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The sound of Keith’s voice calling everyone’s attention jolted Lance from the slumped position, his body having gone lax with exhaustion after his attention drifted away from the debrief for what couldn’t have been more than a minute tops.
“First off, is everyone alright?”
He scrambled to pull himself together but his limbs would not seem to cooperate, his arms shaking like leaves and his feet skidding out from under him when he tried to hike himself up further in his pilot chair. He almost didn’t catch Keith’s next statement with the amount of effort it was taking to try and stay in his seat.
“We’re gonna do a quick sound off. I didn’t really plan on having to bail so soon without checking in on everyone and we have a long way to go before we get back to the castle.”
Lance heard the others start chiming in after that but it quickly fell to background noise when his eyes landed on the floor in front of him and the sizable puddle that was beginning to form. For whatever reason it was proving more difficult than usual to shrug off the residual weariness from the battle they had just narrowly escaped, so he could only vaguely begin to wonder what he could’ve possibly spilled.
His muscles burned whenever he shifted, pulling on purpling bruises and rising welts, but nothing was worse than the steadily increasing pressure in his skull that had him seriously considering putting Red on autopilot. The other paladins were clearly just as spent though, their images on the dash looking about as disheveled as Lance felt in just his pinky, but they could manage to fly then so could he.
”We good to start?”
Everyone ushered their respective ‘yes’s when Keith announced they’d do a proper round table to case and catalog possible injuries since they had a bit of a journey ahead of them before they made it to the castleship anyway.
“Alright, let’s go with Pidge first. I know that you got swarmed at one point, but did you come out of it okay?”
“Yeah, I handled it just fine, my shield is fucked though.”
Lance couldn't understand for the life of him why the integrity of Pidge’s shield sparked a connection somewhere distant in his apparently very short term memory. If anything it was more of a familiarity than any tangible association to recent events he could successfully recall, but the effort of forcing his brain to work through the fog that addled it doubled the angry pulse behind his eyes so he dropped it.
“Watch your language,” Shiro chided from a side channel offscreen.
“Sure thing, cap.”
“How many times do I have to tell you not to call me that before it sticks?—”
“Can we focus please?” Keith interrupted, sounding exasperated already. Lance didn't blame him, this was a rough one for everybody. “Keep going Pidge, tell us about what happened.”
“It’s really nothing to write home about. A sentry got the jump on me is all, the close range blasts must’ve caused the brunt of the damage.”
Something had finally clicked, and Lance would’ve gasped if he wasn’t holding his breath already to keep his sore body from hurting.
“It definitely needs some tlc, but it’s still in one piece and I’m not injured.”
Unlike Pidge, he hadn’t been as lucky. He remembers the dozens of blasts that his shield had taken before it shattered on his face now, and before that, how the galra soldier had yanked him out of his makeshift sniper hole amongst a stack of storage crates by his ankles. He had been attempting to give the others cover so they could get to their lions and provide support from above.
“We can sort out damaged gear later, or tomorrow for all I care, just glad to hear that you’re okay. How about you Hunk?”
The revelation had Lance wondering what else he was forgetting about the battle they’d just fought, the last coherent region of his sluggish brain knew the answer would probably explain why felt so very out of it when he was totally fine, but it was hard to think back on everything with so many missing pieces and so little energy to connect what he did remember.
He grappled with the nature of his hindered awareness for so long that it took him a while to realize Keith was still talking, and an extra beat of concentration to gather that he wasn’t addressing him yet. The anxiety that flared at losing even more time was hard to stamp back down.
“—handled yourself well when it came to close combat, but I saw you take a few good hits at the end back there. You alright?”
Oh. He was talking to Hunk.
More flashes of memory bombarded Lance’s scrambled senses. He was lining up a shot for the soldier advancing on Hunk when he’d been caught, his scope literally just zeroing in on the back of the soldier and then suddenly all he knew was bright, flashing pain as his chin connected with the ground.
The memory had his mouth filling with iron and his eyes welling with salty tears. He could still hear his armor splintering under the crushing grip of purple claws as they tore him away from his position before he could take the shot. His heart fluttered sadly as he worked to put the picture together in his mind and that his failure meant Hunk had been forced to fight because he hadn’t been paying enough attention.
