Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

I

If he’s being honest with himself, he’d expected this whole thing to be less...boring.

He almost wishes it was. Maybe it would be nice to get thrown around a bit, to get interrogated, to be able to spit in the face of the Warden and tell him, no, I won’t tell you anything, I won’t betray my friends.

It makes sense, though. He’s built it up so much in his head, that background fear of being captured, ever since they found out what really happened to Shiro during the Kerberos Mission, that the reality of it is bound to fall a little flat. Still. The entire thing has been, well... weird.

He’d been accompanying a rebel fleet doing a supply transport in preparation for the attack on Naxzela, just there for defense on the off chance anything happened. They were traveling through a peaceful sector of the galaxy, one with very little Galra activity, and Allura and Shiro agreed that they probably only needed to send one lion. He’d volunteered, because they hadn’t really been doing much lately and he was bored. Also, he and Keith were fighting and he’d wanted to get out from underneath that glare that followed him around the castle, angry and annoyed. He’d only be gone a few quintants, give them both time to cool off and reevaluate what they were even fighting about, because Lance honestly wasn’t even sure.

So off he went, waving a cheerful goodbye, and of course, about thirty dobashes away from the destination planet, a Galra fleet shows up and starts shooting. And Lance starts shooting back, because that transport must land. He even takes out one of the bigger ships with a well-placed shot of ice right to the engines, but it’s just him and Blue and that’s not really enough. The rebel base on the planet below has a shield and weaponry; they’ll be able to hold off a fleet from the ground, but those ships have to land first. He only has to give them a little time. They can fight off the small fighters, but the big ship is firing on them, already took out the engine of one, which is plummeting towards the surface of the planet. That’s what he has to stop.

So he flies straight at the big ship, without thinking too much about it, because if he thought about it more he probably wouldn't do it. He’s not Keith. He doesn’t have a death wish.

Well. Keith doesn’t have a death wish. He’s just brave. Lance isn’t, not really.

He flies straight for the cannons and starts firing, ducking and weaving around the shots. One laser grazes the back of Blue and she shudders violently, shaking him around. He clings to the controls, grits his teeth, aims, fires. One of the cannons blows, pushing him backwards in the explosion.

“Fuck yeah!” He crows to himself, imagining the rest of the team connected to his comms, cheering him too. In reality, they’re a galaxy away, too far to hear. They have no idea what’s happening.

But Blue purrs in the back of his mind, pleased, and they wheel back for more. The ships are almost there, descending through the planet’s atmosphere. He wonders if he can take out the other cannon and fly fast enough to follow. Blue isn’t quite as fast as Red, but she’s still quick. He thinks he could probably do it. He turns Blue around to face the ship again, and gets blasted head-on with a laser.

Everything is loud and bright and jolting for a few long moments and when he opens his eyes again he’s out of the pilot seat, crumpled against the wall of the cockpit, head throbbing. He claws his way back to the front, groaning, and finds the controls, pushing at them desperately. She’s not responding.

“Fuck, fuck, Blue, come on.”

He remembers Allura’s voice through the comms back when they were first training with the lions: If you’re going to take a hit, take it on the flanks, or the back. Try not to let anything hit the head. It could destroy the controls, put you offline for a bit.

“Shit, Blue, come on.” His head is pounding and his shoulder hurts, something off center and wrong. He looks desperately down at the planet. No sign of the rebel ships. They must have landed. The small fighters that followed the rebels down have turned back. Now he’s taking fire from them, too.

He closes his eyes, reaches deep into his mind, to the place where Blue’s consciousness curls, quiet and reassuring. He reaches for her, desperate.

She flickers to life, weak, but responsive. He slams the controls forward and she wheels to face the ship again. He fires. Fires again. He hits some fighters, they explode, fall. He can’t seem to hit the cannons of the big ship at the right angle, and Blue isn’t moving fast enough.

“Mierda, mierda, mierda.”

A hit from the big ship slams into Blue’s side. She lurches, and he almost spills out of the pilot chair again, gripping desperately at the controls, tossing them around more. The lights flicker.

The realization is quick, and his resignation is easy. He isn’t going to make it out of this. But he did his job. The transport made it. At least they’ll know what happened, someone will get word back to the team. Ducking Blue around another direct shot from the ship, he thinks of Keith. Dark eyes, exasperated sneer. You let them beat you? He thinks of Keith, soft in sleep next to him, this tender, precious thing between them. Make sure you come back.

He wheels Blue around and fires at the fighters converging on him, a stream of ice freezing a whole line of them at once. He might be going down, but he’s going to take as many of them with him as he can.

Blue, he thinks desperately. You have to put up your shield. Don’t let anyone in. They’ll come for us. I know they will.

He feels her displeasure, her worry, her desire to keep fighting, to protect him.

Protect yourself, he begs her. You’re more important than me. And he feels her surge of anger at the thought, and then another massive shot from the ship shakes him out of the chair, bounces him around the cockpit again, and his head reconnects to the wall and everything falls away against a bright flash of light and the undercurrent of Blue’s desperate panic.

He wakes to something poking his cheek, over and over again. He groans, tries to lift his head, can’t. The poking continues. He peels his eyes open and groans again at the light stabbing his head, his head , Jesus Christ.

“Dios,” he mumbles, “que mierda?”

“What’s it saying?” A gruff voice asks. A hand grasps his chin and forces his head up and his vision swims, blurring and resolving itself on the ugly purple mug of a very short, very fat, Galran.

“Ah, pensé que soñé esto,” he sighs. At this point, he realizes he’s being held up between two other Galra, and his hands are cuffed behind his back. His ankle hurts, his shoulder  really hurts, his head swims and he feels sick, and that’s definitely blood falling into his eyes. He swivels to look behind him, head spinning with the effort, and sees Blue, battered, but encased in her energy shield. Two other Galra stand in front of her, poking at the barrier. They don’t seem happy.

Good girl, he thinks, but he can’t feel her connection. Probably for the best.

“Hey!” A hand cuffs the back of his head, sending pain ricocheting through it. He doubles over and throws up on the floor, and a little on one of the Galran’s feet. Which is....satisfying.

The short, fat Galran in front of him regards him with disgust, sneering at the puddle of sick on the floor. “Pathetic,” he says, then looks at the two Galra holding him up. “Take him to processing. The Warden can deal with this.”

“Yes, sir,” the Galra holding him say in unison, and then they’re frog-marching him down the hall and his stomach is twisting in on itself because, now that he’s more awake, he’s fully aware of what’s happening. Namely, he’s been captured. By the Galra. And his life is probably about to become very unpleasant.

It’s okay, he tries to tell himself against the swell of panic. They’ll come for you. You can hold out until then. It doesn’t help much. He doubts this ship will stay here for long. How will they find him, lost somewhere in the universe?

They reach the end of a hallway and a door slides open under the hand of one of his escorts. They march him inside, and the room is, well...the nearest thing he can compare it to is the police station in Flagstaff where he had to go once to bail out a friend who’d gotten a little too wild on a night away from the Garrison; but Galra-style, so everything is dark metal and purple and shit. There are a few benches, and some desks, all of which are deserted except for the one in the center of the room, behind which sits a disgruntled looking Galran with the biggest, fuzziest ears Lance has ever seen. They almost look soft, and for a brief moment he kind of wants to touch them, but that must be the concussion.

The Galran looks up at them and his expression turns even more sour. “Yes?” he barks.

“Warden,” one his escorts says, “we have a new prisoner.”

“Yes, Meyzak, I can see that,” says the Galran apparently known as the Warden. “Did you have to beat him half to death before you brought him to me?”

“He came that way,” the other escort says, and Lance thinks, Jesus, these guys are dumb.

The Warden closes his eyes, sighs like he’s gathering his strength, and then nods. “Bring him here.”

They push him right up to the desk and the Warden looks at him. He has bags under his eyes. Lance wonders if Galra get tired the same way humans do.

“This is very inconvenient for me,” the Warden says. “We’re already at capacity.”

They stare at each other for a moment before Lance realizes the Warden seems to expect an answer. “Er,” he says, “Sorry?”

The Warden waves a hand and sighs, then pulls up a display and starts typing. “Typical,” he says. “Anyway. Name?”

“Um?”

“‘Um’? Interesting,” he says, typing. “Species?”

“Ah, what?”

He can hear the Warden’s teeth grind. “Are you dim? I asked what species you are.”

“Sir,” Meyzak says. “This is the Blue Paladin.”

The Warden’s fingers still on the keys. “The what?”

“The Blue Paladin. Of Voltron. He was with the rebel fleet, we captured both him and his lion after he engaged us.”

The Warden looks up at him, eyes narrowed, then stands. He studies him, every inch of him, and Lance feels exposed. Then he sighs, and sits back down, typing something rapidly, then hitting a button.

“I’d really rather not be dealing with you right now,” he says conversationally, leaning back in his chair. “We’re full to capacity, I’ve got safety and procedure to think about here, and I was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. Why they thought a prison ship needed to respond to a rebel fleet when there were three other fighter ships in the sector is beyond me, but when Central Command calls I answer, unless I want to lose my job, see? But you’re going to cause me problems. We’re going to have to divert from our course to deliver you wherever they want you, and that’s going to put me behind on my resupply route. We’re already at low power thanks to firing our cannons, and the repair work is going to cost me. It’s really quite inconvenient.”

Lance stares at him. “You could always just let me go, if I’m that much trouble.”

The Warden lets out a short laugh. “Believe me, I want to. More trouble than you’re worth. But I already notified Central Command, so I will have to put up with your inconvenience for a movement or two. Now,” he shifts his attention to Lance’s guards, “get him out of my sight. I think there might be room for him in Block D. And get a healer to look at him, we don’t want him dying on us before we can deliver him to the witch.”

As the guards tug him back out of the room, the Warden calls after him. “Welcome to Eker Prison. Enjoy your stay.”

Then the door slides shut.

They force him out of his armor, his flight suit. They give him prison clothes, that shapeless purple shirt and a dark grey bodysuit underneath. He can barely move his right arm; it hangs nearly useless below his misshapen, bruised shoulder. His ankle is puffy and unstable. They press some sort of device against the inside of his wrist and there’s a flash of pain before they withdraw it, leaving behind a set of numbers. 089-1459-2.

They shuffle him to another room and push him onto a metal table. Okay, he thinks when a huge Galran enters the room and starts poking at him, here’s where the torture starts. But the Galran just sticks a bandage and some sort of salve on his head and prods at his ankle and shoves his shoulder back into place with bruising force, and he screams despite himself. But the Galran didn’t purposefully cause any pain, and he leaves the room after he’s done, remarking on the fragility of these creatures from Earth.

And then the cuffs are back on, and he’s being marched down endless dark corridors lit with purple, past door after door after door, all marked with symbols that he thinks must be Galran numbers until they stop in front of one. It opens with a touch from the guard and he’s pushed forward, cuffs detaching from each other, though they remain looped around his wrists.

“Be nice, Ukar,” one of the guards yells, “this one’s important. And fragile.”

And then the door closes and he’s left blinking in the dim purple light of the cell. “I’m not fragile,” he mutters at the door, though various throbbing body parts disagree. And then he sees the thing he’s sharing the cell with and thinks, okay, maybe I am fragile, and contemplates running back to the door and pounding on it until someone comes back to save him.

It’s the biggest Galran he’s ever seen, bigger than Sendak, bigger than Zarkon, even. The fabric of his prison shirt is stretched over huge muscles and his face is covered in scars, yellow eyes shining out bright through the dim of the room. He’s reclined on the bottom bunk of a metal bunk bed, his massive bulk somehow curled into the small space. It should look ridiculous, but instead it’s terrifying. The guy eyes him. Lance squeaks and backs up until he hits the door.

The guy squints at him. “You get top bunk,” he grunts out in a voice like gravel, and then closes his eyes.

Is that it? Lance was expecting to get punched, or ground into a pulp, or something.

“Er…” he says, hating how small his voice is. “Okay?”

He manages to climb the ladder, ankle and shoulder throbbing, and curls up on the hard mattress, looking at the cell. There’s a toilet sticking out of the wall opposite the bed, and a tiny slit that looks out into space. The whole place is suffused with that dim, sickening purple light. It’s about half the size of Blue’s cockpit, far too small for the Galran below him, let alone both of them.

Shit, he thinks, hugging his knees to his chest. Shit, I have to get out of here. The Warden mentioned a witch. He knows he meant Haggar. He can’t let her get to him. He might be able to hold out against normal interrogation, even torture, but he knows she’ll reach right into his mind and take whatever she wants, and he won’t be able to do a thing to stop her. And the thought of Blue in her possession makes his stomach turn again. He can’t let that happen. He has to escape. There will be an opportunity. There has to be.

But there isn’t. The guards slide meals through a slot in the door, some sort of tasteless grey goop that Ukar eats with relish and Lance picks at. There’s no way to tell how much time is passing. One time, he works up the courage to ask Ukar how long he’s been here, if the ship ever docks, if they ever do anything, but he just gets a grunt in reply. He’d expected to be interrogated, to be questioned, to at least be taken from the cell once. It doesn’t happen. He watches stars wheel out the tiny slit of the window and falls into his own thoughts. The team must be coming. He gets hungry enough to eat the goop.

He gets bored.

So here he is. Not what he expected.

He spends a long time counting seconds and trying to figure out a sense of time. Of course, it’s inaccurate, because all he can do is chant “One, one thousand; two, one thousand” in an even tone, so it’s Earth seconds, worthless here, but at least it’s something. He thinks they bring the food goop three times a quintant, so they’re not starving them. In fact, prisoners seem to be treated pretty well, all things considered. All things considered being this is a Galra prison. He wonders how many of the rest of the prisoners are Galran, like Ukar. Most of them? Just a few? He wonders what Galra get thrown in prison for. Not killing their required quota during battle? He’s not about to ask Ukar again.

Eventually he stops counting, because counting is also extremely boring, and falls back into his thoughts. He wonders what the team is doing. If they know he’s gone. It seems like he’s been here a while--he’s counted thirteen bowls of food goop, though the first few were a little fuzzy thanks to the concussion, so that’s, what, three quintants? A little over? Definitely long enough for the rebels to let the team know he got captured.

As long as they knew he got captured. What if they thought he’d escaped, headed back to the Castle? He wonders if anyone actually saw Blue being drawn up into the ship.

The entire bunk shakes with the force of Ukar’s snore and he jolts out of his train of thought. No. He can’t think like that. They know. They’re looking for him. They have to be.

He sleeps, wakes. He hates not knowing what time it is. That’s one of the most difficult things about floating through space, the nonexistence of time. At home, he never took off his watch, would wake up panicked in the night until he checked the time and could settle back down. He wore the watch for a long time after they left Earth, watching the hands tick uselessly away, completely separate from the life they were living. It was four PM in Arizona and classes were over for the day, it was six PM in Cuba and his mother was probably in the kitchen, cooking dinner, his father was probably knocking mud off his boots on the porch, they were both probably drinking a cold beer. It was 8 AM in Arizona, his classmates were rolling out of bed, scrubbing sleep out of their eyes, filling their thermoses with coffee, straggling their way to class. 8 PM, the sun was setting over the desert or the sea. 10 PM in Cuba and Luis and Lisa, his wife, were dancing around the kitchen to the soft music spilling from the speaker on the table.

He wore that watch until it ran out of batteries and then he kept it on his nightstand for months until one night, in a fit of insomnia ridden anger, he threw it away, sucked into space with the rest of their garbage.

He wishes he had it now, even if it was nothing but a cheap, meaningless thing. There’s nothing on or around him that belongs to home now, other than his own body.

He hasn’t allowed himself to think about Keith much until he dreams of him during one of the short naps his sleep cycle has devolved into. It’s nothing concrete--just Keith, lying on Lance’s bed, hair spread over the pillow. His face is turned away slightly, he’s sleeping, mouth parted, body relaxed and open, trusting. In the dream, Lance reaches his hand out and tries to touch him, but it falls right through Keith’s body, like he’s not there at all. He wakes with a tingle in his fingers and a painful twisting in his stomach. They were fighting. He hadn’t said goodbye to him. He doesn’t even remember what they were fighting about. Some stupid disagreement about training regimens, or had Keith been pissed off that he’d winked at Allura or something? Was it both?

“No recuerdo,” he says out loud, and below him Ukar grunts.

“Shut up,” he says in gravely tones and Lance turns his face into the mattress as tears burn his eyes.

It was still new, this thing between them, so fragile but so good. He never would have thought, after all the barbed exchanges and bickering, that they would end up in each other’s beds, except for maybe he had always known that, in the back of his mind. After all, he’d started the rivalry, in a panic, desperate to hide the fact that he’d been obsessed with Keith since he first laid eyes on him in the Garrison. And if he was going to get shot into space with the guy he sure as hell didn’t want him to know that. So, rivalry it was. Easy enough excuse to mask the real reasons why he was paying so much attention to his every move.

And Keith had responded, pushed back against him. Except Lance didn’t miss the sidelong glances he would send down the table during meals, or the lingering gazes while they were training, or the furious way Keith fought, back to back with him, protecting Lance even when he didn’t need to be protected.

The mattress below his face is damp. He’s so tired, and the cell is cold, the prison clothes not heavy enough to drive away the chill. They don’t give them blankets, or pillows. He’s tired of this. He misses Keith, the warm line of his body next to him in bed.

After a furious battle with one of Haggar’s monsters, after Lance blocked a shot headed straight for Red that would have blown Keith into the next galaxy, Keith had taken his arm and physically dragged him away from the docking bay and into a deserted hallway where he’d pushed him against a wall, furious.

“What the hell, man?” Lance said, still breathless from battle and high on their victory.

“What did you think you were doing?” Keith said, poking him in the chest with an insistent finger, face too close. “Why did you do that?”

“What, block that shot? You didn’t see it, I was just watching your back!”

“I don’t need you protecting me!” Keith shouted at him, and Lance got angry right back, crowding into Keith’s space.

“I’m so sorry! I’ll remember that next time you’re about to get blown up and let you deal with it!”

“You could have gotten hurt!”

“I knew I could block it safely! It would have hit you straight on! Would you chill out?”

And then Keith’s hands were clutching his shoulders and he didn’t seem so angry anymore, more scared, eyes wide and shining. “I don’t want you to get hurt for me!”

“Keith,” he said, brain trying to catch up with Keith’s change in tone, with the desperate grip on his arms. “Keith, I’m fine. I didn’t get hurt.” They were so close to each other. He’d stared into Keith’s face, really looking for the first time in a long time, allowing himself to drink him in. Flush on his cheeks, sweaty strands of hair clinging to his temples and neck, fine lines furrowing his brow, thick eyebrows, long, dark eyelashes. His lips...his lips were chapped and Lance, who had hoped his crush might wither up and die once he really got to know Keith, gave into the fact that he was definitely still stuck with it.

Slowly, he raised a hand and covered Keith’s where it rested on his arm. Keith’s fingers were shaking. He let out a hitched breath when they touched.

“Keith…” he asked, and Keith’s breath hitched again. “Are you...okay?”

“Oh, God.” Keith’s voice was strangled. And then Keith was kissing him, and Lance was frozen, brain so unprepared to deal with what was happening that it seemed to grind to a total halt, a ringing in his ears, and Keith’s lips were soft on his, and dry, and all he could think was that he really needed to find the guy some space chapstick….

And then Keith tore himself away so violently he hit the wall on the other side of the hall, bright red and horrified-looking, put a still-trembling hand over his lips and blurted, “I’m so sorry.”

And then he ran away.

And Lance, after standing stock still for several seconds, ran after him and spent ten minutes pounding on Keith’s door and being annoying until Keith finally let him in, all his walls back up and unable to meet his eyes until Lance kissed him, firm and sure, and said, “you should have said something, mullet”....

He doesn’t realize he’d fallen back into a doze until he jolts awake to the sound of the door of the cell sliding open. Ukar grunts and stands, shifting the entire bed, the bulk of him nearly filling the cell. Lance sits up and peers out the door.

