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Chapter Text

Keith wakes in complete darkness that lightens to dreary grey as soon as he opens his eyes. His head is spinning and it’s cold, like really cold. His breath comes out in frosty puffs that hang in the still air inside his seemingly inert lion. He blinks, slowly lifting his head from the cold metal floor. He must have been knocked out of the pilot’s chair in the crash. He remembers the impact, though not much else.

“Red?” he murmurs hoarsely, frowning slightly he clears his throat. “Red,” he says again, though his voice is just as cracked and dry sounding as before. There’s no response. He doesn’t feel the familiar warmth of her presence or the gentle whispering inside his head. He’s alone. She’s left him.

He swallows and lifts his arm, gripping one of the levers on the pilot’s chair to pull himself up. Stabbing pain blossoms below his breast as he awkwardly hauls himself to a sitting position against one of the consoles. He grits his teeth and looks down to find his armour shattered and his torso soaked in blood from a slowly seeping wound glowing lavender with poisoned quintessence. “Shit,” he murmurs, licking suddenly dry lips.

It’s his own fault. Haggar had been lying in wait for him back on the ship. Since Zarkon’s inexplicable disappearance she’s become relentless, anticipating team Voltron’s every move almost as if she has a personal vendetta against them. The constant stress of evading her has taken a physical and mental toll on all of them. Keith never should have lowered his guard, but the cargo bay had seemed empty, until it suddenly wasn’t and she was standing between him and escape. You don’t even know what you are, she’d taunted while evading his every move like a ghost, let me show you.

He startles, an insistent metallic pounding filling the dim space. It takes him a moment to realise it’s coming from outside his lion and not inside his aching head. “Keith!” Hunk’s voice.”Are you in there? Are you okay!”

He sounds really freaked out. The vibrations from his pounding fists settle in Keith’s chest making it difficult to breathe. Talking will be painful, but he does it anyway. “Hunk!” he gasps, “I’m… I’m here!”

The pounding abruptly ceases and Keith breathes a small sigh of relief. “Oh man,” Hunk calls back, his voice cracking, “don’t scare me like that. I’ve been calling you for the last ten minutes!”

“Sorry,” Keith croaks hoarsely. Funny that he hadn’t heard, though his brain’s still pretty scrambled from the crash, or possibly from blood loss. Either way he’s finding it difficult to focus. Also why are they shouting, comms appear to be out that’s why. It takes more effort than usual to pull his helmet off his head, but at least now he can hear Hunk’s voice.

“Have you got power in there?” he’s anxiously asking.

Keith blinks and looks around. There are no indicator lights on any of the displays and none of the sensors appear to be working. The environmental systems are offline as well judging by the frigid air. Keith’s face, hands and feet are already completely numb, but at least he’s still breathing. “No,” he says.

“Okay, there’s an emergency hatch in the floor behind the pilot’s seat. Just press the handle down,” Hunk says.

Keith licks his lips and squints into the dimness, spying the telltale outline of the circular hatch in the floor about six-feet away from him. “Yeah, I can’t really… move right now,” he calls out, grimacing slightly at the sudden twinge of pain beneath his breast, like shattered glass moving under his skin.

“What?” Hunk cries sharply, “Why not? Are you hurt?”

“I… yeah, sorta,” Keith admits. “Are… are you okay?”

Hunk doesn’t answer right away and Keith’s brow knits in concern. “Hunk?”

“I hit my head in the crash,” Hunk says finally, “but I’m pretty sure I’m okay. I’m more worried about you. You don’t sound… You sound…”

“I’m…” Keith’s about to say okay, but he’s really not. Shiro put him in charge and he led them both into a trap. Even worse, he jeopardised the mission by allowing Haggar to get her claws into him. He didn’t think he had any other choice at the time, but that doesn’t change the fact that he and Hunk are now stranded and he’s made himself useless when Hunk needs him the most. “Stupid,” Keith says out loud.

“Not making me feel any better,” Hunk calls back.

“Sorry,” Keith mutters again, his voice growing weaker.

“Okay, just… save your strength,” Hunk says. “I’m gonna see if I can access the hatch from out here.”

Keith shifts slightly, trying to find a more comfortable position as Hunk plods around outside. Keith thinks he can hear snow crunching beneath his boots. That’s what it sounds like anyway. The crunching stops and there’s another sound; metal sliding against metal. An emergency ladder being extracted Keith guesses. The hatch abruptly opens with an audible click and a sharp creak of metal. A moment later Hunk appears, squinting into the gloom. There’s a torch in his hand, the pale beam plays over the red lion’s interior, though it seems unnecessary to Keith in the dusky light.

“Hey,” Keith calls weakly, raising his hand and the torch beam moves slightly in Hunk’s hand, illuminating Keith’s slumped body.

Hunk startles suddenly, his eyes growing wide. “Shit!” he yelps, losing his grip on the torch. He teeters on what Keith assumes is the edge of the ladder for a moment, before tipping backwards and abruptly dropping back through the open hatch like a stone.

