Archive of Our Own

“--this would be a lot easier if Keith was actually making the right shots,” Lance’s voice crackled over the comms. Lance couldn’t be talking about his shooting-- Keith was the only one making any shots. No, that was more a pointed jab at how Keith wasn’t calling the right shots.

Frustrated, Keith pivoted Red fast, trying to get a better aim on the Galra drone attacking them. If he wasn’t able to call the right shots, he could at least make the right, literal, shots. It was probably his fault they hadn’t seen the ambush coming, but they also weren’t expecting this much chaos on their first mission out since taking down Zarkon.

“Uh, I don’t think that’s fair,” Hunk started, but an explosion nearby cut him off.

Pidge mitigated some of the aftershock with the Green Lion’s shield, but bits of shrapnel still pelted the rest of the team.  “Now’s not the time,” she yelled, as another explosion sent her Lion flying.

It wasn’t the time; they had to defend some planet on the edge of the galaxy, and they weren’t doing a very good job at it. Not that the planet was making it easy to be saved. It was radio-silent; something on the surface was blocking communications, so Voltron couldn’t warn the residents of the Galra drone approach, nor could they figure out what the Galra empire wanted to do with the planet in the first place. Everyone was in the dark, and they were left defending a planet for no good reason.

It was frustrating for everyone, sure, but Lance could try to complain a bit less about Keith’s decisions. It wasn’t like Keith had a warm-up period for being Voltron’s leader. All he had was Shiro’s word, and the ability to pilot the Black Lion. Neither of those two facts helped right now.

The reinforcements were thinning, but not fast enough. “Lance, could you focus on the enemy,” Keith started, but he had the feeling Lance wasn’t really listening.

This wasn’t good; the Galra-controlled drones were too fast for them to make a decent attack. Keith hadn’t planned at all, but he should have spread everyone out so they weren’t so tightly packed. Now, though, the drones were surrounding them, and they couldn’t make many shots without risking friendly fire.

One of the drones had to be the lead, the controller. Pidge had said as much, but the frustrating problem was trying to figure out which one it actually was.

As much chaos was around them, it was directed, in a way. And one of the drones wasn’t attacking as much, instead hovering in the center of the group. He could see Lance just on the other side of the root node drone, aiming the opposite direction.

It was close; Keith could make the shot, but it was risky. Keith would be caught in its explosion, but he didn’t have the time for doubt. He had to trust something.

His shot hit, and as predicted, the explosion wrecked everything around it. Both he and Lance were sent flying in opposite directions, Keith toward the surface of the planet.

“Are you kidding me-- Keith! What the heck was th-” Lance started, but the end of his sentence turned to static.

In fact, everything in his Lion was turning to static; the lights buzzed across his Lion’s dash, his propulsion fizzed unresponsively, and Red just… went out. For a moment, he felt weightless, and then, he started to fall.

Light streamed into Keith’s vision, his eyelids barely shielding him from it at all. He tried to block the light out with his arm, but that ached. He wondered why. There was-- something. Something had happened. Something had gone wrong, and when he remembered what that was, he jolted forward, banging his already injured arm against the metal of his Lion.

Yelping, Keith reoriented himself, pushing back off the dash and into the cockpit chair. His arm still throbbed, and he felt sore and bruised. Other than that, he was alive enough. The light from the planet still shone too bright into his Lion, but that was a small annoyance rather than a potential catastrophe.

Keith pressed a hand to his helmet, turning on his comms. “Hey, uh-- Voltron, are you there?” he asked, still disoriented.

No response. Frustrated, Keith pressed down on the comms link again. “Come on,” he said. “I’m not gone.”

Still no response. At least he’d finally adjusted to the light, and it wasn’t unbearable. Peering around, the inside of his lion looked about as worse for wear as he did. A couple of missing panels, but nothing too catastrophic. Injured but not out for the count. The lights on his dash were dim and drowned-out, but otherwise, Red was in working order.

“Red Paladin to Voltron, do you copy?” Keith probed, looking more carefully at the dash of his Lion. The more he looked at it, the less alive it seemed, even as he adjusted to the bright light. In fact, when he shadowed the light from outside, it confirmed the fact that nothing in his Lion seemed to be on.

So whatever had hit him out cold in the atmosphere of the planet still hit him out cold here.

“Voltron, this is-- this is the Red Paladin, do you copy?” Keith repeated into his comms frantically, even though the comms link was probably dead.

Nothing on the dash of his Lion lit up. Not the comms device, not the controls, absolutely nothing. Even his suit wasn’t working-- his jet pack wasn’t responsive at all. Keith balked as he realized he couldn’t even hear Red. Nothing electronic was working, just as nothing had worked when he’d hit the atmosphere.

He must be on the surface of that… that random planet now, with no way of reaching anyone else. If that force field, or whatever, got anyone else, Voltron would be down another Lion for a while, or worse, they wouldn’t land as smoothly as he did.

Frustrated, Keith tried to salvage what he had. When he tried to tug his bayard out of its slot, it didn’t so much as budge. It didn’t budge when he slammed his fist on the handle, nor when he hit the top of the dash. The red bayard, just like his Lion, wasn’t going to move.

Nothing was going to dislodge it. Trying another whacking maneuver, he heard a creak of metal.

Red-- she was more out for the count than he thought, and he really wasn’t desperate enough for his bayard to hurt her even more than she already was. He had other options-- bad options, but other options.

Guilt clawed at him, fast and unsuspecting, and he tried to look for the damage he’d caused. The top panels were fine but, crawling under the dash, he found one of the metal panels had fallen inward. Other than that, nothing seemed out of line. Pressing a careful hand to the panel, he prodded at the piece until it was no longer concave on itself. He kept his hand on the panel for a while after, fingertips barely brushing the metal.

It was slight, but he could almost feel something emanating from Red. Closing his eyes, he concentrated, and he heard a soft rumble. It wasn’t much. It wasn’t much at all, faint and distant, but it was a soft reassurance. Or maybe an apology accepted. He couldn’t tell what, exactly, Red meant, but it was an overwhelming relief to know the atmosphere hadn’t permanently killed his Lion.

Keith stayed under the dash for a while longer to hear the familiar rumble, but had to eventually back out. After he did, he leaned against the arm of the cockpit chair, assessing the damages. He was out a Lion, a suit, and now a weapon. He still had his knife, but he wished he had more than that.

From the cockpit window, Keith could see a long stretch of the planet he crashed on.

The horizon was far away, unimpeded by trees or mountains. Instead, he could only see a vast expanse of sand. The dark, coral sand swept across the desert valley, a thin layer of silver ash dusting over it. When the wind blew the ash across, it would shimmer across the coral backdrop like waves.

At the least, Keith knew how to deal with a desert.

The desert stretched out for longer than he’d imagined. Sure, he couldn’t see much in the distance in the first place, but he underestimated just how far away anything of interest was. He needed to find a way off this planet-- to fix Red, to get back to Voltron-- but he couldn’t find anything to get him out at all.

The first thing he came across was a stone pillar, made of some kind of crystal, shimmering in the distance. Despite how promising it seemed, there were no people around it, just piles and piles of sand. Still, he stayed for a while, maybe against his better judgement, watching his reflection in the crystal.

Eventually, he realized he really needed to find water, and since the pillar didn’t have a visible entrance, he had to continue on.

Luckily, the sand dunes were leveling out, making it easier to walk and find alien-trodden paths. In fact, the paths were worn and promising, and soon enough he could see a town in the distance.

It was a ramshackle place, tied together at the seams. Buildings were put together with mismatched materials, some looking more like downed shuttles than living places.

The first thing Keith did, when he found the town, was try to find water. It had been easy enough. Luckily, there wasn’t a scarcity despite the desert around them-- the center of the town had a deep well with an abundance of clear, clean-enough water. Keith didn’t make a move until one of the locals dipped in their own canteen-- one even larger than his own.

He copied the alien, filling his canteen, drinking, and filling it again. He didn’t question it too much, he was just grateful to be able to refill a canteen twice without anyone batting an eye.

However, people did bat an eye at him soon enough, as the second thing he did was try to steal a speeder.

It wasn’t even a nice speeder; it looked half-apart, and as Keith turned the engine on, it  clunked and whirred like it hadn’t been used in ages. Silvery sand glittered across its surface, hanging in the crevices of the machinery and certainly making it all the louder. But the clunky speeder would do, and he’d be able to make do, if he could get it out of town unnoticed.

He just needed to get back to his Lion, and find a way out of here. And if a stolen speeder was his first step, well… he’d had worse first steps.

Besides, since he could get back to his Lion faster, he could wait it out until the coast was clear and find another town to scavenge supplies from. It wasn’t like anyone here needed the speeder, as no one had used it, or at least not in a long time. And he could always return it once he figured out how to contact Voltron.

Revving the engines again, Keith eyed the well-worn paths in the town. It wouldn’t be suspicious if he just… acted like he wasn’t doing anything wrong. So he fixed his eyes to the exit of the town and went.

It was as clunky a ride as he had anticipated, but the speeder went faster than he could’ve hoped. It whirred loud and dusted up clouds of silver sand behind him, making it a satisfying exit out of town.

He laughed as the speeder picked up more sand, more than it should. He liked piloting for Voltron, but… there was something to be found in speeding across the desert in something small, maneuverable, and recklessly dangerous.

His nostalgic enjoyment didn’t long. As he got further and further from town, his deeds caught up to him.  

Something snagged the speeder by the handle; it looked like a thin, metallic rope, but Keith didn’t get the chance to get a better look. He slammed on the breaks, turning into the rope to lessen its tension. That didn’t work; something pulled the rope back, and the already rickety speeder unbalanced. It tossed him toppling into the sand, and he landed with a thump and a dust cloud around him.

It hurt-- but it was an easy fall. Bringing himself to a kneel, he gripped the hilt of his knife, to cut the rope, or attack his maybe attacker, or both.

As the dust settled, he realized he could do neither. In front of him was a group of three aliens, one with an old-fashioned looking rifle pointed straight at him. They looked lizard-like, with thick scales that shone a slate gray. Looked familiar with the gun, too. And it wasn’t like he could win a gunfight with a knife.

Well, maybe. He hadn’t tried yet.

Before he could bring himself back up to two feet,the sound of a gun being loaded made him pause.

“Don’t you dare move, kid,” he said, and Keith rapped his fingers across the hilt of his knife.

“That was our speeder,” said the next alien, her voice rough yet high-pitched.

If Keith could distract the shotgun alien enough, he could probably move forward and land a hit on his hand, make away with the rifle, and escape.

The shotgun alien continued, “Ugh, out of all the speeders there, you really picked the wrong one to steal-”

“It wasn’t very good,” Keith said, despite enjoying the speeder plenty. The shotgun still aimed directly at him, but its wielder peered at him in… confusion? Amusement? Well, whatever it was, it meant the alien was distracted.

“It’s the rookie speeder,” said the final alien. She sounded more assured than the rest; despite not being the one with the shotgun, she’d probably be hardest one to beat. She had plenty of scars littered across her snout, and a meandering strip of scales off her arm were missing, spreading from her forearm to her shoulder. She’d been in plenty of close fights, and come out of all of them.

She would be harder to distract.

“Oh, uh,” Keith tried, “Right.”

“You’re not a bad driver,” she said. She flared out skin under her neck, and stretched up to gaze down on him, more than she already was. “And we don’t currently have a rookie.”

“Accident,” said the shotgun-less alien.

“Oh, yeah, terrible, just had to go make a deal with-”

The lead lizard’s gaze momentarily left Keith and landed on her comrade. He shrugged, but didn’t continue his statement.

“So how about a deal,” the lead lizard started, but the shotgun-less one cut her off.

“What? Ma’am, are you serious, he just tried to steal it!” she said. Her voice broke, and her neck flared, and it all seemed a bit overdramatic, almost like Lance in an argument. But it didn’t come off as naturally; petulance was off for her, but she hadn’t said much in the first place, so maybe Keith just found everything suspicious.

The leader shrugged. “We’re out a rookie, and we can’t transport our stock without one,” she said. “So we let him borrow the speeder, give him a bit of spending money, and have him deliver our stock. Everyone goes home happy.”

It wasn’t a bad deal, temporarily. It’s not like Keith would be here forever.

“He can take the pillar route,” said the shotgun alien. “Oh man, he can take the Pillar route, Soph- uh, ma’am- and I’ll be off the hook.” He let his aim down, but it still wasn’t a good time for Keith to strike. Not with a deal on the table, anyway.

The lizard leader’s tail swooped across the sand in irritation. “That’s your route,” she said.

“Place is creepy, ma’am, you know how everyone talks about it? I’m not going on that route again-” he argued, and his companion nodded tersely.

The leader narrowed her eyes at the both of them, more irritated with them than she had been with the stolen speeder. That was… off. Shouldn’t she have been more annoyed about the speeder?

“Fine,” she said, eventually. “Now go fix up the speeder for him, yeah?”

The two scuttled away, chittering excitedly as they did. The leader shook her head, and looked back to Keith.

“Call me ma’am, or Captain,” she said. “Get up, and get your hand off that knife.”

Despite his better judgement, Keith followed the orders, still watching the Captain carefully. He could see more scars along her snout, now, and the meandering one on her left arm. That one ended in a scorch mark on her forearm, and while she had three fingers on her right arm, she only had two on this one.

The Captain rummaged through her bag, and Keith put his hand back on his knife.

“I still haven’t agreed,” Keith said.

“You will,” said the Captain, not even sparing Keith a glance. “Sun’s setting, you seem new to town-- probably a shipwreck out in the desert, yeah?”

Keith didn’t answer her.

