Chapter Text
The familiar sound of the intercom signal is followed by the equally familiar sound of Keith’s Marmora knife, still sheathed, clattering off the speaker, and Lance huffs a sleepy laugh into his pillow. Keith mumbles something he can’t make out as he buries himself further into Lance’s back, pressing his forehead in between his shoulder blades and tugging him closer with the arm he has wrapped around Lance’s waist.
As Allura’s voice comes over the intercom, Lance cracks an eye open. “Paladins, we are approaching a Galra communications base Pidge has identified as a possible information source. We need to infiltrate the facility. Meet on the bridge in one hour.”
Lance groans. “It’s morning. It’s too early for work.”
Keith burrows into him a little more and says nothing.
Poking the arm wrapped around him, Lance twists to catch sight of his boyfriend, grinning at the mess of shaggy black hair peeking out of the covers. He keeps trying to get Keith to tie his hair back before he goes to sleep, but he refuses. And, okay, maybe Lance doesn’t fight that hard. He’d miss the bedhead. “Hey. You alive back there?”
Keith squeezes him a little tighter. “S’early.”
“We’re in space, Keith. Time has no meaning.”
Keith finally pulls back far enough he can glare at Lance between stray locks of mullet. “Why do you have to be a morning person?”
“There he is!” Lance crows, turning in Keith’s arms so they’re facing each other. “Good morning, darling. How did you sleep?”
“You snore.”
“So pretty well, then.”
Keith just grunts in reply, leaning in to kiss Lance. It’s a long moment before they separate enough for him to whisper, “Morning,” against Lance’s lips.
Even though they’ve been dating for almost a year now, even though Lance has woken up with Keith more times than he can count, the words send a shiver down his spine. He presses forward and Keith goes easily, rolling onto his back and tugging Lance down on top of him. Winding his fingers into Keith’s hair, Lance lets his thoughts trail off into quiet static, just letting the moment, the boy he loves, consume him.
After a couple minutes, Keith breaks away, sighing as Lance trails a line of kisses down his throat. “Lance. We don’t have time for this.”
Lance hums against his collarbone. “Allura said an hour.”
“Yeah, and that was five minutes ago.” Despite his words, Keith’s breath hitches as Lance rolls his hips, slow and deliberate.
Lance laughs against his jaw, pulling another shiver out of him. “Keith, cariño, chill. We got time.”
“We don’t--” Keith starts, but Lance is brushing his fingers down the thick, faded scar on his shoulder, voice soft as he interrupts.
“Keith. We have time.”
With one last sigh, Keith gives up, turning his head to capture Lance’s lips in another kiss. “Why do I let you talk me into these things?”
“Because you love me?” Lance suggests, smiling against his mouth.
Keith regards him for a second before a smile spreads across his own face, dropping a sweet kiss on Lance’s cheek. “Yeah, I guess I do.”
A year of this, of them, and Lance’s breath still catches when Keith says things like that. Something bright fluttering against his ribs, Lance presses back in to kiss Keith just as breathless, laughing as Keith meets him halfway.
- ⊹ ✷ ✹
✷
* .
. .
- ✧ ✹ ⊹ ⊹
⊹
Twenty minutes later, Lance looks at the clock and winces. “Shit.”
Keith raises an eyebrow at him, collapsing onto his pillow. “I told you.”
“‘I told you,’ really? That’s immature, babe.”
“You’re immature,” Keith mutters, rolling out of bed and walking to the dresser. In a flash, Lance is scrambling across the covers and sprinting for the bathroom.
“Lance!”
Lance pauses in the doorway, bracing an arm on either side to block Keith, and leaning forward to peck him on the nose. “Sorry, Mullet. You snooze, you lose.”
Keith narrows his eyes at him. “You suck.”
Lance puts a thoughtful hand to his chin. “I don’t remember you complaining.”
He cackles as Keith groans. “Would you just hurry up and shower already?”
“Well, hey, if you want it to go faster, we could always share.”
Keith puts a hand over Lance’s face, covering his half-lidded expression. “That would only slow us down, and you know it.”
“Can’t blame me for trying,” Lance says as he whirls, stepping into the shower.
“Yes, I can.”
Lance just laughs again, turning the water on and reaching for his shampoo and body wash. Really, it makes sense for him to shower first, since he always takes the longest-- as Keith loves to point out-- but he’ll take whatever chance he can get to tease him. As the war with the Galra drags on, it feels like they have less and less time to be together like this, in these quiet, bright moments. Lance fully plans to take every second of good the universe gives him.
Which is why he can’t really be bothered he didn’t have time to finish his full skincare routine, humming under his breath as he walks beside Keith through the halls of the Castle. Keith is still securing the last pieces of his armor as the door to the bridge slides open, wet hair up in a ponytail, and Lance winks at the other paladins as they walk in. They’re the last to arrive, but really, they’re only a couple minutes late. Allura gives them a resigned look and a single sigh before she launches into her briefing on the Galra base. The two suns of the solar system they’re drifting through shine through the windows behind her, turning her silver hair into a halo.
She pulls an image of the binary stars up on the holoprojector in front of her. “We’re currently travelling through the Aquilae B-20 system. Thanks to some very clever signal tracing from Pidge--”
“Hunk helped,” Pidge interrupts.
