears to be thinking along the same lines. “Fuckin’ … bullshit. Just my stupid luck. Stupid shitty stupid wormhole,” he chokes, and Lance is pretty sure he kicks his Lion, if the metallic thunk that follows his quiet outburst is any indication.
They both need to stay calm in this situation, Lance knows. They’re both injured, and panicking even more than he already has isn’t gonna help. “On the bright side, this is the best I’ve ever done playing mechanic. I once blew up a simulator at the Garrison because I wanted to help out while Hunk was doing his training.”
“...Seriously?”
“Mm-hm. They almost kicked us out. My mom was pissed because they called demanding compensation or they’d boot me. So like...maybe Blue won’t explode when I start her up again.”
“Maybe,” Keith says; Lance can hear the eye-roll.
“I mean, I have very clear instructions literally shining right in my face. If I mess this up I’ll concede defeat to your useless ass.”
“Not useless,” Keith barks back without hesitation. He sounds kinda...out of it.
“You good?” Lance asks around a mouthful of wrench as he tries to adjust a vent that’s come loose.
“Fine. Just tired.”
“Dude, you just woke up. How are you tired again?”
“Can you cut me some slack? My ribs are powder right now.”
Lance winces. “That bad, huh?”
“Cabin depressurized in the wormhole. Everything kinda ... broke.”
“Including you?”
“Yeah. The um ... the g-force was ridiculous. I think I blacked out,” he says, somewhat sheepishly.
Grunting loudly as he shifts the vent back into place, Lance grimaces. “I can probably get this finished by tomorrow if I don’t sleep. Have you been eating? I don’t really know the protocol for crushed bones, but I feel like it’s gotta suck a lot less if you’re not also starving.”
He’s met with silence and the occasional spurt of static as Keith breathes. “Can’t move,” he admits finally.
“Perfect,” Lance mumbles. “Just...don’t die on me, okay? I’d rather have your dumb company than be alone with a busted robot lion ‘til the end of my days.”
“Ah, so you admit I’m tolerable.”
“'Tolerable' is the key word here, asshole.”
“At least I’m here.”
“Yeah, that’s doing me so much good.” Lance slams the section of wall back into place and starts checking the breakers again. Lights: check. Crystal: check. Engine: check. Fans: check. He sighs in relief and leaves those on while he sets to work on all the smaller problems scattered around the corridor, like missing screws and busted pipes, because he has no idea what’s truly important here so he might as well fix it all before trying anything to avoid another “incident” like the one at the Galaxy Garrison.
*
Eight hours later, he wakes up with his head still jammed under a pipe he was welding back together (which was beyond terrifying; he would not recommend screwing around with Altean welding equipment). “The hell…?”
A bout of wet coughing explodes in his ears, followed by a wretched gagging sound. “Keith?”
Keith inhales slowly, and it shudders horribly on the way back out. He throws up again. Lance is pretty sure Keith might be crying.
“Keith? Hey, what’s wrong? What’s happening?”
“I’m…” he breaks off into yet another coughing fit, but it’s feeble. He’s trying to hold back -- it’s probably doing a number on his ribs. “Fu-fuck.”
“Keith, seriously, you’re freaking me out.”
“Think it’s infected.”
“What’s infected, Keith? I thought you broke your bones.”
He’s subjected to another several minutes of listening to Keith gasp for air. “I lied,” he whispers.
“You what?”
“Lied,” he says, dragging it out too much. “Think a piece of the seat is...I dunno. It’s stuck. Can’t move.”
Lance drops the soldering gun he’s holding and sits up. “Stuck where?”
“...My chest.”
“Jesus … quiznak, Keith.” Lance puts his fingers over his temples, shifting his helmet up slightly over his forehead. “And you didn’t think this was important, why?”
“You sounded scared.”
“Oh my god. You’re such an idiot, you know? I could have been rushing this--”
“You already are. ‘M not stupid. I didn’t want to scare you more. Just,” he coughs again, still quietly, obviously trying not to disturb the metal stuck in his chest, “keep going.”
“How bad is it?”
“I-I dunno. Just hurts.”
“Keith, I am going to punch you so hard when I find you.”