“Can’t get back to it without a speeder, cold’ll kill you, and you don’t wanna stay in town,” she said. “Sherrif’s not very nice to strandeds… to tourists.”

“Last rookie we had made a deal with her,” she said. She shook her head, and flicked her tongue out. “Sheriff chewed him up and spat him out, and now we’re running thin on crew.”

Keith didn’t want to take her word for it… but what was the worse deal, here? He didn’t know. At the worst, he’d get a speeder out of this. And if he went to the sheriff of this town, if the Captain was being honest, he probably wouldn’t end up with a speeder.

The Captain found what she was looking for, shoving a parchment paper into Keith’s hand. On it was a sketch of a map, marked with sparse landmarks Keith had recognized from his way to town, as well as a bright red line. It traced from the outskirts of town, past the crystal pillars he’d past earlier, to some spot in the middle of the desert.

“Tessa’s drop-off point is there,” she said. “You just have to take the goods from there to the outskirts.

That… seemed easy. He’d walked the distance, and as long as they weren’t doing anything nefarious, he could live with this deal until he fixed Red and got off this planet.

“We deliver Sunshine,” continued the Captain. Keith furrowed his brows, and the alien continued, “Booze. Sheriff doesn’t approve. Not very nice.”

The deal seemed decent, then but he couldn’t shake the feeling of a con beneath it all. He’d have to test out some of the booze himself, to make sure she was telling the truth, or figure out why no one wanted the pillar route, or-

“So it’s a deal, then?” asked the Captain. “Not that you have much of a choice.”

Keith bit his tongue. “I’m not planning on staying forever,” he said.

He expected that to break the deal, but instead, the Captain laughed.

“This place is a black hole, kid,” she said. “You might not plan on it, but you’ll be working with us for a while.”

Well-- as long as they were aware he’d be leaving, he might as well take the deal. Route was short, he could use the speeder, and he could always break the deal with a fight. Keith frowned, then nodded. “Fine,” he said.

“Perfect,” said the Captain. She slapped a hand on Keith’s shoulder, and looked back to his speeder.

She frowned, then said in a quiet voice, “Tell me if anything suspicious happens on that route,” she said. Then, before Keith could say anything else, she motioned to her two lackeys to bring over the clunky speeder. They probably didn’t have a use for the thing-- Keith had a feeling the speeder had been a trap he walked right into.

“Be at the rendezvous point in the morning,” said the Captain, and the three of them left on their much cleaner looking speeders.

Despite getting away without a fight and with the speeder he stole, Keith felt like he got the raw end of the deal. Still, he could get back to his Lion, now, and figure out a way to get out of here.

The route itself was short, just as he’d suspected. Just meet Tessa in the morning, bring the booze to the other lackey-- Elwin-- and he could spend the rest of the day however he’d pleased. They seemed honest about the booze, too; at least their “Sunshine” was some sort of liquid… stuff. He took a bottle of it to test it, but hadn’t bothered to open it just yet.

And he didn’t quite get why the other members of the group didn’t like the pillar. If anything, it was the most interesting thing on the route. It drew him in, with its allure and mystery. But he at least had the sense to make his first delivery on time, without dawdling, as much as he wanted to.

He even got some meager pay for his efforts-- enough credit to buy some food, and maybe something shiny, they’d said. They paid, but he still felt short-changed.

Because, really, they’d been too easy to convince. He figured he would need to barter for the credits, but he got off the hook. Once already he’d tried to steal their speeder, now they gave him credits at a simple complaint, and all he had to do was run an easy supply route.

If the speeder was a trap to get him to join their group, what exactly did they need him for? Either the route wasn’t easy, or the supply wasn’t what they said it was. Or something else; he really didn’t have a good read on the Captain’s motivations.

No matter the option, he didn’t like it, but didn’t have the energy to complain. He needed food, and a way to restart Red-- he couldn’t worry about the motivations of the ruffians.

In a stark contrast to the barrenness of the desert and every other establishment, the town shop hoarded items on cramped shelves. The rows weren’t organized. Keith often found food stored next to weapons, old gears next to what he could only assume were children’s toys, and shiny new canteens next to patchwork clothing.

All the weapons and machinery looked old. Not just rusted, but outdated. Maybe the space mall wasn’t the best representation of alien tech, but all of this looked ancient, even compared to Earth tech. It seemed like something they’d tinker with in entry-level Garrison engineering courses, not something worth being sold on.

“You new around here?” came a voice, and Keith pivoted toward it, hand on the handle of his knife.

The shopkeeper had addressed him, his eyes wide; as Keith took his hand away from the handle, the shopkeeper laughed. “You’re going to fit right in,” he said.

Keith narrowed his eyes, then looked back to the disorganized shelves. He just needed some food, which should be easy, and something to fix Red-- not quite as easy. However, he couldn’t ask for advice, since he didn’t exactly want anyone to know about Red, especially not some nosey shopkeeper.

“Since you’re fresh, I’ll go easy on you,” said the shopkeeper. “Cheapest food’s gonna be the sand squid. Local speciality: tastes like dirt, but has enough to keep you going.” Even as Keith ignored the man’s words, he continued, “Maybe get a salt pack or two to go with it, have some nice variety. You’re also going to want a new canteen, yours is too small.”

Despite not wanting to listen to the man’s advice, it’s not like Keith had a choice-- nothing in the store was labeled properly, and if it was, that often meant it was out of his credit range. Grabbing what he assumed to be the sand squids, salt packets, and a new canteen, he set the collection on the counter.

“Good choice,” said the shopkeeper.

Of course he thought his own advice was good. “Sure,” said Keith, eyeing the door.

The shopkeeper shrugged, still acting suspiciously magnanimous. “Need anything else? We have a good selection of knick-knacks on sale, you could probably spare the credits you have for ‘em.”

The shopkeeper motioned to behind him. Behind the counter were a selection of odds and ends Keith couldn’t place. Some were just fancy bits of engines, others dull jewels and silverware. There were a lot of broken bits of machinery, too, and it didn’t seem like any of them worked.

One thing caught his attention, though, and he tried not to sound desperate.

“The radio,” he said. If nothing in his lion could receive anything, he could try this thing. “Give me the radio.”

“You’re going to have to fix it up yourself,” the shopkeeper warned. He fiddled with the nobs on the radio, and one nearly fell off right there. “I’m not one to rip people off,” he said. He flashed Keith a toothy grin, and something told Keith that wasn’t quite the truth. “I warn ‘em beforehand.”

“Just give me the radio,” Keith repeated.

The man sighed, and took Keith’s credits. “Fine, fine, fine,” he said. “Don’t get mad at me if it doesn’t work.”

Whatever force grounded his Lion and prevented him from using his bayard didn’t work on the radio. It was a rush to discover that it worked, and just after some minor tinkering. Sure, it was static-y and poor quality, but the old hunk of metal worked.

However, the radio only played one station, the warbling tones of an alien song Keith couldn’t parse. He could understand the words they were saying, sure, but the actual content made absolutely no sense, like the jargon of his tech instructors. Just when he thought he might understand it, the song would pass, and he’d be back to an undecipherable alien song. It frustrated him more than anything that had happened that day.

It didn’t seem to receive anything other than that single station, either. No matter what Keith tried, he couldn’t fix it. He could fix his own speeder, back on Earth, and tinker with the one here too, but this old radio was unmanageable.

It was his only shot at finding the others, but it wasn’t working.  They’d be looking for him, and with his Lion dead until he fixed her, he needed some lines of communication. But, frustratingly, the radio wasn’t going to be that connection.

He needed to get back to Voltron-- he knew everyone else would be trying to get him out of here, but he didn’t want to risk another Lion getting stuck on the surface of this planet. They were already out the Red Lion; he couldn’t risk another one being down for the count.

For some reason, though, he wasn’t as frantic as he thought he’d be. He was worried about Red, and he was worried about everyone else, but...

Even if he needed to get back to the team, an ugly, scared part of him didn’t really want to. Working on finding a way off this planet was familiar. It was achingly familiar to what he’d done back on Earth, so much that he didn’t have to doubt himself, like he did when he tried to lead Voltron. And he was making bits and bits of progress. It was a natural fit for his skills. He could trust his instincts here. It was something he could deal with.

Something that wasn’t leading Voltron.

He hadn’t thought about that since he’d landed on this planet-- not Lance’s disparaging words on his leadership skills, nor having to pilot the Black Lion. Even as he remembered his duty now, the thought was distant, like an unsolved problem that could stay unsolved.

He never liked leaving a stone unturned, but maybe he could live with this one. It certainly made him ache less, thinking about having to leave Red behind, and why he had to, in… abstract terms, rather than the imminent endpoint he didn’t think he could live up to.

Shaking his head, he tried to think about other benefits of his strandedness. The desert was familiar, in a way that felt like a well-worn pair of shoes. So even if his speeder was horrible, he knew how to drive in the desert enough to make it work. It was just challenging enough to be enjoyable, but just easy enough that he knew he couldn’t fail.

The desert was quiet, too. He’d missed having that sense of space; on the castle ship, he had his own room, but it was never truly his own. Someone would clog down the hall, or an alarm would blare him awake. There was always something to foil his perception of personal space.

The quiet might not be the best example of a benefit, as Keith found himself relying on the radio for white noise. Personal space was good, but he forgot the loneliness it came with. He thought he could use a break from squabbling, but he missed it. He even missed Lance’s squawking, and the radio was a poor but welcome substitute.

Keith leaned back in the cockpit chair of the Red Lion, watching as the sands over the dash ebbed and flowed. Turning the radio to a quiet hum, he leaned back in the chair, stared at the ceiling of his dead lion, and tried to let the noise lull him to sleep.

He continued his route, buying bits and pieces of gears and tools from the shop each day. He tried to fix his Lion, and the radio, but not much worked. The whole affair was frustrating, and Voltron still hadn’t contacted him, which meant nobody had figured out the barrier yet. It was more worrying than anything, and it wasn’t easy to distract himself.

The Captain might’ve been right about this planet being a black hole.

With none of his recent tinkering efforts working, Keith decided to pocket his spare change, and instead spent the rest of his day investigating the pillars on his route. No one seemed to like them, but each day he grew more curious about them and their weird draw.

He could see them on the way back from his route-- the tip of a pink-glass pillar, left-side holding up a bank of dark coral sand. It looked alien, even to the alien planet; an ornate contrast to the ramshackled pubs and houses in the town. The pillar twisted, consuming itself in a spiral that reached high above the sand, and didn’t have a solid end below it.

It also felt off, not just out of place. Each time he’d pass the landmark on his delivery routes, it would draw his eye.

And now, he finally had the chance to investigate. The double suns rested high in the horizon, and Keith parked the speeder near the pillars. He still needed to trek up the sandpiles that surrounded the place, but it was easy work, especially with curiosity to motivate him.

On closer inspection, the surface of the pillar was smooth to the touch. The crystal held refracted light, shimmering beneath its surface. The surface was clear enough to see a foot or so into the structure, but no further. Keith knocked on it, but the crystal was too thick for him to tell if the inside of the structure was hollow.

As far as he could tell, there wasn’t an entrance into it. It could’ve been hidden in the ever-shifting sands below, or there just wasn’t an entrance at all. He couldn’t assume anything about the structure since so many oddities about it eluded him.

It felt like when he was trying to find the Blue Lion, back on Earth. Whenever he’d thought he understood the energy he felt dormant in the sand, something would pull the rug from under him. Markings on the cave wall of a Lion, or a hum in the back of his mind when he thought he was getting close. It was something unfamiliar, and Keith didn’t want to figure it out as much as he wanted to uncover it. It was a different kind of satisfaction than curiosity- it was being able to confront the impassable.

He wanted that now, too.

Keith could see his reflection in the alien glass. It was almost unrecognizable, distorted by the glass and an unfamiliar expression. Even when he frowned in response, a much more familiar expression, the distortion pulled his face in odd directions that weren’t quite right. Whenever he felt like he could pinpoint where, the feeling fled, a frustrating blight on his understanding of the situation.

Knocking lightly on the glass one more time, Keith watched for any change on the surface of the structure. Nothing came, but he could feel the hair on the back of his neck raise. Regardless, nothing else changed, and the brighter of the two suns was about to set on the horizon. More time had passed than he’d intended, and he couldn’t stay much longer.

Feeling restless, Keith turned his back on the structure and headed down the sand and to his speeder. Frustration clotted in his mind as he left, dissatisfaction growing the further he got away from the crystal towers. He watched them from the mirrored sheen of his speeder, and kept his eyes back on that horizon long after the towers faded from view.

Too much time had passed without progress on the Red Lion. Keith had no idea how to fix this planet’s block on tech, and he wasn’t getting anywhere on it. Maybe Hunk or Pidge would’ve been able to figure something out, but he was lost here. Not even the residents knew what to do, instead relying on whatever tech actually worked.

And his day-to-day was starting to get boring, too. The money wasn’t bad, and he did enjoy the speeder, but he was beginning to feel restless. Keith spent more and more days poking around town for a solution to, well, anything, then left frustrated and tired. He’d stay near the pillars until the sun began to set, return to his Lion, and listen to the warble of his radio.

The next delivery he had, instead of meeting Tessa at the drop-off point, he met the Captain herself.

Keith could tell the difference from a distance. Tessa was shorter, and fidgety, and tended to come right at the last moment, if not late. The Captain, however, was waiting for him when he arrived.

When he got closer, he could see Elwin there, too, making the switch up even weirder.

Slowing his clunky speeder, he stopped in front of the two, not bothering to get off the thing in case he needed an escape.

The Captain didn’t leave Keith much time for questioning. Instead, she launched straight into her own questions, asking, “You liking the route?”

