Chapter Text
The first thing Keith registered when he regained consciousness was the view. It was all red, explosions ringing out left and right, making the ground shake and the sky look dark in comparison to the fires.
Next came sound. As if through a tunnel, he heard voices screaming fuzzily through his helmet, and if he focused enough (which he found unusually hard to do) he could even make out shouts from around him. Moving his head ever so slightly, he saw that he was leaning against a big boulder that hid the cliff from his view. The battle raged around him but he found it unusually peaceful behind the rock, as if someone or himself had purposely placed him there as to not get in the line of fire.
The fuzzy sounds were becoming clearer, he noticed faintly. He could almost decipher what whoever was on the other side of the communication link was saying… was it Shiro?
“eith! – Keith, can you hear me? Keith!” he was repeating, over and over again but each time with more desperation. How long had he been out? Where was everyone? He couldn’t see anything through the blurry haze that was the battle playing out around him, and everything seemed fuzzy.
He tried to respond, to tell Shiro he was alright, but as soon as he opened his mouth to speak, all he could do was cough. And god, it was painful. Each time he breathed in, pain shot up his side, spreading out everywhere, and he could taste the coppery flavor of blood in his mouth. Dark spots danced at the corners of his eyes as he desperately tried to stop coughing. He found he didn’t even have the energy to lift a hand up and take his helmet off; it seemed to be making things worse. When had all of this happened?
After what felt like hours, his breathing calmed down, but he realized tears were snaking their way down his cheeks. It was all so painful, all Keith wanted to do was to black out again, but there was a battle to be fought. He had to help his fellow paladins, even though he couldn’t remember exactly why they were even here in the first place. So, after a minute or so of trying to calm his own breathing down enough to form a full word, he finally managed to speak.
“Shiro – I’m – okay,” he said, struggling to hold back coughs. The pain in his side had gone from bad to worse; he was certain he had broken at least a few ribs. How had things gotten this bad?
It didn’t matter, he thought through the haze occupying his head, pounding, pounding. He had to fight; they could be losing and his skills were needed in battle. Looking to the left, Keith spotted a cluster of Galra soldiers, all focused on one point farther off. Trying to clear his vision, Keith realized that it was Lance, firing his gun at anything that was made of metal and moved.
Making up his mind, Keith combined all the energy he had left and lifted himself into a standing position… only to fall right back down again. It felt as if lightning had struck him; white lights danced before him and he was sure they weren’t supposed to be there. What the hell was going on? When had he gotten hurt like this, and how? He realized Shiro had gone silent only when he spoke up again.
“Keith! Where are you? Are you hurt?” He asked loudly over the sound of metal hitting metal. How did he know what state Keith was in? Upon further investigation, his raw throat indicated that me may have yelled when he fell back down. Figures, he thought.
“Behind – the – boulder,” he managed before breaking into another coughing fit. The dark spots were getting bigger and more numerous – he wasn’t sure for how much longer he could stay conscious. He felt the warmth of what he knew to be blood seep out of the side of his mouth, and after pressing his hand slightly to his side to find it to be completely numb with pain, it came back bright red. What the hell had happened?
The pounding in his head had reached such a point that he couldn’t concentrate enough to process Shiro’s instructions through the helmet’s speakers. He tried to get a full breath, but every time he attempted this, he was cut short by his own brain telling him not to go any further, so he lay there, wheezing and trying to breathe as normally as he could.
The next few minutes were a blur. He could feel himself getting lifted up and carried somewhere, but didn’t register anything else. He could see the fires through his closed eyelids and hear the distant sounds of explosions, but nothing else. Time had no meaning wherever he was. After what felt like twenty minutes, the air around him got cooler and the colors behind his closed eyelids turned to dark blue. He shivered in his cracked armor and tried to open his eyes, even though it felt like the hardest thing he’d ever done. When he finally managed to open them a bit, all he could see were blurry figures running around. The person holding him seemed to have grey hair on the front of his head – was it Shiro? He wondered. Why was he screaming? Weren’t they away from the battle? Nothing made any sense. So, when Keith was placed on what he assumed was a blanket on the floor and he felt the structure he was in – probably a lion – move upwards, he let himself slip into unconsciousness, knowing he was at least somewhat safe.
When Keith suddenly went silent over their helmet’s communication system, Shiro knew something was wrong. The red paladin tended to subconsciously yell while fighting, and even then, he never ignored somebody else talking to him unless it was Lance. So, while Shiro fought, he desperately called out Keith’s name for what felt like hours but was probably only minutes, but to no avail. Finally, right before he went out looking for him instead of fighting the battle, Shiro heard a voice. Well, technically, it wasn’t a voice, but coughing, and it was Keith.