Keith hums in response and Lance listens more carefully than before to the sound of shifting metal and the discontented noise he makes as he tries to move. Can he run suit diagnostics on another paladin?
One way to find out.
“Run full-body diagnostics on Red Paladin.”
A loading bar flashes before his eyes. Detecting...Scanning...Transferring.
Red Paladin: 412 fractures. Lance groans audibly as the screen shows him an image of every fracture and break in Keith’s bones highlighted in red. Body temperature 40 degrees Celsius/104 degrees Fahrenheit; BPM 125; severe blood contamination; acute blood loss -2.3 litres; blood loss continuous; severe internal bleeding; punctured lung--
“Stop! End diagnostics! Keith, what the hell is wrong with you? You’re dying!”
“I’ll be fine.”
“That fever alone could kill you. You’ve probably got brain damage! I can’t believe you right now. Why didn’t you say you needed help?”
"You are helping!”
“Obviously not well enough!” Reasonably, he understands, one of them has to be calm in this situation. Lance needs to be calm. Keith doesn’t have time for him to flip his lid. Unreasonably, the part of him that just needs to argue with Keith, because that’s all he knows, keeps going. “You think I’m gonna handle it okay if you just up and die on me and it’s my fault because I wasn’t good enough? You think Shiro is gonna forgive me for that?"
“Why … why do you even care? You don’t even like me.”
Lance bursts into tears before he can formulate a response. “Screw you, Keith.”
That shuts him up, which is unfortunately not what Lance needs right now -- he needs to make sure he’s okay, needs to know that he’s breathing, that the fever isn’t doing too much damage. He scrubs a hand over his face and bites the inside of his cheek, willing himself to stop crying. He picks up his toolbox and marches out into the cockpit to fix his main controls to the best of his ability.
On the other end of the comms, on some other lonely, barren planet in this lonely, barren solar system, Keith sniffles quietly as he tries to stop crying, too. “I’m … sorry,” he breathes after too many agonizing minutes tick by.
“Don’t go to sleep. Keep talking,” is all Lance says, unable to keep the anger out of his voice. He cracks open a section of the control panel and his helmet starts filtering out every issue it detects.
“I-I’m sorry,” Keith repeats, and it’s all wrong and drives a spike of pity into Lance’s heart. “I just didn’t want…”
“It’s fine. I get it. I probably would’ve done the same.”
Keith makes an awful choking noise and Lance distinctly hears him vomit again.
“Keep talking.”
“Hurts,” Keith pants, sounding like his throat is swelling shut.
“You’re delirious, too. Probably that fever you’ve been ignoring.”
“Sorry.”
“Stop.”
“‘S my fault this--”
“Keith.”
“I know you hate me. ‘S okay.” He exhales slowly; Lance can hear the way it bubbles deep in chest, and he has to squeeze his eyes shut and say a quick prayer to keep himself in line.
“You know I don’t.”
Defiant silence is his only answer.
“What does Red look like right now?”
Keith breathes wetly for a while. “Uhh, dark. None o’ the lights are working. Just … dashboard is crushed. Seat’s got metal bits sticking out. Got, um, blood, everywhere.”
“The sun still up?”
“‘S sunset.”
“Like on Earth?”
“...Yeah. Just like it.”
“Wish I could see. I miss Earth.”
“I don’t.”
Lance grins, but there’s no heart in it. “Aw, c’mon. You don’t mean that. Just because the Garrison was full of ass--”
“Lance?” Allura’s voice crackles through the comm, more distant and static-ridden than Keith’s. “Lance, are you there?”
“Allura! Oh my god! How did you find us?”
“Lance, thank goodness,” she sighs, clearer now. “We caught traces of a distress beacon from your Lion. We couldn’t pinpoint it at first because of the brevity, but we managed to follow it back to this solar system and I have a signal locked on your suit now. We’re on the way.”
Lance drops everything he’s holding back into the toolbox and runs it back to the supply room. “No, no, no. Get Keith first. He’s hurt. Keith? You with me? Allura’s on the way.”
“We’re already landing, Lance. Shiro is coming to get you.”
“No, Allura, Keith is more important right now. Seriously--”
“Get in the pilot’s seat, Lance,” Shiro says.