Keith leaned back on the speeder, as far back as he could without falling. He didn’t want to lie-- he wasn’t the best at it-- but it wasn’t like he wanted to tell the truth, either. The route was the best aspect of being stuck here; it gave him something to do as he tried to figure out how to fix his Lion. The speeder wasn’t bad, either, and the pillars on his route pulled his interest more than anything else in the desert.

It was still quiet, though, and it unnerved him more than he expected it would. It wasn’t like he’d never been alone in a desert before. It was just quieter, and worse, this time.

“Hey, I asked you a question-”

“-it’s fine,” said Keith.

That appeased the Captain, more than Keith thought it would. She smirked, scratching under her snout to hid it. “Good, well, that’s about to change,” she said.

“We made a deal-”

“Don’t worry, I’m not changing your route,” she said. “It’s just… going to get more exciting.”

The Captain scratched at her snout, with her two-fingered hand. “The sheriff’s recruited new blood. A new deputy. It makes your route a bit of a liability,” she said. “Now, the sheriff hates two things. One, everyone and everything on this planet.” That didn’t explain anything, but Elwin found it amusing, giving a hearty laugh. “Two, even more than that, anyone who gets near the pillars.”

What was with those things? Everyone seemed interested in them-- be it fear, or curiosity on his end-- and now the sheriff was, too?

“So she’s interested in the route I’m on,” Keith said.

“The route you’re on until you get promoted. When someone else falls on this planet and doesn’t get made deputy,” she said. “The current sap’ll be patrolling the pillars. Stay out of their scales, and you should be fine.”

It was some kind of retribution for thinking this was boring. He shouldn’t have thought that-- he should have put more energy into fixing Red, or contacting Voltron, and now he has some karmic punishment for dividing attention.

“If this route’s such a liability, why do you give it to the new recruits?” Keith asked, and regretted it. He liked his route; he liked the pillars, too. He didn’t want to change that.

“You’re doing fine so far,” says the Captain. Elwin looked away; Keith followed his gaze, and it lead to the pink pillars in the distance. “And I don’t like those pillars.”

She may have been more honest than she needed to be, because afterward, she just clapped him on the back, and told him to get on his way. Not wanting to lose his route, despite the new threat of a sheriff-led patrol, Keith didn’t complain, just loaded his speeder and continued on with his route.

For the first day under the new deputy, nothing changed. The route remained the same, the pillars as enthralling as ever, and the deputy was nowhere to be seen. He didn’t try to get close to the pillars, instead skirting the edge of them; if the deputy was closer to the pillars, he wouldn’t be able to see them.

The next day was much more eventful.

After his shift, and after an expectedly fruitless search for a way off the planet, Keith started to head back to his Lion. Bitter and frustrated, he decided that, well-- maybe he could take a detour and try to scope out this deputy. It’s not like he had anything better to do-- he was going to run into them sometime, right? Might as well be sooner rather than later.

It wasn’t the most thought-out decision, but that didn’t matter. He could make un-thought-out decisions. He approached the pillars cautiously, parking his speeder a good distance away.

A figure stood on top of the dunes, outline barely visible. Light silhouetted the form, and all he could make out was something vaguely human-shaped and tall-ish. He couldn’t tell if the figure-- who had to be the deputy-- was looking his way or not, but he should probably assume they were.

The figure slid on the sand, unintentionally, but righted themselves soon after. Keith still couldn’t tell what way the deputy was looking, but he could probably forgo stealth. Slowing maneuvering up the dune, the figure became clearer and clearer, and even more familiar. Horribly familiar.

At first, he thought his assumptions were completely off base, and maybe just a bit self-indulgent, but as he crept closer and closer his assumptions were proven. Sure enough, on the top of the dune was Lance, in new gear and new clothes, but it was Lance all right.

He felt something like relief, but the feeling didn’t last long. Sure, he was glad someone was here, but Lance just left too many questions. The tech barrier was still surrounding the planet, after all. How did he land? Why only Lance? What happened to everyone else? He had tried not to think about what happened to everyone else-- they could have been doing fine! But now Lance brought all his background worries back to the front of his mind.

“Keith!” said Lance, finally noticing Keith, and he nearly slipped down the dunes again. “You’re-- you’re okay!”

Maybe the shot Keith made had downed both of them. He hadn’t thought about that scenario at all; he hadn’t even thought about Lance then, just about destroying the root node. Did that mean the Blue Lion was down too?

None of the situations looked good-- he’d rather just have had the team figure out how to land here without stranding themselves, since there really was no way to get out of this.

“Uh, Keith?” probed Lance; Keith was staring without a comment.

Keith shook his head. “What are you doing here?” he asked.

Lance snorted, and balanced himself with the butt of his rifle. “Duh, I’m on patrol,” he said. He poked the glimmery badge on his chest-- must be the deputy badge. It was showy, and Keith couldn’t make out any details due to its flashy glare. “...And I’m supposed to be rescuing you.”

So rescue party of Lance it was. It was a relief-- kind of. Lance hadn’t been downed by Keith’s short-sighted decision, but this wasn’t the best rescue party, as Lance had managed to worm his way into the notorious for who-knows-why deputy position.

“And I can’t believe you have a-- a speeder?” continued Lance. Despite all the questions Keith had, Lance was actually asking the questions. He was peering on his tiptoes, to where Keith had hidden the speeder. “How’d you even get a speeder? Where’s the Red Lion-- is she…?”

“She’s fine,” Keith answered quickly.

Lance peered at him, not quite believing the response. “Well, Pidge explained the uh-- force field situation, and she could kind of get a reading on Red, but she didn’t know for sure, so we were all worried Red might be…”

“She’s… out of commission, but only for the moment.”

Lance scratched the back of his neck. “Blue’s still with the castleship,” he said, looking a bit sheepish as he did. It was kind of tactless. “And, uh, I just got here by one of the smaller Altean ships-- I mean, it’s not working right now, but at least I didn’t decommission Blue. Didn’t want to risk it.”

“And I’m kind of glad because the ship’s kind of… not in great shape,” Lance said. The sheepish look returned, and Lance tried to hide it by looking toward Keith’s speeder again.

Keith scowled; he wouldn’t want to risk Blue down here, either, but didn’t want to commend Lance for that plan. It… was a decent plan, but it stung that Lance didn’t have to risk Blue here, while he had to risk Red. “So now we’re both stuck here,” Keith said.

“Only kind of!” Lance said, then carefully balanced his rifle to rummage through his bag. He took something out, hiding it in his hands until he shuffled over to Keith. It was some kind of technological mistake, all old parts and wires, and he shoved it into Keith’s hands. “Here,” said Lance, as if that explained anything.

It looked like one half of Pidge’s headphones, attached to some melted together plastic with distinctive square buttons. He’d seen the style somewhere before, but he couldn’t exactly place where.

“Pidge and Hunk figured out the uh, technology thing,” Lance explained. “Some kind of magic tech… stuff’s blocking most newer tech’s interception, but old stuff works, so Hunk put together a radio from Pidge’s headphones and the Game Flux.”

That was where he’d seen the parts before.The headset felt heavy in his hands; they’d really put a lot of effort into it. “Do you know why new stuff doesn’t work?” Keith asked, fingers tracing over the old, rectangular buttons.

“Well, no,” said Lance. Keith looked up from the device, giving Lance a hard look of what he hoped was disapproval.

He probably just came across as angry, as Lance waved his hand around to dispel the mood. “Hey- hey, it’s not my fault! It was confusing, and boring, and I spent most the time trying to tell Pidge we’d find another Game Flux because she was sulking, and- and it’s not like you would’ve understood what they were saying, either!”

Right. The look of disapproval was hard to keep on his face, as Lance had a point there. None of the details really mattered, as long as the thing worked.

Still, Lance continued his flustered rant. “Anyway, it’s here, I don’t have to understand how it works, let’s just test it out.”

However, after some gentle probing, the device didn’t find any signal other than static; after some less gentle probing, it found the warbling alien radio station from before. After some very ungentle probing, it found static again, and Keith shoved the thing back into Lance’s hands.

“How was Hunk wrong…?” Lance trailed off, pushing more buttons.

Keith groaned, placing a free hand over his face. Of course he had to be stuck here with- with Lance, who wasn’t being helpful. Lance, who had gotten stuck on this planet with him and immediately joined up with his allies’ arch nemesis.

“He’d probably know,” Keith said, glaring at Lance.

Lance flustered, puffinating like a mangly, upset cat. “Hey- h-hey! It’s not my fault it doesn’t work,” Lance said. “And it’s better than you being here alone, you’d just have been stuck here forever-- I know more about the uh, radio… blocking thing than you do, even if I don’t know as much as Hunk.”

“Uh-huh,” said Keith.

It wasn’t the worst situation, as prickly as Keith was being, but Keith didn’t need the reminder of Lance’s argument here. Besides, Lance… may have been right, in the end. He wasn’t suited to the whole leader thing-- he’d rather waste his time on this alien planet than anything else.

“Oh, come on,” said Lance. “It’s-- listen. I’m deputy of this place now, I’ll be able to ask the sheriff about how to get out of here. You’re lucky to have me around, really.”

Keith snorted.

“You are!" Lance contested.

He kind of was lucky for Lance to be around-- really, he was glad for any information on how the team was doing. But… he was enjoying not having to face his own failures, and Lance’s words stung more now that Lance himself was here.

“Yeah,” Keith agreed, eventually. Lance laughed, and gave Keith a slight smile that faded quickly-- not the braggart one Keith had expected.

“Of course you are,” Lance said, then put on the full-on smirk Keith had anticipated. The smirk didn’t last long, though. “And, uh… well, I don’t exactly have an easy way to get around,” Lance hedged, “So could you give me a ride?”

They’d gotten halfway back to town, when Lance had admitted that, well, if Keith was doing some suspicious stuff, he shouldn’t be seen with the deputy, and Lance had a reputation to protect, and that he also didn’t have any money for lodging.

That last bit was probably the most important, so of course Lance kept it for the end. As desert nights could get cold, especially after the suns set, and Keith since didn’t want to find Lance frozen in the morning, he ended up taking him back to the Red Lion.

The ride back was as quiet as it was cold, and the interior didn’t feel any different. Lance, more tired than he had let on, stalked to one side of the Red Lion and laid down, dramatically announcing he was going to sleep. Keith stalked to the other side of the cockpit, facing away from Lance.

As much as he’d wanted some noise, Keith wasn’t sure if he wanted this.

Lance still found it in him to sleep in. Keith wasn’t sure where he was sleeping before-- maybe he hadn’t slept much since he’d landed-- but whatever the case, he was certainly making up for it now. He splayed across the floor of the Red Lion, taking up more room than he should, and making more noise than he should, too.

At least Keith had an excuse to turn off the radio, with this new source of white noise.

With Lance came his collection of knickknacks, some more useful than others. Keith figured that Lance would’ve gotten some better gear for being deputy, but from what he could see of Lance’s pack, the most useful thing Lance got was the single rifle-- to replace his bayard, which presumably didn’t work. Outside the rifle, Lance had an assortment of low-quality gear; a tiny canteen, slim strips of sand squid, and a ratty looking blanket. The newest object of the lot, a single, shiny badge, hung clipped to the side of Lance’s bag.

It wasn’t much. It wasn’t much at all. Keith himself had better gear and materials. Other than the rifle, of course, everything Keith had outclassed Lance’s gear.

Sheriff must have been as bad as the ruffians said, to send Lance off with only that mess.

Still, Lance had one last curious object- a small plastic disk, and inside it, something moving. Keith hadn’t seen it before, but the disk rolled out of Lance’s pack, the creature inside it rolling around haplessly.

Upon closer inspection, it was a small crab of sorts. It had short blue legs, and unintimidating pincers, and it would snap these pincers fruitlessly at the edge of the dish. As it scuttled around inside, it it clicked along the plastic bottom lining, the noise pitiful for its fruitless efforts.

It wouldn’t do harm to take it out for some air, right?

Keith took the dish out of the cockpit, to right on the edge of the Red Lion and the sand. Prying the dish open, Keith let the crab climb around the palm of his hand. It didn’t snap at his hand, luckily, just meandered around as Keith shifted his hand so it’d meander indefinitely. Tentatively, Keith scratched at the top of the crab’s shell. It didn’t seem to mind, nor did it seem to notice, instead opting to stretch its legs.

There really wasn’t a point to keeping the thing in the dish. It wasn’t making a break for it, and it seemed a bit cruel to keep it trapped in the capsule. Keith had no idea why Lance’d picked up the thing, but he shouldn’t be keeping it in such a tiny enclosure.

The crab stopped scuttling, freezing in place. Instinctively, Keith looked behind him, to Lance, but that wasn’t what caught the crab’s attention. Faster than it’d moved before, it dashed from Keith’s hand, and on to the desert sand.

Maybe that was why Lance kept it in that dish. Keith clapped on the top of his hand, too late to catch the crab. It had already made a break for it, scuttling fast through the sand.

Prying himself from the ground, Keith followed the crab through the sand, trying not to scare it again. The crab seemed to move with pinpoint purpose, scuttling through the sand in a straight-line path.

The crab stopped, suddenly and without warning, and Keith could chase. It wasn’t too far now, and he wasn’t sure why it wasn’t running, only sitting in place. No pincers moving, no scuttling crab legs, just still as if it had died right there.

Then, the crab still motionless, sand moved from beneath it. As the sand moved, a sand squid emerged, its beak snapping up the crab before Keith had the chance to approach. The squid submerged quickly after in a flurry of dark tentacle limbs, no trace of the crab left.

Keith blinked.

Another reason for the capsule, but not for the crab in the first place.