Hunk holds his hands up in a self-deprecating gesture. “I mean, yeah, I helped you build the multispectrum ion scanner, but you were the one who realized the binary system was causing a lensing of the radio signals and recalibrated the autosequencers--”
“You know, it’s amazing,” Lance remarks. “Three years in space, and I still have no idea what you two are talking about. Way to go, team! Let’s hear it for maintaining the status quo.” He reaches up for a high five.
Keith, ignoring his sarcasm, grabs his hand and tugs it back down to his side, shooting Lance a look. “Go on, Princess,” he says, but he winds their fingers together instead of pulling away. Lance takes the opportunity to squeeze his hand gently, biting back a smile as Keith’s grip tightens.
“Thanks to some clever signal tracing from Pidge and Hunk,” Allura reiterates, a strained note in her voice, “we found a Galra communications base has been using the energy fluctuations from the binary stars in the Aquilae B-20 system to avoid detection. Moreover, from what Pidge could interpret, their messages are being sent to--”
“-- Parts of the universe that should be uninhabited,” Pidge breaks in again. “Or empty. Which means--”
“-- Which means there could be a whole string of Galra bases we have no way of detecting,” Allura finishes quickly, adding, “Ha,” as Pidge scowls.
Shiro’s been listening with a thoughtful frown, watching the projection of the system. “So where is the base?”
Allura reaches out and twists her fingers through the hologram, zooming in on a small planet orbiting one of the suns. “We believe the Galra have used the unusually small size and high-density of this planet to further mask their presence.”
“You believe?” Shiro echoes, frown deepening.
Pidge shoves her glasses up her nose. “It’s a guess. I was only able to pick the signal up at all because we just happened to be in the right spot at the right moment. Like, literally, we’re talking a window of opportunity that’s five seconds long. This was so far past one in a million odds, guys.” She takes a moment and a deep breath. “Anyways, the point is, we got unbelievably lucky and I was able to trace the signal to this system. There are only three planets, and the other two are gas giants, which means there’s no way the Galra could have hidden a base inside it.”
Keith pulls away from Lance, stepping up the projection and studying it. “So it’s gotta be on this one.”
Pidge shrugs. “That’s the theory, anyways. I can take Green and do a pass. The planet is really small-- about the size of Mercury. Shouldn’t take long.”
Lance raises his hand. “Small planet that’s actually a secret evil base? I vote we call this thing the Death Star.”
“Seconded,” Hunk says immediately, followed by Pidge’s “Thirded.”
Keith shoots Lance a look. “Really?”
“What, come on, I wasn’t supposed to go for that?”
Shiro just shakes his head as Allura watches them all with a puzzled frown, muttering, “But it’s not a star,” under her breath.
“Anyways,” Lance continues, “we got three ayes. That means the motions passes. Pidge, how long will it take you to scout the Death Star?”
She shrugs. “Depends. We’ll have to get closer to figure out what kind of defenses they have up. This place is so hidden, though, I bet they’re gonna be pretty locked down.”
“Which is why Pidge will do a-- what is it you call it? Ret-conn mission?”
“Reconnaissance,” Shiro corrects Allura.
“Yes, of course. Reconnaissance mission first, before we form a plan of entry.”
“Entry?” Keith asks, frowning. “Can’t Pidge just hack it remotely, or whatever?”
A frustrated crease forms in Pidge’s brow. “No, I can’t. I might be able to intercept another of their signals, but with the levels of encoding they have on that shit, I won’t be able to tell where it’s going or what it says with any reliability. The only way I can find out where they’re broadcasting to or receiving from is by directly accessing one of the servers. Directly,” she repeats, slowly. “Which means I have to be physically in the base at a terminal.”
Keith shoots her a look. “I got it.”
“There’s a lot at stake here,” Shiro says with a shake of his head. “We have no idea how well-guarded this base is, no blueprints, nothing. We’ll be going in essentially blind.”
Allura clasps her hands together, studying them all with a solemn eyes. “It’s a risk, it’s true. But at this point, I’m afraid it’s one we’re going to have to make. Over the last few phoebs, the Galra have been one step ahead of us too many times. It’s time for us to strike back, and infiltrating this base just might be our first step in figuring out how they keep evading us.”
The paladins are all quiet for a long moment, exchanging looks. “Well, hey, if it means sticking it to the Galra, I’m in,” Lance volunteers, finally.
“Me, too,” Pidge says, flashing him a sharp smile. “They’ve got it coming.”
Keith nods. “Count me in, too.”
“I mean, this sounds dangerous, but we can’t keep letting the Galra destroy the universe,” Hunk says, fiddling with his helmet. “I’m not, y’know, great at stealth, but I’ll do whatever I can.”
Everyone’s eyes turn to Shiro, standing silently with his arms still crossed. There’s a tense second before he sighs. “You’re right, Princess. This is too important to not at least try.”
She smiles at them, wide and relieved. “Thank you. We’ll take all the precautions we can. Starting with Pidge scouting out the base.”
“On it,” Pidge replies, pulling her helmet on as she strides towards the lift down to the Green Lion bay. Stepping inside, she tips them all a salute, grinning. “Back in two ticks.”