“Hey! Buddy, are you hurt? Keith, where are you?” he asked frantically and waited until the red paladin could speak before talking again. When he had told him he was ok, that’s when he knew something was really wrong. Keith tended to water down his own problems as to not attract attention, but it never worked with Shiro. Keith gasped between each word, as if he couldn’t get enough air.
“Keith, where are you?” yelled the black paladin over the sound of Galra soldiers falling and breaking apart. When he responded in the same manner, Shiro took one last swing at his attackers, disarming most of them, and took off running towards a boulder about as tall as two Lances which wasn’t too far away. He quickly found Keith behind the other side, mostly hidden from the battle, and it was not a pretty sight.
First of all, there seemed to be blood everywhere. Down the red paladin’s face, soaking through his chest piece which was completely shattered, and pooling on the ground beneath him. He was even paler than usual and completely limp against the rock, his eyes closed and his helmet beside him. As Shiro got closer to help him, Keith started coughing weakly, and more blood ran down his mouth. This wasn’t good at all.
“Hey! Keith! Can you hear me? I need you to stay awake, okay?” said Shiro while pondering about the best way to get his teammate into a lion without hurting him further.
“Shihh… Shir-“ he mumbled, trying to form words but running out of breath halfway through.
“I’m here. Stay with me, okay? I’m going to pick you up,” informed Shiro before carefully slipping a hand under Keith’s back, and another under his knees. He was afraid to even touch his ribs for fear of hurting him further. As he gently pulled him up and close to him, he could feel shivers running through the paladin’s body and the warm wetness of blood seeping through his fingers. He had to act quickly.
Running straight through the battlefield to reach the lions wasn’t what Shiro wanted to do, but rather what he had to do. The battle raged all around them, blasters firing off left and right and the sound of metal sizzling and crackling could be head from everywhere. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Pidge fighting off four Galra soldiers off at once, her tiny bayard doing more than it seemed it should because of its size. She kept on slipping underneath their legs and backstabbing them before turning around and doing something completely unexpected, catching all the soldiers off guard again and again. She fought mostly with brainpower, and Shiro watched while walking fast towards his lion, amazed. Where had she learned to fight like that?
He ducked to avoid a blast coming from his right and sped up. In the distance, he could hear Lance’s gun going off and Hunk’s frantic shouting while he ran into anything he could. Relieved to hear all their voices, Shiro activated his helmet’s communication link and called out to Allura.
“Princess? How’s the plan going?” he asked before anything.
“Pidge got the drive but they all got ambushed on their way back, and I can’t shoot because they’re all on the ground with the army and could accidentally be hit. They’re too preoccupied to get to their lions,” Allura informed him. The original plan was to sneak into the planet’s main base and gather as much information as they could. The planet they were on, Mehkik, had seemed to be the one with the smallest amount of Galra forces so they decided to go down and see what they could find. Getting in was easy, but getting back out again had proved to be rather difficult. A battleship had just come in for landing, bringing food and armour to the residents of this desolate planet, and their landing site had just happened to be right next to where Pidge had left her lion. The invisibility cloak having disabled itself after fifteen minutes, a commander had spotted it and decided to investigate to see if the paladin was anywhere to be found and had been pleasantly surprised to find all five of the Voltron team members in the same base at the same time. Just their luck.
To escape the base, they had two options: either use the main door or sneak out from the back. Keith had said that the soldiers probably expected them at the back door and they should proceed to sneak out the front, which was probably less heavily guarded, but the place was equipped with body heat alarms. Apparently Galras had a much lower core temperature than humans and alteans because they tripped the alarm in no time.
Allura had told them to fight while she figured out a way to bring the lions closer to the main door so they could board them and fight the army as one, but she seemed to have trouble with the red lion. Since everyone was so busy trying to fight off an army by themselves, no one noticed when Keith went silent after a particularly large explosion off West. Apparently, if a paladin gets hurt in combat, their lion shuts down to protect them inside the hull, activating a strong particle barrier that could only be opened by another paladin or someone the lion trusted. It was only when Allura asked Shiro if Keith was okay because she couldn’t get to the lion when Shiro started calling out. What a great plan they had formulated, he thought bitterly.