“Ugh, I think I lost my crab-compass on the way here,” Lance said from behind him, and Keith tried not to look too suspicious. He eyed the empty capsule on the ground, then eyed Lance.

“Crab compass?” he asked, voice too strangled and high-pitched. He tried to kick some dirt over the capsule

Lance seemed not to notice; he yawned, looking exhausted, despite the snore-filled sleep he had. “Yeah, how else am I supposed to find food?”

Because that made any sense. “Right,” Keith said. He crossed his arms, continuing to kick sand over the crabless compass. It worked; maybe. He was almost done covering it up.

“Look, unless you have some other way of finding sand squid, I’m going to have to find a new compass-- and let me tell you, the squid’s catch them fast-- so you should find me a new crab--”

“I get payed,” Keith said. “I could just buy you food.”

Despite this being a feasible solution to his problem, it only peeved Lance. “I can-- I get payed too,” he said. “But since this is probably your fault, you can pay for the squid.”

Keith snorted; way to jump to conclusions, even if they were correct conclusions. It was Keith’s fault, but Lance didn’t know that. Still, he’d probably have to let it go.

The route he was on didn’t require much work, if Keith was being honest. It was maybe an hour or two at most, between transferring the goods and taking it into town. He wasn’t sure why no one wanted his route; Tessa worked at wherever they made the Sunshine, and Elwin had to bargain with the bars. Keith was just the middle man, passing by the supposed threat of the pillars and, well, Lance.

Neither of them were really a threat. Lance may have been testy at first, and have taken his deputy thing too seriously, but-- well.

He got bored.

At first, he seemed very serious about guarding the pillars from Keith, and anyone else. Since no one else liked them, Keith was the only one to visit Lance at his lonely post. Lance was very adamant about guarding his post, and said that it was his duty, and the pillars were dangerous, and it would be easier to get back to Voltron if they were on the sheriff’s good side.

“Keith,” he said, after about a week since he’d first arrived. “It’s-- it’s not against the rules if you come here after your post if I’m here.”

“You gave me one rule,” Keith said.

“Pff, we have to get off here some time, don’t we? That’s more important than the deputy thing-”

These were familiar words to Keith. He’d used the argument himself, when Lance wasn’t completely bored and willing to break his own code. “That’s what I’ve been saying-”

“-but I still have to be here,” Lance clarified. “You can’t just go off exploring on your own. This place is off limits for a reason.”

Everyone seemed to have something against the pillars, but they were fine. And It wasn’t like he was going to explore on his own, but Keith felt miffed at the chance being taken away from him. Maybe he wanted to go off and explore alone, without Lance prattling on about deputy stuff, and about how Keith was in with the wrong crowd of bootleggers. He had plenty of chances before to explore, sure, but it’s the loss of the chance that counted.

“Fine,” Keith said. “I won’t go off on my own.”

Lance’s patrol was… boring. At first, Keith wanted to see what Lance was up to, but it was mostly pacing around the pillars with his shoddy gun and his slim-pickings pack of food. Lance’d peer suspiciously at things that weren’t suspicious, investigate, and return without a sign of mischief.

It was more boring than his job. At least his job was short, and he got to ride a speeder everywhere. And Keith wasn’t prepared for Lance to be taking this so seriously. He had no idea why-- over-inflated ego? General boredom? Crush on the sheriff?-- but whatever the reason, it felt like a complete swap of their normal roles. Lance normally was welcome to mess around, while Keith, well, wasn’t. But now all Keith wanted to do was… anything but this.

The most interesting thing that happened was when Lance nearly slid down the hill, careening down the sand, before righting himself right at the last moment and acting like absolutely nothing had happened.

In fact, despite the whole thing being an accident, it almost seemed fun. Maybe not unintentionally slipping and falling down a hill, but sliding down the sand wouldn’t be bad to do. He’d probably need something to balance on-- maybe one of the empty crates from the speeder-- and it could be pretty fun.

When he was sure Lance was paying attention to some non-entity on the horizon, Keith scampered back to his speeder to extract one of the crates. It took a couple of tugs-- the thing wasn’t very small-- but eventually, he got it out, and began to drag it all the way up the hill. He made it up there before Lance came back; in fact, Lance hadn’t even turned back around.

Positioning the crate at the top of the hill, Keith stepped into it and looked down at his trajectory. He should be able to make it all the way down the hill without hitting Lance, but it would be close.

Maybe close was ideal.

Leaning forward, the crate had a slow start, sand unyielding under its weight. But with a bit of a push, the crate soon slide down the hill, sand splitting in its wake. The air rushed past Keith’s face, sand splattered everywhere, and the crate creaked as it reached maximum speed down the side of the dune.

Keith laughed, squinting to see with the sand everywhere, and nearly crashed into Lance. It took a dive to the side to miss him, crate catching on the bottom of Keith’s shoes as he dove from his almost inevitable crash zone.

“K-Keith!?” yelled Lance as Keith face planted into the sand.

Sand was absolutely everywhere. There was a good chunk in his hair, and bits of it fell out as he stood up.

Lance was eyeing the box, more focused on it than Keith. “Oh, come on, we-- we have to be serious,” said Lance. He didn’t look very serious as he stuck his foot in the box experimentally, moving it in the sand.

“You, Lance, are telling me to act serious-”

“-yeah! You’ve been acting weird here,” Lance started, scrunching his nose. “You’re normally… not like this.” He wasn’t looking at Keith; he’d kicked the box down the sand some more. “Normally it’s like oh, blah blah blah, listen to my orders about Voltr-”

Keith grabbed the top of the box, picking it up before Lance could kick it again. “It’s not like you’re doing anything productive anyway,” he said.

“I-- I totally am. I told you, I have to take this deputy thing seriously--”

“Sure,” said Keith.

“Since you’re obviously not focused on getting out of here-- you’re working with bootleggers-- bootleggers! And I have connections… ”

Keith started taking the box up the hill, and Lance’s complaints petered out.

“Do you have another box?!” Lance asked after him, and Keith pointed toward his speeder.

They slid down the hill until the boxes were nearing their end. By then, dusk had already set in, and the evening chill had cooled their fun, anyway.

Keith tried to repair the poor boxes as he shoved them back into the speeder. Lance wasn’t being very helpful at all, instead poking at his rifle. He was still poking at it when Keith finally finished badgering the crates back into the speeder.

In fact, Lance was so focused on the rifle, he didn’t even notice Keith revving the engines of the speeder.

“Lance?” he asked, and Lance jerked his head toward him. He peered at Keith, then the speeder then Keith again.

Shoving the rifle on his back, Lance said, “Oh, are you finally done? We should be heading back.”

That’s why Keith had started the speeder. “Just get on,” Keith said.

“If you’re so unenthusiastic, can I drive the-”

“No.”

Lance boarded the speeder, but still found it in him to complain, “Oh, come on. I can’t believe you got a speeder by stealing it, that’s just-- that’s just not fair.”

“You got a rifle from landing on here-”

“Haha, no, I earned it,” he said. “Master sharpshooter and all, it’s mine.” He never really clarified how he’d been made deputy, ever. “Now come on, it’s getting late.”

When they got back to the Red Lion, it was already dark. The two of them had to poke around the cockpit to find anything-- or, Lance did. Keith had a general sense for where he’d packed the old blankets he bought from the town shop, even if Lance didn’t.

Keith had already started setting out the blankets when Lance poked him in the back with something cold. “Uh, Keith?” he said, still poking him. “What’s this?”

“I can’t see what you’re holding, Lance,” he said, and Lance shoved whatever it was in front of Keith.

It was that single bottle of Sunshine he’d nicked from the ruffians. He’d meant to test it, but he just never got around to it, and Lance had somehow found it.

“The stuff I’m carting around,” he said. “The alcohol.”

Lance still held the bottle, holding it precariously by the neck. “Shouldn’t you like, test it?” he asked. “To make sure they’re actually selling, uh… alcohol. It could be anything. They’re really suspicious-”

Keith wanted to argue, but that was the exact reason he had for bringing the bottle here in the first place. “I guess,” Keith replied, needlessly ornery.

The stuff was terrible. Lance made a face when he drank his first sip, Keith could tell, even in the dark, but he still drank more of it anyway. It sure did taste like alcohol, and had the affects of alcohol, and they probably should have stopped passing the bottle between them some time ago, but neither of them wanted to admit it tasted bad.

“Hey, Keith,” said Lance. “This stuff tastes… good, I think.”

That wasn’t a very strong conviction. “It tastes great,” said Keith. He didn’t want to bother with the drink anymore.

“Yeah,” said Lance. They’d both sat down on the floor of the Red Lion, on top of the blankets Keith hadn’t finished setting up. Lance set the bottle between them, for Keith to pick up, but Keith never did.

After a while of more back-and-forth refusal to admit how terrible the drink actually was, Lance quieted. He’d start a sentence every now and then, but never finish it, as if the thought kept getting away from him. Keith quieted, too, mostly because he was tired.

“I don’t have to- to listen to your leader stuff,” said Lance. “You’re not…”

Keith expected some kind of revelation-- Lance hadn’t really said why Keith was a bad leader. And while Keith kind of knew that he was, and he didn’t even want to fill Shiro’s shoes, even temporarily, maybe he could take whatever complaints Lance had and run with them. He couldn’t be leader, for… whatever reason Lance had.

It was a solid line of reasoning, until Lance didn’t finish his sentence.

“I’m not…?” Keith probed.

Lance ignored him-- he stretched his arms in front of him, acting like he hadn’t heard Keith at all. “It’s not fair,” was all Lance managed to say, after that.

Maybe that was all the meaning Keith needed. Yeah, it wasn’t fair. Keith didn’t want this. He liked saving the world with Voltron, but leading Voltron? He really didn’t want this. “Yeah,” Keith agreed, certain. “Yeah, yeah. It’s not fair.”

Lances huffed a laugh, surprised. He didn’t comment for a while, but Keith could feel his uncertain gaze, even in the dark. “Yeah, and we’re-- and now we’re stuck in the desert -”

“Desert’s not so bad,” Keith interrupted.

“No, no, the desert’s the worst, ” Lance continued. “It’s-- sand. And it gets cold at night, and the food’s terrible- ”

“It’s quiet-”

“-that too!” And that point flew right over Lance’s head. “Keith, buddy, glad you understand something.”

Keith didn’t know what to say. Sure, Lance, buddy, it was terrible here, it was so terrible to forget about the lingering fears in the back of his mind that had followed him since he’d first piloted the Black Lion. It was terrible not to have to be a leader, a job he didn’t really want and didn’t feel like he could do. A job he got from the worst circumstances that he didn’t even want to think about anymore.

Keith didn’t say anything, so Lance barrelled on.

“Ugh, you’re lucky you get to buy sandsquid-- it’s terrible trying to catch some, and I just got another compass,” said Lance. “They have thick skin, which is like, bad.”

Keith nodded. Sounded reasonable. “They’re chewy,” Keith said, leaning back.

“No, no, I mean-- they’re hard to shoot. You can only really get them if you hit them in the eye, it’s-- stupid. It’s stupid.”

All of Lance’s complaints sounded kind of reasonable, but they started to blur together. Keith wasn’t sure if it was his fault or Lance’s fault that every thread of conversation started to become mush, but it probably didn’t really matter.

Not feeling the energy to nod any longer, Keith leaned back again, but miscalculated the lean and ended up more on Lance’s shoulder than he’d intended. He froze, and Lance quieted, but didn’t try to push him off, so Keith stayed.

Once it became apparent Keith wasn’t moving, Lance muttered something unintelligible, and weakly tried to pry Keith off his shoulder. But gravity was a powerful force, and it wouldn’t shake Keith off so easily, and Lance wasn’t really putting his all into it.

Instead, he continued to complain, sentences lingering and muddling together. There were a couple words that stood out, always “sand” or “sheriff” or “lions.” He didn’t know what to make if it, but the sentences hung in the air, as Lance slowly lost steam.

Eventually, Lance stopped, and Keith could only hear his uneven breathing. Lance probably was more awake than he was, since he still managed to talk. “Sorry,” Lance said, and Keith didn’t know what for. In fact, the pause lengthened so much after Lance spoke, Keith didn’t know if he’d misheard it.

“Okay,” Keith managed, and nodded off, still on Lance’s shoulder.

The suns rose too early. Keith felt like he slept too much, and like he didn’t sleep at all. His head didn’t hurt, but his mouth felt dry, and his neck ached from sleeping sitting up. It wasn’t even a proper hangover, just the curtails of tipsy conversations.

Whatever he was leaning on, it was better than the floor he’d become accustomed to. Soft enough, but sturdy, and-- bony--?
The light was bright enough for Keith to investigate, and apparently, he’d fallen fast asleep on Lance’s shoulder. Keith tried to forget how comfortable it was, pushing away from Lance and staring out the cockpit window instead.

Lance woke up eventually, and seemed worse than Keith was. He glared at the light from outside, as if the suns could be intimidating into setting. Eventually, though, Lance pulled himself up, grumbling as he grabbed his rifle and slung it on his back.

“Ugh, I-- I was supposed to be at the pillars earlier,” he said. He blinked heavily, then looked at Keith. “Aren’t you supposed to be delivering that… aren’t you supposed to be out of here already?”

“It’s my day off,” Keith said. It wasn’t, but he could do without being an over-compensated errand boy for a day. He was sure that someone could take his shift, too.

Lance snorted, crossing his arms. He looked horribly tired, but kept trying to pretend he wasn’t. “Well, if you’re not doing anything, you could, uh… You could give me a ride to my post?”

The ride to the post was filled only with Lance’s complaining; his complaints ranged from general diatribes toward the planet, the desert, and Keith’s driving. Still, the complaints died down as the got closer, Lance quieting to meekly complaining about how much the ride was making his head hurt.