Lance fights down the little flicker of anxiety as the doors slide shut. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Keith’s fists clench a second before he announces, “I’ll be in the training deck.”
Lance is already shaking his head before he even finishes talking. “No, you will not. You’re coming with me to eat breakfast.”
“I’m not hungry.”
“Don’t care.” Catching him by the wrist, Lance drags him towards the door, pausing to look back at the others. “Call us if you need us.”
Allura nods back, and Lance takes a moment to be quietly grateful for his teammates, their bond, the way they always have each other’s backs. Sitting and watching as someone he loves like family heads straight into danger is always hard-- it is on all of them. So they take turns, stepping up when someone else needs a break.
And, okay, Lance would be fine with staying and monitoring Pidge’s progress across the solar system, but there’s no way he’s letting Keith beat himself senseless against the damn training robots again just because he has some kind of insane martyr complex. Lance is trying to teach him patience. It’s not working that well, but hope springs eternal, right?
He holds onto that thought as he determinedly drags Keith into the kitchen, pouring them both bowls of the almost-cereal Hunk came up with a recipe for last year. If he ever gets back to Earth, he’s telling everyone that Hunk is a wizard. He can literally make something out of nothing.
Tugging Keith into the seat next to him, Lance shoves one of the bowls in front of him. “Here. Made you breakfast.”
“Wow,” Keith deadpans, even as he picks up a spoon. “I’m so lucky.”
Lance places a kiss on his cheek before digging into his own food. “Yeah, you are.”
Keith’s nose wrinkles. “Can you please swallow before you talk?”
“Nope,” Lance says, mouth full.
“Should’ve expected that.”
Lance ignores the mumble. “Listen, buddy, I know you’d rather be punching something than sitting on your hands waiting, but you gotta at least eat something first.”
Dark eyes skate away from his at the serious note in his voice. They’ve had this conversation too many times, even though they both know the agreement-- everything they can do to keep themselves safe, they do it, and no one takes the bullet for anyone else.
Lance knows it’s bullshit. When the inevitable day comes he has to make that choice, there’s no doubt in his mind what it’ll be. The universe would be too cold a place without Keith.
He also knows it’s a mutual lie.
Still, for now, he keeps himself centered in the moment, takes the victory as Keith chews a bite of cereal with a slight frown. There are too many what ifs in their life to get hung up on them for long.
He watches the stars out the window as they chew in silence for a while, studying the new constellations. At some point, Keith’s free hand slips into his, and Lance bites down on his smile as he twines their fingers together. It’s a hard balance some days between Lance being too bossy and Keith pushing him away too much, but they’re getting better all the time.
The door slides open and Hunk walks in, frowning at the screen in his hand. “Yeah, yeah, I see what you’re saying. Can’t risk the sonic scan because we don’t know.” He glances up at them, a quick smile crinkling the corners of his eyes.
Lance tilts his head. “Pidge?” At Hunk’s nod, he grins. “Hi Pidge! Long time no see.”
“Lance says hi,” Hunk reports into his earpiece, pausing for a second as she replies. “No, I’m in the kitchen. You can’t blame me for that! It’s still breakfast time, Pidge, come on. You know I get hungry when I’m stressed.”
Lance props his chin in his hand and watches as Hunk bustles around the kitchen, fixing a bowl of cereal for himself before heading back to the control room, arguing with Pidge over the merits of post-breakfast snacks the whole time. “‘What about second breakfast?’” he quips at Keith.
Keith just gives him a blank look, and Lance sighs. “‘Lord of the Rings’ just moved up the list of things we’re watching if we get back to Earth.”
Keith’s hand tightens around him. “When we get back,” he corrects.
“Right, right.” Lance swallows and nods at Keith’s empty bowl. “Finished?”
Keith eyes him, but lets it go. “Yeah. Training deck?”
Standing, Lance collects their bowls and dumps them in the crazy fancy Altean dishwasher. “Sure. I could go for some target practice. Not that I really need it,” he adds, winking at Keith as he flexes his arm dramatically.
Keith rolls his eyes. “It’s your bayard that turns into a gun, Lance, it’s not you.”
“Rude,” Lance gasps, but he reaches out to take Keith’s hand again as they walk down the hall, smiling as Keith laughs, collecting bright moments like constellations in a dark sky.
- * ✫
✷
- ✵ .
. . .
It’s a couple hours and more than a few training routines later that Hunk sticks his head into the room, waiting for Keith to shut down the Gladiators before saying, “Pidge is headed back and Allura wants us all on the bridge.”
Lance waves a hand at him in acknowledgement, holstering his bayard before pulling his helmet off and running a hand over his brow. Despite his best efforts, Keith had pushed the Gladiator training a lot farther than they should have. And maybe Lance had gotten a little carried away with their dumb competition over who could take the most down. And yes, looking back on it now, maybe that had been a super obvious plot by Keith to distract Lance from his wise plan of “taking it easy.”
He points an accusing finger at Keith. “You planned that, you devious bastard.”
