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The day starts bad.
Lance wakes up with a headache pulsing behind the eye mask. He walks late to breakfast still dressed in his pajamas, somehow feeling less rested than he did before he went to sleep. He’s not quite sure what he dreamt about, but he knows it wasn’t pleasant.
“Look who’s finally awake.”
“At least I got some rest, you little night gremlin. When did you go to sleep?”
“Details, details,” Pidge says around a mouth full of goo. “I may feel just as dead as ever, but you’re looking a little worse for wear. I thought we were past the pajamas at the breakfast table phase in your life.”
“Pajamas at the breakfast table will always be a phase in my life, Pidgey, take some notes.”
He sits down in his usual seat between Keith and Hunk and picks up his spork. He stares tiredly down at the goo on his plate. It looks particularly unappetizing this morning, day, night, whenever they are. He takes tiny bites, mostly just moving it around on his plate.
He doesn’t realize he’s zoned out until Hunk grabs his shoulder.
“Huh?”
“I asked if you were okay. You’ve been staring at your food for like ten minutes. Everyone else is done.”
“Um? Oh, Yeah! I’m okay. I’m just not that hungry this morning. Ate a lot last night.”
Keith frowns. “No you didn—,” he kicks Keith’s leg under the table and gives him a look to get him to shut up. “Hey!”
“Hay is for horses, Keith, get it right.”
Keith is about to say something snarky right back when Shiro intervenes. “Can we just, for one day, not have bickering at the breakfast table? Is that too much to ask?”
Lance nods tiredly, pushing his plate out from in front of him. Keith is staring at him with this weird confused concerned expression that Lance absolutely loathes, and he assumes it’s because he let the argument go so easily.
Well maybe he just doesn’t feel like fighting today.
That’s wrong, he thinks. He just doesn’t have the energy to.
“Well…” Allura says from the end of the table. “We’ll be working on close combat with your Bayards today. Each of you will get your own gladiator to fight against. Do your best not to hit each other.”
He sighs, standing up and stretching his back out.
“Hey,” Keith stands up next to him. “First one to beat their bot wins?”
Lance just blinks before smiling and snapping his fingers at him. “You’re on, Keithy-boy.”
He frowns. “That’s not my name.”
“No,” Lance sing songs away. “It isn’t.”
They all enter the hallway and Lance begins to turn a different corner than the rest of them. “Give me a minute to get my armor on, okay?
They nod, waving him off in the direction of his room.
He does, actually, need to get his armor on, because as free moving as the pajamas are, they’re not exactly “Paladin Attire” according to Allura.
First, however, he needs to stop acting like the downer of the century. He splashes some water on his face and looks at himself in the mirror. Pidge is right, he is looking worse than usual today. He knows it has something to do with the dull headache behind his eyes, the way the organs in his chest feel off, like his heart and his lungs are the same thing and they’re both going haywire.
“Calm down,” he breathes out at his reflection. His reflection says nothing in return.
“Breathe, breathe, deep breaths Lance, just some nerves.” Over what, though, is what he wonders as he pulls the skintight under suit onto his body. It feels constricting in the wrong ways and makes the pounding in his chest worse. He ignores it and pulls the hard plating on over.
When he gets to the training room, everyone’s facing against their training bot but Keith, he stands off to the side, waiting.
“You waited for me?” Lance asks as he walks over to him. Keith jumps a little.
“Well, uh, yeah, we have a contest going, don’t we? Doesn’t really work unless the other person is here.”
“Oh,” Lance says, mostly to himself. “Well, thanks man.”
Keith gives him a weird look and materializes his Bayard. Lance does the same, and the weight of the gun feels heavier than usual.
They start at the same time, slipping in next to the rest of them. E ach bot has a different color on its chest, signifying which paladin they’re destined for. Allura explained that their goals are set on their specific paladin, and no one need worry about someone else’s gladiator going after them.
