Chapter Text
“Plant your feet – come on, you think you’re going to blow me away with a stance like that?”
Keith scowled, the expression familiar to his face, as he tried to do as Shiro demanded. “I can blow you away just fine,” he grumbled.
Shiro laughed, jovial without a hint of mocking, “As much as I’d like to see you try, we have a lesson to get through and I’m not going to let you distract me today.”
Keith’s scowl deepens but he does his best to listen, knowing it was ultimately easier to comply than try to fight with Shiro.
“Come on Keith, you’re top heavy! I could just push you right over.”
He scoffs, “No you couldn’t-”
His sentence cuts off as he hits the dirt with a quiet ‘oof’, Shiro standing over him with a shit-eating grin on his face. “Told you-”
Returning the favour, Keith turns on his back and sweeps his legs, catching Shiro in the shins and forcing him to topple down after him, Shiro grimacing as Keith returns the grin in kind, “Who’s top heavy now?”
Shiro shoves his shoulder good naturedly before stretching out on the ground, clearly taking the tumble as an excuse to enjoy the sun. A sharp breeze cuts between them, the coolness seeming to dance over his skin and ruffle his hair. It feels safe, a welcome embrace, but Shiro grimaces at the chill.
“Some firebender you are,” Keith teases, “Chilling so easy.”
“Instead of berating me, how about you calm the breeze so we can enjoy the sun?” Shiro suggests, cracking one eye open at him and raising a brow.
If Shiro hadn’t let his eyes fall back shut he would have caught the mischievous look on Keith’s face. Instead, he was woefully unprepared for the blast of frigid air that Keith shot directly at his face. The air whipped Shiro’s tuft of black hair until he looked like he had been hit by lightening, his mouth opening in a gasp which ended with his lips flapping hilariously in the personal gale. Keith couldn’t keep his assault up for long before crumbling into laughter, rolling onto his back and laughing up at the sky as Shiro tried to recover.
“Keith!” He cried, simply aghast as a couple tears escaped the corner of his eye from where the wind had chilled them.
“Sorry,” Keith said, his voice morphing into his terrible Shiro impression, “Guess I’m a bit top heavy.”
Keith couldn’t stop chuckling as Shiro scowled and swore vengeance under his breath, the pair enjoying a lazy afternoon of useless berating and chatter.
It was almost like a sick joke, the calm before a storm they had no idea was coming. One moment it was just the two of them each other’s company. The next, they were all the other had left in the world.
*****
Keith can move as a shadow.
He can move in the rustle of a breeze, feet light and ducking low with quick steps. He could make his way across the ground that had dried out in the summer heat and not draw an eye. He was silent, and unseen.
His unwanted company however? Not so much.
Despite Keith’s quiet steps and quick movements, Lance stubbornly seemed to keep up just fine. The waterbender crashed after him through the undergrowth, feet seeming to find every dried out husk of a twig to snap beneath his soles as he joyfully swung his arms in the afternoon sun. When there was a break in the trees above him he couldn’t seem to help but raise his face to the light and let his eyes flutter shut for a moment, paying even less attention to where he was placing his feet. The whole ordeal was setting Keith’s nerves alight.
It wasn’t like anyone was following him (well, except for Lance). They hadn’t seen even a hint of human life in the three days since the prison ‘incident’ – but while some may seem that as a positive, the silence in waiting for the other shoe to drop was threatening to drive Keith crazy. Every movement in the forest, every shift in the breeze made the hairs on the back of his neck raise up. He expected to be hunted down. He expected to keep to his shadows as soldiers marched past. He didn’t expect the silence.
Well, ‘silence’ wasn’t the right word.
Lance talked. It seemed that he felt the incessant need to fill ever waking moment with mindless chatter, trying to draw Keith into conversation or singing to himself in a tongue that Keith didn’t recognise. He talked about how nice the day was when the sun was shining, or how the rain felt during a drizzle the previous morning. He told him about Allura, and Pidge, and Hunk, stressing the importance of the Avatar as he tried to convince Keith to help him look for his friends and join up with them.
Keith tried to be silent enough for the both of them.
He didn’t like having the company. After so long alone, one may think that he’d enjoy the companionship, but it only drove him to stand by his choices of solitude. Sure, Shiro could annoy him sometimes in only the way a brother could, but he could also enjoy the comfortable quiet between them both, needing little more than body language to keep connected.
He and Shiro had moved around a lot, after Shiro’s parents had died. Seen a lot of the fire nation, crept through a lot of forests as soldiers carried out perimeter checks. The past few years they had existed beneath the radar, as shifting shadows that didn’t draw the eye, constantly searching for…something. They never had found out what that something was.
Then Shiro was gone, and Keith was alone. By himself all over again in a world where he shouldn’t exist.
And then suddenly he had a waterbender tagging along after him, complaining about how his feet hurt.
“We should take a break,” Lance suggested, playing up a limp as though he expected Keith to show him sympathy and give in. He did not.
“You can take a break,” Keith tells him roughly. “Since we’re not travelling together.”
“Aw Keithy, don’t be like that,” Lance pouts, using those frustratingly long legs to catch up to Keith in three strides. “When are you going to admit that we’re travelling buddies now?”
“Don’t call me that,” Keith grumbled, ignoring Lance’s following question.
It wasn’t like he hadn’t tried to get rid of Lance – the guy was frustratingly persistent. Keith must have told him a million times he wasn’t going to let himself get pulled into this whole ‘Avatar’ malarkey, but every time he did so Lance just shook his head in a patronising manner as though Keith were a young toddler throwing a tantrum.
He had gotten up early in the mornings, before the sun had begun to rise, and start on the next leg of his journey. He kept silent as he gathered his things, watching Lance sleeping soundly on the ground as though he didn’t have a care in the world. He would watch Lance’s even breaths before turning and walking away. He was silent, he was a shadow – he would melt into the forest and become one with it, passing moose-lions without them so much as swivelling an ear in his direction.
And yet, Lance would appear at some point in the early morning, stretching his arms above his head and yawning obnoxiously as he asked Keith how he had slept.
He would duck behind trees when Lance’s back was turned. He would disappear in the opposite direction when Lance needed to ‘go’. Hell, at one point he climbed a tree and hid amongst the unstable branches near the top which would sway in the breeze and make his stomach turn. He couldn’t even see the ground between all the foliage, yet there was Lance, standing at the bottom of the tree and shouting up to ask how long Keith planned on staying up there before they could get going again.
He couldn’t get his head around it – he was so careful, how did this keep happening?
