#like what if Lance IS Blue's pilot bit hes the only one for a long time. the other lions couldn't actually *just be* located | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

dilemmaontwolegs · 9 months

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Not A Verstappen: A New World {1}

Pairing: Charles Leclerc x fem!driver!reader x Lando Norris Summary: With the season over it's time to turn over a new leaf as you start your next adventure outside the Red Bull family. Warnings: 18+ only, sexual themes, fluff, periods, blood, vomit WC: 2k F1 Masterlist NAV: Sibling Rivalry One || Two || Three NAV: Gridlocked One || Two || Three || Four || Five || Six || Seven || Eight || Nine NAV: A New World One || Two

Christmas Eve 2022 “I could get used to this,” you murmured happily. The sun was warm on your skin, the waves gently rocked the boat and you were with your favourite people in the world.

“What, unemployment?”

You dared to open your eyes against the bright sunlight just to glare at Max as he stood on a paddleboard a few feet away from the edge. “Relaxing, you asshat.”

Lando rolled over at the disturbance but his eyes didn’t open before he settled back on his side and draped an arm over your stomach. “She’s got a job,” he mumbled half-asleep. “Lady of the House.”

“Lady,” Max snorted. “Good one.”

You sat up and stretched before getting to your feet, much to Lando’s displeasure. “Water looks nice.”

Max scanned the beautiful blue sea, spotting Charles kitesurfing where the wind was stronger beyond the lee. “It’s a little cold.”

“Even better.” You ran and leapt from the back of his boat, tackling him around the waist and knocking him off the paddleboard and into the frigid water. You were laughing as you resurfaced and found Max looking like a drowned rat as he tried to scramble back onto his board.

“Fuck off,” he shivered as you shook the board everytime he got on it, Lando’s loud laugh upsetting the gulls that hung around hoping for scraps.

“Nuh-uh, not until you admit I am a Lady.” You grabbed the board again and shoved it about. “Earthquake!”

“Sweetheart, stop harassing poor Max.”

“Poor Max?” You echoed as you gave him one last push before tipping your head back to float on the surface. “I can’t believe my mum’s favourite child isn’t even her own.”

“I don’t have a favourite,” she said as she set down a tray of baking at the outdoor table, P quickly following as she smelt the fresh cookies.

“You should, since you only have me, your numero uno.”

She rolled her eyes at your dramatics and you wondered if that's how you looked when you did the same thing. “Come and eat, honey. Now that you have no job there’s no need for those strict diets.”

You pulled yourself up the steps off the back of the boat and Lando held your towel open for you, wrapping it tightly in his arms so you were bundled inside. “I have a job,” you said with a laugh as Lando’s drying tickled you.

“That’s not a job,” Max reminded as he stepped onto the boat and dragged the paddleboard onto the deck.

“Obviously. But, seriously, you are looking at an Aston Martin pilot.”

“That’s a bit of a risk,” Max said with a frown at the news. “Lance’s father is always going to put him ahead of you.”

“Well as long as he doesn’t try to kill me then it’s already an improvement,” you said with a small laugh.

Max sat heavily on the padded bench and dropped head in his hands. He was still struggling to accept that Jos had tampered with your brakes and taken the fuse for the water pump before your last race. He had been obsessed with having the Verstappen name on the winners trophy.

Apparently he hadn’t tried to kill you, he was just trying to slow you down so Max would get the points he needed to win the championship. The brakes were meant to work too well, not stop working entirely. It didn’t change the fact that your own father had nearly been the death of you.

“That’s not funny, love,” Lando muttered in your ear, his arms tightening around you as he remembered the crash and the fear he had felt that day.

“No, but if I don’t laugh about it I will cry, and that’s not pretty.”

“I think you’re pretty,” Penelope said with a mouthful of chocolate chip cookie.

“Thanks, P, but no one is as pretty as you,” you replied and laughed when she smiled at the compliment.

“Mouth closed when we eat,” Max reminded her with a grimace at the sight of mushed food between her teeth.

You joined her at the table, grabbing a muffin from the tray and ruffling her hair. “I’m going to miss you tomorrow but I hope you have a good Christmas with your dad.”

“Do you think Santa will find his way? My stocking is at home.” She frowned and placed her cookie down. “What if I don’t get any presents?”

“Have you been a good girl this year?” She gave you a small nod after thinking for a moment. “Then he will find you wherever you are.”

Christmas Day 2022 The palatial mansion had gone quiet as everyone went their separate ways for the evening after the banquet. There was no way any one family could have hosted the Christmas get together since there were just too many people but the island destination worked perfectly. Charles’ family had arrived on his boat while Lando’s family had flown in on Max’s plane and they were all spending the next few days celebrating the end of the year with you.

“I never want to move,” you groaned as Charles rubbed your full belly. “I shouldn’t have had that last yorkshire.”

“Maybe it was the two bowls of dessert,” he teased.

“Or the bottle of wine,” Lando added, his hands massaging your feet that rested on his lap.

“I didn’t eat that much,” you huffed as you looked at your bloated midriff that seemed to dispute your words. “Where were you two planning on sleeping tonight? I’m sure there is a dog box somewhere on the island.”

“But then who would do this when your stomach hurts?”

You groaned as a sharp pain stabbed your abdomen and sat up. “Fuck.” Pushing off the couch you rushed to the bathroom and crumpled in front of the toilet, emptying your stomach of everything you ate before flushing the evidence away.

“Baby?” Lando nudged the door open and frowned you as curled your knees up and groaned in pain. “You didn’t eat that much…”

“It’s not the food,” you whimpered as the cramps grew stronger and Charles arrived looking worried at your condition. “Can you run the shower?” You could feel the blood running down your thighs beneath the dress and groaned at the timing.

“Should I call for a doctor?” Charles asked as he helped you to your feet while Lando warmed the shower. “You’re shaking.”

“I’m fine,” you said, squeezing his hand as you doubled over in pain. Lando blanched as he saw the red streaks running down your legs and you saw the panic in his wide eyes. “It’s just my period.”

“What do we do?” he asked. “What do you need us to do?”

You would have smiled at the rushed words if you weren’t being crushed from the inside out. “Hot shower, clean clothes, painkillers, pads, cuddles and death.”

“You mean chocolate,” Lando corrected as he pulled his shirt over his head and kicked his pants off before stepping into the shower.

Charles didn’t give you the option to walk yourself in after, carrying you straight under the rainfall of steaming water. The heat saturated your dress and the water turned pink as it swirled around the drain at your feet.

“You guys don’t have to be here for this,” you murmured as you felt a hand dragging the zip down your spine.

“Silly Spitfire,” Lando chuckled as he reached for the special shampoo made for you, lathering it up in his hands while Charles released the updo you had styled for the dinner party. “We promised to take care of you, didn't we? So let us.”

Max grunted a good morning to Charles as he entered the kitchen on Boxing Day and made a beeline to the coffee maker. Everyone knew Lando would sleep as long as he was allowed but Max frowned when you didn’t follow Charles in, his eyes lingering on the empty doorway expectedly.

“She’s not feeling very well,” Charles said as he placed his cup under the espresso maker. Though there wasn’t the comfortable atmosphere they used to share, they were on friendly terms after finding equal footing in their support of you and how your season ended. They were friends, just not best friends.

“Ah, goodluck, mate,” Max chuckled, returning to his half empty coffee and his phone he was checking the news on. “There’s some spare rooms if you need some space.”

“Why would we need space?”

“I love my sister, but you are going to be in for hell.” He winced at the memory of spending the holidays with you when you raced for AlphaTauri. “Happens every year.”

Charles snorted and took his mug with a shake of his head. “Thanks for the concern, but we’re good.”

You woke to the smell of coffee and found Charles sitting up beside you, reading something on his phone, while Lando snored softly in your ear. You had fallen asleep with their body heat easing the ache in your muscles and they were better than any heat pack you had used before.

“Good morning, ma chérie,” he said as he placed his phone down, noticing you were awake. After helping you to sit up against the headboard he grabbed a plate from the bedside table and placed it on your lap before grabbing a glass of juice. “Plain toast and iBuprofen.”

“Breakfast of champions,” you murmured sarcastically before taking a bite and smiling softly. “Thank you, babe.”

Charles kissed your temple before handing you the tablets and drink. “It’s just because it says not to take these on an empty stomach. Once Lando is awake we can get you anything you desire, even if one of us has to pop over to the mainland.”

“I’d rather just have you.” The words had slipped out before you even realised it and you shoved another piece of toast in your mouth. “Sorry, hormones.”

Lando’s dark lashes twitched where they fanned across his cheeks before they fluttered open and he stretched as he rolled onto his back. “What about me?”

You looked down at him in confusion as he rubbed his eyes. “What about you?”

“Would you rather have me too?” he asked with a lopsided smile as he used your thigh as a pillow.

“Are you always just pretending to sleep?”

“No, I just wake up when I hear something sexy.”

Charles laughed as he combed his fingers through the wild mess of curls. “Why does that not surprise me, mon cher.”

“Well you can go back to sleep,” you said as you passed the empty plate back to Charles. “I feel disgusting, probably look worse, and don’t even try to tell me otherwise or I will cry.”

“Agree to disagree,” they said at the same time, sharing a small laugh.

“I still think you are the most beautiful woman in the world, love.”

“I can see that,” you teased as you looked down at the thin sheet that covered Lando’s lap. “You know what would make me feel better? You did promise me anything.”

Charles shifted beside you and his cheeks flushed pink as his mind ran wild with tempting thoughts. “Anything at all.”

Your tongue rolled across your bottom lip at the thought and their eyes darkened with each passing second. “I want to watch you two.”

“You sure you don’t want to join us?” Lando asked as his fingertip drew small circles on your thighs.

“Isn’t that gross?” you asked as you crinkled your nose and your legs closed tighter.

“It’s just blood,” Lando chuckled. “And red is Charles' favourite colour.”

You rolled your eyes but had to give him a little laugh as he eased the tension and Charles kissed his way down to your collarbone. “There’s nothing about you I would ever call gross. And you never have to be embarrassed with us, mi amor. We just want you to be comfortable.”

You swallowed at the sincerity in his voice but still shook your head. “I’m not brave enough today.”

“Okay, love,” Lando said with a kiss to your thigh before he sat up. “Then we will have to put on a show just for you, a late Christmas present.”

Click here for the next part.

#Charles Leclerc x reader x lando norris #charles leclerc fanfic #lando norris fanfic #charles leclerc imagine #lando norris imagine #charles leclerc x reader #lando norris x reader #f1 imagine #f1 fanfic #formula 1 fanfic #formula one fanfiction #formula one imagine

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autisticlancemcclain · 1 year

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parts 1 2 3 4

———

The distress signal they get is from a planet so like Earth that Lance aches with it. Of course, it’s not Earth, and it’s obvious if you spend more than three seconds looking at it, but it’s big and blue and teeming with life and Lance can’t help the broken gasp he lets out when he sees it. He’s not the only one looking a little homesick, but Keith puts a gentle hand on his arm anyway. Lance shoots him a watery smile. He’s grateful for the support.

“It’s a time-sensitive mission, as we discussed during the briefing,” Allura says. She, too, notices the sudden pain visible within each of the paladins, her own empathy for them making her voice shake and shoulders tense. “It is also a mission of stealth, for as long as possible. Remember to use the lion cloaks as long as you can, communicate clearly, and when the fleet discovers you, destroy them quickly.”

“Got it, Allura.” All of them speak in unison, but Hunk takes it a step further. He reaches forward, grabbing her hand, and squeezes it tightly three times in succession.

“We’ll come back, Allura.”

Allura sighs, deep and long, squeezing back. Lance understands her fear. The fleet… it’s huge. Beyond huge. It big and scary and insanely well-armed. And with all of this planet’s similarities to both Earth and Altea, and the plain terror in the distress call… they’re all a little tense. A little skittish.

But they have a job to do. All of them.

So Lance hurries with everyone else, running to Blue’s hangar and flying through the zipline. “Let’s go, beautiful,” he says as soon as he’s settled into her cockpit, and off they fly.

Flying cloaked is always strange — since he and Blue are connected by their very quintessence, flying with her essentially melds her body to his. He becomes a giant metal flying lion, and she becomes her pilot. They’re one and the same. So there’s always a sort of cognitive dissonance, flying invisible, of looking down and expecting see his limbs and seeing empty space instead. It’s something he’s not yet used to, and not sure he ever will be. (It does make his job even easier, though. Sniping always carries an element of pseudo-invisibility, being the one who is felt but not seen or heard, so quietly taking out Empire warships and fighters is as familiar as it is foreign.)

“Check in, everybody,” comes Shiro’s voice from the comms.

One by one they all sound off, confirming their positions.

“Okay, good. Remember — stay cloaked as long as you can. Do some damage and move away, until you’re in a position where stealth is no longer an option, and then just go ham. End goal is the drive this fleet away from the planet, we don’t need to eliminate every fighter. Check in with each other, keep yourselves updated. Most importantly: stay safe. Love you guys. Be careful.”

“Love you too, Dad,” Lance teases, to try and lighten the mood, and it must work because Shiro snorts as everyone else repeats it.

“Yeah, yeah, you little twerps. Get moving.”

They do. Lance takes a deep, meditative breath, melding with Blue until he’s sitting heavily on the astral plane. It’s a new thing they’ve been working on — the astral plane is, obviously, very different from the physical plane. He can sense where everyone else is, even with their cloaking on, and can even sense the ships of the Galran fleet that are dishing the most damage. This way, he can keep tabs on everyone else, on top of dealing as much damage as he can from the background. It’s an excellent strategy. It’s also, unfortunately, incredibly draining, pulling energy directly from his quintessence at extreme rates. He’ll only be able to hold it for so long. Hopefully, by then, they’ll cut the cloaking and get right to demolishing every bit of this fleet, so this planet — the one that looks so much like home — will be safe.

“Oh — fuck,” someone curses, and Lance blinks back into the physical plane with a gasp.

That sounded bad.

“What’s going on?”

“I think I — double fuck,” Pidge says. “I’ve been running my scanners while I was attacking and I have some news.”

“Good news first?” Hunk tries.

“It’s unfortunately bad news and worse news, buddy.”

Keith snorts. “Wish I could say I was surprised.”

“Mhm. Bad news is that we’re going to have to drop the cloaks — scanners were running and I got sloppy. My bad. They know we’re here now. Worse news is that they’ve got an ion cannon charged and ready on the ship in the middle.”

“Could these bitches get any more crusty,” Shiro mutters, and he’s the first to drop his cloak so the fighters he’s facing can feel proper fear before Black just fucking eats the ship.

“That was kinda hot,” Lance says, and he can feel Keith scowling at him as Shiro laughs.

“Why, thank you, Lance,” Shiro says.

“How about we focus on the fucking mission,” Keith snaps, voice all gruff, and he’s the next to uncloak, shooting a harmless laser in Black directly before demolishing his own fighter.

“Hey!”

“Shut up, Shiro.”

“Someone’s moody,” Pidge teases. Lance grins, shaking his head as he drops his own cloaking. God, he loves his team. Everyone is such a loser. It’s great.

(Because, of course, his brain is mean to him and has a personal problem every time he feels even one iota of joy, a traitorous voice in the back of his mind asks him how he thinks the team will feel once Lance finally comes clean about who he is. How betrayed, it whispers, do you think they will feel when they find out you’ve kept such a big secret from them?

Lance scowls and tells the voice to shut the fuck up. He’s busy, and has no time for negativity right now.)

The team spends the next several minutes — or longer, time gets kinda iffy mid-battle — shooting the shit out of several dozen fighter jets, before the big game starts: the giant commander ship slowly turns to face Yellow, ion canon aiming right for the lion.

“Team, to Hunk and Yellow now! They won’t be able to deflect an ion blast on their own. Form Voltron!”

Wordlessly, they all fly full-speed to follow orders, seamlessly falling into formation, Pidge holding up their shield mere seconds before the massive ion blast hits them. The blast deflects off the shield and right back to the commanding ship, but the force of the blast sends them spinning.

“Is it just me, or did that feel more powerful than usual?” Hunk asks.

“Why can’t even one thing go right,” Lance laments, because Hunk’s right. There’s definitely something special about this cannon, because of course there is.

“Let’s try to take the ship out before the canon recharges,” Keith suggests.

“Good plan. Pull up the sword, we’ll get closer and see just how many pieces we can hack the ship into.”

Gleefully — and that’s a fact, Lance can feel his emotions directly when they’re formed like this — Keith does, and they carve into the ship like a goddamn thanksgiving turkey.

(Not that Lance would know a damn thing about thanksgiving turkeys. Thanksgiving is a shitty holiday, and turkey tastes like napkins. The McClains have sopa marinera instead, like cool people. But still. Metaphors, and all that.)

A good chunk into their attack, however, the stupid cannon does recharge, because of course it does. This time, Voltron is much closer to the business end of the beefed-up cannon, which is not ideal for their health and well-being.

“I’ve had better plans,” Keith comments.

“Have you?” Pidge snarks, because of who she is as a person.

“I didn’t hear you coming up with anything better!”

“I never said I was the plan-person!”

“Then cool it with the comments!”

“Um, guys, if we’re about to die via canon evisceration, could we maybe stop bickering?”

“No one is going to die,” Shiro assures. “But, uh, I did not foresee an extra-strong canon, and I’m short on alternative plans. Any ideas?”

Lance does, in fact, have an idea, although it’s not one of his best.

“In terms of great plans, this would not be one of them.”

“Anything you have is better than what we’re currently doing, Lance.”

“Alrighty, then. Hunk, you remember that shoulder-canon thing you summoned a while ago?”

