Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“I don’t think it is working properly.”

 Suspended inside the healing pod, Pidge makes a disgruntled noise, amplified by the cushioned chamber. Despite the door having been closed properly and the paladin sitting patiently in the white suit, the glow that usually paints the pod’s insides, lights up only momentarily, before fading out into nothing. The pod isn’t working.  

“It’s not working”, the youngest paladin says as much again, looking grumpy and tired. Keith’s eyes linger on the badly bruised hand, cradled tightly in her other, and he can’t help but feel the phantom pain of it. 

“Yes, number four, I’ve heard you just fine” Coran signs.

“Maybe it’s the connection?” the princess says. The only indication of her presence in the room is the wild strand of hair sticking out beneath the floor panel, where she rummages through the fuses. It sounds a little like she’s demolishing something down there. “I don’t see the problem.”

“Maybe,” Lance starts from where he’s standing against the pod. “Let me see. If you can’t see it, my above-average observation skills could do the trick!”

“Or maybe, you just let her work ?”

“Hey, I’m just reminding everyone that I not only have ‘the charm’, but also my super keen eye, Keith!”

“Charm? You mean your, how do you put it, ‘exotic allure’?”

Allura snorts softly somewhere under them.

“Duh! At least one of us can get the ladies…”

 Before Keith can draw the breath necessary for a sharp comeback, feeling prickling in his chest to match the angry tone right there on his tongue, Shiro hums a slightly louder than usual “mmm”. He lets his arms fall to his sides as he approaches the pod’s sealed door. 

“Alright, let’s just get you out of there for now, Pidge.”

Keith knows how crappy it feels. 

Not so long ago he himself, when recovering from a particularly bad training in the Garrison, would curse having an injury that would keep him from doing his normal thing. Like eating. It was much nicer without having to wince every time your sore hand moved just a little. Or fighting, where wincing could get you another injury on top of the cracked limb. It just sucked.

 Knowing Pidge, with her constantly tinkering with computers, having to do that without your dominant limb will be as excruciating as hearing Lance in the shower. Painful for the mind. Devastating for the soul. Annoying. Traumatic…

Yet, when Pidge steps out of the chamber, a smile absent from her normally merry face, Keith can’t formulate the reassuring words he, kind of, wants to say. Maybe because Shiro looks like he’s got everything sorted out, walking in tow with her shaky steps, or maybe because Keith isn’t sure a, “Just don’t get it let to you” would be reassuring in any way.

 Still, he walks with them, trying to cherish the fact that Lance stays behind, looking down the open floor panel with his usual silly smugness. 

Before they exit the room, Keith hears his boastful voice rise again, and with it the whine of an annoyed princess down below. 

His first conscious thought is “shit”. 

 Keith’s against his lion’s seat, hot, wet blood slowly dripping from his head and onto the shaking floor as his strained eyes try to focus on the controls in front of him.

 Hard as he tries, he presently fails to visually distinguish the window from the floor, feeling a splitting pain in his head and shoulders. Worse yet, there’s a horrible weight pressing on his chest and lower body, a piece of the familiar metal that he normally looks up to. The ceiling.

It’s pinning him down to his seat. 

“I repeat, Keith, come in.”

 Even confused and possibly concussed, the red paladin easily identifies the urgent voice in his ear as Shiro's, and the noises accompanying his command as the whine and blare of a lion blaster shot firing up. Seconds after that, now in the space around him, there’s a flash of blinding light and the shockwave of a ship being destroyed. 

 Keith’s heart immediately starts beating a little faster, threatening to jump out of his chest.

“Hunk needs help. I’m taking your left flank, you go to him!”

 Shiro sounds focused, breathing fast, and the pain that encompasses Keith’s body fades a little into the background. 

As soon as he manages to push the heavy chunk of the ceiling off his chest with the one arm that isn’t weirdly numb, he breathes out a quick “You got it!”, and forces his sore self to work. They’re in a battle. No time to stay down. 

The huge metal plate doesn't let go of his chest and legs so easily, but when he does manage it through gritted teeth, his arms are free again to rest on the joysticks before him. Not waiting for any of the aches to delay him any further, he pushes forward, his lion blaring into life, flying past the now destroyed ship that hit them, lifeless.

 Through the blinding pain and with his body begging him to stop moving, Keith pushes Red through the asteroid belt to help his friend. 

 The next time he wakes, it’s from a nap he involuntarily had after patching himself up in the lion.

Well… Keith supposes a “nap” isn’t the right word, because he’s pretty sure he blacked out for a couple of minutes, after finishing binding his extremely sore ribs. The tiny clock on his dashboard right in front of the pilot’s seat confirms as much. 

