Chapter Text
During the train ride, they lay down a plan. How are they going to approach the Garrison, and who are they going to try to convince first?
Keith insists that they can’t give the Garrison the opportunity to surround them and subdue them before they can speak their case. Once the Garrison’s got their hands on them, they will inevitably be in control of the situation. Since they need to get back to Voltron as soon as possible, they can’t let that happen.
Lance sees Keith’s logic and decides to agree. They might also get separated, which Lance wants to avoid at all costs, so they need to approach the Garrison in a way that lets them keep control of the conversation, but at the same time mitigates their information as quickly and as efficiently as possible. But how exactly was barging into a high-security area like the Garrison going to accomplish that?
“Our problem is,” Keith speaks up, twenty minutes into the train ride. “We don’t have leverage.”
“Yes, we do,” Lance counters. “The Garrison hasn’t told anyone that we deserted. If we need to, if they force our hand, we’ll threaten to expose them. We have our bayards and our armour. We can prove that we have otherworldly technology. Technology that all tech companies in the world would kill to possess.”
“But if we do that, everyone will know. About the war, about us…” Lance knows what he is going to say next, just from the look he gives him. “…even your family.”
“I know.” Lance swallows and looks out of the window to watch the bright landscape zoom past them. It is another choice Lance has to make. But just like when they’d sat in that diner on the other side of the border, having their last meal before they crossed, Lance knows what he will choose, when the time comes.
“Okay,” Keith says. Lance almost doesn’t hear him over the rustle of the train tracks, and when he looks at him again, he sees that Keith understands exactly what this choice will cost him.
Keith lets him sit in silence for a while, but it doesn’t last long, because the train ride ends at a certain point and they still have one more hole to fill in their plan. “Who do we talk to first?”
Lance sighs, scratching his head. “I don’t know. Ideally, we go straight to Iverson, since he’s got the highest rank, but I have a feeling he isn’t gonna believe us, even with our armour… So, we need to get to someone who can convince him for us, or vouch for us. Someone whose word would be taken seriously.”
“I know someone.”
Lance snaps his eyes to him. Another secret detail of Keith’s mysterious past? By the time they get back to Voltron, Lance is gonna know all the ins and outs of him. He perks up. “Do tell.”
But Keith doesn’t answer immediately, which is unlike him. The only time he’s done that was when he revealed that he hitchhiked as a kid. “He’s an officer.” Keith says quickly, but carefully.
Lance narrows his eyes. Is Keith holding back information, after all? The disappointment tastes more bitter than he remembers. “And?” Lance prompts.
Again, Keith hesitates. “And I think we can trust him.” He’s staring at Lance just like he did when he’d revealed his past. As if daring him to make fun of him or say something stupid. Which is fair, Lance did say something pretty stupid when he’d shown him his knife. But he couldn’t imagine what about this guy would make Lance make fun of him.
He has a split-second where he feels the need to make Keith explain himself. Demand to know why he is acting so weird. But then he remembers how Keith has let him get away with a bunch of his own bullshit, letting things slide even though it was obvious that Lance wasn’t saying everything. So, Lance nods and looks back out the window, biting his tongue. Besides, the more Keith is weird about this guy, the less Lance wants to know about him.
They arrive at the Garrison between late afternoon and early evening. Getting into the place is easier than one might think. Lance has snuck out of there enough times to know this place like the back of his hand, so he knows exactly where to go and when. It’s the whole reason they made it out on the roof in the first place.
Lance gets them in by exploiting the old and broken entrance/exit pad in the west wing of the base. It’s not broken per say, but it does have a glitch that allows Lance to use his Garrison ID code to open the door, but not register his exit if he backspaces the second before it registers. His code is never recorded because the machine doesn’t recognise the ID long enough to store it in the mainframe, but it does recognise it quick enough that it opens the door.
Lance has abused this glitch for years, never telling anyone about it except Hunk, and miraculously no one has figured out to fix it. Lo and behold, several months after their defection, the door still glitches open for them to sneak in. Keith gives him an impressed glance, which sends a bolt of satisfaction straight to Lance’s chest that he will never admit out loud.
The halls in the west wing are also usually empty, being an old research facility that they moved and never repurposed. Even the security cameras are offline in this area. No one sees them coming in, except the line of crates and boxes in the corners of the abandoned facility. Lance briefly wonders about them, since they weren’t there when he and Hunk had snuck onto the roof all those months ago, but they are quickly forgotten again, when Keith opens the second door to the hallways.
Walking down them, Lance gets an eerie feeling. They look nothing like the halls of the Castle of Lions, yet they still remind him of his nightmare. Maybe it’s because he was wearing his Garrison cadet uniform in the dream, but something about hearing his own footsteps echo against the grey walls of this place sets the hair on the back of his neck on end.
Keith must feel his unsettlement somehow, because he glances at him from the corner of his eye, but he doesn’t say anything. Lance tries to force himself to relax, but it’s harder than he wants it to be.
It's not exactly a confirmation, either, more like an expectancy. While they walk down the halls, Lance gets an eerie feeling, like an eye burning a hole on the back of his neck. On instinct, he looks over his shoulder and catches a brief glimpse out of the corner of his eye something orange flowing by and disappearing behind the wall. He gasps and halts in his tracks. Distantly, he’s aware of Keith asking him what’s wrong.
“Did you see that?” Lance says, not taking his eyes away from the corner.
“See what?”
Lance grabs his hand and runs towards where he saw it last, but when he rounds the corner, no one and nothing is there. “I thought—” Lance says, and looks around uncertainly. He feels his heartbeat pounding in his throat. “I thought I just saw Hunk.”
“Hunk?”
"His headband..." Lance rubs his forehead, a chill crawling down his spine. “I'm getting the heebie-jeebies, man.”