Keith looks completely unaffected, like he hasn’t spent the last hour and a half filleting androids with a sword, and that’s just not fair. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
Lance groans, running a hand through his hair and scowling as they follow Hunk down the hall. There’s no time for a shower now, which means he’ll have to just live with being sweaty until they finish this mission, which could take hours, which is disgusting. “Why do I let you get away with this stuff?” he asks, more to the universe in general than his actual boyfriend at his side, but Keith nudges him as he replies anyways.
“Because you love me.”
The words are pitched low so Hunk, walking in front of them and poking at something on his screen, can’t hear, but there’s a light of sincerity in Keith’s indigo eyes that burns like a supernova and Lance can’t help the wide, soft smile that stretches across his face. “Yeah,” he says, equally soft, “I guess I do.”
Keith tugs him to a stop for just a second so he can lean in and kiss him.
For a few seconds, Lance lets the moment stretch, before he presses his lips to Keith’s temple and whispers, “For the record, I totally won.”
Keith pulls away to shoot him an outraged look. “I was trying to be nice, jerk. And also, you did not.”
Lance shrugs cheerfully, wrapping an arm around his shoulders and tugging him along. “Agree to disagree.”
“I agree to nothing, Lance, you were at least three points behind me and you know it.”
When they finally make it to the control room, just a few ticks behind Hunk, Pidge is already there, pulling her helmet off and tucking it under her arm as she sweeps her hair into a short ponytail. Lance throws his arms out wide, grinning at the sight of her. It’s not like he expected anything to go wrong on her scouting mission-- Pidge is fast and fucking genius, and they’ve done this enough times over the year she could probably fly her Lion in her sleep-- but seeing her standing there safe sends a wave of relief sweeping through him. “The One returns!”
She rolls her eyes, but accepts his hug with a smile of her own. “Dude, how many times do I have to tell you? I can’t put you in the Matrix.”
“You’ll crack one day, Neo.”
With another roll of her eyes, she turns back to Allura, picking up their fragmented conversation about the base again. Allura’s frowning at the holoscans Pidge must have gotten on her scouting run, highlighting areas as Pidge mentions them, listing possible security systems in place, points of entry, the usual rundown of infiltration schematics.
As the seconds tick by, Lance pulls a face at Keith. He shakes his head, not quite able to hide his fond grin, before his eyes catch on something to Lance’s right. “Shiro, you okay?”
Shiro’s frowning at the diagrams Allura and Pidge are still detailing, a faraway look in his eyes, but he blinks when Keith speaks. “Yeah, yeah, I’m good. Just wondering why this base is so different from the others.”
“Probably to keep our attention off it,” Hunk points out. “If all the Galra stuff was hidden this well, we’d have figured out how to track it ages ago, right? It’s like everything else was just decoys.”
And man, is that a terrifying thought. “If every other part of the Galra empire we’ve taken down was sacrificed just to keep this safe,” Lance says slowly, “then what the hell are they hiding here?”
He doesn’t realize Pidge and Allura have stopped talking until silence rings through the room. “That’s what we’re going to find out,” Allura declares finally, and everyone’s eyes turn to her as she gestures, the hologram of the base growing to her own height. As she talks, she indicates the places she and Pidge have highlighted. “As we suspected, this base is hidden on the planet closest to the stars of this system. The majority of the base is subterranean, which creates a bit of a problem as far as scouting and entry go. As it is, there are three access points to the base: here, here, and here. Only one of them is large enough to be a hangar.” The hologram zooms in on it, and a frown touches Allura’s delicate features. “This will likely be the most well-guarded point of the base. The other two are smaller entrances near landing pads on the surface of the planet.”
Keith leans forward to study the diagram, reflections sparking and dying in his dark eyes. “What about a ventilation system?”
Allura shakes her head. “The only one Pidge could find is located right next to the hangar.”
“And it’s pretty small,” Pidge adds. “Which means the base is either seriously tiny, which I doubt, or it’s manned mostly by drones.”
Lance frowns at that. “That’s weird. Pretty much every Galra outfit is run by, you know, actual Galra, right?”
“Yeah, I thought that was weird too, so I ran some scans. I didn’t want to do anything sonic since they picked up on Blue when she did that a few months ago, but I tried out this new one Hunk and Matt helped me build for Green, that scans for quintessence.” Pidge’s amber eyes brighten as she talks. “It’s actually pretty cool; we got it to a place where it’s sensitive enough to pick up on the quintessence of living things, which was not easy, let me tell you. Especially because the Lions have so much of it themselves they mess up the calibration of--”
“Pidge,” Shiro cuts her off gently. “What did you find?”
“There are things in the base with pretty concentrated levels of quintessence in them.”
“Things? Like, living things?” Hunk asks. “That would mean Galra, right? Because the way you said ‘things’ does not make me think ‘Galra,’ necessarily, but it’s a very scary term, and I would really like it to mean ‘Galra’ and not ‘terrifying superpowered monsters we’ve never seen before.’”
“Sorry to break it to you, buddy, but I don’t think they are Galra. The way they were moving… it was weird.” Pidge shakes her head. “Everything about this place is weird.”
There’s silence for a couple seconds before Lance claps his hands together. “Well hey, weird is our specialty, right? Remember that planet where everything screamed? That was weird.”
“And annoying,” Keith puts in with a scowl.