So now his current plan was to exhaust Lance to the point he fell too far back to ever catch up.
If he wanted to, Keith could become little more than a machine. He could carry on without rest for days, without food – give him a few sips of water here and there and he was golden.
At present, they had been walking the entire night and well into the blossoming afternoon. Keith had stolen glances at Lance’s face the prior evening when he expected they would stop soon, only for his surprise to build and build as Keith continued to walk without offering explanation.
Keith had seen how quickly Lance could fall asleep, collapsing in the dirt with little ceremony before he heard soft snores of slumber: he suspected Lance would meet his match halfway through the night and give in to set up camp for himself.
So how the hell was Lance still keeping up with him with such ease? How was he still talking and swinging those arms and triggering every one of Keith’s senses to his persistent presence?
“It’s bad for your skin, skipping sleep,” Lance told him. “Not to mention you’re not taking enough water breaks – you’re going to be a wrinkled husk before you even reach 30.”
At present, wrinkles were the least of Keith’s worries. He case Lance a scathing side-eyed look, and said nothing. Nothing new there.
“Back home,” Lance carried on without so much as a pause to draw breath, “there are four months were we don’t see the sun at all. It’s so dark it can drive you mad – we have a fire in the centre of the village always burning so you can ground yourself when the darkness threatens to whisk you away. You can get plenty of beauty sleep then."
As always, Keith stayed silent and Lance took the quiet as an invitation to continue rambling about whatever story that had popped up in his mind.
“But then there’s the four months where the sun sits squarely in the sky and doesn’t so much as move an inch. You would think the continuous darkness would be worse: the blackness that could hold a thousand evils, drawing away demented souls to never be seen again. You’d be wrong though,” Lance says, casting him a quick look just to check that Keith was still pretending not to listen. “The light is far, far worse. I know people who have gone blind from the glare of the sun off of the snow as they try to keep watch of our village. I know those who don’t sleep for days because in the stark brightness time can stand still and they just don’t notice until they’re at the point of madness. I’ve watched a very close family friend strip off in the snow down to his undergarments and curl up on the ground spooning a polarbear-dog because he thought he was back home cuddling his wife – poor guy spent weeks trying to get rid of the fleas.” Lance chuckles and shakes his head at the memory, a smile in the corner of his mouth that Keith definitely doesn’t notice.
“My dad, he makes- he made a chart that Allura and I had to fill out every day. Making the rounds, checking if everyone was suitably rested, making them aware of when it was time to head to sleep. It was funny, all these grown adults needing told when to go to bed by two teenagers.”
You would think the continued silence would clue Lance in to the fact that Keith didn’t want to hear this, but yet he just carried on without a moment’s hesitation.
“We would spend days reinforcing everyone’s homes, doing our best to keep the light out so there was somewhere dark we could escape to, just to keep our sanity. In the dark, you can at least make light. You can spark fire and carry it with you, you can step outside and stand in the light of the moon and stars. But it’s hard to find reprieve from the glaring light – it permeates every thing and refuses to be shut out. It burns itself into your eyes and drives you mad with its detail until you’re twitchy and nervous, convincing yourself you can see something moving out the corner of your eye. My great-great-grandfather apparently went mad in the light, disappearing into the tundra to hunt down whatever beast he thought was plaguing him. No one heard from him again.”
You see what Keith means by ‘chatter’?
“Where did you grow up?” Lance asks with an easy tone, but Keith picks up on the motive beneath it. Lance does this often, tries to lull him into a false sense of security with his never-ending conversation before dropping a loaded question to try and catch Keith out. Its as though he thinks that he is owed a piece of Keith’s past, just because he can’t shut up long enough to stop sharing his.
Keith, of course, doesn’t answer.
*****
Lance sighs, perturbed but ultimately not surprised.
The almost-rattling silence that is ‘Keith’ still made him uneasy: even back home in the middle of the barren tundra, there had always been the voices of his extended family. Talking, laughing – hell, even hearing Kalin and Zarrah screaming at one another would be great right about now. The only time the South Pole grew quiet was when something bad was coming.
Allura always entertained his need for conversation, even if it was the odd nod of the head or ‘hmm’ in response. Pidge would tinker with her gadgets and half listen as he talked about whatever took his fancy that day, his words melding nicely with the sounds of metal working. And Hunk: dear, sweet Hunk. Lance could barely remember a time without the Earthbender in his life. They had connected instantly, getting on like a house on fire (perhaps a poor choice of words…). If soulmates were real, Lance had found the one that would fulfil the role of ‘best friend’ when he found Hunk. The big guy seemed to genuinely enjoy all of Lance’s chatter, listening intently and engaging with his own stories so it wasn’t so one sided.
After the past few weeks, thinking of his friends made Lance’s heart stutter in his chest: what he wouldn’t give for a patented Hunk Hug right now, or an awkward sibling moment with Allura. Hell, he’d even take one of sass-master Pidge’s debilitating comments right about now. He needed human contact to keep him grounded!
Instead, he was partnered with what may as well be a brick wall. Keith’s alien-silence made Lance uneasy – he loved to make connections with those around him. Everyone back home were basically family, regardless of genetics – he had never spent so long with someone without making some kind of connection of friendship.
He found himself thinking of being back in the prison. Yes, it was a horrifying few weeks (which ended in a particularly horrifying final day), but Lance was ever the optimist and couldn’t help but think of the short conversations he and Keith had shared.
He hadn’t imagined it, had he? He and Keith had actually talked once, right? They had made some sort of connection – how else would he have ended up here?
It just seemed like guard Keith was a different breed to whatever this was now. Keith had put a wall up between he and Lance, and no matter how hard Lance tried he just couldn’t seem to breach the defences.
He knew why though. In the prison, Lance was just a nobody in a cell that Keith felt sorry for. A nobody who would never see the outside world again: it was safe to let your defences down with someone who couldn’t tell the world about the real you, who you could leave in their cell safe and secure when you turned your back.
Now Lance was a whole person – and, worst of all, he knew one of Keith’s secrets.
Lance couldn’t believe his luck that he had managed to stumble upon what was likely the only airbender in existence – what were the chances? An act of fate was literally the only explanation: they were meant to find each other and team up. Lance was supposed to reunite with his sister with Keith in tow. He was supposed to finish her training, let her finally be able to fully progress onto earthbending, then somehow learn firebending (they’d cross that bridge when they came to it), before Keith stepped up as an airbending master and taught her the ways of his nomadic people. He was the final piece in Avatar Allura’s training before they could fully unleash her and let her save the world.