Keith frowns, but doesn’t respond, looking around suspiciously, as if he expects Hunk’s ghost to round another corner any minute.
They continue down the halls, although more cautiously than before. The creeping feeling Lance had is even stronger now, and only gets stronger the deeper into the Garrison they get. There’s something about this place that just doesn’t seem right, but wherever he looks, there’s nothing he can pinpoint as the source of his suspicion.
Then, suddenly, Keith stops in his tracks and grabs Lance's shirt.
Before Lance can asks what’s going on, Keith quickly drags him into a corner and crowds close to him against the wall, as if in hiding. He quickly slaps his hand over Lance’s mouth when he tries to protest. “Shut up,” Keith hisses, his eyes wide and staring down the hall. “Look.”
Keith releases Lance long enough for him to look around the corner. At first, Lance doesn’t spot what has Keith looking like he’s seen a ghost, but then his eyes snag on an orange uniform paused in the intersection between two hallways and his breath stalls on the way to his lungs.
He quickly turns around again, his heart beating fast. “Keith. Are you seeing what I’m seeing, or am I still concussed?”
“I told you to look, idiot.”
Lance takes another peek and nope his eyes are not deceiving him. Standing in the intersection is his mirror image, looking down over a tablet as if he’s reading a report. And in the gaudy orange Garrison uniform, no less.
Lance is looking straight at his own doppelgänger. Same short, wavy hair, same flawless, shiny skin, but with a certain tired look in his eyes. And were his arms really that skinny? God, he always knew those Garrison slacks made him look shorter.
He turns back to Keith, strangely out of breath. “Holy shit.”
“Definitely not still concussed.”
“What the hell is going on?”
“Maybe it’s a trick,” Keith says, still staring with an odd look on his face.
“A trick?”
“Or a hologram or something.”
“What? How would that even work?”
“Well, it’s either that, or you have a twin you never told me about!”
“Not a twin,” Lance says and sneaks a peek again, just to see the other him disappear into a corridor. “I’m way better looking than that guy, though, right?”
Keith rolls his eyes. He opens his mouth to respond, probably something snarky, but Lance never hears the answer to that question, because then they both freeze. Footsteps down the hall, coming towards them.
Lance pushes at Keith without thinking, and spots belatedly a door on the other side with the label “storage” bolted on it. But Keith must’ve spotted it first, because before he knows it, he is being dragged into a dark storage unit, with the door locked behind him.
Keith releases the grip on his shirt to lean intently against the door.
“What are you doing?” Lance asks.
Keith hushes him again until the footsteps have receded, then looks at Lance like he’s out of his mind.
“We need to talk about this before we run into anyone else.”
“What is there to talk about? Nothing’s changed.”
“Everything’s changed. We just saw another you, or did you forget that already.”
Lance shakes his head, his mind racing. “This is our chance to show them the war is real. We’re already missing, if we show up—”
“They’ll strap us to a table and knock us out for tests. Remember? We’ve already seen this happen once, but this time, there will be no one saving us. Especially now that we know they can replace us.”
Lance is silent as he realises that Keith is right. Given everything they’ve been through on the way here, Lance can’t assume the Garrison will welcome them with open arms and good intentions.
“What do you think that was? Or I was or am or—”
“I don’t know,” Keith interrupts, but doesn’t elaborate. Keith looks confused and annoyed, his infamous scowl making its way back to his face, but it’s directed at the floor rather than at Lance.
“Do you think… do you think it really was Hunk that I saw?” Lance says cautiously.
“Maybe, but we can’t stay here and speculate,” Keith answers. “We need more information.”
“Yeah...” Lance looks around the storage unit and feels an idea creeping up on him. “And I think I know where we can get some. Come on.”
Sneaking back out of the storage unit, they agree to keep a low profile and try to stay out of sight as much as possible. Leaving the abandoned wing increases their chances of being sighted, but luckily they arrived on campus after teaching hours, which means most students are in their chambers and common areas on the other side of the building, and the personnel have gone home for the evening, or finishing up work in their common lounge.
Good thing they stayed at that beach a little while longer, or this would have been ten times harder than it is right now. That doesn’t mean it’s a piece of cake though. More than once, Lance and Keith have to squeeze into another storage unit or empty classroom to stay out of sight. Once they even accidentally stumble on the simulator room, and Lance has to hold himself back from daring Keith to a match between them.
Eventually they make it. Iverson’s office.
From what they can see through the window on the door, it’s empty with the lights turned off, but when they try the handle, they find that the door is locked. Keith reveals another one of his delinquent talents, and manages to unlock it with nothing but a hairpin forgotten on the other side of the hallway by some innocuous student.
Iverson’s office seems to Lance to be the likeliest place to have answers for most of their questions. The highest ranking officer at the Garrison has to have clearance for all the information they need. And indeed he does. He must have just left the office, because the computer and the Garrison data base are both unlocked, when they wake the screen.
“Thank god for Iverson’s senile old age,” Lance says through a grateful sigh.
Keith snorts beside him, activating the search function. “What should I look for?”
“Look up my name.”
Keith types in Lance’s full name, which shocks Lance, because he doesn't think he's ever told Keith his surname. He remembers having mentioned his Spanish name a few times in Keith’s presence, but he doesn’t remember if he’s ever said his surname. He realises, too, that he doesn’t know Keith’s, and this bothers him for some reason.
He’s quickly snapped out of his thoughts again, when Keith presses enter, and Lance’s student ID picture stares back at him. He is surprised to find that it’s his old one, the one he took for the Cargo Pilot track. He remembers the day it was taken, a little over a year ago, on his first day on the track, but he also remembers taking a new one, once he was promoted to Fighter Class a few months ago.
He looks through the information on him; his height, blood type, nationality, until his eyes snag on his rank.
“Cargo Pilot,” he reads out loud, his voice sounding strange and far away even to his own ears.
