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Lance startles awake, body rolling forward with the momentum of his shuddering coughs, the noise wet and echoing through the emptiness of his room.
He stifles the choking with a hand, the other bracing him up on his mattress as his coughing makes way for a few deep gasps of air, lips slick with what he knows is blood peppered with the tauntingly silky texture of petals, blue and in plenty.
He can barely catch his breath before another cough escapes, a plume of these petals slowly drifting into the air, falling with the weight of his blood, stuck starkly to their surface.
After another few short chokes, he settles, wiping away the offending substance from his bottom lip with the back of his sleeve, thankful that it's black in colour while he settles back into his pillow, the tears that had collected in the corners of his eyes drifting downward slowly as he blinks.
It's getting worse, he knows it is, this is the third time he's been awoken this night alone due to the buildup of petals blocking his airway.
Petals that mark a condition so cruel.
He's dying, fuck, is he dying. A flower that grows so large in his chest that it starts to fill his airways with their petals, and though they are truly beautiful, their colour one of his favourites, he can't breathe through their haze.
The cause? Well, the most cruel cause possible.
Love, a love that runs so deep that it sows seeds inside his lungs, filling them with flowers and filling them with blood.
The cure? Worse than it's cause.
Love in return of course. The person who sowed those seeds to reap them. A person to share the burden of those petals that weight more than the blood they draw.
And that's why he's going to die, because that cure doesn't love him back.
That cure doesn't look at him the same way. That cure doesn't even know he's here, choking.
It makes him sob dryly, an ugly sort of whine that leaves him facedown in his pillow, filled with self pity.
This is the only time he can cry, only time he can truly let the petals drift from his chapped lips, because he's the Red Paladin now and he can't choke in the middle of a battle, he can't stop to cry about how pathetic he is when he's trying to inspire their healing team.
He can't let the cure know that he's dying and it's all his fault.
All Keith's fault for being so damn beautiful.
So completely kind hearted and selfless and determined.
It's his fault for making Lance fall in love with him and not feeling the same.
Accidentally sowing seeds he couldn't reap.
He just needs to live now as normally as possible, push past the heaviness in his throat that inspires him to cough or vomit, wipe the stray trickle of blood that slips from the corner of his lips when he exerts himself too much.
He needs to live until they can find Shiro and return him to his place as the Black Paladin, Keith the Red.
Even if it means looking at the way Keith smiles when he thinks no one is looking, the way he scrunched up his nose in disgust at the food goo or the way he bites his lower lip when he's concentrating and pretending it doesn't hurt him so fucking much.
Even if it means letting Keith plant more flowers in his lungs without knowing it.
He needs to push forward until the end when Pidge, Hunk, Allura, Keith and Shiro can form of Voltron without him.
He's the odd one out after all, the spare and though he knows he might be missed by his team, it won't be for long.
This is war after all, one causality is nothing in the long run compared to so many lives lost, the irony coming from the fact that instead of it being Zarkon or Lotor who delivers the final blow, it'll be Keith. Poor unsuspecting Keith, still planting the seeds with his damn cute smirk or that spark of fight in his violet eyes.
He chokes again, this time on a tear as he curls up in his bed, a single petal, only just stained with his blood, drifting away from his lips with the force of his shuttering breath. He watches it slowly sink down in the low light of his room as he lets sleep take him again, urging him back into its soft lull.
For now he'll keep fighting for Keith, for the Universe and for his family, one breath after the other.
Even if the flowers that continue to twist at his chest hurt so fucking much.