“Hunk!” Keith cries, instinctively springing forward only to fall back against the console again with a wince. “Hunk!” he calls out breathlessly, “Are… are you okay?”

There’s no answer. “Hunk!” Keith shouts again, bracing his hands and feet against the metal floor, preparing to force himself up onto his feet.

“Keith…” Hunk hesitantly calls back, his voice small and apprehensive, “is that… is that you?”

Keith sags in relief while simultaneously pulling a face. “Of course it’s me,” he says tartly, his eyes narrowing in confusion. “Who else would it be?” He shudders and covers the still bleeding wound beneath his breast with his hand, gritting his teeth when the cold from his gauntlet leeches into the ruptured skin. That’s good, cold is good. It’ll slow down the bleeding. Of course it’ll also eventually kill him, but he’ll just have to cross that bridge when he comes to it.

Hunk doesn’t answer right away. “Maybe I hit my head harder than I thought,” he says finally, though Keith can’t tell if Hunk is talking to him, or himself.

“What are you talking about?” Keith demands.

“Your eyes, they’re ow,” Hunk says, and Keith can hear him slowly climbing the ladder before his head once again pops up through the open hatch, “they’re glowing.”

“My…” Keith says involuntarily reaching up to touch his eyelids, as if his gloved fingers can somehow discern some evidence to support Hunk’s claim. They just feel like his eyes though. The same eyes he’s always had. “What?”

“Yeah,” Hunk says nodding rapidly, “glowing, like a cat’s.”

Keith blinks several times, his sluggish brain trying to process what Hunk is saying. “Huh?” he says finally.

“Although, I suppose reflecting would be more accurate,” Hunk says, pausing for a moment to massage a body part outside of Keith’s field of vision. From the way he fell off the ladder, Keith suspects it may be his butt. “Ow,” Hunk says, you just startled me, ow. I thought you’d been eaten by a space-vampire or something.” He spies the still shining torch slowly spinning on the floor where he dropped it and plucks it up in one big hand.

“How would a space-vampire even get in here,” Keith mutters thoughtfully, glancing around his lion’s airtight interior.

“You know, alien vampire powers,” Hunk murmurs doubtfully. “Anyway, it could be a thing. You don’t know,” he says with a shrug, angling the torch beam at Keith’s face.

Keith flinches. “Hunk!” he cries screwing his eyes shut when the light suddenly scorches his retinas like a laser beam. He doubles over in pain, the abrupt movement exacerbating his already throbbing wound.

“Shit!” Hunk cries, fumbling with the torch. “Sorry, sorry, sorry,” he stammers, the pale beam retreating from Keith’s face.

“Geez!” Keith growls, gritting his teeth. His face and neck have broken out in cold sweat and he shivers again, two bright reddish-greenish blobs pulsating before his eyes.

“Hey,” Hunk says, curiously, “can you… can you see me?”

“No!” Keith grunts, “I can’t see anything right now!”

“No, no, I mean before I… Sorry about that. Can you like, see in here?”

Something in his tone makes Keith squint at him, blinking tears as his vision gradually begins to clear. “Yeah,” he says warily. His eyes flicker to the torch in Hunk’s hand, which has apparently been switched off. “Why?”

Hunk lifts his hand. “How many fingers am I holding up?” he asks.

“Hunk, what the fu-“

“Just tell me how many fingers you see,” Hunk excitedly babbles over him.

Keith sighs and winces, shifting again to try and get a bit more comfortable. “Three,” he says flatly.

Hunk’s eyes grow wide. “Holy shit!” he breathes, breaking out in a huge grin.

“What the hell’s your damage Heather?” Keith mutters crabbily.

“Keith it is pitch black in here,” Hunk tells him, “like I can’t even see my hand in front of my face, pitch black.”

For some reason Keith’s mouth goes dry at the words.

Chapter Text

“Keith?” Hunk ventures when the silence stretches on too long. “Okay.” He switches the torch on and scrambles the rest of the way up the ladder, locking the hatch behind him. “It’s fucking freezing out there,” he says, stamping pale frost from his boots and taking a seat on the metal grate a couple of feet away from Keith. The torch sits on the floor between them. “It’s fucking freezing in here too,” he says, tugging off his helmet, “but at least there’s no wind. Anyway, according to the readings I managed to get just before we crashed, this planet’s sun is dying. It’s also the farthest planet from the sun in the system, so as far as I can tell, there is no day here, just one long cold black night.”

“So…” Keith says, his voice cracking like an old man’s, “if there’s no light source, how can I see?”

“Well, in cats there’s this thing behind their eyes called the tapetum lucidum. It’s a membrane that reflects visible light back through the retina and increases available light to the photoreceptors,” Hunk explains.

“Fascinating,” Keith says flatly, “or it would be, except for one tiny detail. I’m not a cat.”

“No,” Hunk hesitates, ‘but you’re not all-together human either.”