It all was supposed to be simple – remember, it was fate.
So why was Keith dragging his feet so much? It infuriated Lance to no end – their course of action was so clear, yet it was like Keith could see the path set out before them and was squarely turning around and heading in the opposite direction.
Lance had considered if he should just admit failure and branch out on his own, finally meet up with Allura to make sure her waterbending was done and dusted – she wouldn’t be learning airbending until she had mastered the other three elements, they had time to find Keith again when she was ready.
But, since leaving the South Pole, Lance had learned that the world is a big place. The years he had spent looking over his father’s maps had not truly prepared him for the sheer size of the place. Journeys that he thought would take hours took days – imagine his surprise when he found out that the journey to the North Pole was apparently going to take them months, not the few weeks they had originally thought when they left home.
So Lance knew that he couldn’t let Keith out of his sight. The guy was frustratingly slippery; if Lance went off to find Allura he knew he would never see the airbender again. He had kept himself hidden away this long, the chances of Lance finding him a second time were pretty much non existent. Something told him this would be the only time their timelines would intersect, and if he missed this opportunity he would never have the chance again.
Frustration would nip at his nerves to get back to his friends and let them know he was okay, but he had to tamp the feeling down and get on with his main objective. He wasn’t the only waterbender in the world: that was, after all, why they wanted to get to the North Pole. Lance could call himself a 'Waterbending Master', but that was a self-appointed title since no one else at home was available to proclaim such a thing. He wanted to quality check his abilities, and make sure that Allura knew all she needed to.
“You have to get to the North Pole, Lance…”
The last words his father had said to him after he made Lance promise to get them to the North. Lance had blinked, the entire situation bringing panic as he heard the shouting of his people as they stepped in to keep the firebenders from where he and Allura sat in their small village boat. She was out for the count, slumped heavily against Lance after her hair and eyes had stopped growing an ethereal white.
“There’s no hiding her anymore,” his father said, lowering his only daughter into the fishing boat and stepping back to give Lance the room to follow her. He settled on the rocking floor, his father passing over a bag with supplies that had been packed and ready to go since Allura and Lance were merely children. “She’s unleashed - you both need to get to the North pole before it’s too late.” Alfor looked up, squinting in the blinding whiteness of the blizzard that Allura had summoned. “Shield the boat in the storm, Lance. The firebenders won’t be able to find such a small vessel – especially once we’re through with them.”
“I should stay – I can help-” Lance pleads, beginning to rise to his feet but gently pushed back down by his father.
“You have to get to the North Pole, Lance. If you don’t…I fear the imbalance will topple the entire world.”
“I can fight-”
“You can keep your sister safe,” Alfor says sternly, cutting off Lance’s pleas. “You have to leave together, and look after each other out there.” With this he stands straight and roughly kicks the boat, jolting Lance and Allura as the boat slips off the ice to bob freely in the water. “Get to the North Pole Lance,” Alfor repeats, reaching to his back and pulling his long favoured weapon into his hands. He looks down at the carved piece of wood wistfully, a silent goodbye before tossing it across the growing expanse of water between he and Lance. “And keep good care of my trusty boomerang!”
Lance was speechless as his father turns and runs into battle, pulling at the sword that he kept strapped to his waist. The boomerang is cold in Lance’s hands, painted the blue and white of his tribe, the weapon seeming too large in his hands.
He wasn’t ready – he couldn’t do this. He felt like a child, small and weak with one of his dad’s most treasured possessions in his hands. Just a kid, sent off to play at war and tag along with his sister who was supposed to save the world-
Allura shifts at his side, groaning and screwing her eyes shut as though she had a migraine. Lance looks down at her face, pinched even in dosing sleep, as the wind shifts and the acrid scent of burning reaches his nose. He looks towards home and sees dark plumes of smoke, reaching into the sky to taint the pure white of snow with its soot. He looks to home as it burns and imagines his father, his aunts, his uncles and cousins and second cousins and the village great-great Uncle Alluro that no one was quite sure who he was related to. He looks to the only home he’s ever known, and turns his back on it.
He shields them in the storm, floating lost in the ocean until the calm of night where he can navigate using the stars he had peered up at his whole life. They determine North, and he urges the currents to take them there-
Allura needed to get to the North Pole, and Lance was supposed to take her there. His father knew that they needed to find an actual waterbending master, and make sure Step One of Allura's avatar journey was completed correctly. Lance had to honour the last duty his father had given to him.
But, as much as he wished he could do just that, he was stuck looking at the big picture.
Allura could find a waterbender in the North without him – she would have options instead of being stuck with her frustrating sibling - but she wouldn’t be able to find an airbender in any which direction. It hurt to betray his promise to his father, but Lance knew he couldn’t give Keith up.
So he would stick with the sour-faced airbender, and eventually wear him down until he accepted Lance’s demands. After that, they would finally get this show on the road.
*****
“Keith,” Lance said in an uncharacteristically stern tone, “I think it’s time that you accept that you’re stuck with me.”
Keith glared at him, face scrunched up in irritation. He had truly thought he had managed it: they had walked until he saw Lance literally nod off whilst walking and barely stop himself before colliding with a tree. He had agreed to set up camp, waited for Lance’s expected passing out, listened for snores of deepening sleep before getting up and moving as fast as he dared. He had turned back on the direction they had came from: he didn’t care if he lost distance in this seemingly never-ending forest, he would happily walk in circles if it meant he could finally be rid of the waterbender.
So how in the ever-loving FUCK was Lance here?
He had almost gotten his hopes up: the night had passed, the sun had risen. The birds were singing and the trees were rustling and Keith was finally alone and could hear it all and he thought he had done it: he was finally, mercifully, alone and could actually start formulating a plan.
And then Lance-
“Will you stop stewing, wipe that stroppy look off your face, and just admit that this is happening,” Lance snapped, arms crossed across his chest. Keith blinked blankly at him, this foul mood unlike anything he had seen from the waterbender. Well, except for…
“I mean it,” Lance interjected his thoughts once again. “Right here, right now, you are going to accept that we’re travelling together. Then we’re going to set up camp and you’re going to let me get a decent sleep for the first time all week!”
“Why is this so important to you?” Keith huffed, leaning his back against a tree and mirroring Lance’s crossed arms.
Lance…couldn’t believe it. Really – was Keith really asking that? Was he seriously asking Lance this question, which he had surely answered a million times by now?