“Up,” a guard snaps, meeting his gaze. “It’s exercise varga.”

He looks to Ukar, but he just rolls his eyes and stomps out of the cell. Lance slides off the bunk and limps out of the cell, the cuffs at his wrists snapping back together.

In the hallway, they join a flood of other prisoners and he’s surprised to see many, if not most, are Galran. There are others mixed in, he sees a few Balmarans, and some Olkari, and a few short things with lots of arms that look a little like Slav. Something giant with a lot of tentacles oozes along a few paces ahead of them. But overall, mostly Galra. He shrinks into himself and tries to hide behind Ukar’s massive bulk, hoping to stay as invisible as possible. He wonders how many of these Galra know about Voltron, how many know about the paladins that pilot it. How many of them would recognize him.

He wonders if he’s fought any of them before.

They’re herded to a huge room with a high ceiling. A few tables are scattered in the center, with prisoners sitting around them. Most seem to be walking around, though, or leaning against the walls talking. Lance glances up and sees guards posted on a catwalk above them, blasters drawn and keeping a close eye. More are stationed around the room. In his surprise he’d completely forgotten that he was meant to be escaping. He edges to a deserted corner and tries to blend into the shadows. The cuffs released him again when they entered the room, and he wonders if he could overpower one of the guards. If he could just get a blaster, he could probably hunker down and take down most of the guards on the catwalks, especially if he had shelter behind one of the tables. If he tried it, would other prisoners take advantage of the chaos and fight back against the guards, too? That would certainly be convenient. He’d need time, his ankle still throbs and he wouldn’t be able to run very fast. He edges a little closer to the nearest guard, eyeing his blaster. He’s never been the best at close-range combat, or hand to hand, though Keith was trying to train him, before. Before all this. If he snuck up on one from behind and moved fast, though, he might have a chance. Might as well try.

Before he can plan out making a move, though, a hand grabs his shoulder, still tender, and throws him back into the wall. An arm moves across his windpipe and presses down, hard, leaving him breathless and choking.

“So,” a voice hisses in his ear. “This is the Blue Paladin. I’ve got to admit, I was expecting something a little more...impressive.”

His shoulder screams in pain. He lifts his hands and scrabbles uselessly at the arm. Laughter rings around him.

“Aww, look, he’s trying to fight back.”

“They really are weak. Why hasn’t the empire conquered their planet yet?”

“It’d be too easy!”

More laughter.

The Galran crushing his windpipe leans in closer. He has massive fangs and his breath reeks. He tries to turn his face away, fingers digging into skin, but he can barely move.

“Well, well, paladin. I know we can’t rough you up much, you’re too valuable, but I think we can teach you a bit of a lesson, don’t you?”

He gasps for breath. “A lesson?” he croaks out. “Is it just you standing here next to my nose? Your breath is punishment enough.”

“Oh,” the Galran says, tightening his grip. “We’ve got one that talks back. Could you speak a little louder? We couldn’t quite hear you.” He crushes down on Lance’s neck and he chokes, heaving. Around him, laughter rings out. Why aren’t the guards doing anything, if he really is that valuable?

“Hmm,” says a Galran on his other side, leaning in close. “What do you think? Break a couple fingers?”

“Aww, don’t be so light on him, Arva,” another laughs, and she scowls, pushing a finger into his cheek. “Maybe mark up his face a little?” she offers. “He’s a little too pretty, I think.”

He chokes, struggles harder.

“What do you think you’re doing?” A voice like gravel comes from behind them, and the arm across his throat loosens slightly. The Galran holding him turns.

“Ukar. Is he not your cellmate? I’m surprised you haven’t taught him a lesson already.”

Ukar is massive compared to the Galran holding him. “We were all told,” he grumbles. “He’s too valuable.”

“Bah,” spits the woman called Arva. “No one said he has to arrive pretty.”

“He’s certainly too valuable for you to think about touching, Arva,” Ukar says. “The Warden has a special interest in keeping him whole. Though I am sure he would be very understanding as to your reasons for harming his prize prisoner."

The arm across his throat disappears and Lance doubles over, gasping and massaging his throat.

“Well,” says someone in a disparaging tone, “if you’re really going to bend to the will of the Warden, I’ve lost respect for you, Ukar.”

“I think I will survive that loss,” Ukar replies, a hint of sarcasm in his tone.

By the time he’s able to straighten up, he’s alone in the corner with Ukar, who’s standing with his arms crossed, glaring out at nothing in particular.

“Why,” Lance coughs again and clears his throat. “Why did you do that?”

“You heard me,” Ukar says. “You are too valuable. Anything happens to you, we all get in trouble. I do not want to deal with that. Keep your head down, human. There are many here who would harm you.”

“Gee, no shit,” he grumbles, “I’m only on a Galra ship, surrounded by Galra, en route to the Galra supreme. I’m pretty sure I’m toast no matter who does or doesn’t decide to beat me up today.”

Ukar snorts, but doesn’t reply and they stand together in the corner for the remainder of the varga, until one of the guards blows a sharp whistle and someone else yells “back to the cells!” and they all tromp through the hallways until they’re back in the tiny room. This time, Lance doesn’t go straight back up to his bunk. Instead, he leans on the wall and stares at Ukar as he rearranges his bulk back into the tiny bunk.

“What was that?” he asks, voice gravelly from not talking for so long. Ukar closes his eyes briefly and sighs, then, to Lance’s surprise, answers. “Exercise varga. We get one every movement.”

“Do they let us out of the cells any other time?”

“Only if they need to clean. That only happens every phoeb or so.”

“Why are there so many Galra here? I thought this was a Galra prison.”

“You think Galra don’t have criminals or political enemies they need to lock up?”

“Why are you here?”

“I spent a lot of time stealing and selling supplies from Galra supply chains.”

“Oh shit,” Lance says, impressed. “You’re a space pirate?”

Ukar squints at him. “I do not know what that means.”

“It’s cool, man, it means you smuggle shit! Very popular on Earth!”

Ukar looks more confused. “Smuggling...shit is popular where you come from?”

“No,” Lance clarifies. “Well, yeah, I guess that’s popular, too. But I meant stories about people who smuggle shit. About pirates. You know what, never mind. How long have you been here?”

“I do not know.”

“Oh,” he deflates.

“It is difficult to keep track of time,” Ukar clarifies. “It has been several deca-phoebs.”

Deca-phoebs. Years. “Does anyone ever escape?” He hadn’t meant it to come out that blatant.

Ukar fixes him with a burning look. “Do not think of escaping, human. It does not happen. And even if you could, this ship floats endlessly through space, traveling through the loneliest quadrants, only docking for supplies and fuel. You would have nowhere to go.”

“Why are you answering all my questions?”

“I am hoping you will leave me be if I do,” Ukar says flatly. “Is there anything else?”

“I…” Lance trails off. There is. Where are we? How long will it take to get to Central Command? Have they gotten through Blue’s shield yet?

All questions Ukar would have no way of answering.

“No,” he says finally. “Thank you.”

Ukar inclines his head, then closes his eyes. Lance climbs back up to his bunk and huddles against the wall, drawing the extra fabric of his shirt close to him to conserve heat. At least he knows now that they’re let out every so often. Every movement. He might get another chance before they reach Haggar. The Warden had said he would be here a few movements.

He might still have a chance.

Chapter Text

II

Time may be difficult, but it definitely hasn’t been a full movement the next time their door slides open. Two guards fill the doorway. “You,” one says, pointing at Lance. “Come with us.”

His stomach sinks as he slides down from his bunk and the cuffs snap together. Have they already reached Central Command? Is Haggar waiting for him? Has she come to them? Or have they finally decided they might as well torture him because they don’t have anything better to do? He drags his feet walking down the corridor, and the guards tug at him.

They enter a small room, no windows, just blank walls and a table with a chair on either side. They shove him down in one and pull his arms up. The cuffs attach to the table, holding him there. It’s exactly like an interrogation room in every crime drama he’s ever seen, including the Altean ones from 10,000 years ago. The guards withdraw to stand against the wall, and the door opens again to reveal the Warden and another Galran, tall, with delicate features and big ears.

The Warden sighs as he sits down, and the other Galran pulls up another chair to sit next to him, both facing Lance expectantly.

The Warden squints at him. “I knew you were going to cause me trouble,” he says.

Lance doesn’t say anything, but the Warden doesn’t seem to expect him to. He sighs again instead, and pulls up some data, scanning it before turning back to Lance.

“Approximately 20 vargas ago, a main military outpost was attacked by your rebel coalition and the other four paladins of Voltron. They destroyed it, took over our colonies in the sector, and stole some very sensitive information.”

Despite himself, he feels a triumphant smirk on his lips. At the very least, he knows the team is okay and still fighting. Still winning.

“I wouldn’t smile if I were you,” the other Galran says, leaning forward. “Their success is at your detriment. We believe they are planning further attacks like this, in various sectors. You will tell us what you know of their plans.”

Lance laughs. “No, I won’t.”

The Warden sighs again. “It would be easiest for us all if you would just talk. Your resistance will be futile once we deliver you to the witch, but you might as well make it easier on yourself now and talk to us. We could provide you with more...comforts. Better rations. A cell of your own.”

Lance leans back as far as the cuffs will allow and smirks at them. “Nope.” The other Galran growls. She turns to the Warden. “I told you, it is useless to question him like this. We must provide some...persuasion.”

“And I told you,” the Warden says mildly, “that I was ordered to deliver him unharmed. I am thinking, General, that your persuasion may cause harm.”

She scoffs. “Nothing that wouldn’t be healed before he was delivered.” She stands and, fast as lighting, slaps him hard across the face. His head whips to the side and he blinks, shocked, tasting blood in his mouth from where he bit his tongue.

“General!” the Warden says. She stares down at him, eyes cold. “Do not forget that I outrank you here,” she says, “We do this my way.”

“Still not going to say anything,” Lance croaks, turning back towards them and spitting blood out of his mouth. “Sorry.”

She slaps the other cheek. “Tell us their plans.”

“Sorry,” he says again. “I’m the dumb one. No one ever told me the plan. I just followed the leader.”

“You expect me to believe that?” she hisses. “You are a paladin of Voltron. You would know their strategy.” Her hand shoots out and grabs him around the neck, squeezing. He chokes, his windpipe already tender from the treatment during the exercise hour.

“General !” the Warden says sharply. She releases him and, as he gasps for breath, slaps him again. He can feel blood running from his nose now. “I knew about the Naxzela mission,” he gasps out. “We were working with the rebels and the Blade, we were going to take out the base there. It was a strategic location, the last holdout in a coalition-held area.”

“That’s the attack that just took place. I think you know that. You can do better.”

“I can’t,” he croaks, trying to sound defeated. She rounds the table to stand at his side and jerks his head up by his hair, forcing him to look at her. “I don’t believe you,” she says.

He smiles at her, knowing he must look grotesque, blood in his teeth and running down his chin. “Sorry you captured me. I’m the fifth wheel, I don’t know shit. I’m just there to form Voltron and shoot lasers. I can’t help you out here.”

She snarls and pulls, and he feels a chunk of hair leave his head, crying out involuntarily at the sharp pain.

“Enough,” the Warden says firmly. “Here’s what we will do. You will be on half rations from here on out. We’ll check in with you in a few quintants. Take him back to his cell.”

The first time they only deliver one bowl of food, Ukar roars and pounds on the door. “Where is the rest?” he yells out to the guard presumably cowering on the other side.

“It’s okay,” Lance says from where he’s curled up on his bunk. “I got put on half rations.”

Ukar steps away from the door and glares up at him. “What did you do?”

“I wouldn’t tell them anything when they questioned me about an attack Voltron carried out. They can’t torture it out of me because they have to save me for Haggar. So they put me on half rations. I guess they’re hoping I get hungry enough to talk.”

Ukar shakes his head. “Idiot human,” he mutters, and returns to his bunk. He eats his ration. Lance’s stomach growls. He tries to sleep. The next time they deliver food, there’s only one bowl again. Lance presses himself against the wall as he listens to Ukar eat. The next time, there are two bowls of food and Lance wolfs down his so quickly he feels sick. Ukar looks at him with something like pity and shakes his head.

“You must save it,” he grunts. “If you only get one ration every three feedings, you cannot eat it all at once. You will damage your digestion and feel ill.”

Lance can only groan in response. A few dobashes later, he throws the whole meal back up into the toilet and nearly starts crying. The next feeding, he hears Ukar eating slowly, then the bed shakes as he stands. Lance opens his eyes to see a bowl resting on the edge of his matress, a third of Ukar’s ration in it. He raises his eyes to look at him.

“You don’t have to,” he says. “You shouldn't.”

“They will blame me if you starve,” Ukar says bluntly, then disappears from his sight, sitting back down. Lance wants to argue more, but his stomach aches with hunger and he’s too weak to resist it. He pulls the bowl towards him and eats the goop slowly as he can stand.

“Thank you,” he mumbles when he’s finished, and Ukar grunts below him. The next feeding, Ukar does the same thing. The next, when Lance finally has a full bowl of his own again, he eats it slowly, and saves half. He can’t imagine vargas-old congealed goop will be appetizing, but it’s better than nothing. He sleeps more, drifting through strange, half-waking dreams to pass the time. He wishes he could send a message to his family, and he tries to think of what he would say. I’m sorry I left without saying anything to you. It was kind of an accident. I’ve been fighting evil aliens for the last year, trying to defend the universe. Well, really, I’m just trying to defend Earth, trying to make sure they never make it to you guys. And now I’ve gotten captured and I’m really wondering if I’ll make it out of this. My friends haven’t come, they might not even know I’m here. So, you know, I might never see any of you again. I miss you. Lo siento. Los quiero mucho.

“Would you be quiet?” Ukar says from below. “I am trying to sleep.”

Keith finds him on the observation deck late one night, or at least what passes for night on the Castle. He’s been staring out at the stars for who knows how long, trying to match these strange constellations and star clusters with the ones he remembers from home, searching for any familiarity and not finding much. He’d woken from a nightmare of Earth exploding, destroyed by shots from Galra cannons, blown to bits in front of him. He’d thrown up when he woke, and couldn’t fall back asleep. Didn't want to. So he came here, where he often retreats when insomnia keeps his brain running loops on itself as everyone else sleeps.

“Hey,” Keith says, coming to stand beside him.

“Hey,” he replies, not looking away from the windows. This thing between them is brand new, just days old, and he still doesn’t quite know how to interact with Keith in this strange new state.

“It’s late,” Keith says, voice low and hoarse.

“You’re up, too,” he says, and Keith huffs a laugh and takes a seat beside him, keeping six inches of space between their arms. Lance glances over at him and sees hair stuck to his cheeks and neck with sweat, red cheeks. He’s panting slightly.

“Were you training?” he asks. Keith nods.

“It’s late,” he parrots.

“Guess neither of us can sleep through the night,” Keith says, meeting his eyes.

“Well next time you’re training in the middle of the night come get me,” he says. “I can kick your ass, send you right to sleep.”

Keith scoffs. “You wish.”

“What kept you up?” Keith asks eventually.

Lance shrugs. “Bad dreams. You know. It’s hard to fall back asleep.”

Keith nods. “I know.”

They fall quiet again. Normally Lance would feel the need to fill the silence. He doesn’t like silences, he hates quiet contemplation, but here on the deck with Keith he doesn’t need to say anything. Keith doesn’t need any explanation from him, and he doesn’t need more from Keith. It’s enough to hear his breathing, evening out, to feel the warmth of his body next to him. Some small fraction of the gaping hole in his chest longing for comfort, for familiarity, for home, fills up with warmth. They sit and watch the stars, and eventually Lance’s eyelids start to fall and his head droops its way onto Keith’s shoulder, and Keith rests his head on his, and they lean together.

In the morning, he wakes slumped against the wall, head still nestled on Keith’s shoulder. Next to him, Keith is curled up, turned towards him, cheek resting on the top of his head, knees bent and falling partially in Lance’s lap. After a moment he realizes he woke to whispers, and turns his head carefully, trying not to jostle Keith. In the doorway, Pidge and Shiro stand staring at them, clearly cut off midway through their whispered conversation by Lance’s movement.

Lance lifts a finger to his lips and shushes them, glancing meaningfully at Keith, still dead to the world.

And that’s how the team finds out.

When the doors slide open for the next exercise varga, he’s ready for it. He’s been counting the feedings, he knew it would happen soon. He’s been here nearly two movements. They must be getting close to Haggar, and his team hasn’t come. He’s going to have to rescue himself if he wants to get out of here.

All in all, he feels pretty good. His ankle is still tender; he’s still not sure if it was broken or just sprained, but it didn’t heal right regardless. He’s wrapped it tightly in a strip of cloth torn from his shirt and it’s as stable as he can make it. His shoulder and head barely hurt anymore, and though his face still feels bruised from the interrogation a few quintants ago, that’s not going to impede him from running or shooting. He feels pretty strong, too, not terribly affected by the half rations thanks to Ukar. He can do this. He thinks he can.

They reach the exercise room and he wanders around, sticking close to Ukar but not walking with him, stretching his legs out. His ankle takes his weight without any problems, and he can definitely move fast enough to catch a guard and get a weapon before the others start shooting. His goal is creating chaos, so the guards are distracted enough by what’s going on inside the room to not notice immediately as he runs away. If he can just get to Blue. He hopes they haven’t moved her from where she first was, though if the particle barrier has held, they wouldn’t have been able to. He doesn’t think the spot where he first woke up on this ship is far from the exercise room; he remembers the twists and turns of the passageways they walked despite his concussion. He just has to run fast, and make sure his hands are in front of him when the cuffs lock his wrists together.

He breaks away from Ukar to lean casually against the wall near the door, close enough to one of the tables that he can dive under it if he needs to. Ukar’s eyes follow him, like he knows what Lance is about to do. Over in a different corner, a scuffle breaks out between a few prisoners. The guards all turn to look, a few heading over to break things up. Distraction. Perfect.

He lunges at the nearest guard, rolls him to the ground and straddles him. The guard shouts in surprise, and they struggle for a moment over the blaster, but Lance manages to tug it from his grasp and fire at the guard coming at them, taking him down. Remembering all the moves from countless hours training with the gladiators, he tucks into himself and rolls under the nearest table for cover. Many of the guards on the ground floor are still distracted by the fight in the corner, but those patrolling the catwalk above have seen everything and are firing down on him, drawing attention. He peeks out from the table and takes a few down, relishing the feeling of a gun in his hands and well-placed shots. A guard runs up behind him and grazes his arm with a shot, but he swivels and takes him down too.

One of the shots from the guards above flies wide and hits a prisoner in the chest, leaving a smoking wound. The prisoner, instead of going down, roars with fury and lunges for one of the guards Lance shot, grabbing his blaster and firing at random. Excellent. It’s exactly what he’d hoped would happen, as other prisoners surge forward towards the guards and the room fills with shouts and the sound of blaster fire. He darts out from under the cover of the table towards the doors, taking out a few more guards on the catwalk, and skids to a stop next to a guard crumpled by the floor. He’s bending down to grab his hand when he hears footsteps behind him and looks up to see a blaster six inches from his nose. The guard behind it snears.

“Put the gun down and your hands up. This is over.”

Lance tightens his grip on the gun and tries to figure out if he could make a shot before the guard puts a hole in him. The odds aren’t good.

And then, all of a sudden, the guard is gone and in his place stands Ukar, who has just picked him up and thrown him into a wall. Lance blinks.

“Fool,” Ukar grumbles. “I told you not to think about escaping.”

“I have to try,” he whispers.

“Then get out of here,” Ukar says, and turns away, running back into the fray. Lance stares after him for a moment, then grits his teeth and hitches the guard’s hand up to slam it into the control panel by the door. The doors slide open, he tightens his hold on the blaster and turns back to the room for a moment, shooting at any guards headed his way, and then turns and runs.

