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It’s not funny, but Lance is laughing. He’s not really sure why. It might be because the pain is making him delirious. Or maybe the situation is just so absurd that he can’t help but laugh.
See, most of the time when Lance survives something that very well could’ve killed him, he’s shocked and then amazed. Sometimes, he only manages to stay awake for another minute or two before he’s out cold and being rushed to a pod.
It’s not his fault, genuinely. They’ve all had brushes with death during the war, and they’re chilling to the bone and a little bit traumatizing every time, but they always seem to make it out of them.
What Lance isn’t used to, however, is making it through something that should’ve killed him and then realizing that he might still die anyway. That is, because he’s trapped and his team can’t reach him, and if he passes out he might never make it to a pod.
Okay, a little backstory might help.
It was an unexpected battle, but really, half they battles they end up in they’re not expecting, so it’s not like this was really anything out of the ordinary. They rushed to their lions and zipped out into space all Voltron-like, no big deal.
And the battle was going fine at the beginning, too. They were crushing the Galra, taking out fighter jets as easily as ever and even blowing up a few cruisers in the process. But it wasn’t until the Galra started heading for a nearby planet — the five of them following immediately, because they can’t leave a random planet full of people defenseless — when they realized that they were winning so easily for a reason.
Turned out, the Galra had a new weapon that they were hoping to test on Voltron. And, boy, did it work!
There was this eery, glowing light. It was different from your usual kind of laser beam, and Lance didn’t like the look of it at all. But they were aiming it at Red — at Keith — and Lance wasn’t about to let that slide. Because Keith was distracted fighting a group of jets and he didn’t see the laser coming and he didn’t hear the warning Lance shouted at him over the comms, and Lance wasn’t about to just let him get hit with some new, funky laser.
Honestly, Lance didn’t expect it to be a big deal. Like, getting hit with a normal laser beam is never a good experience. It fries their brains and rattles their teeth, sure. But the lions are usually fine, if a bit slower, after getting hit. And obviously Lance knows that Keith hates it when someone else takes a shot meant for him, but Lance couldn’t help it.
He’s in love with the idiot.
Anyway, he flew at Keith at full speed, knocking him out of the way to safety. And before Lance could follow him out of the blast zone, he was being fried — something totally different from any laser he’d experienced before.
He remembers screaming. Writhing in his seat and yanking on the controls, trying to get Blue out of there. But worse than the pain was the sudden silence.
First it was the comms — short-circuited by the blast — and then it was Blue. That connection between them was silent, Blue totally dead in the water, and Lance was freaking out. He couldn’t hear his teammates, couldn’t feel Blue — couldn’t even feel the other lions in that weird, distant way that he usually does. It was like he was just suddenly, unexpectedly alone.
And then it went dark. Blue just shut down, her screens no longer showing Lance their surroundings. The interior lights flickered off. And Lance was suddenly rising out of his seat, only kept in place by the straps holding him down — he was falling.
“Blue!” he’d shouted, trying desperately to direct her. But the thrusters were stuck in place and they wouldn’t have done anything, even if they could move. Not if Blue was completely out of commission. “Blue, wake up!”
Blue didn’t wake up, long story short. And Lance doesn’t know how long he fell for — doesn’t know how the hell he even survived — but at some point, he hit the ground.
Aaand he doesn’t really know what happened after that. He woke up recently, unsure of how long it’s been. It’s still dark in Blue, and… God, he doesn’t even know what’s wrong with him. Something serious, for sure.
Like, his head is throbbing. His helmet fell off during the impact, or maybe it split open, or something. Either way, it’s gone. There’s something wet dripping past Lance’s eye, which at first he thought were tears — he’s definitely in enough pain to be crying — but he eventually realized was blood.
And he knows that’s not the only place where he’s bleeding, too. He’s not sure how it happened, whether it was the force of the impact or whether some part of the machinery inside of Blue came lose and hit him, but he can feel that same wetness on other parts of his body. Random hotspots of pain.
“Lance!” someone calls, followed by a deep, metallic banging. Right — he hasn’t even gotten to the funny part yet.
Not only did Lance survive a however-long fall to the ground. He also, very helpfully, landed face-down. As in, Blue is unresponsive and can’t open her mouth, and Lance couldn’t even crawl out that way even if he could open her mouth on his own, because it’s trapped in the ground.
That’s why Lance is currently hanging from his seat, the straps digging into his shoulders and waist and keeping him from becoming a Lance-shaped blanket over the control panel.
He wants to respond to his friends, honestly. He’s heard them call his name a few times now. But every time he tries to respond, he finds himself choking on the blood that spills out of his mouth. So he just laughs instead, albeit soundlessly.
Oh yeah, one last thing he forgot to mention — something is buried in the side of his chest, near his shoulder. Like, gone all the way through it, and also through the chair behind him. He’s stuck in place, and if the blood he keeps coughing up is any indication, he’d put his money on some type of lung injury. If he’s lucky enough that whatever he’s impaled on isn’t actually puncturing his lung, then he must’ve fucked it up some other way. Hence all the rattling breaths.