He couldn’t take it: he screamed. Literally, he opened his mouth and let loose a wail of frustration that made Keith’s ears ring and caused several nearby birds to take flight in their fright. He stood in place and shouted into the universe, looking ready to either tear his own hair out or sock Keith square in the jaw because of just how goddamn dense he is!
Keith’s eyes widened at the vocal assault, eyes darting around them in fear that Lance was summoning every firebender within a five mile radius to their position. “Lance-”
But Lance didn’t stop: he held Keith hostage with his screaming, close to turning blue in the face and yet no closer to stopping-
“Fine!” Keith found himself shouting, simply wanting to be heard but ultimately adding to the cacophony. “Fine, you win! We’re travelling together – now will you stop?!”
Like a fitting toddler who had gotten their way Lance shuts his mouth and smirks at Keith, clearly pleased with his performance. “Thank you,” he said, the previous days of frustration piling into his words. “Now set up your stuff, and get some goddamned rest before I snap and end up strangling you.”
This wasn’t Lance snapping?
Something about the idea of Lance getting even worse than this terrified Keith – don’t think of the prison, don’t think of the prison – so Keith did as he was told, too frazzled by the personality shift to argue. He settled down on the ground, the sun searing even through closed eyes with a silent promise that he would never fall asleep like this, as Lance carefully watched on.
Clearly satisfied, Lance collapsed onto the ground. “Good night,” He snapped at Keith pointedly, watching until Keith turned onto his side as he did when he was getting comfortable for sleep.
Sated that he had broken through Keith’s thick skull, Lance let himself fall into slumber. That day and a half of straight travel had worn him down, and the fact that Keith had tried to be so sneaky as to run off once he finally allowed Lance some rest? That was the final straw.
He fell asleep, the dry dirt of the forest floor feeling like the most luxurious bed. For the first time in days felt like he could allow himself to truly rest, confident that he would wake up to Keith still being present in their pathetic excuse for a camp.
*****
Lance was right to be confident. Keith may not like sticking around, but ultimately he was a man of his word. Not to mention he was exhausted as well: he had thought he could out manoeuvre Lance, and yet his every attempt had failed. He felt ready to give in, and follow Lance into a sleep that looked so appealing from over here.
But Keith couldn’t sleep.
First of all, it was the middle of the day. Secondly, with Lance in such a deep sleep it didn’t feel right for him to nod off: they were out in the open, completely exposed, and the sunlight only seemed to set a spotlight over them both, highlighting their presence to any soldiers that may come along. And thirdly, Keith had probably over done it. By this point he had pushed his body far past the normal point of needing to rest, so now that he had the opportunity to sleep he didn’t have any physical cues from his body to follow. He felt wired and twitchy, his brain too overtired to calm down and let him lull off.
He sat up and combed through his hair that was probably getting far too long, fingers catching in tangled and greasy strands.
He should sleep…when Lance woke up they would probably be on the move again, Keith determined to find Shiro with Lance determined to convince him otherwise.
Keith watched the waterbender where he slept, half curled in on himself on the floor, a forearm tucked under his cheek acting as a pillow. Even in sleep, Lance looked tired: Keith let his gaze brush over the dark shadows under his eyes, darker and deeper than anything Keith had seen from their time in the prison.
He may have tried to forget it, but Keith couldn’t help but see the evidence of Sendak’s beating on the waterbender. Lance’s lip had formed a scab over where it had split under Sendak’s fist, a horrible purple bruise ringing his neck that was beginning to fade into a sickly yellow at the edges. His breaths were shallow and careful, and it was only now that Keith realised Lance’s back was twisted in a way that couldn’t be comfortable, clearly doing anything he could to keep pressure off of ribs there were bruised at best but, far more likely, cracked and aching. And then there was Lance’s clothes…
It’s funny, how the prison seems like a distant dream right now – well, perhaps the use of ‘nightmare’ would be more apt. The stilted conversation between the two of them, the strange connection that had put these events into motion. The look in Lance’s eyes as burning met Keith’s nose, the flash of flame, eyes of pitch black and water the colour of-
They hadn’t had any spare clothes to change in to since their escape. Keith was comfortable enough in his undershirt, trousers and regulation boots, but he hadn’t stopped to consider Lances comfort – why would he, the waterbender wasn’t even supposed to be with him. But now he looked, and he couldn’t shake it.
Lance’s traditional clothes from home were well past ruin. If being left to stew in them for a month straight hadn’t been enough, being covered in the blood of Keith’s former colleagues certainly pushed them to that point. Though now the blood was long dry, staining a deep brown like rust that was cracking and peeling in particularly thick areas. The fabric must be stiff and scratchy, likely irritating skin beneath it as they both hiked through the woods-
It was Lance’s own responsibility, and Keith really didn’t care – but he couldn’t help but feel at least somewhat guilty for never letting the guy have a chance to clean up.
He really, really didn’t care-
Keith rolls over, not looking at Lance anymore but instead watching the woods from his tilted position. He thought about Shiro, and what his next step was in finding him, and didn’t think about what he was supposed to do with a waterbender that had effectively chained himself to him. Hiding in the woods was nice enough, but sooner or later they would need to find a village: they were in serious need of supplies and a change of clothes, not to mention Keith needed to find a new starting point for his search.
He closed his eyes and thought of all the things he needed to get done and, before he realised it, he had managed to fall asleep.
*****
Keith wakes and it is blissfully quiet: the afternoon has passed, and the stretching streaks of sunlight across a pinkening sky tell him that it’s evening. Not enough sleep to replace the hours he had willed himself to postpone, but still a good start.
He stretches with a quiet groan, enjoying the crack in his back and sitting up to pull ground foliage from his hair. He pauses, unsure why the quiet unsettles him before realising its because his unwelcome travelling companion was no where to be seen. Where he had last seen Lance deep in sleep was vacant, and for a second Keith lets his hopes rise at the idea of Lance finally having given up and moved on.
What breaks his fantasy is the odd flickering blue glow he can see dancing on the bark of trees to his left. He’s not sure what he’s seeing, but his gut tells him the waterbender has something to do with it-
He stands, giving himself another satisfying stretch before walking towards the strange glow, treading lightly so as not to give himself away.
Lance isn’t far: the pair of them had taken their afternoon naps not far from what sounded to be a babbling brook. The rush of water had been a constant in the back of Keith’s sleeping mind, continuous but subtle so that he didn't actively notice its presence, and its only now he realises how parched his mouth is.
The dimming light of the evening reflects off of water and Keith darts behind a tree trunk, peering around slowly to spy on Lance.