Keith stares back at him over his shoulder, still hunched over the keyboard, his gaze intense. Then, he quickly turns back to the computer and looks up his own name. Lance sees his surname, ‘Kogane’, and can’t help but store that information for later.
Keith’s picture ID comes up just like Lance’s. He looks as he normally does, indifferent and bored, and on his rank sits ‘Fighter Pilot’ untouched.
Lance has a brief moment where he is transported back to every single time he read Keith’s name at the top of every test result, every list that has ever mattered to him. He remembers how it felt, when he waited for the list of people who made it into the Fighter Pilot track, and he saw Keith’s name, but not his own. How bitter he had felt.
“What the hell,” Keith says, sounding lost.
Lance shakes his head to clear it, but doesn’t know what to say. What the hell is going on?
“Look up the others,” he says quickly, his heart beating a million miles per minute. Keith looks up Hunk’s name first, Lance supplying his last name when Keith gets stumped, and they see his rank as an Engineer. Then Pidge, who is enrolled as a Communications Officer.
Lance slides a hand down his face, not knowing what else to do. “I have more questions than I came in with.”
“Maybe we’re in the past?”
“No,” Lance denies, remembering back to the newspaper. “The date doesn’t match, and Pidge is enrolled. Are you sure I’m not concussed?”
"Yes," Keith dismisses again with an impatient noise.“It has to be a coverup.”
“What kind of coverup involves another me roaming around the halls like some kind of ghost?”
“A hologram or a clone.”
“Okay, this is crazy.”
“How else would you explain it?”
Lance doesn’t have an answer to this one. None of the information they have right now is lining up to one simple conclusion. They can’t be in the past, because Pidge is enrolled and the date doesn’t line up; and Lance severely doubts the Garrison’s ability to clone them, as well as the longevity of a hologram running around without any issues. Besides, if it was a Garrison coverup, why would they bother re-enrolling Keith? Why demote Lance back to the Cargo Pilots?
“Clearly, we don’t know what we’re up against,”
“We have to do something. We still have to find a way to get back up there.”
Lance nods to himself. “You’re right, but I don’t think this is something your friend can help us with,” he says, and tries not to let it show that a small part of him is selfishly relieved by that. “He might have believed an intergalactic war, but not if we’ve been here the entire time. We need to find someone who can figure this out for us. Someone who knows more about space nerd shit and technology than we do…”
They both think for a while, then at the same time, look at the monitor, projecting Pidge’s impatient stare back at them. Lance feels the instant they get the same idea, and the familiar thrum of anticipation and excitement of a clear mission shooting through him.
At the same moment, they hear movement outside the office. Immediately, they put the computer on standby and hide underneath the desk. The space is very cramped, but Keith and Lance somehow manage to perform complicated manoeuvring, the likes of which seen only on a twisters platform, and involves a very clear breach of personal space, in order to fit into the little square space underneath the desk.
They just manage to tuck all of their limbs neatly into hiding the second before the door opens, and Iverson’s voice booms through the room.
“WHAT? What do you mean they’re held up?”
There is some rustling, then a loud smack as Iverson slaps documents on the desk. Lance’s shoulders hitch in surprise at the sound, against his better judgement, and Keith underneath him clutches his shoulder, presumably to keep him still and from making a sound. Lance holds his breath and squeezes his eyes shut, but doesn’t hear Iverson approach. He thinks his heartbeat might be deafening his ears to any other sound in the room, but then he recognises Iverson’s heavy footsteps stalking to the other side of his office, probably where the closet is.
Indeed, the telltale squeak of a hinge lets him know that he is right.
“It seems the transportation vehicles have been flagged, sir. The officers aren’t letting them pass,” the assistant answers, a light voice that Lance doesn’t recognise.
“On whose orders?” Iverson demands.
“I don’t know, sir.”
“Then find out, dammit! Those ships are ours, and I’ll be damned before I let them get their hands on ‘em.”
Lance opens his eyes again and finds that Keith is already looking at him. His eyes are wide and thoughtful. He recognises at the same time that Keith’s hand has moved from his shoulder to his collarbone, where he is sure to feel the pounding rhythm of Lance’s heartbeat. He isn’t sure if the look in Keith’s eyes is concern for his cardiothoracic health or if he, like Lance, is hoping Iverson will take this somewhere else, as soon as possible.
“…The minister of foreign affairs isn’t answering our inquiries—”
“Fuck inquiries. Get a cab ready. If he wants to make my life difficult, he better damn well look me in the eye while doing it, or I will make it very awkward for Thanksgiving.”
The door slams again on the edge of the last word, and the only sound left in the office is the rushing of Lance’s blood in his ears. They stay still, both holding their breath in silence just in case Iverson forgot something, but after a while it becomes clear that he isn’t returning any time soon.
“I think he’s gone,” Keith whispers, looking outside the desk.
“Yeah,” Lance whispers back, and swallows.
Keith looks back at him, his eyes sharp. “Move,” he says.
“What?”
“You need to move or I can’t get out.”
“Oh, right,” Lance says quickly, and in his eagerness to get out of Keith’s space again, accidentally knocks his head against the desk. “Ow!”
“Just—” Keith pushes him as far away as he can in the cramped space. He looks and sounds like he is nearing the end of his very short patience. “Stay there,” he demands, and then manages to crawl out from the tight space.
Lance takes an extra second to quell his new headache and snap himself out of it, before he follows him. He catches a brief glance of the documents Iverson slapped on the desk, mostly because there was a large and angry red font across the front page saying "classified", but also because his eye caught on the word "clearance" and "west wing". Must have something to do with the boxes he saw when they came in.
“Come on,” Keith says, having already made it to the door again. “Let’s go find Pidge.”
