Chapter Text
Thundering footsteps signal Adam’s return from another evening spent searching for food and medication. There’s something frantic this time, the thud of running feet in worn sneakers is panicked and off-kilter, stumbling with aching urgency. Adam’s face swims into view, sweat-drenched and panting in the low light of the church. It forces Shiro into the present, drags him from the half-asleep daydream state.
Black bleeds into the sky through a jagged hole in the roof, dark ink-blood and little shattered stars. Purple flashes on the other side of stained-glass windows. Adam's breathing sounds scared.
“Something is - “ Adam starts, gasping, bent over, one hand on his chest, “ - Shiro, something’s happening.”
Hearing Adam call him by his last name snaps Shiro into attention. He's heard fear in Adam's voice many times throughout his life - from hospital beds to cockpits to sterile airlocks and, yes, in the corner of a collapsing church. They're all different types of scared, and this isn't hospital-bed-fear. This is running fear, blood-on-teeth fear, adrenaline and bricks and bruises fear.
Shiro struggles to his feet, still leaning heavily on the wall, “What? Adam, what’s - “ Despite the panic pumping through his veins he still has to forcibly push through layers of fog to focus his eyes and really think.
To make the connection between the smell of smoke and the purple - what is it, why does it trigger that lurching in his gut, how is it bathing the sky like a terrible sunrise -
He’s cut off by the ground shaking, the creaking of the church. The windows shatter, sending colorful stained glass flying. Shiro smells burning and electricity and something alien, sharp and sour and dangerous. He careens to the side, falling to the hardwood floor with an awful thunk. Ribs and shoulders and bruises clash angrily against the ground, ripping open scabs and stitches. It takes him a crackling moment of painful electricity to remember that, oh, he’s missing his right arm. He presses his plan against the wounds and feels warm, sticky blood. Fuck. When he winces, he feels the pull of a split lip and tastes the salt of blood. There’s a ringing in his ears, persistent and painful, blotting out everything but he sound of his breathing and there is cotton and blood in his mouth.
Adam kneels on the ground in an instant, pulling Shiro to his feet with anxious fervor. He presses a firm hand against the worst gash and swears low under his breath.
Below his feet, the ground squirms and sways, sends his body tilting again. At his side, Adam supports his weight, one arm around his waist and the other a gentle pressure on his chest where his lungs heave. Shiro’s sure he can feel the discordant beating of his heart - it’s loud enough in his own ears.
“Steady,” Adam whispers in the same voice he used to when Shiro struggled to stand, years ago, twisted in an MRI pod. It sends something sharp and cold through Shiro’s chest, sliding right between his ribs.
Caleb scrambles from where he crouches in the corner, running his fingers through the dust to make smiley faces on the ground. He darts to Shiro’s side, latches onto his hand and looks around with wide eyes.
“Shiro? What happened? Are you okay? Please please be okay Shiro.”
“They’re fighting - “ Adam winces, leaning back and wiping sweat from his forehead, “ - Voltron and the Galra. I think the Garrison is evacuating the planet. There’s - there’s this, this purple light in the sky. We need to leave now.”
Shiro nods, stumbling forwards to tug Adam towards the wide-open double doors, “Just - start walking. Caleb, get your bag.” The child nods and runs to his pile of blankets, returning with a backpack over his shoulder and comics clenched in his small hands. Adam helps Shiro limp out the door. His legs wobble with each step and he can’t get his body to move in a straight line when everything sways in his hazy vision.
“The Galra,” Shiro says in ragged bursts of speech, “they destroy planets they can’t conquer. We need to get to the Garrison.”
“We won’t make it there on foot” Adam bites out, worry lining his face. Sand and pebbles crackle underfoot as they walk. Heat blooms behind him, the scalding heat of distant explosions. Shiro tries to place himself behind Adam and Caleb, tries to be a shield but Adam nudges him to the side with an affectionate glare.
“Are we going to die?” Caleb asks bluntly, gripping Adam’s elbow.
Shiro takes a deep breath and insists, firmly: “No. We’re fine. We’re fine.” But - God, are they really? His knee buckles, and he presses his weight against Adam, forcing himself forwards. Another step. He can make it.