Still, waking up, he faintly hears his helmet buzzing with comms activity next to the red-stained towel on the silver floor. He picks it up. 

“So, quesadilla?” Lance asks, sounding both tired and satisfied with himself. “I could kiss you if you made it for dinner, Hunk-man.”

“Well, sure. I could do quesadilla”, Hunk answers, voice matching that done-but-happy tone. ”Except imagine quesadilla with Altean ingredients only”

“ Eww !”

“Ugh, Hunk, what the hell?” another voice turns in. It’s Pidge. “Don’t let these heretic ideas out in the open! What if Coran knows what a quesadilla is?”

 Keith slowly picks himself up from the seat, letting a few of the spare bandages fall to the already messy ground. 

God …he’s going to have to clean this soon. 

“He doesn't!” Hunk laughs. “This stuff is earth-exclusive, don’t worry!”

As he walks through the cockpit, the numbness in his ribs persists. That and this uncomfortable headache wrecking his skull. 

After a short moment of laughter on each of the channels, a new voice perks up. 

“Ah! But I do, in fact, know quesadillas”, Coran clarifies.

 With that, the comms explode with shouts of protest, disappointment and something close to a wet, devastated cry, clearly coming right out of Lance’s channel. 

Keith puts everything to silent. 

His head is not letting him up on the way back up the castle tunnels. It feels like his mind decided that nausea and dizziness weren’t enough for him, so it gifted him a nice, persistent migraine as well. It fends fantastically with the sharp lighting of everything here, and even while he's used to waking up to the exact same brightness, that deadly combination of sensations makes his trip even more excruciating. 

By the time he enters the lounge, Keith’s exhausted and ready to call it a day. 

 His paladin friends are lying in various positions on the thin-cushioned couches, arms and legs sprawled around the room like ragdolls. Taking one look at them, tells Keith that the quesadilla idea was disbanded after all. 

Even Shiro, their fierce leader, is looking half asleep and half at him, a faint wave being the only gesture he can muster to greet him. Lance says something along the lines of an unmotivated, “Oh, look. It’s Keith. Our master pilot”. 

 Their ‘master pilot’ stands in the doorway for another couple of seconds, before sighing quietly, weary of his aching ribs. He tells them he’s heading off to sleep. 

Unsurprisingly, no one stops him. 

Chapter Text

“To your right!” Pidge shouts as a blade nearly misses Keith's abdomen. 

He awkwardly dodges the next oncoming attack his robotic sparring partner has for him, and jumps back once more, this time to launch himself and his bayard at another robot that’s creeping behind him. 

“Here’s a new one coming” he hears the princess announce, as a weirdly-shaped projectile is thrown his way, and almost nicks his head. 

He’s breathing hard, ribs in absolute anguish, head splitting in two still, but there’s no time to whine. Every stab and shove is a serious one. Even in training. 

 The newcomer bot throws the thing again, Keith now identifies it as a ‘boomerang’ hammer. It makes an arch, colliding with the space he was standing in just seconds ago. The paladin dashes over to where the robot stands, sword already making a horizontal arch to cut its thin legs off. The metallic limbs groan when the blade slices them apart from the body and his opponent crumples to the ground.

As his chest tightens painfully, Keith suppresses a groan.

 With only two left to fight, he forces himself to run faster than his still-tired body has any right to go and drives his blade into the back of the quickly turning bot with a sword similar to his. However, the similarities end there, because the machine's form is bulky and tall, unfazed by the sword sticking out of its back, and the paladin hanging from it. 

 Not suspecting to be launched across the room, Keith doesn’t have time to gracefully turn and roll on the ground, instead landing on the floor with the wind completely knocked out of his lungs. His back hits the ground hard and he slides across the ground uncontrollably. Suddenly he's right at the mercy of another enemy standing above him, its huge bat already descending toward him. 

And, look…

 If Keith woke up refreshed today, full of energy and with nothing to burden him, like lingering and excruciating pain in his entire body, then sure; he would dodge this attempt at murder in a tick. Keith was a professional. A seasoned fighter. 

 But this was not a good morning, and he was not in his peak form right now. 

He felt the bat hitting him to the left of his diagram, sending a very painful wave across his entire body, but also the distinct but soft crack of one of his ribs breaking and shifting. 

He shouts. 

With him, someone in the observation room shouts as well. 

A second later the room rumbles with a call-off command, and his robot aggressors walk away. Maybe to have a nice, relaxing shower, while he’s trying hard but failing not to write in pain. His mind refuses to register what is happening around him and soon enough, the sensation is so terrible, that it quickly paints his vision white. 

Then, just as various, quick footsteps shake the ground beneath him, and a warm, familiar hand on his shoulder stops him from moving any further, Keith feels the horrible feeling of air promptly escaping his lungs. 