Lance doesn’t argue and follows closely behind. They try to stay out of sight while simultaneously actively looking for a particular person, which is very challenging considering their objective with finding someone directly conflicts with hiding from everyone. Countless times they have to narrowly avoid being seen by more Garrison personnel, and a particular group of annoying kids who stand in the hallway forever just chitchatting, which stalls Lance and Keith for longer than they want to.
And while all of this is happening, it seems that Pidge is nowhere to be found. Now they know that she is enrolled in the Garrison, but they don’t find her in her quarters, nor in any of the common areas for students. They also look in the simulation room, the combat room, the engineering wing, the dry cleaners, the West Bank park and the cafeteria, all with no Green Gremlin making an appearance.
They even try the kitchens, to no avail.
“There has to be a place we haven’t looked yet,” Keith says, though Lance can tell that he is growing impatient with this routine, quickly. Lance can definitely sympathise with that.
“But where?” Lance asks. “We’ve looked everywhere!”
He grumbles something unsavoury under his breath after another empty room found with no Pidge, and finally, Lance loses it. “Ugh, where is she!” He exclaims.
This was a mistake. Immediately they hear footsteps down the hall, coming towards them. Keith drags Lance by the back of his shirt and pushes him into the nearest door, where they immediately close it shut behind them.
Keith quickly draws the blinds attached to the windows and keeps an eye out for the people’s movements down the hall. Lance takes the time to look around the room. He expected another storage unit, especially considering that they were now in the medical wing, and storage units were frequent in this area to keep stock of medical supplies such as bandaid rolls, syringes, pillow cases, sheets and other practical things. But it isn’t a storage unit, it’s a patient room. And it isn’t an empty one.
Lance freezes once he catches sight of the bed, frantically poking and prodding at Keith, speechless.
“What?” Keith says irritably, but when he turns around his face changes instantly.
Lying on the bed is Shiro, but not as Lance knows him. His hair is all black, no white hair in sight, and he doesn’t have a scar across his nose, either. His face is thinner, though it is hard to tell exactly from the tube strapped to his mouth. His sheets cover him up to the neck, but Lance can tell that there are more tubes attached to him underneath it, because of all the machines.
He hears the soft, mechanical breath of the ventilator, recognises that it times perfectly with the rhythmic rise and fall of Shiro’s chest. He also hears the heart monitor, and knows that it is recording his heartbeat steadily and continuously, which sounds at ease. He takes it all in, but he doesn’t believe what he is seeing.
The frustrating, but thrilling anticipation of looking for Pidge is gone, and Lance feels like he has stepped directly into his nightmare all over again.
He doesn’t realise that Shiro is not alone, until someone speaks from his bedside.
“Keith?” A man in a Garrison Officer’s uniform that Lance doesn’t recognise, but seems oddly familiar, slowly closes the book in his hands and peers curiously between Keith and Lance and the now-drawn window. He speaks very softly, yet his voice projects easily over the hums and beeps of the various machines attached to Shiro, enough that Lance hears him clearly. He points his glasses back at Lance, somewhat sharply and sceptically that has Lance holding his breath. “Who’s this?”
After a short second of silence, Lance realises that Keith hasn’t said anything. He glances very quickly at Keith beside him, sees that he has paled and become completely frozen, only seeming to stare at Shiro’s unmoving body on the bed, and instantly steps forward to buy him some time to come to himself. If Lance is shocked at seeing Shiro like this, he can only imagine how Keith feels right now.
Lance glances furtively at the name tag on the Officer’s chest and salutes. “Uh, Cadet Mcclain, Officer White, sir. Cargo Pilot Track and Keith’s… friend.”
Officer White nods, albeit confused and a little suspicious. He smiles politely, but redirects his sharp gaze back to Keith quickly, “It would have been nice with a little warning, Keith,” he mumbles, but seems to put it behind him as soon as he finishes the sentence. “No need for salutes here. And please. Call me Adam.” He rises from his seat and offers his hand, which Lance quickly takes over Shiro’s bed.
“Name is Lance, when it’s not cadet.”
Adam smiles warmly and shakes his hand again before he sits back down. “Nice to meet you, Lance. Have a seat.”
“Uh, thanks, but we were really just stopping by,” Lance says too quickly, but then realises that this is his opportunity to get more information. This man is by Shiro’s bedside. If anyone can give them a little more context into whatever bizarre nightmare they’ve walked into, it might be him. He gestures to Shiro, who continues to lie restfully and undisturbed. “Can I ask what’s wrong with him?”
“Keith didn’t tell you?” Adam asks, surprised, eyeing Keith.
“He didn’t specify,” Lance amends.
“He’s been sick for a long time. He has a rare autoimmune disease that only gets worse as time goes on. Other cases haven’t been optimistic, and the treatment is mostly experimental right now, but we wanted to be open-minded. He’s actually just come back from a surgery, which was risky but… might give us more progress in his recovery. Keith didn’t mention this to you?”
“Uh, no, sir. Not in as much detail,” Lance panics, struggling to come up with a believable lie. “As you probably know, Keith likes to keep to himself, but I noticed that he was feeling down, and I managed to pester out of him that Shiro— Er, Officer Shirogane was sick. I’m sorry if I’m intruding.”
“Not at all,” Adam dismisses, not unkindly. “At the very least, I am glad Keith finally has someone to confide in. Shiro has been guiding Keith ever since he encouraged him to sign up for the Galaxy Garrison, and Keith’s taken his illness pretty hard.”
Lance nods, feeling overwhelmed with all of this information. Shiro is sick? If this is a cover-up, it’s the most bizarre cover-up Lance has ever thought would be possible. Shiro went missing more than a year ago, and Lance now knows that it’s because the Galra took him, but he’s pretty sure the Garrison didn’t cover that up, back then. He came to the Garrison to get more answers, and get help, but all he has gotten are yet more questions and the impending feeling that this has suddenly become much more difficult and dangerous than he initially thought. If Lance doesn’t even know what’s going on, how can he possibly convince them that there’s an intergalactic war happening right on Earth’s doorstep, and that they need to get back to it as soon as possible?