As Keith slowed the speeder, the pillars looked different. The sand had moved, as it always moved, but this time, it had revealed something on the crest of the dune. Just against the pink crystal of the pillar was a dark pink contrast-- a contrast Keith had never seen before.

Lance complained about the parking job, predictably, but his words cut off.

“Holy crow,” he said. Keith could feel him lean back in the speeder. “That’s…”

It didn’t sound like he had an explanation, so Keith stepped off the speeder without waiting for one.

“Hey-- hey, Keith! Come on, you-- you don’t know what’s up there,” said Lance, chasing after him.

“Not yet,” said Keith.

Lance groaned, and couldn’t match Keith’s pace up the dune. Getting closer, the deep pink wasn’t just a different type of crystal, but an indent in the original structure; an entrance Keith couldn’t see before. As much as he’d investigated, he couldn’t see below the sand, but now…

“You’re not supposed to go in there!” said Lance. “It’s-- it’s off-limits.”

“You-- you knew there was an entrance?!” Keith said.

“Yes!” Lance said, too fast for it to be a lie. He wasn’t very good at lying, anyway. “I-- you’re not allowed in there,” he repeated.

Keith snorted. “And you are?”

“I’m supposed to investigate to see if--”

“I can investigate,” Keith said. “You’re-- you were just complaining about being tired!”

“Yeah, but it’s my job-”

“Can you drop the-- the deputy thing already?”

Lance quieted; it gave Keith the chance to get closer to the pillars. It was an entrance, all right, and he couldn’t see how deep it went. The hall it carved was steep and twisted, only giving him a partial view of the innards of the pillar.

“I still don’t think you should go in there,” Lance hedged from behind him.

He had to find out what was in there, Lance or not.

“Keith!” Lance yelled, but Keith was already inside.

Keith couldn’t trust his instincts at all when he was with Voltron-- but he knew something was down here. He knew everyone on this planet was hiding something, and Lance could complain all he wanted, but Keith was going in anyway.

Lance could follow if he wanted to, too, but Keith could ignore him.

Inside the pillar’s cavern, the thick glass still prevented him from seeing much. Light sparkled through it, reflecting all around him. It was blinding, but Keith could still find his way around. He had expected there to be a path going up, to the top, but instead, the path careened down. Keith followed it, one hand on the wall, as he circled down into the depths of the structure.

When he got further down, he could see that the path had been carved by… something. It hadn’t been carved well. Unlike the outside of the structure, that seemed almost artful, the inside had meandering carvings on the wall that didn’t go anywhere. They were smooth, sure, but… It was almost like whoever built this, built it from the inside out- trying blindly to carve a path out.

It only got more eerie as Keith continued. While the walls were smoother near the top, chunks of the pillar were cracked out as he got further and further down. Scratches littered the walls, too, though they didn’t seem to mean anything.

The more scratchings appeared on the wall, the more and more Keith slowed down. He knew something had to be down here, but…

He slowed down enough for Lance to catch up; he could hear Lance’s uncertain footsteps coming, but he didn’t feel very inclined to speed up.

“Keith!” Lance yelled, too loud for such a small corridor. Keith grimaced, and Lance said, quieter, “Keith, what are you-- I was trying to explain to you, up there, this place… is…”

Lance’s speech pattered out. He was looking at the walls, too, eyebrows furrowed, paying them more mind than Keith had. And maybe he saw more in them than Keith had, too, because his eyes widened at… something, and he took a step back up the cavern entrance.

“Keith… look at the walls.”

“I’m already looking at them-”

“-I know, but…” Lance trailed off. “There’s scratches on the walls. In like, groups of three.” Keith could see that, but that didn’t make it important. Just… weird. Just really, really weird. Lance was scratching at the wall with his fingernail. “And-- okay, the beginning of the cave was weird, or whatever, but all the carvings were smooth.”

That wasn’t wrong. The markings here were weird, especially with how smoothly carved the rest of the path was.

“And don’t-- don’t those lizards have like, three claws…?”

“What does that have to do with--”

The walls. They weren’t-- they weren’t carved by whatever carved the walls above. In fact, carving the walls may not have even been the intention.

“We should get out of here,” said Lance.

They should get out of there-- none of this was a good idea. Lance clearly knew something about the place, and Keith could press him for more details later, but now really wasn’t the time for that. It stung, to be wrong about this, but waiting it out might work better.

He looked back at Lance, and continued down the cave anyway. He could hear Lance groan behind him, and yell something down the cavern, but he couldn’t look back-- and not due to his own short-sightedness, either.

No matter how much he wanted to turn back, it was like his limbs were moving on their own, and his jaw clenched shut, and nothing was right about this situation at all. In fact, something was very wrong.

His foot caught on the floor of the cavern, and for a moment, he could move again; he tried to grip the cave walls, but he just scratched the surface and slide further and further down, until he came to an unmoving stop.

He couldn’t move a limb again; blood dripped from under his fingernails but the sensation felt so distant. Despite being scared witless, his breathing was even and measured, and he couldn’t do anything but stare down the dark cave.

In the depths of the cave, there was… something. But Keith couldn’t blink, and could only make out a blurry outline of a threat. Keith couldn’t focus at all, and panicked, he wondered how much control he had left. He couldn’t control his own breathing, his own limbs, his own focus--

Something twisted around his arm, his fingers constricted together in a vice-grip Keith couldn’t look down to see. It curled up his arm, further and further, but he couldn’t-- there wasn’t anything he could do. He couldn’t move his feet off the cave floor, or his arm off the wall, or the-- the thing off his arm.

And the worst thing was, he was probably looking right at the… whatever it was that was pulling him in, but he wasn’t seeing a monster. He wasn’t seeing anything at all, just a blur, as if his eyes had decided to stop working all on their own.

He couldn’t move and he couldn’t see. The constriction of his arm felt distant and numb, like his arm wasn’t his own anymore. Panic surged again-- he didn’t know what he could do--

A crash rang from behind him, and the vice grip on his arm loosened. He could-- he could move, and he scrambled back, into something, but it didn’t really matter.

Whatever was in front of him was morphing-- shifting-- and the desert sands sifted away, revealing some tangled mass in its center, writhing around inside the crystal. It rammed into the walls, and shards fell onto the ground in front of him.

“Keith, what are you-- we have to get out of here!”

Something pulled him from his shoulder, the same one the-- the thing had twisted around. Reflexively Keith yanked his arm back, surprised he could even move, then looked for the source--

It was just Lance. Lance was holding on to Keith’s shoulder, not… not whatever had grabbed Keith before. Lance was looking deeper in the cave, expression urgent.

“Lance-” Keith started, and Lance let go of Keith’s shoulder and grabbed his wrist.

Lance pulled him forward again, and this time, Keith complied. The path they’d taken into the pillars was even more claustrophobic on the way out, sand seeping in. The movement had disrupted the structure, and while it didn’t break, it made maneuvering even harder. The crystal walls pressed against them both, scratching up Keith’s sleeves and then grating down his skin, but Lance’s pace was relentless.

Slipping up the incline, Keith had one chance to look back-- but he found no answers there, just sand falling back down into the pit.

When he looked up, they were almost back to the surface, but sand slid down the cave path, making finding a grip impossible. Keith tried to grip the walls, weakly remembering the scratches Lance’d pointed out.

In front of him, Lance yelled, and grappled for the rifle he’d returned to his back.

“Lance, that’s not going to-” Keith started, and Lance shoved the rifle forward. He snagged it between the narrowest part of the cave walls, and it bent in a terrible lurch, but then, it stayed.

Lance held onto it with a free hand; with that grip, they could scale the rest of short incline, and out of the cavern.

Sand still streamed into the cave entrance; Lance had managed to dislodge his rifle. And as much sand entered the cavern, it never seemed to fill it; the… whatever was down there not being buried.

“What-- what was that?!” Keith said, trying to keep his voice hushed, as if whatever was down there could hear them.

Lance looked down into the pillars’ cave, then looked at his rifle, but he never responded. It seemed like the apt time for telling Keith off, but that never came. Instead, Lance stood just outside the cave, eyes cast inside.

It… it didn’t matter. It unnerved Keith, sure, but it didn’t matter.

“Let’s get out of here,” Keith said in a shaky breath, and that managed to turn Lance away from the cavern.

He scaled the dune slowly, trying to ignore the pain in his arm. The ride to the Red Lion shouldn’t be long.

“Wait, uh,” Lance started, “I can drive back. You’re… not looking so great.”

He wasn’t feeling great, either; with Lance looking so… distracted, Keith was surprised he’d said anything at all. “Thanks,” Keith said. It felt a lot bigger than a thanks for driving back.  

Lance shrugged. “Uh, no problem,” he said.

Lance drove the speeder back to the Lion. He wasn’t very good at it, and he caught more bumps than Keith would’ve liked, but he didn’t complain. Not at all.

When they got back, Lance was quick to find the emergency kit on the Lion, and even quicker to try and help Keith with his injuries. His hands were shaking, but Keith figured his own efforts would be even worse.

The injuries weren’t the worst; he’d peeled off a lot of skin, but he hadn’t broken anything. The most worrisome injury was a dark purple bruise, meandering up his arm, from where the… whatever was in those pillars had grabbed him.

After Lance finished, it quieted. More than Keith wanted it to. He could rely on Lance for being a constant source of ramble, but the… whatever it was, had shaken Lance just as much as it had shaken Keith.

“What was that?” Keith asked.

Lance wrapped his arms around his legs, chin resting on his knees. Despite normally being animated, the only erratic movement he had now were his eyes, darting across the cockpit. Otherwise, he remained still, eerily so, not even a fidget.

Stretching his leg across the cockpit, Keith tried to poke Lance with his foot, but he only just grazed Lance’s leg.

Lance jolted, looking to Keith with glazed-over eyes. “I think it was a squid,” he said.

That didn’t make much sense-- but no explanation made much sense. Keith couldn’t tell what was in the crystal. The crystal had masked whatever it was in reflections, and given how Keith hadn’t left until Lance pulled him out, he doubted his own judgement meant much anyway. All he knew was the feeling of being drawn in, and then nearly...

“I mean, it moved like a sand squid, and when it stopped trying to… it stopped when I shot it in the eye, which is how you kill sand squids,” Lance explained. “And it…” He trailed off, distant look returning. Lance chewed on his lip, and the look faded as he frowned. Shaking his head, Lance said, “I hadn’t seen one that big, though.”

“I guess that’s why you’re on patrol,” Keith said. “So people don’t get…”

He didn’t know how to describe it-- pulled in? Eaten?

The distant look returned on Lance’s face. “Haha, yeah,” he said. “Good thing I was on patrol.” It sounded bitter, self-deprecating, almost. Lance stared a hole in the floor, frown on his face unfitting.

“Of course it’s a good thing,” Keith said.

Giving an unanimated shrug, Lance slumped back to the wall.

Of course it was a good thing Lance saved him from that-- that thing. He didn’t get why Lance was being so… weird about this. None of it made sense.  

Maybe it was the pillars-- the squid… thing. Keith wondered what drew Lance to them. It had to be different-- Lance had seen something down there, while all Keith saw was a blur. Whatever Lance had seen, it must have struck him to his core, as he’d never seen Lance this quiet.

“We can figure it out in the morning,” said Keith.

Lance gave a final non-committal shrug, and turned away from Keith.

Maybe figuring it out in the morning was procrastinating, but it’s not like Keith had any other choice.

Lance didn’t talk much in the morning. Instead, he fretted over the broken rifle, trying his best to even out the barrel, but getting nowhere. It was a solid reminder of the day before, and Keith didn’t want to look at it for long.

They couldn’t really figure anything out if neither of them were talking; frustrated, Keith ended up going to the drop off point to meet with the rest of the ruffians.

It probably wasn’t the best idea. He’d bailed the previous day to go to the pillars, both of which wouldn’t please the Captain. But it was all he could do, right now.

Only the Captain was at the drop off point, and she didn’t look pleased. Keith slowed the speeder, trying to gauge just how testy she was.

He wanted to get answers out of her-- he knew nothing about what he’d seen, other than Lance thought it was a squid. A squid, of all things! But from Keith wasn’t sure how much information he’d get, since he was already on the Captain’s bad side.

“So, the no-show decides to show up?” said the Captain. She swished her tail across the sand. Keith still couldn’t get a good read on lizards, but that was never a good sign.

Keith got off his speeder, but didn’t approach her very close. He leaned against the speeder, just in case he needed a quick getaway. “Vacation day,” he said. Maybe he could play this off as… as not being satisfied with work. Something normal.

Something normal wouldn’t explain anything, though. And, well-- he could at least try to get some information. He was already in a deep pit as it was; an extra foot of depth wouldn’t hurt, would it?

“A vacation to the pillars,” Keith added. When that didn’t get a response, he continued, “I went inside the pillars.”

That cracked something in the Captain’s act; her rufflet flared around her neck, and her nostrils flared, but she didn’t approach him. “You… you went inside?!”

He hadn’t expected her to get this angry so fast. “Uh, yeah--”

“You’re off the route,” she said. “You’re not getting anywhere near those things-” she paused, then took a composing breath. “I’ll take over. You work with Elwin in town-- and take the long way to town.”

He didn’t even have the chance to ask any questions. “But-”

“I know where you’re staying,” she said. “Your ship’s hard to miss. You better not get any closer to the things.”

“It takes me longer to get to town-”

The Captain snorted, silencing him, but didn’t comment immediately. Tapping her claws on her leg, she said, “Fine, you’ll help Tessa at the refinery. You won’t have to go in the direction of the pillars then. Consider it… a vacation. A break from the hard work.”