Ugh, finally. All caught up.
“Lance!” someone calls again. Bang! Bang! Bang!
This time, Lance recognizes the voice as belonging to Keith.
Now, the guilt really starts to get to him. Knowing that his friends are out there, desperate for a response, while he’s totally aware. It’s too hard to talk, though. Trust him, he’s tried. But Lance kicks at his chair weakly, hoping they can hear it. Thud, thud, thud.
“Lance?” Keith says, his voice muffled from the other side of Blue’s hull. “Was that you?”
Thud.
“He’s awake in there,” Keith says to someone, his voice lower — not directed at Lance. Still, Lance deciphers the true meaning to what he said. He’s alive in there.
“That weapon deactivated Blue,” Pidge’s voice says, pitched louder to explain to Lance what he’s already figured out. “Hunk’s walking Allura and Coran through the steps to reboot Blue from the castle. Do you think you can wait?”
Lance doesn’t kick the chair this time. He’s not sure. He can hear his breath rasping through his chest more than he can feel it. And while he’s inclined to say that yes, he can wait, he’s just really not sure. How long will that take? Because if Lance really thinks about it, he’s pretty sure he’s woken up three separate times now, since crashing, and each time he’s been awake for shorter and shorter periods of time. He’s not sure how many more times he can wake up.
“Lance?” Keith’s voice comes again. Lance hears him, though he sounds faraway.
Jesus, this is exhausting. And… well, not just this.
Because yes, this is exhausting. Staying awake despite the excruciating pain. Waiting for help to arrive, if it’ll arrive, or otherwise waiting for Blue to come back online. And, once she does, somehow managing to navigate her, despite the fact that he’s been impaled and not even sure if he can move his arms — he hasn’t tried. Of course this is exhausting, is what he’s trying to say.
But also, just… everything. Waking up every day, and not knowing what to expect. Not knowing if they’ll have to fight — in their lions, or on a planet, or after invading some enemy ship. Not knowing who they’ll try to recruit to the coalition, or what they’ll want from them in exchange for their alliance. Not being able to sleep through the night, every night. Not being able to just live, without fearing for his life, and his friends’ lives. Not being able to love the way he’s always wanted to love.
And not just because he’s not on earth, but because he hasn’t wanted to risk it. Saying it to Keith. Because that could change everything, and not necessarily in a good way.
So, yeah. Lance is exhausted. And that doesn’t mean he wants to die, but it does mean that he would really fucking like to go to sleep.
“Lance!” Keith says again, his voice more urgent this time, and Lance kicks his chair in response because he can’t help it. He doesn’t want Keith to give up on him. “Tell Hunk to hurry up,” Keith snaps.
“He’s going as fast as he can,” Pidge snaps back.
Ah, classic. Tensions rising. Somehow, they all end up pissed at each other when another one of them is in danger.
Lance reaches for the thing impaled in his chest, just wanting to get a feel for it. Because despite the depressing angle his thoughts have taken, he really does love being a paladin. Helping people who need it and exploring the universe and getting to have a grand adventure. Dangerous and terrifying and painful and scary, sure, but exciting and amazing and fun and exhilarating, too.
He doesn’t want to die. Not right now and not anytime soon.
Whatever’s impaling him is thick — it’s slippery with blood, and Lance feels nauseous touching it. He coughs, and keeps coughing, and it makes his body ache as he jolts around the thing inside him.
“He’s coughing!” someone shouts.
“I hear that!”
“Hunk needs to hurry up—”
“He is hurrying—”
“Lance is dying!”
“You’re not helping!”
The lights flicker on, suddenly. Lance squints against the light, and then blinks when the scene before him starts taking shape, starts making sense.
Uh oh.
That’s… more blood than he was expecting. It’s pooled on the control panel, dripping off the end of the pipe sticking out of him. Lance feels dizzy.
“..qrss—ssh… csstsssts…”
Lance peels his gaze away from the control panel and up to the screens above it. The images are staticky, crackling into place, just like the audio.
Double uh oh.
Keith, Pidge, and now Shiro are gathered in one screen. Hunk’s in another, and Allura and Coran are gaping at him from a third.
“Oh, fuck,” Pidge says.
Lance raises a few fingers, waving weakly.
“Lance,” Allura says. Her voice is careful and quiet. The kind of voice you talk to a kid with, or someone who looks two steps away from death. “Is there… can you reach the controls, at all?”
Lance understands the question, of course. Blue’s stuck in the ground, still face down. His friends can’t help him, no matter how much he might want them to. They already did their part, in getting Blue responsive again, and now Lance needs to be able to do the rest. Or, if he can’t fly back to the castle, he needs to at least get her up, so that she can let him out.
But God. The task should be so simple, and yet he’s not sure if he can actually do it.
The control panel is a little more than his arms’ length away. It’s closer, when he’s actually sitting in his seat upright, but he’s hanging away from it, at an angle, and impaled in place. The act of reaching it might as well be like reaching across a canyon.
Still, Lance has to try.