Keith winces, inexplicably hurt by the words, even though they’re not untrue and he knows Hunk didn’t mean anything by them.You don’t even know what you are, Haggar’s words abruptly come back to haunt him like a malicious echo ringing inside his head, her voice dripping with contempt. The way she’d looked at him in that cargo hold had made him feel unclean. “I’ll keep that in mind if I ever decide to spend the night chasing Platt around the castle,” he snaps without thinking.

Hunk pulls a face. “Boy you’re just a little ray of sarcastic sunshine aren’t you,” he says, sounding about as annoyed as Hunk ever sounds.

“Sorry,” Keith says, with a sudden flare of guilt. It must be really disconcerting for Hunk to be sitting here talking to someone who’s eyes are glowing like a fucking Tokyo Ghoul. Keith supposes the least he can do is try to be a little less snarky about it. “This is just a lot to process,” he says, feeling suddenly exhausted.

“I get it,” Hunk says not unkindly. “So what are you seeing exactly?” he asks, his expression hovering somewhere between genuine concern and overwhelming curiosity.

Keith grimaces slightly, his eyes scanning Red’s interior as he searches for the correct words to describe the faded tapestry he’s seeing. “It’s sort of like how things look right after the sun sets back home,” he says wearily, “like all the colour’s been drained out of the world and all you can see are the silhouettes.”

“Has anything like this ever happened to you before? Hunk asks.

Keith winces, attempting to draw in a deep breath. He’s really starting to feel sick to his stomach now. “I’m pretty sure I would’ve noticed having a pair of built-in night vision goggles before now,” he says weakly, his head lolling against the console. Not to mention that any one of his many interchangeable foster parents would’ve probably had him shipped off to some sort of research facility if they’d known.

“Hmmm good point,” Hunk says thoughtfully, “I wonder what triggered it. Maybe it’s the combination of chemicals in the planet’s atmosphere, or its angle to the sun, or…”

“Do you think this could have something to do with it?” Keith asks softly, and Hunk’s brow knits as he snatches the torch from the floor, illuminating Keith’s listing body. Keith blinks in the indirect light and draws his trembling hand away from his torso, revealing the unnaturally glowing wound beneath his breast.

“Shit!” Hunk starts, his eyes growing wide as he springs to Keith’s side. “Did it never once occur to you to mention that you might be bleeding out instead of letting me babble on like an idiot for the last ten minutes?” he demands, his mouth drawn in a tight grim line.

“I was trying not to freak you out,” Keith mumbles defensively.

“And yet you’ve failed spectacularly,” Hunk says, carefully tearing the shredded edges of Keith’s black flight suit away to get a better look at the wound.

“Sorry,” Keith murmurs, “but could the quintessence have affected my eyes somehow?”

Hunk grimaces. “I mean magic isn’t an exact science,” he says, his jaw growing tighter and his face more drawn as he inspects Keith’s injuries by pale torchlight. “If it were, it’d be… you know, science. We’ve both seen how Haggar can manipulate this stuff though, so, I dunno… maybe?”

Keith shivers. It’s so cold. The frigid air hangs thick and heavy in the confined space, like a lead weight sitting on his chest. His eyes fixate on the dried blood streaking Hunk’s face from the nasty looking gash in his forehead, visible now that he’s close enough for Keith to make out the details. Hunk’s left eye and cheek are mottled and bruised as well, the result of a less than smooth landing and Keith’s carelessness. He swallows bile at the thought. It was supposed to be just one lone supply ship, manned with mechanical drone soldiers. It should’ve been easy, and it would’ve been if Haggar hadn’t shown up.

“Hey, eyes on me,” Hunk says, his big hands cradling Keith’s face. “Don’t fall asleep, okay?”

Keith blinks at him. He must’ve checked out for a second, because the emergency field kit Coran insists on stocking each lion with has suddenly appeared beside him. He nods. “Yeah, okay,” he agrees weakly. He watches Hunk tear into the canvas duffle, his hands trembling with cold. “She said she’d show me what I am,” he murmurs, licking cracked lips.

“Who, Haggar?” Hunk mutters distractedly, the torch wavering in his hand as he digs through the kit. “What does that even mean?”

“I dunno,” Keith murmurs back uneasily, “nothing good, I guess.”

“What were you even thinking messing with her,” Hunk says, removing a bulky vacuum pack from the canvas duffle, “you know how dangerous she is.”

“The only way out was through her,” Keith says softly.

“So she’s…”

“She’s alive Hunk,” Keith murmurs weakly, “she pulled that disappearing in a black puff of smoke Nightcrawler bullshit and escaped.”

Hunk grunts, the torch wedged between his teeth. He rips the vacuum pack open with both hands, revealing a thick field dressing. “I still say there had to be something you could do besides fighting her,” he says, plucking the torch from his mouth, “especially after what she did to Shiro.”