He mostly starts out dodging blows, hesitant to use his Bayard for some reason. He remembers he has a battle going against Keith, and tentatively raises the gun. The first couple shots go fine, and he gets back into the swing of things. He’s breathing a little heavier than he should be, but he’s fine. This is fine. Just training.
Just-
The smell of blood permeates his senses, and he whips his head around. Keith has a small cut on his side, seems otherwise fine, but the bitter tang of blood is unmistakable and it trips Lance up.
He takes a hit on his shoulder that sends him stumbling for getting distracted, and he grits his teeth and turns back to the task at hand. The next shot he takes sends a numbing feedback through his hands, and he doesn’t know what the hell that’s about.
There isn’t even much of it, not enough to cause alarm, but the scent of blood makes Lance gag, and he doesn’t know why.
He shoots, and the gladiator flashes purple and fuzzy.
Oh.
Oh god.
He doesn’t think, just shoots at it mindlessly to get that flash to go away, and the sound of the gun ricochets in his ears. It’s loud and grating and he winces.
Blood blood blood and the gunshots and he sees dying Galra soldiers at his feet, bleeding slowly, smelling of charred flesh and death, surrounding him and he drops his gun.
There’s blood on his hands, oh so literally and figuratively, and he can’t take his eyes off it.
“Lance!”
He snaps out of it just in time for the gladiator to smack him across the face with its staff. Someone must call for it to end, because there’s nothing more as he slams into the floor.
Something warm trickles down his face from the hit, and when he touches it, his fingers come back red.
Blood.
Blood blood blood.
Blood on his hands.
The panic grips at his throat so smoothly he has trouble registering why he can’t breathe. He Bayard lays next to him, still in the shape of a gun, and it makes him feel sick.
Lance throws up straight bile onto the training room floor.
Someone touches his shoulder and he jerks away from it. He stands, shakily, still not quite able to breathe right, eyes darting around nervously.
“Lance,” he thinks Shiro says, but it’s all so muddled and he shakes his head.
Everything feels so suffocating and he runs for the door.
He doesn’t look where he’s going, just runs down hallways until he feels far enough away. He throws the helmet off of his head, followed by all the hard plating of their armor. He pulls himself out of the top half of the under suit before realizing he doesn’t want to be in just his underwear in this weird back part of the castle he’s never been before and leaves it on from the hips down.
He can still smell the blood because it’s smeared onto his cheek right next to his nose and it makes him feel filthy. It feels like its smeared and dripping all up his arms and hands. He stares down at them and there’s nothing there, but he just rubs his hands together over his arms to try to get it off anyway.
He’s killed so many.
It started as just sentries, and that was fine, because they were mindless robots. But that got too easy and the real soldiers were sent to fight them. And they were full of blood and life regardless of being affiliated with the literal overlords of the universe. He’s certain not all of them wanted to be there fighting like that, but he shot them one after one like a goddamn execution.
It might as well have been.
He can smell it and he can hear it and when he closes his eyes he can see it. His lungs and heart feel like the same thing again and he can’t tell if he’s actually breathing.
His mom always hated war.
His mom, oh god his mom.
She’d be so disappointed in him. He’s killed so many people, he’s let her down so badly.
He wouldn’t be able to stand in front of her, if she’s even still alive. He has so much blood on his hands so so so many lives on his soul.
He starts scratching at his arms because rubbing isn’t doing enough the blood isn’t going away.
He thinks he’s rocking in place, he at least knows it used to help when he got panicky as a child. But this is different. He’s killed people on purpose now, watched as they died, one after another. Scrubbed the blood in the aftermath off of his suit.
He doesn’t deserve his mother’s reassurance, unable to unsee all the blood surrounding him.
“Lance.”
It’s soft and familiar, that voice. He opens eyes that he didn’t know were closed, but can’t make himself focus on anything but his hands.
There’s blood under his fingernails and on his fingers and he makes a pained noise.
“Lance, is it alright if I sit down next to you?” He tries focusing long enough to make the words come out, but only ends up digging his nails back into his arms.