The cuffs snap back together, binding his hands in front of him, but he still has a grip on the blaster and he can still make shots. About fifty paces down the hall, alarms finally start blaring and he hears running footsteps behind him, sees shots ricocheting off the walls. He aims blindly behind him, fires, runs faster. It’s actually working. He remembers where Blue is, remembers the passageways they marched him down. He skids around a corner, takes out the two unsuspecting sentries standing at the end of the hall, and keeps running. If he can just get to her, just get inside her, she’ll protect him. They can make it out, together.

The guards are gaining on him. He hears their footsteps echoing off the walls, accompanied by what sounds like some robot sentries. He ducks behind an alcove and crouches, panting, peering around the side. The second they round the corner, he starts firing, taking out the first few and leaving the others tripping over them. Then he throws himself out of his hiding place and runs faster than ever. He’s almost there. He’s almost there.

Round another corner, through a large room he remembers being marched through when he first got here, down another hall, alarms blaring and blood beating so loud in his ears he can barely hear it. One more corner, one more hall, and he slams up against a metal door. He knows Blue’s behind it, and he curses. It’s locked, of course. He blasts the keypad with five shots in rapid succession and it makes a funny beeping noise and smokes. He tries the door again. It opens.  

And there she is, sitting quietly, still protected by the particle barrier. He lets out a sigh of relief, a breath he hadn’t realized he was holding, pent up since this whole nightmare started. He takes a step towards her. It’s almost been too easy.

Behind him, footsteps thunder, a group of guards skidding to a halt in front of the open door. He turns. There are a lot of them.

“Hands up!” one of them says. “Surrender.”

He grits his teeth. If he gives up now, he’s certain there will be hell to pay for this stunt. He doesn’t want to pay that price. If he fights, he might still be able to make it. Or maybe he’ll die in the attempt, which would honestly be better than being delivered into Haggar’s hands, to give up everything he knows, to give up Blue. Before, he had hope for rescue before that happened. Now, with rescue unlikely, or coming too late, wouldn’t dying be better for everyone involved? No pain for him. No danger for his friends or the coalition or the planets they’ve liberated. No Galran piloting Blue.

He raises his blaster and fires straight at the Galran who spoke, then ducks down and rolls to avoid the blasts from the rest of them as they surge forward. Blaster fire grazes his shoulder, his leg, but he’s moving fast. He moves faster than they do, at least. And they all have really bad aim.

He skids to a halt in front of the particle barrier, panting, firing behind him, then reaching out, desperately, digging into the depths of his mind. Let me in, let me in, please, Blue, it’s me, abre, por favor. More guards run in the door. He’s far outnumbered, and he wonders why they aren’t stopping him, just taking him down now, his blaster dangling uselessly in his hands as he reaches for Blue...he’s an easy target, but they seem to be falling back, circling him rather than rushing him….

He feels Blue, just barely there, curling in the back of his consciousness. The particle barrier flickers.

And then he understands, and he throws himself away from her, towards the dozens of guards, slamming the door on their mental connection, trying to put distance between them. They let him get this far. They weren’t missing him with their shots, they deliberately weren’t shooting him. They could have stopped him getting to her, but they wanted him to, wanted him to bring down the barrier, because he’s the only one who can. They would have let him bring the barrier down and then swarmed him before he could make it into the cockpit, and then they would have Blue, too.

He tries to run for the door, shooting desperately, hardly paying attention to his aim, but there are too many of them. Someone yells, “don’t shoot him!”, and then he’s being pushed to his knees, held on both sides by a guard, blaster torn out of his grip, panting and desperate and so, so, angry. So close. He misses the warmth of Blue’s consciousness, her quiet reassurance, her trust in him. The metal floor swims in his gaze as his eyes fill with tears.

The guards in front of him part and the Warden stomps up to him, looking down with disdain.

“You really thought you could get away?” he asks. “There hasn’t been a successful escape attempt in the entire history of this prison ship.”

“First time for everything,” Lance croaks, and the Warden sighs.

“Do you know how much damage you’ve caused? How many of my guards you injured? How much paperwork I’m going to have to do? This is a tarnish on my reputation. And I very much do not appreciate that.”

“You wanted me to get to her,” he whispers, and the Warden’s expression transforms into something almost like pity.

“I don’t see why you don’t make this easier on yourself, boy. On yourself, and me.”

Lance doesn’t answer him, just glares. The Warden shakes his head. “Bring him to my office,” he says to the two guards flanking Lance. “I’ll deal with him there. The rest of you, clean this mess up.” He turns and walks out the door. The guards pull Lance to his feet and follow, moving fast. Lance’s ankle throbs.

“I can walk,” he hisses to the guards, stumbling along beside them as he tries to find his feet. They ignore him and march him all the way back to the room where he first met the Warden, with the benches and desks. More of the desks are manned this time, and the Galra behind them look harried. They bypass all that and go through a door to a much smaller room with a desk and a view out to the stars. The Warden takes a seat behind the desk and the guards shove Lance into a chair in front of it, cuffs attaching to the arms.

The Warden pulls up some data, then spends a long time typing, frowning deeply. Lance waits. He wonders what they’ll do to him now. Surely, he’ll be questioned, tortured. Punished in some way. But he keeps expecting that, and it keeps...not happening.

“Alright,” says the Warden finally, turning to face him. “Here’s what we’re going to do. Frankly, if I had my way, I’d throw you out the airlock without a flight suit and be rid of you. However. Given the circumstances, that is not possible. So, much to my regret, we will have to continue hosting you for a few more quintants. You will be taken to solitary confinement. You will not receive any rations. We will have you to Central Command before you die of starvation, and after that you are no longer my problem. I can only hope they reimburse me for the damage you have caused.”

The Warden stands and comes around the side of his desk, reaching for Lance’s arm, the cuff detatching when he presses a small chip to it. Lance tries to pull away but the Warden’s grasp is firm as he presses the same device they used when he first got here to his wrist again. Another sharp pain, and when he pulls away the numbers are bright red.

“Change in status,” the Warden comments. “You’re classified as dangerous now. I hope you’re pleased with yourself.”

“I wasn’t classified as that before? I’m a paladin of Voltron! I’m part of the group that’s completely destroying your empire!”

The Warden purses his lips. “I didn’t ask for your opinion. We’ll be at Central in about four quintants. Until then, enjoy solitary.”

The cell is tiny. Tiny. Barely enough room for him to stretch out both arms, and when he stands he has to hunch over a bit, head brushing the ceiling. He can stretch his legs out, but only if he’s sitting up. It’s all metal, no window, suffused with that sickening purple light, shining through his eyelids when he closes his eyes. They throw him a flask of water before they lock the door, and that’s that.

He curls up in the corner, hides his face in his knees, and lets himself cry.

Chapter Text

III

If time was difficult in the other cell, it’s impossible here. No feedings to count, no movement of stars outside the window, no sleeping and waking of any other living thing. It’s silent, like the cell is soundproof. The only noise is his breathing, the tap of his knuckles against the metal of the walls, the slide of his clothing against the floor, the tinny echo of his voice if he speaks. He sleeps, wakes, has no idea how much time has passed, how close Haggar is. He takes tiny sips from the flask, trying to ration the water. He’s very hungry, but he was hungry before. He’s cold, too, the chill in this cell even deeper than in the old one.

He wonders what happened to Ukar, to the other prisoners that rioted. He hopes they didn’t get in too much trouble. Especially Ukar, who protected him. Who let him go. Why would he do that? He’s sure to get in trouble for it.

How much time has passed? He sleeps. How close are they to Haggar? The purple light of the room burns through his eyelids, suffusing his dreams, everything cast in eerie shadows. He sleeps.

He’s lying in his bed next to Keith, sheets tangled around their legs. Keith stares at the ceiling, Lance rests on his side, staring at Keith.

“You ever think about what’s going to happen when this is all over?” Keith asks, narrowing his eyes. The bags underneath them are dark and huge. He’s been stretching himself too thin, working with the Blade and Voltron both. Lance worries about him, but he can’t tell him that.

“Yeah,” he replies softly, “all the time.”

“What are you going to do?”

“I’m going to go home. I’m going to see my family. I’m going to help my dad on the farm for a bit. Go swimming. Eat. God, Keith, I’m going to eat so much fucking food. Arroz con pollo, tostones, ropa vieja, all my mom’s cooking. I’m going to eat papas fritas till I explode. And pizza. And garlic knots. Jesus Christ, Keith, garlic knots.”

Keith laughs and rolls over, buries his face in Lance’s side.

“What food do you dream about at night?”

Keith shrugs and Lance prods at his side. “Come on, there has to be something.”

Keith sighs, warm breath gusting against Lance’s ribs. “I miss fruit. Raspberries. Mangoes.”

“Mangoes,” Lance sighs in agreement.

“Tomatoes,” Keith continues, “and green chilies. We used to grow them in the backyard, and my dad would roast them on the barbeque.”

Lance sighs. “I remember that. Roasted green chiles in the fall in Arizona. You know how we had Sundays free at the Garrison? There was this farmer’s market in town I’d go to sometimes, just ‘cause I missed that sort of thing, outdoor markets. They’re all over at home. And people would be roasting green chiles behind their stalls, and the air would smell like them for blocks around. Did you ever go to that market?”

Keith shakes his head. “I never really left the Garrison, unless it was go somewhere with Shiro. I didn’t have anyone to do that sort of thing with.”

“I would have taken you there,” Lance says softly, and Keith rolls over to meet his eyes and smiles.

“So what else?” Lance asks eventually. “What else are you going to do when we get home?”

Keith sighs and turns his head away, resumes staring at the ceiling. “I don’t know. I might not...spend a lot of time back.”

Lance pushes himself up on his elbow, staring at him. “What do you mean?”

“I mean...I might stay out here. Work with the Blade. I don’t think they’ll be finished after the empire falls, not with the mess it’s left behind. I could be useful to them.”

“You wouldn’t...go home?” Lance asks, the idea unfathomable to him, because the only thing pushing him through the endless missions and the danger and the void of space is the thought of protecting the ones he loves, and returning to them at the end of it all.

“I don’t have anywhere to go, Lance,” Keith says. “Not like you. I don’t have a family. Dad’s gone, I just have Shiro, and an empty shack in the desert. What’s the point of going back to that when I could stay out here and make myself useful? Besides,” he shifts his gaze and finally meets Lance’s eyes, “I might find my mom. You never know. She’s out here somewhere. Or was, at least.”

“Oh,” Lance breathes, because of course that makes sense. He hadn’t been thinking, but now the memory of that cabin in the desert returns to him, lonely and sunbleached, dust in the corners, walls papered with dreams of other worlds. “Right. That makes sense.”

“Yeah,” Keith nods, but he looks sad. Lance reaches over and grabs his hand, twining their fingers together.

“I’ll bring you home with me, for a bit,” he whispers in Keith’s ear, squeezing his hand. “Before you leave. My mom would cook for you, you could meet my brothers and sisters and cousins. I can show you Varadero Beach and we can go swimming. We can eat mangoes picked straight from the trees.”

Keith huffs a laugh. “You wouldn’t want to subject your family to me.”

“Try me,” Lance says, rolling on top of him. “Tell me you’d come. Just for a few days.”

“Lance…”

“For the mangoes. Come on, have you ever had a mango right off the tree? Warm from the sun?”

Something in Keith’s expression turns wistful and far away, like he’s looking past Lance straight at a mango tree, dripping with ripe fruit. “No,” he says.

“So come.”

“Okay,” Keith sighs into his ear, and Lance kisses him long and hard, and could swear he tastes mango juice from their future on Keith’s tongue.

He wakes up with the taste still heavy in his mouth, though he hasn’t had a fresh mango in years. His lips are dry, his throat scratchy. He takes a small sip of the water. His cheeks are wet. He must have been crying as he dreamed.

He sighs and stretches. The purple light bores into his eyes, worsening the stabbing pain in his right temple that’s been building for hours. He wishes he could lay down fully, stretch out. He wishes he wasn’t so cold. He wishes he could have just a bite to eat. He wishes he was out of this damn cell.

Except for not, because when he gets out of this cell he’ll be handed straight to Haggar.

He shuffles over to the door and runs his hands along the seam of it yet again. How many times has he done this? Searching for any weakness, for any dim possibility of a way out? There’s nothing, as always, and he slumps against it. The rapid staccato of his heartbeat still calls for action, for escape, for something. He can’t end up with Haggar. She’ll tear everything out of his mind and leave him empty, she’ll get Blue, she’ll know about their plans for other planets, she’ll know the full extent of their allies, about planets they’ve liberated in far reaches where the Galra rarely patrol. She’ll know everything about Earth, it’s weaknesses, how easily it would fall to Galra forces. She would know exactly where Voltron goes to hide, when they need to rest or regroup, lonely sectors, half-forgotten planets, rebel strongholds. She would hunt them all down.

He isn’t arrogant enough to think he can hold out against her probing through his mind. If Shiro couldn’t, Lance won’t last three seconds.

Escape, escape, escape, his heart pounds in his head. There’s no escape. He stretches out a fist and knocks it against the wall, the dull echo on the metal bouncing around the tiny space. He wishes Keith were here. Wishes he could just talk to him for five minutes, five seconds. Hold his hand. Kiss him. Apologize for everything.

“Fuck,” he says out loud, and knocks his head back against the wall. He takes another tiny sip of water, barely enough to wet his chapped lips.

And then it comes to him, simple and brilliant. He was ready to die to get to Blue, because if he was dead they couldn’t get to her. Now it comes down to him, living and giving up all the information he knows, putting everything and everyone he loves in danger; or dying and becoming completely useless to the Galra. He’s going to die anyway. He’s not naive enough to think Haggar will pick through his brains and then let him go with a “thank you”.

If he dies before he makes it to Haggar, it’s a form of escape. It’s the only form he’s got left, if he wants to protect everyone. If he wants to protect Blue.

As for Voltron, they can find another blue paladin. He’d like to think Blue would be sad, but she’ll accept another easily enough. Probably someone better than him, if he’s being realistic. He’s nothing special. He can point and shoot a gun pretty well, and he’s good at watching his team’s back. He hopes they know he loves them all. But, like, he’s nothing special. Just a kid from Cuba who became a fighter pilot by accident, got shot into space by accident, ended up part of a universe-saving robot by accident, and just sort of rolled with it. It’s not like they need him. They’ll be fine.

But how to do it? They haven’t left him a weapon, of course, and he doesn’t think he’s got the courage to physically choke himself to death with his clothing. After all, he’d pass out before he actually died. He looks around him. There’s the water flask, he could try to break it and use a jagged piece as a weapon, but it looks like pretty durable metal. He could hit himself on the head with it, or he could just throw himself headlong into the wall and hope that would do the trick. He takes another sip of water, ruminating. And then--of course. Humans can’t last that long without water. He’s already weak. It’s three days you can go without dying of severe dehydration. He’s not sure how long he’s been in here, but quintants are longer than days. If he’s lucky, if he stops drinking now, he might be dead before they get to Haggar. It’s worth a try.

He lowers the flask from his lips and stares at it. He’s so thirsty, he wants to chug the whole thing right now, pour it over his dry lips, soothe his aching throat. But he knows his best bet is to drink nothing starting now. He hasn’t drunk much in however much time he’s been in here, anyway, trying to conserve it. He can’t drink more.

He hesitates for a moment. Can he do this, really? Is he brave enough? Despite everything, there’s still tiny flicker of hope that his team might come for him, or that he might not die with Haggar, or that he could escape when they open this door, or, if he reached out desperately enough, Blue would blow apart the ship to get to him.

But that hope is so small, and the flame shrinks every second. He tips the flask and the remaining water pours out onto the floor, soaking his leg. Now he can’t be tempted. Now he can only hope he dies quickly.

He regrets his decision not long after, when he wakes up, throat parched and mouth tasting like something died in it. He groans. The water he dumped out soaked into the tatters of his clothing while he slept, adding to the chill of the cell. He hadn’t thought this out as well as he should have.

Not that there’s a good way to think out killing yourself to save your friends. There aren’t really any manuals for that. Self-Sacrifice for Dummies. He laughs out loud at the absurdity of his situation, but it quickly catches in his dry throat and turns into pained coughing, leaving him heaving for breath and lightheaded. Maybe It won’t take him long to die, after all. He curls up in another, drier corner and tries to sleep, but the light, he’s so sick of that purple light, he can’t get away from it, his dreams are all tinted purple, it’s all he can see, whether his eyes are closed or open. Damn light. Damn headache. Damn body, putting up such a fuss. If only he couldn’t feel anything, this whole thing would be easy-peasy.

He and Keith fight well together, always have, despite their rocky start. Now that they can train together without threatening bodily harm, they’re even better. They fight back to back, Lance shooting, Keith cutting down anything that makes it through Lance, twisting and curling, cutting a path of destruction through whatever enemy they’re facing. Or Lance will perch above a battle, oftentimes with Hunk, and shoot from above, lost in the satisfaction of hitting every target, watching Keith’s back from up high, watching all their backs. In battle, all the slow clumsiness he feels in his everyday life, tripping over his own feet, dropping shit right and left, legs too long and arms too ungainly, fades away and he shoots and moves and never misses.

He likes fighting beside Keith the most, though. Likes the feeling of him behind him, likes hearing the whoosh of his sword as it swings. Likes knowing he’s nearby, that they’re protecting each other. He can read Keith’s moves, they can communicate a plan without saying a single word to each other, something the others view with a half-impressed, half confused air. It works, though. Stick them down in a mess of droids together and they can get through it no problem, clear the way for the rest of the team, or make sure no one’s following as they leave.

What Lance doesn’t like is when Keith leaves, when he’s gone off somewhere with the Blade, where Lance can’t follow him, can’t watch out for him. He doesn’t like waiting for him to come home, and he doesn’t like fighting alone while he’s gone. It’s their first argument, or at least their first serious disagreement after it all starts, when Keith comes back from a mission with his arm in a sling and a long slice in the side of his neck that must have come centimeters from hitting his jugular. Lance corners him after he leaves the infirmary, after he assures Coran that he’s perfectly fine, that the Blades have completely adequate medical care, and that he will not be going into a pod, thank you very much; and lays into him.

“You need to be more careful! What the fuck are you doing out there with them, anyway? Why do you have to work for them, too? Aren’t you busy enough here? You’re barely sleeping as it is, no wonder you got hurt.”

Keith, ever unapologetic, rises to Lance’s anger and matches it. “I’m putting myself to use. They need help! I can do stuff other members can’t! Don’t you dare lecture me, you’d do the same thing if you were feeling as useless as I do…”

“Useless? Useless? Keith, you’re a paladin! You fight with us all the time! Did you forget we freed, like, three planets just this week? You think that’s useless? You do realize that’s all I do, right? We need you!”

“And you have me!” Keith hisses back. “I’m here for Voltron, I never miss a mission, do I? I just don’t like sitting around in between them feeling like a lump when I could--”

“You’re supposed to rest in between, it’s not a fucking foreign concept, Keith--”

“I can’t!” Keith yells at him, then gets right up in his face, and all Lance can see is the angry red of the cut on his neck, free from bandages because Coran thought they should let it breathe. He can’t take his eyes off it. “I try to sleep and I can’t, Lance, all I can see is all the work we have left to do, how far we are from actually finishing this whole stupid thing, and I just feel like shit! Like I’m wasting time! Why do you think I end up on the training deck practically every night I’m here?”

The anger in his eyes has faded to something like desperation and Lance’s anger melts, too. “Keith,” he says, lost for words. “You’re not the only one fighting. Saving the universe doesn’t hinge on you alone.”

“I know that,” Keith says, fists clenched. “But I have to do everything I can, don’t I?”

“Well, yeah,” Lance concedes. “We all do. But you’re doing more than you can. You look like you’re about to drop dead, and please don’t get mad at me for saying this, but I’m willing to bet the only reason you’re injured right now is because you’re so tired you’re barely functioning and you jumped into a fight, anyway.”