“Shiro, Keith’s hurt really badly, I’m not kidding you.” He listens anyway, skidding into the cockpit and buckling the belt over his tender ribs just as the Black Lion lands beside him and scoops Blue into her mouth.
“We have his coordinates. We’re going now. Follow us, Shiro.”
A wormhole opens in the overcast sky. The castleship disappears inside, with Shiro trailing directly behind them. It opens on a slate grey planet with several large bodies of dark blue water covering the surface, and the castleship immediately dips down towards a belt of dry land. Shiro pushes Black ahead of them.
“Keith, do you copy?” Lance asks, desperate. “We’re on our way. Keith?”
Shiro lands and Lance is tumbling out of his Lion before his visor can even close completely. Red is only a few yards away, scorched exterior making her look more black than anything, one eye cracked all the way across, jaw clamped firmly shut. Lance struggles to open it for several seconds before Shiro joins him, and as soon as he can squirm through the opening, he does, pulling himself into the darkening cockpit.
“Keith!”
Keith doesn’t answer. He’s sitting upright in his seat, pinned in place by a long scrap of metal that enters through his lower right ribcage and sticks out the back of the chair. His head is slumped forward, chin brushing his chest, and his suit is covered in a disturbing mixture of what appears to blood and yellowish bile full of red and orange spots.
Lance has no idea how to get him out of there.
Everything is ruined. He can’t even see a feasible way to get his legs out from under the dashboard. His armour is beyond repair, shattered in several places and missing altogether in others; his helmet has collapsed inwards so much it’s probably stuck on his head.
He can’t help the distressed noise he makes as he drops to his knees beside Keith. “Hey, buddy, it’s okay. We’re gonna get you out of here.”
His hand slides up to Keith’s throat, feeling for a pulse under his feverish skin; it’s there, fluttering faintly, and he sighs in relief. “Keith? I need you to stay with me, okay? Just listen. I know you can hear me.”
Shiro finally forces his way through the gap Lance left behind. He gasps when he gets a good look at Keith. “Allura, I don’t know if we can do this. I need you on the ground.”
“I’m on my way,” Allura says tensely.
“Shiro, is he gonna be okay?” Lance asks, lifting Keith’s head to make it easier to breathe. There’s blood spotting his lips and sweat dripping off his skin.
Shiro manoeuvres behind Keith and tries to bend the pulverized console up and away from him without disturbing the metal lodged in his chest. “I’m not sure,” he says, too much defeated honesty in his voice. He looks like he’s been to hell and back, now that Lance is actually paying attention.
“Keith,” he tries again, running a thumb over his sweltering cheek. “Allura’s coming to help. Just hold on for a sec.”
Red’s jaw creaks ominously and then Allura is beside him, eyes firm and expression unwavering as she grabs hold of the dashboard and bends it upwards without so much as grunting. “You did really good. You’re stronger than I am, going through this and making it out okay. Just keep breathing.” His voice drops to a whisper, hidden by the groan of the twisting console. “I need you to keep breathing for Shiro, okay? He’s here; he can’t handle losing you.” Beneath his fingers, Keith’s pulse thrums vehemently, like hummingbird’s wings, then starts to abate. Lance presses his hands tighter around his face.
“I don’t hate you,” he tells his unresponsive teammate, suddenly frantic. “Please don’t think I do. Please don’t die. I don’t want you to die thinking I hate you. I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry, I--”
The squelching sound as Allura tears the sheet of metal from Keith’s chest is enough to send him reeling backwards, fingers still gripping frenziedly at Keith -- he needs to keep him close, and he can’t understand why, not while panic and dread and guilt boil in his stomach.
Allura grabs Keith around his shoulders and below his knees and runs out of Red, chattering about the healing pods. Lance takes off after her, struggling to keep up before he even exits the Lion -- Altean stamina is ridiculous. His heightened emotional state is exacerbating his issue. He stumbles halfway to the castle and just lets himself collapse, hugging his knees, sobbing openly because he doesn’t know what else to do.
“Lance, it’s okay,” Shiro is saying, coming up behind him and looking even more haggard in the dying light of the distant sun. “He’ll be okay.” It sounds hollow and unconvincing.