“Exactly! This place is downright boring compared to that.” Lance shoots them all a grin before cocking his head at Allura. “So what’s the play, Princess?”
Allura only hesitates a beat before laying it out. “Pidge, Shiro and Lance will take the Green Lion to infiltrate the base. Pidge has already determined the best entry point. Keith and Hunk will stay in their Lions nearby for extraction if they need it. Coran and I will remain here in the Castle-- we have to maintain some distance, but we’ll still only be a short flight from the planet, and we should be in contact with the Red and Yellow Lions at all times.”
Keith frowns at that. “What about the others?”
“Since the base is subterranean, communications may be disrupted,” Coran points out. “There’s a chance they’ll still work, but we can’t count on it.”
Pidge taps her helmet. “We’ll have our emergency trackers, if nothing else.”
“Besides,” Lance adds, “we won’t need all that. We’re the best stealth team in the universe.”
Shiro shakes his head at Lance, but there’s a smile on his face. “That’s a big claim, Lance, but I do think we’ll be okay.”
Lance cheers, sticking his hand in. “All right, the gang’s back together! What’s it been, three months since we did a good sneaky mission?”
“Probably,” Pidge says, covering his hand with hers. “Some people would say that means we’re out of practice.”
“Practice is for chumps who aren’t born with our pure natural talent.” Lance grins at Shiro, who’s still fighting that smile. “Right?”
“Whatever you say.” Despite Shiro’s neutral words, he places his hand on top of the stack.
Lance breaks their little huddle with a call of “Go, team!”
Hunk pulls him and Pidge in for a hug. “We’ll be watching you guys, don’t worry. We’ve got your back.”
“You don’t get to worry either, buddy,” Lance tells him, patting him on the back. “We’ve done this a hundred times.”
“And I’ve worried for all of them.”
Pulling her helmet back on, Pidge gives Hunk one last gentle knock on the shoulder. “Come on, man, have some confidence in us. I’m gonna go down and run some last checks with Green,” she says over her shoulder to Lance and Shiro.
Shiro only gets two steps after her before Allura is drawing him into some last-minute strategy breakdown. Hunk squeezes Lance’s shoulder again before heading to the elevator to Yellow’s hangar, and then it’s just Keith and Lance in their own little fragile bubble of space and time.
Keith’s still scowling at the hologram of the planet, and Lance takes his wrists gently to get his attention. “Hey, you know we’re going to be okay, right?”
It takes a second for Keith to nod. “Yeah, it’s just-- I don’t like this. I can’t put my finger on it, but something about all this feels… off.”
“It is kind of a weird one,” Lance agrees, a frown touching his own face. He tightens his grip on Keith’s hands as he searches his eyes. “But we can handle it. We’ll just take it slow. You be careful too, okay?”
Keith stares right back, as fierce and sharp as the first day Lance ever saw him, flying simulators at the Garrison. “Okay.”
There’s just enough time for Lance to sneak in one quick kiss before the bubble pops and Shiro is nudging him towards the lift down to Green’s hangar, asking, “You ready?”
“Born ready,” Lance replies, shooting him a wink. Just before the doors close behind him he turns to see Keith standing in the center of the bridge, staring after him. There’s no time to do anything, say anything-- all Lance gets is one split-second where their gaze locks before Keith’s gone, and he’s left strangely shaken by the intensity in his dark eyes.
⋆ + ˚
✺ *
⊹ . *
* . ˚
˚ ⋆ * * .
The Aquilae B-20 system is large and empty; according to Pidge, the massive solar winds from the binary stars blew everything but the planets and a few stray asteroids out of the heliosphere. It’s a perfect place to hide a base-- it’s so empty, Lance would never have looked at it twice.
It also makes the trip to the tiny terrestrial planet acutely nerve-wracking. There’s no place to hide if the Galra happen to turn their eyes upward, and they all know it. Shiro’s silent, his flesh-and-blood hand tight on the back of Pidge’s seat. Lance can’t quite contain his own nervous energy, pacing back and forth behind them as Pidge guides Green towards the base.
Another drawback of the barren system is that Keith and Hunk have no place to hide while they’re in the base, which means their backup will be delayed if they need it. Keith hasn’t said anything about it, but Lance knows he’s frustrated, can hear it in his clipped replies to Hunk and Allura as they move into position.
If this was just a normal mission, everything would be different. They could go in together, as a team, kicking ass and taking names like usual. But the closer they get to the planet, the more the feeling grows that they’re flying straight into the heart of something dark and unknown and deadly.
Pidge quietly counts down the timing of the patrol drones, and Green slips by undetected. Lance joins Shiro behind her chair to watch as they touch down on the surface of the planet, enough distance from one of the landing pads Green’s cloaking will hide them.
“Good luck, Paladins,” Allura says from the Lion’s screen, and they disembark.
The planet is as barren as the rest of the system; the solar winds stripped most of its atmosphere, too, leaving a craggy mess of gray-blue rock and dust behind. Lance scoops up a pebble as they walk along-- it’s actually a pretty color, white-veined and sparkling. He tosses it gently, watching it sail farther than it should-- the gravity on this planet is only about a third of Earth’s.