“Yeah, but it’s not as strong as an ion cannon.”

“No, but I imagine it would do some pretty catastrophic damage if you were to shoot it directly at the barrel of the cannon, right as the ion cannon charges up to shoot. I imagine that would make a lovely explosion.”

“…You imagine correctly. Shiro?”

“Good job, Lance. It is risky, though. Timing will be rough. We might get hit by an ion blast anyway.”

Before they have the chance to come up with anything better, the ion cannon glows purple, charged and ready to blast.

“No time for better planning! Hunk, cannon!”

“Aye aye!”

Hunk slams his bayard into his port, and they shoot off a blast the exact same second the ion cannon shoots at them.

As expected, the second their blast touches the ion cannon, the whole ship explodes.

Also as expected, the ion blast hits Voltron square in the chest, knocking the power out of the lions and forcing them apart. Completely powerless and reeling from the force of the blast, the lions go hurtling towards the planet. Lance desperately tries to wake Blue up, get the comms going, but it’s futile — she’s completely offline, and so is everyone else.

He forces himself to take a deep breath, and hurriedly engages the emergency controls — he won’t be able to stop himself from crash landing, but he can maybe make it a little less violent, and maybe not die on impact.

He hopes everyone else will be okay, too.

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jxsatlas · 3 years

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𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐖𝐇𝐈𝐓𝐄 𝐏𝐀𝐋𝐀𝐃𝐈𝐍 ⇢ keith kogane, ch. 3

keith kogane x gn! reader – previous

DISCLAIMER! this story does not originally belong to me, the author is @MaddieWolf37 on Wattpad. i have simply received permission to rewrite and continue her story. go and check out her profile for the original version!

SYNOPSIS! a story in which you are thrown into the middle of an intergalactic space war and have the undesirable weight of being a symbol of peace dropped on your shoulders. but maybe if you look past the constant danger and endless fighting, there's some good to being a paladin of voltron.

MATURE CONTENT! swearing, violence, gore, war, graphic descriptions, mentions of self-harm

You step into the tent, eyes wide at the sight of three unconscious scientists scattered around the ground. Straight ahead, Keith is carefully pulling Shiro off of the metal table and trying to sling Shiro's arm around him.

"Nope! No! I'm saving Shiro," Lance says and takes Shiro's other arm and tosses it around his shoulders.

"Uh... who are you?" Keith asks, furrowing his brows at Lance in confusion.

"The name's Lance?" your brother says, but Keith only blinks at him. Lance feigns a look of hurt and disappointment. How could his self-proclaimed rival not recognise him? "We were in the same class at the Garrison? We were like rivals. You know, Lance and Keith, neck and neck?"

"Really? Are you... an engineer?" Keith asks.

"What? No! I'm a pilot," Lance frowns.

Keith narrows his eyes at Lance for a moment before it clicks. His face relaxes. "Oh... yeah, I remember you. You're a cargo pilot."

"Well, not anymore. I'm fighter class now, thanks to you washing out," Lance sasses.

"Congratulations," Keith says in a low tone, not interested.

You roll your eyes at their interaction and place a hand on your hip. "Are you two just gonna sweet talk each other or are we gonna take Shiro and get out of here?" you ask.

Keith looks up at the sound of your voice, recognising it. He stares at you for a bit, unintentionally. It's been a while since he's seen you, and he could honestly that say he missed you.

You were the only person he truly got along with at the Garrison, so it's reasonable for him to feel that way.

"Well?" you ask, quirking an eyebrow.

Keith blinks, breaking his stare and bringing him back to reality. "Taking Shiro and getting out of here," he says.

You all rush out of the tent as fast as you can with an unconscious person in your arms. As the others make their way to Keith's hoverbike, You take a quick look to see what's going on with the Garrison.

"Oh, that's not good," you say and spin on your heel quickly. You scurry over to the hoverbike. "We should really get moving! The Garrison is coming back and they do not look happy!"

Pidge climbs onto the hoverbike. "Hey, is this gonna fit all of us?"

As Keith sits down at the helm, Hunk climbs onto the back, causing the back to drop downwards. "No," he grumbles.

But he doesn't bother wasting time when all of you are on and ready to go. He revs the engine and the hoverbike roars to life, lifting up into the air a few feet.

And right as the Garrison comes around the tent, Keith does a sharp 180 and heads in the opposite direction. He speeds away with the Garrison pursuing without hesitation.

To fight against the inertia, you grab ahold of Keith who you sit right behind. And you don't plan on letting go anytime soon, scared you'll fall off.

Pidge has his arms hooked under Shiro's. "Why am I holding this guy?" he asks, but he's left unanswered.

Lance looks at the Garrison behind us. They were getting closer by the second. "Can't this thing go any faster?"

"We can toss off some non-essential weight," Keith says bitterly.

"Oh, right!" Lance chirps and looks around to see what could be tossed off the hoverbike. But when he finds nothing and realises Keith was talking about Hunk, he rolls his eyes. "Okay, so that was an insult."

Keith shouts over his shoulder at Hunk. "Big man, lean left!"

Hunk does so and the hoverbike sharply veers left, quickly evading the gaining pursuers. The Garrison tries to match the sudden movement, but two of the vehicles chasing after you crash into each other.

"Aw, man!" Hunk whines. "Mr. Harris just wiped out Professor Montgomery!"

You look over your shoulder behind you and see the two vehicles rolling and flipping. You frown. You hope they're okay.

"Big man! Lean right!" Keith orders and Hunk listens to him again. As the hoverbike tips to the right, jumping over a canyon and to the narrow ledge on the other side, you make the mistake of looking down below.

Your body tingles with adrenaline as you watch the ground disappear for a second too long, not enjoying the sight at all.

"Not cool! Not cool!" You say and squeeze your eyes shut. You don't usually have a fear of heights. But it's one thing when you're piloting an aircraft, and a completely different thing when you're riding on the back of a hoverbike where falling off is a very prominent thing.

"Are you seriously scared of heights?" Lance asks, picking up on the reason why you suddenly got anxious. "You're a freaking pilot!"

"This is different!" you bark back at him.

"Wait! Guys! Is that cliff up ahead?" Hunk asks, pointing ahead. You turn back around and you squeak at the sight of the sudden drop getting closer and closer.

"Oh, no, no, no, no!" Lance shouts.

"Yep," Keith smirks and increases the speed, practically flying towards the cliff.

Everyone, except for Keith and Shiro, who is still very much unconscious, clambers and screams incoherently as Keith heads straight for the cliff and drives right off.

You feel your stomach fly up to your chest as you fall, your butt lifting off the seat. The butterflies make your entire body buzz with fear and you tighten your arms around Keith. If you fall off now, there's no doubt you'll be dead.

And flat as a pancake.

"What are you doing!? You're gonna get us killed!" Lance shouts, his eyes wide with fear. His grip is tight on the hoverbike. He doesn't want to fall off either.

"Just shut up and trust me!" Keith shouts back at him.

"I trust you!" you shout, squeezing your eyes shut once again. You truly do. Even though Keith was reckless and quite the trouble maker back at the Garrison, You know he wouldn't intentionally put you in danger without a way to get you out of it.

You fall for what seems like an eternity before Keith rolls the throttle all the way, maxing out the power of the engines. The hoverbike stops just before it hits the ground. Your butt hits the seat pretty hard and you wince.

That's definitely gonna be a bruised tailbone.

With the Garrison having no way to get down the cliff and chase after you, Keith drives off into the desert.

﹋﹋﹋﹋﹋﹋﹋﹋﹋﹋﹋﹋

Inside of an old cabin in the middle of what seems to be nowhere, the group lays about. Lance sits on the edge of a surprisingly soft sofa with you laying across the majority of it, your head in his lap. He has his arms hanging on the back and his head resting on his shoulder. The two of you snooze away.

Pidge and Hunk are across the room sitting on the floor, talking about tech and engineering. Keith is outside with Shiro.

When you were waiting for Shiro to wake up, you had a chance to catch up with Keith. You hugged him and conversed with him happily. He seemed to enjoy talking to me too again, a faint smile on his face.

Although Lance glared at you from across the room the entire time. The boys have a mutual dislike for each other, so Lance didn't take too kindly to you talking to Keith. But you think Lance feels the said dislike more. Keith doesn't seem to care most of the time, but Lance can and will get on his nerves.

Nevertheless, you genuinely missed Keith. You were pretty good friends with him. In fact, you think you were his only friend at the Garrison.

You stir awake when Keith and Shiro walk back into the cabin rather loudly. You rub the sleep from your eyes and sit up. You stretch your arms out with a yawn, accidentally smacking your brother in the face.

Lance jolts awake with a small yelp.

"Oh, sorry," you say. Lance grumbles under his breath and sits up. He yawns as well.

"What have you been working on?" Shiro asks slowly.

You turn my attention to the other side of the room. Keith holds a large cloth in his hands, having pulled it off of the wall. And on the wall are pictures of caves carvings and odd locations and maps of the desert pinned onto it with tacs and tape. Messy red arrows and circles are marked onto said maps, pointing out places in the desert. But not as much as an area at the center of the map, where a large, overlapping circle was scribbled down.

With curiosity overpowering your sleepiness, you rest your chin in your palm and lean forward with interest. "What's that?" you ask.

"It's... kinda hard to explain?" Keith says with a shrug. "After getting booted from the Garrison, I felt... lost?" he says with a somber expression.

Keith points to the large circle on the map. "But I was drawn to this place. It was like something, some energy, was telling me to search," he says.

"For what?" Shiro asks.

"I'm not sure," Keith answers. "But when I did search, I came across a cave system with all these ancient carvings. Each depicting a slightly different story about a Blue Lion, and some... arrival happening," he explains and points to the photos on the wall before looking at Shiro. "Then you showed up."

Shiro hums, a small, impressed smile tugging at his lips. He turns to you, Lance, Hunk, and Pidge, who are clumped together across the room. "I should thank you all for getting me out of there," he says.

Shiro reaches his robotic arm out to Lance. An awestruck expression takes over my brother's face. On the outside, he appears rather calm. But on the inside, he's most likely freaking out about the fact that his idol is wanting to shake his hand.

"You're Lance, right?" Shiro asks.

Lance nods with a wide smile, firmly grasping Shiro's metal hand and shaking it.

Shiro turns to you. "And... [y/n]?" he guesses your name and you nod.

"Yep! That's me!" you affirm and shake Shiro's hand as well.

"I'm Pidge, and the nervous guy is Hunk," the short ginger says and points to Hunk, who is pulling at his fingers, with his thumb. "Do you know if the rest of your crew made it?"

You glance at Pidge. He seems to be pretty hung up on Shiro's crewmates. You slowly get lost in your thoughts wondering why.

Could he possibly be related to any of them? Or at least a good friend to one?

Pidge gives you a strange look and you realise you're staring. You flash him an embarrassed smile and look away.

"I don't know," Shiro says after taking a moment to dig through his memories. "My brain is still pretty scrambled. But one thing sticks out. I kept hearing the word Voltron, over and over. It's some kind of weapon."

You blink. "That's what Pidge was hearing on the radio!" you point out.

Pidge nods. "Yeah, I picked it up on alien radio chatter when scanning the solar system," he rephrases.

"Maybe those were the aliens that captured Shiro?" Lance suggests.

"Well, we need to find this Voltron before the aliens do," Shiro says with a sharp tone of determination.

"But how are we gonna do that?" Lance asks.

He's got a point. "Yeah, we don't even know what Voltron looks like," you say.

"I got that doodle in my notebook?" Pidge says.

"Sorry, Pidge, but your artist's rendition isn't the best," Lance says. You smack his arm and he smacks yours in return.

Hunks smiles. "I don't think Pidge's drawing skills will be a problem," he says and picks up Pidge's backpack. "Because I was looking through his stuff–"

Pidge snatches his bag from Hunk and holds it away from him. "What were you doing looking through my stuff?" he asks sharply.

Hunk rubs the back of his neck sheepishly. "Looking for a snack," he says. "Anyways, I was looking through his diary and–"

"You did what?" Pidge growls. He seems to like his privacy.

"–and I noticed a repeating series of numbers that kinda look like a Fraunhofer line," Hunk quickly finishes talking before Pidge has a chance to interrupt him again.

"A frown-what?" Keith asks and you, him, and Lance give a quizzical look.

"Sorry, we have the brains of pilots," you say.

"That's fine," Hunk shrugs and proceeds to explain what he's talking about. "It's a number describing the emission spectrum of an element. But this element doesn't exist on earth, so I was thinking it could be this Voltron?"

You nod, understanding a little bit more of his engineer mind, but not really. He used too big of words.

"I think I can build something to track it, like a Voltron Geiger counter," Hunk says.

Lance flashes an impressed grin and crosses his arms. "Hunk, you big gassy genius!" he praises.

"It's pretty great," Hunk smiles bashfully at the compliment. He then reaches into his pocket and pulls out a sheet of paper with a sort of graph on it. He holds it up for everyone to see. "It looks like this."

Keith snatches the paper from Hunk and examines it closely. He furrows his brows and turns to one of the photos pinned up on the wall, something connecting in his brain. He holds the graph up next to a photo of rocky outcropping somewhere in the desert.

The line matches the shape of the tall, jagged rocks eerily well. You all share a look, concluding that that's the next place you need to go.

#voltron legendary defender #vld keith #vld fanfic #vld #voltron #voltron keith #keith kogane #keith x reader #reader insert #gender neutral reader #fanfiction #wattpad

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blueberry-sunshines · 3 years

Text

Small Surpises— Big Brother Shiro x Little Sister Reader

Summary:

You are Shiro's younger sister waiting on him to return from a mission while you reminisce about your life with your big brother which then gets interrupted when he brings you back an unexpected surprise...

Word Count: ~2K

Childhood memories | Brotherly Love

Requested by: @white_skittle on Wattpad

{Your POV}

Honestly, you had never really thought that it would be so boring to be in a half-castle half-spaceship until you were actually in one. It sounds crazy to even think you'd be in one let alone that one exists! One moment you were on earth with Keith trying to figure out these weird radio signals and then the next your brother who'd been missing for a year had crash landed onto earth in an alien pod! And just when you didn't think anything could get any crazier, you found a giant blue lion that whisked you all away into space! That was just the beginning of all the adventures you'd have traveling the universe with your new found family. But as of now, the only thing you could do is wait around the Castle of Lions until the Paladins are back from their mission. To keep your mind off of your boredom and anxiety you tried your best to distract yourself with useless things like wondering the castle and getting lost in your own thoughts.

You were significantly younger than your brother, Shiro. While he was 25, you were only a teenager. You two were always rather close despite your age difference. Shiro was always so cool, you and all of your friends thought he was the most amazing person in the whole world. And if you were being honest with yourself, he still was. I mean, being the paladin of the Black Lion and the leader of Voltron was the coolest thing you could think of! As kids you and Shiro loved playing together, you would play with his soldiers and planes or he'd play dolls with you. You two would spend hours playing little games like hide and seek or just playing pretend.

You would be the princess and Shiro would always be the courageous knight there to protect and save you from evil villains and mystical dragons. Using sticks and pool noodles as swords he would slay any foes that even dared to hurt his little sister. Shiro has always been your hero in more ways than you'd ever realize.

"Fear not, Princess (Y/N)!" He would cry, holding his makeshift sword in the air. "I will slay this dragon to protect you and your kingdom from his evil!" He would then jab at one of your stuffed animals or sometimes even trees, pretending they were the villain.

As you got older, you two were still super close. Shiro was then entering his teens, going to the Galaxy Garrison to be a pilot. He was so smart and so talented and all you ever wanted to do was impress him. When you didn't think he could get any cooler he always did. But even though he was at the Garrison, he still had never let you down. You have many memories of Shiro picking you up after school and taking you out to your favorite diner. Sitting in a booth across from each other he would ask you about your day while drinking a milkshake in his bright orange Cadet uniform.

"You look silly in your uniform, Takashi." Little you giggled in your memory. You could still see Shiro's face as he pulled away from his Oreo milkshake's straw, as well as the smile that formed on his face as he let out a small chuckle.

"I guess I do look kind of silly, huh?" He agreed, setting down his milkshake softly.

These couple times a week visits made it feel like Shiro had never really left at all. Soon you were able to transfer into the Garrison Cadet program and next thing you remember is staying up late into the night studying with Shiro and practicing your techniques. Shiro was the star of the Garrison and he still remained the star of your life. Sure you had made many friends, but Shiro was still your best friend above all else. You still remember when Shiro had introduced you to Keith and how you two got off to a rocky start. But eventually, it didn't feel like it was just you and Shiro against the world anymore. Soon you had a new honorary brother in Keith. You would all ride around together on Hoverbikes and Landspeeders and you even would take Keith for milkshakes at your diner.

"Hah!" You beamed triumphantly as you swung to a halt on your hoverbike. You looked behind you now as your brother came up to a stop behind you. You laughed triumphantly as you had just beaten Shiro to your designated finish line. "I told you I could beat you!"

"I never doubted you for a second." Shiro told you proudly as he whipped the sweat from his forehead.

You looked now on the other side of you over the edge of the large cliff next to you. "So can I learn the dive now?" You blurted out quickly.

Shiro laughed warmly, "Absolutely not." He said quickly and gave you a teasing smile. "Not until I'm sure you and Keith are both ready." He explained, watching you pout in amusement.

As you were entering your teenage years and Shiro was leaving his, you two had somehow managed to grow even closer. He had come out to you over the course of your time at the Garrison. You still remember him gushing to you all about his, then crush, Adam. You were there for him when coming to terms with his feelings and there when he brought Adam home to your parents for the first time. In return he was always there for you, helping you when you were sick, giving you advice when you were down in the dumps, and he helped you through your first ever breakup.