“It’s my fault,” Lance laments, letting Shiro pull him to his feet and slumping against him. “I should’ve known. I-I should’ve worked faster. He didn’t tell me it was that bad.”
Shiro smiles carefully at him. “Keith isn’t the most open person.”
“He might die! He might die and it’s gonna be my fault because I didn’t get to him fast enough and he spent that whole time like that like it was no big deal and I don’t know what I’m supposed to do Shiro I don’t hate him I--” He breaks off to gasp for air.
“I know,” Shiro says. “I know. It’s okay.”
“He thinks I hate him!” Lance wails as they shuffle through the doors of the castle together.
“He knows you don’t.”
“He said I do! He said it’s okay that I hate him but I don’t!” Lance knows he’s being unreasonable; Shiro is just trying to do damage control and he’s making his job infinitely harder. He just … can’t shake the horrible feeling plaguing his body, the gravity of this whole situation bearing down on him all at once and dragging him beneath the surface of everything dark and ugly he’s ever thought.
“Lance…” Shiro tries.
“Lance!” Hunk is sweeping him up in a hug as soon as they’ve descended the steps to the infirmary. “You’re okay!”
Lance just clings to him and weeps, and Hunk shoots Shiro a bewildered look as his friend breaks down and cries into his shirt.
“Keith’s in bad shape,” he explains, moving past them and brushing a hand over Lance’s shoulder on his way by. Hunk turns to guide Lance after Shiro.
The pod is just closing around Keith when they round the bend into the room, where Allura stands straight-backed and trembling minutely. Her hands and flight suit are soaked in blood and pus, tiny rivulets of pink running off her clenched fists. “I … I didn’t want this,” she says quietly, then turns and stalks out of the room.
Lance doesn’t waste time in moving to stand before the pod in which Keith is enclosed. He looks worse than Lance had expected. The least Allura could have done was hide all that damage with one of the white bodysuits. She must not have had time -- he’s just stripped down to his boxers, which puts the carnage on display. The crescent-shaped hole through his chest is surrounded by yellow and green bruising, harsh red swelling, and dark veins branching out across his ribcage and down his stomach. Even through the blue-tinted exterior, he can see the pus that’s built up around the edge of the wound.
The rest of his body is no better off -- everything seems to be bruised to some degree, from the sickeningly purple welt that starts at his eyelid and disappears under his hairline to the web-like green-and-black marks sprawling down his arms and legs. He’s covered head to toe in other, minor cuts and scrapes, though his left thigh looks as though a piece of his armour collapsed inward on it when it shattered.
Lance remembers the visual from the diagnostics he ran, and every broken and fractured bone it detected. He also remembers the amount of blood he lost and can’t help but compare this knowledge to how pale he is.
This damaged, sickly creature is not the Keith he’s been bantering with for several days.
“He could’ve died,” Lance whispers, gaze locked on the awkward angle of Keith’s right forearm. “If you’d just been a couple minutes later…” He shudders.
Hunk is beside him again instantly. “But he didn’t. We got him out of there, and he’ll be okay.”
There’s a strain in his voice as he takes in the sight of Keith so clearly teetering on the edge of death. The way Lance sees it. The only way Lance can see it.
Anger seizes him again. “He’s stupid. I was right there, in the same solar system, I could’ve gotten to him faster if he wasn’t so…so--”
“This isn’t anybody’s fault, Lance,” Shiro interjects, and Lance startles, having assumed he’d gone after Allura. “Stop trying to place blame. Neither of you did anything wrong.”
He turns back to face Keith, trailing his hand over the outer edge of the healing pod. He can’t tell if the blue on Keith’s lips is from oxygen deprivation or just an effect of the pod’s glow. He can’t tell if the tears on his own face are real or an illusion of his reflection. Hunk pulls him into another warm embrace.
“This space war thing is bullshit,” he sniffles.
“I know,” Hunk says.
“He’s my friend. I...I…”
“I know,” Hunk repeats, turning Lance’s face gently away from Keith. “C’mon. You need to heal, too. Let’s get your armour off.”
“No,” Lance growls, vehement, breaking away from Hunk’s grip. “I’m staying out here.”
