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Don’t go down without a fight, promise me.
Keith is halfway to unconsciousness when the tendrils of his last conversation with one of the paladins wakes him up. He shakes off the fatigue from laying down on the metal floor, backbones popping as he straightens up. His only chance of staying alive lies in staying awake. It doesn’t matter how much blood he’s lost, or how much his ribs seem to hurt.
Keith needs to live, if not for himself, then for the only family he’s had since he was an infant. He can’t abandon Voltron.
With a grunt, Keith leans against the wall of his prison, hand shooting out to clutch at his ribs. He groans quietly, head banging against the metal. Keith stares up at the ceiling and takes stuttering breaths to try to calm down. It barely works against the backdrop of the Galra ship against his shoulders.
He heaves a gentle sigh, careful not to screw up his ribs more than they are. Keith needs to make a plan. Shiro shared with them the pattern of the Galra patrols when guarding prisoners, and Keith would like to say he remembers it, but it’s only at the edges of his memory.
He scrubs a hand down his face, eyes momentarily falling shut and remaining shut. The exhaustion from his wounds, and the lost adrenaline from his fight, are enough to make Keith want to sleep for three months and not wake up.
Don’t go down without a fight, promise me.
Keith groans, tapping his head repeatedly against the metal. Of course he wasn’t going to go get captured by the Galra without fighting first, but what happens when he gets captured? Is he supposed to keep fighting? How can he keep fighting when he feels like shit piled upon shit?
Don’t go down without a fight. Promise me.
“Fucking Fine,” Keith gasps against a shooting of pain on his side.
He counts the electromagnetic bars making up one side of the box he was shoved in, reaching eleven before his eyes cross and he has to close them. The last time Keith felt this bad was his first week away from the Garrison, where he went three days without food and scarce water and was probably also suffering from mild heat exhaustion.
Keith thinks about something else. Anything else. He thinks of Pidge, who is probably having a race with themselves to see which hand is fastest on a keyboard. He thinks of Hunk, sick with worry over their failed mission and Keith, stuck bleeding his life out in a Galra ship, of all places. He thinks of Shiro, probably announcing orders in a voice that is booming but not a shout, beside Allura, who pilots the ship to his rescue like a shimmering queen. He thinks of Coran, running around the control room, putting up defences and shooting blasters.
Keith thinks of Lance, whose voice was the last thing he heard before he fell. Whose tone was panicked and desperate as he said don’t go down without a fight, promise me, when he realised that Keith had truly gone insane and had gotten too close to the Galra to fly away or be rescued.
He thinks of himself, an idiot who got stuck inside a prison of the aliens that have destroyed countless lives, including Allura’s and Coran’s, including Shiro’s. He thinks of Pidge’s family, who were ripped apart by the Galra and whom they haven’t yet found.
Keith thinks of all these things, all these people, and he feels the dull ache in his chest expand to something raw and red, sliding around his ribs like blood and clutching at his heart like veins. His eyes prickle, and he squeezes them shut so the two tears leak from his eyes as quickly as possible. He wipes them away. No one in this ship has gained the right of seeing Keith at his weakest.
With a quivering sigh, Keith rests his head against the cold wall and wills his emotions to dig themselves a hole in his chest cavity and die there.
He closes his eyes. This hell will soon be over. He hopes.
…
Keith is woken up by the distant sound of an explosion, and he startles hard enough that pain trails into his senses from his ribs, and then, a prickling heat spreads over his body as he realises that the guards that had been just meters from his prison are gone. A little disbelieving smiles sneaks into his lips when he hears shouting, the distinct sound of Pidge chewing off Lance, and a huge boom from one of the boys’ blasters.
A moment later, the door separating Keith from the rest of the ship is opened, and in run the paladins. Each one of them wear different levels of distress on their faces, with Hunk’s being the most and Pidge’s the least, already focusing on hacking the Galra servers to lock the door behind them.
Keith coughs and blood splatters on his hand. He still manages to croak, “Guys…”
“Keith!” Lance shouts, sliding down on his knees when he reaches the prison, and blasting away the control panel of the electromagnetic bars. Instantly, the bars disappear and then Lance is there, right beside Keith, looking over his body with growing concern.
“How bad is it?” Keith murmurs.
Lance meets his eyes, and what Keith sees there says all. “It’s fine, just fine. Listen, I’m going to carry you the rest of the way. Don’t move too much, and for the love of everything holy, press onto the wound on your side and don’t let go. At all.”
Keith nods.
Lance heaves, and scoops Keith up in his arms. Keith briefly remembers holding Lance in his arms, a half-delirious and half-unconscious Lance. He can’t help but find it funny, being cradled in Lance’s arms after everything.
Keith grins slowly, enough for Lance to look down at him as the rest of the paladins hurry about, “What’s so funny?”
“You’re cradling me in your arms.”
Lance gives Keith a watery smile.
“Are you crying?”
“No,” Then, “Shut up.”
Keith half-closes his eyes, only enough to feel Lance shut his helmet glass completely, enough to feel the oxygen trickling in. He sees and hears only enough to process the frankly terrifying image of Hunk shooting a hole through the wall of the ship, only for the hole to be covered by the Black Lion’s mouth. It takes a moment for Keith to blink before finally becoming awake enough to shoot everyone a disbelieving look.
“What?” Pidge shrugs, “We can’t go through where we came in.”
Keith glares at Lance, who sputters in indignation all the way inside Black’s Lion. As soon as they’re inside, the five of them squeeze past Lance, who lays Keith down on the floor before stripping Keith of his upper gear and pressing down on his wound.
“Wait,” Keith’s hand shoots out to grab Lance’s wrist, “Where’s Red?”
“Not to worry, we got her out. You can thank me and Blue for that, by the way.”
Keith relaxes his muscles, sinking down on the floor. He gives Lance a meaningful look, “Thank you.”
“You’d do the same.”
“No, thank you. The one thing that kept me awake while I bled out was you telling me not to go down without a fight. You kept me alive."
“Oh,” Lance stares down at his bloody hands. He presses more firmly, “Well, I’d have preferred it if you didn’t get captured but...”
“I know.”
“Yeah,” Lance breathes out, glancing at Keith. “I guess you do.”
They remain in silence while they listen to Shiro, Pidge, and Hunk talking about signalling for Allura as quickly as possible before the Galra recuperate from their damage to their smaller ships and send for the lions.
“Hey,” Lance says tentatively. “I was really worried.”
“Were you?” Keith huffs a small laugh.
“I was.”
“Is this a bonding moment that you finally acknowledge?”
“No. Maybe. Yes. Shut up!”
Keith laughs silently at Lance, careful not to shake too much for fear of more blood oozing out of him. The bleeding has stopped enough for him to move his arms, but he doesn’t want to restart the process. Instead, Keith takes one of Lance’s hands and holds it to his chest.
Lance miraculously doesn’t say anything, but instead intertwines their fingers. “I’m glad you’re okay.”
“Me too.”