He moves one arm, carefully, in the direction of the thruster. If he can grab that, and push it forward, he can get Blue to stand up and raise her head, all at once. That’s all he has to do.
Except the control is out of reach. Even with his fingers splayed, he can’t touch it.
His friends are waiting with bated breaths. Watching his every move, hoping he can do it, surely.
And, Lance realizes, there is a way he can do it. He’s just not going to like it very much.
He closes his eyes, takes a deep breathe, and pulls his body forward. He slides along the pole — an inch, at most — and a scream tears out of his chest, echoing around the inside of Blue. He’s forced to stop, panting and twitching, as a new rush of blood drips down the pole.
“Fuck,” someone whispers.
Lance tries again. He swings his arm, his fingers just barely brushing the edge of the thruster. A sob lodges in his throat and sticks there. He can’t…
“Come on, Lance,” Keith says, his voice low and worried. “You can do it.”
The sob escapes Lance, but just for a second before he clamps his lips back together. He doesn’t give himself time to prepare, this time. He just pulls, his arm outstretched, and a strangled, broken yell escapes him as he slides along the poll, further and further, and then finally grips the thruster.
But he can’t stop, because he can’t push it further, so he keeps going. His vision blurs and swims, his everything throbbing, and he finally manages to push it forward.
Everything inside him deadens immediately. He stops moving. Stops breathing for a second, even, just trying to make the pain stop.
He can feel Blue moving. She’s waking up, her consciousness brushing his. He can feel her concern, her urgency, but Lance is too tired to respond. He just needs to close his eyes. Needs to sleep for a moment, is all.
It’s probably only a minute or two later, when his friends are pouring into Blue. Their voices surrounding him, demanding answers of him, and waking him back up.
“I’m sorry, Lance,” someone says, and then someone’s screaming. Lance realizes it’s him, after a second, because he’s being pulled off of the pole, and then cradled in someone’s arms.
Lance is shuddering, barely breathing. He’s swaying in someone’s grip, and someone else is saying, “Can you grab Blue on the way up?” and another one of them is saying, “Coran has the pod prepped, just hurry!”
The sky above Lance is gray. It’s dark and sad-looking and Lance thinks someone is crying on him, for a second, before he realizes that it’s raining. For the first time in years, it’s raining.
His eyes migrate to Keith, next. That’s who’s holding him.
“Keith,” Lance manages, his voice strangled. Weak.
“You’re okay,” Keith says. “We’re gonna get you to a pod. Just hold on.”
Keith looks amazing. Well, sweaty and stressed and pale, but amazing.
“Keith,” Lance rasps, with a sudden urgency. Because apparently the time is never going to be right, but he realizes that he wants to say this. That he’s been wanting to say this for a long time, actually, and when better to do it than now? “I want you to know, I love—”
“The rain?” Keith interrupts. “I know. You’ve told me.”
“No, Keith, I love—”
“Shut up,” Keith says. “Don’t say it.”
“But—”
“Don’t say it until you’re out of the pod,” Keith says. “You don’t get to say it now. That’s not fair.”
“It’s a little fair,” Lance huffs. He’s only imagined saying it on his way out of this world half a million times. But maybe Keith’s right. Lance wouldn’t like it very much if Keith said that to him only to die immediately afterwards. Talk about not wanting to deal with the aftermath, right?
Lance is in and out of it for the rest of the way to the castle-ship. He feels Keith set him somewhere in Red. There’s a pressure on his chest, and Keith snaps, “Hold that,” but Lance knows he’s not really mad at him. And then Lance is waking up in Keith’s arms again, the castle’s lights blinding him. Then he’s leaning against Coran, mumbling as he’s arranged in a pod, which shuts behind him.
The world turns blue and foggy — the view from inside the pod — and then it fades away, as it always does. Lance finally lets himself sleep, knowing that he doesn’t have to worry about it anymore. Knowing that he’s going to be able to wake up again.
And, wow — the shit that he wakes up to.
He stumbles out of the pod, tired and a little achey and a tad delirious, as always.
“You don’t take hits meant for me,” Keith snaps at him. He shoves Lance, and Lance is still unbalanced, so he stumbles and almost falls, except that Keith catches him up in his arms, stabilizing him.
“Lance!” Allura says, pulling him from Keith’s arms into her own. Lance is passed around the room like a hot potato, bounced from one pair of arms into another waiting pair of arms. He ends up back with Keith, somehow, and picks up their conversation where it left off.
“You have to admit it was romantic,” Lance jokes. Ah, how good it feels to be able to speak again.
“You almost dying and then spending two whole days in a pod isn’t very romantic,” Keith says.
“It’s a little romantic,” Lance hedges. “I mean, I was gonna tell you I loved you.”
Keith punches him. Just — flat out. Lance reels, because rejection? Sure, he’d expected that, in the few hundred times he’s imagined confessing. But he never thought he’d get punched because of it.
But then Keith kisses him, hard and fast and passionate and a little angry, even. And even though he’s glaring, Lance can still see the smile that’s trying to break through.
“I love you, too,” Keith admits, finally. Lance just grins and kisses him again.