The babbling brook is more than a simple stream of water: in front of Keith is a short waterfall where the stream topples over to land in a rippling pool below, gathering in the secluded spot before trickling over the edge to continue on its way. It’s peaceful, the running water creating the effect of white noise that he feels he could relax into. Instead he presses his body to the trunk of his hiding place, too focused to let the water lull him-
He’s caught sight of Lance, and his breath has stilled in his throat.
The waterbender is in the centre of the pool with his back to Keith, the water coming up to the boy’s waist where he stands balanced on rocks thick with algae. He is shirtless and, if the pile of drying blood-strained clothes laid out on the rocks are anything to go by, the waterbender isn’t any more modestly dressed beneath the water. He wobbles slightly, almost losing his footing before righting himself again, his palms tracing invisible shapes into the rippling water around him.
It’s not like Keith has never seen a half-dressed man before – no, what makes him pause is the glowing-
Lance’s hands move and trace their shapes, and the water responds in kind, the edges lapping at Lance’s torso and raising up over his skin where he directs it. Every droplet within a metre of the waterbender glows a pale blue, spotlighting him where he stands as he raises his palms and draws an orb of water from the brook. With practised ease the orb settles against his chest and spreads to envelope his torso, glowing that same calming blue.
The water touches Lance’s chest and he sighs audibly, loud enough that Keith can hear him even over the crash of the waterfall. The tense muscles of Lance’s back relax, his shoulders drooping as the glowing water seems to pulse against his skin. Lance’s head tips back and he watches the peaceful sky above him, feeling better than he has in days-
“What are you doing?”
The words are unexpected and, frankly, very nearly give Lance a heart attack. His focus snaps and the water falls away from him as gravity takes back over. He spins in place with wide eyes, barely spotting Keith before his toes lose grip on the slippery rocks and he falls. His head dips beneath water and he jumps back up with a spluttering gasp, treading water as he splashes and tries to regain his footing.
“Keith-!”
“What are you doing?” The airbender repeats, watching Lance with a critical look as though the waterbender were about to grow a second head.
“What does it look like?” Lance scoffs, managing to get his feet back under him. He pouts, running a hand through his now wet hair as he scowls at Keith. “Now I need to start over – I was just managing to breathe without being in agony.”
He begins to start the process of imbuing the water with a healing energy again before catching the quizzical look on Keith’s face. Lance rolls his eyes at him, his concentration ruined once more as the faint glow fades away.
“Look, I know I’m a guy,” Lance says, the hairs on the back of his neck bristling. He’d received that look plenty of times, along with passive aggressive comments about his masculinity from members of his tribe who had outdated views on what jobs men should and shouldn’t do – not that they were ones to complain when they slipped on ice and broke a hip. At that point they were Lance’s best friends, telling him just how grateful they were for his help. “But I’ve got a gift for healing and, really, who would turn that opportunity down just because they don’t have a pair of tits?”
Keith blinks, neither prepared for Lance’s irritation nor processing it well. “What?”
“I’m self-taught,” Lance tells him, “But it works. And my ribs are killing me – I don’t have time for your judge-y looks nor your misogyny. Especially as I half suspect you were just on your way to sneaking off again and had the misfortune of stumbling across me.”
“I-I wasn’t sneaking off,” Keith says dumbly, Lance no longer looking at him as he frowns down at the water and wills the blue glow to return. “I was looking for you.”
Surprise crosses Lance’s features, a lone eyebrow cocking. “Oh really? And what for?”
Keith shrugs, feeling sheepish. “Just wondering where you…” He feels his words trail off into nothing as he watches the water raise up over Lance’s chest once more. As he had suspected the skin there was mottled in horribly dark bruises that promised the crack of bone beneath them, but as the water raised Keith watched as the bruised flesh too began to glow. It wasn’t instant, but even from this distance Keith could see the dark purple begin to abate and fade to a paler blue.
With Keith’s silence Lance dares a look at him, hands firmly kept in place to keep his connection with the water, and is surprised to find genuine curiosity and awe on his face. It’s strange, seeing a look so endearing set over features that were usually hard set as stone, and suddenly Keith’s previous question seems to click in place.
“You don’t know what I’m doing?” Lance asks genuinely.
“I said that already,” Keith grumbles, eyes still glued to the glow. He feels like if he looks away – if he blinks – those bruises will disappear and he’ll have no proof of what was happening. He had to watch it for himself, make sure he wasn’t hallucinating as the flesh changes colour.
“I’m healing,” Lance says slowly, gauging Keith’s reaction. “My ribs – after Sendak? You’ve been so focused on your march the past few days I haven’t had the chance to sort myself out. I hope you know that it’s been agony.”
“You’re…healing?” Keith asks, the words sounding ridiculous on his tongue.
“It’s a skill waterbenders have,” Lance tells him patiently, like he’s giving a lecture to a toddler, finally catching on to Keith's curiosity. “Well, some of them. We can infuse the water with our chi, redirect energy to areas of the body that need it and fast track healing. It can really come in handy.”
If he wasn’t watching just that happen with his own two eyes, Keith isn’t sure he would believe Lance. Sure, he had heard of some subsets of bending – hell, he had seen Shiro redirect lightening away from their house during a storm – but he had never considered that other nations would have similar additional skills as well.
“I thought everyone would know about it,” Lance says, drawing a large droplet up and having it roll out into a long strand in front of his face. The strand moves closer, winding itself around Lance’s throat until he wears a glowing blue choker over the dark marks from the rope that had tightened on his throat days beforehand. “It’s not exactly a secret.” Even as he speaks, Keith can hear the rasp leave Lance’s throat, the damage of Sendak’s commands fading away with each passing second. “Apparently, before the war, people used to travel to the North and South poles from all over to meet our healers.”
Keith shrugs – Lance might think this was common information, but Keith couldn’t exactly trust his point of view when he came from a tiny village in the middle of a barren wasteland. In school they had discussed the other bending disciplines to a point: earthbenders and their stubbornness, waterbenders and their content-ness to hide away from the developing world. Airbenders with their heads up in the clouds-
He had been taught about the other disciplines, but now he suspected the Fire Nation’s teaching syllabus wasn’t representative of the cultures themselves.
What else didn’t Keith know? Did his airbending hold similar secrets, untold potential that he would never discover because the entire culture had been wiped out?
“Sorry,” Lance says, seeing the genuine interest on his face and regretting his knee-jerk reaction. “I thought you were trying to make fun of me.”
“Why?” Keith asks.
“Because healing is apparently something for the women to do,” Lance says, his tone of voice morphing to match qualities of a generation older than him. “Men do the fighting, women the healing.”