Namely, experimented on him, mutilated him, poisoned him and then used her weird dark matter magic to eject him from the black lion into a pocket dimension where he’d spent weeks trapped inside his own head. Slav and Pidge had finally figured out where he was and gotten him out, but he still won’t talk about what he saw there. Although judging by the haunted look in his eyes, Keith knows it was nothing good.

He swallows, his chest growing tight at the thought. He’s been making a conscious effort to concentrate on anything but Shiro. Except now all he can think about is the fact that he didn’t kiss him goodbye. They’d hugged, but Keith wasn’t really comfortable doing more than that in public. He regrets not kissing him now though, because he’s afraid he’ll never get to do it again.

“It does answer a bunch of questions though,” Hunk is saying, “’cause I’ve been trying to figure out how we wound up all the way out here.”

“What do you mean?” Keith asks, hissing in pain when Hunk firmly presses the dressing to his slowly seeping wound. “Where…” he falters, blinking stars, “where are we?”

“Nowhere near where we were,” Hunk says tensely, he pulls one of his gloves off with his teeth and presses the back of his hand to Keith’s cheek, Keith can barely feel it, “which is concerning because…” Hunk breaks off, shaking his head.

“Because…” Keith prompts.

“I need you to keep pressure on this,” Hunk says, guiding Keith’s trembling hand to the dressing. Keith nods and winces, the thick layers of gauze already turning red with his blood. Hunk anxiously bites his lip as he starts tearing through the field kit again.

“Don’t try to change the subject,” Keith says flatly.

Hunk sighs explosively, tapping the torch against his palm and squinting into the open duffle. Keith thinks the batteries might be dying from the cold. “This planet has a really strong magnetic field,” Hunk says uneasily, “like really strong. We basically got hit by a giant electromagnetic pulse when we crashed.”

“Which is what knocked out our lions,” Keith guesses.

“Not just our lions,” Hunk says. “Haven’t you noticed your suit’s been knocked offline as well?”

“I noticed the comms were out,” Keith says, his voice growing noticeably weaker even to his own ears. He feels really strange. His entire body is tingling with painful pins and needles. His teeth hurt and his tongue feels two sizes too big for his mouth. The effects of the poison quintessence he guesses. He’s really starting to get concerned about what it might be doing to him.

“Keith, don’t close your eyes!” Hunk says anxiously and Keith startles, blinking rapidly in the pale torchlight. “Just stay with me… okay?”

“Okay,” Keith agrees automatically, though his eyelids have grown so heavy, it’s becoming difficult to keep them open. “Is…” he swallows queasily, throwing up seems like a distinct possibility, “is there a way to counteract the effects of the field?” he asks somewhat breathlessly.

Hunk presses his lips together. “Not without power,” he says, his hands trembling with panic, or cold, or a little of both, as he hunts through the disheveled field kit. “This would be a lot easier if I could see!” he growls in frustration.

“Give it here,” Keith says, gripping one edge of the canvas duffle with his free hand and sliding it closer to his side. “What do you need?”

Hunk exhales in one long shuddering breath. “How can you possibly be this calm?” he asks.

“I’m not,” Keith murmurs, “I’m just…” he breaks off, afraid to tell Hunk he lacks the energy to feel anything at the moment. “I can get you what you need if you tell me what I’m looking for,” he says instead.

Hunk scrubs his face. He looks tired and his head must really hurt. Keith rummages around inside the kit for a moment until he locates a stack of single dose foil pill packets. “Here,” he says, handing one to Hunk.

“What’s this?

“I’m guessing aspirin,” Keith says softly.

Hunk nearly smiles at him. He tears open the packet and eyes the two small white pills in the palm of his hand for a moment before shrugging and popping them into his mouth. “Okay,” he says, wrinkling his nose in distaste as he manages to swallow them dry, “here’s the thing. I don’t have much experience with weird glowing wounds, but whatever else that stuff is doing to you, I’m pretty sure it’s keeping your blood from clotting, so I feel like we need to flush it out.”

Keith swallows. “Sounds like fun,” he says wryly.

Chapter Text

“Yeah,” Hunk murmurs sympathetically. “I’m not even sure it’s the right call frankly,” he says anxiously, “but we need to stop the bleeding. You’ve already lost a ton of body heat and your lips are starting to turn blue.”

“What about you?” Keith asks, eyeing the dried blood caking Hunk’s scalp. Head wounds always bleed a lot and he’s shaking like a leaf, though Keith thinks that may only be partially due to the frigid temperature.

“I’m okay for now,” Hunk says firmly, but Keith wonders if he’s just putting on a brave face for his benefit.

“I’m… sorry I got you into this,” Keith says breathlessly. It’s getting harder to breathe. The heavy frozen air feels like a vice around his chest, squeezing all the breath from his lungs.

Hunk pulls a face. “You’re not gonna say something ridiculous like leave me here to die and save yourself now are you?” he asks.

Keith’s mouth quirks into a wan half-smile. “No,” he murmurs hoarsely.

“Good, because even if I could leave, I wouldn’t,” Hunk tells him earnestly. “Besides, there’s no way any of this is your fault. This is on Haggar; end of story.”

