Chapter Text
To say things were going badly was putting a huge damper on the reality of the situation.
It had just been an hour since Shiro had left to find crystals, and that’s all the time it took for the Galra to multiply. After about thirty minutes in, Lance had (reluctantly) left to help Hunk fight them all off. Pidge stayed in the hallway, tapping away on her computer and keeping watch over Keith, waking him up every half hour as Shiro had instructed. Allura was still in the control room and Coran had joined in, bringing materials and other objects from the ship’s depths.
The ship vibrated every few seconds, its thrusters desperately fighting off the gravitational pull. They were slowly slipping away from it, but not quickly enough. Even though the power was slowly returning, the ship depended on Allura to function at least partially. To say the least, they were all in a bit of a touchy situation.
Coran had come by to check on Pidge’s progress a few moments ago, bringing food and water along with him. He handed Pidge a strange looking pyramid-shaped glowing blue object, which she immediately questioned him about, even though his mouth was already open to give an explanation.
“What’s this do?” she asked, her mouth half full, examining the unknown object.
“It’s a container; inside are some medical supplies I thought could be useful,” he announced, eyeing the red paladin to their right. “I’d almost forgotten we still carried them, but they’re old enough that I think they may be compatible with humans,” he explained.
“And what if they’re not?” asked Pidge, pushing her glasses up her nose.
“Then nothing will happen. It took a while to find them but I knew we had them somewhere,” he said, shrugging it off as if it was nothing.
“Wow. Thanks, Coran. I’m sure it’ll help,” she exclaimed before pressing a few buttons on her computer and sliding a translator on her screen. Coran gave her a wobbly-looking thumbs up before heading off in Allura’s direction. “Oh, and try to get him to drink some water! The healing pods should be fixed soon enough!” he announced before turning the corner into the central command deck.
Having quickly translated the altean markings on each of the objects inside the pyramid container, Pidge scooted over to where Keith lay against the wall, shivering in his sleep.
“Hey. Keith. Wake up,” she murmured, gently tapping her hand against his shoulder. One of his eyes cracked open ever so slightly and closed again. “mm.”
“Come on! I have painkillers. And other helpful stuff. Come on, you gotta wake up!” she said a bit more forcefully. Flinching, the other paladin opened his eyes and dragged his left hand over to his stomach, where he weakly felt against the wraps under the oversize shirt he was in.
“I got stabbed?” he wheezed, incredulous. “Why does my head hurt if I got stabbed?” he continued, clearly a bit out of it. At least his condition wasn’t as critical as Lance’s was when the ship had gotten invaded.
“Concussion,” said Pidge before handing him a pale green capsule around half a centimeter long and holding the cup of water closer to his face. Seeing Keith’s quizzical look as he eyed the pill in his right hand, Pidge helped him pull it up. “I double-checked, it’s not gonna do anything bad. Worst case scenario, nothing happens at all. You don’t have to take anything, but frankly, you look like you’re trying to singlehandedly hold up the Empire State building,” she explained, mainly talking about the way Keith seemed to flinch at even the slightest movement, or the way his face looked thirteen shades too pale, or the way he seemed to be shaking all over from blood loss or fever, who knew, and she could have gone on. To be honest with herself, she was very worried about Keith’s current condition, even after Coran had said that nothing could happen to him at this point and they really just had to wait until the healing pod was fixed up. Thanks to Shiro, Keith had managed to push his own ribs back into place by breathing, and upon further examination, the blood coming from his mouth was due to vocal cord issues, which also explained his inability to speak above a hushed whisper. Lance had patched up his stab wound pretty well (after having to deal with Keith’s delirious bragging, i-got-stabbed-and-you-didn’t one-sided conversation) and the bleeding seemed to have almost completely stopped. After gentle questioning, Lance had gotten the impression that Keith had gotten in the way of a sentry’s knife, but nothing afterwards.
The paladin took a shaky breath, decided to listen to his (undeniably very intelligent) teammate, and Pidge let out a sigh of relief, handing him the water. She secretly hoped this would stop Keith’s pitiful sleep-mumbling, at least.
“Okay, you can go back to sleep now,” she gave him a gentle pat on the shoulder, taking the partially empty cup from him and getting up, trying to ignore the tingling in her legs.
“Thanks,” he answered, making eye contact. Pidge was happy to see that his eyes didn’t look as unfocused as before. For now, all was going as well as it could be. Then the castle undeniably lurched to the side a few degrees, half the lights illuminating the corridor going out. All was silent for a millisecond before Keith and Pidge heard the echoes of Coran saying “quiznak” in the Control room.