He starts suspecting something like Allura’s dreamscape room, in that they are in some kind of test or dream or hallucination, but that has its limitations on the senses. Lance is pretty sure that everything he’s seen, heard, tasted, smelled and felt has been real. Besides, it doesn’t explain everyone they’ve met on the way here. Lance has never met any of the people they’ve come across on this journey, and he’s pretty sure Keith hasn’t either, so how were they here? Allura’s dreamscape room is entirely based on ones own memories and experiences, it cannot conjure up anything new. It is possible that Lance has met these people and he just doesn’t remember, but another part of him doubts it. He’s never even been across the border before.
And who is this Officer in front of him, and what is his relation to Shiro? Could this be the friend Keith talked about on the train? Lance considers him again, but he doesn’t recognise him as part of the crew of the Kerberos mission. Yet he still seems oddly familiar to him. Maybe the dreamscape pulled him from some deep subconscious part of his brain to plant him here?
“You must be very close with Officer Shirogane,” Lance says, carefully.
Adam smiles, as if Lance told him another joke. He even laughs a little, softly. “Yes, I suppose you could say that. He’s my fiancé.”
Lance chokes. “Fiancé?” No, this is definitely not a dreamscape. There is no corner of Lance’s mind that could have ever conjured up this possibility.
“Yes,” Adam says succinctly. He tilts his head. “Is there a problem, cadet?”
“No, sir,” Lance hurries to say. “Not at all, sir. I just didn’t know Shiro was engaged.”
Oh god, this was turning left very quickly. Lance looks at Keith desperately, silently begging him to intervene, to help Lance out, but he’s completely immobile. He just keeps staring at Shiro, lying on the bed.
Lance goes back to the door and checks through the window to see if the halls are empty, but there are still a couple of people walking past, so he turns back to the room.
“Right…” Adam briefly looks at Keith, who hasn’t said a word in all this time. “How come you’re back already? And with a friend?”
Keith still doesn’t answer, so Lance answers for him again. “Keith just wanted to check up on him. Uh, again. He was pretty worried and upset…” He squeezes Keith’s shoulder, urging him to say something, respond, anything, but Keith is almost completely catatonic. Lance is starting to get worried, and wonders if he should find a way get them out of here.
Adam returns his attention back on Keith, his eyes seeming to soften. “Keith, I told you not to worry. When he wakes up, I’ll let you know immediately.”
Keith sharply turns away and storms out of the room.
“Uh, thank you, sir!” Lance says, hurrying after Keith, but not wanting to be rude. “Nice to meet you.”
Adam looks surprised by Keith’s abrupt departure, but doesn’t protest. “Nice to meet you, Lance.”
By the time Lance leaves the room and closes the door behind him, Keith has already rounded a corner. Lance just manages to catch the last glimpse of his horrid, orange vest, before he disappears.
“Keith,” Lance hisses as he speedwalks after him, to hell with their low profile. He smiles inconspicuously at onlookers, no one he recognises or who might recognise them, but who still peer after them with confused and curious eyes. “Keith, wait!”
He doesn’t know where Keith is going until they make it back outside. Lance jogs up to him, and catches his elbow, before he can leave him behind completely. “Hey, slow down.”
Keith whirls around quickly to face him, forcing Lance to lose his grip on him. “What’s going on?” Keith says, sharply, his eyes wet. “Where the fuck are we?”
At the look on Keith’s face, Lance is at a loss for words. Despite everything that they’ve been through, he’s never seen Keith so rattled. He looks so lost, so hurt, that Lance’s heart pangs and twists inside of him. He’s wearing the same frown he usually wears in his sleep, and Lance hates that it’s made its way back. They are a long way from Lance’s childhood bedroom now, where all they had to worry about was who was sleeping where. A long way from water fights in the kitchen, and swimming in the ocean. He wishes more than anything that he could take Keith out of here, protect him from this strange dream, this nightmare.
“Okay,” Lance recovers. He places his hands on Keith’s shoulders, both to ground Keith and himself. “let’s— let’s try to regroup. I think we’re both pretty out of it from what we just saw, but let’s not talk here, where we might get spotted. Come on.”
He grabs Keith’s hand and leads him to the usual route he takes, when he used to sneak into town with Hunk, leaving the Garrison behind them.
Keith falls silent again as Lance guides them back into town. Both of their morale low, they are each trapped in their own thoughts. Lance has no idea what to think. Seeing Shiro like that… lying on the bed with all those machines around him, keeping him alive, helping him recover… it was the last thing he expected to see. Shiro has always seemed so strong to him, there’s no way… If it wasn't for the warmth of Keith’s hand in his, Lance would be convinced that none of this is real.
Night has fallen over them while they'd been in there, and Lance is starting to worry again about where they should stay. Obviously, the Garrison is no longer an option, and he does have some leftover savings from his piggy bank, but with this new development, he has no idea how long that will last them.
He's thinking about the cheapest motel in town when, suddenly, Keith stops in his tracks, dragging Lance out of his thoughts. Lance looks back at him, concerned. “Keith?”
Keith doesn’t answer, he stares down at the ground, focused, his brow folding. They’re just on the outskirts of the city, out of bounds from Garrison ground, when Lance hears it, too. The sound of a run-down gas motor — no several — puckering towards them, and Lance’s gut drops all the way down to his feet.
In the blink of an eye they’re surrounded by old gas motor cars, four, no five of them, each with their headlights on, trained on them. Immediately, Lance lets go of Keith’s hand and summons his bayard from his bracelet, holding it ready in his hands. At last, trouble has caught up to them.