Keith lowers his eyes and stares at the floor. Lance grips his shoulder. “Keith. You’re not going to help anyone or anything if you drop dead from exhaustion, okay? Let’s just...let’s just lay down now, please? Just for a few hours. I won’t let you sleep for too long. Just... let yourself rest.”

Keith’s shoulders slump in defeat and he doesn’t say anything, but finally gives one short nod and lets Lance lead him away to his room. Despite everything, he hasn’t spent much time there; they usually end up in Lance’s. Keith’s is spartan, undecorated. A few things hanging in the closet, some random knives and a blaster from the training room scattered over the top of the chest of drawers. There’s a pile of paperback books on the floor by the bed. Lance hadn’t even known they still printed books on paper. A small, wrinkled photograph is stuck on the wall over the bed. That hadn’t been there the last time he was in Keith’s room. Lance squints at it. It’s a photo of Keith and Shiro, must have been at least four or five years ago, now, because Keith is tiny and scrawny and Shiro’s hair is pure black, no wrinkles around his eyes or frown lines against his mouth. Shiro grins at the camera and Keith smiles shyly, eyes on Shiro. The photo has clearly been folded in fourths for a long time, faded white along the lines.

“Found it in my pocket,” Keith grunts from behind him. “Or, well, I was keeping it in my pocket. But. It was getting wrinkled.”

“It’s a great photo,” Lance says, sincerely, then reaches out his hands to Keith. “Come on. Bed.”

Keith steps on his own heels to shed his shoes and lets his jacket slip from his shoulders to the floor. Lance climbs onto the bed and holds out his arms and Keith comes, no protest, and folds himself into Lance, tucking his face against his neck. Lance kisses his hair, his ear, the reddened skin right above the cut on his neck. Turns his face towards him, kisses his lips, his nose, the jut of his cheekbone.

“I miss you when you’re not here,” he says softly, and Keith kisses him back, firm and gentle at the same time. “I know,” he says. “But I always come back.”

He misses Keith. He misses him so much it hurts, hurts more than his throat, or his ankle, which still throbs, or the raw lines where blasters caught his arm and calf. He misses everything about him, not just kissing him or having sex with him or the feeling of his fingers or his heat at night, lying in bed together or looking at the stars. Not just fighting next to him, not just the gentle words and the teasing challenges and the perfect curve of his lips and the deep color of his eyes.

No, he misses more than that, the tiniest things, misses the way he scrunches his eyebrows in the moments before he wakes up, misses his fond annoyance when the mice run up his arm to sit on his shoulder, the way he’s been tying back his hair in a messy half-bun to keep it out of his eyes during training, the sound of his laugh when Hunk tells a really good joke. He misses his frown, the way he’s not afraid to argue with Lance, with Shiro, with anyone if he thinks they’re wrong, misses his rare, wide, open-mouthed grin, misses the small smile reserved for Lance alone, just a quirk of the lips, misses his annoyance if someone disturbs him while he’s buried in a book.

He misses Keith singing in the shower when he thinks no one can hear him, anti-war tunes from a hundred and fifty years ago, Bob Dylan and CSN&Y, and I dreamed I saw the bomber jet planes flying shotgun in the sky, turning into butterflies…. One day, Lance burst into the bathroom singing along, and Keith stuck his head out of the stall, sputtering, and it ended with them kissing sloppily against the cold wall and Lance whispering the lyrics of Suite: Judy Blue Eyes in Keith’s ear that night. Funny to sing those songs while they themselves are nothing but kids, floating through a war, fighting a battle none of them really understand. He misses the feeling in his chest when Keith is nearby, a small warm thing that whispers, everything will be okay, that tells him, you have a home here, that soothes all the frayed edges of his soul.

He misses Keith, misses what their relationship is, but also, absurdly, misses what their relationship could have been, what it would have been, all the future that should be unravelling in front of them if they were normal kids, if they weren’t locked in a battle for the freedom of the entire universe, if Lance wasn’t locked in a cell and dying.

He sleeps. Keith sleeps next to him, a line of warmth along his back.  

Hunk sits with him when he wakes, bulk stuffed into the cell across from him. “Why didn’t you come for me?” Lance asks him in a whisper of a voice, throat burning. He’s so thirsty. He doesn’t want to do this. He doesn’t want to die. “I miss you. I thought I’d see you again.”

Hunk looks sad. He reaches out a hand and grasps Lance’s own, fingers warm, offering solace from the chill of the cell. He doesn’t speak, though, just keeps that sad look on his face, like Lance is the most tragic thing he’s ever seen. Clumsily, Lance tries to pat at his knee. “It’s okay,” he says. “I just want you all to be safe. I love you, buddy.” And Hunk smiles and Lance wakes, the sound of Hunk’s voice saying “I love you, too” echoing in his ears. Except he can’t be awake, because there’s Keith again, curled up next to him, arms around him, holding him up. He looks like he’s been crying, eyes wide, full of anger and fear. “You idiot, Lance,” he says in that husky, dry voice of his, “what have you done?”

“I love you,” Lance says back, desperate. He needs Keith to know this. He didn’t get to say it before he left. “I love you, Keith.”

Keith shakes his head, and Lance sees he is crying, tears dripping down his cheeks to land on Lance’s face. He tries to stick out his tongue to catch them, the way he’d stand in the street with Veronica and Marco during a storm, trying to drink the rain, but Keith’s tears taste like salt and blood. Blood, which washes over the floor, around Keith, coming from Keith, and then Keith’s lying on the floor in a puddle of it, eyes empty and lifeless and Lance screams and screams until his voice disappears.

He recognizes he’s fading. He knows. It’s almost strange, the feeling of acceptance, the lack of any desire to fight it off. He chose this. The water is gone. There isn’t anything he can do about it now. In the ragged, strange place between waking and sleep, his mother sits next to him, curled in the cell. She holds his head her her lap and strokes his hair out of his eyes. “Ah, mijo, mi Leandro,” she whispers, “lo siento. Te quiero. Quería que volvieras a casa.” His father sits with them too, sings a lullaby Lance remembers from when he was very young, sharing a room with Marco, when his father would sit on the floor between their beds every night, hold their hands in each of his, and sing until they were drowsy and half asleep. Veronica comes and doesn’t say anything, just holds his hand. Marco and Rachel ask him if he wants to go swimming, but he’s too tired to move. Luis and Lisa stand in front of him and put an infant in his arms, tiny and perfect, her fingers gripping his thumb. “She’s your new niece,” Luis says, “we named her for you. Leandra.” He thinks he should be crying, but he can’t feel any tears. Maybe he doesn’t have enough water left in his body to produce them.

After a while the cell evaporates in the sun and he’s lying on a beach. White sand coats his skin, sifting through his fingers as he moves his hands through it. Above him, tall palm trees sway against a blue sky and the air smells like heat and motor oil and meat cooked long and slow in spices, and ocean brine. Smells like home. He sits up, and there’s the ocean, stretching out as far as he can see, bright blue and clear. That color that doesn’t seem to exist in that exact shade anywhere in space, anywhere in the whole universe besides here, at Varadero Beach. He stands and moves across the sand, floating, until the waves touch his toes, and he wades in. The feeling of water, the buoyancy of his body as he swims away from shore, the ocean wrapping around him, cradling him, safe. How he missed this. Far away, a storm builds over the waves and on the shore fishermen call back and forth, repairing a boat. He floats on his back and closes his eyes against the sunlight throwing up glittering diamonds from the waves and drifts, drifts...

Haggar stands over him, long white hair, yellow eyes glowing out from under her hood, the purple light reflecting off her teeth. He wants to beg, but he can’t speak anymore, voice a thready, useless thing. He wants to plead with her that he’ll give her information, she’s going to take it from him anyway, but please, humans aren’t worth it. Earth isn’t worth it. Leave it alone. Please. Por favor, por favor no haga esto. Por favor ahórralos . He wants to hold out everything he loves about Earth in his cupped hands. Try to make them understand. Look, he wants to say, you might have spent 10,000 years building an empire, but your culture is fear, you’ve driven yourself into nothingness. Here, this is Earth, we have music there. Do the Galra have music? Look, this is a family gathered around a dinner table, laughing together, this is a couple kissing on a street corner, this is a litany of people trying to define love. This is a farm in Cuba, close to the ocean, quiet in the early morning, hazy fog lying low over fields, fracturing the sunlight, the call of a bird, the distant, inescapable sound of surf crashing on a shore. This is the taste of a ripe mango.

Earth might be a primitive planet compared to the Galra, or the Olkari, or the Alteans, but let me show you everything there that is good, too precious to destroy. Here, this is the art people were painting on cave walls while across the universe the Galra Empire rose. This is snow, Earth snow, cold and wet and soft on your cheeks when you turn your face up to meet it. The first time he’d ever seen snow he’d been standing on the North Rim of the Grand Canyon, not far from where Blue lay buried, and as the flakes started to fall he’d turned to Hunk and said, “I didn’t realize it could snow in the desert”. Here, take communist revolutions and the United Nations, take ancient pyramids and Shibuya crossing at night, take the fall of the Berlin Wall and the prayer flags on top of Mount Everest. Take the scent of concrete after a rainstorm in summer. Take the sound of a guitar. Take the sight of the arm of the Milky Way on a dark night. It used to seem so far away. Take Pablo Neruda’s poetry, no te quiero sino porque te quiero, y de quererte a no quererte llego, y de esperarte cuando no te espero, pasa mi corazón del frío al fuego…

The door opens. Light falls across his face. A voice bites out a curse, harsh and angry. Hands grab at him, drag him out of the tiny room, and he feels fresh air--or as fresh as you can get when you’re shut up on a spaceship--hit his face. He can’t react, though, can barely lift his head. Where did Haggar go? Is she already done with him? Isn’t he supposed to be dead?

Blurred movement, a rushing sound. Too much light, too much noise. Maybe he is dead.

And then he’s choking, something filling his mouth and spilling down his throat, something lukewarm and wet, and he can’t breathe, he can’t breathe.

He gulps, chokes, swallows. Breathes. Swallows again, faster now, because whatever he’s swallowing soothes the gravel in his throat, coats his puffy tongue...water.

Water.

He chokes again, spits, surges forward. “No,” he croaks, “no, no, no, no!”

Someone’s holding his head, someone else is holding his mouth open, more water pours in. He refuses to swallow, tries to turn his head away. They pinch his nose shut, force him to swallow, to breathe. He’s crying, dry sobs and no tears. “No!”

A big hand yanks his head back by the hair, jerking him to look up. The Warden looms in front of him, looking furious. “You thought you would kill yourself?” he spits. “You fool. Luckily, we have arrived. The witch is coming.”

He jerks, struggles, but his hands are cuffed and attached once more to the table in front of him. He’s back in the interrogation room, and too weak to fight. His heartbeat rushes fast in his ears, he feels like he’s about to pass out, but he’s so angry he’s trembling. As the hands reach towards him again, he turns and bites at one of them viciously, tearing into the tough Galra skin. His mouth fills with blood. Galra blood tastes just like human. The guard roars and slaps him across the mouth and his head spins and when he comes back to himself he’s slumped over in the chair, dripping with water, and the Warden is yelling furiously, something he can’t understand.

“That’s enough, he only needs to remain alive until the witch gets here, she’ll take care of him…”

“Listen to me, paladin,” the Warden tells him. “The witch is here. We have decided against transporting you to her, as she does not want any more close calls. She will board the ship and visit you here, and then we will be finally rid of your troublesome--” His voice cuts off abruptly and he lets out an undignified yelp as a massive boom echoes around them and the entire ship shakes, listing sideways.

“What the--” says one of the guards as the Warden jumps to his feet, looking towards the door. Less than five ticks later, another blast shakes the ship and the red alarm lights start to flash.

The Warden smashes his fist on the desk, growling with frustration. “You,” he says, pointing at the guard standing at Lance’s left, “stay here and watch him. Call in another to join you. You,” the guard on Lance’s right, “come with me.”

The Warden and guard run out of the room, leaving the door ajar. Another, smaller blast shakes the ship and the lights flicker and go out. Finally, that purple glow disappears and Lance blinks, relieved. Next to him, the remaining guard shifts from foot to foot, clearly nervous.

He only has a moment.

Without thinking too much, he pushes the chair as far as it can go with his wrists still attached to the table and twists his body around, shooting a leg out to trip the guard as he shifts again. Caught off guard, the guy goes down with a shout and, before he can push himself up, Lance kicks him in the head as hard as he can. His toes pop and explode with pain, but the Galra grunts, and his eyes roll back up in his head. He’s dropped his blaster down by his knee. Panting, Lance slides out of the chair and stretches, straining for the blaster, reaching his leg, just a little farther... manages to catch it with the edge of his foot, kicking it closer, trying to maneuver it up to where he could maybe buck it up onto the table, close to his hands….

Another guard runs into the room, taking in the scene with wide eyes. Fuck, he’s so close, so close…!

“Hey!” the guard yells, raising his blaster and Lance thinks, yes, shoot it, kill me, just kill me, she’s coming.

“Lance!” Another voice screams, and the guard jolts, then lunges for Lance, pulling him up off the ground and resting the blaster on his temple. Lance’s head swims, then his vision clears and he sees…

Hunk. Silhouetted in the door, gun raised, panting slightly, brows furrowed and mouth pulled into a snarl, angrier than Lance has ever seen him. And behind him, Allura, gripping the Warden in a chokehold, her own gun held against his head.

For a moment, everyone stares at each other, caught in a frozen tableau, and then Lance screams, “HUNK!” and starts laughing. It hurts and it sounds like he’s dying, but he can’t help himself.

Allura lets out an audible sigh and relaxes slightly. “Well?” she asks, prodding the Warden with her blaster. “Let him go! Now!”

“I don’t have the key,” the Warden groans.

Hunk growls in frustration. “You’re telling me these fancy Galra cuffs have a key? And you’ve lost it?

“Well, if you hadn’t been shoving me around so much, maybe I’d have it still!”

“I’m going to shoot you right now if you don’t get him free!” Allura snaps, and Lance, in his hazy state, thinks she looks like a goddess, hair falling free of it’s bun, face red with anger, eyes flashing.

“I don’t have it!”

Allura growls in frustration and brings the butt of her blaster down on his head. He makes a noise of surprise, then crumples. Hunk shoots at the guard hovering behind Lance while he’s distracted, looking at the Warden, and sends him flying with a well-placed blast. The guard’s blaster falls into Lance’s lap and he sighs in relief, temple throbbing where the gun was pressed against it. Hunk rushes to his side and throws his arms around him.

“Hunk,” he chokes out, completely enveloped in him, hardly able to draw breath. “ Hunk.”

“Lance,” Hunk replies, and for a moment, all he can think to do is repeat Hunk’s name over and over again, breathing him in, sweat and vanilla and engine oil and some spice he must have been cooking with. Hank answers him with his own name, a soothing tone in his ear, reassurance that he’s here, this is real, Lance is alive. They came. They didn’t forget him.

Which is when he lets out a loud sob and knocks his head against Hunk’s chest, hard. Hunk draws back a little, looking concerned, and Lance sobs again.

“Lance? Are you okay? Where are you hurt? You look terrible, man.”

“¿Por qué no viniste?” His languages scramble in his mind and it takes him a moment to revert back to something Hunk and Allura will understand. “Where were you? It’s been weeks!”

Hunk’s face crumples, and then he’s crying, too. “Lance, buddy, I’m so sorry. We’re so sorry. We couldn’t track you, and every time we thought we found you the ship jumped again and we had to start all over….”

“You didn’t come,” Lance says again, nonsensically, and starts really crying.

Hunk draws him close again. “We’re here now. Okay, Lance? It’s over. We’re here now.”

“Goddammit!” He shouts through his tears. “Goddammit, Hunk, I thought I was going to die! I thought I was going to have to die! ”

Hunk looks taken aback. “What do you mean ‘going to have to’?”

A hand lands on Hunk’s shoulder and he looks up at Allura. “I’m sorry, Hunk. We need to get out of here. We will tell you everything once we get back to the ships, Lance. But you need to tell me, is the Blue Lion on this ship?”

Of course. She only cares about Blue. Of course they’d come back for the lion. More important than Lance. He slumps. “Yes.”

A smile flits across Allura’s mouth and she sighs again with relief. She rests a hand on his cheek for a moment, cool and soft. “I am so sorry, Lance. We’re going to get you out of here.” She turns to inspect the cuffs and curses. “Okay, this might hurt, but we need to leave immediately, so I don’t really have a choice.” She aims her blaster and Lance is halfway through saying, “wait, wait, I really don’t think--” when she fires at the cuffs right where they’re connected to the table. He yelps at the heat, at the sudden pain, but his hands are free, burning, mangled cuffs still circling his wrists.

“Sorry, Lance! Let’s go!”

He scrambles to his feet and sways, a head rush leaving him light-headed and trembling. He can’t quite believe this is happening. Hunk’s hand is warm and reassuring on his shoulder. “You okay, buddy?”

“Yeah,” he says around dry lips, then takes a step and collapses.

“Shit,” he says into Hunk’s chest, slumped low where Hunk has caught him. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”

“You’re in shock,” Allura says. “Plus dehydrated and severely malnourished. Hunk, carry him.”

He doesn’t want to be carried. “No, I--”

“Hunk.” Allura’s voice invites no argument.

“Sorry, buddy,” Hunk says sympathetically. “But this is probably best.” He reaches for him, but Lance holds up a hand. “At least let me do piggyback.”

Hunk raises a brow. “Do you think you can hold on?”

He licks his lips. “Do either of you have water?”

Hunk looks confused, but pulls a small canteen off his belt and hands it to Lance. He uncaps it and pours the whole thing down his throat, gulping greedily and relishing the taste of it, warm and slightly metallic. He lowers it, wipes his mouth with his arm, and grins at Hunk, adrenaline thumping through his veins. “Yes,” he says, and Hunk lets him climb up, gripping his legs firmly. Lance holds on, and they take off running. It’s like when they were kids, it’s like those memorable drunken nights at the Garrison, it’s like running around the Castle. Hallways blur by, lit by the emergency lights, and Lance laughs again out of pure relief. Allura runs in front of them, taking out anyone she sees in front of her with her blaster. She’s a damn good shot.

“How did you get in?” he asks Hunk.

“Pidge set off bombs,” Hunk pants back. “Big ones, in the engines. Took down the power, so the guns are offline and the ship’s just floating right now, everyone’s distracted. But it probably won’t last for long, a ship this size has backup generators. So. We have to hurry.”

Lance rests his throbbing head on Hunk’s shoulder. “Haggar’s here.”

“We know. Shiro’s on it.”

Lance squeezes his eyes shut. Something scratches in the back of his mind.

“Hunk. We should set the prisoners free.”

Hunk huffs. “Why? It’s full of Galra.”

He thinks of Ukar, protecting him, giving him food. Thinks of the Balmerans and the Olkari stuck here. Even the other Galra. He wonders how many of them are just smugglers like Ukar, or got thrown in here for defying the empire. “Still,” he says to Hunk. “Some of them helped me.”

“Well, the power’s down, the cells are all unlocked,” Hunk pants. “If they can get to escape pods they’ll get out--Ah, shit!”

They’ve skidded into a central room with multiple hallways leading off of it. A group of guards and sentries wait for them, guns drawn.

“Lance, which way?” Allura shouts.

“To the left!”

Allura nods and starts shooting. Hunk curses and activates his bayard, letting go of Lance’s legs. “Hang on!” he shouts.

“Hunk, give me a blaster!” he yells back.

“You can’t shoot! You need to hang on. You almost passed out a minute ago!” He’s already shooting.

“Hunk, if you don’t give me a gun we’re all going to die right here!”

