Chapter Text
Even before he opens his eyes he hears the alarms sounding off in the cockpit, the noise digging like needles into his skull.
Keith wonders, briefly, dazed, if he could just—make this situation go away, if he ignores it. Keeps his eyes clenched shut and stays slumped back in... there's alarms sounding, this is his Lion, he's in his pilot seat. It would be very convenient if he could just sit here in his seat and let this take care of itself. He comes to a little more, though, senses sharpening into a hazy almost-focus. The alarms keep screeching.
He opens his eyes. Unfortunately, things are still happening. Words flash urgently in Altean on the cockpit interfaces. It's not like he can read ten thousand-year-old dialects of alien languages, but if he had to guess, he'd figure they say things like 'congratulations, idiot, you crashed!' and 'guess who screwed up!' ....Paraphrased.
Crashed—they'd been on a mission before this. Keith rubs his eye with one hand, taking a deep breath. His lungs ache, distantly, but they're only one of many other aching things, and they really should get back in line. The mission; it wasn't a routine thing, but it wasn't exactly a matter of earth-shattering importance, either. The Castle had brought them to the edge of an out-of-the-way solar system. Small planets orbiting a yellow star—their focus had been on the fifth planet from the center, or rather, its largest moon. Recent observed information gleaned from Pidge and Hunk's frighteningly-rapid decryption of local low-security Galra communications revealed an intelligence center situated on the moon's surface. He doesn't know why he didn't think of that—logistically, of course the Galra would need outposts like these to maintain comms. Empires on continents can fall apart due to being unable to manage the size, let alone empires spread across galaxies.
He sits up—feels pain shoot through his back and neck. It has him very concerned for a moment before he remembers that that's just sort of a thing that happens with the levels of G-forces that must have come from falling into the planet's atmosphere. The alarms are still splitting his eardrums.
"Red," he manages, scowling. "Can you turn those off."
The alarms shut off. Silence sinks into the cockpit. Something unsettling about it—there's Red's presence in the background like a pulse, but there's something hollow about the quiet, something implicitly threatening. No comms, he realizes, and lead settles in his gut. The mission failed. He should be hearing his teammates hollering right about now. Either his comms are down, or.... Fear rises in his chest to creep like ice through his veins.
"Are the comms online?" Please—he's never hoped for a technical malfunction before, but it'd be better than facing the alternative of silence by any other cause. There's a moment that goes on for far too long before Red gives a response: no. Tension immediately sinks out of his shoulders. Okay. So there's still a chance there's someone out there left to get through to him. Red sounds wound-up, something tight in her response. It's easier to notice these things when communicating telepathically. He's crashed... somewhere, trillions and trillions of miles away from Earth, telepathically communicating with a robot space lion. Keith almost wants to laugh, a little hysteric, mostly stunned.
The mission objective had been to take out the Galra intelligence outpost. The fine details (as plotted by Allura and Shiro, working in tangent poring over a map of the solar system) were that Pidge would use Green's stealth upgrades to focus on the destruction of fine equipment. Hunk would manage the demolition of the structure itself (the Yellow Lion is the sturdiest—most suited for heavy hitting) and double as backup for the more fragile Green Lion, which would likely end up as the focus point of Galra retaliation. Keith, Lance, and Shiro would stay away from the moon's surface and handle the reinforcements.
Reinforcements—that's where the plan fell apart. They had expected resistance. Nobody exactly likes having their toys broken. But they hadn't expected the better part of a fleet, as it'd seemed—decelerating into view out of nowhere. The Castle, from its position of security at the edge of the solar system, had been quickly put at risk. All paladins had rushed back to assist.
Keith checks his armor over for damage. There's none; he hadn't been jostled around the cockpit like he'd almost expected, the G-forces of the plunge through the planet's atmosphere keeping him pinned in his seat. That's about the only good thing they did for him—he hasn't fallen unconscious from G-forces since his earliest days at the Garrison (and everybody in his class blacked out their first time in that centrifuge, he might add).
Why had he been crashing, though? All these memories are hazy—he has trouble remembering what he was doing before he falls asleep sometimes, and that doesn't even involve space battles or oxygen deprivation. It comes back all at once, though, and his heart beats like a hammer in his chest. Lance—dammit, damn him, damn both of them.
Keith had had it under control. Red had been hit hard, stalling, but he'd been able to use his remaining velocity to aim back. He could have shot back. He could have—until the Galra ships started charging their weapons again. And Lance, of course (Keith bites his lip), of course he had decided to push the Red Lion out of the way. Sending him on a trajectory towards the planet at the furthest edge of the solar system while taking the hit. Keith slams his fist down on his thigh, taking another deep breath.
You wouldn't expect, at first, for Lance to be the selfless type. But Lance, as typical as he acts, has always tended towards the unexpected. Keith had never much cared for the unexpected, before now.