The drivers all come out to greet them, some in pairs, others big enough to stand on their own. Each of them have a gun either in their hand or in the waistband of their pants. Lance doesn’t recognise any one of them, but then the car door in front of him opens, and three men come out to stand them off.
That’s when Lance recognises him, and his blood instantly turns cold.
He smiles, satisfied by Lance’s reaction. “You think I wouldn’t find you, ratero?” He says, in heavy accented English. “Avoiding border patrol is not enough to throw me off your retched scent.”
It’s the thug Keith stole from the day after they crashed, and the two goons he fought off behind the bar. And just like then, he has his machete ready in his hand.
Lance deactivates his gun and holds his hands up. He tries to mask the panic in his voice, when he says, "No queremos problemas. Devolveremos lo que robamos."
The thug doesn’t answer, just stares at him with a menacing glare that makes Lance shiver.
Slowly, he reaches his hands behind him, and when everyone around them react, he quickly holds his hands up, again. He tells them that it’s in their backpack, that he will give it back to them. When they don’t react a second time, Lance assumes he’s gotten permission to move. He reaches into the backpack on his shoulder, his hands shaking and finds the keys while they all watch. He holds them up for him, but when no one steps forward to take them, he throws them at their feet.
“There,” he says in English. “No harm done, okay?”
The man laughs, low, almost in disbelief. “No harm?” He laughs louder, then abruptly plunges his machete through the roof of the car behind him. While staring them down, he reaches slowly to his other hand, which was all this time wearing a glove, and pulls it off. He shows them his palm, which is a ruin of burnt and damaged skin, a wide circumference, as if the skin couldn’t make out how to grow back together. He’s lost three of his five fingers, too.
Lance is thrown back to the dark alley behind the bar, on the other side of the border, where he looks for Keith, and finds that he’s almost killed by this guy’s machete. That is, until Lance shoots it out of his hand.
“El hombre que me deja lisiado, quedará lisiado diez veces más,” the man spits, the venom in his voice reaching all the way across and poisoning Lance’s bravery. He settles his sharp, sinister gaze on Keith, and switches back to English. “I will make you watch as I tear this fucker limb from limb, and I will enjoy every second of it.”
Lance’s shoulders go rigid, and a sick feeling starts welling up inside him.
Beside him, Keith scowls, his hand reaching behind him. “Don’t even think about it.”
The thug only smiles again, and then he gives a sharp nod of his head.
It all happens too quickly.
Lance follows Keith’s hand as it inches to the back of his belt, where his mother’s knife lies hidden in its sheath. But then, out of the corner of his eye he catches movement. Someone with their hand on the gun, the barrel pointed at Keith, a twitch by the trigger. He stumbles to the right, the sound of a gunshot and then he falls.
Keith doesn’t have time to re-orient himself, before another shot rings loudly in the air. He loses himself in the fight, not seeing anything, only feeling his knife catching on flesh, tearing, stabbing, killing. He hears a man gurgling out “what are you?” before he meets his end.
He hears another shot and now he comes to again. A body before him, eyes wide with shock as he plunges the knife into the gang leader’s chest, killing him instantly. He drops to the ground with blood running out of his mouth, at the same time as another body drops behind him, his chest a smouldering ruin.
Keith follows the direction of the shot and watches Lance’s bayard deactivate when he loses his grip on it with a groan, clattering to the ground. He doesn’t quite understand what he’s looking at until he sees the growing pool of blood, spreading underneath him.
“Fuck. Fuck.” Keith rushes to his side.
Lance’s eyes are wide on Keith’s, a single tear rolling down his cheek, “Keith— Your—” he starts to say, but then Keith presses on the gaping wound in his stomach, hoping to stop the blood. Lance cries out in pain and clenches his fingers around Keith’s arm and shirt. “Hijo de puta.”
“Why did you do that, you idiot!” Keith grits in frustration.
“Stop, stop!” Lance gasps, his face white as a sheet. “I can’t — it hurts—”
“I have to, I have to stop the blood.” He doesn’t tell himself that he’s panicking just yet. Keith keeps pressing, but soon his hands are coated with Lance’s sticky blood, the metallic smell stinging his nose. He can’t tell if any of his fingers are covering his wound anymore. “Fuck. Why won’t it stop?”
He should have seen this coming. Why didn’t he see this coming? Of course they would have stopped at nothing for revenge. This is all his fault. Lance was right, he shouldn’t have stolen from him, no matter what he had. Look where it lead him. Look what it cost him.
“Keith. Keith, listen to me,” Lance cups his hand around Keith’s temple to get his attention. “Take the car. Go back to the Garrison,” he wheezes, choking, even though Keith is already shaking his head. “Tell them— No matter what tell them about the war— you have to tell them.”
“No—”
“Keith, listen— tell my mom—”
“God, shut the fuck up! I’m not leaving you here!” Keith yells, but then he actually comprehends what Lance said. He quickly places Lance’s hands on the wound and tells him to press, then runs to the nearest car and checks if the keys are in the engine. Once he confirms they are, he turns around and catches a brief glimpse of several men lying on the ground, covered in blood, before he goes back to Lance. He takes one of his arms and swings it around his neck, as he lifts him carefully in his arms.
Lance groans in pain and clutches at his shirt again, squeezing his eyes shut.
Keith says, “I’ve got you. I’ve got you,” as soothingly as he can. He places Lance in the passenger seat and then rounds the car to the driver’s seat, when he sees movement in the corner of his eyes. Keith grits his teeth and starts the engine, revving until the tires screech in protest. As he books them out of there, the car jostles, the ground uneven.
“What was that?” Lance asks.
Keith keeps his eyes straight. “Roadkill,” he says, evenly, then barks at him to keep pressing the wound.
The road is long and unending. There are signs on his way, but he’s going so fast, he can’t read them. Doesn’t know if he has any use for them. Keith drives and drives and drives, but he has no idea where to go. “Fuck. Do I get you to the hospital?”