Time was flying by so quickly and soon, you were an accomplished pilot just like your big brother, and Shiro had asked Adam to marry him. Life was just the way you liked it and you didn't think anything could ruin your wonderful relationship with Shiro. If none of the petty sibling fights you got into or even any of the serious ones could have ruined it, you didn't know what could. But, you could never forget Kerberos...

"We're back!!!" You heard a voice shout from a room over. It was the cherry voice of Lance McClain exclaiming their arrival in the castle. You began running back down the corridor to return to the lounge where you heard the voices coming from.

"Hey, (Y/N)!" Hunk smiled seeing you enter the room. You saw Lance, Pidge, Hunk, Keith, and Allura all standing in the room.

"How did it go out there today?" You asked them all, subconsciously looking around for your brother. The Paladins went to a freed planet to collect some tech that was needed to help the fight against the Galra.

"We collected all the samples we needed." Pidge told you before gesturing behind her, "Coran and Shiro are unloading as we speak." She was unusually smiley, but you brushed it off as her just being happy to have new tech to work with. You were about to leave to go find Shiro when,

"(Y/N)," Keith said your name now, walking over to you, also dawning a small smile. "There's also something we brought back for you, too."

"Hey!" You heard Lance complain, "I wanted to be the one to tell (Y/N)!"

"Too bad." Keith smirked at him and the two began a small, signature squabble as they walked past towards the direction of the showers.

You looked over at Pidge and Hunk now curiously, "What are they talking about?" You asked them, furrowing your brow in thought trying to guess what on earth they could have brought you. You heard them both giggle as they refused to give you any clue before heading towards the showers as well. Your last hope was Allura.

She just looked as confused as you, "I do wonder what they had brought you as well." She said warmly before following you towards the other door the four Paladins had come from originally. As you and Allura made your way down the hallway she tried to offer you ideas as to what they could've brought you, but half the things she said you had no idea what she was talking about.

Once you reached the hangar where the Paladins had come from, you sprinted towards the Black Lion. Coran was placing small metal crates onto a floating cart and Shiro was helping him.

"Shiro, Hey!" You yelled as you got closer, Allura still following suit.

"(Y/N)!" Shiro called your name happily placing down a crate and turning towards you. You laughed as you ran into his arms, you felt him stumble a bit upon impact and you heard him chuckle.

"You really missed me that much?" He teased you as he gave you a tight squeeze before putting you back safely balanced onto your feet.

"Always do." You smiled up at him affectionately. You then cut right to the chase, "Keith said you guys brought me something!"

Shiro raised an eyebrow at you, "He did, did he?" You nodded in response and he let out another laugh. "Alright, you got me." He admitted humbly.

"Is it another crystal?" You asked excitedly. Shiro had brought you small trinkets before from the missions you didn't get to go on. The Paladins often needed your help, but sometimes when there wasn't any risk you'd just stay behind.

"It's better than that." He said mysteriously as he lead you back towards his lion.

"Is it a bigger crystal?" You asked which earned you a laugh in return.

"No... now stop guessing!" He shook his head in amusement. "Wait here, I'll be right back." Shiro instructed you, turning snd disappearing into the lion.

You looked back over to where Allura and Coran were conversing about something while you waited. Once your brother reemerged from Black, he was holding a small box that had some kind of cloth or blanket sticking out from it. You stared at the box in pure curiosity as Shiro grew closer.

"Keep your voice down," he advised as the contents of the box were nearly in full sight. "You don't want to startle him."

You were still not understanding what this could be but now you were thinking it may be alive. Despite not knowing, you listened to your brother and kept quiet. Shiro held the box further down and you saw him.

You had to hold in a squeal as you saw what Shiro had brought you. It was a small light gray ball of fluff. The creature had long droopy ears, four legs with five tiny toes on his paws. It had four small horns above his closed eyes, a pink nose and cute little pouting mouth. His chest and his face were white and he was all curled up in his long, white, fluffy tail. He sort of reminded you of a chinchilla but much more alien like.

Gasping you looked back up to Shiro, "No way..." you breathed out finally. Shiro had a large smile on his face.

"Do you like him?" He asked now, "His breed is concerned to be a loyal partner on Ormaphu. He's a traditional Ormanphian pet called a Bentorm."

"Shiro I love him!" You gushed looking back down as your sweet, little baby Bentorm.

"I'm glad, I thought you would."

When you were kids, you would always beg your parents for a pet but they never let you or Shiro get anything besides fish. Your new Bentorm was the most amazing pet you could think of! Your attention was turned back to the box when you heard him let out a soft yawn as he stretched and uncurled himself. You let out a soft aww, as he sat upright and looked up at you with big, black eyes. He looked as if he was smiling as he looked up at you, he began making a sweet chirping noise and you looked up at Shiro in amazement.

"You can pick him up." Shiro told you softly, smile still prominent on his face. You reached down and picked him up softly from his tummy, under his arms. You pulled him close to your chest and he quickly snuggled into you, smile on his cute, Bentorm face.

"From what his breeder told me, they don't get much bigger and they love riding on their owners shoulders as they get older."

"Allura!" You exclaimed, "Look what Shiro brought me!!"

Allura came over then, in the same awe that you were upon seeing him for the first time. "Is that a Bentorm?" Allura asked looking up at Shiro.

Shiro nodded and moved the box onto his hip you free one of his hands to pet the Bentorms head.

"What are you gonna call him?" Shiro asked looking back up to you.

"Hmmm, I'm not sure..."

_________________

Hi everyone! Thanks for reading this Brother Shiro one shot! It wasn't super long but I think it's pretty cute. Shiro would be the best big brother and I hope I captured that!

Have a great day! Keep requesting please!

#big brother shiro #shiro voltron #shiro x reader #shiro x sister reader #vld shiro #shiro vld #voltron shiro #takashi shirogane #voltron one shot #voltron x reader

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im-definitely-not-trash · 3 years

Text

Heehoo here’s the first prompt for whumptober! This is the first year I’m determined to complete it on time by posting every day so here’s the beginning of the attempt. Anyway!

Alt prompt #6: Head Injury

Fandom: Voltron: Legendary Defender

TW: vomiting, mentions of vomit

Word count: 2591

“-idge! Pidge, come on! Answer me!”

“K… Keith?” Pidge opened her eyes, squinting at the shadow above her.

“Thank god, Pidgey, I was… I’m glad you’re okay.”

“What happened?” Keith pushed her down by the shoulders as she tried to sit up.

“Green got hit, bad. You crashed on this moon and we couldn’t reach your comms.”

“Where’s everyone else?”

“Finishing off the Galra. It took us a while to spread them thin enough that I could come down here.”

While recapping the events, Keith had been checking over Pidge thoroughly for any injuries, and he seemed content. “Okay. Let’s go. The others are surely done and waiting for us. Can you get Green back on?”

Pidge got up with Keith’s help. She stumbled into him once on her feet.

“Are you okay?”

“Yeah,” she said. “Just got up too fast, just a tick.” Pidge used Keith as a support as the blood rushed to her head, trying to find her footing and balance. It took a bit longer than she thought it should, but eventually, she got her bearings and sat in the cockpit chair. “Go ahead and go back to Red, Keith, I’ll get her up and running. Then I’ll meet you guys at the castle.”

“I don’t want to leave you here, that was a really rough crash. And not only that, you were thrown from your chair and were on the floor. Outwards, your body looks fine, but I don’t want to leave you alone until we’re sure everything is fine internally.”

“Keith, I feel fine. I was a little dizzy when I stood up but I had been on the floor for… I don’t know how long, you know better than me, but whatever! I’m fine!”

Keith’s face was still brushed over with concern.

Pidge sighed. “If you’re really that worried, once we get back to the castle we can do a full scan and if needs be, I’ll go into a pod.”

Keith sighed as well, ready to resign his worries. “Fine, but if anything feels off, you need to tell me as soon as you can. Here’s a communicator if Green won’t wake up.” He handed it to her. “Let me know if something feels wrong, with Green or with you.”

“Okay, whatever you say, Keith.”

“Good. I’ll talk to you later.” He waved and ducked out of the cockpit. Pidge saw him running to Red from the windshield. She sat in the pilot’s chair and groaned. Her head killed. Her stomach rolled. She still felt dizzy.

She tried to shake off the feeling to connect with Green, and Green woke up.

“Hey, girl.”

The lion groaned as it stood, sounding much like Pidge felt.

“Okay, we got hit and crashed hard, but we’re fine now. We need to get back to the team to help.”

Green seemed to say, You aren’t well, paladin.

“I’m just as well as you. Banged up but functional.”

You’re worse off then me. You have a fragile body.

“Your mom.”

Green went silent, knowing Pidge wouldn’t listen.

Pidge steered Green to where they could safely take off without damaging the surrounding ecosystem and off they went. Once in the atmosphere, Pidge grabbed the little communicator. “Paladins of Voltron, this is the Green Paladin and her lion.” The sound of her own voice echoed in her ears loudly.

“I hear you, Pidge,” Keith said. “We’re still fighting, and the others don’t have this communicator frequency. We could really use your help right now.”

“I’m not sure if Green is up to it.” She was lying through her teeth. Green seemed fine if not a little banged up. It was her who wasn’t up to it.

“Then stay still, we don’t want the Galra to see you and target you when you can’t dodge or counterattack.”

“No, I want to help! Green is just banged up and can take all the time she needs to recover in the hangar of the castle. I’m on my way.”

Pidge could hear Keith sigh over the comms. “Okay, but be careful. Don’t get hit again.” Static crackled and Pidge knew she was alone again.

Her vision blurred as she looked up to see where her friends were fighting. There were blurs of pink and blue lights, coming from the Galra and from the Lions. She was too far away to see any of her friends clearly, just the lights from the blasts. And assorted explosions.

For once, Pidge was grateful that space was a vacuum, because if she had been able to hear those explosions, her head probably would’ve exploded itself.

Slowly, she crept up on the battle, trying to figure out where she could possibly go in to help. “Hey, Green, activate the reflective shield.” Invisible, she got even closer.

Her comms crackled to life.

“-m on the left, someone get-” That was Lance.

“-eith, where’s Pidge?! We need to for-” Shiro.

“She said she was coming! I don’t know-” Keith.

Hunk seemed to be quiet but active. Coran and Allura were shouting affirmations for everyone from the castle.

And Pidge was sitting here doing nothing. The yells from the comms were louder than they had been earlier, but that was probably just from the little “time-out” she had on that moon.

“All right,” she said to herself. Then she shot Green forward to the middle of the battle and joined all the chaos on the comms.

The whole team was still yelling, but this time more excited that they had a chance to win this now that they could form Voltron.

The lights were closer now, brighter than before.

Every explosion shook Green, and Pidge inside.

For a minute, everything was quiet and dark.

Pidge gagged and vomited.

It wouldn’t stop, she was so dizzy and everything was so loud and she couldn’t stop moving and her head- oh god her head—

She coughed and heaved and she couldn’t breathe and it wouldn’t stop it wouldn’t stop it wouldn’t stop it—

And then it stopped.

But Pidge didn’t know that.

~~~

Keith tuned out everyone’s voices. They were all saying generally the same thing. ‘Pidge, are you okay,’ ‘Pidge, are you there,’ ‘what’s going on,’ ‘is she okay,’ all the same stuff.

I shouldn’t have left her alone, he thought. I should’ve known that she was lying, of course she would, she never wants to feel helpless.

“Keith!” Shiro yelled through the comms. “It doesn’t matter what you should’ve done, stay focused!”

Was he saying that out loud?

“Yes, sorry.” He glanced again at the Green Lion, eyes glowing and standing in ready position, but not moving at all. No pilot to control it.

“If Pidge is incapacitated, we can’t form Voltron! We need to defend her and beat the Galra,” Lance said. “We can’t separate more than we already have, and we can’t run.”

“I’ll go protect Pidge, my lion can take blasts meant for her until we can overpower them,” Hunk said.

“You can’t take them for long, it would be easier to just get done with the Galra.” Shiro sounded exhausted and worried, reasonably.

The team was still trying to plan amongst themselves when Allura bursted into the comms.

“Everyone, get out of the way, and take Pidge with you!”

The Paladins and their Lions quickly left where they were surrounding the Galra ship, and Keith and Red shoved Green out of the proximity.

A huge blue blast came from the castle and hit dead on the Galra ship.

There was nothing left of it.

A collective sigh of relief made it’s way through the team, and then Lance said, “Why didn’t you do that earlier?!”

Allura moaned at his lack of logic. “It took time to charge up to be that powerful, Lance, and with us helping with the smaller shots from the turrets, it took much longer than it could’ve. Be glad it worked at all before anyone got hurt.”

“Thank you, Allura, Coran,” Shiro said. “Let’s get back.”

It was quiet while everyone was taking a couple breaths, finally done with the battle.

“We can’t take more time, guys,” Keith said. “Pidge… Pidge was definitely worse than she let on to me. I’ve got Green, but Red isn’t strong enough by herself to push Green to the Castle.”

The Yellow Lion showed up at the Red Lion’s side, then Blue too. Together, they pushed Green as fast as they could to the Castle.

~~~

Everyone met in Green’s hangar.

“Green, you have to let us in!” Lance was a bit frantic. “We get you’re trying to protect her but we can protect her too, and you probably don’t have the tools to help her if she’s hurt!”

Lance kept pleading with the Lion while the others stood by, worried about their youngest family member. Allura walked to the Lion and put her hand on its leg.

“Please, Green Lion, I can’t lose another Paladin. Please let us in to help Pidge.”

The Lion didn’t answer.

Allura turned to the Paladins and Coran. “If the Lion won’t open… there’s only one explanation.” Her voice broke and tears welled up as she tried to blink them back. “The Green Lion is waiting for a new Paladin to take Pidge’s place because she’s—”

Everyone finished that sentence in their minds.

Coran started working on something to open the Lion in the corner. Lance kept begging, Allura quietly started to cry. Hunk tried to put on a brave face, but his eyes were watering too. Shiro paced.

Keith couldn’t believe it.

Pidge was like a little sister to him. A best friend. She managed to get him to open up when he wouldn’t talk to anyone else. He trusted her with all his heart. If she had said she was fine, she was fine, not…

Not dead.

He’d had enough.

“OPEN UP YOU STUPID LION!!! YOU CAN’T KEEP HER!! SHE’S OURS, SHE’S HUMAN LIKE US, NOT A STUPID ROBOT LIKE YOU ARE AND YOU NEED TO GIVE HER BACK!!! PIDGE IS OUR FRIEND, AND EVEN IF SHE’S YOURS TOO, SHE WAS OURS FIRST! SO LET HER OUT OR LET US IN!!!!!”

Everyone went silent at Keith’s outburst.

“Keith, it’s okay. We’ll get in soon enough.”

“No, it’s not okay!! She was hurt, and I thought she wasn’t, and if she’s still alive, I doubt she will be for much longer! We need to help Pidge now!”

Tears were falling down Keith’s face, along with some snot down his nose.

A thud echoed through the room.

Green’s maw was opened wide.

~~~

Keith was first to reach the cockpit. He turned the pilot chair toward him and saw Pidge. She was quiet, still wearing her suit, but not her helmet. She hadn’t had it on when Keith had first gone to check on her and Green when they first crashed. Had it come off in the crash or was she just not wearing it? And then why didn’t she put it on again.

There was puke all over the front of her suit. A goose egg showed through her bangs. Pidge didn’t have any good tanning abilities, but she was paler than usual. Keith knelt in front of her and pulled off the pieces of her Paladin suit after unbuckling her.

“Pidge?” His voice shook.

She didn’t respond.

Keith put his hand under her mouth and for a few terrible seconds, nothing happened, but then he felt warmth cover his hand as she exhaled.

Breathing. That’s good.

He checked her over for injuries, just like he had done a couple hours earlier, but slower and more carefully.

Nothing seems to be broken.

Then he got to the back of her head.

It was warm and wet.

“Shit.”

Gently, he let her body flop over him. He saw her flight suit stained red all down her back and her hair matted near the base of her neck.

No wonder she was off balance and dizzy. If she had hit her head bad enough to bleed, surely she had a concussion, at best.

Keith picked her up so her arms were over his shoulders and he had grip on her legs. He made sure the back of her head wasn’t going to hit his chin or anything else and carried her out of the Lion.

Allura, Coran and the Paladins stood waiting as he walked out. The room held its breath.

“She’s alive,” Keith said.

It let out the breath.

“But she really needs a pod, like immediately. She must’ve hit her head without her helmet when she crashed. I missed it when I checked her over the first time. She’s bleeding.”

The room then went kind of crazy. Shiro grabbed Pidge from Keith (with his permission [he has attachment issues]) and ran to the infirmary with Coran. Hunk walked over to Keith and talked to him. Lance paced and Allura sat near Keith to support.

Eventually, they all sat in the common bay with each other. Hunk got up and made some food for everyone and they all ate together in silence.

~~~

A few days passed and the whole team had sort of gotten back into a routine of checking on everything. Checking for Galra outposts on planets that needed help, checking in with the Blades of Marmora, checking on Pidge, checking on the Lions, et cetera.

Almost a week later was when the pod opened. It was the middle of the night and Pidge walked out to discover she was alone.

“Guys?” She was bewildered. The last thing she knew was crashing to the moon that was near their battle with the Galra. “Hunk? Allura?” She walked around the castle in the pod suit. “Guys, hello?”

Making her way around the entire Castle, Pidge made it to the common bay and sat down on the couch and she felt a lump underneath her.

“Ow, Lance, get off. No one else has a butt that bony.”

“Keith?”