Hunk curses again, then reaches for the blaster he pulled from the guard in the interrogation room and tosses it up to Lance. Locking one arm around Hunk’s shoulder and latching his fingers into a notch of his armor, wrapping his legs around his waist, Lance lifts the blaster, looks behind them, and starts shooting. Allura and Hunk clear the path in front of them and they run forward, Hunk’s arms back around his legs as he sprints. Lance keeps shooting, covering their tracks, taking down sentry after sentry and a few guards as they pursue them down the hallway.

“Where now, Lance?” Allura cries. He glances around.

“One more right, and she’s at the end of that hall. Shoot the keypad by the door!”

She nods, and they hurtle around the last corner and skid to a stop in front of the door. Allura shoots the keypad so many times it explodes before Lance remembers the power’s down and the door’s open anyway.

And there she is. Still cocooned in her particle barrier, but Lance can feel her concern, her anger shifting over him. She knows it’s time to go.

It sounds like the entire guard force on the ship and a few sentry squadrons are coming down the hall towards them. Hunk lets him slide off his back to his knees in front of Blue.

“Get to her, Lance!” Allura says, turning to face the doors. “Hunk and I will hold them off!”

He gasps. “There’s too many of them! Try to close the doors!”

She shakes her head. “Get to the lion. Lower the barrier. That is an order.”

He’s opening his mouth to protest again, the first group of sentries pursuing them almost within shooting distance, when a huge figure detaches itself from the shadows by the door and slices through the entire first line of sentries with a practiced swipe of a massive sword.

A sword which, come to think of it, looks mighty similar to one he’s spent a lot of time looking at recently, as it never leaves the belt of a certain Keith Kogane.

Ukar turns to them, sword raised. “Get out of here, paladins. I will hold them off. Blue Paladin, lower that barrier."

“Ukar?” he gasps, “you’re...you’re with the Blade?”

Ukar smiles at him briefly, then turns back to the hoards at the door.

“Lance, ” Allura snaps him out of his shock. Closing his eyes, he grits his teeth and vows he will not let Ukar die here because he deserves some answers , dammit, and turns to Blue. Resting a palm on the barrier, he reaches deep into his thoughts, into the place where her consciousness rests, the place he’s been pushing so far away the whole time he’s been here, and welcomes her back in.

The barrier breaks immediately, her eyes lighting up, and he almost falls over with the rush of affection, concern, anger, protectiveness that washes over him. She stands from her crouched position and roars, stepping forward to stand over him so he’s nestled between her paws. Unprompted, she sends out a stream of lasers, evaporating some sentries fighting Allura and Hunk and leaving them slightly singed.

He drags himself to his feet using her claws and leans in close. “Let me in, Blue.”

Obligingly, she drops her head and her mouth opens. He scrambles up the ramp and to the cockpit, collapsing in the pilot chair, panting. Trying to ignore the smears of dried blood on the walls of the cockpit, he takes a deep breath.

“Okay, girl. We’re back, baby. We’re going to take out as many of these assholes as we can and then we’re gonna pick up our friends and get the fuck out of here.”

She growls and her approval fills him. He grins and grabs the controls.

They freeze a whole line of guards against one wall and another group in a pile on the floor. Between them and Hunk and Allura, the area immediately around them clears fairly quickly and he moves Blue behind them, opening her mouth. “Get in!” he yells, and as soon as they’re inside he’s moving across the room, crushing sentries with her paws, towards Ukar, who’s fighting an impossible number of guards by the door.

He quickly realizes he won’t be able to use Blue to take out the guards. This was always his frustration with close-range fighting, the ally gets tangled up with the enemy and you can’t use the big guns. Endlessly frustrating with Keith, who always seems to be fighting off a massive number of enemies at close range.

“Shit,” he spits, and stands from the pilot chair, grabbing the blaster he’d abandoned on the floor. Behind him, Allura makes a noise of protest as she ducks into the cockpit. He rushes past her, slides past Hunk, heading down to the opening. “Take the controls, one of you!” he shouts back at them. “She’ll let you fire the lasers, but wait until I’m out of the way!”

“Lance, what--”

Blue’s mouth opens and he stands on the edge of her teeth, behind Ukar. A few of the guards notice him and fire towards him, but he fires back. “Ukar!” he yells. The big Galran turns and sees him, alarm in his eyes as he swings his sword. “Get out of here!” he yells.

Lance shakes his head and raises his blaster. “You’re coming, too.”

It feels so good to shoot again. Control. Precision. Success. Everything he hasn’t had the whole time he’s been stuck in this prison. He’s good at this.

Ukar stares at him for a moment before apparently realizing Lance isn’t going to leave, and doubling his efforts with the sword. He’s an amazing fighter, somehow maneuvering his bulk in a graceful dance around blaster fire and bodies, pushing the guards and sentries back. Lance fires a few more shots, then reaches his hand out. “Now!” he yells to Ukar, and Ukar spins once more with his sword and leaps towards Blue, catching Lance’s hand, weight nearly pulling him off his feet.

“Blue!” Lance shouts, and her mouth snaps shut, sending them both sliding towards the cockpit.

“Fire on them now!” Lance yells, and he hears the explosion as Blue’s guns fire. Scrambling to his feet, body screaming in protest, swaying against the wall, he rushes back into the cockpit and runs for the pilot’s chair. Allura stands to make way for him. “Can you fly…?”

“Yes!” he answers, throwing himself down and grabbing the controls.

Allura’s hand clamps hard on his shoulder. “Then get us out of here.”

He grins. “Will do, Princess.” He wheels Blue around, sends a couple tail shots off for a farewell, and barrels straight for the wall. Blue tears through it like it’s paper and they shoot out of the ship, into the stars. Behind them, broken sentries and a few guards drift out of the hole in the ship. A fleet of escape pods heads out from the other side, already leagues away. He hopes they carry prisoners and not the Warden.

Allura’s talking. “Yes,” she says. “We have him. We have Blue. We’re headed in your direction. Get ready to leave.” She turns to Lance. “Head over towards the bridge. Shiro and Pidge are there, and Hunk’s lion. We’ll drop him off there and get out of here.”

He nods, focused on flying and not passing out, but something’s wrong with what she’s saying. Or rather, what she’s not saying. He’s not sure what it is. Blue cartwheels through the sky and he spots the yellow of Hunk’s lion perched on the side of the ship, next to Pidge’s green and the bulk of the Black Lion. He brings Blue in to land and Hunk claps him on the shoulder. “See you soon,” he says softly, and jumps out, running to Yellow and clambering in.

And then they’re gone, flying away, the prison ship receding by the second, still smouldering from the bombs.

Pidge’s cheering fills the cockpit as the comms come online. “Lance!” she shrieks. “Lance! Lance!”

He grins. “Hey, Pidge.” His voice is hoarse.

“You okay, Lance?” Shiro’s voice crackles through.

“Yeah,” he says. “For the most part.”

He can hear the smile in Shiro’s voice. “Good to have you back.”

“Yeah,” he says. “Yeah.”

Behind him, Ukar squeezes his bulk into the cockpit and claps a hand down on Lance’s other shoulder. “You are quite a fighter, paladin. I am impressed. Thank you for coming back for me.”

Lance smiles at him. “I owed you one. Actually, I owe you three, but you also owe me some explanations.”

Ukar inclines his head. “I agree, but perhaps they can wait until we have returned to your castle ship. Princess, would you allow me to use your communication device to contact the Blade? They must be made aware of this development.”

Allura inclines her head and hands Ukar her comm, which he takes with him out of the cockpit. Lance can hear his gravel tones, though his words are indistinct, and it feels comforting. He glances up at Allura and she grins at him and slides down the wall to sit in boneless relief, her head tipped back against the wall. “Goodness, Lance, I have to say, you were impressive back there. Thank goodness. Thank goodness we found you. I’m so, so, sorry it took us so long.”

The relief is too heavy to be angry for now. “It’s okay. It’s okay now.”

“Yes,” she says. “Yes. It will be.” Something in her voice is strained, though, and she won’t meet his eyes.

They’re far enough from the ship now to put Blue into autopilot, and he does so, leaning back in the chair, exhausted, all the pains and weakness that adrenaline managed to drown coming back with full force. “Is there more water?” he asks, and she nods, opening a cabinet and pulling out an emergency ration pouch, opening it for him. He drains it. She hands him another. He wonders why Keith hasn’t checked in to the comms yet. He wonders what part Keith played in the mission. As a matter of fact, they probably shouldn’t have left without checking in with him. He might still be back there. The thought sends tension shooting through Lance’s spine. He sits back up.

“Where’s Keith? He’s not still back there, is he? ‘Cause we need to go back for him, if he is. Or at least wait here. Can we get him on the comms?”

He’s already reaching for the button when Allura shakes her head, slowly, looking suddenly fearful. His fingers freeze inches from the button.

“What?” he asks.

She opens her mouth. Closes it. “Lance,” she starts, and he knows, he knows what she’s going to say before she says it, and the remainder of the water pouch is all over him, soaking into his shirt, pouch crushed in his trembling hands.

“Lance,” she says. “Keith isn’t here. He’s back at the Castle. He’s hurt. Badly.”

He thinks he doesn’t breathe for a straight minute. He forces his hand to relax, and the pouch drops from suddenly boneless fingers. He’s hurt. He’d thought she was going to say dead.

Hurt. Badly.

“How?” he croaks out.

“At Naxzela. He flew into the particle barrier of a Galra ship to disarm a bomb. Blew it up, got caught in the explosion. He was...he’s--we almost didn’t get to him in time.”

“He...flew into a bomb?”

“Into the ship that was going to set it off.”

He struggles to breathe. In and out. “Is he,” breathe, “going to be,” breathe, “okay?”

Allura nods, though she looks tentative. “We think so. He needs a few more quintants in a healing pod, and we’re not sure what lasting effects might be, but...we think he’ll recover.”

His hands clench again. “What do you mean, lasting effects?”

She takes a deep breath. “He was...he was dead. Brain dead. From when the explosion happened to when we got him to a pod. It was...it was a long time, Lance. Too long. And we’re not sure what the recovery from that looks like.”

“Brain dead,” he repeats dumbly. Keith. Hair in a half bun, laughs with his mouth open Keith. Keith who sings when he thinks no one can hear him. Keith who he was going to take to Varadero Beach. Dead. Floating through space. Willing to die to disarm a bomb.

He blinks, and when he opens his eyes again, the world is blurry. His vision spins. His tongue feels too big for his mouth. He wonders, vaguely, how long it’s been since he’s eaten.

He passes out.

Chapter Text

IV

The first time he gets hurt after they start doing whatever the hell they’re doing, it’s not too bad. A blaster shot grazed his ribs as he jumped in front of Pidge to deflect it. It just bounced off him before he could get his shield all the way up. It would have hit Pidge straight on, so it’s not like his wound is a big deal. He’s fine, doesn’t even need a healing pod. It probably won’t even scar.

But Keith glares at him all through dinner and all evening as they sit in the common room and over the sink as they brush their teeth. He follows Lance into his room when they all go to bed, as has become the norm, and sinks down on his bed, still glaring as Lance smears moisturizer over his face.

“Okay,” he says finally, exasperated. “What?”

Keith regards him, stone-faced. “You got hurt.”

“It’s a scratch.”

“It could have been worse.”

“Yeah, but it isn’t, and I’m fine. It doesn’t even hurt, Keith. You need to chill.”

“You need to stop throwing yourself in front of other people to protect them.”

“What, Keith, you’d rather Pidge be dead? You’d rather I didn’t watch people’s backs? That’s kind of part of the job description!”

Keith grits his teeth. “Of course not. I just want you to start thinking of alternate courses of action besides just using your body or your ship to block the threat. You’re going to get yourself killed."

Lance holds out his hands, frustrated. “That’s also kind of part of the job description! This isn’t exactly the safest career choice, in case you hadn’t noticed!”

Keith glowers at him. Lance turns away, slamming the pot of moisturizer back down on the dresser and fuming at his reflection in the mirror. He has a zit on his chin. All this stress.

“Take off your shirt,” Keith orders from behind him.

“What? Is this doing it for you? ‘Cause I gotta say, this conversation is not putting me in the mood--”

“Just take it off,” Keith growls, and, well, okay, Lance can’t tell if he’s scared of that tone or if it’s just making him horny. He takes off his shirt.

“Come here,” Keith orders. He goes. Stands in front of him. Keith stares at him, eyes unfathomable. Gently, he places his hands on Lance’s hips and spins him around, then stands up behind him. He trails a hand lightly over his back, and Lance knows he’s tracing the scars there, the shrapnel wounds from the explosion that took out the crystal so long ago, back when this all started. The wounds that put him in a healing pod for the first time.

“You always do it,” Keith says from behind him, voice low and rough. “You save people without even thinking about it. You’d do anything to keep the people you love safe. You’d die for them, without even thinking twice.”

“They’re worth it,” he says automatically. “You’re all worth more than I am.”

Keith’s hand clenches against his back and he spins him around again, drawing him close with an iron grip and knocking their foreheads together. “You can’t ever say that. Don’t say that.”

“It’s true,” Lance whispers. “I’d rather die than live knowing I could have saved someone and didn’t.”

Keith shakes his head, bewildered. “Do you not see how fucked that is? Not that you want to save people, or help them, but that you think you’re not worth the same as the rest of us?”

Lance shrugs, averting his gaze, but Keith tugs on his chin, forcing him to meet his eyes. “Lance.”

“Keith.”

“Why do you think that?”

Lance sighs, shrugs, tries to pull away, but Keith won’t let him, holding him firm and close.

“I guess,” he sighs eventually, “I guess I’m just nothing special. I mean, it’s obvious. I don’t have anything, like, important about me. I mean, you’re like the badass brave one, and Pidge is the tech genius, and Hunk’s a kickass engineer, he can fix anything, plus he’s so kind, he keeps up everyone’s morale, and Shiro’s the leader and, like, the one that holds us all together. And Allura’s a diplomat, and she guides us, and she’s a badass fighter, and Coran, like, knows shit, like this ship would fall apart if he wasn’t here to take care of things.

“But me? I’m, like, I can shoot a fucking gun, Keith. I can shoot a gun and tell bad jokes that only Hunk laughs at and I’m halfway-decent at making tortillas that taste kind of like they’re from Earth. You don’t need me.”

Keith closes his eyes and knocks his forehead into Lance’s again. “I told you to stop doing math. Stop measuring yourself against everyone and deciding you don’t belong. And besides, you’re totally wrong.”

“I’m not.”

“Shut up. You’re wrong. Shiro’s not the one that holds us all together, you are. You keep us cohesive, you make sure we spend time together, you’re the one who asks how everyone’s doing, you’re the one that’ll spend an entire day doing something stupid and extravagant to make someone feel better if they’re having a bad day. And on top of that, you can’t just shoot a gun, you’re a fucking amazing sharpshooter, you hit almost every shot you take, and you have eyes on everyone during battle. I honestly don’t know how you do it, Lance, but you do, you see threats no one else does and you take them down. How many times would we all be dead if it wasn’t for you? Dozens. Dozens, Lance. And I’m not just talking about when you throw yourself in front of bullets or bombs, I just mean when you take a shot and save us, because you have our backs. You’re the most stupidly loyal person I’ve ever met, and you always have a positive attitude even when we’re doing something absolutely insane and ninety percent likely to fail…. I’m serious, Lance, we would fall to pieces if it wasn’t for you.”

Lance stays silent for a moment, digesting what he’s said. “You’re just saying that ‘cause you’re fucking me.”

Keith rears back, flares bright red, and snaps, “No I’m not, you asshole!”

Lance quirks a smile, then bites his lip, staring at the floor. “You really mean all that?”

Keith sighs and steps back in close. “Yes. Ask anyone else, too. They’d say the same thing. I promise.”

Lance sags to sit on the edge of the bed. Keith sinks down with him. “It’s still just a scratch,” he says of the cut on his ribs.

Keith sighs and takes his hand, rubbing his thumb against Lance’s wrist. “I know. But it might not be next time. And if you die because of some self-sacrificial martyr complex, I’ll hunt you down in the afterlife and kill you again.”

Lance huffs out a laugh and leans against Keith’s shoulder. “Okay. Same for you, though. I’ve seen you take shots meant for other people, too, you hypocrite.”

“I’m not nearly as bad as you. I think before I do it. I know there’s a high probability I’ll make it. I strategize. But okay. Deal. I won’t ever do anything grand and self-sacrificial if you don’t, either.”

They shake on it.

Keith looks small in the pod. Pale, the circles under his eyes and the hollows under his cheekbones standing in stark contrast to the sallow color of his skin. He’s the first thing--the only thing--Lance saw when he was helped into the infirmary, one arm looped around Allura and the other around Ukar. Ignoring the others; Coran’s insistence on him sitting down right now, Pidge shouting his name, Allura telling him he’s not going to do Keith any good by passing out again, he moves across the room, forcing Allura with him, until he stands right in front of the pod. He raises a trembling hand and rests it on the glass, right where Keith’s breath puffs out a tiny cloud.

“He promised me he’d never pull this shit,” he says. Behind him, the room is silent and frozen, no one daring to talk. He swallows, throat clicking. “He promised me.”

He curls his fingers on the glass and bows his head. “We were fighting when I left,” he mumbles. “I didn’t even tell him goodbye.”

Allura squeezes him slightly, arm firm around his back. “He’s going to wake up, Lance.”

“He’d better,” Lance says. “Because I’m going to personally kill him for pulling that stunt.”

“Okay,” Coran says nervously from behind him. “I think that’s enough. Would you please come sit down?”

Lance keeps his eyes on Keith, but he lets Allura pull him over to the cot Coran stands next to. He’s distracted as he answers Coran’s questions--no, no major injuries, but yes, he thinks his toes might be broken, and his ankle didn’t heal well; no, they didn’t torture him; yes, he thinks that number on his wrist is permanent; yes, he had a head injury at the beginning, but he thinks it’s healed. All he can think is Keith, Keith, Keith. Keith, when you wake up, please be okay. Keith, please remember me, please remember us. Keith, why did you do that?

Yes, those are old blaster wounds on his arm and leg. He’d tried to escape. Yes, they’d punished him for that. Solitary confinement in a tiny room. No meals. No, he doesn’t know for how long. A few quintants. Maybe more. Was he eating before then? Yes, but not much. What had Keith been thinking, when he’d wheeled around the face the ship, pushed Red to full throttle to speed towards it? He can imagine his face, hard eyes and set mouth. Is Red okay? No food in solitary and half rations before? Yes, but Ukar had helped him, given him food. Did they give him water in solitary? Yes, he hesitates. He has to explain the dehydration. Only a little water. Not enough.

“Wait,” Pidge interrupts Coran’s litany of questions. “I have the files we stole. It’s very, er...comprehensive? Whoever was in charge of this place really liked paperwork. Anyway, there’s a note for when you got transferred to solitary, Lance. It says no food rations, but full water rations. They had to have known you needed water if they wanted to keep you alive long enough to get to Haggar. Did they not give the water to you?”

“I--” his mouth is dry. He doesn’t want to talk about this. “I don’t--”

Coran’s hand rests heavy and comforting on his shoulder. “It’s alright, my boy. I’m sure you’re a bit scrambled from everything that’s happened, you don’t need to recall it all in perfect detail right now, we’ll talk later--”

“Oh, my god,” Hunk interrupts loudly. “Wait, Lance, when we got you, you said...you said you thought you’d have to die. What did you mean?”

He licks his lips, tongue sticking on the dry, cracked skin, flicking his gaze around the room, desperate for an excuse. He lands on Keith again. “I just meant I thought I was going to die.”

“No,” Hunk says, shaking his head insistently, “you very clearly said I thought I was going to have to die. You--they gave you the water, didn’t they? You just didn’t drink it.”

Pidge gasps and Shiro says “Lance!” very loudly, then seems to cut himself off with considerable effort. Allura looks grim. “Is that true, Lance?” she asks. “You’re very dehydrated. You probably hadn’t drunk anything for over two quintants.”