“I’m fine. S’just a couple of bruises, nothing Coran’s magic cream can’t fix.”
But those bruises were Lance’s fault. He had failed to protect his best friend from that soldier, from having to do the one thing he hated most.
“Okay, let me know if anything changes.”
It took biting his bottom lip so hard he tasted blood to stifle the broken sound that bubbled in his throat then, his stomach clenching with guilt, but it gave him enough of a shock to take a shaking breath and blink back the tears ready to spill over. He found himself wiping at the wetness under his eyes again and again after that, but they remained just as blurry and unfocused.
“And how about you, Allura? I know you were with me for most of it protecting the canister of quintessence.”
That was what this entire mission was about, securing a powerful vat of quitessence Pidge had been keeping tabs on with intel stolen from a galra battleship en route to occupy a peaceful planet in a nearby solar system. Shiro wanted them to intercept the delivery so that they could minimize the inevitable fallout when they formed Voltron to defend the planet.
“You can be at ease that I am uninjured and the quintessence is in tact.”
The assurance that all their efforts weren’t for nothing did little to ease the rapidly increasing feeling of wrong that was slowly consuming Lance. They succeeded. Everyone was alright.
But Lance had made a mistake that hurt Hunk, and he was having a hard time reconciling that to make the success feel like a victory. He was also having a hard time staying focused on Keith as he continued to ask after Allura, or maybe the quintessence, he couldn’t tell which with everyone talking at once, their voices muddling together until they were indecipherable against the ear piercing ringing that only Lance seemed to be affected by.
“Great, and Lance? I didn’t see much of you back there, but I guess that’s the point. Did you come out of everything alright though?”
Five minutes ago he would have answered with an affirmative yes, but now he felt as though the stream of post battle adrenaline pumping through his body had abruptly plateaued, if not stopped spewing altogether. His skin pulsed with a cold sweat that made his body shiver and his brain send signals that something wasn't right, which only served to confuse him further considering his friends proved to him mere seconds ago that he was completely being dramatic.
“Lance?” Keith called again, and if Lance wasn’t being distracted by the near constant waves of concern his lion was sending him, he might’ve picked up on the notes of concern laced into his leader’s voice.
“Uhhm…” For the first time probably ever, Lance had no idea what to say. With his body still coming down from the massive high that came from active combat, the leftover disorientation dulled whatever parts of his brain that were deciding to remain useful which made stringing together a cohesive thought almost impossible, forget forming a proper sentence.
“Everything okay? I can see from here that your face is cut up pretty well, but I don’t remember you running into much trouble back there. Was there something wrong with your visor?”
“I—yeah… I mean, no. My visor was fine, I just didn’t have it up and he got in a couple of good hits once he got past my shield—”
“Wait, he?” Lance didn’t know how to interpret the shock spreading across Keith’s features then, it looked wholly out of place on someone that certainly didn’t give two shits about him outside of leadership duties. “Are you saying your shield crapped out while you were fighting a galran soldier and not a sentry?”
“Yeah,” he croaked eventually, his voice small and rough. “I actually think I need a new one.”
“Why do you say that?”
The silence that followed was loud even compared to the ringing, the burden of expectation weighing on his chest as heavily as the galra’s boot had.
“Because it shattered.”
He doesn’t know why it was this particular admission that broke the dam of worry in their collective consciousness, just that all of the questions being fired at him after meshed with the mass signals of fear and dread he was receiving through their bond until it was the input from his worried teammates that was clouding his brain, and not whatever was alarmingly wrong with him.
“Lance, I need you to tell me exactly what happened when you fought that soldier.”
He was slower to respond this time, blinking hard and trying to orient himself for what felt like an eternity before he finally began again.
“I-I don’t really know… I’m sorry,” he rasped, the lump in his throat making it difficult to get words to work. “I just feel—I don’t how to explain it… just really off, I guess.”
Moving his mouth in a way that produced the right sounds was beginning to feel like a real chore with his jaw so heavy and his so mouth dry, like there was cotton stuffed between his cheeks and wedged under his tongue.
“That’s okay. It seems like you’re having a tough time remembering right now. Did you hit your head at all? Do you think you might have a concussion?”