But, he wondered while jogging closer and closer to his lion, why had the red lion shut itself off if her paladin was nowhere near? He came up with the only reason he could: there were too many enemies. She couldn’t risk damaging herself while she waited for her paladin to make his way to her so when he finally got in, she would be ready to protect him. The lions rarely ever moved on their own, only when they found it absolutely necessary. Red had probably felt Keith hidden behind the boulder and thought him to be safe enough for her to stay where he knew she was.
A bomb exploded to Shiro’s left, the shock wave knocking him sideways onto the dusty ground. Keith groaned in his arms and proceeded to cough out more blood, and Shiro hit his shoulder hard against the ground, feeling the unmistakable crack of a bone. Gritting his teeth against the pain, he got up carefully and jogged to the mouth of his lion, which Allura had brought closer to the battle for easy reach.
“Allura! I’ve got Keith, let’s go!” exclaimed Shiro while the lion’s mouth shut itself behind him. He ran to the cockpit and laid Keith down on a spare blanket in the back.
“Paladins, get to your lions and evacuate! You’ve got thirty ticks before I blow the cannons!” yelled the princess through everyone’s comms as she fired the castleship’s thrusters. Shiro heard the frantic pants of three paladins rushing to their lions while dodging blows from the Galra, and sat down with a grunt on his own chair, reaching for the command board.
“Let’s get out of here, Keith,” he murmured before pulling the lever and sending his lion flying upwards, away from this horrible planet.
The fuzzy sounds were getting clearer, and Keith could make out individual voices.
“- do you mean, they don’t-“
“-gravitational field is too strong, it’s messing with the-“
“-him in the castle, at least! Don’t you have any first aid kits in the-“
Everything was moving. As he opened his eyes, he saw through his blurry vision that the other paladins were running around. When had he gotten inside the castle? He found he still couldn’t breathe all the way through. Why wasn’t he in a healing pod? The pain was coursing through his body, making want to go back to being unconscious, but he knew that wasn’t happening anytime soon.
Shiro’s vague shape kneeled down to Keith’s level. Okay, so he was sitting up against a wall. Somebody had taken off his chestplate, but he could still feel shards of it in his skin, and it was awful. He was trying to focus on what the black paladin was saying, but all the other noises were confusing him and the bright lights were very distracting. Something was flashing red and he could feel the ship’s thrusters vibrating through the floor, which usually didn’t happen. Shiro gently took his head in his human hand, but Keith could still feel the pounding. He was looking into his eyes, he realized. Then, after what felt like a few minutes, Shiro’s voice came into focus, but only because the other paladins seemed to be huddled around a screen at his right.
“Keith. Keith, I need you to take a deep breath. I know it hurts, but it’ll put your ribs back where they have to be, do you hear me? Keith. Deep breath,” he was saying over and over again. Keith gave the best nod he could, barely moving his head, and even that made him dizzy. He was still panting. Did Shiro really expect him to take a deep breath? It was the last thing he wanted to do right then. But he knew he wasn’t going to leave him alone until he did what he was told, so he grudgingly inhaled as much as he could before breaking into the most painful coughing fit ever.
His whole body was on fire, even though he was barely even moving anymore. He could feel something unpleasant scraping inside of him, and he lost focus of Shiro, closing his eyes but still hearing his voice.
“Keith, I know you really don’t want to, but try again, please. One last time, and then it won’t hurt as much, I promise. Keith, can you hear me? Breathe,” he was saying. Why did he want him to do that? He wondered through the haze of pain and blood. What was the point, anyways? His lion was still on the planet, he assumed, otherwise they would be far gone. The ship only ever rattled like this while it escaped a planet’s gravitational field, which meant they were still pretty close. Why was Shiro focusing on him instead of fighting against the Galra forces? Nothing made sense anymore, his brain was a muddled mess, but he could still clearly hear Shiro urging him to breathe. Every time he did, though, it felt like something was blocking him, and it was so, so painful.
“Keith! Look at me, buddy. Just one breath and it’ll all be over,” he reassured, but his eyes were worried as ever. Making up his mind, Keith decided that the only way to stop Shiro from torturing him any further was to do as he asked. Trying to shut off all of his senses, he counted down. Three… Two… One, and his universe imploded.
Electric shocks were running through his body, he thought. What else could it be? He was certain he was dying and couldn’t wait for all of this to be over. The darkness that had engulfed him seemed infinite; was that what the afterworld was like? It couldn’t be, he assumed, because he could feel hands on his shoulders. His shoulders… which were attached to his body… which was in the castle. Suddenly, he remembered why he was here, and opened his eyes.
Everything was blurry and unfocused, all sounds were faint and echo-y, and everything was numb. At least this was better than the pain, he thought miserably before finally passing out from exhaustion.