Keith’s smile broadens slightly. “Okay,” he says, even though he’s not sure he entirely agrees. Hunk is right about one thing though, blaming himself won’t change their current situation, so he might as well concentrate on the things he can control. “What am I looking for?” he murmurs, feebly rummaging through the contents of the duffle with one trembling hand.

“See if you can find another field dressing,” Hunk says tensely. “This one’s about had it.”

Keith locates an identical vacuum pack to the one Hunk ripped open earlier. “Here,” he says, handing it to him.

“Okay now we need a sterile solution,” Hunk says talking around the torch in his mouth as he rips open the pack. “Saline would be ideal, but iodine, or hydrogen peroxide will do in a pinch,” he says, plucking the torch from his mouth and pressing the clean dressing to Keith’s wound after swapping it for the old one soaked in blood.

Keith shudders, the pressure from the dressing like a knife breaking off in his breast. He gags, bitter bile hitting the back of his throat, and Hunk lunges towards him, gripping him by the shoulders and turning him as he vomits syrupy fluid onto the metal floor.

“You’re okay,” Hunk tells him, rubbing his back until his stomach is empty and the sickness passes. “You’re gonna be okay.”

Keith gasps, feeling himself pitching towards the floor, but Hunk doesn’t let him go. His big strong arms wrap around Keith’s chest and shoulders, sharing what little body heat he has until Keith’s head stops swimming and his eyelids stop fluttering. “I’m… I’m okay,” he croaks, patting Hunk’s shaking hand as Hunk carefully props him back up against the console. “We should probably hurry though,” he says, swallowing past the burning lump in his throat.

“Yeah,” Hunk agrees tensely.

Keith shivers, cold sweat trickling down the back of his neck as he turns his attention to the disheveled field kit. Hunk presses the thick dressing to his wound, muttering some sort of apology when Keith flinches in pain. His stomach is empty now so he feels a little better, but his head starts spinning every time he looks down and his vision keeps threatening to disintegrate around the edges.

He licks his cracked lips, moving his trembling hands with some urgency through the packed duffle. He locates every available container of liquid he can find; four clear plastic packs that look like IV fluid, six foil packs with little straws attached that are clearly for drinking and two brown bottles of… something, alcohol or antiseptic maybe. “That’s,” Keith gasps weakly, “I think that’s it,” he says, as Hunk considers each container in turn, squinting at each label by the light of the failing torch.

“Good, okay,” he says absently, “do you see an irrigation kit in there? It’ll look like a big needle-less syringe with a rubber bulb at the end, and we’ll need bandages, ooh and a thermal blanket would be good; that’ll look sorta like a thick sheet of Mylar.”

“How do you know all that stuff’s gonna be in here?” Keith asks, spying the syringe thing in a clear plastic container and laying it out on the floor next to the various liquid packs.

“I don’t,” Hunk shrugs, “but I made some suggestions when Coran was putting the kits together.”

Shiro told Keith once that Hunk had taken advanced classes in field medicine back at the garrison. At the time Keith remembers thinking it seemed like a strange responsibility for someone who seemed to be so ambivalent so much of the time. He realises now that uncertainty is just a part of Hunk’s process. He doesn’t really have a filter when it comes to voicing his concerns, or anything else for that matter, but he’s remarkably clear headed once he decides on a course of action. He’s also wicked smart and has a way of coming through when it matters most.

“Keith, open your eyes!” Hunk cries anxiously and Keith’s eyes fly open. He must have checked out again, because he’s been moved onto the floor. He’s laying flat on his back with his feet propped up on the field kit. Hunk kneels beside him, squinting in the pale light of the faltering torch beam. “There you are,” he says, visibly relieved, “I was afraid I’d lost you.”

Keith opens his mouth, but his voice seems to have failed him. He shudders, clammy sweat trickling down his face despite the cold. His chest is so tight, his breath coming in short painful gasps that barely fill his lungs. He feels like he’s suffocating. Hunk lays a hand on his forehead and Keith shivers. “Just try to relax,” he says, his jaw set in a grim line, “and I’m really sorry about this.”

Keith barely has time to wonder what he’s talking about before Hunk empties what feels like a syringe full of acid into his oozing wound. Keith screams, his vision disintegrating to fireworks as he writhes in pain. “Sorry, sorry, sorry,” Hunk is babbling, one big hand clamped on top of Keith’s chest to keep him still while he relentlessly bathes the luminous wound in fiery liquid with the other. “I’m almost done, I promise.”

Keith’s voice cracks, his screams dissolving to whimpers as Hunk continues to babble muffled words of comfort that barely register inside his sensory overloaded brain. He’s leaning over Keith now, worry clearly etched on his face. “I’m done. It’s over,” he says, wiping tears from his eyes with his fingers, “the bleeding’s stopped. It’s stopped.”