“A concussion…” Lance mused aloud, not really understanding why that was a concern before he reminded himself that he was totally missing a handful of key events from the end of the mission.
“Pidge,” Keith started, the edge in his tone tinged with concern instead of irritation for once. “Can you pull up a larger visual of Lance for us?”
Lance didn’t know whether to be worried about that or annoyed. He didn’t need Keith to pity him for being stupid enough to get hurt, but then again, why would he bother with it if he thought he was only a little cut up?
“Already on it. It should pop up soon, give it a sec.”
He was pretty sure the screen in front of him was already beginning to change, but the lights on his dash stretched into a blur whenever he moved his head too fast, even when he tried to keep still and focus on just Keith’s face his vision wavered like it was shaking, or maybe it was just Lance that was shaking, but that still wouldn’t make any sense because every lion’s cockpit is temperature relegated, he shouldn’t be cold at all.
Lance could feel Blue mentally nudging him then, could sense her enveloping him with a firm calm over all of the signals from the other lions, how Red had been withholding control of the steering for a while and was doing the bulk of the piloting now.
A wave of nausea sapped the last bit of strength he had to keep his eyes open and he let them flutter closed without a fight, the flood of warmth that followed replacing his instinct to continue holding the joysticks on either side of his chair. His hands fell into his lap with a thud that echoed through another heady silence. He wasn’t sure how much longer he’d have been able to steer straight anyway.
“Full screen visual should be coming up now—oh fuck.”
“Lance.” Keith’s steady voice was the only one that broke through the flurry of frantic remarks that came after the entire view of Lance’s cockpit was available, because his team could now see the red that painted his armor and much of the floor beneath him.
“Do you know how long you’ve been bleeding from your side?”
“Bleeding? I’m not—I didn’t get, wait what do you mean bleeding…?”
Lance had only glanced down to examine himself to humor Keith, certain there would be nothing there, but his stomach roiled violently when he found quite the opposite to be true, and his subsequent confusion threatened to send him spiraling. He hadn’t felt a fucking thing, but the sheet of red flowing from the side of his armor in rivulets was indisputable.
“—ance! Can you hear me?”
He swallowed thickly, head swimming from the angle he held it at to peer at the grizzly sight over his chest plate. The threat of passing out was now a very real possibility though, so he brought his head back up to rest against the back of the chair slowly and trained his gaze anywhere but down while he fought the blood rush tempting his ability to remain conscious.
“Lance, I need you to focus.”
As soon as he was still again he became very aware of the fact that he was heaving like the air in his cockpit was running out, his gasping breaths soon turning into gags, something about seeing that much of his own blood making him immediately sick to his stomach.
“You with us again?” A low moan was apparently answer enough. “Good. Alright, now you gotta work with me for a minute. I need you to tell me if the soldier had a sword or a blaster?”
Saliva pooled in his mouth as he thought back on it and remembered glinting metal that swooped down on him in short, swift arcs. The solider had a very long, very serrated knife, not a blaster. He hadn’t even had the time to transform his own bayard to accommodate before the air was being squeezed out of his lungs under the weight of the soldier’s foot first, and then his knee while he slashed at him with all of his body weight behind the blows. Lance’s shield had not lasted more than four strikes.
“A knife. He—fuck, he had a knife.” The pressure in his head pulsed from the resurgence of volume to the point where he was certain enough fussing would have him gladly giving in to the black dots spotting his vision.
“Hey, can’t be that bad if you didn’t even notice, right?” He appreciated the sentiment, but Keith’s attempt to put him at ease was not working. Lance hadn’t noticed when it happened because he was quite literally fighting for his life, and then his utter lack of awareness and self preservation instincts cost him a horrifying amount of blood in the meantime, but what scared him the most was the he wasn’t physically with the others. He was going to die alone, and his friends would get to watch.
“Stop that. Stop thinking. All you have to do is focus on me and do as I say. Okay? You are going to be fine and we’re gonna make sure of it.”