“I said get off.”

“Keith! What happened?”

Keith finally seemed to wake up and he flipped the blanked off his head. “Pidge??”

“What happened? And why are you sleeping on the couch?”

Keith stood up, throwing Pidge to the floor, and then jumped on her and gave her a hug. “Pidge!”

“Yeah, that’s me. What’s your deal?”

“It’s been about a week.”

“Since what?”

“Since you crashed.”

Pidge’s demeanor changed and she got off the floor. “A week? All I remember was being on my way down to that moon. That’s it.”

“Oh, Pidgey. You hit your head really bad when you crashed. When I got to you, you were unconscious and thrown from your seat. You woke up and complained about dizziness but you got Green up and came to help but then something happened and you were out, unable to control your Lion. We won and brought Green back to the hangar but she wouldn’t open, so Allura assumed you were…”

Pidge’s hands shook as she reached to Keith. “I’m not though.” She smiled.

“You don’t know how glad I am for that,” he said, laughing.

They hugged again, Pidge pulling Keith tight. “Thanks for protecting me.”

“I’m just glad you’re okay. I can’t imagine losing a little sister, especially since you’re my only one.”

“Too bad you aren’t my only big brother. I could have a favorite that isn’t you.”

Keith pushed her off him so she could see his pout.

Pidge laughed. “Just kidding. I already know my favorite is Hunk.”

Keith was about to protest but then nodded. “His food though.”

“Exactly.”

#whumptober2021 #altno.6 #voltron: legendary defender #VLD #Pidge whump

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willadisastercry · 3 years

Text

Slow and steady... breathe.

tw: severe blood loss, needles, self surgery, loss of conciousness.

Lance wasn’t particularly aversed to needles, he just didn’t want to have to willingly stab himself with one, ya know? Everyone is distraught once they realize Lance is hurt and that they can’t be there to help him because they’re in the middle of nowhere and can’t leave their lions, so talking him through stitching himself back together is the best solution they have. If only Lance can stay awake long enough to fix himself up so he makes the journey.

“Is everyone alright?”

Keith’s voice jolted Lance from his slumped position after his body had gone lax with exhaustion and his mind wondered off. He almost didn’t catch Keith’s question with how intently he was staring at the floor in front of his pilot chair where a sizable puddle was beginning to form.

“Didn’t really account for having to bail so soon without checking in and we have a long way to go before he get back to where Coran had to move the castle...”

He wondered vaguely what he could’ve possibly spilled as he shrugged off the weariness from the battle they had just narrowly escaped. They were all spent after things went pear shaped and had to evade the hail of fire from galra blasters all the way up to their lion’s ramps.

Everyone ushered their respective ‘yes’s though, even Lance, but Keith decided to do a sound off for damage control anyway since they had a bit of a journey before they made it back to the castleship.

“Pidge? Did your shield hold up?”

Shield. Hmm. Lance knit his brows together as he forced his brain to work through the fog that addled it.

“Yeah, it did. I’m not hurt.”

Unlike Pidge, Lance wasn’t as lucky and his had cracked almost immediately in his one on one with the galra soldier that had discovered him. He’d taken post in a makeshift sniper hole between some storage crates to cover his team as they made their eacape.

“Good, how about you, Hunk?”

Lance wondered what else he was forgetting about the battle they’d just fought, maybe that’s why he felt so strange and out of it, why his mind was so slow.

What the fuck happened back there?

“—saw you take a few hits in close combat at the end there, you alright?”

Lance’s heart fluttered sadly as he recalled how he had been lining up a shot for the soldier that was advancing on Hunk when he’d been caught.

His scope had just zeroed in on the soldier when one that Lance wasn’t aware of made his own surprise attack, clutching the armor around his ankles so painfully that he was afraid it’d crack before yanking him backwards and away from his position.

He had cried out more at fact that he hadn’t gotten the shot in because that meant that Hunk would have to fight and he hated fighting. The guy was a goddamned pacifist in the middle of an intergalactic war, but his build made him look like a formidable threat and attracted unwanted attention during battle all the time.

Lance just wanted to spare his friend from having to engage in the thing he hated so much. But he couldn’t. He’d failed.

“I’m dandy, nothing more than a couple of bruises Coran’s special cream can fix.”

Those bruises were Lance’s fault. He had failed to protect him from that soldier, to protect him from having to do the thing he hated. It took all of him to stifle the broken sound that erupted in his throat as his stomach clenched with guilt.

“Okay, let me know if anything changes.”

Lance breathed shakily as he blinked back tears, but even when he wiped the wetness under his eyes they remained blurry, unfocused.

“Allura? You were with me but you had the quintessence—”

That’s what this entire mission was about...

Stealing a powerful vat of quitessence Pidge had been keeping tabs on with intel she’d stolen from a galra battleship en route to occupy a peaceful planet in the nearby solar system. Shiro wanted them to intercept the delivery so that there would be less catastrophe when they formed Voltron to defend the planet.

It was more than vital that they succeeded and Lance was determined, ready to do whatever he could to prove himself as a sharpshooter and make sure they secured what they were after.

“You can be at ease that I am uninjured and the quintessence is in tact.”

This bit of information did little to ease the rapidly increasing feeling of wrong that was consuming him. They had succeeded and he had done his job relatively well aside for one mistake, but that mistake had gotten Hunk hurt, and he was having a hard time reconciling that to make the success feel like a victory.

He was also having a hard time staying focused on Keith as he spoke with each of them, all of their voices as they recounted the battle muddling together, lost behind the ear piercing ringing that only he seemed to be affected by.

His breathing picked up and he was vaguely aware that he had started sweating, realizing he’d zoned out again just in time for his turn to check in with Keith.

“Great, and Lance? I know you were in a bit of a scuffle, are you all good?”

Five minutes ago he would have answered with a resounding yes, but as soon as he’d sat down in Blue the pump of adrenaline through his body slowed and the weariness had dripped away bit by bit to reveal that he actually felt incredibly weird. Of which was doubly confirmed with the near constant waves of concern Blue was sending him.

“Uhhm,” Lance paused, his mind blank.

For the first time in literally ever he had no idea what to say. His mind was in a thick haze as his body continued to try and come down from the massive high of combat and so he found he couldn’t really grasp what the strange feeling was exactly.

“I... I think I took a couple of direct blows after my shield... maybe my head because I sort of feel... I don’t know actually, just-just weird I guess...”

“Wait, your shield crapped out while you were fighting that soldier?”

Lance was slower to respond this time.

“Yeah, it cracked, my shield...” his words came out between increasingly ragged breaths.

“Well, that’s not promising. What do you mean by weird, do you think you might have a concussion?”

“Concussion...” he mused aloud, not really understanding why that was a concern before he reminded himself that he was fully missing a few key events from the end of the mission. He was faintly aware of worried fussing from Hunk and Allura as he racked his brain.

“Pidge, can you pull up a full visual of Lance?”

“On it!”

“...I don’t think I hit my head though. I mean, yeah, I guess I do feel a little dizzy maybe... and lightheaded... everything looks kinda strange too,” Lance rattled off as he took in his surroundings.

The lights of the panels and screens in front of him blurred and stretched if he moved his eyes too fast, so he tried to keep still and focus on just Keith’s face for now. It was pinched with concern but his voice divulged nothing but calm.

He could feel Blue nudging him, clearly worried over something because she had been withholding control of the steering for a while and was doing most of the piloting then.

“Easy girl, I’m alright,” Lance whispered.

He was becoming more lightheaded by the minute and his movements were now so sluggish he wasn’t sure he’d have been able to steer straight much longer anyway.

“Full screen visual should be popping up—

“Oh, crap!”

“Lance, what the hell?”

“Lance?” Keith’s voice was steady, breaking through the sea of concerned remarks pointedly.

For everyone else the entire view of Lance’s cockpit was now visible and so was the red that painted the front of his armor and much of the floor.

“Lance... do you know how long you’ve been bleeding?”

“Huh? I’m not-I didn’t get... wait, what do you—woah,” Lance had looked down to examine himself, certain there would be nothing.

But there was. And he was really confused because he hadn’t felt a thing but the sheet of red cascading down his armor from his side said otherwise.

He swallowed thickly, head swimming from the angle as he peered down at the grizzly sight. With the threat of passing out now a very real possibility, he brought his head back up to rest against the back of the chair and looked elsewhere as he fought the blood rush that threatened his ability to remain conscious. Something about seeing that much of his own blood was making him sick to his stomach.

“-nce! Lance, focus! Good, okay, so did the soldier have a sword or a blaster?”

He knit his brows together as he thought back on it. He remembers glinting metal that swooped down on him in short, swift arcs. The solider had a very long and very serrated knife, not a blaster. He didn’t even have enough time to transform his bayard before the soldier descended on him, his shield not lasting more than four hits before it shattered.

“A knife, he-he had a knife...”

He tried to ignore the resurgence of worried questions from his friends.

“Okay, can’t be that bad if you didn’t even notice, right?” Keith tried to put him at ease but it wasn’t really working.

He hadn’t noticed when it happened because he was quite literally battling for his life, losing a significant amount of blood in the time that had passed since then. And that scared him.

Because he wasn’t phsyically with the others, he was bleeding out and basically alone.

He was going to die... and his friends would get to watch.

“Lance, stop worrying and just focus on me okay?”

“R-right, sure. Um, what-what do I do though? We can’t just pull over... we’re in the middle of nowhere in outer space and the castle is too far... what if—I don’t want t—I can’t-can’t—“

“Lance! What did I just say? Stop worrying and listen to me!”

He dragged his eyes from the hole they were burning into Blue’s dashboard to meet Keith’s purple saucers.

“You’re okay. You’ve got a med kit in the cargo hold and we can talk you through how to patch yourself up, yeah? You’ll be fine.”

“Fine. Right, I-I’ll be fine.”

“Do you think you can stand? The med kit is on the wall behind you.”

“I can try...”

Lance scooted to the edge of the pilot chair and braced himself before rising onto his legs.

“Shit...”

The world spun before him as the new orientation produced another swell of blood from the comprised bit of his armor where he’d been... he didn’t even know what he’d been yet but he knew it wasn’t good.

He forced himself to take a deep breath, blinking away the static before starting for the back of the cockpit, using the wall to keep himself upright.

“Kit’s on the left.”

Walking felt weird. His legs were weak and didn’t seem to ever go where he intended, but they held his weight even when he’d acquired the bulky med kit and had use a bit more effort to lug it back to his pilot chair.

His friends were in the middle of a discussion Lance hadn’t heard and continued when he returned. He had to set the kit down before maneuvering carefully around the puddle to get himself seated in his chair.

He began tugging off the top half of his armor, starting with the gloves and elbow guards which came off painlessly. It was only when he moved to the top most pieces that he ran in to some issues. He inhaled sharply when tugging on his right shoulder guard pulled at whatever was waiting beneath his armor on his side.

“Hey hermano, just breathe, you’ve got it,” Hunk offered when Lance stopped.

He nodded and took another deep breath before continuing.

The left shoulder guard came off with little incident when he approached it with more caution, but now came the chest piece. He separated the clasps at the bottom and sides before leaning forward to slide the back piece out, the front piece falling away when he leaned back in his chair.

He gasped and was sure that his friends had too when they saw the gash in his side. It was long and wide, deepest towards his back and tapering off on his stomach just above his belly button.

Lance remembered it now. Once the shield finally shattered, he threw his hands over his head and rolled out from under a hit that would have killed him.

The soldier seethed at the evasion and launched at Lance again, giving him barely enough time to deploy his bayard before he was on him. Twisting around was all he could do to get more distance between them so he could take his shot, but he wasn’t quick enough. He caught the impending strike in his side anyway, the blade cutting into him due to his own momentum even after the soldier had stopped swinging and fell to his knees lifelessly.

He thought his armor had held, not aware of the splintering crack where the blade broke through the joint at the midsection.

“Okay, okay, hey! You’re still okay! You’re going to fix it and we’ll walk you through it, yeah?”

He nodded. The air in Blue seemed to be warmer than usual but it didn’t stop him from shivering now that his armor was off. All of the heat in his body seemed to be drawn to the hole in his side.

“Pidge, do you think—“

“Yeah, I’ve already patched Coran in and he’s got a whole set of medical diagrams pulled up... okay Lance, you ready?”

He attempted a ‘yes’ but his mouth was so dry he wasn’t sure he could separate his lips to speak so he hummed instead, his eyes wide and searching as he combed over the contents in the open kit below him despite the mounting pressure behind his eyes that made keeping them open a challenge.

“There’s a vial of yellow liquid and a syringe, grab those... also the sheers because you’ll need to cut away what’s left of the suit around the wound.”

He grumbled at the thought of stabbing himself with a needle but seemed to shift into a sort of auto pilot after that, moving methodically and ignoring the agony of the pulsing wound on his side now that he was aware of it.

His face paled visibly once he held the syringe up in front of him. The needle was big and the liquid in the vial looked like acid than it did medicine.

It was Allura interrupting his inner turmoil this time, her voice full of fear but sure.

“Lance, you can do this. It will hurt, but you will be grateful once you’ve administered it, trust me.”

“Whatever you say, princess...” he smirked meekly and Allura almost laughed.

Once he’d cut away a haphazard square from the material left around the entirety of his wound, Pidge explained how much of the liquid to pull into the vial and how much he should inject each time and where.

He figured he’d need to get a move on with all of this from the way that everything seemed to be spinning and steeled himself for the first of numbing injections. It was to go right above his hip below the deepest part of the wound.

“Breathe...”

He waited for an inhale and went for it before he could panic.

“Shiiiit!”

Turns out the needle going in wasn’t what he should’ve been wary of because the altean medicine burned. He squirmed and cursed as he pushed in the allotted dose, practically seeing stars at the thought of administering five more of them.

“Relax buddy, you can do it.”

He pushed the next shot in quickly, starting with another before his body could protest and did that with the rest of them all in quick succession, not letting himself focus on the seering fire until he was done. Throwing his head back and doing his best to keep from writhing as much so he didn’t make the wound worse.

“Gah! Fuck, fuck, what the fuck is wrong with altean pain medicine?! Hurts-hurts more than the freaking knife wound—“

“Shut up, you’re okay. You won’t feel anything soon. Hard parts over, but now you gotta relax, freaking out on us is only gonna make things worse.”

Keith’s stupid for being right, but he is.

Don’t freak out. You can do this... you have to do this.

“Okay,” he huffed, “no freaking out.”

His voice was trembling almost as much as his hands as he let the empty syringe fall mindlessly to join the puddle of his own blood on the ground.

The pain in his side was diminishing now, the burning of the numbing medicine becoming a cool sting and then smoothing out into a hollow warmth. He tested the skin around it with his finger and couldn’t feel a thing, perfect.

“What’s next?”

“Ha,” Pidge laughed grimly, “now you have to put your money where your mouth is and thread an actual needle.”

He couldn’t help but laugh at that too, the movement made something around the wound on his side twinge but he couldn’t really tell where or why with how numb it was now, which was probably a good thing.

“The pack of needles is in the sleeve... look for one that’s curved... size 3–yeah, that’s it. There is a clamp to guide the needle and a tweezer type tool to help tie it off, grab those. Now you need a couple packs of gauze and tape... the spool of polyester blend thread—wait how do atleans also have polyester? Right, focusing now, sorry! Okay, next is the antiseptic... yeah it’ll probably hurt but you’re not croaking over galra germs if we can help it... sorry Keith, you definitely don’t have galra germs.”

Keith just pinched the bridge of his nose but Hunk seemed to be amused by it, his light chuckle taking the edge off the intense worry written all over his face.

“We sure one of you can’t just do a little space walk over here?” Lance asked as he held up the bottle of antiseptic, “seriously don’t know how the mullet isn’t jumping at the opportunity to torture me, like come onnnnn! I know you’d enjoy it!”

“Shut up and listen to Pidge, the castle is still really far and Coran hasn’t been able to triangulate our location yet, so we’ve gotta keep moving.”

He grumbled pitifully but looked to Pidge’s face on the dashboard in front of him.

“You ever threaded a needle before? The sewing kind not the almost killing your friends trying to show off your piloting skills kind.”

“Ha-ha and no, but i’ve seen my máma do it... something like this I think... hey, I got it!”

“Damn, he really can thread the needle.”

“Thank you Hunk! Finally some recog—“

“Both of you be quiet. Lance, listen to me very carefully because now you have to stab yourself with it. Lock the clamp at the end of needle, you’ll hear a click. You won’t feel it when you start stabbing—stitching, probably just the motion, but you’re still bleeding so you’ve gotta hurry.”

Lance was well aware that he was still bleeding. His body wouldn’t let him forget. The color had all but left his face and he was drenched in sweat. And he seemed to shake steadily now no matter what he did to try and calm down, no doubt a side affect of half of his blood being beneath him instead of inside him. But he ignored it all and put his remaining energy into listening to Pidge.

“Start at the back where it’s deepest and hold the skin together... yep, good now bring the tip of the needle just below—left more, perfect. Coran says to angle it in the direction you want it to come out the other side... go as deep as halfway down the wound and don’t push too far in on the other side where it’s coming out... kay, now push it in, shit. Lance! LANCE!”

As soon as he had the needle situated as deep as it needed to go he lost the battle with how lightheaded he’d become. It had him slow and sluggish before but was now severely impeding his ability to remain conscious for his self surgery.

It wasn’t so much as the actual piercing his own skin that culminated with everything else for him to faint. More of the way he could feel it moving inside of him, like he could feel that the metal was cold by how it stood out against the heat of the wound, just not the actual cold of it or the pain part.