Keith just looks at him, barely comprehending the words. Fat tears leak from his own eyes, slowly sliding down the sides of his face into his matted hair. “Just please don’t die on me okay,” Hunk says, his voice ragged. Keith moans softly, his eyes slowly sliding shut seemingly of their own accord. “Shiro’d never forgive me,” Hunk says softly, his plaintive words following Keith down into darkness.

Chapter Text

Keith!

Shiro? Keith cries, squinting into the dense mist. When did it get so foggy? Crumbling rock shifts beneath his feet and jagged mesas float suspended in the stagnant atmosphere. I can’t… Where are you?

Keith! Shiro again, only now his voice sounds further away.

No! Keith yells. He must be in trouble. Shiro! Keith’s heart leaps into his throat at the thought of losing him again. Don’t, don’t go! His eyes are drawn to movement in the murky distance and he takes off, sprinting across the hard scrabble landscape towards a blurry silhouette barely visible through the shimmering haze.

Geysers sprout from his footsteps, shooting towers of steaming liquid into the air. Keith ignores them, his legs momentarily wobbling before he finds his feet again and picks up speed, bursting through the cloying mist into a barren clearing where Shiro stands with his back turned to him.

Shiro! Keith gasps, smiling with relief. He doubles over panting, trying to recover his breath.

Keith, Shiro turns, the smile on his face disintegrating into something almost threatening when Keith straightens up.

Shiro? Keith murmurs uncertainly, his own smile fading at the dark look on Shiro’s face.

Who are you? Shiro growls at him, his expression turning harder and a telltale glow beginning to illuminate his artificial fingers. What have you done with Keith?

What? Keith stammers, I’m… It’s me Takashi. It’s Keith.

Shiro’s eyes narrow with suspicion, his glowing artificial hand flat and angled like a blade. No, he snarls, taking a menacing step closer.

Keith throws up his hands in surrender, taking a tentative step back as Shiro advances on him. Hollow rock crumbles beneath his feet and a geyser erupts at his back, soaking them both in steaming drops of liquid. His eyes flicker to Shiro’s glowing hand. He can feel the heat radiating from it; see the drops vaporising in sizzling puffs of steam the moment they hit. I’m… Keith, he tries again, his voice small and uncertain.

You don’t even know what you are, Shiro growls softly. Somehow it’s worse than if he were yelling. His grey eyes burn with unnatural golden light. Let me show you, he says, a vicious smile twisting his lips. His artificial hand crackles with energy as it hurls towards Keith’s face.

Keith’s eyes open to dull violet slits. The darkness around him softens to monochrome grey and the sharp pulse inside his head gradually settles to a dull throbbing ache. He’s still lying on his back with his feet propped up on the field kit. Clammy sweat coats his skin, though the air is noticeably colder and he shudders, despite the thermal blanket wrapped around him like tinfoil wrapped around a baked potato.

He swallows, groggily eyeing the needle in his hand inserted through a slit cut into the back of his glove. His eyes slowly follow the clear plastic line to a half full IV bag hanging from the flight chair lever above his head; slowly filling his veins with clear liquid one sluggish drop at a time.

His head weighs a ton. Much too heavy to lift off the freezing floor. He manages to tilt it slightly, wincing in pain when the tightly wrapped gauze binding his wound pinches his ruptured flesh. He blinks a few times at the sight of Hunk hunched inside one of the consoles open access panels, exposed wires in a tangle at his feet.

“Hey,” Keith calls out hoarsely and Hunk startles, hitting his head on the edge of the open panel with a yelp. Keith grimaces in sympathy, watching Hunk carefully back out of the console muttering some sort of apology to no one in particular about the oppressive darkness making him jumpy.

“You’re awake,” he says, gingerly rubbing his head. A relieved smile tugs at his lips. Keith returns the smile wanly, though he’s pretty sure Hunk can’t see it. The waning torch light seems to have deteriorated while he was unconscious, barely illuminating more than a few inches of space between them. “I was worried about you. I thought you might be having a nightmare,” Hunk continues, “not that I’d blame you if you were.”

“Yeah,” Keith says softly.

“You wanna talk about it?”

Keith presses his lips together. “Not particularly,” he murmurs wearily. He’s been having nightmares where Shiro attacks him for months now. They started shortly after the Marmora trials revealed Keith’s Galra heritage. He hasn’t told Shiro about them, partly because he’d worry and partly because Keith really doesn’t want to talk about it, but Hunk is the feelings guy and he’s trying to respect that. “Thanks for asking, though,” he murmurs, trying his best to sound gracious about it.

Hunk just nods. How’re you feeling?” he asks, closing the space between them on his hands and knees.

“Better,” Keith says, sort of, it’s easier to breathe anyway.

Hunk smiles, though it doesn’t reach his eyes. His eyes look really worried. He pulls off his glove and presses his fingers to the pulse at Keith’s neck. Keith’s face is pretty numb, but even he can tell Hunk’s fingers are as cold as ice. “There’s enough room for both of us under here,” he says, trying to shift the mylar sheet covering him with clumsy leaden fingers.