“R-right. Um, what—what do I do though? We can’t just pull over. We’re in the middle of nowhere in fucking space and the castle is still so far away and what if I can’t—”
“You need to stop thinking about what you have no control over and listen to me.” Dragging his eyes from the holes they were burning into Blue’s dashboard to meet Keith’s purple saucers was almost impossible with how heavy his head weighed on his shoulders, but he managed it somehow. “You’re okay. There’s a med kit in the cargo hold and we can talk you through how to patch yourself up from here, alright? You’ll be fine. We won’t let anything bad happen to you.”
The ‘okay’ that quietly passed through his lips was small and uncertain, but Keith stared at him with all the confidence in the world. At least one of them was hopeful.
“Do you think you can stand? The med kit is on the wall behind you.”
Lance took a shaking breath, and then “I can try.” He scooted to the edge of the pilot chair and braced his legs on either side of the ever expanding puddle of blood beneath him so he wouldn’t slip as he rose onto unsteady legs.
“Shit...”
The world spun before him, the new orientation producing another swell of blood from the comprised bit of armor where he’d been—well, he didn’t even know what he’d been yet but he knew whatever it was wouldn’t be good. He forced himself to take a deep breath and blink away the static before starting for the back of the cockpit, suddenly immensely grateful that his hands weren’t slick with blood since the wall was the only thing keeping him upright.
“The kit is on your left.” Walking felt strange. His legs were weak and didn’t seem to ever go where he intended, but they held his weight even after he’d acquired the bulky med kit, though he had to use a bit more effort balancing it on his hip in order to lug it back to his pilot chair without dropping it.
He had to set the kit down before maneuvering carefully around the puddle of blood to get himself back in his chair, but once he was safely seated he began tugging off the top half of his armor, starting with the gloves and elbow guards which came off painlessly. It was only when he moved to the top most pieces that he ran in to some issues. He inhaled sharply when tugging on his right shoulder guard pulled at whatever was waiting beneath the armor on his side, watching as another horrific spurt of red welled at the puncture site.
“Just breathe, hermano,” Hunk reminded. “You’ve got this.” Lance nodded and took another deep breath before continuing. The left shoulder guard came off with little incident when he approached it with more caution and willed his hands to steady long enough to loosen it nice and slow without jostling anything else. There was just the chest piece left after that.
He got the clasps at the bottom and sides out of the way, then leaned forward to slide the back piece out. The front piece fell when he sat back against the chair, the sound of it scittering across the floor making Lance flinch. Not looking seemed almost more terrifying than looking once the wound was free. He choked on nothing but air when he finally bit the bullet. It was long and with jagged edges that ran deepest towards his back and tapered off in the middle of his stomach.
Lance remembered it now, that once the shield finally gave he threw his hands over his head and rolled out from under a hit that would have killed him had it landed. The soldier seethed at having to wrench his weapon from the ground, but it had given Lance enough time to ready his bayard before he was launching at him again.
He had spun on his heel, body twisting out of reach and arms swinging up into position faster than his mind could follow, it was all he could do to get enough distance between them so he could take a shot, but galran armor was designed to absorb blaster beams wherever it covered. Lance wouldn’t have survived if he gone for anything other than a kill shot, though he caught the impending strike in his side even as the soldier dropped to his knees, the blade cutting into him on account of his own momentum. He thought his armor had held up when he’d scrambled away from the corpse like the image itself had burned him.
“Okay, okay. Hey, you’re still alright. We’ll walk you through how you’re gonna fix it, yeah?”
Keith’s voice was farther away than it had been before, but it was still the loudest and clearest of his teammates, so he nodded. Not really hearing with all the cotton stuffed in his ears now as well, his eyes also not really seeing with the glaze that had fallen over them. The air in Red seemed warmer than usual, but it didn’t stop him from shivering now that the upper half of his armor was off, all of the heat in his body concentrating on the hole in his side.
“Pidge, do you think—“
“Yeah, I’ve already patched Coran in and he’s got a whole set of medical diagrams pulled up… okay, Lance, you ready?”
He attempted a ‘yes’ but his mouth was so dry he wasn’t sure he could separate his lips to speak so he hummed instead, his eyes wide and searching as he combed over the contents of the kit below him despite the mounting pressure behind his eyes that made keeping them open a challenge.
“There’s a vial of yellow liquid and a syringe, grab those… also the sheers because you’ll need to cut away what’s left of the suit around the wound.”