Pidge shoots him a glare as it clatters to the ground. Wilting under her and Shiro’s stern looks, Lance follows them towards the base without touching anything else. It’s not like there’s anything out here, but he knows their nerves are stretched just as tight as his.
They take cover behind a rock formation a couple hundred feet from the landing pad, and Pidge starts a scan of the area.
Allura’s voice crackles through the comms on their helmets. “Paladins, what’s your position?”
“We’re just outside the base,” Shiro tells her, keeping his voice low even though the landing pad is completely devoid of any movement. Lance uses the scope on his rifle to look closer, but the there’s no droids hiding anywhere, nothing waiting to ambush them. Like everything about this whole system, it’s completely, eerily empty.
“I’m detecting some of those moving balls of quintessence, but they’re beneath us, in the lower levels of the base,” Pidge reports. “We should be clear to move in.”
“I don’t like this,” Keith says finally, the first thing he’s offered since they left the Castle. “Something feels wrong.”
“Everything feels wrong,” Lance mutters.
Pidge looks up at him with a frown. “Logically, this all makes sense-- the Galra would want a secret base as undetectable as possible. That means no big security systems, no traffic in or out, no guards, nothing that could be traced back to here. Still…” Her brown eyes search the desolate landscape for a minute before she shakes her head. “We’ll just make this fast. In and out.”
Shiro crouches, narrowing his eyes at the door into the base. “I’ll take point. Lance, you cover us.”
Lance shifts his bayard from a sniper to his standard laser rifle. “Gotcha.”
“Be careful,” Allura says, a thread of anxiety in her voice. Keith growls, almost inaudibly, and Lance wants to say something to him, reassure him, but Shiro’s raising a hand and counting down on his fingers and they’re off.
The sprint to the door takes a heart-pounding thirty seconds, their footsteps echoing off the hard surface of the landing pad, but they reach it without any alarms they can hear or guns firing. Pidge spends a few seconds muttering to herself and tapping away at the computer on her wrist before the lock disengages, Shiro shoves it open, and they slip inside.
They take a second to breathe as they study the hallway around them. As weird as the place seems from the outside, the inside looks like standard Galra base material-- metal halls lined with purple lights, a little narrower than usual, like it’s not used much. Lance exchanges a shrug with Pidge.
“Paladins?” Allura’s voice is tight even through the thin layer of static.
“We made it. No trouble so far,” Shiro says, frowning down the hall. “We’re moving up. We’ll let you know if we find something.” With a quick flick of his wrist at Lance and Pidge, he’s off down the hall. They trail him cautiously, bayards at the ready, Pidge checking her computer every so often to track the bright spots of quintessence.
They’ve almost made it to the end of the hall when Pidge sucks in a breath and grabs Lance’s arm, yanking him up against the wall and tucking them both just out of sight behind a support beam. Shiro flattens himself next to them and they all hold their breath as a set of footsteps echoes down the hall to them, growing closer with every tick. Lance flicks his eyes down to where Pidge’s computer is still active, tracking the a glowing dot that’s nearly on top of them. He grits his teeth as her grip tightens on his arm.
And then the footsteps are fading, the glowing dot passing by without so much as a pause, and Lance’s head spins as he sucks in a shaky breath.
“That was too close,” Pidge whispers.
Shiro leans around the beam, peering at the intersection with a frown. “Which way?”
Pidge shrugs helplessly. “I don’t know. Presumably, the control room would be in the center of the base at the lowest point since that’s the most well-defended, but this whole place is backwards.”
“Right,” Shiro says, narrowing his eyes at the darkness down the hall. “I’ll take the middle route, then, and you and Lance each take a side.”
“Uh, is splitting up really the best plan?” Hunk asks nervously.
Pidge blows out a breath. “Maybe not, but I don’t want to spend any longer in this place than we have to.”
“If that’s the case, shouldn’t Pidge take the middle route?” Lance whispers. “It looks like the way that leads, you know, down.”
“If it really is the way to the control room, it would also make it the most dangerous,” Shiro argues, but Pidge is shaking her head.
“Lance is right. If it really is the right way, it’ll be fastest if I go. Besides, I’m sneakier than either of you.”
“You can back her up if you’re worried,” Lance points out.
Shiro grits his teeth for a second before sighing. “No, you’re right. Whatever’s gonna get this done the fastest, we need to do it. Let’s try and avoid any fights if we can, though. And Pidge?” She cocks her head at him. “Be careful.”
A smile tugs at the corner of her mouth as she nods. “You got it, boss. You guys, too.” She squeezes Lance one last time before she’s letting go and sliding down the hall, peeking around the corners before darting across the junction and down the hall on the other side.
Lance raises an eyebrow at Shiro. “Which way you want?”
Shiro narrows his eyes for a second, staring into middle distance before he blinks. “Right.”
That’s the way the footsteps went, but Lance doesn’t press it. “I’ll take left, then.” Lance props his rifle against his shoulder as he saunters down his hall. “Catch you later.”
Shiro gives him a tight nod before heading down the right-hand passage. A bubble of anxiety rises in Lance’s throat as he turns the corner and vanishes from sight. He swallows it down as best he can, gripping his bayard and creeping down the hall. The scans from Pidge’s computer are displayed on his own, and there aren’t any dots close to him, but he keeps his eyes on Pidge’s marker as she heads down into the base.