He tries to take a breath to stop it from happening, but the pain of trying to expand his chest almost makes him puke. His heart races, breath is short and quick, Keith tries to keep calm, focusing on that warm hand gripping his shoulder, but he’s straining to listen to the voices around him. 

“Keith, calm down,” says Shiro, his face blurry where he hunches over him. “or you’re going to pass out. You have to breathe.” 

Keith tries to answer, his voice barely making it. By the third time trying to catch enough air, he gasps a very breathy, “Can’t”. 

Shiro’s face lifts up, disappearing from his short vision. It returns again after what feels like too long, even more concerned than before. He can faintly hear people talking to him and about him, but it’s so hard to focus on anything but his brother trying to help him. 

“Is it your ribs?”, he asks, his hand leaving his shoulder, as if he’s afraid he’ll hurt him. “Do you feel sharp pain anywhere in your chest?”

“Yes”, Keith manages to wheeze.

“Okay, hang on, Keith.”

Without the hand on his shoulder, he feels cold and shaky. It’s terrifying, how alone he is when he’s surrounded by an entire group of people loudly panicking because of him. Alone and like he has to face this problem by himself. 

 His panicked mind races, everything blurring together from the pain. 

 A new voice joins the others, this one much louder than any of the persisting shouting, and closer to him too. The chaos quiets down, and he can suddenly hear his terrible-sounding wheezes. A hand, a smaller one, returns to rest on his shoulders.

“Keith, focus on me.” he hears Coran, whose face materializes in front of him. “Do not breathe deeply. You have punctured a lung”

The words slowly register in his mind, and he almost frowns because not being able to breathe deeply is exactly what he can't do anyway.

“I am going to give you a fast-acting painkiller, you won't be able to feel your body at all.” The voices around them become loud again, as if protesting, or rather encouraging him to do it already. He feels the same, the pain having paralyzed his body, muscles spasming.

“Okay,” he manages to say, a clear tone of bewilderment and stress in his tone. 

Coran's hand feels very heavy against his shoulder. He continues:

“The painkiller will shut off your pain receptors completely. No big breaths, otherwise you’re just causing more damage."

He nods to the best of his ability, hoping that he'll jab him already. It's so hard to focus.

"Keith, after the painkiller, I’m going to punch a small cylinder instrument through your chest.” 

Just do it already, do it, do it.

“It's okay, Keith. Calm down”, Coran is now using both of his hands, holding them in front of him, like he’s a scared dog about to bite him. “You'll be alright.” 

Shiro’s there. He can feel him to his right. And someone big and warm is behind him, now gently laying a big hand on his head. His left hand is being held by someone small, someone with a bandage on their hand. Even Lance is there, he thinks. It must be him because he’s hearing stifled whines. 

Keith braces for the hit. 

“Okay, on three.” He closes his eyes. “One, two, thr-” 

Suddenly, Keith doesn't feel anything anymore. 

Not only not the pain, but also the the cold floor beneath him, and the reassuring presence of his team around him. He floats. 

“Alright, Keith. You’re doing great” Coran says, but it's far away.

Then, the air he wanted so badly, comes to him in a wave-like rush. 

He sucks in a breath deeper than he could before that, somehow trusting himself that this was the right indication that he can safely do that, and shit if this doesn’t feel great.

“Good job. Good job.”

“You’re alright, Keith. Breathe.”

The voices are like warm blankets settling onto him, making his already closed eyes, strangely unwilling to open any time soon. 

He lets the darkness take him away for a little while.

"Keith."

A voice slowly emerges from the depths of consciousness he's idly resting in.

"Keith. Keeeeeith."

“…”

"And I'm the sleepy one, guys?"

"Let him rest, man"

Barely at the corner of his awareness, a warm and soft feeling meets his limbs. Drowning in bliss, the paladin's foggy mind calls for more rest.

"Keeeeeith. Come on… Keith."

Someone is shaking his shoulder a little, but the touch, however gentle, immediately sends a paralyzing wave of pain throughout his side.

 Everything comes back to him in a sudden whoosh of awareness. Feeling like the infirmary blanket is swallowing him whole, Keith instinctively tries to rise up. The room's white ceiling shines in his face and now he knows exactly where he is, but the unexplainable panic pushing him doesn't let up.

 A warm, real hand and an agonizing sensation in his ribcage stop him when he's about to fall to his side. His breath escapes the injured chest, then refuses to come back. 

Somewhere in between him leaning left and starting to actively suffocate, Lance lets out a surprised shout, someone else springs up from their chair in the far corner, and the IV that was, apparently, attached to Keith, is unattached. He doesn't realize the latter until his eyes focus on Lance's face leaning a couple of centimetres away from his and the sound of the IV stand falling to the ground startles them both.