“No. We can’t. The Garrison—” Lance is cut off when the car jostles. His face instantly turns white, and he looks like he doesn’t breathe for a second.
Keith hastily right the car and apologises, his mind running a million miles per hour. He can’t go to the hospitals, so what’s he to do? He feels an idea forming in his head, like a switch, and he floors the gas to the bottom, to hell with any cops loitering in the area.
When Keith looks back towards the passenger seat, Lance’s head is leaning against the window pane, and his droopy eyes stare up into the night sky. He keeps muttering to himself, his hands placed lazily around his wound. His blood running, staining the old and worn polyester seats. “Mamá, lo siento...”
“Keep your hands pressed!” Keith barks, and forcefully places Lance’s left hand back on his wound. Lance hisses and Keith looks back out on the road just in time to veer out of the way again from a passing car, who honks after them. “And keep talking!”
“About what?”
“Anything,” Keith says, desperately. “Tell me ‘I told you so.’ Tell me how much you hate me.”
But Lance doesn’t listen. “How pretty the stars,” he mutters instead, absentmindedly. “La flecha de cupido es un beso bajo la luna. Where is my cupid tonight?”
“What are you saying?” Keith wheezes, his panic seizing him by the throat now. He looks over again, worried that Lance’s blood loss is making him delirious.
“Find Pidge,” Lance slurs. “You have to get back to the others. One of us has to make it.”
“Shut up! We’re both gonna make it. You’re fucked, I’m fucked, remember? I make it, you make it.”
To keep the panic at bay, Keith focuses on the road. The black sky outside looms over him like a dark wave, waiting to crash. He’s going 50 miles past the speed limit, hoping to outrun the wave, but it’s all desert out here, and no patrol to tell him to slow down. Even if there were, Keith doesn’t think he could lift his foot from the gas, even if he wanted to.
After some time, Keith realises that Lance hasn’t said anything for a while. “Hey, I didn’t actually mean shut up. Say something, Lance.” Keith glances over and sees that he’s passed out, his head lolling between his shoulders like a rock on a string. “Shit. Lance? Lance! Wake up, come on! You have to keep pressing!”
Despite everything, the shack is still right where they left it. When they arrive, Keith flings himself out of the car and runs to the other side to throw open the passenger door. Lance looks pale and sallow, his lips losing their usually vibrant colour. Keith gently slaps his cheeks, begging him to wake up. “Lance? Lance. Come on, Lance, please. Open your eyes. Please, open your eyes for me, Lance…”
Lance stirs a bit, opening his eyes. Keith is so relieved, he feels dizzy.
Lance whines, a moan catching on his teeth on the way out. “It hurts.”
“I know. Just stay with me, okay? I’m gonna get you inside.”
Instantly, Keith carries Lance inside and puts him on the table. Lance’s shirt is soaked in blood and sticks to his skin, so Keith takes it between his hands and rips it apart. Lance mumbles something, but Keith doesn’t hear him over his own laboured breathing, and frankly, he has no time to listen to whatever delusion Lance is spouting now. Lance is losing blood and feels weak and if Keith wants to save him, he needs to focus. Focus, dammit!
The ripped shirt reveals Lance’s gaping bullet wound in his gut in all its grotesque and jagged details. Keith checks to see if the bullet is still in his body or if it was shot clean through by turning Lance over, and he finds a matching, though somewhat smaller hole in his back. It was shot clean through, which was good long term, but short term it meant even more blood was lost by the second, and two bullet wounds Keith needed to close.
Remembering what Lance said, when Keith had been cut on his arm, he bundles up Lance’s ripped shirt, presses it to his wound, and leaves Lance to look for disinfectant, which of course he doesn’t have because when has he ever kept anything useful in this mess of a place? He throws useless things like spoons, extra wires, string, pin tacks, notebooks, bolts, screws, pliers and every other goddamn thing in existence on the floor, none which can help him now. He does find alcohol, though, which he uses. He also miraculously finds a needle and thread in some obscure drawer that he can’t remember why he owns, some large bandaid pads and bandaid rolls.
He takes his own shirt and rips a piece off, stuffing it between Lance’s teeth to Lance’s hazy confusion.
“I’m sorry,” Keith says, closing his jaw. “This is gonna hurt.”
Keith pours the alcohol over the exit wound on his back, and tries to ignore Lance’s screaming, and his deathly grip on Keith’s neckline. He pours some on his hands and on the sewing needle too for good measure. Keith has no idea how to sew a wound back together, but he’s mended a few of his pants and shirts enough times in the few months he was out here to have some basic knowledge of how to mend torn clothing. Skin and fabric are two very different things, but his hands don’t shake, nor hesitate when he punctures the needle in with the thread.
He can tell that Lance is awake during the cleanup and is trying not to scream even though no one would hear him if he did. He clutches Keith’s shoulder, intermittently tightening his grip when something particularly hurts, and yet still, Keith manages to finish the wound off without any preamble. Once it’s closed, Keith applies a fresh bandaid patch carefully, and then guides Lance back onto his back so that he can get started on the entry wound.
He throws the soaked, ripped shirt away, pours alcohol over his wound again and listens to Lance scream at the sting. Lance bats Keith’s hands away and grabs him by the neck, pulling him up towards him with a surprising strength, considering how much blood he’s lost. He spits out the stuffing between his teeth and brings Keith closer, all the way until their foreheads touch.
Lance says, “I don’t hate you. I never hated you.”
Keith doesn’t know if that’s the pain delusion talking, but he finds himself responding, automatically, “Yeah? Make sure you remember that, this time.”
He barely manages to finish his sentence before Lance pulls him in, kisses him on the lips and promptly passes out.
Keith startles back, stunned, and stares down at Lance’s slumped form. His hand falls from his neck, but Keith catches it before it can fall. He feels his pulse at his wrist, although it is severely weakened.