“I’m okay for now,” Hunk insists, squinting in the waning torchlight at the IV bag hanging over Keith’s head. “Saline,” he says, when the feeble glow of the torch illuminates the dubious look on Keith’s face, though it’s not what’s in the IV that worries him. Hunk’s movements have become noticeably slower and his skin’s about two shades lighter than it ought to be. “It’s important to stay hydrated,” Hunk says, wearily sitting back on his heels, “at least that’s what my mom always says. It was pretty much the cornerstone of all her home remedies when I was growing up,” he says fondly and Keith smiles slightly in sympathy, recognising the familiar look of homesickness on his friend’s face. “Got a headache? Drink some water. Stomach ache? Water.”

“Gaping chest wound,” Keith murmurs wryly.

“Water,” Hunk finishes with a melancholy chuckle. “Actually, you were in shock. You’re doing a little better now, but it took two bags of saline just to stabilise you. I wasn’t sure how much I’d need, which is why I used the antiseptic to flush out your wound. I’m really… I’m sorry about that by the way,” Hunk says, his voice cracking.

“Sorry for what?” Keith asks softly. “Saving my life?”

“Yeah, I mean no,” Hunk says ruefully. “It’s just I don’t… I usually try to avoid purposely inflicting pain on the people I care about if I can avoid it,” Hunk says, guiltily avoiding Keith’s gaze.

Keith smiles wanly at that. “Yeah,” he says, “I get that, but you do realise you have nothing to apologise for right?” He covers Hunk’s bare hand with his and gives his sturdy capable fingers a feeble squeeze. “Thanks for taking care of me Hunk.”

Hunk shrugs a little awkwardly, making a show of inspecting the needle in Keith’s hand to avoid looking directly at him. “You’d have done the same for me,” he murmurs self-consciously.

“Not nearly as well,” Keith freely admits. “I’d have died if it wasn’t for you.”

Hunk tries to smile, but it looks more like a grimace to Keith. He shakes his head, lifting the mylar sheet to check the bandages covering Keith’s hastily patched wound. “You should probably hold your applause until after I tell you what I need to tell you,” Hunk says softly.

“That bad huh?” Keith asks quietly, indicating his still throbbing wound with a slight tilt of his head.

“Uh… yeah, kind of, it’s still glowing, which is, you know, troubling and you’re um…,” he breaks off, shaking his head, “but I was actually talking about that,” he says, indicating the mass of strewn wires in the open access panel behind him.

Keith’s head drops towards the console. “Did you find a way to restore Red’s power?”

“No, it’s… she’s fried, sorry,” Hunk says, pressing his lips together, “I mean, nothing that can’t be fixed if we ever make it off this snowball… and the castle has a particle barrier, which theoretically could be adjusted to compensate for the planet’s destructive magnetic field.”

“So,” Keith murmurs, his heavy eyelids threatening to close again, “the others might be able to launch a rescue mission after all. Isn’t that good news?”

“I’m actually way more concerned about them finding us,” Hunk says tensely, “before we, you know, die.”

“Can’t they just, I don’t know, follow our ion trail, or something,” Keith asks weakly.

“Yeah, I’m pretty sure that’s only a thing on Star Trek,” Hunk says, sounding suddenly very tired, “but I was thinking,” he says, scrubbing his face and crawling back to the tangle of wires spilling out from the cannibalised console, “if I can use Red’s communications array to direct some of the magnetic energy surrounding the planet back out into space, I might be able to let someone know we’re here.”

“Like a distress beacon,” Keith murmurs.

“Exactly,” Hunk says, tapping the failing torch against the metal flooring and laying it down next to his knee. He hunches over the meagre beam of light, his trembling fingers methodically rewiring connections and bypassing burned out circuit boards. “There’s a couple of problems though.”

“In addition to the whole dying thing, you mean?” Keith asks.

“Yeah,” Hunk says, his head and upper torso disappearing further inside the console, ”I can’t actually direct the beam anywhere,” his somewhat muffled voice continues. “It’s just gonna be this massive energy wave shooting out across space like an electromagnetic tidal wave, so anyone within a hundred lightyear distance will pick it up.”

“Right,” Keith says flatly, “so we’re just as likely to be found by a Galra prison ship as the castle.”

“That’s one possibility, yeah,” Hunk says, “although mistaking the signal for a natural phenomenon is also just as likely. I mean, I’m guessing Allura will recognise the red lion’s signature inside the wave, provided the castle’s within range, but I don’t know if anyone else would.”

“Okay,” Keith says, licking his lips. He’s starting to feel sick to his stomach again. “What’s the other problem?”

Hunk stops what he’s doing and backs out of the console. “Okay, don’t freak out,” he says.

Keith just looks at him. “Does telling someone not to freak out ever do anything but freak them the hell out?”

“No, I mean, you’re basically being held together by duct tape right now, so freaking out would be bad,” Hunk says with some concern.

Keith’s heavy eyes narrow into a scowl. “Has anyone ever told you your bedside manner sucks,” he mutters.