“That doesn’t make sense,” Keith says, thinking back on his time when he used to watch Shiro’s firebending classes from the sidelines. The women stood in line just the same as any other man, all fireballs created equal regardless of gender.
“Tell me about it,” Lance barks out a laugh. Before now, a laugh like that would have made him grimace in pain. But now it only makes a small crease appear between his eyebrows as he redirects water to centre on a particularly sensitive spot over his sternum. “Especially when it was coming from 90-something year old Asdef: ‘back in my day,’” Lance imitates the lilting tones of the old man perfectly, having had years of experience as he and Allura mocked whatever nonsense had come out of the man’s mouth. He waggles his finger at Keith disapprovingly, his other hand coming to rest on his hip, “ ‘Men were men and women were women. You shouldn’t waste your time with such hobbies – you’ll end up a sissy..’”
“Sounds like a charmer,” Keith remarks, still not quite understanding the divide that Lance came from. “So why did you become a healer?”
“Because I could do it,” Lance says bluntly, like it was a stupid question to ask in the first place. “I was good at it, and I could help people while doing so: that’s a win-win.”
“Sounds like Asdef was just jealous then.”
Lance grins at that, the smile lighting up his face. “Who wouldn’t be? One look at this, ladies and gents alike can’t help but swoon.” He abandons his mission of healing then to flex his muscles ridiculously, his lithe frame not quite managing to live up to the display he was putting on. “Isn’t that why you’re travelling with me?” Lance asks with a waggle of his eyebrows, “Because you can’t get enough of the gun show?”
Keith scoffs good naturedly, rolling his eyes.
Lance beams under Keith’s attention: it may just be a roll of the eyes, but it was the closest to joking that Lance had managed to get with him. He feels his motivation to break through Keith’s walls return with renewed vigour now that he was most of the way healed – not to mention the half-decent night’s sleep he had managed to snag was doing him a world of good. He almost felt like himself again, washing away the events of the last few weeks like he had done with the blood in his clothes.
They were still stained a deep brown, but they were at least clean.
‘I rustled us both up some lunch while you slept - caught some squirrels for me,” Lance tells Keith, the glow of the pool dimming slightly as Lance let himself relax in the water, letting the healing properties ease the tension out of his muscles. “For you, I could only find things that look kind of like they’re potatoes. Though, they’re a fluorescent green so I’m not sure you should actually eat them…”
Keith raises an eyebrow, “Can I not have any of the squirrel?”
Lance looks oddly aghast, a shocked hand raising to his chest. “You’re an airbender dude – meat is murder!”
“Then you eat the potatoes,” Keith snaps at him.
Lance blinks blankly at him, mouth gaping open. “But-”
“Not raised in the culture,” Keith shrugs. “In the Kogane household, we ate anything that could remotely be considered edible. Beggars couldn’t be choosers.”
“Your parents couldn’t cook?”
The hairs on the back of Keith’s neck bristle, the question loaded with the opportunity for Lance to pry into his past.
“Nope,” He says easily without hesitation, not willing to elaborate. Lance deflates somewhat under his tone, but carries on regardless.
“Then there’s squirrels and potato-things for both of our lunches,” Lance says, trying not to screw his face up at the idea of consuming the strange green tubers. “I’ll gut and prep them once I’m done here-”
“I can do it,” Keith offers, walking over to where Lance had left the food he had collected over the morning.
“You don’t need to-”
“It’s fine,” He says curtly. “You find it, I cook it.” He’d appreciate some time alone to think, to process his travelling companion’s permanence and work out what they were supposed to do next.
“Are you sure it isn’t too ‘meat is murder’ for you?” Lance teases. He may be trying to object, but he hadn’t made a move from the water that glowed just as strongly as before.
“Meat is murder,” Keith says, hefting the supplies into his arms. “I’m just someone who would murder in order to survive.”
Lance laughs nervously, watching Keith with wary eyes. “That almost sounds like a threat,” He says uneasily, trying to keep it light.
Keith shrugs non-committally, grinning to himself as he turns and hears Lance’s splutters of indignation after him.
*****
Another reason Keith didn’t like travelling with others: he doesn’t like to share.
His stomach growls with a ferocity he wasn’t prepared for as the squirrel roasts over the flames. He feels on the brink of a feeding frenzy, ready to grab the meat and eat until he couldn’t move anymore: it was his own fault: after barely eating the past few days of travel, he had a gaping hole of hunger in his gut and he just wanted to fill it.
But, he had to wait for Lance to return and share their meal in a civilised manner. It wouldn’t be fair for him to eat it all, especially as Lance had been the one to actually track it all down for them. But still, it was frustrating to have to stop himself and wait.
The green tubers were beginning to look edible: while a fluorescent green raw, when roasting they had darkened in colour and charred at the edges. If he told himself that they were just green sweet potatoes he could believe it – he just hoped they tasted half as decent as his imagination promised.
“That was heaven,” Lance hums as he plops down across from Keith, water still dripping from the ends of his hair. He looks like a new person, those horrible bruises that had plagued his skin these past few days now erased as though they had never even happened. His clothes are still stained red, damp and clinging to his body, but he looks so much brighter and happier than Keith had ever had the opportunity to see before.
“Lunch is ready,” Keith says gruffly, removing the food from the fire and placing it down on a large flat rock between them. They divide up the food between them, both silently wishing there was more on offer than what sat between them and beginning to eat before they could let themselves complain.
“Bit overdone, Keithy-Boy,” Lance says around a mouthful of tough meat, breathing around the roasting flesh burning his tongue. “Knew I should have cooked it myself.”
“Just eat,” He grumbles, getting the food down him. It didn’t need to be good, just edible enough to not give them food poisoning.
“Man, I miss Hunk,” Lance says, speaking obnoxiously with food still in his mouth. “The man was a god: could make a gourmet meal over a couple bits and pieces he found in the forest.”
“Then go travel with him.”
Lance frowns at him, sticking a tongue out before returning to his lunch and his story. “This one time- oooh, the stew he made. It was just…” He raises greasy fingers to his mouth to kiss the tips and flourish out into a chef’s kiss. “To this day he won’t tell me what animal the meat came from: but honestly, I couldn’t care.”
“Sounds like a great guy,” Keith says non-commitally, not enjoying the small talk.