It takes him a few minutes to find a set of stairs in his own hallway. As he walks down them, wincing at every clang of his boots against the metal, he checks the tracker again, blinking as he sees Shiro’s dot another level below him, moving fast through the base. “Shiro?”
There’s no response, but Pidge’s dot pauses.
“He might be hiding from something,” she says after a second.
“There’s nothing close to him on the tracker.”
“I know that.”
Lance sucks in a breath. “You think there’s, like, stealthbots now too?”
“I don’t know,” she bites out, and her dot starts moving again. “Shiro, update us when you can. The faster we get out of this creepy place, the better.”
“That’s for sure,” Lance mutters, peering down yet another deserted hall on his way down the steps.
Halfway down that flight, though, the projection from the tracker flickers. Lance pauses midstep, tapping his computer, but the image stays fuzzy, blinking and jumping. “Pidge?”
There’s a burst of static and a weird humming noise that raises the hairs on the back of Lance’s neck. Well, Coran had said communications would be sketchy once they got underground. Lance keeps going, heading further down into the base, trying to ignore how much louder his footsteps seem in the silence.
He gets one more flight down before his comm crackles again and Pidge’s voice comes through. “--know if you guys can hear me, but I found the control room. I’m gonna--” Another burst of static, perforated by the eerie hum, interrupts her. “--back on the surface when I’m done--”
The comm pops one more time and she’s gone again. Lance hesitates at the top of the next flight of stairs; he can head back up now and regroup with the others on the surface, or he can try and make his way to Pidge. He’s not exactly sure where she is, but the stairwell she was using seemed to head straight down, into the center of the base. Getting lost down here would be fucking miserable, sure, but… Lance can’t shake the bad feeling. It’s been hanging over this whole mission like a stormcloud.
With one last cautious glance around, he takes the hall to his right. It should lead him back towards the center of the base. Towards Pidge.
He barely makes it twenty feet before he hears the clockwork thud of android feet. Cursing under his breath, he throws himself behind another support beam; the halls in this place are too bare to offer anything better as cover, probably by design.
As the footsteps draw closer, Lance readies his bayard, forcing his breathing to stay even despite his racing heart. Metal clanks on metal as the droid gets closer, and he’s flat up against the wall, taught as a tripwire, waiting for the first sign of movement.
It comes in a flash of black and purple as the droid steps up next to him, and the long hours of training with Keith must have done some good because Lance is already lining up the shot and firing at where the droid’s head will be without a thought, reflex honed to instinct, and he knows even as he squeezes the trigger it’ll hit.
Which is why it comes as a surprise when the droid dodges.
Lance barely has time to register the laser shot bursting into sparks on the opposite wall before the droid is swinging at him. Yelping, he throws his arm up in a wild block. It hurts, rattling his bones as the droid’s fist collides with his forearm, but he can’t afford to waste a second. Lance ignores the screaming in his arm as he grabs the droid’s wrist and fires his rifle one-handed.
Somehow, it twists away from the shot, and now he knows something is wrong. Droids are mindless, drones carrying out whatever prime directive was coded into them; they aren’t capable of reacting like that.
He barely manages to duck the next punch, and his thoughts connect as the metal hand sparks off the wall above his head. The concentrations of quintessence Pidge picked up earlier must be these things, some sort of artificial intelligence powered by the stuff.
He rolls out beneath its feet and fires off another few shots. It dodges them easily, but Lance is ready as it spins away from the last one, sweeping a foot out and catching it in the knee. Living or not, it stumbles when he hits the joint, and all it takes is that split-second of pause for Lance to shoot it, once in the head and three times in the chest as it staggers.
It collapses to the ground, shuddering and sparking, and he scrambles away from it til his back is pressed up against the wall. Its ruined head almost seems to twitch towards him, a hand jerking out in his direction, and the breath catches in Lance’s throat as he brings his bayard up and fires into the thing’s head until it’s still.
His own harsh breaths echo in the hall for a long moment as he sits there, clutching his injured arm and staring at the droid. Another crackle from his earpiece makes him jump.
“--here? Did--” Pidge sounds surprised in the two words she gets out before the humming static takes over the line again. Lance flinches, raising a hand to his head involuntarily and knocking into his helmet.
And then the line clears for just a heartbeat, just a second, and he hears Pidge cry out.
The blood in his veins freezes him solid for another burst of static, but as the line falls silent, he’s up and sprinting down the hall, heart pounding. Pidge had sounded like she was in pain, which means she’s hurt, trapped and injured somewhere in this nightmare base in this desolate system, and they never should have come here.
Something flickers to life on his visor, and his heart seizes for a second as he registers it.
An emergency signal. Pidge’s emergency signal.
He flies down the halls as fast as he can, arm throbbing in time with his pulse, and he distantly registers that he should be worried about making noise, that the creepy, quintessence-infused droids will come after him, but he can’t bring himself to care. There’s still ice in his bones and blood and breath as he finds the stairwell, taking the steps two at a time, scrambling to stay upright as he makes his way down as fast as he can.
And then the signal vanishes.
And like everything else about this fucking cursed mission, that’s weird. That’s too weird. The signals only switch off manually.