He didn’t know how long he’d been out when the voices of his teammates registered in his head again. They seemed worried, some of them distraught. Like Hunk, he was really scared about something, sounded a little mad the harder he listened.

“...if he doesn’t come around soon I’m going over there—no, I don’t care!”

“Just give him a minute!”

“Wait guys he’s moving.”

“Lance can you hear us?”

“Lance!”

Everything seemed so loud but muddled and indistinct all at the same time.

“Ugh, stop screaming...” he slurred, his head still hurt and he felt even lighter than he had before.

“Open you eyes, bud. You’re almost done, come on,” Keith urged.

Almost done his ass, he’d passed out just after getting the needle in, not even finishing the first stitch. This was going to be hell.

“The needle stayed in, you just have to get it through the other side and tie it off. Coran says you can space them out and skip a few, you just need to get it closed to staunch the flow.”

He hummed again and pried his eyes open wide to blink around wildly before he tried to sit up. But his limbs were so heavy even lifting his arm was hard, so he stayed where he’d slumped down, shoving his legs out farther to get his middle straight.

“J-just through the other side?”

“Yes, where you have it now is fine... just like pinch the skin and coax it through and don’t stab your finger like your about to, you’ll feel that!”

He wanted to laugh, he really did. Because this was so ridiculous. It was probably the dangerous amount of blood he’d already lost but he just found this so amusing.

Having to stitch a knife wound up while a lion flew him back to a castle that wasn’t really a castle—in space! All in space!

He wondered what he would’ve been doing back home if he weren’t here right now, probably nothing nearly as ridiculous.

“Lance, stay with us,” Hunk’s low voice pulled him from his mental tangent.

He rubbed his eye with the back of the hand holding the tweezer, it was covered in blood.

“You’ve got to tie it off now, so pull the thread through until just a little is left, like an inch—stop! Now unlock the clamp and grab that last inch, wrap the end with the needle around a couple of times, not tightly. Release the lock on the clamps but keep a hold of the end of the thread, grab where it comes out the other side and pull through then pull tight and cut, good, done!”

He took in mouthfuls of air like he’d just finished a race.

Shit, he could cry. This was hard and he just wanted to close his eyes and forget about everything. It didn’t hurt anymore. But he just wanted to be asleep and not have to focus so hard on stitching his own wound closed while his friends tried to make him feel better.

Because they couldn’t. Because this sucked and they couldn’t help him.

“You’re doing amazing Lance,” the princess remedied, her voice firm but soft all the same.

His heart felt warm with that, it was something he could hear his máma saying.

“Few more and then you can rest, bud.”

“Y-yeah, okay...”

It got increasingly difficult to keep his hand steady and after the fourth stitch he’d sort of gave up on trying. He resolved to do them quickly like the injections once he’d gotten the hang of it. But his energy was leaving him faster than he could stitch.

And then his heavy breaths and shaking hands made it hard for him to hold the skin together long enough to get the needle through, so eventually he resorted to holding his breath and stabbing wildly.

His friends grimaced every time he did that. They all felt horrible that they couldn’t be there to physically help him but also knew they needed to get to the castle as quickly as possibly.

So Pidge continued to guide him through each stitch and everyone else praised and encouraged him each time he finished one. Their voices pulling him back when he’d drift off into the pull of darkness that continued to tease and toy with him.

“-ng so good.”

“Keep going, bud.”

“-re so strong, Lance.”

“Only a few left... Coran says it looks good.”

He coughed on the dryness that had made its way down his throat and almost into his lungs with how tired every part of him was. Breathing hurt because he had absolutely nothing left on his body that didn’t, made so much worse with the strain of having to withhold air so he could get the needle though.

The wound was practically closed now and not bleeding much through the gaps where he’d forgone some stitches. He was at the part where it tapered. Pidge said it looked like one more would do and so he held his breath and shoved, whining when he poked his hand by accident, not even hearing what his friends were saying as he tied it off almost robotically, the muscle memory of having done it a dozen times now taking over as his mind remained elsewhere.

“-n you hear me?! Lance, Lance listen to me! You’re almost done, don’t go just yet.”

He forced his lidded eyes to look at Pidge, he could barely make out her face with how blurry everything had gotten.

“Open the gauze pads and place them over the wound... tape the bottom and only the bottom down completely then rip off a long enough piece for the top and sides... pour the antiseptic onto another piece of gauze, dab it over the wound, and press it all down before you pass out... got that?”

He huffed wearily and thought he did something of a nod, but it probably didn’t look like it because Pidge asked if he’d heard her again. He had. He was just done. He tore the gauze pads free form their packages and placed them over the wound before taping them down.

None of it looked pretty. Not the sutures, not the bandaging, none of it. But it would have to do. He opened the antiseptic and lost the cap in the process but couldn’t find it in him to care.

He looked up at the screen of worried faces in front of him.

“Go on, bud. It’ll only hurt for like a second and then you can sleep.”

“You can do it, you just stitched your skin back together, this is light work.”

“Once again, altean medicine hurts like hell, but it works. Trust me, Lance.”

Yeah. Trust the princess.

He closed his eyes and waited for it. He really wasn’t sure how anything could top the fire that was the pain medicine, but somehow the antiseptic achieved that. His vision whited and he thought he could hear himself screaming, but he felt too far away to be able to hear that.

He didn’t remember covering the wound with the gauze but apparently he’d gotten three sides stuck down before his head lolled to the side and gentle waves of assurance washed over him from Blue as everything faded to black.

He couldn’t be sure how much time had passed between then and the next time he woke up, but he didn’t have the energy to ask. He just knew that he was still in Blue from the pulse of assurances that surged back up again as soon as he came back to.

“Coran says he’s picking up Black on the radar, he’s making a worm hole now. I’m gonna fly next to Blue to be ready to grab her just in case she doesn’t get the memo...”

He must’ve groaned because someone was talking to him then.

“Oh! Not dead, that’s so good, hi Lance.”

Freaking Pidge. He might’ve laughed. He couldn’t remember.

“Hey dude... nah don’t try and move, just stay there.”

“Thanks for listening to us for once.”

“Lance, you’re so brave, you should be proud of yourself that you were able to do that.”

“Course, princess. Any-anything you say...” he smirked and tried to hold up his famous finger guns, earning some laughs from his teammates that faded quickly.

Blue was the last thing on his mind when he passed out again. She was proud of him too.

#lance whump #voltron whump #voltron fic #vld lance #vld fanfic #vld fandom #voltron legendary disaster #whump fic

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calligraphist-artemisia · 3 years

Text

Scattered Blue (Part 1)

Written for the Kidge Spring Event!

Prompt 3: Forget-me-nots | True Love, Memories, Remembrance

Summary: Alternate Universe. From the moment the first blue petal passed her lips, Pidge knew what was happening to her.

Also posted on AO3 under the username Kishirokitsune

❀ - ❀ - ❀ - ❀ - ❀

Part One: Pidge

The small blue petal haunted her from the time she woke up to the time she laid her head down to go back to sleep. There was a part of her that desperately wanted to ignore it and what it meant, hoping it would go away if she just wished hard enough for it.

But as with all things in life, wishing did nothing without her also taking action.

Pidge covered her mouth as she coughed hard, feeling something slide up through her throat until it splattered out into her hand. She caught a glimpse of blue as she shoved that hand into her pocket to hide the evidence.

“Is everything okay?” Hunk asked in concern. He and Lance sat across from her at the cafe table they'd snagged for their weekly lunch.

“Everything's great!” she lied with a smile. “How was your flight, Lance? You transported some heavy cargo to the east coast base, right?”

Lance shrugged. “It was just a normal, boring flight. No issues.”

“Which is a good thing,” Hunk said, his tone long-suffering.

Lance agreed with a grumble that spoke strongly of his true feelings. He'd always dreamed of being more than a “simple” cargo pilot, no matter how often Pidge and Hunk tried to remind him that he was the backbone of the Garrison and served a pivotal role in keeping everything running smoothly.

“What about you?” Hunk asked Pidge. “You and Keith have been testing the new jets. That must be fun.”

Pidge's heart fluttered at the mention of Keith's name and she swallowed to try and stop the cough that threatened to overtake her. “Um, y-yeah. Yeah, it's been a ton of fun.”

Hunk and Lance exchanged alarmed looks at her unusually lackluster response and Pidge wanted to swear, but instead, she reached for her water and took several swallows until her throat was clear.

“Keith giving you problems? I could kick his butt for you,” Lance volunteered.

“We're fine, so please don't get yourself suspended trying to fight him,” Pidge said with a roll of her eyes. She set down her drink. “Our test flight went great! We're just waiting for the technical report to come back before we can go up again and there were a few minor tweaks the ground crew wanted to make to improve how responsive the controls are. Shiro's been coaching us through new drills while we wait.”

“Ugh, you're so lucky. You get Shiro as a mentor and you get to test fly the new jets. Can we trade lives for one day?” Lance asked.

“That means you'd have to work with Keith,” Pidge reminded him.

“Good point. I'd much rather trade with Keith and have you as my partner,” Lance said, sitting back in his chair as the waitress arrived with their meals.

Pidge rolled her eyes as he went about his usual routine of flirting with their waitress. She briefly considered apologizing on his behalf but figured it would only encourage him to keep going. At least he wasn't making a complete fool of himself and thus, by extension, of her and Hunk as well.

They didn't do much talking as they enjoyed their food and it was only as they got down to the last few bites and were contemplating dessert that Pidge asked Hunk how he was doing in the engineering department. His eyes lit up as he began describing their experiments with a new lightspeed engine that they hoped would be capable of drastically reducing the amount of time it took to get to the farthest planets in their solar system.

“Pretty soon you and Keith will be preparing to fly one of these! Well, uh, if everything goes the way we hope,” Hunk said, rapidly backpedaling in an attempt to curb his own enthusiasm.

“That sounds incredible, Hunk! You'll have to keep me updated,” Pidge said.

Hunk grinned back at her. “I will.”

In the end, they decided against ordering dessert at the cafe and instead walked a few blocks down to Lance's favorite gelato place where they each got a scoop in a little paper cup so they could walk and eat at the same time.

Every now and then, Pidge had to turn away and cough, though thankfully she didn't end up with any fresh petals. For the rest of the night, she didn't find a single speck of blue when she pulled her hand away and she went to bed with a smile on her face and no worry lingering in her mind.

She danced around her room with a spring in her step when morning came, taking a little extra time on her hair and putting a little bit of color on her eyelids, which she normally saved for special occasions. By some miracle, she didn't drip any of her breakfast onto her uniform and was able to leave the house soon after by catching a ride with her brother, who was also on his way to the Galaxy Garrison.

They split up after he parked in the Garrison's garage, with Matt heading over to the labs where they were analyzing new plugs taken from Saturn's moon, Enceladus, while Pidge went to the gym to meet up with her flight partner and get started on their training for the day.

Keith was already there warming up when she arrived. His black hair was tied back out of his face and he had swapped out of the heavy uniform in favor of a pair of gray shorts and a black tank top.

Pidge caught his attention with a wave before gesturing towards the locker room, silently indicating that she was going to get changed and would be out soon. Once she was dressed in her own gray shorts and Garrison-provided orange shirt she jogged out to Keith, dodging around the others who were taking advantage of the open gym.

“Hey, did you get the itinerary Shiro sent?” Keith asked the moment she was close enough to be heard.

Pidge had to take a moment to think about it. She's woken up to two messages from Shiro that morning – one was a note regarding a slight change in their schedule and the other was a list of what they'd be covering that week. She assumed he was talking about the week-long one. “I glanced it over. It looks like it's mostly what we do every week.”

“Yeah, except for Friday. Do you think I can convince Shiro to give me a pass to skip out on the annual health screening after what they pulled last year?” Keith asked.

“Doubt it, though I bet he'd go with you if you're really worried about it,” Pidge said as dread began to creep in her chest.

At their last screening, the nurse helping Keith found something “odd” in his blood and ordered him into quarantine for two weeks while they tried to puzzle it out. The Garrison medical team ran test after test, asking Keith all kinds of invasive questions, until Shiro, with the help of Commander Iverson, put an end to it all. Keith was let go, but he then had to suffer through several months of resurgent rumors about his parentage and whether or not his abilities were because he wasn't fully human.

Keith was anti-social and a little awkward, which when coupled with his innate sense of how to pilot and the fact that he out-flew even seasoned pilots on the simulator on his first try, led to a number of rumors that one of his parents weren't human or even that Keith himself was born somewhere far beyond their solar system. It was all nonsense, of course.

Pidge had her own reasons for being worried about the screening. She knew, without a shadow of a doubt, that they would find out about her affliction.

Hanahaki.

Just putting a name to it made it feel all the more real and terrifying.

“Hey,” Keith said, nudging her gently. “It'll be alright. I'm really not worried about anything happening again this year. They wouldn't dare.”

Pidge did her best to smile and try to reassure him that she'd also be there to stop them if they tried anything, but the weight of what was happening to her dragged her down, threatening to drown her if she didn't wrestle back control of her emotions. Her breath stuttered in her chest, a cough building even as she cleared her throat to try and chase it off. Her eyes watered.

“Pidge?” Keith's tone turned concerned and he placed one hand on her back to keep her steady.

She couldn't hold it back any longer.

Once her coughing started, it was nearly impossible to stop as something thick and slightly scratched traveled up through her throat, threatening to block her breathing, until it finally began to slide out. Pidge gagged and coughed even harder, forcing a long stem and the accompanying blooms out of her mouth and into her hands.

All she could hear was the sound of her own heartbeat. Dark spots danced across her vision and she swayed, nominally aware of Keith holding her up. Pidge closed her eyes.

❀ - ❀ - ❀ - ❀ - ❀

She woke in the medical wing.

Or at least, she thought that was where she was at first glance, but closer inspection of the wall next to her and the lack of orange décor told her that she was most likely at the Plaht City Memorial Hospital. Pidge stared at the wall for a moment and then slowly, stiffly turned her head to look around the room, which was when she realized Keith was sitting at her bedside and staring at her with a worried expression on his face.

“Wh... what happened?” Pidge groggily asked.

“You passed out,” Keith told her. “Pidge, why didn't you say anything sooner?”

She looked away from him. “Didn't want to. S'fine, Keith. I can handle it.”

“You can handle it? Pidge, this isn't going to go away on its own!” Keith's voice raised to a near shout. He blanched and ran a hand through his hair, clearly struggling to calm down. “You... Will you at least tell me who it is? I could go get them and... and then everything would be fine, right? Unless... you've already told them?”

Pidge swallowed thickly and glanced to the bedside table, hoping to see a glass of water there, but there was nothing. “It doesn't matter.”

“Of course it matters!”

“They don't feel the same way,” Pidge said, refusing to meet his eyes. “I don't need to ask them in order to know that.”

Keith growled in frustration and stood up. “I don't buy that for a second! Who wouldn't like you?”

“Keith...”

“Just tell me who it is and I'll go talk to them,” he said fiercely. “Or I'll bring them here, whichever works best for you. Please, Pidge, I just want to help. You're my best friend.”

Her chest clenched painfully at those words and Pidge wondered for a moment if she were about to be launched into another coughing fit, but after a moment or two, the pain subsided to mere discomfort, which allowed her to speak again.

Not that she really wanted to speak, since that meant revealing the truth: she was in love with him.

That was the cause of the Hanahaki Disease. Flowers would take root in the lungs, growing until there was no place left for them to go. The body naturally tried to rid itself of the invasion by coughing them up but there was only so long that could keep the disease at bay before it became too much for the body to handle. Sometimes, the person afflicted could “cure” themselves by falling out of love before the disease progressed too far. Otherwise, there were three ways it could end: in the death of the infected, by surgical removal, or by having their love reciprocated.

The last of those was the best-case scenario – the one that was often used in the plots of movies or cheesy romance novels. Having one's love returned would effectively shrink the flowers until they were gone completely.

Surgery was a more recent option, though one that some still chose to reject even if it meant their death. Choosing to surgically remove the flowers meant also removing any feelings they had for that person and often resulted in the complete loss of memory of them as well. No one could pinpoint why it was like that and all attempts to improve on the surgery fell flat.

Those were the options sitting before Pidge.

She didn't want to die. That much was for certain. There was still so much she wanted to see and do in the world, and though it broke her heart to think of needing to do it all without Keith, her partner, steadfast by her side, she wasn't going to give it all up. Besides, there was still the chance that she wouldn't forget about him. She was too stubborn for that. And if she could remember, maybe they could rebuild their friendship as well.

But what if she didn't remember?

Pidge slowly met his eyes.

He was her best friend too; the first person her own age that she'd ever truly gotten along with and felt comfortable around. Life without him wouldn't be nearly as vibrant. She couldn't lose him.

“Don't leave me,” she begged, her chest constricting as she forced the words out. She tried to sit up, her arms trembling from the effort, but gave up as Keith moved to help her. She shook her head and blinked back tears as she caught a whiff of his cologne, which usually inspired warm and fuzzy feelings, but instead dredged up an intense need to cough.

She swallowed, trying to force it away. She needed to talk first.

“Of course I'm not going to leave,” Keith tried to reassure her.

Pidge shook her head. “If... If I forget you, please don't leave me.”

Keith made a confused sound. “Why would you forget...?”

She could hear the exact moment he put the pieces together. The way his voice cracked was a dead giveaway just before his expression crumbled in distress. She reached out and grasped his hand. “It's okay, Keith. I know.”

He sucked in a shuddering breath. “It's not okay! Pidge, I-”

“You're not allowed to blame yourself,” she cut in. “This isn't your fault. You can't help who you like. Or who you don't like.”