That wasn’t what he wanted; that wasn’t what he wanted at all. He didn’t get any answers out of her, and he wasn’t even punished for his actions, he was just… put on a new job. The Captain had to know something about the pillars, but it was clear Keith wasn’t going to be able to probe her at all.

Before Keith could figure out what to even ask, the Captain interrupted his thought process. “What did you see in there?” she asked.

It took a while to reply; he almost missed the question entirely. And while the question was whispered, she didn’t take it back.

“What was it? I know you saw it, I know something’s in those damn pillars--”

“I don’t know,” he said.

She chewed on the response, unnerved. She stretched the hand with two fingers, clenching and unclenching a fist. Keith thought maybe, just maybe, he’d get an answer.

“Head back with Tessa. She’lll show you the ropes,” the Captain said. “I’ll take it from here.”

The refinery was boring business. Tessa wasn’t a very good teacher, either, too terse to give good instructions. Eventually, she either gave up, or gave him enough pity to let him off early.

When he got back to Red, Lance… Lance was still there. He was still messing with that rifle, and he looked as harried as he did when Keith had left. He got being scared of the place-- it was terrifying, whatever had happened the day before --but after Lance had puffed up his deputy resume so much, he should at least try to stick with his protecting-people-from-the-monster bit.There was actually something to protect people from.

“You never went back to the pillars,” said Keith.

Lance huffed, “Uh, no, of course not.” His face was infuriatingly blank.

“Shouldn’t you have-- done your job?”

Another huff from Lance; this time, he’d shifted away from Keith, face coloring with an unwarranted irritation.

“Oh, come on,” Keith started, “You’ve been going on this whole time about how-- how you’re supposed to be on patrol over there, and once there’s actually something to patrol--”

“--that wasn’t my job!” Lance said. Of course it was his job-- he’d made it super clear when he was down there. “That’s what she-- she told me my job was, but there’s a squid in there!”

“That’s why you have to patrol--”

“Yeah, sure. No one goes over there! No one who’s been on this planet long enough not to be-- to be eaten!” This wasn’t making any sense-- Lance wasn’t making any sense. Keith hadn’t expected him to get so worked up about this.  “My job was to patrol the pillars, make sure no one got near them, and if-- on the rare case there was an enterance, to investigate, as-- as much as I could.”

“That sounds normal -”

“--no, it’s not.” Lance said, still more upset than Keith thought was warranted. He hadn’t been the one to almost get them both killed down there. “You-- you saw what happened down there! With the squid!”
“I don’t know why you’re so set on it being a squid!” Keith countered. “And I didn’t see anything, I-- I just almost got the both of us killed--”

Keith didn’t know what else to say. He wasn’t on the same page at all. He rubbed at his eyes, and after a pause, looked up at Lance. Despite yelling at him, Lance had calmed down, shoulders less tense and a dawning look of understanding on his face.

“Sorry, I…” Lance sighed. “Just... calm down.”

Like he was one to talk. “I am calm,” said Keith. He wasn’t perfectly calm, but at least he was calmer than Lance. “You’re not.”

Lance snorted, then placed a hand over his eyes. “Sorry,” he said. He could have been crying, but Keith couldn’t tell, and it frustrated him. Worried him, more like. He really wanted to understand why Lance was freaking out, but nothing made sense.

Lance shook his head, staring down the ground. “I, uh… Just, okay, bear with me for a second.” Digging in his bag, Lance pulled out the crab compass, of all things, with a brand new crab in it. It scuttled around as Lance shoved it in Keith’s hands. “So, this is a crab compass. Which is what you use to hunt sand squid.”

No amount of eyebrow raising could express the disjointed whiplash Keith was feeling. “Yeah,” said Keith. “That’s... a crab compass.”

“So squids here uh-- hunt by like… a mental link.” That didn’t sound entirely believable. “Like, like Lion stuff. Except they force a link and just convince the crab to go to the squid. Mind control stuff. It’s like, super creepy, but it makes it really easy to find squid. The link doesn’t break until the squid’s dead, or the crab’s, uh, eaten.”

It sounded more like an old wives’ tale than anything, but… that would explain how that crab he let out acted. It had just walked its way to its own death. And if Keith’s following this correctly, then… “I’m the crab,” said Keith.

Lance laughed, but it sounded bitter and harsh. “Yeah-- yeah, you’re the crab. I don’t know what you saw down there, but what I saw was just a squid.” He paused, then emphasized, “A very big squid.”

That… all made sense. That all made way too much sense, but it didn’t explain why Lance had freaked out so badly. “So it’s a big squid,” said Keith, skeptical.

Lance nodded. “So-- so I’m pretty sure the sheriff knows it’s a squid down there,” Lance said. “I mean, my patrols were never… she was never very interested in what I had to say. And I know there’s been a lot of missing deputies here, I-- someone warned me about it, when I first came to town.”

“And I just had to accept the job anyway!” Lance shook his head; there was something more there, but Lance steamrolled over his own bitterness. “As deputy, I- I wasn’t supposed to come out of the pillars,” he said. “I was just supposed to-- I was supposed to be the crab.”

And that-- oh. That explained why Lance didn’t go on patrol at all; there wasn’t a need to in the first place. Everyone stayed out of the pillars after all, and only total strangers to the planet would try to investigate. And while Keith still didn’t fully trust the ruffians, they’d taken him off the route as soon as they heard about him entering the pillars. The sheriff had kept Lance by the pillars intentionally.

“Sorry I didn’t tell you before you left,” said Lance. “I didn’t want to think that… that that was what was going on.”

Lance sounded a bit too raw and earnest, and it wasn’t anything Keith was prepared for. “It’s fine,” Keith said, eventually. Lance wasn’t taking this probably-predictable betrayal well at all, but at least his caginess made sense now. “It’s... it’s really fine.”

After that, Lance returned to messing with his rifle. It was really a lost cause, but Lance kept tinkering with it, maybe needing something to do with his hands. Keith didn’t know. He sat down on the blanket again, and he should leave Lance alone about this, but...

“You shot it down there,” Keith said. “When I was... mind controlled.”

Lance set the rifle down; it was very much dead. “Yeah,” he said. “Normally one shot in the eye’s enough to kill them, but-- you saw that thing. It didn’t stop for long.”

“It did let go of me, though.”

Lanced nodded, “Yeah. It’s still alive, though. And I… I got a good shot in, I think. It just wasn’t enough.”

Small guns didn’t work on it, then. That was unfortunate. They didn’t really have access to anything bigger than Lance’s broken rifle, but it’s not like Keith needed to think about taking that squid down, after almost being eaten. But it’s not something he could let go of.

Thinking about it, it was probably why Voltron was here in the first place. They knew that the Galra were after something on this planet-- and given the planet’s relative desolation, it had to be the squid. Maybe they wanted to experiment on it, or just use it as a weapon, but whatever the case, Voltron had to stop them.

This wasn’t the best time to go after the squid-- they needed to get back to the rest of the team. And this probably wasn’t the best time to ask Lance about it, either. Lance was still very much freaked out about being bait, even if he hadn’t been mind controlled down in the pillar.

And despite being mind controlled, this was still very much Keith’s fault, if he was being honest. He’d gone way too far deep into the pillars for an answer to question he didn’t need to ask, and if Lance hadn’t been there, he wouldn’t have made it out. And if Keith hadn’t been there…well, maybe Lance would’ve just been normal bait.

Maybe they were both on the same page here, juggling their own mistakes.

The pause had stretched on too long, but Keith could still bring up the conversation from the dead. “Do you think a bigger gun would work?”

Lance stared at him, for a long time, with such a set look of determination on his face, that Keith was sure they were on the same page.”I mean, nothing that works on this planet will be big enough,” Lance said. Then, after a good look around the Lion, he said, “But if we could get the tech barriers down… Red could probably take it down.”

They needed more info now, for sure. It wasn’t just Keith’s desire for answers; it was the need for a concrete plan. In order to get Red working, they had to understand how the tech barrier worked. Since Hunk and Pidge couldn’t figure it out, Lance figured that it was probably useless for them to try and figure out the science on their own. Instead, they would have to interrogate anyone they knew.

The sheriff was probably the best bet, but despite his newfound determination, Lance still hedged on asking her anything. “I don’t think… we shouldn’t go to her now,” he said.

“She probably knows more than anyone--”

Lance winced. “Probably, but…” he paused, “But you didn’t get very much out of your crew, did you?”

He had a point, but Keith didn’t want to agree with him. No, he didn’t get very much out of the ruffians, but the sheriff probably knew more.

“So you ask them questions first. They don’t want you dead.”

Again, Lance had a point, but Keith still felt like Lance was just avoiding asking the sheriff anything. It was still fair, but they still would have to go get information out of her, if the ruffians didn’t pan out.

“If you go with me to the bootleggers, I’ll back you up with the sheriff,” Keith offered.

Lance tapped his fingers on his knee, still unsure, then said very quickly, “Okay, fine, okay, that’ll work.”

Lance stayed fidgety, all the way to the meeting with the Captain and her crew. He was still wearing his dumb deputy badge, for “interrogation purposes,” despite both them knowing it was probably meaningless.

It didn’t get them anywhere. Elwin was the first to notice Lance. His eyes darted toward the Captain, looking for some kind of approval, but the Captain looked decidedly stone-faced.

“Kid,” she started, “I don’t know what it is you think you’re doing--”

“It was my idea!” said Lance. “Uh, our idea, um--”

So far so good.

“He’s not going to turn you in,” said Keith. That didn’t do much to relax the tension, but it did make Lance less jumpy.

Lance calmed down enough to talk, at least. “We’re just trying to get more info,” he said. “About… anything. Why the tech’s not working, how to get out of here, what’s with the--”

“You’re asking questions I can’t answer,” said the Captain. “Tech’s always not worked, there’s no way off this black hole, and…” She straightened her posture, just like before, in an aim to intimidate.  “There’s nothing you need to know about with the pillars.”

Lance backed down, but not as much as the Captain had wanted. “I never-- I never even finished my sentence,” he said. “Come on. You know there’s something up with the pillars.”

He paused, and the air remained tense and unmoving.

“We just want info,” Keith added, trying to sound restrained in his frustration.

Surprisingly, the Captain does relent. Even more surprisingly, she dismissed Elwin and Tessa, having them continue their route.

When the both of them are gone, the Captain turns to Keith. “You said you went inside the pillars,” she said. Lance shot him a look, and Keith shrugged. “And I told you not to look into it again.”

“We’re not planning on going inside it, we just need information on it, for… reasons.”

It wasn’t a good excuse. Not at all. It was a terrible excuse, and the most suspicious thing Keith could say. Lance kicked a puff of dust up, groaned, then kicked the back of Keith’s foot.

Lance took over for him. “We know the sheriff’s been… she’s been sending people into the pillars to be eaten,” he said. The Captain eyed him, but didn’t interrupt. ”And we know what’s inside there-- we saw it!”

The Captain lifted up her arm, the one with the two fingers. A burn pattern circled around it, ending in one finger gone, and it was a familiar pattern-- like the bruises on Keith’s own arm. “I know there’s something in there,” she said. “It almost killed me, so I know better than to let some kids try a bird-brained plan to stop it.”

“We’re only asking for info,” Lance said, but at the same time, Keith started, “We’re not asking for your help stopping it--”

Lance kicked him again, hitting him on the first try that time.

“If you think I’m going to let you two children die trying what I’ve failed--”

Keith snorted. “We’re going to try anyway.”

He expected another kick from Lance, but Lance just… looked at him, with an expression Keith couldn’t read. It could almost be admiration, for a second, but it was gone when Lance notices him looking.

“So you might as well tell us everything you know,” continued Lance, turning back to the Captain. “That is, if you really don’t want to get us killed.”

“You probably know more than I do,” she said. “But…”

The Captain shook her head. “I worked with one of the old deputies,” she said. Lance wasn’t good at hiding the surprise on his expression; Keith couldn’t blame him. He probably looked just as surprised. “Things hadn’t gotten bad here. At least not in the same way. We didn’t have any outside communication, and we still had strandeds like you two landing here. And they all still disappeared, one by one. But it wasn’t as consistent.”

She looked at Lance, and then to his deputy badge.

“The old deputy was more in charge of the town relations than his sister-- the sheriff,” she said. “Same sheriff we still have. She kept to herself, in her books, giving bizarre orders. She wasn’t much of a help, but her brother tried to keep the town together regardless. He knew the disappearances were connected to the pillar, and he knew he couldn’t get anything out of his sister. But, one day, he figured something out, reading one of her books. And he never told me what, but I knew.”

She looked over her shoulder, in the direction of the pillars. “He tried to take that monster down himself, but I followed him into the pillars,” she said. “When he got to the center, he just… stopped. I tried to be discrete, but something was pulling him-- inside-- and he wouldn’t move, and…”

The same monster had pulled him in. The Captain held up her arm, and Keith thought about the scratch marks they’d seen in the tunnel. “It didn’t affect me. I managed to get myself out, but...” She trailed off. “He was a lost cause by then.”

“Oh,” said Lance. Keith couldn’t think of much more to add.

And as in-depth the information was, it didn’t tell them anything new. Just that a previous deputy had figured something out, and that he’d died, just as Keith almost had, to the squid’s mind control.

“I’ve been trying to keep a close eye on any strandeds on this planet,” she said. “The business is lucrative, and with enough hands, easy. I can employ plenty of strandeds and make sure they don’t become deputies, then let them leave when they’re no longer desperate for employment.”

She shook her head. “Obviously the plan didn’t work out with you two.”