"Give me a readout on this planet's atmosphere," he says, trying to look over Red for any damage (he doesn't have to look very hard). He needs to get off wherever he's landed. Not entirely sure where he's going to go—he hasn't exactly gotten any updates from the Castle, or even any of the other paladins. Red takes a second before giving him the answer to his question. Enough oxygen to breathe, but only barely. Negligible percentages of nitrogen. Okay. Good. He can take his helmet off, if necessary. Keith isn't going to question why an outer rim planet in the gravity of a yellow star has a semi-hospitable atmosphere. "Are you sure you can't establish communications with anybody else?" Red gives him a response that loosely translates into words along the lines of I'm not a miracleworker. Keith isn't sure what he expected. "I know, Red—can you fly?" He already knows the answer. If Red could fly, she would have gotten them both out of the way of that shot before Lance had to play hero. He's getting a reflection of his own nerves—his own need to do something—from Red. She gives him back a no. "What systems aren't down?" he mutters.
The lights, Red tells him, and he doesn't miss the pettiness. Keith is really not sure why he hasn't gotten used to the universe batting him around like a cat with a mouse it doesn't quite want to kill yet. Great. Yeah, no, fine, this is normal. He's sitting here in a wreck getting telepathically sassed by a robot lion, and also all his friends are possibly dead. Lance is probably dead, and somehow that stings the hardest—the idea of it being because of him is almost more than he can bear. A notion of futility wells up in his chest, until his connection with Red flares up. Her presence in the back of his mind is burning hot, something laid bare—he can feel her determination just as harshly as he can his own. The Blue Lion could be nearby, she tells him. The statement notably does not include any guarantee towards Lance's status. A memory that is not his own flicks through his mind of falling. Both Lions had descended into the atmosphere at almost the same time. Keith sits up. "Why didn't you say that earlier?"
Red notes that she's been a little busy having the majority of her systems offline, thank you kindly—which is a completely fair reason, of course, but not enough to keep him from suddenly wanting to leap out and start searching. Keith stares, exhausted, at the view from outside the cockpit. There isn't much of one; dusty white, mixed with upheaved dirt. Snow, then. Unsurprising. He wouldn't be able to make it far on foot before having to turn back, but he's caught between that and sitting here rotting.
---
Okay. No. Sitting and rotting? Definitely almost starting to sound like the better option. Downright vacation compared to tromping about in the snow like this. There's barely even sunlight—he walks partway by just the light coming off his suit. The sky, where it isn't obscured by the clouds or the fog lingering low above the ground, is a dim, threatening orange tinge. There are a few streaks of light tracked across, and he wonders if they might have something to do with the battle—the wreckage from the Galra ships might be entering the atmosphere.
There's no sight of the Blue Lion. There's no sight of much anything else, either, between the low visibility and the flat expanse of snow. His suit keeps out the worst of it, but it's still enough to seep into his bones, mingling with cold dread in his chest. Something about the vastness of the area surrounding him, the freezing chill, the sheer isolation drives in the enormity of everything. Even if the Blue Lion is here, that's no guarantee that Lance will be alright. And even if he is—then what? They're going to be stuck on this planet with no communications and, possibly, nowhere to go back to.
Keith thinks, not for the first time and not for the last, that his entire life might just be a car-crash course set towards the fact of being alone.
The first real lead he finds is heavy bits of dark metal shrapnel glinting up from where they've crashed into the snow—bits of the Galra ships, then, but there's not much recognizable beyond that, metal twisted out of shape. It's not so far away from Red, but he's been walking slow, and it comes at around the time he was thinking of turning around. But now—he's always worked on feeling, because there's never been much else going for him, and finding this he knows that he's going to find Blue, for better or worse.
And he does. In an oblong clearing of melted snow and tumbled rock, paint chipped and visibly damaged. Relief courses airy through his veins even as logic dictates that this is a really bad sign, and that he might not like what he finds in there. Even with the cold, alien air harsh in his lungs, he sprints as fast as he can towards Blue.
Smoke rises up from several points. She seems to recognize him but doesn't move. "Blue," Keith breathes. "You've got to let me in." He needs to get to Lance. The surroundings fall out of focus.
A moment of churning silence, before Blue opens up to let him in. He rushes into the cockpit and—
Lance is slumped over across the floor, spilled out of his seat. Keith slows down, trying to focus on something besides panic, heart beating harsh enough to echo in his ears. Nothing seems wrong, but then, Keith isn't exactly the medical expert. None of them are medical experts. They're all teenagers. He drops to kneel by Lance's side. Ice in his veins, he takes the armor off one hand, stripping away his glove, and presses it to the side of Lance's neck to check his pulse.
Lance shrieks.