While it wasn't something they'd exclusively talked about, she'd gotten the gist from past conversations that he wasn't someone interested in any kind of romance. He preferred focusing on his career and studies, which was something they'd always had in common right up until she went and fell for him.

She had to look away from him for a moment. “It's just... you're my best friend too and I don't want to forget that, but if I do then I need you to be there and make sure we stick together. I know that's a lot to ask.”

“No, it isn't,” Keith heatedly denied. “Of course I'll stay with you.”

Though Pidge mostly felt relieved by his agreeing to stay with her, there was still that sliver of worry that things could go wrong for them. But what choice did they really have?

She was saved from needing to talk about it more by the arrival of Shiro and her family, who crowded around her bed to ask if she was alright and if there was anything they could do to help. Matt seemed particularly stricken that he hadn't noticed anything wrong when he spent the most time with her, though her mom was a close second.

Once he was sure Pidge would be okay, her dad took charge of the situation and arranged for her surgery to take place that evening by calling on a few favors and using his influence as a Commander at the Galaxy Garrison. It took a little more convincing on Pidge's part, as well as some hefty backup from Shiro, to make an allowance for Keith to stay with her outside of surgery. It all happened so fast that she didn't have time to think about everything else she wanted to say to Keith, just in case she wouldn't get the chance later.

Her family stayed until the last few minutes until Shiro was able to direct them out into the waiting room so she and Keith could have one last moment alone.

And it was in those last few minutes that genuine fear struck Pidge.

She didn't want to forget him.

She didn't want to lose his friendship.

Heavy tears flooded her eyes, dripping down her cheeks without her fully realizing it. She choked back a sob as she looked at Keith. “I-I-...”

She couldn't get the words out.

Keith didn't need her to say anything. He got up so he could sit on the edge of her bed instead, cradling her against him and offering physical comfort. He refused to budge as the anesthesiologist entered and began prepping her arm for the IV which would administer the anesthetic directly into her bloodstream.

“Count backward from one-hundred, dear.”

Pidge tried, but she was still too choked up to speak and had to settle for mouthing it instead. Rather quickly, Keith's soft reassurances faded and she dropped off to sleep.

❀ - ❀ - ❀ - ❀ - ❀

There was an annoying beeping sound that cut through her dreams, dragging Pidge back into the realm of consciousness. It was a strange, rhythmic sound – wholly different from the obnoxious screeching of her alarm clock. She groaned as she opened her eyes and had to squint against the sudden, harsh light that reflected off of crisp white sheets and plain white walls. The only spot of color near her was a single stem of purplish flowers that was placed in a water glass on the bedside table.

“Pidge?” an unfamiliar voice called her name, relief present in their tone.

Her head felt heavy as she turned it to face whoever was speaking to her. She figured it was a nurse or something – she had to be in a hospital of some kind – but instead, she found a young man with dark hair sitting in a chair at her bedside.

“You're awake!” he said, a smile blossoming across his face. “How do you feel?”

“M'okay,” she said thickly. She stared at him for a moment and watched as his smile faded. “Sorry, but who are you?”

He reeled back as though he'd been slapped, his expression dropping into something close to pure anguish. “I...” He paused and took a deep breath. “I'm Keith.”

#voltron #kidge #kidgemas #kidge spring event 2021 #fanfiction #hanahaki disease #there will be a part 2

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fandom-trash0116 · 3 years

Text

Klance AU

Okay, so I'm still pissed that keith left lance and the rest of the team (I hold grudges sue me) so a while back I came up with this whole elaborate au about what if lance thought the team abandoned him?

- so just imagine sometime after keith leaves and lance is abandoned the castle get hit with some beam and the Paladins are hurtled through the galaxy, and lance was hurtled through space to a distant planet in around the same system that keith was stuck on the space whale, inhabited by magic aliens, but not like Alteans that use the power of quintessence

- on this planet, quintessence is the magic around you, and the aliens on this planet use the magic within them, which is much more powerful, called ajā

- so anyway, the blue lion crashes on the planet and goes unresponsive, for some reason, and lance is stranded

- because time works different there, Lance is there for like three years, while it's only like two weeks for the rest of the team

- on the planet, everyone is ruled by an emperor or empress, along with their three or four generals, who rule alongside

- each general has like a sort of spirit animal, who accompanied them at all times

- lance befriended and got close too the next empress, who chose him as one of her generals

- Lance is chosen by this huge blue sea Bird with like iridescent wings, so he leads the flight division of the army, and get good. Like, REALLY good

- lance never really gives up hope that his team will evebtually come for him, so he always keeps the armor, but he starts going to red less and less and devotes more and more time to his new home

- The empress and the rest of the generals really don't like the team because they feel like keith is unworthy of their brother (btw the main value of society on this planet is loyalty)

- so after searching for like two weeks, the team manages to locate the red lion, but something seems off

- for lance, at this point, it's been like three years, and he thinks that they just decided he wasn't good enough

- once Voltron lands on the planet, Lance is away on a mission, and the rest of the leading group decided to mess with Voltron a bit, because they abandoned one of their own so fuck them

- so one Voltron arrives at the palace, they ask if theyve come across the blue lion or it's paladin, and the empress tells them that they have the blue lion, it arrived three years ago, and in the red lion was a very badly hurt boy dressed in blue armor, who later died

- the empress invites them to stay for a bit and mourn their lost brother-in-arms, and the paladins take them up on their offer, everyone be in shock from the news

- on like the day lance comes back but before he realizes what's happening, the Galra attack

- before the battle lance seeks out the empress and the other generals and is like "wtf did you do" and she's all like "okay so we kinda sorta maybe told them that you were dead"

- and lance is like "WTF WHY WOULD YOU DO THAT"

- but before he gets his answer, the alarms go off, and lance runs to his fighter, and red then roars, calling out to her paladin, Lance almost crying because he thought red was dead for good

- so once runs to red and joins the fight, and the rest of the Paladins think that someone on the planet bonded with red and they have a new red paladin

- until they land, and they wait for one of the aliens to walk out of red

- and then

- SUPRISE

- it's lance. But like older. And bigger. And more grizzled (according to keith)

- and the empress and posse is like "lol sorry appreciate our brother more or we will find you"

- and lance tells them about the last few years and the team is like "damn it's been like two weeks for us."

- and keith is like "oh no he got HOTTER"

- and since lance was on the planet for a long time, he leaned to control ajā, and was now able to pilot the castle

- after their wedding, klance heads back to the planet to tell Lances other family (empress and co.) and their like "Oh FINALLY. Do you have any idea how many times lace whined about missing you. Like do you. We took rurns listening."

~*The end*~

#klance #klance au #voltron #vld #vld lance #vld keith #Lance deserves better #i’ve been thinking about this for a while #voltron legendary defender

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mizu-writes-kumo · 4 years

Note

Shance au: lance was the one on the mission instead of shiro as team doctor. He hates the galra mostly for the horrible amputation they did on his arm.

Yo...what if...what if...Kerberos was suppose to be a four man mission.

Shiro was the pilot, Lance was the medic (and additional co-pilot), and Matt and Sam being science and engineering. And because Lance was the medic he was in tasked doing a lot of medical tests. He knew Shiro was sick, cause like he knows the signs, but was wasn’t going to say anything, because he had a theory that being in space might help prolong Shiro’s general health. And like it’s a historic mission, Shiro deserves it. Only some higher ups find out about it, and Sam isn’t able to talk them into keeping Shiro on the mission (even with Lance being tell them my theory and give them this proof). Turning it into a just a three man mission, as Lance becomes the Pilot and the missions medic.

And then the mission fails.

The Galra attack, and Lance goes into the ring and becomes the Champion.

Ultaz and Lance sort of a little be of loose repour, cause Ultaz gets Lance is medic. So Lance is little more willing to go when Ultaz breaks him out and sends him hurtling back to Earth....Only you know a head injury kind of makes that memory hard to access for Lance.

I could imagine the Garrison team send out to investigate is kind of able to move Lance around cause he’s somewhat unconscious. But the moment he comes to a bit, Lance goes hard on fighting for his life, cause he’s just in flight or fight mood. And it takes like five people to pin him down enough to give him a sedative.

Shiro, who is still teaching at the Garrison, and Keith is still attending. Pidge is undercover, but Shiro quickly picked her out for who he is...and decided to help her, because yeah there was a lot of weird mystery surrounding the the Keberos mission. Keith just kind of tags a long, sort of “keep everyone out of trouble”, and pidge is on his Team. Hunk is is roommate, who followed Keith when snuck out and stumbled upon the three of them when Lance crashed back down. And Shiro was all “You guys should go back to your room and follow lockdown protocols” until Pidge hacked the cameras and they saw it was Lance. Then Shiro was very much leading the charge.

The four rescue Lance, and take him somewhere hidden and safe. Then they all go to find Blue lion...and you know...

And I could see Lance really struggling with his prosthetic arm. Because it was so sudden and as much as Ultaz tried to actually not make super traumatic, the Druids didn’t give two hoots. And he also don’t know how it works, or how it’s so connected to his body. Also some of the “anatomy” doesn’t line up right like it should, so it’s straining and painful against his muscles. And it also scares him out of being a medic sometimes, cause while he can activate it on command, he isn’t completely confident in his ability to not do it accidently. His struggling with it can very much range from his just staring at his right hand...to threatening to cut off his own arm.

Shiro walked in once on Lance having an extreme reaction, and got him to calm down. And quickly became a shoulder Lance could lean on. It’s not the best, but they both when to mediation and mental assistance training when the Keberos Mission was a four man crew. Shiro knows the ways to help Lance calm down form most extreme emotions.

Sometimes Lance comes in to talk about stuff. Sometimes about what happened too, sometimes to find out about what happened while he was gone. Other times he’ll just go to Shiro and just kind of wedge himself against him without a word. And it’s not to long before it just becomes...the norm...no one raises an eyebrow.

#shance #medic!Lance au #medic!Lance #Lance and Shiro are the same age #Lance goes to Keberos #It's my headcanon that Medic!Lance would approve Shiro for a mission #and have a good reason as to why

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delaneytveit · 4 years

Text

Hold me Close, and Let It be

Annnnnndddddd she’s back. Uni is up and running again and I had to take care of some personal stuff, but here is a new little ficlet for ya’ll to enjoy. Hope you like angst with a little bit of comfort.

****************************************************************************************

Today was definitely not a good day. Lance woke up to the blaring alarm of his phone, a piercing screech that on any other day would have earned no more than a disgruntled groan before a quick press of a button. Today however, it received a string of curses as the Blue paladin rolled over and away from the device, stuffing his head under the pillow to muffle to sound to no avail.

With another few choice words, he reluctantly withdrew himself. Sitting up with little grace and all the annoyance he could probably use to fuel the ship for decapheobes. Lance was pissed.

After spending all day the day before training and failing and training more, chores upon chores in the infirmary, his own solo missions, and meetings with the team he was once again forced to find each and every paladin and put them to bed at a reasonable hour. God forbid they be able to pull themselves away from whatever they were doing to do so themselves. Okay, forced wasn’t the right word. No one was holding him at gun point, threatening his family. But his team was hurting. They weren’t taking care of themselves. And he would be damned if he let his second family spiral when he could so easily stop it.

So he spent each night hunting down each paladin, getting them to eat, drink, rest. Usually taking hours before he was finally able to do the same for himself. Of course that meant that while the rest of his team got to bed at a reasonable hour, he was far from it.

He stumbled lazily to his ensuite bathroom, quick to wash his face and brush his teeth before returning to his room to dress in his paladin armor.

Allura had announced the night before that they would be attending a diplomatic celebration on a planet Lance had no hope of ever being able to pronounce. On any other day, Lance would have jumped at the idea of such a mission. Celebrations meant parties, and if anyone liked to party, it was Lance. But over this past pheobe or so, he’s lost any and all emotional capacity to do more than train.

Coran had told him to come to him when this feeling started. Knowing what the missions were asking of Lance, and how heavy they would weigh on the Paladin’s mind. As grateful as Lance was for the Altean’s words, he couldn’t shake the thought that it would just be better if he didn’t. The less people traumatized was better, and these missions were confidential for a reason.

So, there he was, drained, exhausted, and irritable. Dreading the day before it had begun as he entered the bridge.

To his surprise, he wasn’t the last one. In fact, he was the first of the paladins to reach the bridge. Though he probably shouldn’t have been as surprised, he had been getting pretty good with his time management if he did say so himself. The room was only occupied by Coran and Allura. They quickly shared good mornings, Allura in her excitement already briefing Lance on the celebration. A day-long party followed by a dinner with all of the planet’s officials. Easy enough. Lance just had to act like he wanted to be there, and not like he wanted to crawl inside a hole and hibernate for the next decade.

The room was quickly filled with the noise of the other paladins, bright and lively as they entered. They didn’t seem to notice Lance as they bickered, Shiro stepping in a few times to keep it out of hand.

“Where is Lance, is he late again?” Pidge joked, earning a scoff from Keith before both of their eyes landed on the Blue Paladin already standing at the console with the Alteans, their conversation seemingly interrupted by the outburst. After the briefing, it was little over a varga before the castle landed on the planet and the Paladins were greeted by its inhabitants. Music and excited shouts filled the air as the group marched from the castle to the large civic center that was to house the celebration.

To Lance’s joy, Hunk stood with him the whole time. His friend finding exciting food for both of them to try as they mingled with some of the natives. As exhausted as Lance felt, his smile never faltered, and in all honesty it could have been much worse. He just wished that whatever alien was practically hanging off of his arm could let off a bit.

It was smooth going throughout the party, all the way up until the dinner. Nothing could have ever prepared him for this dinner.

Well, could anyone really prepare to be seated across from the most beautiful alien he had ever seen. Her skin a dusty pink that seemed to aglow in the candle light, her long flowing hair dark as night and hung in long curls where it wasn’t plaited in the most intricate braids. But her eyes, her diamond like eyes could have put the most precious stone to shame. The way he could see almost every colour in them shook him to his core.

She was beautiful, strikingly so.

He almost hadn’t realized he had been staring until he felt the elbow of his best friend hit his ribcage. But he couldn’t bring himself to look away.

The girl sitting in front of him looked up with such sad eyes, it made him want to cry just looking at her.

“You carry much pain with you, Blue Paladin.” her voice was soft, but the sentiment in it struck an arrow in his chest. It seemed her words had silenced the entire table as eyes turned towards the two.

“Though you crave to return home the most, you know that you will not. Not in your lifetime...and yet you remain.” she took a shuddering breath, reminding Lance that he hadn’t breathed since she sat in front of him. “I will not ask you why. For your silence is all the answer I need, but I must ask. You are scared are you not?”

“That’s enough Nalena.”

But all she did was hold a singular slim finger to her father, an action that silenced him yet again.

“Yet you brave the fight, the war that you are convinced you will not survive.” She moved her hand to cover his, offering him the slightest squeeze of comfort.

“You fight because though you may not return, you will do all you can to make sure that they,” she dropped his gaze finally to pass her eyes upon his team before those kind diamond eyes returned to his once more, “they may. You lay awake at night, haunted by the prophecies of your demise, yet you continue. You rise every day, answer every call, knowing that it could be your last.”

He could feel the pain in her voice be mirrored in his heart, and knew the tear that fell from his eye matched that on her cheek.

“Alejandro, you have committed many sins in your effort to protect your team. Though they will never truly know what you have done, what plagues your mind every waking moment, know that they could not have a more devoted nor more loving paladin. Your heart will never be hardened, your efforts never in vain. You carry the curse of the Blue Paladin, and take it in stride. Your loyalty knows no bounds. Know this Alejandro Serrano-McClain, if they do not let you into your heaven it is not your fault. The road to hell may be paved with good intentions, but it is their loss for not honoring the hero you have become.”

Blue eyes stared, unlooking into the vast expanse of the stars hidden behind the glass. His mind still reeling relentlessly vargas after his encounter with the princess Nalena. Her words played in a continuous loop in his mind. Keeping him awake.

So here he stood, arms crossed, dressed in only a pair or dark sweatpants and his lion slippers shielding his feet from the ice of the cold castle floor. He was so wrapped up in his own mind, he hadn’t heard the doors whoosh open, nor the light footsteps that followed to where he stood.

“Lance?”

Startled he turned around, eyes wide when they settled on the violet ones belonging to the red paladin.

“Keith...what are- are you okay?”

They both stood in silence, Keith dressed in his pajamas seemed colder than Lance did, shuddering a little in the dark of the observation deck.

“Shouldn't I be asking you that?”

Lance shifted on his feet, not really sure where this was going, but dreading it nonetheless. “What do you mean? I’m fine.”

“Are you? I mean, after what happened today, I wouldn’t be. And I-” Lance watched as Keith fidgeted with the sleeve of his shirt, his eyes refusing to meet the blue paladin’s in front of him. “I don’t know. What she said. It seems like you haven’t been okay for a while.”

Lance wasn’t sure why he was so surprised, after all the whole team had been there to witness the incident. They weren’t blind. Of course they’d be concerned. He’d be worried out of his mind if the same thing happened to Pidge, or Shiro, even Allura. But he had to admit it was a little weird having Keith, his self proclaimed rival- not rival, genuinely worry about him.

His first instinct was to deflect. Hell, this wasn’t something that a few kind words could fix, and the last person he’d want comfort from would be the boy that only bickered with him. But that wasn’t right. Keith was standing in front of him because he wanted to help, because at the end of the day they were a team, friends. And he genuinely did care.

Lance sighed before holding out his hand, gesturing for the other boy to come and join him in front of the glass, only turning back to the stars when Keith finally stood next to him.

“You’re right.” he said, breaking the long drawn out silence, his eyes never leaving the stars he had grown so accustomed to. The stars that he knew he would live and die fighting in. “I don’t think I’ve been okay for a long time.”