Neither of them say anything. There was a quip on the tip of Keith’s tongue, but he can’t get it out. Instead, he waited until the Captain’s posture faltered, and she looked much smaller than she had before, for once looking uncertain. “Don’t get yourself killed, kid,” she said.

“Not planning on it,” said Keith, and the Captain nearly smirked.

She left soon after, and Keith and Lance watched as she sped away. Keith wanted to feel relieved, but he couldn’t. All that had told them was something Keith already knew-- that the sheriff was the key to solving their problems.

Lance still wasn’t sure about talking to the sheriff, Keith could tell. He’d given Keith a brief overview of the sheriff’s office, but not much about the sheriff herself. Keith knew all about what the building looked like, where they’d find any potentially useful documents, and how to get out easily, but all the plans were… lacking.

It was enough to get a rudimentary plan in place, but Lance’s focus was so scattered. Lance’d add in too much detail about the vents, where Keith was supposed to be, and not enough about his side of the plan. Keith didn’t know what questions Lance’d ask the sheriff when they were there, or what kind of papers Lance was hoping to find.

He only knew how to watch Lance’s back, which was useless, if he didn’t know exactly what Lance was doing. But any topic that even approached the sheriff would cause Lance to doubt his own convictions-- maybe he knew what papers to look for and questions to ask.

It wasn’t a good situation, but there wasn’t much time to question the plans. It would probably already be a shock to her that Lance wasn’t dead; they didn’t want to make themselves even more suspicious.

Climbing through the ventilation shafts was easy enough. It was cramped, and dusty, but it was passable. Finding a path to the office was much harder, but he’d managed that, too. However, finding the right documents was looking more and more difficult.

The office was caked in old stains and older documents. Papers spread across the singular desk, ink stains blurring across them. Nothing looked useful; it was run-down, like the town itself. Maybe even worse than the town itself, as instead of having conclaves of life, the whole place was coated in a dry mold of misery.

Sitting in the vent ducts wasn’t any better. It was unpleasant, but it would be hard for the sheriff to see him. At least, Keith hoped she wouldn’t be able to see him-- he shouldn’t downplay the perceptiveness of paranoia, as off-base as it could be.

Shifting slightly, Keith tried to get comfortable, waiting for Lance to appear.

It took longer than he expected. After what felt like hours, an alien walked into the room; she looked small, her scales a dusty rose color, and her eyes darting around, cataloging her mess of an office. That had to be the sheriff, and it seemed like she knew something was wrong.

Keith froze, hoping he wouldn’t be spotted. After a too-long moment, the sheriff scurried to a bookshelf on the far wall, and Lance appeared behind her.

Comparing the two, Lance actually wasn’t much taller than the sheriff. It must’ve been the way she held herself, like if she hunched over enough, she’d disappear.

“I’m not sure I can fix the rifle. You’ve done quite the number on it,” said the sheriff. “I told you to be careful with it.”

Lance looked up to the vents, a bit too obviously. “I, uh, was,” he said, looking away. “I mean, I tried to be careful. But, you know. Deputy’s a hard job.”

The sheriff snorted, and continued to dig in her shelves. Something metal clanged to the floor, and Lance jumped at it. After it finished clanging, Lance stood up straight, posture more contained than it was before.

“You know, with the giant squid inside the pillars, and all,” Lance said. This wasn’t discrete; this wasn’t espionage, this was a confrontation, and Keith wanted to shove off the ventilation shaft to yell, or to drag Lance out of there.

The sheriff froze; she faced away from Keith, but he saw her try to look back. She swished her tail across the floor, and papers flew across the room, meeting the wall in a woosh of air.

“And, like, I don’t think a rifle’s the best weapon for it,” Lance rushed through his words. “It didn’t even do a dent on the thing, and--”

“You hit it?!”

“-and that doesn’t even matter,” Lance said. “You gave me that post. With only a gun. I thought I was supposed to figure out what was going on in there for you, but-” Lanced paused; this was very off script from what he expected. Keith hoped Lance knew what he was getting himself into. “You knew the whole time. I know you… I know you’ve just been sending people there to die.”

The sheriff still faced away. Keith wondered what was in that bookshelf of hers, and he wondered how fast he could pry himself from the air vent, worse come to worse.

“It’s mind control,” he said. “The thing-- the squid just eats whatever deputy you have patrol it, and you send them there anyway!”

The sheriff finally turned around, and she finally looked her full height. Like the Captain, she was a lizard, but her scales were smooth, and she had no neck rufflet. Instead, she stretched, trying to give herself the most intimidating height she could.

“Of course I send them there anyway,” she said. “I don’t have a choice.”

“Of course you have a choice--” Lance started, but the sheriff cut him off.

“No, I don’t,” she said sharply, and Lance quieted. “This planet... we used to be so much more than this wasteland, until that monster destroyed us. We would’ve been demolished, had my predecessors not sealed it away in those pillars. We thought that would be enough.”

The sheriff shuddered, her intimidating stance momentarily looking weak. “But-- but even our best engineers couldn’t design something to stop it. It’s been trying to escape out of those pillars for years. Those caverns you found… they weren’t originally there.”

Keith thought back to the caves-- they’d been carved out smoothly, from the inside. It wasn’t the original pillar creators who’d done that, it was the squid.

“I can’t let it escape. Eating placates it, so of course I send you… you strandeds to the squid. There’s no other solution,” she paused, staring down at Lance, her eyes steely. “Even if it makes me a villain, I’ll continue to send that monster an expendable meal every now and then.”

“I’m not-- I’m not expendable!” Lance said, and his voice broke through the words.

Keith should be watching the sheriff, but instead, he was watching Lance; Keith couldn’t even see his face, but he could imagine it.

“I’m not expendable,” Lance repeated. “And I’m going to get off this planet.”

The sheriff had something in her hand-- Keith couldn’t see what it was from here. “No, you’re not. You’re not the one calling the shots here,” she started, and Keith elbowed the vent grate, hard.

“Lance!” he yelled, and something hit just above the vent with a blast of noise. The grate hung on its edge, and Keith elbowed it again to unhinge it.

The sheriff had shot what looked like a pistol, and it smoked up the room. She’d aimed it again, but didn’t have the chance to set it off. Lance shoved her into the wall, full-forced with the brunt of his elbow. The wall shook, and something-- books-- clattered down, and Keith couldn’t see anything from his angle anymore.

Shoving himself out of the ventilation shaft was hard, and he wasn’t nearly as fast as he’d like. He could only catch glimpses of Lance, and the glimpses weren’t clear, either. He couldn’t hear anything useful, either, as the wall impact shook too many books and knickknacks to the floor.

“L-Lance?!” he said, figuring his cover was up anyway; he could finally get a good visual. Lance was leaned on the bookshelf, and the sheriff knocked out on the ground.  

Lance looked-- Lance looked alive. Keith wanted to reprimand him for whatever he had just pulled, but he couldn’t. Not right now, anyway.

“Grab the books,” said Lance, before Keith could get a hold of himself. “They’re-- we’ll figure out what to do with those.”

The books made for an awfully good distraction. They had diagrams neither Lance nor Keith could really make sense of; the books were full of documentation notes for high-tech plans that had too many numbers and runes to make any sense. On top of that, almost every page had a taped-on note to it with some scribbled high-tech jargon that made even less sense.  Every now and them, one of them would have half an idea of what something meant, but half an idea didn’t go very far.

Plus, Keith figured both of them were half-focused on the task at hand. Lance fidgeted as nervously as he had before he went to confront the sheriff, and Keith… well, he couldn’t stop thinking about the whole confrontation in itself.

Lance had taken the whole expendable thing… hard. And Keith couldn’t blame him, the sheriff had been sending Lance to his death, but Lance had taken it hard enough to splinter from their espionage plan and confront her. He could’ve talked that out with Keith, instead of just speaking on his own, but he didn’t.

And, well… maybe Lance had a reason for that. While Keith hadn’t been sending him to his death, he hadn’t really talked to Lance about his own plans at all, either. He’d practically treated Lance as expendable, too, firing at the node droid without a second thought about the consequences.

So Lance had a problem with expendability, and Keith probably wasn’t a help with that. Maybe it was even a reason as to why he was acting so defensive about anything leadership related, but Keith didn’t know for sure. Shiro might have known on instinct, but Keith’s blind here.

At least he was blind for now. He could always try probing for something.

“Uh, Lance,” he said. He hadn’t thought through a speech. He probably should have done that.

Lance was still looking at another one of the plans, and not Keith, but the plan looked decidedly upside down. “I know, I-- I messed up, but we still got the info--”

The very upside-down info. “Not what I was going to say,” Keith said.

Lance frowned, looked to his paper, and tried to discretely flip it around.

“Why did it bother you so much?” he asked. Before Lance could counter with his standard she-tried-to-kill-me answer, Keith barrelled forward, “Look, I know it… was a terrible situation, but we had a plan, and you kind of… snapped.”

“We still got the stuff,” Lance said, his excuse now kind of sounding pitiful.

This obviously wasn’t going anywhere. Keith wanted to groan and look back at the papers and ignore this again, but he probably shouldn’t.

“I’m sorry about before,” Keith said. “About aiming at the droid when you were still there. I didn’t-- I shouldn’t have done that.”

“That’s not relevant--”  

“Expendable,” Keith interrupted. “It’s relevant. You got worked up about being expendable.”

It shouldn’t have been enough, but somehow, it worked on Lance. He shifted his weight, obviously uncomfortable, and said, “Yeah I-- I don’t know. Sure. That was the problem.” He finally dropped the pretext of looking at papers. “I snapped because, well, when I landed here I really latched on to the idea of being the deputy because I thought it meant something. That I was more important. So being just a pawn in a… squid murdering scheme stunk. A lot.”

The following silence was uncomfortable, and Keith wondered if he should probe Lance for more info, but Lance gave it himself.

“I wanted to be important because, I... I know we all pilot robot Lions that form the best defender of the Universe, but-- we’re not all equal,” Lance continued. “It’s pretty obvious, since Shiro chose you as leader. And I guess I haven’t let you catch a break on that. I mean, I-- I always should’ve known we weren’t neck and neck. We never were.”

It was selling Lance a bit short, but Lance was on a roll with words, and Keith couldn’t find it in him to interrupt.

“And so the whole leader thing was… well, I couldn’t kid myself anymore, could I? Shiro had chosen you to lead Voltron, and that’s… I couldn’t put myself on your level if you were leader of Voltron, and I just.. blew up. I should probably apologize for that.”

He paused again, giving Keith another chance to interrupt, but it was a chance he didn’t take.  “But I don’t have to put myself at your level,” said Lance. “One of you’s enough.”

That wasn’t an apology. Or what he expected at all. “Uh, what?” Keith said.

“Oh, don’t get me wrong, I think I get why Shiro chose you,” Lance said, finding his stride again. “You’re... you put everything into what you do, but sometimes you just put everything in the completely wrong direction, and it’s… it almost ends with you being eaten by a giant squid.”

“That was mind control!”

“Only when we got to the center! Before that it was regular old Keith control,” Lance said.

“You’re not exactly helping your-- your case here--” Keith knew he’d messed up, but he couldn’t help feel affronted at this. What kind of apology was Lance leading into? “Oh, I was mean, but you still stink, actually?”

Something must have shown on his face, because Lance tried to cover himself quickly. “But, uh, anyway, what I’m trying to say is, um.” He scratched under his nose, looking much more nervous than before. “You’re not going to be as good of a leader as Shiro was,” said Lance. “But you don’t have to be. I mean, all of us-- Pidge, Hunk and I-- we’re… uh, more competent than we were when we first started. We can help you out.”

That wasn’t a vote of confidence, really. But a vote of confidence really wouldn’t have helped Keith out-- it would have felt… thin. Like a false promise. And with support rather than reliance, he didn’t really have to doubt his own instincts. No one had to rely on him, they just had to keep up. Maybe not to the same extent, but thinking back to Lance and the squid, they probably could.

“That’s…” Keith paused, trying to find a way with words. He never really had that. He should say something monumental. Lance just looked horribly embarrassed.

“Thank you,” said Keith. He hoped he sounded like he meant it-- because he really did. “That’s… that. Thanks.”

Even though Keith’d tried to sound sincere, Lance just looked even more embarrassed, turning away from Keith. Keith couldn’t even see his face anymore, but that didn’t stop Lance from being horribly transparent in his fluster. “That’s all? A thank you? No ‘Lance, that’s the most inspirational thing I’ve ever heard—’”

“We have work to do,” Keith said, and Lance guffawed. “And I don’t want to embarrass you more than you already are. The ‘thank you’ did enough.”

Lance’s voice turned high-pitched. “Wh… I’m not embarrassed!”

“Your voice just cracked-”

“This is the thanks I get for-- for that?!? Do you know how long I’ve been trying to-- think--”

That was a low hanging fruit to make fun of. How long had Lance been struggling with the process of thinking? But instead of a quip, Keith instead said, very earnestly, “Alright, fine. You’re fantastic, amazing work, and-”

“N-nevermind!” Lance said; he covered his face, even though he was turned away from Keith.  “Fine, whatever, we just need to finish our plans for-- for the things.”

Keith laughed, which almost made Lance look over. He turned, but quickly turned his head back around to hide his face again.

Even as the mood sobered again as they returned to planning, it wasn’t as tense, anymore. Keith could actually ask Lance about plans without worrying about stepping on something wrong, which sped up figuring out what to do.

Lance shoved one of the heavier books in front of Keith, open to a page with designs for the pillars. All around them were runes he couldn’t make out, and was sure Lance couldn’t make out, either. The margins were scribbled in, too, with more words than Keith wanted to read.

“This is it!” Lance said, and Keith looked to the confusing diagram.