He's staring at his friend now, the usual sillness gone and in its place, a worried frown that dominates all over. His mouth is moving, and after the wave of pain passes on, Keith realizes that his teammate is apologizing. 

"I didn't mean to scare you." He says, voice high. "Breathe, man!"

Someone else is touching his other side, guiding him slowly into laying down again and his lungs can now take air in. He inhales sharply, trying to ignore the pain and momentary blindness that accompanies it. 

"Don't move too much, Keith." 

He does move, but only his head and only slightly to the left to look at Shiro. His closest friend is sitting beside the bed, metal hand firmly gripping his, and it makes some of the anxiety bubbling in him go away. 

Everything feels horrible. There is no way his ribs are not broken; at least a few of them feel out of place, pushing against his chest and skin. His right side is weirdly numb. With a throat dry from frantic breathing and a hurting head, if only slightly less than before, he's more than ready to go back to sleep and not wake for a long time. The cold and dryness of a healing pod is almost calling to him, but even with how crappy he feels, he still recalls the equipment being of no use to them right now.

"Hey," Shiro says, the cold hand squeezing a little. "Hunk went to fetch Coran. He'll check you over, alright?"

Keith refrains from nodding, somehow knowing that it would only put a strain on his aching head. His eyes follow Lance, as the blue Paladin stands up from his chair with a squeak, and runs a hand through his hair. The gesture is missing its usual flair, and it's obvious he's embarrassed. Shiro, over from the other side, shoots him a barely noticeable look of disappointment and seriousness, which he takes in with a wince. 

The doors to the infirmary open, as Hunk and their tall shipwright come running in. The big guy breathes heavily, looks at Keith, worried, and then sits down in the chair next to the entrance, waving a hand at him and muttering something he couldn't possibly decipher right now. 

"Ah, and there you are!" Coran exclaims, throwing his arms out towards him, and then, less enthusiastically gesturing towards the fallen IV with a stern gaze. "Mischief in every circumstance, of course."

He gathers the fallen equipment, swiftly exchanging the needle and readjusting the bag above his head full of… something. Before Keith can even say a word against Coran stabbing him with needles, he's done just that and is moving on to grab some sort of monitoring device and read it carefully. 

 To the right, Shiro smiles at him encouragingly, hand now gone, but his brother still close beside him. Lance sits with Hunk who, now collected after their run, observes him like a hawk. Keith tries but fails not to look a little overwhelmed by the sheer power of the paladin's motherly gaze.

"So," Coran starts, standing close again. "had a little accident in the battle, didn't you?"

Defining human physiology, Keith chokes a little on the air. His crewmates freeze in their seats. He instinctively lets his head down a little without realizing it, having no immediate answer to give.

"Well, you did, I think." He nods with sureness, looking at his tablet again. "Which you could have shared with us by actually telling someone you and your lion were damaged. Instead of, say, choosing to carry on."

Shit.

He feels like someone is scolding him for being a bad kid, and the clear memories of dozens of situations just like that flash in his mind. 

"I believe moving on like nothing had happened, and especially letting normal training continue was not only reckless…"

Coran's tone startles him a bit. He should be angry but sounds casual. 

"But it also led you to this , much worse injury.  It shows the lack of trust you have in us. Trust you don't have in me, as the ship's doctor." His voice sounds hurt now. 

"...Which saddens me greatly."

Keith visibly winces.

He isn't exactly sure what his deal is, but somewhere deep, he's certain he didn't want them to know. For what reason, he can't say.

A curtain of silence falls briefly over the room, the other paladins looking at the both of them, awaiting something. It's obvious they talked about this before, because when Keith glances at Shiro, he doesn't find a hint of surprise in his face, only his lips being pressed into a tight line. Lance looks just as unimpressed, if not a little angry and Hunk just stares.

 They talked about having this conversation with each other, presumably, yet he doesn't have an answer planned as to why he chose not to tell anybody. The apology that's near on his mind, feels insincere and unfitting. 

So he stays silent. 

 Shiro glances at him. He can feel it, though he's entirely focused on examining the shade of white on his bedsheet. He knows his brother is waiting for him to say something, anything . 

He doesn't.

"Well… alright," Coran speaks again. He's also not sure how to proceed, it seems. 

After a moment of stillness, the Altean reaches with his hand over to the bed, gripping the blanket slowly and raising it for Keith to see underneath.

"I had to do a 'little' surgery on you since we are still figuring out how to get the healing pods to work." 

 There's a thick gauze on his left side, wrapped in a bandage around his stomach. It's much stiffer than the rest of his abdomen, and it's clear now why he feels so weird. He faintly remembers the stabbing sensation he noticed earlier, right where Coran is pointing to.