He grumbled at the thought of stabbing himself with a needle but seemed to shift into a sort of auto pilot after that. Having tasks helped him ignore the agony of the pulsing wound on his side now that he was aware of it, that was until he was holding the syringe up in front of him though.
The needle was massive and the liquid in the vial looked more like acid than it did medicine.
It was Allura interrupting his spiral this time.
“Lance, you can do this. It will hurt, but you will be grateful once you’ve administered it, trust me.”
“Whatever you say, princess…” he smirked meekly. Allura nearly laughed.
Once he’d cut away a haphazard square of material around the entirety of his wound Pidge explained how much of the liquid to pull into the vial as well as how much he should inject each time and where.
He allowed himself exactly five seconds to panic, figuring that he’d need to get a move on with everything since now he felt like everything was spinning when he kept his head perfectly still, so he steeled himself for the first of the numbing injections. It was to go right above his hip below the deepest part of the wound.
“Breathe buddy,” Shiro aptly reminded.
He waited for the peek of his inhale and went for it before he could chicken out. Turns out the needle going in wasn’t what he should’ve been wary of, the altean medicine burned like absolute hell.
“Oi joder!”
He squirmed and cursed the entire time it took him to push the allotted dose in and was practically seeing stars at the thought of administering five more of them.
“Relax man, you can do it.”
He pushed the next shot in quickly and started with another before his body could protest. The rest were administered in a similar succession because he refused to let himself think about how horribly it seared until he was finished. And when it finally was he threw his head back to keep from writhing so he didn’t make the wound worse.
“Agh, fuck, fuck. What the hell is wrong with altean pain medicine?! It hurts—oh fuck, it hurts so much more than the literal knife wound—“
“Shut up, you’re okay. You won’t feel anything soon. The hard parts over, but now you seriously have to relax, freaking out on us is only gonna make this more difficult.”
Lance apparently had enough energy to roll his eyes at Keith, but only because he was stupid for being right.
“Okay,” he huffed between panting breaths, “I will not freak out.”
His voice was trembling almost as much as his hands were now. He hadn’t meant to let go of the empty syringe, but there was no love lost as he watched it roll off of his chair to join his blood on the ground with an unnerving squelch. The pain in his side was diminishing slowly, the fire of the numbing medicine lessening to a cool sting and then smoothing out into a hollow warmth. He tested the skin around it with his finger until he couldn’t feel a thing.
“M’kay, what’s next?”
“Ha,” Pidge laughed grimly, “now you have to put your money where your mouth is and thread an actual needle.”
He couldn’t help but laugh at that too. The movement made something around the wound on his side twinge but he couldn’t really tell where with how numb it was now, which was probably a really good thing.
“The pack of needles is in a pouch on the side… look for one that’s curved… size 3–yeah, that’s it. There is a clamp to guide the needle and a tweezer-looking tool to help tie it off, grab those. Now you need a couple packs of gauze and tape… the spool of polyester blend thread—wait atleans also have polyester?! Focusing, right, sorry! Okay, next is the antiseptic… yeah it’ll probably hurt but you’re not croaking over galra germs if we can help it… sorry Keith, you definitely don’t have galra germs.”
Keith just pinched the bridge of his nose but Hunk seemed to be amused by Pidge’s compulsive rambling, the light chuckle smoothing the lines of intense worry etched into his features.
“You’re sure one of you can’t just do a quick little space walk over here?” Lance inquired sheepishly as he held up the bottle of antiseptic, “seriously don’t know how the mullet isn’t jumping at the opportunity to torture me, like come onnnnn! I know you’d enjoy it!”
“Shut up and listen to Pidge. The castle is still pretty far and Coran hasn’t been able to triangulate our location yet. And as far as we know the galra could still have us in range. We’ve gotta keep moving.”
Lance grumbled pitifully but looked to Pidge’s face on the dashboard in front of him and nodded in assent for her to continue.
“You ever threaded a needle before? The sewing kind not the almost killing your friends trying to show off your piloting skills kind.”
“Ha-ha and no, but i’ve seen my máma do it… something like this I think… hey, I got it!”
“Damn, he really can thread the needle.”