"Oh my god, dude, what the hell—ice hands!" Rushing to sit up, which turns out to be a mistake, because he goes suddenly dizzy, enough that Keith finds himself automatically putting his hand on Lance's shoulder to keep him steady. Keith isn't entirely sure what he expected.
"That's what you're concerned about? You—" Keith remembers himself, and pulls his hand away. Starts putting his armor's glove back on. His heart still pounds doubletime crashing behind his ribs. He feels a little breathless. "We crashed," he says, voice leveling out.
Lance takes a long look around the cockpit. Something lost flickers in his gaze. "No shit," he deadpans. "No, wait! Lots of shit! We're up shit creek without a paddle, is where we are!"
"Actually, we're on an ice planet." Same difference, really. "The one on the outer edge of the solar system. Do you remember what happened?" Keith starts checking for damages to Blue as Lance reorients himself, although he finds himself reluctant to look away from Lance. Funny thing, that, when you just spent a good hour or so expecting to find someone dead. Relief tugs the tension off his shoulders, melts some of the cold fear in his blood.
Lance rubs his eyes. "Uh, yeah. Lots of suck. So much suck that the planet sucked us in and now we're about to reach critical mass suck."
"Supercritical," Keith mutters, picking up a metal panel and sliding it back into place. That's about the only easy repair there is. He can't feel anything from Blue, for obvious reasons, but he's hoping she's not doing too badly. Lance squints.
"Excuse you?"
"Critical would imply the level of suck is staying the same." Keith spares another glance back at Lance, before quickly looking back at the interior damage to the cockpit. "Supercritical means the level of suck is constantly increasing as part of the suck chain reaction."
There's a pause. "My god," Lance says, too theatrical for someone who just nearly died. "He does have a sense of humor!"
"Don't get used to it."
Silence settles in. Lance looks over the interfaces, out the cockpit view, coming to all the same conclusions as Keith did earlier. Something changes in his face. "Have you heard anything from the others?"
Keith is usually the one getting the bad news. It doesn't feel much better to have to be the bearer of it. "No. Comms are down on my end—ask Blue if she can make a connection." Another pause. Lance shakes his head. "She says no. Nothing."
A shaky laugh, something almost hysterical to its lilt. "Guess I don't know what I expected."
"We can head back to Red," Keith says, feeling something in his chest drop at the sound. Lance shouldn't even technically be here. He wouldn't have to be, if not for... whatever that was, whatever he did. If he didn't dive in front of that shot, he would have been able to regroup with the others. One loss, maybe, instead of two. It'd be easier to justify the loss of one paladin rather than two—the Castle could have fled to safety sooner, less reluctantly. "Red's more intact than Blue. I can work on repairs for her and bring her back over here, work from there."
"Helps that she's got fire powers." Lance checks his armor for damages. Keith wonders if regaining consciousness always looks so generic. "Can't imagine that the whole ice thing Blue's got will be much help." Beat. "No offense, Blue." It is rather reassuring to have Red's literal firepower on their side. At least they probably won't die of hypothermia. Keith brushes a dusting of snow off his armor.
"It's cold outside—"
"Really? I would never have guessed."
"—so try not to die," Keith finishes, voice taking an exhausted edge to it. Lance stands up. Still shaky on his feet, but Keith rules him safe for walking after one more glance over.
"What? I'm an expert in not dying. I've never once died in my entire life." They start heading out of the cockpit. The cold is biting, but it's easier to put to the back of his mind, now.
"You nearly died back when the stuff with the crystal happened," Keith points out. This is really not the time for bickering, or whatever this is, but—in a weird way, he thinks it might be helping. Something normal, something Lance. Although, those are two categories that rarely intersect.
Lance glares at him. "But I didn't. I have an unbroken streak of not dying! I'm going for the world record."
Keith takes a deep breath. "I think the Alteans have you beat on that one."
"Coran already knows he's welcome to fight me any day of my life."
"What about Allura?"
Lance stops at the bottom of the ramp. "Dude." He squints. "I'd die, like, twice. Both because she could kill me and because—holy shit, you've seen her, I'd thank her if she killed me." Keith goes to continue walking, vaguely annoyed, but Lance's hand on his shoulder stops him. "Hold up."
He is acutely aware of Lance's hand. The wind is strong out here, prickling, picking up snow and tossing it around, but the helmets block most of it out. Something changes in what he can see of Lance's face through the condensation-covered visor of his helmet. Lance steps over to Blue's paw and puts his hand down. There's tenderness to the motion that Keith hardly ever sees (but has been catching more and more, lately, learning what to look for). "Hey, Blue. We're gonna get you out of here, okay?"
The air is heavy with a tension he can't place. He doesn't feel any of what transpires along the bond, but he's close enough to his own Lion that he understands the nature of a moment like this. After a while that lingers in the quiet, Lance turns away, a rare trace of reluctance slipping onto his face. "Guess we should head back to Red?"