He could feel the smaller boy’s eyes on him, studying him and if the conversation hadn’t weighted so heavily on him, he probably would have blushed.

“I used to look up at the stars, and dream about flying through them. I wanted to be the best pilot out there, traveling farther than anyone ever had. Even when we were brought into this war, I couldn’t help but dream of doing great things. It's all I've ever wanted to do... fly.”

“All I ever wanted to do was fly.” He repeated softly, as he looked down at his feet, shaking his head at his own ignorance. No, not ignorance, naivety. All those years ago he was a naive 17 year old who would have given an arm and a leg to travel the stars.

“Now I’m here, fighting a war my family has no idea even exists. And all I want to do is go home. I want to hug my mom, argue with my siblings, play with my niece and nephew.”

“You will, Lance. We’ll go back to Earth, and you can do all that, and more-”

“Will I?” he interrupted. There was no harshness, no anger. Just a reserved sadness that Keith would have done anything to never hear from his friend’s lips again. This wasn’t Lance, Lance was supposed to be loud and happy and...not hurting like this. Lance deserved to be happy.

“It doesn’t scare me any more, the thought of not going home. At first I used to be terrified, of getting hurt, dying, leaving my family to wonder what happened to me. As bad as it sounds... I don’t feel that way anymore.”

“Lance…”

“I used to spend hours imagining how I would die, getting gunned down by a Galra soldier, or saving one of you, or… I spent so much time imagining it, that I couldn’t even imagine going home if I wanted to.”

Keith had turned completely now, facing the taller boy, tears in his eyes as his friend struggled to talk. How could he have not known about this? How could any of them not have known? They were supposed to be a team, and when one of your team is hurting, you help. They didn’t seem like a team at that moment, neglecting their Blue Paladin. The one person who was holding this team together was completely falling apart and none of them could see it.

It made him want to wrap Lance up in the biggest hug he had ever known, and Keith was far from a hugger. But seeing the boy stand before him, speak about how accepting he was of fucking dying? That was not okay. None of this was okay. They had grown up fighting a war, and if there was any indication that it had taken its toll on the teens, Lance was it.

“She was right.” Lance said finally. Breaking Keith out of his stupor.

“Right about what?”

“I’ve done horrible things for this goddamn war. I’ve killed people Keith, not droids, or senteries. Living, breathing Galra. Not just Galra, but anyone who would cross the coalition. I-” his voice cracked as he placed his head in his hands, stifling a sob that threatened to escape him. “I don’t want to be remembered for that. I never wanted to be a hero, but here I am pretending to be one, knowing all the things I’ve done.”

Any self control that Keith had once had evaded him in that moment, as he lunged forward and wrapped his arms around Lance. Pulling him close, as if he was afraid to lose him if he didn’t.

The action only made Lance cry harder, no longer hiding it as he clung to the Red Paladin. Keith guided them to the floor, and there they remained until Lance had cried himself out, Keith releasing a few tears himself.

It was some time before either of them spoke again. Neither one really wanting to break from the safety of the silence, but knowing that more had to be said. In the end, Keith waited until Lance pulled away before speaking.

“Lance, war brings out the worst in all of us. We’ve all done things that we’re not proud of, but we can’t let it define us. What we do is to help the universe. Voltron exists to help the universe.”

Lance scoffed at that, the disbelief held in his voice only pushing Keith more.

“I’m so sorry that you’ve been forced to do those things. But I’ve also seen you do some amazing things as well. I’ve seen you carry children out of a collapsing building, I’ve seen you push Pidge out of the way of a shot, I’ve seen you talk Shiro down from his nightmare induced panic attacks. Hell, you literally drag me out of the training deck every night to make sure I actually sleep. Lance, you care for this family.”

Before Lance could get a word in, Keith cupped his cheeks in both hands, angling him so that their eyes met.

“I know me listing all of the good things will never outweigh the heaviness of the guilt you carry. All I ask is that you acknowledge that you are more than that, because you are. You are Lance McClain, the Blue Paladin of Voltron. A hero, a fighter, a friend. The scar on your back is a testament to how true that is.”

He let the words sink in, let Lance just have time to feel them. Because he meant every word.

And he’d be damned if he let Lance go on believing that he wasn’t worthy of being here. He defined what it meant to be a paladin, and though he may not be their leader, he still managed to instill it in each and every one of them.

“Lance, I-”

“Thank you. I think I’m gonna go to bed.” Lance pulled back before moving to stand up, popping the cricks out of his shoulders.

“...Just think about what I said, please.”

Lance turned then, a small smirk replacing the broken expression that plagued him just the minute before.

“Yeah, I will. Thank you, Keith, really.”

#langst #but with comfort this time #we love to see it #I love two blue bois and lance is one of them #I mean the number has gone up to three blue bois but I refuse to change the tag #its fine #everything is fine #lance mcclain #lance serrano #vld lance #klance if you squint #honestly its klance for comfort #Keith just wants his boy to be okay

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chaoticevilbean · 3 years

Text

Four In One : Chapter Two

Lance nearly flailed when he woke up, only to stop and remember that the Altean blanket was still doing its job. His twenty-plus foot-long wings were hidden in the warmth of a mini space pocket, all four feeling better than ever because of the room within. It wasn't often that he got to stretch his wings, mostly because his wingspan was over forty feet long, and that was just his smaller set. Luckily, there were multiple ballrooms and training rooms that allowed him to practice his flying and properly groom, something that often took vargas.

It wasn't that Lance couldn't fly without extending his wings fully. He had taught himself from a young age to fly with one set of wings or the other, to fly in small spaces, with his wings only partially unfurled or unhidden, with one wing from each set, with only one side's wings. Just because he had four giant wings, didn't mean he was going to let himself fall behind others in something as common as flying.

But Lance didn't have as many opportunities to let his wings out as the others did. Not if he wanted to keep them private. And he did. He wanted to have some clue about how they'd react to wings like his. To impossible wings.

"MINE!" was the screech that tore Lance from his thoughts and woke him up so fast and fully that he did in fact flail, though much less than he had upon his first partial wake-up. And if he wasn't fully awake at that point, he was when a weight suddenly landed on him, forcing his reflexes to push Pidge away from his body. The girl had still been in his arms, and it seemed that she had been woken up by the screech as well.

"Keith, you can't just claim him!" Hunk called out, wrapping his arms around Keith's waist.

"Yeah, we were cuddling and he's warm," Pidge butted in, glaring at the mullethead who caused her to be shoved to safety.

"Please be quiet, it's only six," came a sleepy voice from under black wings. The four teens turned (as much as they could) towards the place where Shiro appeared to only just realize what he had said. Since they had come to space, the teens found it much easier to wake up and go to sleep each night because of the less stressful environment and positive atmosphere they now had. That meant waking up early.

Shiro's wing lifted just enough to show the very drowsy face of one man with a unicorn floof.

"Don't." The teens glanced between each other, before looking back towards their flock leader. "I swear, don't you dare." Keith slowly got off Lance, who was sitting up and hiding his wings, causing the Altean blanket to fall. Hunk let go of Keith as the boy kneeled beside him. "Guys, think about what you're doing." All four were slowly moving forward, standing or kneeling side by side, almost a half-circle around the now slightly panicked Space Dad™. "Guys. Gu-AHHH!"

The teens lunged forward quickly, tackling the man and pinning him with their weight. It was much like what had happened to Lance the day before, only now Hunk was holding Shiro's legs, Keith was holding his waist, Pidge had his stomach and Lance held him by the shoulders. Pidge's arms effective pinned the older man's hands, and he didn't dare use his Galran arm against his flockmates.

"Boop," Lance said as he used his left hand to bop Shiro's floof. The man glared up at his tallest space son, which was ineffective with the braided white hair still bouncing slightly.

"I hate you all."

"No, you don't," came four voices, followed by a flurry of movement as the kids swiftly left the nest, abandoning a seething Shiro. Coran was already in the kitchen, prepping breakfast but waiting to actually make anything for the humans until Hunk approved them as safe and actually delicious. The surrogate uncle was getting much better at telling if something would make his nephews and niece ill, or simply be downright disgusting to them. Allura was setting the table, something Lance starting helping her with immediately, a habit he had developed long ago.

With table set, Allura and Lance went to help Coran and Hunk bring breakfast out. Somehow, they had made the space equivalents of bacon, porridge, toast and eggs, along with a few Altean dishes. Upon returning to the dining room, the four were met with what seemed to be a two-on-one argument: Pidge and Keith versus Shiro.

"I know I saw one, Shiro! Why are you lying?" Pidge shouted, wings puffed up in an adora- irritated way. Keith nodded beside her, lower set of wings rustling a bit.

"Yeah, Shiro! What sort of example are you setting for your children?"

"What is the matter, Paladins?" Allura interjected, not setting down the food yet on the chance they begin launching it at one another.

"These two are obsessed!" Shiro pointed at the two as he moved to stand by Coran, as if the Altean man would protect him.

"Is this another cryptid thing," Lance asked, putting the two trays of food he held down.

"Shiro has scales in his feathers and he won't show us," Pidge pouted, moving over to Hunk to snatch some space bacon from the trays he had.

"If I show you my scales, will you drop it, ya cryptids?" Both of them frantically nodded, extracting a sigh as Shiro turned around. His wings spread out, and he carefully pointed towards the base of them, where they met his back.

The rest of the team pressed inwards, Coran gently moving a few feathers to reveal several streaks of scales, spattered as if someone was drizzling them outwards. They blended in perfectly with the colors of the feathers around them, which was probably how none of them had been noticed during grooming. Lance's breath caught slightly at the sight, because here was something that might be proof. Now, all he needs to do is-

"So do all of us have mutations?" Sweet, beautiful Hunk.

"What do you mean," Keith asked.

"Oh, I get it," Pidge interrupted. "I have unusual coloring, Keith has an extra set of wings, Hunk has extremely large wings, and now we know that Shiro has both feathers and scales. That means that we all technically have mutations." This was Lance's chance.

"Wouldn't it be cool to see wings with all four mutations?" Lance's palms got sweaty as everyone's attention snapped to him. At their looks of confusion, he continued. "I mean, imagine someone with, like, bright blue wings, and four of them, and both scales and feathers and they'd be huge."

"That'd be sick." Hunk's face had a huge grin on it, and he looked like he was going to explode with happiness.

"Can you imagine what sort of secrets wings like those could hold," Pidge exclaimed, bouncing in place before sitting down and bouncing while eating. Hunk joined in, immediately beginning to discuss the possible ways someone could up with wings like that. Coran was pulled in as well, adding his knowledge of more alien mutations.

"Forget the secrets, imagine fighting with four giant wings! Especially with both feathers and scales!" Keith grabbed Shiro's arm, dragging him to the table and blabbering about all the techniques that could be created with both feathers and scales. Shiro looked like he wanted to die, but was still mildly interested.

Allura, however, was watching everyone else talk, having slowly moved over to Lance. She gave him a side glance that was almost knowing. Leaning down, she whispered lowly into Lance's ear.

"Be prepared to be pulled every direction when you show us." Lance tensed, before seeing her warm smile. He nodded to her, and the quick squeeze she gave his arm relaxed him greatly. One down, five to go. The two rushed over to the table together, trying to get some food before the others devoured it all.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Lance was pulled aside after only one week in the Garrison, by none other than Iverson. Iverson had apparently seen the second flight Lance had gone for and most definitely seen his wings. But he didn't go crazy, and he didn't get mad, and he didn't in any way raise his voice. Instead, he seemed stern and somehow concerned.

"McClain, I can understand why you are worried, but there isn't a reason. Not yet." Lance remained tense in the chair across the desk from his teacher. "Your grades are good, you have the makings of a fighter pilot. However, you struggle in simulations because of the lack of realism. I've seen it before. Without the actual risk of crashing or hurting someone, you can't perform nearly as well as you could. I've talked with other teachers about this, and we all understand." Lance was very confused at this point. Where was the usually yelling man who everyone already knew as a jerk?

"McClain, you are right to hide your wings from the public. But, if we play the cards right, you might not have to."

"We?" Lance inquired, even more confused and highly curious about this change in behavior.

"Every teacher here has a reputation. My own is not exactly flattering. But each of us are simply trying to push our students. Outside this room, I might yell at you or seemingly insult you, but in here, I can tell you what it means. If you get the best grades possible, connect with whatever team you receive, work as hard as you can and prove that you're one of the best pilots we've ever had, one day the world won't care what your wings look like. I've looked over all your grades and classes and the only person you ever come second with is Kogane. You beat him, a natural prodigy, one I assure you doesn't try nearly as much, and you prove that it doesn't matter what impossible wings you have. You are the best pilot at the Garrison. Do you understand?"

For the coming months, Iverson was true to his words. Every time his words hurt, Lance would head to his office. Iverson explained what he had meant in far gentler terms. Every time he reminded Lance that he was second to Keith, it reminded the boy about their talks. When Lance told Iverson that he might be able to get better scores if his tests were translated, he found his teachers handing him the Spanish version of the tests. Both Iverson and him put on facades of hatred and mutual annoyance.

When Keith dropped out, Iverson pushed Lance even harder. He had a team, one he needed to connect with, and the struggle was real. Pidge couldn't focus that well on the missions, no matter if they were in the simulators or not (the students sometimes got to do real shuttle piloting, though those were far less often). Hunk had very high anxiety, which led to worrying and nausea, which led to vomiting. Lance did the best he could, meaning adding a puke bucket for his roommate, reminding him that the simulator isn't actually dangerous and quelling any anxiety afterwards. It also meant using the newest team addition's obsession against him. Lance reminded Pidge that if it really wasn't a pilot error that caused the Kerberos mission's failure, then something else happened. If Pidge didn't focus, the team would fail and possibly die. If Pidge did focus, the team might make it to higher ranks, maybe even getting to go to Kerberos themselves someday and seeing if they could find the real cause. It didn't help entirely, but it did help.

The night that the Garrison Trio found Shiro was also the night that Lance was going to show his wings to his teammates. They needed to come together, and he thought that showing such trust in them would lead to a better team dynamic. All he needed to do was get Pidge to sneak out with him and Hunk, and then find a safe place to reveal himself.

Then Shiro's pod crashed. Lance and Pidge rushed down to help with Hunk following. They successfully assisted Keith in saving Shiro. They made it to the desert shack. Hunk snooped and found the frequencies that lined up with the canyon picture Keith had. The cave markings lit up at Lance's touch, telling him that he was expected.

Flying the Blue Lion was an amazing experience. She connected to Lance's mind in a way that was unlike anything he had felt before, but at the same time, he knew the feeling. Slow sunsets, warm air, calm seas. She was home and at the same time, not. To bond to her, Lance simply had to be himself. His full self.

The Alteans were a sight to behold as well. Their wings were far more colorful than any humans, besides maybe Pidge's. Allura practically tackled Lance once she became semi-conscious. His lack of wings and pointed ears terrified her half-aware mind, and Lance began flirting to distract her. Coran was quick to realize that distraction was also needed, pretending to fight the air and arguing with the boy he had never met before.

Lance kept Iverson's words in his heart, many of which were beyond what the others could even imagine. For example, the whole "the Kerberos mission failed because of a pilot error" was apparently a ploy to keep the public calm while the government investigated the situation. Lance's rivalry with Keith spawned from the simple fact that Iverson tried to keep Keith out of the mess and he got a black eye for his troubles. Lance's overdramatic confusion about Pidge's gender was to hide the fact that Iverson told him about two hours into being on a team with her. That led to Lance carrying a small amount of painkillers, chocolate, and some pads and tampons, which was handy when there weren't any on hand in space.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

"Alright, team," Shiro called, watching as the last of the food was swiped from the trays and disappeared in ticks. "We need to train today. Let's start with the invisible maze, then move on to long range weapons, and lastly short range weapons. Tomorrow we'll start close combat with no weapons."

Cheers rang out, since that meant a relatively moderate training day compared to what it could be. Both Shiro and Allura were getting better at judging what quintants were perfect for hard training and which quintants were definitely meant for more lenient drills. Food fights had greatly diminished now that Allura wasn't a tyrant with Shiro behind her.

"Last one to the training room has to do the maze first! And no wings!" Lance shouted as he ran full speed down the hallways. Keith was right on his heels, followed by a Pidge riding a Hunk. Shiro, Allura and Coran's laughter carried after them, the empty halls of the castle filling with sounds of joy.

#voltron #wing au #lance #hunk #pidge #shiro #allura #keith #lance mcclain #hunk garrett #pidge gunderson #takashi shirogane #keith kogane #coran coran the gorgeous man #lance-centric #purple #klance

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ghostgetter · 3 years

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hehehe more wip from the klance fic I’m writing:

Lance fluffs out a gigantic blue comforter with flowers decorating the front. He folds it carefully, sticking his tongue out with expert, sharpshooting precision, before gently placing it on the ground next to the guest bed.

“Here ya go, Kosmo,” he pats the blanket repeatedly and the wolf obeys. He noses Lance’s hand and snuggles into the soft, make-shift bed. “Fit for a king.” He pets his fur for extra measure, smiling gently down at him.

“A king?” Keith crosses his arms, unable to control the soft smile gracing his features. Lance is unable to see how soft he looks, how content and happy he appears with his space wolf.

“More than any of us will ever dream of being,” Lance answers with an affirmed nod.

“Kosmo loves the attention,” Keith says, noting how comfortable his wolf appears under Lance’s hand. He’s a bit envious, which is stupid. Because he’s not a dog. And Keith doesn’t get “pet.”