Which means Pidge isn’t alone.
Lance slips his way down one more flight of stairs before they bottom out, dumping him in a hallway ribbed with open blast doors. He sprints past all of them. His breathing is so ragged at this point it hurts but he pushes himself on, turning a corner and stumbling into a closed door. It takes a second for him to blink the sweat and lights out of his eyes, searching for the panel. There-- just to the right.
As he slams his hand down, he has just enough time to pray it’ll open for non-Galra before it hisses and slides open.
He charges through the gap and--
And.
The ice is back, freezing him in place even as his brain goes into overdrive, categorizing every detail of the brightly lit room and catching on three like a saw on metal.
First: there’s blood splattered across the floor, shockingly red against the white tiles.
Second: Pidge is sprawled out like a broken doll, her cracked helmet inches away from her outstretched fingers, like she’d been reaching for it.
Third: Shiro stands with his back to Lance at a control panel, typing at something, and as Lance’s eyes slide down to his hands he sees the Galra one is covered in blood.
Pidge’s blood.
“What-- what the hell?” Lance stammers, fighting through the static as his brain tries to rationalize what he’s seeing, the conclusion he’s drawing, with how he thought the universe worked. “Shiro, what are you doing?”
Shiro turns to look at him in a move so casual Lance feels sick, because his hand is covered in blood and his eyes are glowing Galra-purple. “Ah, Lance,” he sighs, like he found him flirting with an alien on some diplomatic mission or goofing off with Hunk instead of training, while Pidge bleeds out beside him. “You’re always in the wrong place at the wrong time, you know that?”
It’s so close to Shiro but so viscerally wrong. His rifle is up and levelled at him before Lance can even register making the decision, but when he does he tightens his grip, ignoring the pain in his arm and the way his hands shake as he says, “Who are you?”
“Ten more ticks and I could have played this off as just a mission gone wrong,” not-Shiro sighs, shaking his head. “Why couldn’t you have been slower?”
“I said, who are you?”
A nauseating smile twists Shiro’s face as he spreads his arms wide. “Come on, Lance, don’t you recognize me? We’ve only been teammates for three years.”
His words knock the breath right back out of Lance’s chest, turns him numb for the one critical tick it takes Shiro to charge at him.
For the second time that day, Lance stumbles back just in time to avoid a fist to the face. Shiro’s glowing hand carves a groove into the metal of the wall right next to his ear, and Lance lashes out blindly, catching him in the shoulder more by luck than anything. It earns him a precious second, and he launches himself forwards, vaulting over a console to put some space between them.
He slips when he lands, and his stomach lurches when he glances down. There’s a smear of red beneath his feet.
Spinning, he looses a few shots at Shiro, forcing him to stop attacking and dodge for a second. He doesn’t know what’s going on, but there’s no way he’s letting whatever this thing is anywhere near Pidge again.
One of his shots catches Shiro a glancing blow to the thigh and he stumbles. Lance doesn’t hesitate for a second before he shoots out his opposite kneecap, and Shiro goes down hard. Levelling his gun at him, Lance approaches slowly, blinking back sweat. “Don’t move.” His own voice sounds weird, distant and alien.
Shiro looks up at him with narrow purple eyes. “Or what, you’ll shoot me?” He drops his tone into something soft and cajoling. “It’s me, Lance, come on.”
“No, you’re not,” Lance tries to say, but all that comes out is a whisper.
Shiro’s face hardens and he lunges for him, but Lance is expecting it and he jumps to the side, swinging his foot in a solid kick to the side of Shiro’s helmet.
The purple glow finally dies as Shiro’s eyes roll back in his head.
Lance stares down at him for another second, mind slaloming between rational thoughts and a growing, bottomless horror, before a tiny sound from across the room breaks through.
A gasping breath.
He drops the rifle from his shoulder as he races over to Pidge’s side. Her eyes are still closed, but they’re rolling beneath her eyelids, and she makes another pained noise as Lance gingerly moves her onto her side.
“Sorry, Pidge, I’m sorry,” he whispers, trying to keep his voice steady. “Can you hear me?”
She groans again, but he can’t tell if it’s a response or just involuntary. His eyes tracks helplessly down the blood smeared across her white armor before he’s cursing and scrambling to press the little button of the emergency tracker hidden on the inside edge of his own helmet. After a moment, the signal flickers to life on his screen.
Taking a shaky breath, he speaks into the comm link. “Guys, I don’t know if you can hear me but--” His voice breaks as he looks down at Pidge, her face gaunt and white under her freckles. “We need help. Emergency extraction,” he corrects himself. “We-- we need an emergency extraction. And medical care…” He trails off again as the air rattles in Pidge’s lungs.
The comms crackle with static, deafening in this silent room, and Lance squeezes his eyes shut. Faraway, lost in the noise, he almost thinks he hears a shout.
“Please hurry,” he whispers. “Please, Keith.”
The red emergency light keeps pulsing on his visor, the static buzzes in his ears, and somewhere above him, out in space, he knows the team is coming.
But as he kneels there, holding Pidge’s hand as she bleeds, staring at what he thought was his friend lying unconscious across the room, he wonders if they’re already too late.