Keith feels almost like he's intruding. He doubts Lance cares for the idea of leaving Blue here alone, but then, it's not as if they have much of a choice. If anything comes by (the leftovers of the Galra fleet come to mind), they're all mincemeat, anyways. "We can follow my footprints back. Count our supplies and try and think of something to get us all off this planet. You ready?"
"As I'll ever be," Lance says, sparing one more look at Blue.
---
It's cold. It's very cold. It's very, really, incredibly cold. Keith apparently couldn't derive this from the normal means, so Lance has so kindly decided to fill him in on every miniscule detail. He's been subjected to this battery of complaints the whole way thus far.
"You know," Lance begins, and already Keith is starting to question his own rapidness in rescuing him, "I wanna know why we never land on fun planets. Why can't we get stranded, in, like, a beach town planet where the aliens give us unlimited free food in exchange for an easy rescue mission? Whatever the space equivalent is of cotton candy. We can't be the only people to have invented it, we're not that smart. And waterslides. What I could go for right now is—"
"Snow can be a waterslide, if you slip hard enough." Keith is waiting for the other shoe to drop. Lance took that shot for him—got himself stranded on this planet for him. It stands to reason that, Lance being Lance, he'd bring something like that up. As it stands, the fact lingers as a tension in the background Keith wonders if only he can feel. Lance seems relatively unaffected by the whole stranded to die on an alien planet thing, aside from the expression that sneaks in sometimes when he thinks Keith isn't looking.
Lance looks around at the measureless expanse of snow swallowing them both in all directions. "Dude. Don't give me ideas."
Giving Lance ideas is the worst possible notion. Keith doesn't respond. "Man. Keith. Dude. Betcha I could turn this place into some kind of ice park if we weren't busy out here dying and freezing. Like the ones they've got in… some part of Europe, I don't know."
"If you haven't noticed, we are busy out here dying," Keith snaps. "I don't care about European ice parks. I'm trying to figure out how to get us out of here alive." He feels bad the moment it comes out of his mouth, taking the crack of anger with it, but he's learned to live with the sinking feeling of dealing with consequence after an impulse. His whole time in the desert after dropping out of the Garrison felt like an extension of that sinking feeling—how dare he be happy for once, and all that. Getting stranded here is just another case of that; he's been enjoying his time as a paladin, even despite the stresses. The other shoe had to drop sometime. The other shoe always drops, and it usually steps on him.
Lance doesn't even bother keeping up the nonchalance. He scowls instead, something setting rigid in his posture. "Oh, yeah, god forbid I try to be an optimist."
That nearly stops Keith in his tracks. He furrows his brow. "You? An optimist? Lance, last week you complained for thirty minutes because the food goo machine was backed up." The heat sinks out of his voice.
Lance scrunches up his face. "Dude. We were gonna die of starvation because of that thing."
Keith takes a very deep breath. "What, and we aren't now?"
"Well, maybe, but we'll die cool!"
"We're on an ice planet, if we died hot I'd be pretty stunned," Keith says, and almost regrets the pun more than snapping earlier. Lance is rubbing off on him in possibly the most annoying sort of way. Lance laughs in such a way it makes Keith's chest ache, and he wonders for a second if they couldn't just harness that power to warm up this planet.
"Are you kidding? I don't know about you, but I know I'll die hot! I'm living hot!" He strikes a pose and nearly trips in the snow. Keith finds himself looking away, something in his face flushing. The cold, probably.
The landscape around them would be beautiful, maybe, if he was seeing it in (say) a magazine picture, and not in person. National Geographic would shit over this place. Now that he's not focused solely on getting to Blue, stuck in a sort of tunnel vision, he can see the hints of mountains (maybe glaciers?) through the fog framing what he can see of the horizon. The clouds have settled in more, a flat orange-backed gray sky trailing above them. Keith hopes it doesn't snow, but knows it probably will.
"Dude. Do you remember that episode of Spongebob? We're like Spongebob and Squidward. Krusty Krab pizza, is the pizza—" Keith thwacks Lance on the back of the head.
He feels Red's frustration in increasing amounts as they get closer. It mimics his own—he's always preferred the ability to do something. Playing tug-of-war with the universe for control of his own life. Keith was never really surprised at Red's exclusive taste in paladins. He relaxes some, insofar as he can out here, when Red comes into view. They may not be out of danger, but they'll be out of the cold. Red, impatient, opens up for them immediately.
"I mean, if we're both staying in here, it'll basically just be like Hell's sleepover," Lance says, the first words in a while.
Keith stamps his feet on the bottom of the ramp. "Hell would be warmer."
"Hell's evil ice queen cousin—"
"Watch it! You're tracking snow into my Lion!"
Lance glares at him. "You don't exactly have a doormat."