Children once played in these streets, he thinks as they pass an elementary school. SLOW SCHOOL ZONE. The marquee board flickers weakly. An empty playground collapses on the blacktop, kickball walls knocking over and abandoned backpacks shuddering in the wind of explosions.
Purple streaks like lightning illuminate the sky. Violent bursts that leave a terrible glow. Shiro has to squeeze his eyes shut against the color, it’s the color of death and fear and helplessness. His ears ring. He stumbles when he walks.
After a block, Shiro’s legs are weak and his head fucking spins. He doubles over to kneel in the pavement, dry-heaving, forehead grinding against sand. Tears leak out of his eyes, running down his face and everything fucking hurts. One palm pressed into the ground, he tries to steady himself but everything is moving and swirling and when he cracks his eyes open his vision flickers, twisting. He can’t stop the dizziness that boils in his core. Adam wavers like a fun-house mirror. Distorted and nauseating. Shiro swallows and rests his forehead on the pavement, sand clinging to his cheeks and eyelashes, stuck to blood and sweat. Something ferociously sour and stinging rises in his throat and he spits out bile, coughing. Adam rubs gentle circles in his back and distantly Shiro can hear Caleb crying.
He drags his head up, slumps against Adam, digs his fingers into the sand and says, “I don’t think I can walk much further.”
Adam presses a fluttering series of kisses against Shiro’s temples, buries his face into the crook of Shiro’s neck and inhales deeply as purple lights flash and explosions shake the sky. They can hear metal grinding and when Shiro looks up, Adam’s hair brushes against his chin and he sees Voltron through the clouds. Flashes of green, red, yellow, black, blue.
“They’re alive, at least,” Shiro breathes, and Adam’s shoulders shake, “We’ll - we’ll make it. Just. Help me up.”
“Don’t make this worse, sweetheart,” Adam murmurs, wet teeth scraping on Shiro’s collarbone as he speaks.
Tears burn in Shiro’s eyes again and he feels Caleb curl at his side, slipping a small hand to slot against Shiro’s palm, “I don’t want to die again, Adam,” Shiro says.
The planet shakes. A building crashes down, sending up plumes of dust. Shiro closes his eyes against the chaos and the nausea in his stomach.
“I’m sorry,” he says, kissing the crown of Adam’s head as his husband clutches him, shaking, “I love you so fucking much, Adam.” His chest aches.
He tips up Adam’s chin and presses a teary-eyed kiss against his mouth, gross breath and blood be damned. He needs to feel Adam’s lips before he dies for the second time.
Adam speaks through hiccuping sobs,“I love you, I love you, I love you. Sweetheart, my whole life and - and, if there’s anything after, my whole death I’ll never stop.”
There’s nothing after there’s nothing after there’s nothing after. Just black and purple and loneliness. Death is simply nothing. The end of the road.
It drags a sharp sob from Shiro’s throat and he curls down to protect them, protect Adam and Caleb and that’s his world, right here in the dusty streets of a fucking ruined Earth.
“We can’t,” Shiro says, “please. Help me stand. Adam. We can make it.”
He’s lying, the Garrison is miles away but he has to do something.
Adam exhales shakily, “Takashi, sweetheart, please.”
Adam always loved pet-names. Called Shiro honey and baby and sweetheart in soft, quiet moments. Always sweetheart. There was sir and captian panted between sheets and skin and thighs. Words whispered in kisses along the curve of Shiro’s spine.
Sweetheart.
He was the only one to call Shiro by his first name.
Shiro presses his face against Adam’s cheek, “I don’t want to die. I don’t want you to die.”
Adam breathes shakily. The sky matches him with terrible blasts. Shiro wonders if this is how the dinosaurs felt, watching a meteor lurch towards their planet. He wonders what it’s like to go extinct.
All of the humans. Gone, wiped from their tiny little planet. He thinks he knows how Allura feels. When he looks at Adam, he understands her rage. How could any creature be cruel enough to take this from him?
Caleb cries.
Shiro pushes Adam back. He falls against the sand with fear in his clenched jaw and Shiro says, “Just run. Please.”