"You have a chest full of fractured ribs, and one of them broke and pierced your lung. It was a mess too, so to say, rearrange back whole. It's all ready to heal now, but it needs you to take it easy." He directs his finger towards his chest in an accusatory gesture. "So no more running around with severe injuries. You're on bed rest." 

One look at Shiro again tells Keith all he needs to know. They are all pissed at him, and won't let him have a free hand while he's like this.

"I feel fine…" He tries, but a second passes and Hunk perks up from where he's observing him, saying with a dash of worried hurt:

"You're not fine."

Lance nods in agreement, which, for some reason, pisses Keith off. 

"I've dealt with this kind of stuff before." 

"We all did and that's why we know it sucks." Hunk notes. He crosses his arms. "You should stay here and rest up."

He almost wants to stand up to prove he can. His legs twitch at the thought.

"I'm fine, this is no-"

" Keith ." Shiro commands.

He shuts up. 

The black paladin is not looking at him. His eyebrows furrowed, arms crossed and his posture a picture of authority, he has his eyes closed and seems… angry.

It scares him a little.

"You screwed up, Keith." 

Oh…

He says it and it is plain and simple. That tone hits just in between nearly threatening and agitated. 

"We're a team. Supporting each other is our duty as much as it is to help the people. If you're planning on officially going solo, be my guest, but as long as you're a part of this, we can't let you just disregard threatening injuries. It's careless, and ignores what we stand for."

He's right. He absolutely is, but…

"We care about you, but there's no way we'll let you do as you please and get yourself killed in the process." 

But it's alright. It only hurts him…

"Broken ribs, sprained ankle. Never mind what it is. It's putting you in real danger."

It's okay . He can take it.

"And if you're out..."

"...If you're out and there is no Voltron."

…and he can't argue with that.

Chapter Text

It's been three days of laying restlessly in the infirmary. 

 He can't sleep properly; everything in here is making him anxious. The white walls, strong light, his bed standing among the others in a straight line along the wall. The bedsheets are the same as his, yet they seem rougher and less warm. He also misses the comfort of being alone in his room. But there's always someone here. 

Shiro comes by in the morning, when the team finishes training and breakfast, bringing him his plate. Until Hunk opens the door around noon, his brother keeps trying to talk to him, but Keith expertly fakes being too tired to converse. Sometimes he really is too tired to do anything but sleep, and Lance barging in around sixteen wakes him up from whatever nap he's having. Spending time with him was always something of a challenge. 

Now it's just pure agony.

"You want to play something?" He asks after Keith eventually decides he doesn't have the appetite to eat the goo Lance brought him. 

"Oh, what do you know?" He reaches into his pocket to reveal a small, round, watch-looking device. "I brought you a game from Allura. She says it's really like a teaching thingy, to spread compassion, but Keith…"

Keith looks up from where he was staring at the wall trying to decide if this room wouldn't look nice in red.

"Me and you both know you have plenty of that, am I right?" The paladin finger-guns the air with a wide smile. "And besides, when the thing is a little monitor with cartoon characters on it, there's no way it isn't a game."

"Lance…"

"Hmm, this is like that thing I had back when I was little. The remake thing of the old thing with digital pets and stuff. The one they ripped off from Japan."

"Listen I w-"

"Tamagotchi!" He shouts, doing a spin in his chair and grinning again. His booming voice is too loud for a room this small. "I used to love them back in the day!"

Keith can't take it anymore. Despite the persistent pain in his side, he turns his body towards him and gets up from his pillow to emphasize, briefly shouting: 

"Lance! Please just shut up for one. Second."

 He does. He falls silent for more than a minute, quite unlike himself and it almost makes Keith feel bad for shouting at him. An apology is at the end of his tongue, but wouldn't this idiot take it as a sign to continue talking? He thinks it's better not to risk it. So for the next one and a half hours, they sit in that anger-charged silence. 

 Lance is fidgeting with the little device, clicking and ‘aweing’ a couple of times, but says nothing otherwise. It should mean the possibility of sleep, but he just can't do it. Every time he doses off, something pulls him right out. 

When Pidge comes in the evening to stay with him, he's trying to preoccupy himself with studying the design of this weird "Tamagotchi" thingie he's left with. She doesn't try to talk him into explaining his current mood, the political situation of the world, or even his self-destructive tendencies. Instead, she just sits beside the bed, the computer on her lap as she types away with her one good hand.

 It then comes as a surprise to hear her actually answer a question, he’s spoken in a hushed voice and didn't even intend to say aloud:

"What the hell is this thing?"

She looks up, her glasses gleaming in the now dimmer, ceiling halogens.