Taken aback, Hunk gapes at him for a few seconds. “Lance, I hate to be rude, but you look like shit--”
“Oh, I look like shit? Do you not see what Keith--”
“And you’re emotionally compromised and I just want what’s best for you!”
“Knock it off!” Shiro shouts over their bickering, stepping closer as though to physically separate them.
Lance … really doesn’t have the energy to fight this. “Fine. Fine! I’ll get in a pod! But if he comes out of there while I’m healing, I’ll toss your mattress out the airlock.”
“That’s fair. He’s going to be healing for a couple days. Come on. Sleepy-time.”
Feeling uncannily like a misbehaving duckling being coddled by its angry mother, Lance starts shedding his outer armour. Shiro shuffles out into the hall to give them some privacy.
Hunk presents him with one of the white suits designed for use in the healing pods. “He’ll be fine.”
“I know. I just, ugh, I dunno. This isn’t what I wanted when I said I’d join Voltron.”
“What isn’t?”
“All of this!” Lance gestures to the space around them. “Never seeing my family again! Being in constant danger of dying! Just, everything with Keith!”
Hunk folds his arms over his chest and smiles softly. “What about him?”
“Don’t,” Lance pokes him harshly in the shoulder. “Don’t even. You know exactly what my problem is.”
“Tell him.”
“He thinks I hate him! He said that out loud to me right before…” He trails off and rubs a hand over his aching eyes. This is too much. The emotional toll of the past few days has ruined him. “I dunno. My head hurts.”
“‘Kay.” Pulling him close with one arm, Hunk plants a huge, wet kiss on his cheek. “Goodnight.”
“Disgusting,” Lance grumbles halfheartedly, turning to step into a healing pod, watching as Hunk activates it. He’s asleep before the blue film has even finished covering the entire width of the pod.
*
In the middle of toppling onto the floor, Lance wakes with a start and catches himself. “Damn,” he says under his breath, pushing himself back to his feet and stretching the ache from his bones, satisfied with the sound of his joints popping.
He rubs at his eyes and glances around the dark room, unsurprised to find Shiro sitting against the wall opposite Keith, head tilted back and eyes closed.
The circles under his eyes are so dark they look like they’ve been painted on.
Out of courtesy, Lance tiptoes past and settles as slowly as humanly possible against the side of Keith’s healing pod.
“Hey,” he whispers, resting his forehead on the translucent exterior. “Please be okay.”
He can’t even bring himself to look up at Keith and check his progress. It’s too much to risk seeing again.
Instead, he eyes Shiro’s sleeping face, watching the rise and fall of his chest. He needs the rest. Lance sighs and drops his gaze to the floor. “I don’t hate you,” he says, so softly that some of the syllables are lost in his breath.
The drowsiness that comes with being in the pod for an extended period of time is overcoming him. He fights it for a few minutes longer. He knows his body needs to recuperate from such an intense and accelerated healing process, but he needs to keep an eye on his teammates.
“Don’t hate you,” he tells Keith again, yawning.
He wakes up with a blanket over his shoulders and Shiro watching him from the same spot across the room.
“Good morning.”
“Hey, Shiro. How is he?” Lance worms a hand out from under the blanket to rub at the buildup of gunk in his eyes.
“Better,” Shiro says vaguely, and he forces a smile. “So, uh, how was your time away?”
Lance snorts. “‘Bout as good as it looks like it was.”
Shiro hums his acknowledgement. “Now that you’re awake, are you going to stay here?”
“Yes,” he says unhesitatingly, taken aback by his own decisiveness on the matter.
“Okay.” Shiro nods. “Okay. Keep an eye on him. I have to go help.”
“Help? With what?”
Shiro has already stood and started to walk towards the door, but he pauses and turns incrementally towards Lance, who can’t help but see the open emotion on his face as he speaks. “Help with searching. We, uh … we still haven’t found Pidge.”
“Oh,” is all Lance can say.
Shiro leaves.
Lance has a whole new shroud of worry ruining his mood.
Pidge is probably fine. She’s a tough little shit. He keeps telling himself this as he tucks himself as close to the edge of the cold healing pod as humanly possible. Pidge is fine. Keith is fine. This isn’t the end of the world … er, universe.