“No, no, no. Wake up, come on!” He pleads, but it’s no use. Lance doesn’t wake back up and he can’t wait any longer, he needs to close that wound, now!
He makes quick work of it, a quiet and sudden stillness falling over him. He knows this one turned out cleaner, but he doesn’t mull over it for long after he’s finished, closing it off with a knot and a bandaid pad. He fishes out the bandaid roll next and wraps it quickly around Lance’s torso for extra protection. He looks at Lance’s face again, but he hasn’t woken back up.
Keith sits there for a while, not knowing if he should try to wake Lance up again. He probably needs rest, but Keith is nervous that his fainting is a bad sign. He cradles his neck in both his hands and lifts his head carefully. His skin is warm, and his pulse throbs faintly against his fingertips. But it’s there all the same.
Every time Lance has fainted, he's woken up by the sound of his name. When they'd crashed, Lance fainting outside his torn ship, Keith had called his name, and he’d called it again, standing over him with the sun on his back. He’d woken up then, had somehow heard him, even though his head had been bleeding. The time before that, Lance woke up, when Keith asked him if he was okay, even though he'd just been blasted by a bomb. Back then they’d had the castle’s healing pods to take care of him. But Lance was right, when he’d cleaned Keith’s cut arm. Here, in this desolate place in the middle of the desert, Lance’s safety and well-being depended entirely on Keith.
So, Keith calls his name, softly. “Lance...?” He says, and he’s disgusted by the hope in his voice. But Lance doesn't wake up this time.
Keith shakes his head and decides he can’t sit still for much longer. Lance needs rest, he convinces himself, then he’ll be okay. He lays him back down carefully, and gets up to start cleaning. He starts with his hands, even though he wants to start with Lance. If he is covered in blood, he will inevitably leave Lance more dirty than he started, so he runs to the kitchenette’s faucet and turns on the tap. He doesn’t realise how much blood he has on him until he sees how red the sink gets from his hands.
He can deal with that later. Now that his hands are free of blood, he can go back to Lance.
Lance is still lying on the table, covered in his own blood and passed out from the pain. Keith finds a rag and soaks it in water, before he kneels beside him and starts cleaning the dried blood away. Some got on his face from when Keith tried to wake him in the car, but Keith erases that too, drags the rag carefully across his skin until it’s all clear, all clean. His hand slows on his chin, just under his bottom lip, as he remembers again Lance clutching his neck like that, so firmly, pulling Keith towards him; how he pressed his lips to his before fainting, as if it was all he had left to do in all of his pain, before he went. The last thing he could do, a last visage of strength, and he spent it like that.
Keith sits back and cleans the rag again, trying to focus, but this part is harder than sewing his bullet wounds. The adrenaline that’s kept him going since they were surrounded is starting to ebb away now, he can feel it seep out of him like a leaking faucet. Still he manages to wipe away all the blood, and finish what he started.
Once Lance is (mostly) clean, Keith takes him to the bedroom, where he settles him carefully on the bed. He isn’t sure if he actually owns anything blue here, remembering Lance’s lamenting when Keith had given him the clothes he stole from someone's laundry line. That is, until he manages to find something. He gives him a new, clean, blue shirt to wear. He adjusts the pillows to make sure that Lance’s neck is comfortable, and he won’t wake up with a pulled muscle. He finds the old blanket he used to curl up with on the couch on particularly late nights, and throws it over him, to keep him warm.
Then, there isn’t much else to do for him but let him rest; yet still, Keith hesitates to leave him. He uses any excuse to stay: leaving the window ajar for fresh air, adding more pillows, drawing the blinds, filling a glass of water and placing it on the bedside table in case he wakes up and is thirsty. But finally, when there is nothing more left to do, Keith turns off the lights and closes the door.
It’s first then that Keith catches a whiff of himself. He reeks of death, and his shirt, originally stark white, has now turned a deep crimson. He didn’t think about it much before, forced himself not to long enough to take care of Lance. But now he stumbles into the bathroom, turns on the light and takes off his vest and shirt. He turns on the sink and washes his hands again, covered in Lance’s blood once more. But he realises quickly that it isn’t just on his hands. Looking into his mirror image, he sees blood all the way up to his neck, splatter patterns on his cheek, his temple. He touches his hair and feels some wet areas, his fingers coming away crimson, but he doesn’t feel any wound on his head, so it must not be his own. He’s not sure any of the blood on him is his own.
He strips completely naked and decides to take a shower. Somehow, the shower drain sucks away even more red water than the sink did. Keith stands underneath the douche and stares at the Red Sea at his feet, recognising that it’s coming from him, his body, but feeling oddly detached from it. Feels oddly detached, even, from the shower-heads rain. He has a moment where he feels as if he is watching himself from afar, looking down at himself staring into the drain, a blank, vacant look that reveals nothing. He is back on the road to the city, surrounded. He smells scorched sand and blood, sees a gaping wound, hears his knife slicing flesh, screaming, a gunshot—
Then he snaps back to himself, his fingers brushing his lip. Lance kissed him. He feels the ghost of Lance’s lips on his, the short pressure of his mouth. His last act. It isn’t the first time Lance has turned Keith’s world upside down in a second, before fainting. He really wishes he’d stop doing that.
He shakes his head and reaches for the neutral shower gel. He scrubs his body until his skin is red and raw and the water is clear and then he steps out of the shower and changes into fresh clothes. He takes his blood soaked stolen shirt and pants and stuff them into a plastic bag. He finds Lance’s ripped shirt and throws that in there, too.
Then, he starts cleaning all the blood on the table, and tries to get the blood out of the carpet as much as he can as well, scrubbing and scrubbing until his back and his wrist ache, until all of his thoughts turn quiet and all that’s left is a faint stain.