“I know, I’m sorry,” Hunk babbles nervously, “I may be freaking out a little bit.”

"Don’t make me stab you with this needle Hunk,” Keith says flatly.

Hunk sighs and takes a deep breath. He closes his eyes and rotates his shoulders and neck a few times as a relaxation technique. “It's a catheter,” he says finally, his tone noticeably calmer. “Okay, there’s a chance, a small chance, tiny really, that activating the beacon will create a reverse magnetic pulse that may sort of… instantly kill us.”

Keith blinks a few times. “I’m sorry, sort of do what now?” he eventually asks. “Death by magnetic pulse? Is that even a thing?”

“Death by aneurysm technically,” Hunk says, quietly.

“Are you… “ Keith pauses to take a compulsive swallow. He thinks he may be sick again. “Are you kidding me right now?”

“Yeah, no I wish I was,” Hunk says, looking as if he’s about to cry.

Keith closes his eyes. His head is pounding. “How small a chance are we talking?” he asks.

“Like… thirty percent,” Hunk says softly.

”Thirty percent? Keith repeats incredulously.

“Um... ish,” Hunk admits.

“More-ish, or less-ish?” Keith asks weakly, his fragile voice cracking like glass.

“Well I did the math in my head so,” Hunk shrugs, “maybe plus five percent either way?”

Honestly, Keith doesn’t know whether to laugh or cry. He swallows queasily, his eyes losing focus for a moment as the world tilts around him.

“Whoah,” Hunk cries, springing to his side. He lays a hand on Keith’s forehead, then checks the pulse at his neck again.“You okay?”

“I… yeah,” Keith shudders, his eyelids fluttering as Hunk rises to his knees and squeezes the IV bag a few times, forcing more saline into Keith’s veins.

“Funny,” Hunk says, biting his bottom lip, “‘cause you look like you’re about to barf again.”

“It’s a distinct possibility,” Keith mutters, taking several shaky breaths. He swallows, the contents of his stomach seemingly deciding to stay put for the moment.

Hunk sits back on his heels and scrubs his face with a trembling hand. “Which brings us back to the whole dying thing,” he says solemnly.

“How long do we have?” Keith asks. Hunk just looks at him, his jaw clenched with words he seems afraid to speak. Keith swallows. “How long do I have?” he asks softly.

Hunk exhales a long shuddering sigh, swiping tears from his eyes with trembling fingers. “Well,” he says, with a sniff, “if the temperature continues to drop at the same rate it has been, it’ll be a few hours before I freeze to death, but without a transfusion, you’ll…” he falters, “you’ll uh…” he clears his throat. Sluggish tears roll down his face that he doesn’t bother to wipe away. “You’ll be gone like way before that,” he says, his voice fading to a whisper.

“When?” Keith numbly asks.

“The IV bought you some time,” Hunk says with another big sniff. His voice sounds hollow, as if all the feeling has been wrung out of him. “But you’re almost through the third bag and there’s only one more left.”

Keith closes his eyes. He’s so tired. It would be so easy to just drift off to sleep and never wake up again. It even sounds peaceful. A far more peaceful death than he deserves probably, but he won’t allow his dead body to be the last thing Hunk sees, not if he can help it.

“Screw that,” he says, blinking a few times to bring his eyes back into focus. “We’re not gonna die Hunk.”

“Because you say so?” Hunk asks, nearly smiling as he rubs the tears from his eyes with the heels of his hands.

“Damn straight,” Keith says weakly, and he can practically hear Shiro chuckling inside his head at the words. So you’re just gonna not die through sheer force of will now? Keith almost smiles. If Shiro were actually here he’d understand, because it’s what he did. For over a year on that prison ship, through all the battles, all the scars, the severed arm, the cracked face, all the times he should’ve died and didn’t, because he was simply too stubborn to give his galra captors the satisfaction of killing him. That same iron will keeps bringing Shiro back to Keith. Now it’s Keith’s turn to try to make his way back to Shiro. “And because I trust you,” he tells Hunk. “So, screw the odds. We're getting out of here.”

Hunk’s mouth quirks into a melancholy smile. “Okay,” he says, “one last connection is all it should take.” He takes a deep breath and grabs the all but drained torch on his way back to the rewired console. “Wait,” he says suddenly, retracing his steps, “you should put this on,” he says, retrieving Keith’s discarded helmet from the icy floor.

“Will it help?” Keith asks, as Hunk lifts his heavy head and helps him slip into the frigid helmet.

“I mean, it couldn’t hurt,” Hunk says with a shrug. He jams his own helmet on with some difficulty and shudders. “Fuck, that’s cold!” he squawks, before crawling back to the console. He disappears inside for a moment, reappearing again almost immediately. He replaces the access panel door, then rises up onto his knees, one big hand hovering over a switch on the console. “Ready?” he asks, nervously biting his lip.

Keith nods. “Let’s go home,” he says.

Hunk steels himself and flips the switch.