“Pidge is fine,” he says, finally turning to gaze up at Keith’s significantly less bruised face.
“You okay?” Hunk asks, strolling casually into the infirmary and making Lance jump a full foot in the air.
“Jesus! Fuck! Quiznak, Hunk, fuck! I’m fine!” He puts a hand over his heart and wills himself not to die of fright.
Hunk snorts and sets a tray of food in front of him. He looks pretty tired, too, now that he thinks about it. He’s sure Allura and Coran are no better off. “You sure about that?”
“Yeah, I’ll live. I heard about Pidge. Are you okay?”
Hunk thinks on it for a second. “I will be,” he says honestly.
“Once we find her?”
“Once we find her, yeah.”
*
Keith spends another twenty hours (vargas?) in the healing pod. Lance starts counting down obsessively at the ten hour mark.
At the five hour mark, Hunk comes running into the med bay to announce that they’re on their way to pick up Pidge. He feels bad that he isn’t able to match Hunk’s energy level as his best friend twirls him around the room a few times, then bolts off to get his armour. He just slumps back down against the pod as soon as Hunk has disappeared.
He can’t help thinking about everything that could still go wrong. Keith was, essentially, dead when Allura put him in the pod. He was running a fever high enough to kill anyone, or at the very least cause brain damage, and on top of that he’d sustained several head injuries. Lance worries his thumbnail between his teeth as he glances up at the timer on the pod for the millionth time, then at Keith’s face, now free of bruises.
Waiting is killing him.
Opportunistically, Coran strolls in just as Lance sighs in defeat and flops back onto the cold floor. “Number Three, can’t say I’m surprised to find you here still.” He sets a pillow and several water pouches on the floor on his way by.
Lance barely raises his head to glance at him as he stops in front of the pod and starts pressing buttons on the control pad. “Mnnmghh,” he groans, like it’s an adequate response.
“Something on your mind?”
Coran is smiling too kindly at him, too knowingly. Lance just sighs again. “What if he isn’t okay?”
“What do you mean?”
“What if … what if his personality is different? Or he has amnesia? Or he can’t read anymore, or … or he doesn’t remember how to fight, or--?”
“Woah, slow down.” Coran holds both hands up in a placating gesture, then offers one to Lance when he sees his jaw snap shut. He helps him to his feet and puts his hands on Lance’s shoulders. “Why would any of those things happen?”
“Because … because human’s brains are fragile. It’s so easy to mess them up, and Keith took a lot of damage when the wormhole glitched. So what if the pod doesn’t heal his brain right?” Lance turns his head and focuses his gaze on Keith, subconsciously moving closer to the luminescent blue encasing him.
“No need for concern, my boy.” Coran claps him jovially on the back. “These are made with quality Altean technology. Nothing they can’t do in a pinch!”
“I-I dunno,” Lance whispers, leaving out the, I just need him to be okay. Coran tugs on his sleeve, and when Lance turns back towards him, he’s drawn into an embrace.
“He’ll be alright,” Coran says softly. “Just wait here for him.”
*
Two hour mark.
Pidge is in the healing pod next to Keith’s, and now Lance has Hunk sitting with him in a nest of blankets they’ve built on the floor. He uses Hunk’s chest as a pillow as he lies back and alternates between staring at the ceiling and watching the agonizingly slow countdown to the pod opening.
“Twenty-two vargas,” Hunk announces, holding out a bag of space chips for Lance to take some. He shakes his head, and Hunk shrugs.
“This one’s … just under two hours. However many ‘vargas’ that is.”
“I think waiting around like this is stressing you out.”
Lance tilts his head back to glare at Hunk. “You don’t say.”
“What are you planning to do when he wakes up?”
“Well, I did tell him I’d punch him.”
“What?”
Lance shrugs. “We were arguing and I told him I’d punch him when I found him. But I obviously didn’t get the chance, so now I’ve gotta make good on my promise.”
“You’re going to … punch Keith when he comes out of cryostasis?”
The tips of his ears flare red. “Yeah,” he breathes weakly, the pitch of his voice climbing steadily as he continues, “I’m gonna … I’m gonna punch his mouth … with mine.”