Sure, Lance could understand this. “Okay,” said Keith, “What is this?”

“Don’t look at the diagram, it doesn’t make any sense,” Lance continued. “The notes are-- I think it’s the old deputy’s notes.”

The books were covered in notes. “What, are you an expert in alien handwriting?”

“No, they’re actually written in the margins,” Lance said. “Every other note is tapped in-- like a book prude. Sheriff wouldn’t actually write in the notebooks, I don’t think.”

It was as good an assumption as any. Keith looked over the margin notes; they looked like chicken scratch, hastily jotted down. He peered at it, eyebrows furrowed. The start didn’t make any sense-- it was referencing some tech he couldn’t understand at all. But at the very bottom, the writer had circled one of the runes and labeled it with some complicated tech jargon that made no sense to Keith.

“I think the pillars are the barrier,” said Lance. “They made the pillars to block the squid and the tech. Two birds with one stone.”

Writing in the margins was rare; most notes were attached, not written in. It made skimming for more information easier, like a breadcrumb trail. They just had to look for where someone had written in notes, and figure out why the notes were important.

The trail didn’t initially lead to helpful revelations. Keith thought he had something when he found intel on the squid itself, but the accounts of the squid itself were always written with a measured distance rather than a first-hand. The best Keith ever got to understanding their opponent better was a short briefing, outlying a failed battle plan, with a lengthy casualty list.   

However, one of the earlier treaties, covered in notes, outlined the proposal for the pillars in the first place. Some occupying force had come to trade on their planet, but weren’t actually there to trade. Instead, they experimented on local wildlife, and whatever they’d done left them with a failed experiment. From the descriptions of the occupiers, it had to be an early Galra empire-- experiments fit their game plan, after all.

The treaty itself stated that the pillars were constructed to contain the experiment’s mind-control powers, and to make the planet unfindable so the occupiers couldn’t resurrect their work. It made no work of the exact extent of the tech barrier, only that they needed to prevent the occupiers from coming back. They didn’t want the squid to cause any more destruction. The margin-writer had scribbled angry notes at that, mostly detailing lists and lists of people who’d gotten stuck on the planet, instead of never finding it.

“You’re right,” Keith said.

He couldn’t say much else, as the prospect of being right was enough for Lance to drop his current work. “Wait, what?! Seriously, let me see that--” Lance practically hurled himself over at Keith, leaning over his shoulder to look at the treaty notes.

“Hah! I knew it, I was right, they--” Lance frowned, glee fading. “They built the pillars to keep the squid in, and to… to keep other people off this planet. To just… let the planet die.”

Whatever vindictive glee Lance found at being right was gone now.

“That’s it, though,” said Lance. “If we can destroy the pillars, we set the squid free, but… we can turn Red back on.”

Keith nodded. “And Red has enough firepower to kill it,” he said. Lance still seemed uncertain, so Keith continued, “You saw how it reacted when you nailed it in the eye. As long as we get a good shot, we should be good.”

That didn’t seem to give Lance any peace of mind. “And if we don’t, we’ll have Pidge and Hunk to back us up,” Keith added. “They can help us out.”

“Oh, no way, you’re not using my own words against me--”

That trap worked easily. Keith smiled, pleased with himself, and Lance shuffled away from Keith, peering at the treaty notes from a distance now.

“We just-- we just need to figure out how to destroy the pillars in the first place,” said Lance.

That wouldn’t be an easy task-- but they could probably drag someone else into this. “The Captain,” said Keith. “She’s still… she’ll probably be down for it, if we can convince her we know what we’re doing now.”

It was a stretch; she wasn’t too keen on helping them their last conversation. But she did tell them all she knew, and he was sure if she believed their plan, she’d be more than willing to help them out.

“Do you think they have big enough explosives?” Lance asked.

Keith snorted; he wouldn’t doubt it. “I don’t know,” he said. “But they’d be able to figure something out.”

They met up with the ruffians at the refinery; Keith needed to be there, anyway, and they’d be able to catch the whole crew if they met in the morning. This time, Lance had decided to forego his deputy badge, and instead brought a handful of the sheriff’s books and papers.

Sure enough, they managed to catch the whole motley crew at the refinery. Elwin regarded the two with curiosity, and Tessa looked at them with suspicion. The Captain didn’t seem surprised at their entrance at all, only sparing them a short glance.

“Since you’re not dead yet,” she started, “I’m assuming mister deputy wants a job working with-”

“-we need explosives,” interrupted Keith.

The Captain narrowed her eyes, displeased with being cut off.

“Uh, we know how to get rid of the squid in the pillars,” Lance elaborated. “We just-- we need to destroy the pillars, so we can get our ship running again.”

While Elwin cocked his head more curious than anything, the Captain still didn’t look impressed.

“We have proof!” Lance said, and shoved the books at the Captain. “We got these from the sheriff’s place. It-- uh-- look at the margins?”

They still didn’t know if the writings in the margins were the old deputy’s for sure, but by the change in the Captain’s expression when she paged through them, Keith knew it had to be. She tapped two claws on her leg, but not out of irritation.

Both Elwin and Tessa tried to sneak looks at the papers, Elwin going as far as to unsubtly lean over the Captain’s shoulders for a glance. Lance fidgeted, obviously wanting them to get a move on, and Keith couldn’t really blame him.

Keith’s patience wore thin before Lance’s did. “We need to destroy the tech barrier,” said Keith. “My Lion-- my ship-- has enough firepower to take down the squid.”

“That’s a big assumption,” said the Captain, not looking up from the papers. “And what if it doesn’t?”

“We have back-up, outside the planet,” said Lance. “A lot more ships.”

She didn’t seem impressed.

“Four more of them, they form a really powerful robot, it’s pretty cool.”

Luckily for Lance, Tessa switched the topic. “You’re going to want to hit it in the eye,” she said. “If it’s a squid, you’ll want to hit it in the eye.”

Lance huffed then said, “I know, I already hit it in the eye once. We just didn’t have enough firepower.”

As they talked, Elwin had managed to pilfer some of the papers from the Captain, flipping through them eagerly.

“You really hit it down there?” asked the Captain. She handed the rest of the papers to Elwin, focusing her full attention on Lance.

Whatever bravado Lance was mustering before shrunk. “I mean, uh, yeah. It didn’t like it.”

“You think you can do it again?” the Captain said, smirking.

Lance wouldn’t be the one to aim at the squid, but that wasn’t a detail that really mattered. As long as they could get the explosives they needed, they should be fine. “I mean, yeah,” Lance said, with a return of his bravado. “Duh. Probably.”

The Captain grinned, and she didn’t need to say anything for Keith to know they’d be set.

It took a couple days to set up the explosives. Elwin and the Captain needed time to understand the schematics, and Tessa needed to set everything up. When they were done, they gave Keith an old-looking radio signaler; all they needed to do now was give them the word.

Lance paced in the Red Lion, fidgeting with the signaler. Finally, he asked, “Are you ready for this?”

Keith… wasn’t sure. Sure, the squid wouldn’t be a difficult target-- he’d hit worse, and faster targets-- but he didn’t even know what it looked like. By the time he’d gone into the pillar, it had controlled his perception, and…

...and the both of them were idiots.

“The pillars prevent the squid’s mind control from getting out, and tech from working, right?”

“We already went over-”

“I’m-- I’m not going to be much use mind controlled. ”

Lance’s expression was a patchwork quilt of terror. “Oh,” said Lance.

Why didn’t either of them think of that? That was one of the core reasons the pillar was there-- and as long as Keith had a link with that squid, there was no way he could take it down. It was probably even worse-- could they chain mental connections? Could they hurt Red, too? Sure, Hunk and Pidge might be able to figure it out eventually, but he couldn’t risk the damage they could do with Red.

“Great, uh, we just, we just need to figure out a different weapon,” Lance started, panicking. “Or- or something. The explosions are already set, we could always do a… bigger explosion.”

“An explosion that’ll hit directly in the eye?”

“I-- I don’t know! Maybe! We can make a really big catapult--”

“Why didn’t we-- why didn’t we think of this?!?”

“Yeah, and why weren’t we vetoed--”

“Well, the Captain thought you’d be… piloting…”

It would be fine if Lance was the one piloting, after all-- the squid only made one mental link at a time.

“No way,” Lance said.

Keith pulled himself from the pilot’s seat, and Lance reiterated, “Uh-uh, no way, I-- Keith!”

“What happened to the whole relying on the team when I’m making terrible decisions,” Keith argued.
“This is the terrible decision!” Lance motioned to the controls of the Red Lion in a mess of a hand motion. “You know how-- how picky Red is! Didn’t you say you had to fall out of an airlock for her to even respond?!”

Maybe Keith shouldn’t have complained about that. “It’ll be fine,” Keith said, but Lance continued to splutter. Keith needed to try and sound sure of himself; actually, he was sure of himself. This had to work-- this was going to work. “You can do it,” he said.

Lance snorted, a new retort on his tongue, but he met Keith’s gaze, and gave a long pause.

“Then move out of the way,” said Lance.

Keith moved easily. He skirted around the dash, and grabbed the back of the pilot chair. Lance sat down, fingers tapping sporadically on the arm rest, before hovering his hand over the controls.  

“You ready for this?”

Lance said, “Haha, absolutely not,” but he turned on the radio signal anyway.

Keith wished they could actually see the pillars go down; they’re barely in vision of the Red Lion, just a blip on the horizon. In fact, they heard the explosion before they see its effects. It was a distant thunder, and Keith looked at Red’s dash for any sign of functionality.

A horrible pause stretched, as nothing happened, but soon enough, Red began to rumble to life. All the lights on the dash shone bright, and Keith laughed, relief flooding him.

The relief was only short-term; as he felt in the depths of the pillars, something tugged on him, in him, and he gripped the back of the pilot’s seat hard for balance.

“Lance,” he said through gritted teeth, “Hurry up.”

He wanted to look over to Lance, but he found he could only look out to the desert. The pillars were no longer there, and now the sand moved with purpose. No longer was the wind dusting silver sand over pink, but the squid was upheaving masses of sand in its wake. It was approaching them, fast, and Red wasn’t moving at all.

“I’m trying, your-- your stupid cat won’t listen to me!” Lance said. “Are you-- really... ” he muttered. Keith could hear him jamming at the control panel, but nothing moved.

“Oh, come on!” Lance said. “I’m not Keith, but I-- I have to count for something, right?”

They didn’t move; Keith wished he could do anything, but all he could do was watch as his vision of the horizon blurred and blurred, as he couldn’t focus anymore. If they didn’t move, fast, they wouldn’t stand a chance-- Red had to realize--

“Just-- just fly, you moron cat--”

Red’s engines rumbled, as before either Lance or Keith could comprehend it, she flew into the air, and Lance laughed. Keith wished he could see anything right now.

“Ha! See that, Keith!” Lance yelled; he steered Red to the left sloppily, then regained balance. “Oh, right, you can’t. Mind control.”

His first shot missed; Keith couldn’t see it miss, but he could feel the shot. Keith thought he could deal with the alien’s control again, since he at least had something between him and the squid, but its grip terrified him. What if the squid’s control was stronger now, without the pillars? It had to be stronger; the control had set in so fast.

Lance lurched Red in the other direction, hard, and Keith’s grip on the seat strained. He wanted to hold on-- he’d done his best to death grip the seat-- but despite himself, his fingers relaxed, until he wasn’t holding on to the seat at all.

Another shot, another miss, and Lance turned Red around hard, sending Keith toppling to the ground in a thud. The impact broke the control, but only momentarily; all Keith managed was a startled yelp.

His vision turned to black again. “Crap, crap crap crap--” Lance started, and Keith wanted to yell from the ground. Startlingly, he still opened his mouth, but only to produce a strangled mix of noise, like something was testing his vocal chords but didn’t quite understand the controls.

“What was-- Keith?” Lance said; the squid was starting to figure out how ears worked, as noise began to distort, and everything had a tiny overlay.

Another strangled sound came out of Keith’s mouth, and he lost all resemblance of control. He could feel his own limbs numbly, but that was the only sense he had left-- all he could here was a low ringing in his ears, and all he could see was a dark blur--

He hit the ground, hard, but knew that he didn’t have long before he lost all control again. “Ha! Got it,” Lance said. Keith expected Lance’s voice to be drowned out after that, but it wasn’t. Instead, Keith heard Lance whoop from the pilot seat, and he could see the metallic floor of Red. His elbow ached-- he must’ve landed on it at some point-- but he was more relieved that he could really feel it again.

“Lance,” Keith said hesitantly, his voice sounding strained. He pulled himself up, legs shaking, and tried to find his balance by gripping the pilot’s seat.

Lance looked back at Keith, suddenly concerned. “Keith, you’re-- you’re okay!” He said, then added, “I mean-- are you okay?”

He could feel the pilot’s seat under his fingers, and that-- that was very much okay. He nodded, holding onto the seat desperately.

Lance was laughing, and he had no problem leaping out of the pilot’s seat. At least Keith no longer had to struggle for his own balance, as Lance’s hands were on his shoulders providing some kind of grounding.

“We did it!” Lance said, and Keith could finally see his smile.

And before Lance could say anything else, Keith kissed him.

It was quick, and not very good; not that Keith really knew much about kissing. Gripping Lance’s shoulder, Keith pulled away to a startled Lance. They stared at each other for a moment, then Lance’s smile widened.

“Uh,” Keith tried to explain, “Good, uh, job.”

“That’s not a bad reward, leader-man,” said Lance, and Keith didn’t know if he wanted to glare at Lance or bury his own grave. This had to be punishment for how much he teased Lance about being embarrassed.

“Not a bad reward at all,” Lance repeated.