“Shhhh, okay, you don’t have to talk, just shake your head yes or no. Can you do that for me?”
That sounds so much easier than talking right now, and he nods his head up and down.
“Okay. I’m sitting down now, alright?”
He keeps nodding as the solid mass of person sits down next to him.
“Can I touch you?”
That sounds- that sounds bad, and he shakes his head no rapidly.
“Alright, that’s fine. That’s just fine.”
They’re quiet next to him, just a comfortable solid in his peripheral, and he’s grateful to them.
“Can you focus on your breathing for me? If not it’s okay, I just want you to try.”
He tries to figure out where his heartbeat ends and his breathing begins, and he gets close before his focus slips out again. He shakes his head so hard it hurts.
“Okay, instead of that, can you tap your fingers on your chest with me? Like,” Lance hears the dull noise of fingers against chest. “Try to keep time with me.”
Lance takes a shaky hand and slowly taps it against his chest.
“Yes, just like that. Now try to tap at the same time I do. Let me start.”
He hears the repetitive tap tap tap of their fingers on their sternum and tentatively starts tapping along with them. He’s a little slower at first, but catches up quickly.
“You’re doing great. Just keep doing that with me.”
He doesn’t notice he’s attached numbers to the taps until he hears himself whispering out the quiet one two three four along with it. His heart beat has slowed to a similar pattern, along with his breathing. He tapers off slowly, taking in a shaky, shuddery breath before dropping his hand.
His arms don’t feel like they’re covered in blood anymore, but they sting. He looks down to see, funnily enough, blood oozing slowly from the gouges he’s scratched into his arms.
“You back with me?”
Lance turns his head to see Shiro, tired eyes meeting his, and he nods.
“Okay,” and the sigh that Shiro lets out is so relieved it hurts. “Okay good.”
Lance curls his knees up in front of his chest and wraps his arms around them. His tongue still feels heavy in his mouth and his brain is still a little foggy, but he’s here.
“What happened back there in the training room?”
He shakes his head no again, closing his eyes when he feels the familiar burn in them.
“Lance, please. I need to know that you’re okay.”
He focuses his energy really hard and chokes out the word “Bad.”
“What’s bad?”
He taps his chest.
“You are?”
Lance nods and bites his lip, screwing up his already closed eyes.
“Why are you bad, Lance?” His voice is calm and patient, and Lance wonders vaguely how hard it is to keep that inflection.
“I—,” he coughs. “Killed too many.”
Shiro lets out this little, pained ‘oh,” and Lance curls up on himself further.
“Th-the blood a-and the noise and my m… mom,” he chokes himself silent.
“Your mom?”
“She ha-ated war and killing and g-u-uns.”
Shiro is quiet and Lance reopens his eyes and heaves out a sob.
“Sh-she’d hate me,” he whispers against his legs.
“What?” Shiro turns to him, baffled. “Lance, no. From what I’ve heard about your mom, she’s very kind and accepting. And you’ve done so much to protect people.”
“But I killed them t-too,” his face is wet.
“So have I.” Shiro holds out his prosthetic for inspection.
“That’s different. You didn’t have a choice.”
“Yes I did. And not just then. I’ve killed Galra soldiers too. We all have. Does that make us bad?”
“Tha-at’s different—”
“Lance.”
He shuts up.
“It’s,” Shiro’s face screws up for a second. “It is so hard to deal with killing living things. It’s so hard. It burrows in deep and doesn’t leave you and you can see whoever it was you killed in your mind forever. It’s so difficult to work through. But this? This doesn’t make you a bad person. You’ve risked your life countless times for others, you’ve killed so others get to live. Your mom wouldn’t hate you, Lance. You’re her son, and from what I hear, she loves you so much. I think she’d be proud of what you’ve done for all the people you’ve helped save across the universe, but I think she’d be very worried for you as well.”
Lance is trying to choke back sobs, and he makes a motion with his hands that he hopes gets across hug, because he doesn’t think he can vocalize that right now. Shiro gets the message, and he feels strong, steady arms wrap around him.
