Chapter Text
Lance looked up at the sky from his place sprawled on the ground. Whatever star was heating this planet made it almost unbearably hot, but he couldn’t seem to work up the energy to get up and try and move. He knew he needed to get up and go somewhere, but for the life of him, or whatever was remaining, he couldn’t remember why, or even where he was supposed to go if he did. All his brain could register was that the ground was hot and the sky was changing to a purply color as his vision started to fade around the edges. He couldn’t think anymore, but he needed to. He had something he was supposed to do. If he just reached for it. His vision completely blacked out before he could build his resolve.
Lance woke up for the second time only minutes later with a crippling pain coming from his left leg. He felt like he screamed but he heard nothing, just silence. No wind, no rustling, just nothing. He needed to get up, he needed to find his… his...what? What was he looking for?
Keith. Keith had crashed here. He needed to help Keith, had to make sure he was okay. He couldn't remember what had happened, he couldn't hear, he didn't know where he was, and his leg was definitely fucked up, but he knew that Keith was here somewhere.
With that in mind he forced himself up with every ounce of strength he had left. He screamed, or at least felt like he screamed, through the pain and finally got a good look at the world around him. Blue was on her side a couple feet away and in bad shape. Dents and wires, blood, most likely his own, smeared near her head, and her jaw was hanging open from where he can vaguely remember clawing himself out. He couldn't hear her either, which couldn't be a good sign. But he knew he needed to patch himself up before he went searching for Keith. At least put his leg in a splint and stop whatever bleeding he could, finding out where it was coming from would be a good start. He didn't look down at his leg as he used his arms to drag himself slowly through the hot sand to his lion. He didn't know how long it took to get there but the shade of her massive body was such a relief he nearly wept.
Once he dragged himself inside he went straight for the cabinet in the floor which he knew housed medical care and emergency things that he had stocked up on after the whole trapped in your lion exercise fiasco a few months earlier. When he finally looked down at his leg he gagged and covered his mouth. Bone stuck out from torn skin and pieces of his armor were piercing multiple spots in the area. He set to taking out the shards and throwing antiseptic all over everything before wiping the wounds down and dowsing his leg again. He was thankful he couldn't hear the screams that were tearing his throat raw.
Setting the leg was the hardest part. He didn’t want to somehow make it worse. He quickly pushed it back into his leg and wrapped it up. The pain was overwhelming and not going away. He carefully removed his shirt ignoring how tears were falling on the ground and how he reflexively convulsed in sobs he couldn’t hear. His torso was completely mangled but he managed to hastily stitch the larger wounds closed before it was too late as well as disinfect and wrap the most alarming areas that were still sluggishly bleeding. He pulled off the rest of his shattered and torn armor and pulled on a spare set of, what he guessed, was the altean version of sweats. Wrapping more bandages around his left leg for a little more stability.
After taking a moment to breathe and gather his medical supplies in a knapsack sorta arrangement Lance took a look around the cockpit of Blue. Blood was smeared nearly everywhere. Sparks were flying from pieces of broken machinery and shards of metal and glass were strewn about the floor. He whimpered as he tried to search for her voice in the back of his mind, any indication that she was still with him. When he heard nothing he began the painful limp back out of his lion to search for Keith.
Once he had stepped outside of his lion he looked around the desert like terrain of this foreign planet. It had gotten even hotter and he immediately missed Blues natural cool inside and sanctuary from the burning light. When he turned his head to the left he saw a plume of smoke coming from behind a sand dune about fifty yards away. Panic coursed through him as Lance began to hobble as fast as he could.
When Lance finally made it over the dune he was sweating profusely and yet again his vision was starting to blur, but the Red lion was in sight. She was halfway buried in the sand and upside down, she didn't seem to be sinking any farther down luckily, and her head was fuming with the jaw only open enough to slide in and out. Lance didn’t waste any time crawling down the sand dune and into the mouth although he had to jostle his supplies through. Red was the complete opposite of Blue, in that while Blue was always at a comfortable cool temperature, Red, on the other hand, was possibly hotter than it was outside.
Lance made quick work of finding Keith, who was still strapped in the pilot’s seat. His helmet had fallen off sometime during the crash and there was a small pool of blood below him but not to a worrying amount. The smoke was coming from the control panel and was practically blowing straight into Keith unconscious face. Lance quickly stood up, not a great idea considering his leg, and stumbled his way over to Keith. The buckle on his seatbelt was stuck so Lance whacked it a couple times until it finally unlatched. For a moment Lance felt successful, but then Keith came crashing down on top of him.
Lance might of blacked out but he couldn’t quite tell as his eyes regained focus and he pushed Keith off of himself as he struggled through the sudden wave of pain brought on by the sudden weight on his chest. Lance counted himself lucky as Keith managed to avoid his mutilated leg. He pushed Keith onto his back and checked for breathing. Thankfully Keith seemed, for the most part, to have fared significantly better than Lance had. With that out of the way Lance picked up Keith’s helmet and began to drag Keith out of the boiling, smoke filled lion, and onto the sand outside.
As soon as they made it out Lance opened his supplies and examined Keith quickly, looking for any immediate damage. His right arm was definitely broken and a few ribs seemed bruised, but other than that everything seemed fine. He probably had a concussion, and Lance had no idea how long he’d been out, and of course there was the fact that Lance couldn’t actually hear if anything was wrong, but for now he could breathe as easily as possible knowing he wasn’t completely alone.