“Thank you Hunk! Finally some recog—“
“Both of you be quiet. Lance, listen to me very carefully because now you have to stab yourself with it. Lock the clamp at the end of needle, you’ll hear a click. You won’t feel it when you start stabbing—stitching, probably just the motion, but you’re still bleeding so you’ve gotta hurry.”
Lance was well aware that he was still bleeding. His body wouldn’t let him forget. The color had all but left his face and he was drenched in sweat. He also seemed to shake steadily now no matter what he did to try and calm down, no doubt a side affect of half of his blood being beneath him instead of inside of him. But he ignored it all and put his remaining energy into listening to Pidge.
“Start at the back where it’s deepest and hold the skin together… yep, good now bring the tip of the needle just below—left more, perfect. Coran says to angle it in the direction you want it to come out the other side… go as deep as halfway down the wound and don’t push too far in on the other side where it’s coming out… kay, now push it in, shit—Lance! LANCE!”
As soon as he had the needle situated as deep as it needed to go he lost the battle with how lightheaded he’d become. It had him slow and sluggish before but was now severely impeding his ability to remain conscious, of which he direly needed if was going to perform his own surgery.
It wasn’t so much the fact that he had just stabbed himself with a sharp object or even the actual piercing of his own skin that culminated with everything else for him to faint. More so the way he could feel it moving inside of him, and how he could tell that the metal was cold by how it stood out against the heat of the wound, just not the actual coolness of it or the pain part.
He didn’t know how long he’d been out when the voices of his teammates registered in his head again. They seemed worried, some of them distraught. Hunk was really scared about something, sounded a little mad the closer he listened.
“…if he doesn’t come around soon I’m going over there. See but that’s just it—well, I don’t care!”
“Just give him a minute!”
“Wait guys he’s moving.”
“Lance can you hear us?”
Everything was so loud but muddled and indistinct all at the same time. It was making his headache encroach on migraine territory and he wasn’t sure he could handle one of those with how much blood he’s lost already.
“Ugh, stop screaming…” he slurred, his voice sounding like it wasn’t even coming from him with how light he felt.
“Open you eyes, Lance. You’re almost done, come on,” Keith urged.
Almost done his ass, he’d passed out after the first pass of the needle. He hadn’t even finished a single stitch.
“The needle stayed in, you just have to get it through the other side and tie it off. Coran says you can space them out and skip a few, you just need to get it closed to staunch the flow.”
He hummed again and pried his eyes open wide, blinking around wildly before he tried to sit up. But his limbs were so heavy even lifting his arm to move was hard, so he stayed where he’d slumped down, shoving his legs out farther to get his middle straight.
“J-just through the other side?”
“Yes, where you have it now is fine… just pinch the skin and coax it through and don’t stab your finger like your about to, you’ll feel that!”
He wanted to laugh, he really did. Because this was so ridiculous. It was probably the dangerous amount of blood missing from his circulatory system that was making this so amusing to him.
Having to stitch a knife wound up while a lion flew him back to a castle that wasn’t really a castle—in space! All in space!
He wondered what he would’ve been doing back home if he weren’t here right now, probably nothing nearly as ridiculous, but he’d take anything to be back there no matter how boring.
“Lance, stay with us,” Hunk’s low voice pulled him from his mental tangent.
He rubbed his eye with the back of the hand holding the tweezer. It was covered in blood. Now salty tears too.
“You’ve got to tie it off, so just pull the thread through until only a little is left, about an inch—stop! Unlock the clamp and grab that last bit, wrap the end with the needle around a couple of times, not tightly. Release the lock on the clamps but keep a hold of the end of the thread, grab where it comes out the other side and pull through. Now pull tight and cut, good, done!”
He took in mouthfuls of air like he’d just finished a race.
Shit. This was hard and he just wanted to close his eyes and forget about everything. It didn’t hurt anymore. But he wanted to be asleep and not have to focus so hard on everything, let alone stitching his own wound closed while his friends tried to make him feel better.
Because they couldn’t. This sucked and they couldn’t help him and there was nothing anyone could do about it.
“You’re doing amazing Lance,” the princess remedied, her voice firm but soft all the same.
Hearing it made his heart swell with warmth, it was something he could hear his máma saying.