He stares at Keith and grits his teeth. “They were going to hand me over to Haggar. You know her, Shiro, she would have sifted through my brain and extracted every useful fact I’ve managed to retain in my entire time here, then killed me anyway and used it all to get to you, to get to Blue, to destroy the work we’ve been doing. What were my options? Die later, after betraying you all, or die on my own terms, before she could get to me?”

Pidge looks horrified. “Lance, we were coming! We would have gotten to you before then, but what if...what if it was too late? You shouldn’t have...we were coming.”

“Well HOW WAS I SUPPOSED TO KNOW THAT?” he yells at her, voice cracking horribly. She shrinks, face crumpling on itself, and turns to hide her face in her hands, shoulders shaking. He rounds on the rest of them, sliding off the cot to stand shakily, hands gripping the edge hard enough to bruise his fingers. “I thought you’d come! I was waiting for you! But it was weeks! Weeks and weeks, and you didn’t come, and every day we got closer to Haggar, every day I failed at escaping on my own. It was the only thing I could do! I didn’t think you were coming! I thought you’d given me up as a loss, and if I died and they couldn’t get to Blue, she’d be safe. She’d get back to you somehow and you could find a different Blue paladin, but you’d all be alive! You’d be safe! How was I supposed to not make that choice? YOU DIDN’T COME!”

He sways, gasping for breath, and Coran steadies him, but he’s not done, rapidly descending into hysteria. “Why didn’t you come?” he shouts. “I was waiting for you! I was counting on you! You didn’t come!”

Allura, stricken, reaches out towards him but he recoils, stumbling. “Lance, it’s just as Hunk said. We couldn’t track you, and when we finally latched onto your location the ship jumped. Those prison ships move randomly through the most isolated quadrants, it was only once we realized they were headed, in a roundabout way, towards Central Command and Haggar that we were finally able to latch on and track you. Even then, the jumps it took were highly randomized. It was clearly trying to cover its tracks and not draw attention to itself, and it didn’t even end up going to Central Command, it stopped a few quadrants away and Haggar came to it. I know it took too long. We were doing everything we could, but I know it took too long.”

“Keith was going insane,” Shiro says quietly. “He was out looking for you, looking for clues, all the time. Any time we weren’t getting ready for the Naxzela mission, he was looking for you.”

“And Keith,” Lance chokes in response, anger rising in his chest again. “How could that happen? How could you let him do that? There had to be another way! Shiro, he’s your brother! How could you?” He’s weeping now, yet again, tears angry and hot running down his face.

Shiro looks at him, wide-eyed. “Lance, it wasn’t like that. We didn’t know, I didn’t know what he was doing. It was chaos. We couldn’t form Voltron, and none of us knew what the rest were doing, not between the fighting on the planet, and around the Galra fleet, not with all the rebels and the Blade, too, flying around, firing. He turned off his comms. He wasn’t talking. None of us noticed until it was too late. Until the explosion.”

“You shouldn’t--it shouldn’t have--he shouldn’t have--!” he’s cut off by lack of air, doubling over, trying to get in a breath that won’t come. Arms circle his shoulders, Allura’s voice in his ear, Coran’s soft concern washing over him as they lift him back onto the cot and try to soothe him. “Breathe, my boy,” Coran is saying over and over again, rubbing his back. “Breathe, you’re safe now and so is he. You need to rest. You need to heal.”

He curls in on himself, burying his face in his hands and letting his tears come. He wants Keith. He doesn’t want these hands on him, doesn’t want Coran and Allura, doesn’t want any of them, really, except maybe...

“Hunk,” he chokes out, and Hunk’s there in an instant, concern lacing his voice, hands hovering over Lance like he doesn’t know where to touch him without shattering him into pieces. Lance forces himself back to a sitting position and tips himself into Hunk’s chest, fists his hands into the fabric of his flight suit, and cries. Hunk doesn’t say anything, doesn’t tell him to calm down, or that everything will be okay. He just holds him until Lance exhausts himself and slumps limp in his arms, until his head goes heavy and his hearing goes fuzzy and his sight starts to recede behind encroaching black dots.

“We’re going to put you in a pod,” Hunk says in his ear. “Just for a few vargas. You’ll feel better when you come out.”

He nods once against Hunk’s shoulder, and then he sleeps.

They’re on a supply run on a planet in the middle of rebel controlled territory, doing some minor repairs on the castle and stocking up on food supplies. While Coran attends to the Castle and Allura visits the president, the rest of them are left to their own devices. Hunk firmly declares that he’s intending to spend the entire time at the food markets, and the rest of them decide to join him. From past experiences, this planet has much tastier food offerings than the norm. They might as well eat as much of it as they can before reverting back to a diet of mainly food goo.

The market is a warren of stalls, manned by several species of aliens that live on the planet. It’s a loud, chaotic place, full of foreign-looking fruits and vegetables, vendors shouting their wares, the sound of food cooking and the bustle and chatter of hundreds of shoppers. As Hunk presses on ahead, excitement in his eyes and Pidge sticking close to his side to avoid being trampled, Shiro stops to stare in bemusement at a stall that looks like it’s selling live crabs, except they’re the size of hubcaps and bright blue. Lance and Keith fall behind them all, wandering slowly. Lance eyes the fruit, wondering if any of it would taste at all familiar. There’s some things that look a little like plantains, some round green balls that remind him of granny smith apples, bunches of tiny, dusty blue berries that look like the clusters that grow on juniper trees in Arizona. Ahead of him, Keith pokes at a pile of gelatinous spheres and the shopkeeper snaps at him, “if you touch it, you buy it!”

Keith tries to refuse her, but she’s insistent and making a bit of a scene, so Keith eventually hands over a few coins and takes a bag full of the fruit, holding it at arms length and fuming.

“I don’t want these,” he says, pushing them at Lance and speed walking away from the stand.

“Hey!” Lance says, darting around a couple of aliens standing in the middle of the thoroughfare chatting to catch up with him. “Neither do I!”

Keith eyes the bag. “They look gross.”

Lance grins at him. “We should try them.”

“I’m not eating that.” Keith turns away and starts walking, but Lance reaches out a hand and catches his sleeve before he can get too far. Keith shoots him a dirty look and tries to shake him off, but Lance doesn’t let go and Keith eventually relents and lets him follow. Lance grins. They’re walking through the market, almost holding hands, which is a pretty nice feeling.

It’s a shock when he feels fingers on his own. He looks down, and Keith’s actually holding his hand. Of his own volition. He’s determinedly not looking at Lance, still walking and staring straight ahead, but the tips of his ears are red. Lance grins even wider and squeezes Keith’s hand.

They wander around for a while, having completely lost the others, and eventually buy some fried balls on a stick that taste remarkably similar to barbeque chicken. Keith holds his hand practically the whole time, only detaching himself to eat.

“People are going to think we’re a couple,” Lance tells him as they reach the outer edge of the market, down towards a river that flows light pink between grassy banks.

Keith scoffs, and Lance doesn’t go further, only intending it as a joke. But after a few minutes of silence, Keith asks, “Aren’t we?”

“Aren’t we what?” Lance says absently, mind on whether or not they might be invited to dinner at the President’s house.

Keith blushes furiously. “A couple. Kind of.”

Lance chokes on his own spit. Keith rips his hand out of his grasp and turns away, flushing brighter.

“Uh,” Lance says, when he can breathe again, “how do you mean?”

“I mean, we sleep together, we train together, we kiss each other, we spend most of our free time together, last week you made me dinner and somehow it tasted good, even though it was mostly weird space ingredients; isn’t that what couples do? We’re not having sex with anyone else. Unless, uh, you are?” He looks suddenly unsure of himself.

“There’s only seven people on that ship, Keith,” he says. “If I was fucking someone else, you’d know about it.”

“Okay, so…” he shrugs, waving his hand. “We’re kind of a couple.”

“I mean,” Lance says, mind racing, “yeah. But I thought you didn’t want to define it? I thought we should keep it casual, given the circumstances.”

Keith shrugs again. “It’s not a declaration of marriage.” And Lance chokes again.

Keith’s still talking. “I think I didn’t want to call it anything because we’re fighting an insane space war and either or both of us could be dead any second, and that’s scary for me, trying to make...something in that situation, you know? But then I thought well, this is the way things are, and we might as well allow ourselves to have stuff like this.”

“Stuff like...relationships?”

“Well, yeah. I guess. A relationship.”

“So, what, we call each other boyfriends and skip off into the sunset?”

Keith wrinkles his nose. “Uh, no, I’m not going to walk around calling you my boyfriend. That sounds stupid. It’s weird. You’re still just Lance.”

“But I, Lance, am with you, Keith, in a relationship.”

Keith shrugs again, and bites his lip, and Lance can tell he’s trying so hard to be casual about this, to act like it isn’t a big deal, but it is. He can see it in the turn of his brows, in the teeth marks on his lip, in his clenched fists. “Yeah, I guess. If that’s something. You’d want to call it.”

He reaches out to grab Keith’s hand, uncurling his fingers. “Works for me if it works for you.”

They’ve reached the riverbank, the water below them calm and lapping on a small sandbar. Keith smiles at him. Lance smiles back.

“Let’s go down there,” he says, pointing at the water and the sand.

“What?” Keith yelps, but Lance has already jumped down, shoes sinking into the soft sand. Keith peers down at him from the bank. “We should probably find the others. It’s getting late.”

“Just for a second. Come on, man.” He holds out a hand, and Keith sighs and jumps down to join him, ignoring it. “This water might be toxic,” he remarks, but Lance ignores him, stripping off his shoes and socks, rolling his jeans up till they’re tight above his calves. He wades in and yelps.

“Poison?” Keith asks dryly.

“No, just cold!” He laughs, and kicks his foot up, sending a cascade of droplets into the air to catch the light of the two suns. Like river water on Earth, it’s clear, the pink hue a reflection of the reddish skies of the planet. “Come on! Or are you too chicken?”

Keith rolls his eyes, but he still can’t resist a direct challenge. He kicks off his shoes and rolls up his own pants, though he can only get them up six inches above his ankles because they’re so tight. He wades in gingerly. Lance reaches out and grabs him, pulling him into deeper water, and he shrieks, then blushes.

“You asshole!”

“Ha!” Lance kicks water at him, and he kicks some back, and soon they’re both soaked, laughing, and Lance hasn’t played like this in water in so long, this is what he misses, this is what he’s been longing for….

They drag themselves out and back to the sand after a bit, sprawling down to try to dry off. Keith tries to brush off the sand sticking to him, but only succeeds in smearing more around. Lance laughs at him.

“You’re more covered,” Keith grumbles.

“I don’t care.” He reaches over to grab the bag of mystery fruit he’s been hauling around all day. “Come on, let’s try one.”

Keith wrinkles his nose, but Lance pulls the bag open and chases one of the balls until he can finally get his fingers around it. It’s slippery and cold and entirely unappetizing.

“You don’t have to eat that just to be a show off,” Keith points out. “I’m the only one here.”

“All the more reason,” Lance says, sticking out his tongue, and pops it in his mouth.

It’s unpleasant at first, but then he bites down and pops it and a flood of sweet juice fills his mouth. He laughs.

“Keith! Hey, Keith, they taste like mangoes.”

He comes out of the pod jelly-legged as ever and Hunk catches him, wraps him in a blanket, and doesn’t seem surprised when Lance refuses to leave the infirmary, settling him on a cot and saying something about getting some food. He leaves Lance to himself, except for Pidge, who’s sitting in the corner fiddling with one of the tablets Coran uses to scan for injuries and avoiding eye contact.

He picks at the fraying edge of the blanket and takes stock of his body. The little aches and pains are gone, the throbbing in his toes and ankle, the headache. He doesn’t feel quite as weak or lightheaded, either. But he’s still thirsty, and his stomach twists on itself with hunger. He feels detached, like the whole thing happened years ago instead of just hours. He draws his knees up and rests his head on them.

Pidge glances over at him at the movement and quickly averts her gaze again. He sighs.

“Hey, Pidge,” he calls, and she whips back around to look at him.

“I’m sorry I yelled at you,” he says, and then coughs, throat still dry. She grabs a water pouch and hands it to him without a word, backing away to stand at arm’s length.

“Thanks,” he says, after drinking. “Look, I know it wasn’t your fault. It wasn’t any of your faults. I know you must have done the best you could. I shouldn’t have shouted like that.”

She looks down at her feet. “You had a right. It took us too long, way too long. I can’t believe how close...how you…” her eyes look glassy and she cuts herself off, rubbing fingers under her glasses furiously. “I kept thinking I had them, I’d lock on their position, we’d go, and they’d just be...gone. I couldn’t figure out how they were doing. If I had just known a little more, or tried a little harder, maybe we…”

“Hey,” he says, holding out his arms. He imagines Pidge hunched over her computer, dark circles under her eyes, tracking him across the universe.  “It’s okay. It’s not your fault, really. I know you did everything you could, and I’m here now, you got me. Come here.”

And Pidge, averse to hugs and most displays of physical affections, hops up onto the cot next to him and buries herself in his chest, strong arms wrapping around his waist and squeezing. She doesn’t let go.

“I’m sorry,” she says again. “I’m so glad we got you back.”

“Me too,” he says softly, wrapping an arm around her shoulders.

The doors hiss open, which makes him jump because it sounds like the doors at the prison, but it’s just Hunk, carrying a bowl.

“Here,” he says, holding it out to Lance. “I know you’re probably not too excited about food goo, but it’s easy on the stomach, and we need to start you slow since you’ve been eating so little.”

Lance nods and unwraps his arm from Pidge to take the bowl. She pulls away from him, but not much, and pulls the tablet out again to keep fiddling.

“You figure out what’s wrong with those things yet?” Hunk asks.

She shakes her head. “Something with the base code got corrupted, which is why it’s just saying everything it looks at is dead, but I haven’t isolated what’s wrong yet. I’ll figure it out.”

Hunk inclines his head at the tablet. “That’s the thing that told us Keith was dead when we brought him in, even though he wasn’t. Freaked us all out, and Coran got pissed, man.”

Keith. He lowers the spoon he was about to put in his mouth and turns to look at him. He looks the same, pale and small in the pod. Lance was only asleep for a couple of vargas, though, of course he looks the same.

“You need to eat, Lance,” Hunk says, leaning against the cot and peering over Pidge’s shoulder at the tablet. “At least try a little.”

He nods and forces the food into his mouth, barely tasting it. The Naxzela mission was chaos, Shiro had said. Chaos because they couldn’t form Voltron and finish things quickly. Because one of the lions was missing. He wonders if Keith would have gotten hurt if Voltron had been there. At the very least, he would have had to detach himself from Voltron before flying straight at the ship, which would have given them all a clue of what he was planning, and enough time to stop him. No, if they’d been able to form Voltron, if Lance and Blue hadn’t been missing, Keith wouldn’t be here, half dead.

He huffs a small laugh, shoving another spoonful into his mouth. Even when he’s not even here, he manages to fuck things up. If he’d been there, Keith wouldn’t have gotten hurt. If he hadn’t allowed himself to be captured, this wouldn’t have happened.

Typical. God, he’s so useless.

“Whatever’s making you make that face, stop thinking it,” Hunk says.

“Just...food goo’s just as great as I remember.”

“Yeah, right,” Hunk says, but turns back to the tablet.

If he’d been there, maybe he could have talked Keith out of it, even if he’d tried to do it. He could have reminded him of their mutual promise.

Not that Keith has ever, in his life, listened to Lance, but. Maybe. They would have figured out a solution together, all of them, a team. They always have in the past.

A hand lands on his knee and he looks up, realizing he was completely zoned out, spoon in midair, staring at Keith.

“You can’t blame yourself for what happened,” Hunk says firmly.

Lance sighs. “How do you always know exactly what I’m thinking?”

Hunk squeezes his knee. “I’ve known you for ten years, man. You’re my best friend. I can read your face like an open book.”

Lance eats another spoonful of food goo because Hunk is looking at him pointedly. “If I’d been here, you would have been able to form Voltron,” he says after he swallows. “He probably wouldn’t have had to do that. We could have stopped it some other way.”

“We could have stopped it another way anyway,” Pidge says. “We were working out a plan, and Lotor showed up about five seconds later with a cannon that could have taken it out, no problem--”

“Wait, Lotor?” Lance interrupts. “What’s that jackass got to do with anything?”

“Oh, yeah,” Hunk says. “We’re sort of thinking about working with him now? Depending on how things go. He helped us out at Naxzela.”

Lance’s mouth drops open. “Work with Lotor? Are you insane?”

Pidge waves her hand. “That doesn’t matter right now. The point is, Keith didn’t need to do it, but he did it anyway. He probably would have done it even if Voltron was there, if you were there. You know Keith. He does crazy stuff like that.”

“Only when he knows there’s a high probability he’ll make it out,” Lance mumbles.

“What?” Hunk asks.

“He knew he probably wouldn’t survive running headlong into a ship’s shield, I’m sure. That’s not like him.”

Hunk sighs, twisting his hands together. “He was acting pretty wild, after you got captured. He wasn’t sleeping much, he was driving himself crazy trying to find you. We all were, but he was just...not dealing with it well. He was more reckless than ever, more ready to fight.”

Lance growls, setting his bowl aside. “Then you shouldn’t have let him fight.”

“Oh, sure, Lance,” Pidge says, sounding annoyed as she sets the malfunctioning tablet down to direct her full attention on him. “We were already down one lion. We had to succeed at Naxzela, and it needed to happen when it happened, we couldn’t put if off any longer. We all had to fight if we had even a chance. Besides, how do you think Keith would have reacted if we’d told him he couldn't fight? He would have just run off and fought with the Blade anyway.”

Lance deflates, recognizing the truth in her words. After all, no one can tell Keith what to do. Maybe Shiro, on a good day, but only if Keith’s in a particularly conciliatory mood.

“I just wish I’d been there,” he mumbles. Hunk reaches over and ruffles his hair.

“So do we, buddy. Now would you please eat some more? For me?” He holds out the bowl and makes puppy dog eyes, and Lance cracks a smile and takes the bowl back. He manages to eat about half of it before his stomach feels uncomfortably full and he pushes it aside with a grimace.

“It’s not surprising you’re already full,” Hunk says, taking the bowl and setting it aside. “You’re stomach’s probably about the size of a walnut. We’ll get you back to normal soon, though.”

Lance isn’t so sure. His stomach hurts, he’s still thirsty, and the simple act of being awake for thirty minutes and eating half a bowl of food goo has left him exhausted and wrung out.

“You should sleep,” Pidge says, noting his drooping eyelids. “We’re deep in rebel-held territory right now, totally safe. You can rest.”

He’s already falling asleep. “Will you guys stay?” he asks pathetically.

Hunk moves the blanket up to cover him fully and squeezes his shoulder. “Of course, buddy.”

He drifts off to the sound of them arguing over the tablet code and smiles. He’s home.

When he wakes again, he can hear Shiro and Allura. He squeezes his eyes shut tightly and tries to fall back asleep. He knows a talk is coming, and he doesn’t quite want to face it yet. Hunk lets him get away with it for about five minutes, then pokes his shoulder.

“Come on, Lance, we can all tell you’re not asleep.”

He groans theatrically. “Not with you all talking so loud.”

Hunk snorts. “Whatever. You should drink some water. Come on, up.”

He sighs and complies. As he reaches for the water, he feels a tug on his hand and notices an IV line threading away from him, clear liquid dripping through.  

“Just some fluids to help you rehydrate,” Coran says reassuringly as he looks at it.

They’re all there, watching him. Shiro, arms crossed, leaning against a cot, mouth set in a thin line. Allura next to him, eyes narrowed. Ukar, looking out of place, his prison clothes replaced by a crisp Blade uniform. Coran, hovering near Keith’s pod, peering at a data display. Hunk and Pidge, pretending to be busy with the tablet, but really looking at him from underneath their eyelashes.