Hunk barks out a laugh. “Finally.”
“Only if he’s okay with it! Or maybe, uh, maybe I should just leave him alone. Maybe it’s not so bad he thinks I hate him?” Lance drags himself up to sit cross-legged on the blankets. “Because what if I tell him and he hates me?”
“Come on,” Hunk grumbles, throwing an arm dramatically over his face. “You got me all excited there. You are not allowed to back out now.”
“I’m having a crisis, Hunk, I can do what I want.”
One hour to go, and Hunk has dug a deck of cards out of one of his pockets. They’ve settled into a basic game of Go Fish.
“You got, uhh, a five?”
“Go fish.”
Lance groans and fumbles for a new card, head back on Hunk’s chest. Hunk slips one into his hand.
“Queen?”
“Ugh.” Lance blows a raspberry and passes his queen to Hunk, who chuckles. “Are you peeking at my cards?”
“Pshh, no.”
He gasps and sits upright. “You can totally see my cards, you jerk.” He can’t believe what a cheater his best friend is. Hunk holds his hands up in surrender while Lance whacks him repeatedly with his hand of cards.
“Cut me some slack, I’m having a crisis, too, you know!”
“Cheater!”
“Hey,” Hunk snatches his cards from him and starts shuffling them back into the deck, “I resent that. I am an opportunist.”
“Cheater,” Lance grumbles again, crossing his arms and pouting. He knows he’s being childish, and he has no right to complain because he cheats at card games all the time, but he’s just so beyond stressed out and frustrated that he’s desperate for an outlet.
Seeming to sense this, Hunk wraps him up in a big, warm hug. “Look, you’ve got fifty doboshes left. Want me to go get some snacks for when he wakes up?”
Lance nods sheepishly, then curls his fingers into the front of Hunk’s shirt to hold him in place. “In a minute.”
“Okay.” Hunk nods, rubbing slow circles on his back. “In a minute.”
Lance does not possess the courage for this. His heart is going to beat right out of his chest. The timer on the pod is clicking steadily through the seconds, and through the ticks, and the slightly asynchronous tempo is driving him crazy. He’s barely got thirty seconds left until Keith wakes up.
Hunk already left to give them some privacy.
He made gross kissy faces at Lance before the doors closed on him, and Lance still can’t will away the ruddy cheeks.
Twenty-five. Lance glances hopefully up at Keith’s peaceful face. It looks like there was never anything wrong with him. Like he wasn’t almost pulverized by a collapsing wormhole, and he didn’t crash his Lion on some barren planet and spend several days lying there, injured, doing nothing. Probably in a lot of pain.
He looks like he didn’t get impaled, get blood poisoning, break every bone in his body, and almost die.
Except, that’s all Lance can see, even when Keith looks as healthy as ever.
Even when the timer hits zero and Keith wakes up cradled in his arms, he can’t stop picturing this boy he’s grown so fond of broken like that. He can’t stop himself from crying and clinging tighter to Keith.
“--the fuck?” Keith slurs, struggling to support his own weight. Sleep chamber legs are a bitch. “‘m I dead?”
Lance cries louder, hiding his face in Keith’s messy hair. “Nope. Nope, you’re okay. Oh my god, you’re okay.” Keith doesn’t fight his embrace, which he takes as a good sign as he begins to rock back and forth. “Oh my god. Are you okay?” He takes Keith’s face in his hands and leans back to examine him.
“What do you mean?” Keith asks, still looking somewhat dazed and groggy from his time in the pod. One hand reaches up to wrap around Lance’s wrist, like he’s grounding himself.
“Do you remember me? Do you remember what happened?”
“Do I--?” The fog in Keith’s eyes clears quickly and he frowns at Lance. “Why wouldn’t I remember your annoying ass chatting away in my ear while I was on my deathbed?”
“Oh, thank god,” Lance sighs. He doesn’t let go of Keith’s face.
Now Keith’s cheeks are red, too.
“I thought you died,” Lance says, soft.
Keith swallows and squeezes his wrist. “I didn’t. You got me in time.”
“You scared the crap out of me.”
“You don’t hate me.” He says it like it’s still a question -- like there’s still something tentative about it. “I … did you…? You said you didn’t hate me.”