"Oh, this?" Pointing at the device, grins awfully similarly to Lance. "It's an Altean Tamagotchi, I think…? You take care of that little creature on the screen. Make sure it's fine."

She takes it from him for a moment, and then, after no more than a second it returns to his lap, with the screen on and glowing slightly. 

Keith rotates it in his hand to reveal the green-gray screen displaying something similar to a bear, but highly pixelated. It's moving around.

"What for?" He asks, baffled by the idea that clicking those three, tiny buttons would be any fun. Pidge chuckles.

"Just because. For the same reason, people take care of dogs and cats and all the other animal pets." 

"Ah, yeah." He nods but still doesn’t get it. 

When she's leaving the room very late at night, Keith's head is comfortably drowning in the pillow. He waits until the doors close with the familiar hiss and slowly rises to his elbows. 

 He can't stress this enough; humans aren't meant to lay around all the time. Especially, when used to fighting and running for fun. He can't stay in one spot for this long, not when something is so clearly keeping him from getting rest. Something is off . He can feel it. 

 So after managing to sit on the edge of his bed and ease himself onto the floor, with only a small wince, Keith makes it his mission to leave the room and investigate. 

 It takes some time just to reach the door, but he ignores the initial discomfort of walking on numb legs and with a very sore chest and soon he's sneaking through the corridor. He knows Coran and Pidge love staying up late, but he'd seen the green paladin leave for bed, and Coran normally keeps to the deck. 

 His ribs ache. A voice in his head; maybe Red, or maybe just his intuition, tells him to look for the room, where he normally lands with an injury this painful. 

 The high ceiling of the pod chamber looms over him, as he slowly walks in the middle, breath a little short from the leisurely stroll. The room looks… as it normally does. It's white, empty and boring. Maybe a little… colder than usual? 

 Walking closer to one of the pods, he notices something different about it. The inner chamber is just as dark as it was the last time he was here, probably indicating that it still isn't functional, but now he sees a tiny, nearly invisible scratch on the surface of the doors. It's quite long and shallow and it really shouldn't make Keith think, but something about it just doesn't sit right with him. 

 The pod next to it, to his surprise, has a similar-looking scratch, or rather two scratches, in almost the exact same place. They run in the same direction too.

 Now onto something, he wobbles over to the other machines, seeing again and again the same, tiny marks and wonders, how and why they got there. And then it hits him. 

 He would laugh at the literal and the proverbial, but he's too busy literally sliding through the floor, body flung across the room. A sharp pain from being so suddenly kicked in the back knocks the breath out of him, for what must be like the fifth time this week. During the second of uncontrollable movement, he doesn't know what's happening around him. Only after his body abruptly stops on a pod across from the one he was just standing by, can he really see who's in the room with him.

 Two tall Galra are charging at him with their swords already swinging to cut him in half. He's almost too late to jump away when the blades meet, narrowly missing his neck. Keith rolls to the side, almost screaming out loud when the still vulnerable right side curls up. 

 He doesn't have his bayard with him and fighting injured and empty-handed is too stupid of an idea, even for him. But he can do very little at the moment, as the two soldiers try to get him again, one of the swords unfortunately reaching its mark. The cut, however, shallow and short, is hardly noticeable, given that he had worse before. 

 Full of adrenaline, jumping away, he moves back towards one of the pods. It's close enough so that when one of them attacks, aiming to chop Keith's head away from his body, the purple sword gets stuck in the metal. The cloud of freezing, cold air whooshing out of the crack makes both of them cough, but blinded as he is, he can still sense that the Galra is aiming to headbutt him. He ducks underneath him, leaving the feline to grunt angrily and throws his leg out to trip the other one when he's close by. 

 It almost works out perfectly, with the soldier not expecting him so close to the ground, he manages to bring him low enough to throw a punch to his face. What doesn't work out for him, however, is the weakness he feels the second he tries to rise up again. His ribs scream at him not to move anymore, and his post-surgery side is suddenly weirdly warm and wet. 

 A kick from behind, awfully familiar to the previous one, sends him on his stomach with a cry. 

"You little shit," The one behind him says, voice between normal and an angry whisper. "Quiet"

 He drives his knee into Keith's aching back and he's now actively pressing him into the floor, with what seems like enough force to crack his spine. The room fills with the hiss of the pod losing nitrogen and wheezes, as his diagram, pressed to the cold ground along with his chest, refuses to expand. Keith can barely hear anything through the panic in his mind and the anger that fills it. He tries to struggle out of the deadly grip, but he just earns himself having his head tossed against the ground. 

 His world spins and everything becomes blurry.

"You acted against the orders, fool." He faintly hears one of them say in a gruff, low tone. "What now?"

"Now I kick him for punching me in the face." The other one says, and he feels the boot on the side of his stomach before he finishes his reply.