“We are gathered here today,” he intones, “to witness...Lance sleeping? Would you all stop staring at me?”

Everyone quickly averts their gaze. Coran goes as far as to start whistling as he stares into the middle distance.

Shiro clears his throat. “Lance. We need to talk.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Lance says. “Look. I’m sorry I yelled at you all and I’m sorry I tried to die of dehydration. Let’s put it all behind us, why don’t we? It’s all fine, we’re all alive, et cetera, so we can just skip this part.”

“No,” Shiro says firmly, “we can’t.”

“I thought you’d say that,” he grumbles. “Can I get another water pouch first?”

Coran, looking grateful for something to do, grabs one and passes it over. Lance salutes him with it and takes a sip. Finally, the sticky dryness and awful taste on his tongue is starting to subside.

“Okay,” he sighs, looking at Shiro. “Shoot.”

Shiro takes a deep breath, then holds up a hand. “Okay, first of all,” he raises a finger, “Ukar has filled us in on some of what happened, some of the things you talked about and your efforts to escape. And I want to make this very clear: you are an integral part of our team. We did not search for you simply because you’re a paladin, or because the Blue Lion was with you, we searched for you because you’re Lance, you’re our friend, you’re our family, and we need you. Got that?”

Lance snorts and salutes. “Yes, sir.”

“Do not treat this as a joke, Lance,” Allura says, frustrated. “The Blue Lion would have been fine on that ship. Think of how long the Red Lion was in the clutches of the Galra, and they were unable to use her. The lion would have been fine, we would have gotten her eventually. But you, you’re more valuable. We were coming to get you, not the lion.”

Lance stares at her, surprised at the fierceness in her tone. He nods.

“Good,” Shiro says, popping another finger up. “Second of all, we need to apologize again for how long it took us. The ship was difficult to track, but we should have tried harder. Furthermore, the Naxzela mission distracted us.”

Lance holds up a hand to interrupt. “That mission’s been in the works forever, you couldn’t put it off, it’s okay, I get it.”

“But we shouldn’t have let it distract us,” Shiro presses. “There were enough groups working on that mission that we could have taken more of a step back and focused on you. But honestly, we thought we had some wiggle room. We didn’t think they were taking you to Haggar at that point, and because the prison ship didn’t seem to be headed anywhere in particular, we wondered if they hadn’t captured Blue, and didn’t know who you were. It was stupid of us, to think that.”

“Really,” Lance says weakly, “it’s okay. I understand what was going on.”

“But you were counting on us,” Pidge says fiercely, fists clenching. “You were counting on us, and we let you down.”

“And that brings us to the third thing,” Shiro says, lifting a third finger. “Your decision to stop drinking water in order to prevent Haggar from questioning you.”

Lance groans. This is what he really didn’t want to talk about.

Shiro ignores his discomfort. “While I understand your thought process, it’s disappointing to know you think so little of your own worth. If you had been handed over to Haggar, we would have gotten to you. Probably easier, once you were off that prison ship.”

Lance laughs, dry and humourless. “She would have killed me the second she was through with me.”

Shiro shakes his head. “She likes to keep her prisoners around. She has...many uses for them, aside from information.”

“You didn’t hear the Warden talking. They were going to get rid of me as soon as she was finished, throw me out of the airlock. And besides, even if I did survive, she would have gotten all the information I had. She would know about other planned missions, a bunch of details about the rebel coalition and bases, our plans for taking out Zarkon, everything about all of you. It would have put you all in danger, put the whole coalition in danger. You can’t seriously tell me you all wouldn’t make the same choice I did, in the face of all that.”

“We can’t,” Allura allows. “We all react differently in those sorts of situations. But your willingness to...to die for us, without seeming to recognize your own importance to the team…”

“I’m important, I get it,” Lance interrupts her. “But I’m not irreplaceable. I’m not!” he says, pointedly, to cut off whatever Shiro’s opened his mouth to say. “Look, I know I’m a decent pilot, I know I’m a good fighter, I know I can shoot a gun. But a lot of people can do that. You don’t need me, specifically, to form Voltron. You just need to pilot Blue. All of us, really, aren’t...irreplaceable. That sounds awful, but, you know, forming Voltron is what’s important to this war. And the lions could find other pilots. Especially Blue.”

“Lance,” Allura sighs, “The lions sat for 10,000 years waiting for you all, specifically. Why do you think you would be so easy to replace?”

“You’d find someone if you needed to.”

“That’s not the point,” Hunk interrupts, sounding like he’s fighting back tears. “The point is, this isn’t about the lions, or forming Voltron, or the war. This is about you, Lance, and the fact that you thought it would be okay with us all if you died. I don’t give a shit about the lions, or whether or not you’re a good fighter or important to the team, even though you are. I care about you staying alive because you’re my best friend and I don’t fucking know what I’d do with myself if you weren’t here with us.”

“Yeah,” Pidge agrees. “You could be a completely useless slug and I’d still want you around, most of the time.”

“Your protective instinct is touching, Lance, and your loyalty is one of the things that makes you so unique. But Hunk and Pidge are right, this isn’t just about the war or Voltron. This is about us caring about you because you’re Lance. You’re our friend. You’re important to us.” Shiro looks so sincere, brow furrowed, eyes sad. Lance lowers his gaze.

“I just wanted to keep everyone safe,” he whispers. “I didn’t want any of you to get hurt because of me.”

Hunk strides over to him in two steps and wraps him in a hug. Seconds later, Pidge joins, pressed against his side. Coran bounds over, too, and hugs him from behind, wiping a tear from his eye, and Allura joins, too, grasping his hand tightly. Shiro smiles at them all, and walks over, wrapping one massive arm around Lance and Hunk.

“We care about you, Lance,” Allura says, voice slightly muffled from where her face is smashed into Shiro’s armpit. “It is important during war to not get too caught up in the bigger picture. That’s important, too, but we have to remember each other, the individuals that make up the whole. We’re all valuable. That’s what we’re fighting for, after all, freedom for all of us. I know I can be a little...single minded. I’m sorry if I gave you the impression that the lions, or Voltron, or the war are more important to me than the people on my team.”

Lance presses his face into Hunk and squeezes his eyes shut. He feels tears burning again, and he’s tired of crying in front of them, but he can’t help himself. He lets them come, a few drip down his cheeks to soak into Hunk’s shirt.

Eventually, they all pull away, though they stand close, like they’re trying to guard him. Lance wipes at his face.

“Fourth,” Shiro says quietly, holding up one more finger, “how are you feeling?”

“I, uh,” he has to think for a moment. “Okay, I guess? Still tired. Hungry, but it’s more that my stomach just hurts than I really want to eat. My throat hurts.”

Coran nods sagely. “That’s to be expected. The pod healed your injuries and stabilized you, but it can’t put food or water back into your body. It will probably take a quintant or two for you to feel back to normal. You should go to your room, get some more sleep.”

Lance shakes his head. “I want to stay here. Until--until Keith comes out. If that’s okay.”

Coran sighs, but nods. “I expected you’d say that. It’s alright with me, as long as you let yourself rest and continue to eat and drink regularly.”

Lance nods and glances back towards Ukar, who remained awkwardly standing against the wall as the rest of them had their group hug. “I still don’t get it,” he says to him. “What were you doing there?”

“Orchestrating prison breaks,” Ukar says simply.

Lance shakes his head. “I thought the Warden said no one had ever escaped?”

“He was wrong. He did not realize they were escaping. We made it seem as though they were dead, and their bodies would be dropped out into space. The Blade would be waiting to pick them up, after.”

“Wow,” Lance says. “So you’re even more badass than a space pirate. How many did you help?”

Ukar shrugs. “Hundreds, in my time there. Many Blade members and so-called traitors are sent to and held on that ship.”

“It was actually Ukar who allowed us to finally track you,” Shiro interjects. “We didn’t realize it, but we were eventually able to lock onto their location. We thought we’d cracked it, and that it was getting easier to follow because we figured out they were headed towards Central Command. But it was Ukar, he managed to scramble the ship’s cloaking software so we could stay locked onto their location even when they jumped.”

Ukar nods. “I knew your team would be looking for you, paladin. But I also knew the ship was difficult to track. I am sorry I was unable to reassure you while we were together there. Perhaps then you would have not felt the need to go to such measures as you did.”

Lance shakes his head. “No, no, you did so much. I would have died way earlier if it wasn’t for you.”

Ukar eyes him. “You are very brave, paladin. I was impressed at your tenacity. Most do not retain their fighting spirit in a prison like that.”

He shrugs. “It wasn’t that bad. I mean, not as bad as I was expecting. They didn’t even torture me.”

“I don’t know, Lance, I’d call getting locked up in a tiny cell and starved torture,” says Pidge.

“Yeah,” Hunk agrees vehemently.

“And they beat you, once, when they interrogated you, did they not? You came back to the cell bloody.”

“Nah, that wasn’t bad. The Warden stopped anything major from happening. And, I don’t know, I was expecting to be beaten up, or electrocuted, or experimented on or something, like Shiro. So it didn’t seem so bad.”

Allura shakes her head. “There are ways to torture the mind that leave the body in tact. Most would not have borne it as well as you did, Lance.”

“Yeah, well,” he says, thinking of the hallucinations in the cell, of his mother stroking his hair back from his forehead, of Keith dying in front of him, of his imagined pleas to Haggar, “I don’t think I was doing so hot there at the end.”

“You were dehydrated, starving, and completely isolated,” Allura says, exasperated. “Of course you weren’t. I shudder to think...if we had been just a little later.”

“But you weren’t,” Lance forces himself to smile. “You were right on time.”

They all still look guilty. Hunk shifts closer to him and takes his hand, Pidge pressed close on his other side. He supposes they’ll all be guilty for a while, until this trauma fades away in the face of other, more immediate, horrible things. But he’s absurdly grateful that he has the chance to face those horrible things with his team, that he isn’t lying dead in that cell, that he hasn’t been wrecked by Haggar and thrown out into space. In the cell, he’d accepted that the future he so desperately wanted wouldn’t happen, but here they are, all of them with a second chance.  

“I’m happy I’m back,” he says, yawning.

“So are we,” Shiro says. “You have no idea.”

Hunk grips his shoulder. “Why don’t you try to eat a little more? Then you can go back to sleep. I can tell you’re tired.”

Lance nods and Hunk leaves to grab another bowl of food goo. Allura follows, taking Ukar with her, saying something about talking with Lotor, which is another issue he needs to ask about. Later. Coran goes back to fiddling with things around Keith’s pod. Lance stares at him.

Soon,  he thinks. I'll see you soon, and then everything really will be okay.

Chapter Text

V

Two quintants later, Keith’s finally ready to come out. The hours have dragged, even though Lance spent most of the time asleep, but he feels nearly back to normal now. Still drinking absurd amounts of water, but other than that pretty good. He’s only left the infirmary long enough to shower.

Next to Keith’s pod, Coran types something on a keypad and squints at the readings on the pod. “It says he’s ready,” he reports. “Now, keep in mind, we don’t know what to expect. A movement is a long time to be in a pod, too long, in my opinion, but it was necessary in this case. He’ll be very weak, disoriented, and it will likely take a few quintants for him to be back on his feet. But...it says he’s fully healed. So let’s give this a try.”

Lance stands a bit to the side, bracing himself on the side of a cot. He wants to be right there, he wants to catch Keith in his arms and never let him go, but Coran warned that Keith wouldn’t be expecting to see Lance, he might panic, might not know where he is. So Shiro steps forward to catch him when the glass of the pod slides down and Keith stumbles forward and falls.

Lance can’t breathe. Behind him, Hunk is a warm presence, reassuring. He stares at Keith, his hair falling over Shiro’s shoulder, his hand hanging limp at his side.

“Keith?” Shiro asks softly. “Keith, can you hear me?”

A moment of silence, and then Keith’s head moves in a slight nod and Lance sighs with relief.

Shiro’s hand rubs up and down Keith’s back, soothing him as he starts to shiver. “Good. Can you tell me the last thing you remember?”

Keith’s arm comes up to grasp at the back of Shiro’s shirt. After a few moments he coughs, quiet and breathy. Lance steps forward to hear him as he whispers, “Naxzela.” His voice is scratchy and nearly gone.

Shiro nods. “Good. Do you remember what happened?”

Keith raises his head for a moment, but it’s clearly a lot of effort, and he drops it back down on Shiro’s shoulder quickly. “I was flying at the ship. Trying to stop...the bomb. There was an explosion.” He jolts his head up again, alarm in his eyes. “How--how am I here?”

“We got to you, Keith,” Shiro says soothingly. “We got you to a pod in time.” He doesn’t mention the brain dead part.

“But,” Keith says, breath coming in short pants now, clinging to Shiro like his life depends on it, “but I--” His eyes weave around the room, taking in his surroundings, looking at them, all standing around watching. He passes by Lance, then freezes, going so still it looks like he’s stopped breathing.

His eyes slide back to meet Lance’s; and Lance’s chest feels like it’s caving in, there’s no air to breathe, he’s frozen solid.

“Lance?” Keith breathes out, thready and disbelieving, and Lance moves instinctively, rushing to Keith’s side, and Keith is reaching for him. Shiro stands aside and lets Keith slump into Lance’s arms.

The dam breaks. Feeling and air and noise rush back in, and he’s crying, clutching Keith to him, probably holding him too tight, relishing the feeling of his living, breathing, body. Keith gasps and brings up his hands to fist tightly in Lance’s shirt. “Lance,” he says, voice cracking. “ Lance. What--how--?”

“You’ve been out for a while, Keith,” Shiro says, voice watery. “We got him back.”

Keith buries his face in Lance’s neck and starts to shake in earnest. Lance can feel tears on his skin, and he gently lowers them both to the ground because Keith clearly isn’t capable of staying on his feet right now. Hunk brings a blanket to wrap around Keith and Lance pulls it tight around his shoulders, but Keith doesn’t seem to notice, hands still tangled in Lance’s shirt, pressed close to him. Lance just holds him, strokes his hair, rubs his back until his trembling calms slightly and he pulls back to look at him.

“Lance,” he croaks, “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I couldn’t find you, I tried so hard, but I couldn’t--”

“Hey,” Lance cuts him off, pushing the bangs out of his eyes. “It’s okay. I’m here. I’m okay.”

“I can’t believe it,” Keith says hazily, and slumps back against him. He’s quiet, except for his ragged breathing, and Lance might think he’s fallen asleep if it weren’t for the death grip on his shirt and the feeling of Keith’s lips moving against his neck. He’s speaking, or mouthing words, but Lance can’t tell what he’s trying to say.

“We should get him up onto a cot,” Allura says after a while, and Lance nods. He turns to speak into Keith’s ear, trying to sound soothing. “Hey, Keith, let’s get you off the floor and onto a bed, okay? Then you can rest.” Keith’s hands tighten on his shirt, but he doesn’t protest, and Lance manages to maneuver them off the ground with Shiro’s help, both of them supporting Keith’s weight over to the nearest cot. They lift him onto it and lay him down and he goes, compliant, but he won’t let go of Lance’s arm when he tries to pull away, fingers in a death grip around his wrist. Lance meets his eyes and Keith whispers something he doesn’t catch. He leans closer. “What?”

“I said,” Keith whispers, “don’t you dare walk out of my sight.”

Lance laughs. “Look at you. You’re already back to normal.”

“Are you okay?” Keith asks.

“You’re asking me if I’m okay? You just came out of a movement in a pod. Are you okay?”

Keith shakes his head. “What did they do?”

“They didn’t do anything, Keith. I’m fine.”

Keith shakes his head again, insistent. His grip tightens. “No, you were gone for so long, I know they hurt you, I know you must have--”

“Alright, alright,” Coran says soothingly, inserting an IV into the back of Keith’s hand. “You’ve been out for a long time, my boy, you need to rest. I’m just giving you some fluids now. Try not to worry yourself. We are all here, we are all fine, that’s all that matters right now.”

Keith’s eyelashes are already fluttering. He rolls his head towards Lance. “Lance.”

“Yeah, Keith?”

“Stay.”

“Of course.”

Keith wakes up shouting, and Lance quiets him. He wakes up repeating Lance’s name, and Lance holds his face between his hands until his eyes clear and he looks at him and says “I’m here, I’m here, it’s okay,” over and over again until Keith falls back asleep. Lance’s own dreams are quieter, he wakes in frozen terror, convinced he’ll open his eyes to purple light and smooth metal.

The first night is terrible. Keith seems to wake every hour from a nightmare, and Lance wakes from his own every time he manages to fall back asleep. Now that the heavy exhaustion has receded, he can’t seem to sleep for longer than an hour or two before jerking awake. He feels like he doesn’t sleep at all, and eventually abandons his own cot to sit next to Keith’s, head pillowed on the edge, gripping his hand. It’s faster to soothe him that way, and easier to tear himself from his own dreams with Keith’s hand in his.

In the morning, Lance’s head is pillowed on his arms and he’s just looking at Keith, drinking him in, the rise and fall of his chest, the sweep of his eyelashes, the blood beating at his pulse points. Keith stirs awake, peaceful for the first time, and his eyes flick around the infirmary for a moment, like he’s reminding himself where he is, before they land on Lance.

“You’re really here,” he says softly.

Lance nods, not lifting his head. “Yeah.”

Keith closes his eyes and swallows. “Thought I dreamed you.”

“No,” he says.

“How’d they find you?”

He lifts his head and takes Keith’s hand. “There was a Blade member on the ship. He helped me, managed to scramble the ship’s cloaking so they could finally track us. They blew up half the ship and got me out.”

A smile flickers over Keith’s face. “Good.” He winces, shifting on the cot. “Feel like shit.”

“You blew yourself up, you absolute idiot. Of course you feel like shit. What the hell were you thinking?”

Keith groans. “Can we not do this right now?”

Lance pokes his chest. “We don’t have to do the full conversation right now, but let me just say that you broke your promise, and that really sucks of you.”

Keith cracks his eyes open. “What promise?”

“The one we made when you got pissed at me for throwing myself in front of dangerous things and we both promised we’d stop doing that.”

Keith sighs and closes his eyes again. “I had to. The bomb would have taken out everything, everyone. I didn’t have a choice.”

“You would have figured something out,” Lance says stubbornly. Keith just shakes his head. Lance relents. They can have this conversation when Keith isn’t half asleep.

“Can I have some water?” he asks, and Lance stands to get it. Keith grips the pouch weakly but allows Lance to help him sit up to sip from it. He leans against him when he’s done, and Lance readjusts himself so he’s sitting against the pillows, propping Keith up.

“Don’t leave,” Keith mumbles, already falling back asleep.

“I’m not going to leave, Keith” he says. “Don’t worry.”

Lance drifts off not long after Keith and they sleep for a while tangled together, until Keith wakes again, yelling.

“How about some food?” Lance asks him, when he’s calmed down. “You should eat.”

Keith nods carefully and Lance stands to get it.

“Wait,” Keith says, looking uncomfortable.

“I have to go get it, Keith. I’ll be right back, I promise.”

Keith bites his lip, but nods. “Okay.”

Lance runs to the kitchen and speed-walks back with the food. When he walks back in, Keith is sitting up, looking uncomfortable as Coran checks him over, shining a light into his eyes, tapping at his knees and the tips of his fingers.

“Ah, good,” he says when Lance walks in. “Food should help you out quite a bit, young man. Everything seems to be in order with your reflexes and reaction time. No lasting effects, as far as I can see.”

Lance sighs in relief and hands the bowl over to Keith. “You’re sure?” he asks Coran.

Coran nods. “Again, there could always be things that crop up in the future, but he seems right as rain.”

“Good,” Lance says, sitting heavily in the chair next to Keith’s bed. Keith eats a spoonful of food goo and makes a face at the taste. “Ugh. What do you mean, lasting effects?”