“Does it get any better?” he wobbles out between sobs.
Shiro takes a moment to think, and Lance appreciates the effort, until he feels the shake of a head. “You get… numb-er, to it.”
Lance sits there with his head on Shiro’s shoulder until his hands stop shaking so much and his breaths even back out. When he pulls away, he looks down at his arms and winces. Now that he’s not crying and panicking out of his mind, they actually kind of hurt. The smell of the blood still makes him gag, but he bites his lip and deals.
“I… I’m sorry—”
“You don’t need to be sorry. I promise you, you have absolutely nothing to be sorry for.”
Lance worries his lip between his teeth and Shiro stands, extending a hand to him.
“We should get you patched up. Everyone was really worried when you blanked out in the training room earlier.”
Shame colors his cheeks and he accepts the hand, eyes downcast.
“Lance,” Shiro says, very, very gently. “No one will think less of you for this. We can take a small break from training and fighting if you want? Don’t feel like you have to say no just because it’s Voltron.”
“I… I think that would be good. For everyone.”
“I think so too.”
They walk slowly to the ship’s med bay, Lance realizes very quickly that Shiro still has his helmet with him as he sees everyone waiting there for him.
Shiro looks just as surprised as him. “I thought I muted it,” he says quietly.
“Something unmuted it when you were moving around. We didn’t catch all of it, just the last few minutes.”
Lance is suddenly incredibly self conscious. He knows he has blood all over his fingers, on the gashes in his arms, on the spot where he kept tapping his chest with Shiro.
“Um,” he says eloquently. Coran is shuffling him toward a bed, where he hops up to sit. “I’m really sorry for freaking you all out like that.”
“Lance, buddy, you don’t have anything to be sorry for.” Hunk comes and sits next to him, examining the marks on his arms. “I didn’t even know fingernails could do this,” he says absentmindedly.
“Uh, me neither, I guess,” he tries. Hunk smiles at him.
“The blood freaks me out, too,” Pidge says, not quite looking at him. “Injuries, bleeding, stuff like that is really,” they shiver a little. “So, sorry if I’m not that touchy feely until you get wrapped up.”
“Aw, little Pidgey, can we finally add something to the ‘Things we Have in Common’ list that isn’t a meme? Finally.”
They snort. “There are plenty of things on that list besides memes, you dick.”
“Language,” Shiro says from next to the bed.
“If, um,” Keith is shuffling awkwardly over next to him. “If the noise is part of it, I can help you with different weapons? Knives and swords and stuff. I know it isn’t really helping the whole killing people thing, because it really doesn’t help that, but it might take away some of the noise factor.”
“Hey,” Lance tries to sound reassuring here, and Keith looks up and meets his eyes. “I’d like that. I think it might help a little. And I should probably get used to using other things anyway. I can’t always rely on the blaster to protect me, now can I?”
Keith’s mouth quirks in a funny sort of smile, and Lance smiles back.
“However,” Allura says, somehow materializing next to him. “I think the two of you were right when you said we all needed a small vacation from this fighting. We do have to worry about ourselves sometimes before the fates of others can be involved. So I think, Keith, that we’ll have to put that training off for another time.”
Keith nods as Coran finishes cleaning and wrapping his arms. “There we go! You should be right as rain in a couple of days. Be sure to keep those clean, or you could get quite the nasty infection.”
Pidge comes and smushes themself into his upper arm and side.
“You know you can talk to us, right? I mean, we’ve all gone through the exact same experiences as you. We can’t know exactly how you feel, but I’m sure one of us has something similar going on.”
“I didn’t… I wasn’t really thinking.”
“Well, get it through your thick skull that we all care.” They knock on his forehead to prove their point and he laughs.
“I think it’s in there now, Pidge.”
“Allura,” Hunk says. “Did you have anywhere in mind for where we can all take a breather?”
She smiles gently. “I think I know just the place.”