Chapter Text
All he could see was darkness, flecked with stars that spun and whirled relentlessly across his line of sight. The cockpit was dim, lit only by a few flickering blue lights and the glow from his suit, and Blue was not responding to his commands, no matter how frantically he jammed and mashed every damned lever and button on the control panel. She was there, definitely, but she was not coherent, not at all the soothing presence he'd come to know. In an instant she'd be booming in more force than he'd ever felt, so loud that he couldn't hear himself screaming into the comms, like she was consuming his mind - and in the next moment gone to but a whisper, a strange and distorted voice, a childlike presence questing tentatively into the unknown. In those moments, she did not know who he was, and that scared him. It scared him more than her screaming that racked his brain seconds later. He slammed his fists down on the control panel in exasperation, looking out at the vastness of space and the blur of stars. He couldn't make any sense of where they were, no one was responding in the comms, and the spinning lights before his eyes were sending waves of nausea through his body. They were tumbling head over heels through space and he could only pray they didn't hit something. A giant asteroid, another ship, a small asteroid, a moon, hell, any size of astero-
The main lights of the cockpit flashed on. Everything was silent for a moment, all but his erratic breathing and the shrill creaking of Blue's metal body. The pseudo-quiet was cut short by a grinding and whirring of machinery that sounded far off, from the hind of the ship, and the spinning visual of space began to slow. It eventually curbed to a halt, leaving him to stare out at, well, what do you know, blackness and the pinpricks of stars that dotted it. He let out a half-laugh, half shuddering exhale. It was like the calm after a storm. His hands were shaking from adrenaline, heart beating so quickly and loudly that he could hear it. But that was all he could hear. Blue was gone. She'll be back, was his immediate thought. He collapsed back in the pilot's seat, not recalling when he'd stood up from it, and tried not to lose himself. He took a deep breath and let it out, hands resting on the controls once more. First step, assess the area. As well as you could manage to assess outer space, that is. He navigated Blue to the left, hoping to see, against all hope, the Castle of Lions, or maybe one of the other lions themselves. At the very least, a planet. Blue did not turn to the left. He shifted his grip on the steering handles and bit his lip. Blue? He sent the question adrift, to anywhere and everywhere, because he couldn't find his connection to her mind, couldn't focus his thoughts to her.
There was no reply. The silence seemed to grow with every second, and with it came anxiety. Space. Very quiet. Very lonely. Blue was gone. His hands were shaking harder, and he let them slip from controls and onto the sides of his helmet as he stared out into the void. But...the ship was running, the lights were on, and she'd, something had triggered the boosters to level them out of that tailspin. If that hadn't been Blue, he didn't know what it could be. She was here, she had to be. Was she...hiding from him? Blocking him out? The thought of it crushed him. He let out a breath he hadn't known he'd been holding, and then his heart dropped. At the corner of his display, a hunk of dull crimson and flickering light had emerged from the darkness. It was making its way across his field of vision at an alarming pace. Keith, he thought. It was difficult to make out the shape, the colour was so muted by lack of light that he could be mistaking it for red, but - but the ship had already traversed the span of his display and was gone from sight. Recovering his wits, he opened his mouth to start screaming into the comm, but then thought better of it. He would be composed. He would speak calmly, levelly.
"Keith?" he said, shrilly, complete with a cracking voice. He cleared his throat.
"Keith, Keith, hey buddy, hey Keith, my man..." He got into the rhythm of it, spouting off "hey Keith"s, this and that, and is it bad that rambling on and hearing his own voice was somewhat comforting? Though it'd be much better if he heard Keith's, and boy did he regret giving birth to that thought. But really. Nothing but silence on the other end. Was it not Keith? Was he ignoring him? Comm's out? Keith could be an asshole, but was he the kind of asshole to just leave him stranded out here without so much as a word. What the hell was he doing?
"...hello?" He anxiously tapped the side of his helmet. "Testiiing, one two, one two..." Tapped his foot. "...fucking..." Picked at his armor. "KeiaaAA-" The edge of the seat jammed into his ribs as he was thrown violently to the side, Blue was rumbling to life, and then she was off like a predator on the scent of prey. He could hear her machinery working into overdrive, fully alive, fully functioning. But he couldn't hear her. Lance drew up from his huddled position, shoving the pain in his side from his mind as he looked up at the display. Dead and center, that small, maybe-red, maybe-Keith blot in the distance. It didn't appearing to be growing smaller; it seemed that they might even be gaining on it, which spurred a sense of pride in Lance that Blue could keep up with Red, if that is who it was, Red, the supposedly fastest, most agile of the five.