The ramp closes behind him. It feels warmer already, like standing close to a furnace, and he's grateful to be back inside. Red's presence presses warm at the back of his mind as well—she's fickle, but she knows when she's needed. Keith takes off his helmet, setting it aside. "Take off your armor if it's damp."
"We'll just freeze faster if we wear less."
"Are you always this contrary?"
Lance snorts. "You? Calling me contrary? That's rich." Bait. He is being baited. Call him a fish, then, because he's always going to fall for it. He can't just let Lance get the last word.
"Why?" A sharp edge to it. Keith is just glad to be inside. They can start counting out their supplies—they're lucky that Coran always seems to prep them for even the most unlikely situations. Lance's hair is ruffled up as he pulls his helmet off.
"You disobeyed an order from Shiro about fleeing to the Castle. You dropped out of the Garrison. Yesterday you were willing to fistfight me over the concept of canned cheese."
"Dude. Only elitists don't like Easy Cheese. And the Garrison would have kicked me out anyways, eventually." He's not going to answer that first one. Keith starts heading to the back of the Lion, where supplies are kept, but stays within hearing range.
Lance rolls his eyes. "Oh. Great, no, yeah. Do you have an answer for disobeying an order, canned cheese heathen?"
"We were overwhelmed—"
"That's why you should have gone straight back to the Castle, like Shiro told you!"
"—and they were tailing me. I would have led them right back to the Castle. I was trying to hold off the ones right behind me so I could get away without bringing any back, okay?" Keith hates using the word 'flee'. He sorts through the rations stock, pointedly avoiding looking back at Lance.
A pause settles in. "Dude. You're an asshole," Lance says, sounding a little... stunned?
Keith snorts. "So I've been told." He counts the rations supply three times, almost slipping up on the numbers once or twice when his mind drifts towards the situation.
"Who told you you were an asshole?" Lance sounds genuinely shocked at the prospect of anybody else but him calling Keith an asshole. "I'll fight them." Is... is Lance aware of how bizarre he is? It agitated Keith at first, when all this began, when they were all new to being paladins, but now it's begun to grow on him. He wholly blames Lance for this fact.
"You told me. Many times now."
"Well, I was right," Lance says, "anybody else is wrong." Keith wonders what the unspoken thought here is. He's only ever been able to read these things at face value.
"Regardless of my status as an asshole," Keith says, dropping a rectangle-packed ration in front of Lance, "we've got enough rations to last for a week if we eat two a day. Two weeks, if we eat one a day. Not counting whatever Coran stocked on Blue. There's ten gallons of water, but. You know, I don't think we're going to have a problem with that on an ice planet."
"We could totally just eat snow. The universe's lamest snowcones." Lance picks up the ration by the corner of it and stares at the Altean lettering. It looks enough like an MRE that it probably tastes just as bad.
Keith shakes his head, sitting down nearby with his own rations. "Can't eat snow. It just dehydrates you more, makes you colder, and do you really want to eat unpurified alien dirt snow?"
Lance scrunches up his face. "Fair point. What are we going to do, boil it?"
"Melt it. The stockpile included iodine for purification."
"Aren't we fancy." The rations in Lance's box turn out to be... something. They're definitely something. Lance sticks his tongue out. "You know what? I think I'm gonna be okay with only eating one of these a day. God, I thought the stuff the Garrison served was gnarly."
It tastes no worse than food goo, really. Keith stretches his legs out, leaning against a wall, feeling something quiet and leaden settle in his chest. Now that the initial rush of crashing here and finding Lance is over, with nothing left to do but to sit here and wait for some grand idea or rescue, he finds himself having to deal with the reality of being here. It's not a very fun one. And there's still guilt clawing at him about getting Lance trapped here too. Lance makes a face at every bite of the ration, brow furrowing, nose crinkling. Keith finds himself looking over for a second too long and quickly shifts his focus to his food.
Feelings, too, are collaborating with the universe to make his life suck. Figures the guy for whom Keith caught emotions is the one that got stuck on a inhospitable planet on the edge of a solar system with him in the process of (dare he think it) saving his life.
"Man, I wonder what the Garrison even thinks happened to us. We kind of just—left? Right as that stuff happened. What do you even tell families, when that happens?" A vague hand gesture. "'Oh, yeah, your kid just went missing and we can't find them. No reason. We were the last ones who saw 'em, though.' I'm sure that won't cause a massive fuss." Some of the air of nonchalance is fading, and something in Lance's eyes isn't quite there. Still a spark to them, but there's a heady trace of distance.
"I'm sure they'll find a way to slap 'pilot error' on it," Keith mutters. "It's the excuse they used last time."
Lance snorts. "God, that's so messed up, though, isn't it? They didn't even try and search."
"You're telling me." Shiro had been his only tie to—well, anything, really. First time he'd ever properly gotten close to anybody. The time between the Kerberos mission and Shiro coming back to Earth was one of the worst parts of his life. "I wonder if they did, and just figured we wouldn't like what they found."