 He can't help but shout when it hurts him like hell. 

" Quiet." The first one presses his face further into the ground, angry. 

 They argue he knows, but it's hard to distinguish between the rhythmic thudding of his heart. His ears ring, and at this point he just closes his eyes, unable to distinguish the edgeless forms anyway. He understands: "-uld kill him now.", and a newfound panic defies whatever warning the Galra gave him against making sounds, as he screams as loud as he can: 

" Help !"

 It's blaring and echoes throughout the huge room. Keith's mind is quick enough to form a plea for someone to have heard him, and then he’s too busy being in full agony again because the soldier holding him down snarls and presses his knee even further. He takes a handful of his hair and sends his head into the ground, again . 

With another shout on his lips, Keith’s world swirls and turns to the point where he’s sure he will pass out. 

He does. 

But… doesn't? 

“Keith!” He hears his name being yelled in a distressed tone, by someone who’s got to be Shiro. 

 There’s quick breathing and then the knee that holds him down eases, only for a big hand to take its place at his shoulders. He can feel something being pressed into his side, something he's sure is a blade pressed to kill. 

“Don’t move, or I send him straight to whatever hell you paladins believe in.” The gruff voice above him snarls. 

“Easy,” Shiro answers in a low tone, seemingly calm, but then there are different footsteps echoing in the room and in another moment the weight on him disappears. 

 He takes in a gulp of air, his chest finally expanding and it’s almost funny how strong the déjà vu is. 

 A loud thud, a bang and then another thud rings out in the chamber.

It’s obvious who’s on the ground with him now, but he’s still a little too disoriented to comprehend anything beyond a simple 'I’ll live’ in his mind. Still, he doesn't move an inch, not because it would hurt, but because it seems like all the energy Keith had, especially given his restless night, has left him completely. The shred of consciousness that keeps him aware is probably directly tied to those voices screaming his name. 

“Keith! Buddy, do you hear me?” Shiro asks, a little too loud for his aching head. Then, there are hands on his shoulders again, but they’re different. It’s his brother. It’s fine. 

“Is he alright?” That’s Allura, he’s almost sure. She’s to the right, as someone slowly gets him onto his banged-up back. “Keith, do you hear us?”

He does, although he can’t really say who is who, the forms swirling from side to side. Voice too distant to force out, he nods as he can, and succeeds, if not for the price of his head splitting open with another batch of pain.

“Coran?” Shiro asks.

“Get him to the infirmary. I’m right behind you.” Coran says, having appeared out of nowhere. 

 It’s all a blur. He’s lifted and shouts as everything in him protests at the movement. Shiro apologizes to him and hurries through the corridors. They arrive at the room Keith recognizes from the distinctive smell, and he almost gags at the idea of spending any more time here, but his brother sits him on his bed, careful and slow, while Coran runs around spewing fifty words a second. It's all a little much for him. 

"No, no, no." He hears Coran say very close to him. "Don't fall asleep yet, alright? You have a concussion, I need to check how severe it is." 

"Keith, hey." Someone else addresses him. He looks to the side, where Lance's lanky form sits beside him. "Come on, tell me what you think of the gift."

His fuzzy mind doesn't understand, so he asks, voice slurred and quiet. "What?" 

"The game," Lance reaches over to the nightstand. Then pushes the small thing into his hand and points. "Well, I see you haven't been feeding him. Poor guy's having it hard. Let me show you how to fix it."

 It's stupid. The screen's tiny, and the game is somewhat silly and repetitive. Yet, even with his self-proclaimed rival talking non-stop, for the first time in weeks, Keith is glad he's there to distract him. It's easier to focus on the Tamagotchi and not on Coran prodding and poking him all over. 

 Sometime after he's checked for a concussion and gets to see his doctor lose his marbles over how banged up his brain apparently is, he's helped to lose his shirt. Too tired to give a shit, he doesn't fight as the Altean insists on checking out the cut and the now torn post-surgery stitches. 

 It takes some time to get it all closed up, during which Shiro appears again, having left… at some point. He talks to him, voicing reassurances about the two Galra not being on their ship anymore. Well, he doesn't say they're "gone" necessarily, but Keith doesn't believe being dead constitutes being . 

His talking helps though, and the hand on his shoulder makes him feel a little safer. Somewhere in his scrambled brain, he promises himself to be tough and brave some other time, but not right now. 

 Overall, it's a bitch to get through and by the end of it, he's pretty much clueless as to what's going on. There are people moving around him, still prodding and moving him, talking to him and between each other. He hears running and alarms, slightly muffled by the closed doors, but it's all so weirdly distant, that it doesn't register as anything requiring his help. Besides, he very, very much, wouldn't like to get up right now. 