The five. Hunk, Pidge, Shiro. A fresh wave of dread hit him, fear and worry for them, and loneliness for himself. Blue was chasing after this thing that might not even be Red like a rabid animal, probably wasn't Red, probably wasn't Keith, probably would never see any of them again, because let's be honest, how the hell do you find any one person in the vastness of space, and he'd never see his family, and no, no. Not going down this train of thought. Not doing it. Hunk and Pidge are geniuses, and even if they were stuck in the situation he was, they'd definitely been reading up on Altean technology and could probably find some way to rig up a solution. Shiro, experienced, levelheaded, in control, and probably the one with the best bond with his lion. Allura and Coran would be fine, Castle of Lions at their disposal, and they would be looking for them. And Keith was right here, that was the red lion, Blue would catch up to them and Keith would see them and be all "oh hey I didn't see you before when I was flying by like a maniac and my comm is broken so, ya know." He let himself believe it, for now.
Now that Lance thought about it, out of the five of them, he and Keith were likely the ones who needed the most not to be alone. Sure, Lance knew Keith was a skilled pilot and fighter, but he was also incredibly skilled at heedlessly throwing himself into death traps. He needed someone to keep him in check. And Lance, he was capable, adaptable, a quick thinker with a penchant for spur of the moment strategy - but being alone scared the shit out of him. He knew he could survive it, even if it broke him. He didn't want to break. But then he thought again of Hunk and Pidge all alone, how Hunk cried openly in tense situations, but would have no shoulder to cry on, and Pidge, strong-willed yet still so young and vulnerable, who'd already lost one family. How Shiro had moments where his mind seemed to drift to a different world, stuck in some private hell that was inflicted on him by the Galra. It was a punch to the gut. He turned his attention to the screen.
Red was definitely closer now. He squinted at the display. He hadn't noticed it before, but there was a thin and faint crescent of light, very large in diameter, which they were heading towards. A planet, or moon, he guessed. The sun must've been casting a shadow on this side, almost obscuring it completely. Well, here's hoping it's a terrestrial planet, preferably with a non-toxic atmosphere and without bone crushing gravity, habitable for life that won't want to kill us on sight, things Keith probably hadn't considered at all before speeding straight for it. At the breakneck pace they were keeping, it took only a few minutes to breach the atmosphere, and as turbulence wracked his body and lion, a thought occurred to him. What if Keith wasn't in control of his lion, either? Shiiit.
Maybe he should try the comm again. Could have been out of range last time, he wasn't really sure how much distance these things covered, or maybe there had been some kind of interference, he didn't really know, but it was worth a shot.
"Keith?" he tried. God, he'd said that name so many times in the past twenty minutes it was starting to sound foreign on his tongue.
"Keith...if you can hear me..." Lance focused his gaze ahead, trying to make out any details of the planet's surface. It was so dark he couldn't even tell if they were still passing through layers of clouds. "If you can hear me, say 'Lance is a better pilot than Keith.'" In fact, he vaguely wondered if Blue would even be able to make a good landing, because he was betting that he for one wouldn't be able to see the ground even if it hit him in the face. Which was now a possibility. Blue, being a feline, surely could see in the dark. Or had some fancy ultrasound features. Surely. He trusted her, she knew what she...the comm crackled to life for a moment, only to transmit a small...grunting? noise and cut to silence again. A groan? It was a something, and a something was much better than a nothing. It both relieved and worried him.
"Really? You let me talk to myself for like ten minutes, and when you finally deign to respond, all you do is grunt at me?" Lance threw up his hands, despite the gesture being utterly futile with video feed not activated. That was a mistake which he quickly rectified. Even Keith was deserving enough to bear presence to his beautiful face in such times of need. His beautiful, and glaring, face. Fierce, like Tyra. The lack of response on the other end was worrying. There was definitely something wrong.
"Alright, be that way, all good. Just wanted to let you know, I'm here, but uh, Blue isn't, exactly."
A few shuffling noises filtered in, like the rustling of cloth against cloth, and maybe some breathing. Good to know.
"Can you still talk to Red?"
Barely audible grumbling that Lance couldn't for the life of him decipher.
"Keith? Talk to me buddy, how are we doing in there?"
More shuffling noises, gratingly loud as though he was rubbing his fingers all over the mic, and then one final shhhfff to end it. It sounded suspiciously like he was putting his helmet on. Like he hadn't had his helmet on this entire time. And Lance truly had been talking to himself for ten minutes. Why in the everloving quiznak...
"Lance?" His voice was deep and groggy, like he'd just come out of a ten year coma. Lance was going to put him in a ten year coma as soon as they landed for making him worry over nothing when there were much more legitimate things to be worrying about.
"The one and only," and, as Lance was saying this, there was a deafening roar from the other end, so loud that had him practically flinging his helmet across the cockpit. Instead, he held it a safe distance from his head, cradled in his hands, listening to the screeching metal and booming rumbles that bellowed from it. He felt sick, a twisted, sinking growing in his gut.
Bad landing.