"Reckon those conspiracy theory people are right?" Lance waves a spoon in a circle as if the motion is going to clarify anything. Keith looks right up as Lance continues. "Not talking, like, the 'I fucked Mothman and now he's my lawfully-wedded husband' types you see in the tabloids, but like, y'know. The real types."
This is a subject that Keith, perhaps embarrassingly, understands. "Well, I mean, we all know about Area 51."
"Bro. Dude." Lance squints. "Dude. Bro. Area 51 is a real place."
"Exactly!" Of all the things to be talking about, out here like this—it makes something warm seep into his chest. Talking with Lance, when he isn't being a menace to society, is surprisingly nice.
Lance looks at him as though he's seeing him for the first time. "Holy shit. You're actually a nerd, aren't you?"
And Keith's out of his element again. Knowing how to navigate a social situation was fun while it lasted. "You could have asked Shiro, he would have told you that."
Lance shakes his head. "Nah, man, like—I dunno, you just seem so."
"So?"
"So, like... aloof. Bad boy type. Too cool for school."
Keith is pretty sure that if he laughs he'll somehow offend Lance, but this. This is so incomprehensible it's funny. "I wouldn't say 'too cool for school'. If I had wanted to be there, I would have gone."
"See!" Lance waves a hand in front of his face. "Like that! God, did you even notice the number of girls talking about you?"
He's not about to take any information regarding women as fact, coming from Lance. "I've got some real bad news for them, in that case."
"Good god. The instructors were pretty impressed, though. Not about the girls, I mean about you. Some of them even seemed to miss you."
"I'm going to go out on a limb and say that Iverson isn't included in that statement."
"So shocking, right?" Lance pokes at the rations with his spoon. "Guess what I'm trying to say is. You seem so cool, right? And here you are stuck with me, talking about conspiracy theories. You know what? I bet you think you fucked Mothman."
"Mothman is my boyfriend," Keith deadpans, although he can't keep a smile from sneaking in and tugging at the corners of his mouth.
"I support our local gay cryptids," Lance says, not even bothering to hide a grin. The rations don't seem to taste so bad any more.
---
The rest of dinner (can it be called dinner when you're eating it on the floor while in a survival situation?) passes easy. The fleeting distance has long since left Lance's eyes by the time they're tossing their empty ration packs into the snow outside.
"Wow. Humans really do wreck shit wherever they go. We're leaving trash on an obscure planet in the middle of nowhere. Can you imagine how much we're confusing any poor space archaeologists that come this way?"
"For their sake, I hope nobody has to come here." Keith smirks. "Maybe they'll make conspiracy theories about it."
Lance cracks up. It's a good sound. Once he realized that it was never really at him (okay, maybe near the beginning), Keith started maybe even liking it. He glances away. "We're going to have to work on repairs," he continues. "If the Castle's still out there, we don't have a way of calling and asking for a pickup. We can try and repair comms, or we can try and get ourselves off the ground." He doesn't exactly like being the one that has to keep them on track, but he's been running his brain threadbare this whole time lingering on the situation at hand.
"They're probably looking for us," Lance says, hands falling to where his pockets would be if he wasn't still in his armor.
"We don't know if they even escaped the fleet safely." That's not a thought Keith likes to linger on. "We have to assume the worst."
"I thought I told you I was converting to optimism lately?" The end of it is a little ragged.
Keith takes a deep breath. "You picked a hell of a time."
"My streak of excellent timing had to end eventually." Lance looks away. "Hey. If it counts, I don't think they're gone. Maybe a little worse for wear, but I just—it feels like we'd feel it, y'know?"
Keith knows. He's always run on intuition, feeling like a reactor fueled by instinct and anger, cooled by results. He'd felt the same certainty of survival back after the Kerberos mission news broke. He wonders if Pidge feels it too. "I get you. But I feel like if we plan on an uncertainty, we're setting ourselves up for disappointment."
"And what are we supposed to do if they're not fine?" Lance snaps. Something in his voice is off. So much for being in a good mood after dinner. "What would even be the point of getting off this planet, then? Oh, yeah, look at us, taking down Zarkon with two half broke-down Lions and no Castle. They have to be fine. I'm sure they fled in time to escape the fleet."
"Which means they're not even in this system to rescue us." Keith turns away to try and see what can be done with Red in terms of repairs. "Meaning, we need to get our comms up, or manage to fly somewhere where we can. Do you think Blue's comms are salvageable? Mine are shot."
"Maybe." He does the thing where he forgets his armor doesn't have pockets again. "God. I wish Pidge or Hunk were here. Neither of us are exactly... tech geniuses."
"It's bad enough you're here," Keith mutters, kneeling by a spot of damage he might be able to not destroy further.