Lance shakes his head. Oh god, his heart. “I’m sorry I made you think I did.”
“So, you..?” Keith’s expression twists around into confusion, then disbelief. “Are we--?”
“I, um,” Lance interrupts, one thumb tentatively stroking the cool edge of Keith’s cheekbone, “the opposite of hate you,” he finishes lamely.
Keith snorts, then -- even though he’s blushing like crazy -- bursts into laughter.
“Hey,” Lance snaps. “I’m trying to make a confession, here!”
“You’re, uh,” he pats Lance’s shoulder. “You’re doing great. Go on.”
“You’re ruining it.” Lance pouts.
“You had at least two days alone with me to say this,” Keith counters.
After a few seconds of glaring and only receiving a hopeful grin in return, Lance relents. “I’m going to kiss you, then,” he says, determination lighting up every nerve in his body.
“Okay,” Keith breathes, suddenly looking apprehensive again.
His hands are still cupping Keith’s face, and the lingering cold of the cryopod has begun to dissipate under his touch. He leans forward and presses their lips together in a brief, gentle kiss.
“Okay,” he murmurs, barely pulling back.
Keith’s arms loop around the back of his neck and drag him into a much firmer kiss, pressing their chests together and shuffling closer. Lance gasps a little and tangles his fingers in Keith’s hair.
“You don’t hate me,” Keith says again when they break apart for air.
“I never hated you.” He tucks a strand of hair behind Keith’s ear and gives him a hesitant smile. “I really, really like you, though.”
“Oh, good. Me, too,” Keith says, smiling back, as he pulls Lance into yet another kiss.
*
“You made Lance cry?” Pidge splutters around a mouthful of Hunk’s famous Space Pizza.
“Yeah, I guess.” Keith shrugs when everyone turns to look at him.
“He did,” Hunk insists again, apparently determined to embarrass the actual soul out of his best friend. “It was gross and desperate and he got snot all over my shirt, and he was all, ‘Oh, Hunk, my lord and saviour, help me, help me, I looove him!’” Hunk winks at Keith, who flushes red to the tips of his ears and glares down at his plate.
“Did not,” Lance whines, crossing his arms and imitating Keith’s position.
“That’s mad gay,” Pidge says analytically, scarfing down more pizza.
Lance pouts and sticks his tongue out at Hunk. “You know I’ve got dirt on you, too, you big mean--”
“I yield!” Hunk puts a hand up in mock surrender. “Don’t tell all my secrets to the whole castle!”
Keith scoffs. “Pidge and I don’t count as the whole castle.”
Lance watches a mouse scurry past along the bottom edge of one of the couches and shudders. “Hunk’s right. The walls have ears here.”
“Anyway, my point is that you can’t tell my secrets to the castle but I can tell yours because you broadcast them in the middle of the med bay for three straight hours.”
“Okay, well,” Keith stands and abandons his plate as he makes a beeline for the door. “This was fun.”
“You held my snack food hostage, Lance,” Hunk hisses. “I sat in the hallway thinking about muffins while you made out with--”
“You’re scaring my boyfriend away, Hunk,” Lance whines. He hurries after Keith and ignores whatever else Hunk starts saying to him in favour of hopping out the door and right into Keith’s path. “Wait!” he whisper-screams, grabbing his shoulders.
Keith rears back, clearly startled by Lance’s surprise appearance. “What?!”
“Let’s go embarrass Hunk and Pidge by acting all lovey-dovey in front of them while they try to eat.” He waggles his eyebrows suggestively and Keith barely suppresses an amused smirk.
“Yeah? How?”
“Like this!” Lance presses a kiss to his forehead, then his nose. “And this!” he adds, kissing both cheeks, too, before planting a wet, loud kiss right on his lips. “And we can tell them all about what an emotional wreck you made me by almost dying.”
“You can. I want to hear more about that.”
“C’mon.” Lance slings an arm around Keith’s shoulders and steers him back into the common room, continuing to kiss his face as they walk. “We’re gonna be the universe’s most sappy, embarrassing couple and totally ruin their day.”
“Works for me,” Keith laughs, lacing their fingers together.