“Oh, the best.” Lance continues on unfazed, clearly feeling better as his ability to chitchat returns with vigour. “He’s the sweetest earthbender you could ever meet – I don’t know how he does it, apparently you need a lot of stubbornness to move rock. But Hunk…he’s just so kind, the earth probably can’t help but move for such a sweetheart. And then there’s Pidge, who certainly has the attitude of an earthbender…”
Keith nods along periodically as Lance chats, not entirely paying attention as he looks down at the remains of the meagre meal they had just shared. It barely touched the sides, and if there wasn’t the proof in the bones left at his side he could have convinced himself they hadn’t eaten at all.
“We need to get supplies,” Keith cuts in bluntly, not aware that he had just interrupted Lance’s tale of how he met his Earth nation friends. “We can’t carry on like this, we need to get a move on.”
“Well, I know Allura, Hunk and Pidge will-”
“You want to travel with me,” Keith says sternly. “I’m putting up with that because I have to, but I am not wasting my time looking for your friends just because this Hank knows how to cook.”
“It’s Hunk,” Lance says with a frown. “And I was just suggesting it as they’ll likely have a cache of supplies we could take advantage off.”
“I am more than capable of taking care of myself,” Keith tells him. “If you can’t, then feel free to go back to your friends.”
Lance’s frown deepens, but he doesn’t rise to Keith’s bait. Instead he casts the remains of his meal aside and claps his hands together, standing up and pushing his still-damp hair from his eyes.
“Well then,” He says, looking down on Keith. “We had better get a move on.”
*****
“No.”
The word is said with a no-nonsense tone that, frankly, Keith wasn’t expecting.
“Yes,” He says with a roll of his eyes, “We can’t get far like this.” He makes a point of gesturing between the outfits the pair of them are wearing.
“No way,” Lance presses, crossing his arms stubbornly across his chest and glaring at Keith. “It’s not right, we can’t just-”
“Just what?” Keith asks, peering at him from the corner of his eye. Ahead of them the forest edge thins out to reveal a farmhouse, quiet at this time of the day. To the side of the house hangs a collection of freshly cleaned washing, drifting in the afternoon’s breeze. Not to mention their luck of them being firenation clothes, deep red cloth fluttering in the breeze: if they wore those, no one would dare question them out of fear of harassing a firenation citizen who had enough money to move to an Earth Kingdom colony. “You left the South Pole how long ago, and are still wearing the clothes from there?”
“I didn’t need-”
“You are in enemy territory,” Keith points out. “And you think it’s a good idea to walk around in broad daylight wearing waterbender clothes? That would be bad enough before what happened at the prison. We could be getting hunted down right now, and you’re just making it easier for those after us. And if that’s not bad enough, those clothes are covered in blood!”
Lance pouts, still displeased. “It’s fine-”
“It’s not fine.” Keith really doesn’t mean to snap – in fact, he wouldn’t even call his harsh, clipped words a ‘snap’. He just wanted to get Lance to finally agree with him so they could get a move on – the farmhouse seemed deserted, but who could tell for how much longer. If they were to take advantage, they had to do it now-
“Keith-”
“You’re covered in blood, Lance!” Keith says incredulously, “And I can still be identified as wearing a fire nation guard’s uniform, which may look a bit suspicious to be wearing out of work.”
“We can just stick to the outskirts-”
“I’m not going to track my friend down hiding in the shadows.” Keith felt the irritation threatening to take over as he argued with the waterbender over something as miniscule as stealing a couple of outfits. “You’re being stupid – quit being an idiot and get a move on!”
“We can’t just steal…” Lance bites at his lip, worrying the flesh between teeth as he looks at the washing that seems to taunt him in the breeze. He could understand the need for new clothes, but stealing…it was wrong, and the mere thought made his skin crawl.
When you grew up in a small close-knit community where everyone had to work so hard for everything they had, the idea of stealing didn’t come naturally: the mere thought was leaving him feeling slimy, his stomach knotting uneasily.
“We can,” Keith says shortly. “Because, if we don’t, we stick out like sore thumbs and attract the attention of every fire nation soldier within a three mile radius. It’s a necessary evil that I’ve accepted – if you can’t get with the program, then you’d best just stay here and hide in the forest until a kind-hearted spirit takes pity on you and blesses you with a brand new outfit.”
Keith is tired of inaction, of standing in the shadows having a nonsensical argument, so instead of waiting on Lance’s retort he quickly scans the area and takes off, sprinting to the clothes line. He’s already identified a couple pieces that should fit him nicely: he’d still need to wear the pointed boots of his uniform, still a risk of him being identified, but it was an improvement on his current shirt and trouser combo.
He moves quickly and without hesitation, not looking to his indecisive waterbender as he runs. The clothes come easily off the line, the taught string pinging as he roughly pulls at the fabric before he’s running again, forwards and amongst the shadows of a copse of trees to hide him from view. He breathes heavily out of his nose, fabric scrunched firmly in his grip as he hears running feet joining him.
Lance looks ragged, face flushed and hair in disarray from worryingly running his hands through it as opposed to physical exertion. In his arms he grasps almost too many articles to keep hold of, arms straining around the large pile of fabric. When Keith turns he sees the washing lines now completely barren, Lance having picked them clean of every item.
“What the fuck Lance!” Keith asks with astonishment. A couple bits of clothing may not be immediately noticed, but an entire load of washing disappearing would surely draw attention a lot sooner than Keith would like. “What is wrong with you?”
“I panicked!” Lance gasps, his tone certainly reflecting just that. “I-I just acted. I didn’t know what would fit, what I would want to wear-”
“Five minutes ago you were fretting about taking so much as a sock,” Keith hisses. “Now you’re cleaning these people out so you can put together a fashionable outfit!”
Lance looks utterly miserable, disgusted with himself as he shrugs pitifully. “I didn’t know what to do.”
Keith breathes out slowly through his nose, then promptly begins to pull at his clothes to get undressed. “Get changed so we can get out of here,” He says briskly, watching past the copse to ensure no one was headed their way.
“But I-”
“Get changed,” Keith growls. “Pick whatever outfit you want. Just get changed so we can go.”
Keith turns his back and changes quickly, hoping Lance gets with the program before he blows a gasket.
He was correct in his assumption of the outfit he had grabbed – the trousers are black and plain, form-fitting to his legs nicely and tucking neatly into his boots. A sleeveless shirt replaces the stained prison uniform, black like the trousers but with a red trim at the edges of his shoulders and neck. His hands reach into his pockets and pulls out a pair of black leather gloves with no fingers and, since he has them, decides to put them on. They fit like, well… and there’s a part of him that likes seeing them on his hands, almost like he suits them if he was shallow enough to consider how he looked when dressing himself. He looks down at himself, satisfied with his choices: it fits and looks unremarkable on him. Frankly, it’s perfect.