“Few more and then you can rest, bud.”
“Y-yeah, okay…”
It got increasingly difficult to keep his hand steady and after the fourth stitch he’d sort of gave up on trying and resolved to do them quickly like the injections once he’d gotten the hang of it. But his energy was leaving him faster than he could stitch. And then his heavy breaths and shaking hands made it hard for him to hold the skin together long enough to get the needle through, so eventually he resorted to holding his breath and flat out stabbing wildly.
His friends grimaced every time he did it. They all felt horrible that they couldn’t be there to physically help him but also knew how important it was to get to the castle as quickly as possible.
So Pidge continued to guide him through each stitch while everyone else praised and encouraged him every time he finished another one. Their voices were the only thing pulling him back when he’d drift off into the pull of darkness that continued to tease and toy with him.
“—ng so good.”
“Keep going, bud.”
“—re so strong, Lance.”
“Only a few left. Coran says it looks good.”
He coughed on the dryness that had made its way down his throat and felt like it was creeping into his lungs with how tired every part of him was. Breathing hurt. He had absolutely nothing left on his body that didn’t, but it was made so much worse with the strain of having to withhold air so he could get the stupid needle through.
The wound was mostly closed and not bleeding much anymore, even through the gaps where he’d forgone some stitches. He was at the part where it tapered. Pidge said it looked like one more would do and so he held his breath and shoved, whining when he poked his hand first by accident, and not even hearing what his friends were saying as he tied it off almost robotically, the muscle memory of having done it a dozen times now taking over as his mind remained elsewhere.
“—n you hear me?! Lance, Lance listen to me! You’re almost done, don’t go just yet.”
He forced his lidded eyes to find Pidge, barely able to make out her face with how blurry everything had gotten.
“Open the gauze pads and place them over the wound… tape the bottom and only the bottom down completely, then rip off a long enough piece for the top and sides… pour the antiseptic onto another piece of gauze, dab it over the wound, and press it all down before you pass out… got that?”
He huffed wearily and thought he did something of a nod, but it probably didn’t look like it because Pidge asked if he’d heard her again. He had. He was just done. He tore the gauze pads free form their packages and placed them over the wound before taping them down.
None of it looked pretty. Not the sutures, not the bandaging, none of it. But it would have to do. He opened the antiseptic, losing the cap in the process, but couldn’t find it in him to care.
He looked up at the screen of worried faces in front of him.
“Go on, bud. It’ll only hurt for like a second and then you can sleep.”
“You can do it, you just stitched your skin back together, this is light work.”
“Once again, altean medicine hurts like hell, but it works. Trust me, Lance.”
Yeah. Trust the princess.
He closed his eyes and waited for it. He really wasn’t sure how anything could top the numbing medicine, but the antiseptic sure did. His vision whited as soon as it made contact with his open and angry flesh. He thought he could hear himself screaming, but he felt too far away to be able to hear that.
He didn’t remember covering the wound with the gauze but apparently he’d gotten three sides stuck down before his head lolled to the side and gentle waves of assurance washed over him from Blue as everything faded to black. He couldn’t be sure how much time had passed between then and the next time he woke up, but he didn’t have the energy to ask. He just knew that he was still in Blue from the pulse of assurances that surged back up again as soon as he regained consciousness.
“Coran says he’s picking up Black on the radar, he’s opening up a worm hole for us now. I’m gonna fly next to Red to be ready to grab him just in case he doesn’t get the memo.”
Lance must’ve groaned because someone started talking to him.
“Oh! Not dead, that’s so good, hi Lance.”
Freaking Pidge. He might’ve laughed. He couldn’t remember.
“Hey dude… nah don’t try and move, just stay there.”
“Thanks for listening to us for once.”
“You should be proud of yourself that you were able to do that.”
Red sent out a mental message then that seemed a lot like he was trying to tell Lance to go back to sleep before he embarrassed himself now that he didn’t have mortal danger as an excuse to be an idiot.
“Course princes, anything you say,” he smirked and tried to hold up his famous finger guns, earning some laughs from his teammates that faded as quickly as they erupted.
Blue was the last thing on his mind when he passed out again. She was proud of him too.