Lance goes unexpectedly silent—when Keith looks back questioning, there's annoyance on his face. "Do you really hate us that much?"
"What!" Keith squints. "What? No! I meant that if anybody should be stuck in Santa's fucking nightmare factory it should be the guy who caused the mess in the first place."
Lance looks taken aback. Like he was so sure that Keith had meant whatever he'd been assuming. God, Keith wishes he was better at these things—he's never been good in social situations. Sometimes he'll listen in on people and while the individual words have meaning, he can never quite follow the thread of conversation. Something about Lance, though, makes any kind of thread get tangled up in his head. So often Keith accidentally ends up offending people—too blunt, maybe, or not there enough. He doesn't even really know what he did to make Lance think they were, whatever, rivals or something. Keith would like to make that right before they die on this godforsaken planet.
"I don't hate you, you know," he continues. "I don't hate any of you. I—"
Should really get back to work, Red reminds him, impatient in the back of his mind. He exhales deeply. "Just. I don't know. Words suck." He wonders when Lance is going to bring up the part where he saved Keith's life. He thinks about bringing it up himself, but (perhaps selfishly) decides against it.
Lance's shoulders sink, relaxing, before falling into his normal stance. A small smile creeps up—not one of his usual ones. This one, Keith is convinced, is real. "Here," he says, crouching down next to where Keith is trying to work. "Can I help?"
Wow. Keith's shocked that worked. He keeps his eyes fixed on the work at hand, a sneaking thought that if he looks over at Lance he'll find himself having trouble looking away. "Yeah. Can you see if there's any kind of toolbox in here? I need a set of channel locks."
"Sure thing." Lance goes over to where the rations are and starts rifling around. Keith wonders how much of a mess is being made back there. "Uh... what are the channel locks, again? All tools look the same. You've got pointy things, turny things, the highlighter-color things with bubbles in them, and smacky things."
"Turny thing with the blue handles that flips around a lot." Keith is glad that human and Altean tools share at least some basic concepts. Some, at least. Other things in the Castle supply closets he's pretty sure he could put his eye out if he presses the wrong button. Lance presents him with the channel locks and returns to his position.
"Man. It'd be so useful if people could talk telepathically like us with our Lions. Or Allura and her mice, or whatever."
Keith can't argue that. If he could talk to people like he can to Red, maybe he could understand more of what the hell people are talking about once in awhile. "I wouldn't people creeping around in my brain."
"We do those training exercises," Lance says, watching as Keith works with what's behind a piece of jolted paneling. "With the tacky helmets."
"Yeah, but those you put on. And I can't say I like that, either. Would you want people creeping around in your brain?" Keith tightens something, wondering how much of a fucking miracle it'd be if that loose piece was the lone cause of their comms malfunctioning.
Lance shakes his head. "Guess not. It'd be pretty cool to be able to waltz into a crush's mind and see what they think of you, though."
Keith blinks. "Lance, I just don't think Allura's all that into you." Plus, like, she'd probably suplex Lance if he tried to telepathize all over her.
Lance sputters. "Who said I meant Allura?"
"Basic knowledge and consideration of the situation." Red's getting a little annoyed about having to be worked on like this. He apologizes to her without speaking aloud. "I've got no idea where to start on this," he admits.
"Maybe I could try Blue?" Lance says. "She took a harder hit than Red, but maybe her comms are stronger." He scrambles to his feet, grabbing his helmet and heading for the door. Before Keith can even say not to head out alone, the exit is opening—
—and a blizzard is raging outside, thick snow swept sideways in white winds. Keith can feel the blast of freezing air from where he's situated across the room. Lance immediately shuts the door.
"Okay! Not going out in that, no sir! My ass is too good to freeze off!" Lance pops his helmet off, eyes wide. "How about we wait for the morning on that! No thanks!"
"Good idea," Keith says, looking back to the repairwork. "Hey. Maybe you can figure out how we're going to sleep in here. Last I checked, our Lions didn't have bedroom suites. And sleeping on the floor, I'll admit, doesn't sound fun."
"Ah, yes, let me just materialize some air mattresses out of my asshole." Lance folds his arms, scanning the room. Keith wonders how much progress they'd have made by now if he'd gotten stuck with, say, Shiro.
"Huh. I always knew you were full of air."
"My own brilliant wit, turned against me. Oh no. Whatever shall I do." Lance goes back to where the rations are. "Yeah, no, I have nowhere near enough energy to make that sound sincere. I was thinking you could take the chair? Since it's your Lion and all."
"Blue took the harder hit," Keith says, giving up on the repairs. "And I know G-loc isn't a party." G-force induced loss of consciousness is just about the furthest possible thing from a party. As a pilot, the idea of falling unconscious in midair scares him more than almost anything else. A tangible kind of loss of control. Plus it makes your back and neck hurt, which is the real problem here. Keith sets the channel locks aside. He's beginning to regret all the classes he skipped before he dropped out. One of them might have had something useful to get them out of here in one piece. He doesn't even remember which ones he had, really—all that is ages away, and he's always had a tendency to split his life into Befores and Afters.