 It's been some time since his 'fight' in the pod chamber. Coran is still insisting he stays awake for just a little longer, from time to time placing a hand on his shoulder and urging Lance to keep talking. The Tamagotchi stuck in his hand gets warm from his grip on it, but he can't look at the screen anymore. His head hurts too much. Still, even so tired, he makes it his mission to stay at the very least aware in case something happens.

 The feeling that stopped him from sleeping these past few days is still there, strangely enough. Although Keith considers that it could be just the concussion talking.

 In the end, it doesn't matter, because after some more time passes, the sounds quiet down, and the only thing he hears in the room is the ghost presence of Coran and the mumbling of Lance. The doors hiss briefly and what could only be his teammates walk in, presumably everyone, judging by the voices present. He's still sitting up on the bed and when they come barrelling in, he quickly becomes the victim of a sudden hug.

"I'm so glad you're okay, Keith," Pigde says, holding him carefully and he feels so warm in her arms, that he returns the embrace with shaky arms. 

"We got them all." Shiro says. "They sabotaged the healing pod system. Actually quite clever."

"But it's not like they won themselves pity for that. All got a kick to their space-criminal arses." Hunk chuckles, close. "How are you feeling, Keith? Did they get you bad?"

 Keith has to take a moment to think about the answer. It's difficult to even keep up with the conversation, let alone be a participant, but he's still aware and under a comforting blanket and is that a new IV over his head and in his arm, pumping painkillers into his bloodstream?

 He manages, after a few dozen or so seconds:

"Nah, I'm alright" 

"Far from it, I would say." Coran argues.

"But… mostly alright." Keith tries again, words close to a mumble. 

"Keith, I know you're not much of a self-care guy, but man…" Lance begins. "Do get some rest now, please?"

He can't help but furrow his brows in a slow-acting bewilderment. "But I'm restin'?"

"Well, I mean," He frowns too, judging by the voice. "You just snuck out of the infirmary to fight bad dudes. You get injured twice, don't sleep, eat or talk properly in days, and then get kicked in the butt on top of that. Even I would just resign the whole 'must be a soldier, every minute of my life' for a tick."

"I am a soldier." Keith counters after a time too long to be considered normal for a healthy person.

"Lance means that we are justifiably worried about you," Shiro explains. 

 Well… he knows that. He doesn't quite understand why they care this much, but then again… he kind of understands now . This feeling he had constantly these past days; it wasn't just his self-preservation urging him to get rid of danger. He thinks it may be because he's not alone anymore… and well. 

 It's hard to form logical conclusions like this right now, but he's pretty sure that he cares for them too.

"Keith, buddy? You in there?" Lance asks after Keith fails to answer after half a minute. 

"I'm sorry that I didn't say anything about the injury." 

 It's a bit of a challenge to pronounce, given his twisted tongue, but he manages it in a slow manner that's met with unexpected silence from the group. 

"And for sneaking out.. just now."

He takes another breath, then exhales saying:

"Thank you for caring, even when… I’m such an ass."

 He knows they are looking at each other in what may be a pretty cartoony gesture. His mind feels tired having formulated these three, oh so complicated phrases, and now the pillow behind his back feels so much more comfortable.

No one says anything for some time, before a light female voice chuckles into the silence, voice cheerful: "It's quite funny you needed to be hit in the head to finally say it."

Her comment is met with light laughter, and he lets a smile tug his lips, too. She's right.

He’s sometimes too caught up in being… well, himself. 

“Keith.” It’s Shiro talking. He feels his supportive hand on his back again. “Thank you for letting us care.” And it feels like he means it. 

 Somehow, it tugs at his heartstrings a little and makes his stomach warm up, but he welcomes it all wholeheartedly. It honestly feels great.

“...As much as you protest to anything resembling help, though…” Lance notices. 

His team laughs and the atmosphere in the room becomes weirdly homely and warm. 

 Keith laughs too, regretting it in seconds, as the new and old injuries speak out, despite the drugs flowing through his bloodstream. The following wince is met with Coran’s worried murmur. 

 The older crewmate carefully grasps his shoulders and guides him into lying down, having buried the lad in what seems like another blanket. 

“Sleep.” He orders but adds: “I’ll be waking you up. To make sure you’re not dying.”

So he finally lets himself close his eyes for longer than a blink, and the rest that he tried so hard to avoid, comes to him easier than a snarky remark. 

 A vortex of quiet voices, the infirmary’s appalling smell, beeps and muted noises of the ship, his heart thumping slowly in his ears and that warm hand, holding him as if to make sure he’s alright, all eventually fade away, but…

 With his friends watching over him, Keith’s pretty sure he will be okay from now on.