Coran sighs. “We weren’t quite sure how you would respond to the time in the pod, if it would fix everything. You see, you...well, when the others got to you, you weren’t breathing. You’d been ejected from Red and it took them a bit to find you in the wreckage of the explosion. You had a tear in your flight suit, and your helmet was damaged. You weren’t getting oxygen, not to mention the damage from your other injuries. Though Allura managed to get you breathing again, and your heart working, you weren’t responding at all to external stimuli. I believe they call the condition...brain dead, on Earth. Allura had to keep you breathing the whole flight back, until we could get you into a pod. You weren’t doing it on your own.”

Keith gulps and rests the bowl in his lap, glancing sideways at Lance. Lance hasn’t heard the full explanation of what happened until now, and he feels like he might pass out.

Keith clears his throat. “The pods don’t reverse death,” he says. “How did you do it?”

“Well, you weren’t really dead. But we were concerned, so Allura offered an idea, and we tried it. We put some raw quintessence in the pod with you, just a little. She thought it might restore that which you lost. It seemed to have worked.”

“So Allura saved him twice?” Lance asks. Coran nods.

“I need to do something completely outrageous to thank her,” Lance mutters.

“Wait,” Keith says, like he’s still trying to take everything in, which he probably is. “What happened to Red?”

Coran looks grim. “She was badly damaged. Most of her body remained in tact, but one of her legs was blown off, and the windows of the cockpit shattered. That’s how you got dragged out of her. We recovered her, obviously, and repaired her, but we’re unsure how she’ll operate. We’re hoping that now you’re awake you can connect with her soon and get her back online.”

Keith hands his bowl to Lance and sits up fully, swinging his legs off the cot with a grunt. “I want to see her now.”

“My boy, you really shouldn’t be up and about this soon--”

Keith glares at him. “I’m going.” He turns to Lance. “Help me there.”

Lance sighs. “Keith, Coran’s right, you’re going to pass out if you try to walk all the way to the hangars right now.”

“That’s why you’re going to help me.”

Behind Keith, Coran rolls his eyes. Lance sighs. “Fine,” he says. “But then you’re coming back here and not moving for the rest of the day, got it?”

Keith scoffs, but nods. He slides off the cot and Lance steadies him. He’s still wearing the suit he came out of the pod in. “You wanna change clothes first?” Lance asks.

Keith hesitates for a moment, then nods. Coran brings him a pair of pajama pants and a t-shirt from his room, and Lance helps him strip off the suit and put the clothes on. He stands shakily on his own two feet afterwards.

“Okay,” Lance says, pulling Keith’s arm over his shoulders. “Lead the way, Coran.”

It takes them forever to get to the hangars, and Lance is seriously regretting his agreement as Keith pants in his ear. When they reach them, he sees that four of the lions are encased in their protective barriers, but Red slumps on her side, eyes dim. Keith lets out a low, wounded noise and slides down to his knees in front of her. He reaches out a hand to rest on her nose and closes his eyes, a few tears running down his cheeks.

“I’m sorry,” he says quietly, bowing his head.

Everything is silent and still for a long time, Keith bent in front of Red, Coran hovering by the door, Lance crouching behind Keith, close but not touching. After a long time, Keith hunches over, pressing his forehead to Red, and her eyes light up yellow.

“I’m sorry,” Keith says. “I know, I’m okay, I know.”

Red growls and Keith backs away as she moves to a sitting position, slowly, like she’s in pain.

“I’ll fix you up,” Keith says, struggling to his feet in front of her, resting a hand on her paw. “We’ll be fine. It’s good to see you.” Then he turns away towards Lance and smiles tiredly.

“I want to go back to bed,” he says, leaning on him. Behind them, Coran whoops and claps his hands. “You did it!” he cries. “Oh, I knew your presence would fix her right up. I must go tell the others!” He runs from the room, leaving them alone.

Lance wraps his arms around Keith. “You doing okay?”

“Better now,” Keith says. “Tired.”

“Let’s get you back to the infirmary,” Lance says, and they make the excruciating walk again. Pidge is there when they get back.

“Where’d you two go?” she asks.

“Visiting Red,” Keith answers, sitting back on the cot with a sigh. “God, I can’t believe how tired I am.”

“I can,” Lance says. “Eat the rest of that food before you fall back asleep.” Keith grunts and obeys, and as he eats Lance takes Pidge by her arm and leads her far enough so Keith can’t overhear.

“No one told me how close it was,” he says. “He was out of his lion? Just floating through space? How long was he dead? Like, dead dead?”

Pidge sighs. “I don’t know, Lance. Time was hard to measure, so much was happening. Maybe twenty minutes?”

“Jesus,” he says, heart seizing in his chest. “That’s a long time. That’s way too long. And Allura had to keep him breathing all the way back? How long from explosion to when he was in a pod?”

She shrugs helplessly. “I don’t know. A varga? Maybe longer?”

He covers his eyes with a hand and dimly notices he’s trembling. “I’m going to kill him. When he stops looking half dead, I’m gonna fucking kill him, Pidge.”

She rests a hand on his shoulder. “I’ll help you.” Then she wrinkles his nose. “You smell terrible, Lance. You haven’t left here in days. Go take a shower. I’ll stay with him.”

He turns to look at Keith, grumpily scraping the bottom of his bowl with the spoon. “You sure?”

She rolls her eyes. “He’s not going to drop dead now. Go.”

“Hey, Keith,” he calls, and Keith looks up at him. “I’m going to go take a shower. I’ll just be gone for a little bit. Pidge’ll stay here, okay?”

A brief flash of panic crosses Keith’s face, but he quickly sets his jaw and nods.

“Just a few minutes,” Lance promises, and rushes out of the room. In the shower, he closes his eyes, rivulets of water running down his face, and tries to think. Think how to talk to Keith. How to tell him that he can’t do that, he can’t blow himself up. How to tell him that he, Lance, would be completely lost without him. How to tell him that thing he said in the cell, to all the imaginary Keiths that visited him. How to tell him he loves him.

Is it too soon? It really isn’t, not anymore. They’ve been doing this thing for a while now. And maybe it’s natural for things to move quicker when you’re stuck in the middle of an intergalactic battle for freedom and about to die every other day.

There’s one thing he’s sure of: he doesn’t want to be in that position again, stuck somewhere without Keith, unsure if he’ll ever see him again, regretting that he never got to say those three little words.

He shuts off the water and towels off. No. He’s going to say it. He has to. They need to talk, and it’s probably going to be painful, and he’s probably going to cry a lot, and he’s going to tell Keith he loves him.

He walks back to the infirmary, hair still dripping, and finds Keith still awake. Allura and Coran are both back, alongside Pidge.

“How you feeling?” he asks Keith. Keith shrugs and shoots him a look, half sad, half angry, that Lance doesn’t really want to unpack right now. His eyes prickle. He could use a nap, too. “I’m surprised you’re still awake.”

“Can I go back to my room?” Keith asks abruptly. “I don’t want to stay here longer.”

“I don’t see why not,” Coran answers. “You’re stable now, you just need more rest. If you want to, you can, but someone should stay with you.”

“I’ll stay with him,” Lance says. Of course.

Keith glares at him. “Fine,” he says. He sounds angry. Maybe he’s remembered they were fighting before Lance left. Lance still can’t remember what it was about, but maybe Keith does. He has a better memory and likes holding grudges for unreasonable lengths of time.

Keith slides back off the cot, legs wobbling. “Help me,” he orders Lance, and Lance obliges, wrapping Keith’s arm back around his shoulders. “Anything we need?” he asks Coran.

Coran shakes his head. “Just make sure he eats and drinks. And make sure you do, too. You’re not back to normal yet, either, lad.”

“Oh, he’ll eat and drink,” Keith growls next to him and yeah, he’s definitely mad about something. Lance sighs and helps him out of the infirmary towards his room.

“Your room,” Keith says, when he makes to turn the corner towards Keith’s. Lance shrugs and changes direction, swiping the door open and helping Keith to the bed, turning on one of the lights. The room is dusty, and smells closed up and musty. He hasn’t been in here since he left. He runs a finger over the top of the dresser and looks at the dust collected on his fingertips. Catches a glimpse of himself in the mirror and winces at the bags under his eyes, the sprinkle of pimples on his forehead, the unkempt raggedness of his hair.

“Lance,” Keith says roughly from behind him. He turns.

Keith’s crying, silently, tears running down his cheeks and dripping off his chin. “They told me what happened,” he says. “They told me what you did.”

Absurdly, Lance was hoping Keith would never find out. “Oh,” he says.

“I can’t believe you’d do that,” he says, “and you, you yelled at me about our promise! And you broke it, too!”

“I didn’t think I had a choice, either,” he says quietly. “I was trying to save the people I love. Just like you.”

Keith shakes his head. “I just...I just took action, in the middle of battle. You...you thought about it. You planned it! They almost didn’t--didn’t get to you in time!” And then he’s bent over, face in his hands, shoulders shaking, and Lance doesn’t know what to say, because Keith is right, he broke their promise, too.

“I love you,” he blurts without thinking. Keith freezes, but he doesn’t look up. Lance takes a step closer, hovering in the middle of the room. “I love you,” he says again. “I kept seeing you, when I was alone in that cell. Dreaming of you, or hallucinating you, maybe. And I kept thinking, I’m never going to see him again, I’m never going to be able to tell him, and that’s so stupid, because I’ve loved you for so long, Keith. Before any of this started, I think I loved you.” He takes another step.

“I tried to do it to protect you all, because I couldn’t stand to think that I’d give up information that would lead to you being hurt or captured, or killed. But I would have given anything to see you. To tell you that.”

He clutches his hand in the neckline of his t-shirt and tries to breathe. “And then they came for me and I thought, oh, I’ll be able to tell him after all. But you weren’t there. You weren’t there, Keith, and then Allura told me what you’d done and I thought I was going to die all over again. God, Keith. I love you.”

Keith’s still buried in his own hands. “You can’t just say that. Why are you telling me this now?” he asks.

Lance swallows. “I didn’t want to keep waiting and regret it again later.”

Keith’s silent for a long time. Lance wonders, is this the end of this? Is he too angry with me? Did I betray his trust, break my promise one too many times? What will I do if, after all this, he tells me he’s done with me?

Keith drops his hands and looks at him. “You have no idea, do you?” he croaks. “You have no fucking clue.”

“About what?”

Keith laughs shortly, shakes his head, stares at the mirror on the wall behind Lance.

“I didn’t really think much when I flew at that ship. I only had about thirty ticks before the bomb was going to blow and we were all going to get vaporized. So I just did it. But I thought of you, Lance. Before I hit. Like you were sitting in the cockpit with me. You were laughing about something, you told me not to worry. You told me everything would be okay, and then I hit the particle barrier and I don’t remember anything until I heard Shiro asking me if I could hear him when I came out of the pod. And you were there. Like you’d never left.” He lurches to his feet and sways, and Lance steps towards him to steady him, holding him by his upper arms. Keith reaches up and grips his face, hands gentle despite the anger still simmering behind his eyes.

“I thought I would die when you were gone,” he says. “When we got the transmission saying you’d been captured, I thought I was going to die.”

Lance leans in, knocks their foreheads gently together. “That doesn’t mean you had to go do it, you idiot.”

Keith lets out a watery laugh and curls his hands around the back of Lance’s neck, drawing him in. His lips are chapped, like the first time they ever kissed, and Lance drinks him in, feeding the other thirst that plagued him at the prison, breathing him in, breathing with him.

“I missed you so much,” Keith says into his lips, around a sob. Then he breaks away, pressing a fist against his eyes. “Fuck. I didn’t want to cry.”

“We’re both crying,” Lance points out.

Keith shakes his head and pulls him back in, kissing him long and deep, sending Lance’s heart racing. He can feel his pulse thundering through his body, echoing Keith’s heartbeat from where they’re pressed together; his skin lights up where Keith touches him. Keith draws away again, grips a handful of his hair tightly.

“Why can’t you listen to me?” he demands. “Why can’t you believe me when I tell you matter? That you can’t just throw your life away?”

“I do listen,” Lance says, “I believe you.” He ducks down to kiss Keith’s neck, behind his ear, and Keith shudders.

“You can’t do that again, then,” Keith says.

“Neither can you.”

Keith sighs, pulling away from Lance’s hungry mouth. “How many times are we going to have this conversation?”

Lance pulls away from him, slides his arms down to settle around his waist. “Look, Keith. We’re in a war, and we’re going to keep being in a war until the war is done, and we’re probably going to have this conversation dozens of times. And I can’t promise I won’t jump in front of a bullet again, and you can’t promise me won’t pull some crazy stunt and blow yourself up again, and I think we both just need to accept that. We both care about our team, we both care about the war, we both care , and we’re both willing to get hurt, to die, to protect that. Tell me if I wrong.”

Keith looks at him warily, slowly shakes his head.

“Right. We need to accept that this might happen again, but we also both need to be better about trusting our team. They feel the same way about us, right? They’ll fight for us, too, we don’t just need to fight for them. They were coming for me, and I lost faith in them. But they were coming, and they made it in time. Pidge said they were working on a way to disarm the bomb, too, and knowing her they would have succeeded, but you lost faith in them and did what you thought would end it. We both need to stop doing that. We have their backs, but they have ours, too. That doesn’t mean we’re not going to be in danger, or we won’t have life or death situations, but we both need to take a step back sometimes, and trust in other people. And in each other, too.”

Keith reaches up and traces Lance’s eyebrow with his fingertip. The anger has bled out of his eyes and he just looks sad now, and tired. “You told me something once,” he says. “You told me, you’re not the only one fighting. Saving the universe doesn’t hinge on you alone.”

Lance nods. “I’m pretty wise, right?”

Keith smacks him lightly on the arm. “You need to start listening to yourself. Because you were right.” Lance laughs and kisses him again, briefly, before pulling back to look in his eyes. “Do we have a deal?”

Keith considers him for a moment. “A new promise,” he says. “We trust in each other. We trust in the team.”

Lance nods. “And we still fight like hell ourselves.”

Keith nods once, short. Lance smiles. “I love you.”

Keith wraps his arms back around his neck. “I love you too, you idiot.”

And they’re kissing again, and they end up on the bed, panting into each other’s mouths, and Lance is half-hard and drowning in Keith, Keith, Keith, and below him Keith groans as he bites at his neck and says, “Lance, Lance, if we do this right now I’ll fall asleep in the middle of it,” and Lance doesn’t want to stop, but Keith’s right, they both will. And there’s no need to rush. They’ve got a future, stretching out ahead of them, a future he’d thought they’d lost. They’ve got a second chance.

Chapter Text

VI

(Two years and) seven months later

First night back on Earth

Lance sits on the roof of the Garrison, staring out over the desert. The sky is that searing, burning blue he remembers from desert summers, and thunderheads build in the distance over mountains still streaked with the vestiges of snow. Everything is tinted orange and slightly blurry behind the particle barrier that cuts off the Garrison from the rest of the world. The rest of Earth. Controlled by the Galra.

Everything he’d been fighting for; the determination that drove him through battle after battle, one near-death experience after another, the conviction, the memories that comforted him through a year and a half of drifting through space, all gone. All gone, because they were too late. His family is here, safe, and he supposes that should be enough. Hunk wasn’t as lucky, and Shiro lost the person he thought he’d come back to. But that relief rings hollow in the towering tragedy of what the world has become, fallen to pieces, everything he’d loved either gone or buried deep in terror and tyranny.

They don’t know what happened to the farm; his family was driven from it when the Galra came. It’s probably gone. The house he grew up in crumbled to the ground, the crops torn up, the mango trees chopped down. Sedona’s in shambles, Flagstaff is gone. He wonders what happened to the farmers that used to set up their stalls at the market, wonders if any of them are still free, wonders if any of them are even alive.

Footsteps sound behind him, but he doesn’t bother turning around. He knows the cadence, knows the gait.

Keith settles down beside him, warm against his side. Lance is still getting used to the new bulk of his shoulders, the lines of his face, the way he holds himself now, older, wearier.

“You okay?” Keith asks, bumping his shoulder. Lance doesn’t answer him, and Keith doesn’t press him, just sits, a solid presence, grounding him. Filling that hole in his chest. Sometimes Lance can barely breathe from the relief that he’s here, back safe with them. When he disappeared during a Blade mission, Lance understood what he’d meant when he said he thought he would die. The hazards of love, when you’re fighting an impossible war. The next few months were excruciating, no word, no sign, no whisper of him. Just...gone. Eventually, Kolivan admitted that they’d lost track of his ship near something called a quantum abyss. Against everyone’s advice, Lance looked up what that was and read about them all night. They sucked in gravity, broke down time and space itself. It would have pulled in a small ship like Keith’s in an instant, stretching it and him into nothingness.

He’d essentially given up hope by the time Keith showed up completely fine, four inches taller, with his mother, an Altean, and a space wolf, and turned their whole world upside down again. And Lance had thought, this time, this time I’m never letting him out of my sight again. At the very least, after that, Keith seemed to have lost interest in working with the Blade. But maybe that’s just because they started heading towards earth soon after, and Keith was the only one who managed to connect with the Black Lion after Shiro turned out to be a clone and almost died….

Jesus, their lives are fucked up.

Keith nudges his shoulder again, pulling him out of his thoughts. In front of them, the sun sinks, blood-red over the desert, the sky streaking around it. Despite it all, the sunsets on Earth are still beautiful. He takes a deep breath. Despite it all, the air still tastes of mesquite and juniper and ozone from the far-off thunderstorm. Despite it all, he still has Keith, sitting beside him; he still has the team, all of them. He has his family, now. Despite it all.

“It’s getting late,” Keith says. “Come inside.”

“I was going to take you home with me,” he answers, heart heavy and sad, beating away in his chest. “I was going to take you to the beach. We were going to eat mangoes.”

Keith takes his hand. His palm is calloused, hand slightly larger than Lance’s now, enveloping his. “It’s not going to end like this, Lance,” he says. “We’ll still do all that.”

Lance laughs humorlessly. “Don’t make another promise neither of us can keep.”

“I’m not. We’ll go to your home. We’ll rebuild it, if we have to. We’ll swim at that beach you love, what’s it called again?”

“Varadero.”

“Varadero. We’ll eat mangoes. Maybe we can grow tomatoes and chilies, too, and roast them in the fall.”

Lance turns to look at him. His jaw is set, he looks determined, like he refuses to accept any other possible outcome. The new scar on his jaw stretches shiny and pink against his pale skin. “How can you be so sure?” he asks. “We’re losing, Keith. Look at this. Look at Earth.”

Keith grins, quick and fierce. “We’re all back together now, though. And we always think of something. The Galra thought we were gone. They won’t know what hit them when they realize they were wrong.”

He stands, pulling Lance to his feet with him, and wraps an arm around him.

“And when it’s over,” he says, “We’ll never have to break a promise ever again.”

Lance pulls away and looks at him, backlit by the sunset, orange fire on the tips of his hair, eyes bright. “Come on, Lance,” he says. “Trust me. Trust your team.”

“Trust the team.”

Keith nods. “And fight like hell.”

Lance reaches out to take his hand. “Okay. And when this is over, we have a date. You. Me. Varadero Beach. No matter what.”

Keith nods and smiles at him, and Lance loves him, he loves him. “No matter what.”

Behind them, the sun sinks behind the mountains and the Earth, with all her life, coils, waiting, filled with people and power the Galra were not expecting. They’ll give them hell. They’ll give them hell until they’re kicked off this planet, until they’re kicked off every planet, until it's all over and they can start everything anew.

“It’s a date,” Lance says, and lets Keith pull him back inside, back to their team, back to their family.

Take it all back. Life is boring, except for flowers, sunshine, your perfect legs. A glass of cold water when you are really thirsty. The way bodies fit together. Fresh and young and sweet. Coffee in the morning. These are just moments. I struggle with the in-betweens. I just never want to stop loving like there is nothing else to do, because what else is there to do?

- Pablo Neruda