Only when he turns back to Lance he pauses, looking over the waterbender’s new outfit and raising an eyebrow.
Lance had gone less unremarkable and more…well, markable. He’s kept his Tribal boots as there wasn’t an alternative choice, tucking in red baggy trousers that somehow accentuate the curves he has on what Keith thought was a skinny frame. A cropped top of the same shade hugs his chest, the fabric tied taut at Lance’s back and the edges stitched in yellow thread. He hasn’t noticed Keith watching him, too busy fighting with a maroon sash that he thinks is supposed to go around his waist but how-?
Keith huffs in laughter and, before he considers his actions, he’s stepping forwards and taking the sash off of Lance rather than watch another moment of him struggling. Deep marroon in colour, like his crop top the edges are lined with yellow, the end embroidered with the flaming emblem of the fire nation. He winds the sash around Lance’s waist, laying it so it looks like a skirt from the back but gathering into the front, with the tail hanging down showing the embroidery. Keith had seen his mother tie similar pieces over the years – better to do it correctly than have it catching people’s attention.
It’s only when Keith is finished that he realises that Lance seems to be holding his breath, and he sees just how close they’re standing, sees how his hands are still resting on Lance’s hips-
He flinches away like he’s been shocked, turning quickly to hide his reddening cheeks. Since when did he not avoid other people’s personal space?
“Er-thanks?” Lance croaks after him, unsure of what just happened. He looks down and sees the sash and, despite himself, has to admit that however Keith managed to tie it looks correct: he’ll need to remember to ask for a lesson. Probably shouldn’t rely on more of Keith doing it for him…
“Ready to go?” Keith says gruffly, avoiding Lance’s eyes and tucking his discarded clothes beneath a bush to his side.
“I think so…” Lance says, looking down at himself clad in the red of the fire nation. It feels strange, like wearing a new skin where no one will recognise him for who he is, and he looks at where he neatly folded his clothes from home.
Keith sees the indecision on Lance’s face, and decides to try to derail the train of concern he can see pulling out of the station. “You couldn’t keep wearing them if you wanted to find your sister. If she has any sense, she’ll have done the same long ago.”
Lance nods silently, strangely feeling the urge to cry and doing his best not to do just that. It felt like he was leaving a piece of himself behind, hidden from view as Keith takes the initiative and the clothes join his guard uniform beneath the bush.
“Come on,” Keith says with a gentleness he didn’t plan, not liking the wispy look on the waterbender’s face. “We need to go.”
Lance nods, ready to follow, when he actually takes in the outfit Keith picked for himself.
“You had an entire washing line of clothes to choose from, and you went for that?” He asks, taking in the drab attire his travelling companion had selected.
Keith shrugs. “It fits.”
“It’s boring.”
“No it’s not,” Keith grumbles, pointing to the red edging detail. “Look, its even colourful.”
“I…I can’t,” Lance scoffs, turning to peruse the selection of washing he had grabbed in his panic.
“What’s wrong with this?” Keith starts feeling strangely self-conscious in a way that is entirely foreign to him. “It’s better than your outfit.”
“My-my outfit?” Lance spins back to him, red fabric clasped in his hand momentarily forgotten as he points a finger at Keith. “My outfit is comfortable yet fashionable, practical with a healthy dose of style. It is both parts elegant and functional.”
“It’s for girls,” Keith says matter-of-factly.
Lance sputters, not expecting Keith to be as childish as to say he looks girly. “Just because you don’t have a fashionable bone in your-”
“You are wearing clothes designed for women,” Keith tells him matter of factly before he can really settle into his tirade. “My mother only ever wore those trousers because they were ‘comfortable yet fashionable’,” He says while making a show of quoting with his fingers. “Not to mention your top has room for boobs.”
Lance scoffs, “It does not-”
“You’re lucky it ties in the back,” Keith says with a grin, finding himself dangerously close to chuckling. “Even luckier that the girl who owns it apparently has a flat-chest!”
The look on Lance’s face is just too good to bear, cheeks raising a rosy pink and him grasping for words to say yet ultimately failing. His hands flail, that red length of fabric in his grip trailing in the breeze he generates, and Keith can’t keep his laugh to himself. It’s a short burst of sound, rounded off with a jovial shake of his head, yet Lance’s spluttering ceases and his huffing and puffing is replaced by a small smile.
“You’re just jealous that I’m pulling it off,” Lance tells him with a smirk, and Keith just rolls his eyes. “And you’re the lucky one, having me around to fix your fashion choices.”
Lance steps forwards and wraps that length of red fabric around Keith’s waist like a belt, tying it off at the corner of his hip so the ends will sway at his side as he moves. He reaches down and runs his hands over the material, noting embroidery and stretching it out between his hands so he can appreciate the image etched in black thread: a feline face with long pointed teeth, an intimidating stare even conveyed in thread.
“It looks like a lion turtle,” Keith remarks.
Lance’s eyes flick from the fabric to Keith’s face, “A what?”
“A lion turtle,” Keith says to him, thinking of the stories his mother used to tell him before bed. “Giant beasts that live in the ocean with entire islands on their backs. Apparently they once housed and protected humanity from unruly spirits. Or so they say, anyway.”
“I’ve never heard stories about them,” Lance says, peering closer.
“Probably too cold for lion turtles in the South Pole.” Keith just means it as a statement, but is surprised to hear Lance start laughing at what he’s said.
“Probably,” The waterbender agrees with a grin.
They’re in another strange moment, like when Keith fixed Lance’s sash, like the air is being charged before the beginning of a storm. A moment that makes the world dull around them, that leaves Keith unsure if he should draw breath, that makes him notice just how close Lance is standing-
There’s a loud bang of a door slamming, before a feminine shout of “What the-Mazu, I thought you told me you would hang the washing out!”
Both Keith and Lance freeze with wide eyes, turning back to the farm house to see the woman retreating back into her house to likely give this ‘Mazu’ a scolding for not doing as they were told.
“I think it’s time to go,” Lance says, Keith nodding in agreement and already moving.
He doesn’t notice Lance hang back for a moment, moving the clothes he had folded so neatly into clear view of the house and scribbling ‘thank you’ into the dirt with the end of his finger. It wasn’t much, but he felt like he had to do something for these people who had unknowingly, and unwillingly, helped them.
But it was well past time for them to go, so Lance didn’t hang around before jogging to catch up to his marching partner, doing everything he could to not think about the pile of blood-stained cloth he was leaving behind him.