Lance shakes his head. "Nah, man. I can't just sit in your seat. Besides. With how tense you always are? Your back probably has, like, nine bazillion knots. One day your muscles are going to throw a prison riot and just shank you."
"Wow. You are really concerned about my back." At least if his muscles shanked him he wouldn't be stuck on this planet another day. "No, really. Speaking of G-loc. I found you on the floor of your cockpit. Are you sure you're alright?"
"Don't talk back to me, young man," Lance says, picking up a ration pack and squeezing it with both hands. Keith hopes he isn't thinking of what he's probably almost definitely thinking of. "Yeah, no, I'm fine. Just some bruising, but that always happens with this stuff." A pause. "How d'you think bruising affects frostbite?"
"Try not to find out," Keith groans. "Look. If neither of us are gonna take the chair, then how about we both sleep on the floor. Deal?"
Lance looks between Keith and the chair. There's a lingering moment of consideration before Lance sits down in it and leans back—
—a burst of distaste comes from Red through the back of Keith's mind. He grimaces. "I. Uh. Don't think Red likes that."
Lance hops right back out of the seat. "Fine. Didn't wanna sit there anyways, Kitkat," he mutters, speaking in the general direction of the wall. He sits down, stretching his legs out, before laying the ration pack under his head like a pillow. "This thing withstood ten thousand years at the Castle. I'm sure it can withstand my head."
"Kitkat," Keith says, incredulously, because of all the crap Lance just said that's what stuck with him the most. If he called Red Kitkat he'd probably get locked out for days. "Kitkat?"
"Yeah, dude." Lance crosses his ankles, folding his arms above his head. Keith didn't exactly intend for them to sleep right now, but if he's honest with himself, they might get more done if they sleep on it. "I miss Kitkats," Lance continues. "Even if Pidge refused to ever eat them right and always ate the whole block at once while looking me in the eye. Some kind of fourteen-year-old territorial custom, probably."
Why is Keith not surprised in the slightest. "Licorice allsorts," he says, sinking back into his pilot's seat. He starts undoing the armor on his hands. Sleeping in armor isn't going to be the most comfortable thing, but he's used to sleeping in clothes. He lets himself spin idly in his chair, looking up at the ceiling. Meaning he doesn't catch Lance staring a hole in him.
"Really, dude? Licorice? Licorice is, like, a scourge upon the Earth. It's candy made by heartless people who have never even seen candy in their lives. It's made with the tears of children and the little baby ducks who get caught in oil spills in dishsoap commercials." Lance waves a hand in the air above him. "Candy corn is where it's at."
Oh, he's on. "If by 'it', you mean the taste of sugar that someone tried to reconstitute as asphalt, then yeah, sure." Keith closes his eyes. Tries to find some comfort, some reprieve from this situation in the background purr of Red, and another petty not-quite-argument with Lance. They've come far from the days of actual arguing, he likes to think. "Starbursts."
"First sensible thing you've said all day. But only all the ones but the yellow ones."
"Lance, what? The lemon ones are the best." He doesn't bother opening his eyes.
"Finally! We've found someone to dump those things on! Me, Pidge and Hunk all hate them."
"More for me." Lance's voice can be calming, in a way. Sometimes he hears it and it makes something leap in his chest. Other times, right now, it makes something simmer. Either feels like a fire. "Nerds?"
"You can't eat Nerds without being a cannibal. The green candy apple ones are the best, though." "...They make green Nerds?" "Well, yeah. We have Pidge, don't we?"
Keith actually laughs. Not much—barely more than air through his nose. It's surprising, heavy with fear as his head's been since he came to. Being here with Lance, selfish as it is, does something to quell the burn of anxiety in his chest. The conversation continues on like this for a while, before simmering out. Lance's voice starts trailing off more and more as both of them get closer to sleeping (or, rather, attempting to sleep—Keith knows he himself has a hard enough time sleeping on the Castle, where impending threat to life and limb is a little bit further away than just outside the Lion's cockpit). Silence settles in the space between words, and Keith watches the ceiling, assuming Lance has fallen asleep.
"Do you think we'll ever get back to Earth?" Lance's voice startles him, and he blinks. The lights are dimmer, now, and he appreciates Red's propriety. The question weighs heavy in the air, making something clench in Keith's ribcage. He doesn't think any answer he can give will be reassuring. It's not as often that he thinks about going back—Earth never seemed to hold much for him. Keith exhales slowly. "I've got to do my best to get us off this planet in one piece, before that."
There's no response after that. Keith falls asleep eventually, with the uneasiness of the situation and—something else, something harder to identify, tense in the back of his mind.