Lance chuckles, rising up to his full height. “Yeah, well one of you has to.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” It comes out more defensively than he had intended, because really he’s just confused. Where’d that come from? The soft, domestic mood is suddenly squandered.

Lance mirrors his crossed arms, but in more of an annoyed posture. Like what he’s stating is obvious and Keith’s just an idiot, which Keith never stands for. “Uh, dude? We barely tolerated one another in Voltron. It’s only recently that you’ve even started staying over. I know my main default setting is to bother you still.”

“You don’t bother me,” Keith responds immediately, like a reflex. Like Lance’s words are an annoying house fly and Keith is the swatter.

“Huh?”

“You don’t bother me,” Keith repeats. The opposite, in fact. But he keeps that to himself.

“No, I heard you. I’m just confused.”

“About what? You don’t. You haven’t since way before the war ended. I dunno why you think otherwise,” Keith ensures.

Lance rolls his eyes and opens his dumb mouth, but Keith still wants to speak, so he does. He wants to make sure Lance gets how much he cares about him, even if he isn’t ready to say all that yet.

“I like being here. I like staying here with you. You’re fun and caring and my friend, my close friend, and I like staying with you when you let me,” Keith picks at the skin of his upper arm as he manages to keep a straight face. Somehow, potentially through the constant meetings with the Blade, he’s able to look at Lance as he speaks, unravels, throws up, whatever. But Lance...

Lance’s bemused face is dropping into silent shock. Why is this so surprising to him? Why is he so against this idea of them...them...

“I like being around your family. Your mom is kind and a good cook, and your brothers and sisters are fun. Veronica’s a great pilot and always tries to talk to me about stuff. You spoil Kosmo. You’re great, Lance. I dunno why you still think....you bother me.”

It’s silent for a bit, and Keith sees the rose grow on Lance’s cheeks under the green facemask, and part of him wants to step closer and graze them with his fingertips. Even at the expense of covering his hands in chalky goo. Even if Lance yells at him about hand oils. He watches Lance blink once, twice, thrice -

“Oh.”

Oh.

Oh, Keith feels like a moron now. His heart sinks and...he doesn’t normally unload that many emotional admissions in one sitting, and the build up is congesting his mouth. Suddenly everything he said feels like too much. Lance looks... flabbergasted? More confused? Shit.

“Okay, well...thank you,” and only because Keith’s observational skills have been drilled into him so fully, he sees Lance’s eyes shift to whatever is behind him. The awkward is worse than when Krolia forced him to speak in front of those Puigans a month ago and he forgot the name of their leader. Lance’s face, the red and the adverted eyes, is why he took so long to open up to people. “If you need anything, you know where I am. Right down the hall.”

“Right.” The awkward tension gets thicker as Keith forces a swallow. Now even he can’t look at Lance. He really shoulda just kept his mouth shut.

“Right. Well,” and now the classic neck rub. Fantastic. He’s fucked up to that level, apparently. Kill him slowly. “G’night.”

Once Lance swiftly escapes the guest room, Keith drags his hands down his face, like ripping off the embarrassment from his skin can ease beating heart. A long, loud exhale. Is this what it’s come to now? Realization of crushing on Lance - Lance, of all people, and now he throws up emotions all over the floorboards? Lance could barely look at him.

Things were so much easier when he was just reassuring Lance about his role with Voltron. Blissful and ignorant while Lance swooned over Allura.

He glares at Kosmo, snuggling into his comforter as he eyes his owner. Must be nice.

His heart is still pounding. Escaping under the covers of his bed is the only logical option at this point, so he dives in after turning the lamp on the nightstand off. Kosmo huffs in the dark, relaxing further, while Keith just turns and stares up at the ceiling fan.

He likes Lance. He really, truly, irrevocably likes Lance.

Lance, his used-to-be righthand man. Lance, who buys Kosmo toys and beds. Lance, who still wants to stay on the farm and refuses to get involved with anything space-related. Lance, who makes jokes about their rivalry still but actually believes Keith doesn’t consider him a close friend. Lance, who’s still grieving after 2 years without Allura.

He turns to face the door and burrows himself into the pillow.

Lance is in love with someone else, and she isn’t even here anymore.

If at all possible, his heart sinks even further.

He struggles to sleep; he always does in times of anxiety and restlessness, but this is different. His heart aches in ways he’s never felt before, because he’s never felt this way before about anyone. These feelings are new and unwanted, even though the one he carries them for is warm and inviting and a dream he wants to live by. Lance, of all people, the reciprocate of Keith’s newfound desires. How ironic.

Not for the first time, he dreams of deep blue that night.

#klance

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gold-eyes-vengeful-heart · 3 years

Text

White vs Blue

((Runya fights the Diamond Weapon.

Spoilers for the Diamond Weapon part of the questline (5.5 stuff)! Also real big warning for Runya being a colossal asshole and Blue being very angry and yelling about Gaius’ war crimes.))

===

The Diamond Weapon soared out through the deck of clouds ahead of them, and Runya gunned Blue towards it, completely ignoring the startled shouts of the Ironworks men and Sorin and Baelsar in the process. He far outstripped the pace of the heavily-burdened G-Warriors, though the barrage from them had arrived ahead of him...and did absolutely nothing.

Of course it did nothing. That was a Weapon. Had they really expected that to work?

He sent Blue twisting to the side as those shoulder lasers lanced towards him, though even that wasn’t quite fast enough--one nicked the edge of Blue’s wing and the blue Weapon’s thoughts shot through with pain and anger that he had even been hit.

{badbadbadbad--}

“Yes, that was very naughty.” Runya didn’t even so much as slow the two of them down as they barrelled at the Diamond Weapon; his eyes flashed gold as his own mind pointedly melded further into his own Weapon’s, and this time the shower of lasers he simply ducked Blue under, missing the attack entirely and firing back with the aetherial cannon in Blue’s mouth.

{Something’s wrong.} Blue was still focused, at least--Runya would have been quite displeased if he hadn’t been--but he finally gave ‘voice’ to his unease, and Runya didn’t have to ask to know what he meant.

Something was off about it, wasn’t there?

“Runya!” Sorin’s voice crackled in his right ear, which automatically swiveled to follow it (highly disorienting when his subconscious was half-convinced he was a giant flying Weapon at the moment). “Fall back! We’re going to capture it!”

This still seemed like a damned fool’s errand.

“Runya.”

He was half-tempted to simply ignore them. He, after all, genuinely did not care what happened to that stupid girl and her stupid siblings.

“Runya, answer me.”

But...there was Sorin, and so he just snorted in a fit of fine ill-temper and pulled back on the controls, sending Blue arcing up into the sky and letting the two G-Warriors sail by underneath him.

{Hmmmm.}

“Yes, you’re as dubious about this as I am.” He slowed Blue and deliberately dropped him back a bit, and as the Diamond Weapon tried to follow, it zipped between the two G-Warriors...and got caught right in the capture field they generated instead. “Though it did at least stop it for a few moments. Better than I thought it would go.”

The Diamond Weapon’s craggy features split into a hellish roar, and it struggled mightily against the sparking barrier.

{...Runya-friend.} The cautious remark lapped around his ankles. {It talks.}

At first, Runya wasn’t terribly put off by that. “So do you. And I believe all your siblings do too--”

{It is someone.}

Runya sighed again, watching the Diamond Weapon rage against the capture field with increasing savagery. “And so are you? I’m afraid I don’t get what you’re getting at.”

{It has a person-brain!}

Ah.

Runya blinked, rapidly, almost kicked entirely back into his own mind by the surprise.

“...Beg your pardon?”

{It’s...yelling about ‘Allie’?} Blue didn’t even sound certain. {It wants to save her.}

And then it all clicked in Runya’s mind. He interrupted, before Blue could go any further. “Well, I can only presume that was her one brother that wasn’t dead. How...very Merceus of the VIIth Legion.”

Blue’s tail lashed behind him and his wings shivered at the thought, though. {Nonono. Don’t want it. Don’t want to fight.}

Oh, now was really not the time, and Runya’s grip tightened warningly on the controls. “Ah ah ah, it’s a bit late for that.” That barrier was shivering and sparking uncontrollably under the onslaught, and he even had to tweak Blue’s flight path down a bit to dodge a rogue laser. “We’re not running, dear.”

{It doesn’t wanna fight for the Empire. It just wants to be left alone--}

“Blue. Blue...dearest Blue.” The panic and reluctance of the Weapon crystallized around his thoughts and he knew very well he had to convince his own machine to do what he wanted, and he didn’t have very long. Either Blue would run or the Diamond Weapon would burst out of that energy rapidly failing to contain it. “If it really does have one of those boys’ minds in it, he’s likely gone completely mad by now. And there’s no getting him out of there. There’s no getting someone like that back to normal.”

His voice dropped lower until it was almost a growl. “I would know. It’s what they did to Angerona.”

A hint of sadness plinked through the heavy weight of Blue’s hesitation.

“I know you must think it’s cruel to destroy it,” Runya continued, his eyes narrowing and his mind prodding more firmly into Blue’s, “but consider: it would never truly ‘leave everyone alone’, and it would even be a mercy to simply slay him.” Not something he entirely believed, but enough so that it wouldn’t immediately get him caught. (All he wanted to see was those idiots dead, at this point. All that mattered was that it got them out of his way, and taught Baelsar a lesson into the bargain.) “He isn’t like you. His mind was ripped out of its socket and crammed into a death machine, and I very much doubt he’s going to suddenly stop being a death machine just because he blew up the VIIth Legion’s base. You have logic. You have rationality, and you can be spoken with.”

The Diamond Weapon’s chest cannon freed itself, and an ominous glow built in its depths.

“He wouldn’t be fighting his own daddy if he was something that could be saved.”

Blue dropped a bit more, level with the Diamond Weapon, as it hurled invectives at him and snarled that it would keep Allie safe like a mindless drone--even as Baelsar’s voice continued to crackle over the communications link, begging him to stop.

“They failed to shoot him down, and they failed to catch him. So we can and should just kill him.”

The blast carved a notch through the barrier field and the Diamond Weapon shed its armor in a burst of aether, loosing a strange creature of all metal and lanky legs and spikes and a gaping maw that screamed defiance at Runya and Blue, using a pool of aether like a springboard.

“So, Blue. Kill him.”

The Diamond Weapon collided with them in a rending screech of metal, and the weight of an entire extra machine drove Blue back down into the roiling stormclouds below, down towards the fields of Werlyt...out of sight.

Sorin panted as he ran, crossing rain-sodden farmland and still wielding his sword.

They had to be around here somewhere.

“Runya!”

He really doubted that the Miqo’te in question could actually hear him, but he tried anyway, without thinking twice about it. He tried in vain to dash the rain from his eyes, but it worked for only moments, and he was left squinting through the downpour to no avail.

“Runya...” He spoke more softly that time, taking more careful steps, lest he dash right past a sign of where Runya and Blue and the Diamond Weapon had gone. He gnawed at his lip a moment, and for just a moment worried not just about Runya, but about Baelsar--

(The Imperial had yelled at him to just go when the VIIth’s Legatus came charging in, and yes the man was responsible for many an atrocity but he wouldn’t wish death on someone who could at least be open to learning from their mistakes--he was friends with Runya for Twelve’s sake, he was no stranger to the concept!)

--but he was still alone and his furred ears swiveled but were overwhelmed with nothing but the raging rainfall...though...

Wait.

He frowned and his brow furrowed, and his right ear swiveled just moments before his head turned to follow it. Those were not natural noises. Heavy thuds, like--

A shadow loomed up out of the rain, limping slowly.

Sorin bristled and brought his sword to bear, though his muscles ached on him after so much running.

The footsteps thumped into wet earth, accompanied by the hiss of hydraulics and the chattering of loose metal.

For a moment, it looked as if the dark silhouette had the Diamond Weapon’s head and his breath hitched, though he quickly shifted to a stronger stance as it advanced.

And then Blue dropped the severed chunk of the Weapon’s corpse just yalms from his feet, his eyes lighting the rain-soaked gloom in red.

Runya-friend had been very pleased that he had killed the other Weapon. And when Runya-friend’s thoughts had turned towards crushing people, to attacking the little dragon-lady that had fallen out of the bad-weapon’s cockpit, he had knocked Runya out--he knew quite well now how to activate the failsafe that was installed into the Miqo’te, and though he hesitated to use it, he would do it if he had to and he very much had to.

He hadn’t wanted to kill it. He was convinced he had to, but he didn’t want to, and even if he had made it very dead and pulled its head off so it couldn’t hurt people anymore, he didn’t like it, and even the relief in Sorin-friend’s expression and in the thoughts radiating off of him didn’t do much to un-sour Blue’s mood.

(That he was in a significant amount of pain, even with the crystallized parts keeping him from bleeding out, didn’t help.)

(But more importantly, he didn’t want to do that.)

“You defeated him?”

He could dimly hear Sorin-friend through the vortex of his own thoughts, and he just shrugged, though it left part of the armor on his left forearm sparking and sending terrible warning signals to his head.

{bad-weapon is gone.} The tone of his ‘voice’ put a frown on Sorin-friend’s face but he was too tired to care much. Too sad. {bad-weapon-pilot is back there. Runya-friend wanted to kill her.}

And Sorin-friend looked so alarmed that he was quick to carry on. {But didn’t want to. Made Runya-friend stop and go to sleep.}

“I...good job, then.” Sorin-friend closed his eyes. “I’m sorry he did that to you, he really needs to learn to not be like that--”

“Allie?!”

That voice. Blue knew that voice, even if he had only heard it from behind a big horned mask before.

Baelsar came to a screeching halt at the sight of the Diamond Weapon’s severed head, jaws gaping wide in its demise, no signs of life (mechanical or otherwise) in its eyes; his gaze snapped quickly to Blue, still standing some distance away.

Blue was tired and Blue was hurt and Blue was very not happy at all to see him here again. The same man that had given Legatus Merceus the space and the people and the money to hurt him and make him like this when even the empire of thousands of years ago hadn’t done anything half as bad to him as that.

He charged with a snarl of anger, and though Sorin-friend stood in his way, he didn’t have to--Blue wasn’t going to stomp Baelsar even if he might have before meeting the two Miqo’te, and he stomped to a halt just short of them. Given the sheer height Blue had, he had to bend and that hurt a particularly ugly injury in his right leg and sent more warnings screeching into his head, but the dam had broken and the flood was in full force and that anger was not going to be stopped by hurt. Enhanced by it, maybe.

And still, Baelsar had the boldness to stay where he was, and even managed to hiss out a question in the face of an angry IXth Legion Weapon.

“Where is Allie?!”

{Alive. Sleeping.} Blue’s answer remained blunt and disinterested, in the face of the sudden aggravation he felt. {You should go away.}

“Why--”

But the question provoked another growl. {You know why you should GO AWAY.} The last two words, rattling into Baelsar’s mind at greater volume, made the man flinch but he still didn’t move.

“...You were the IXth Legion’s, weren’t you?”

Did he not remember, did he not did he not did he not--

Blue suddenly roared then, and the noise and air blew both Baelsar and Sorin-friend flat; the latter clamped his hands over his now-flat ears, but Blue was beyond reason and his thoughts tidal-wave-crashed over everything in range.

{YOU. HURT. ME.} The roar died away like a receding rocket, but the (undamaged) plates at his neck bristled and his tail lashed, even though that created some sparks and painful jolts. {You hurt Sorin-friend! You hurt Runya-friend!}

“I had nothing to do with--”

{You let the bad men have rooms and money and more men!}

Baelsar went very quiet. Blue went on, storming past any of Baelsar’s more subtle thoughts (and Sorin-friend trying to get him to stop).

{Runya-friend and Sorin friend told me about your bad men. And the little ones you made bad men so you could have more people to hurt people with.} He did overhear Sorin-friend thinking about the leader-little-one (Fordola?) that he had fought, and angrily prodded it into Baelsar’s head too. {And the way your bad men hurt people. Made them monsters. Made them hurt forever. You let your bad men do that.}

Baelsar swallowed hard as Blue leaned in so close that his breath steamed out in clouds around him.

{Your fault. YOUR. FAULT.} Blue hissed out loud. {You didn’t care. You don’t. Not enough. You only care about being hurt, not not hurting anyone else.}

And though Baelsar closed his eyes, as if expecting death, Blue just straightened back up and turned, tail swishing through the air some yalms over Baelsar’s head. {No. I won’t.} He flared his wings tentatively, and then a bit more strongly. {Runya-friend and I are going home.}

Before any of them could protest, Blue stumbled into a shambling run, and his thrusters flared to life and propelled him into the air, wings straining but holding to keep him up in the sky. And the sheeting curtains of rain closed up behind him.

#; writing #5.5 spoilers #Sorin at the end going REALLY YOU COULDN'T TAKE /ME/ WITH YOU #anyway yeah hi anyone following my main will know #i've been ranting about some things today #and that spite has fueled me to finally finish this damn thing omg

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actress4him · 4 years

Text

Whumptober 2020 - Day 7

This trope is one of my favs. Also we get Lance whump this time (in addition to Keith, of course), and a hopeful ending! Check the warnings and enjoy!

Read on AO3

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Day 7 - Carrying/Support

Fandom: Voltron: Legendary Defender

Warnings: broken bones, mild gore, death mention, mild blood, fever, scorpion mention, venomous creatures, vomit, seizures

The creature was gone. Dead. Keith had made doubly sure of that. It was dead, which was good, but that didn’t change the state that it had left them in.

“Lance?” he called out uncertainly. The Blue Paladin had taken a bad hit from one of the monster’s wildly swinging arms during the fight, flying across the tiny clearing and slamming into the trunk of a tree. He hadn’t moved since.

He’s dead, a cynical voice in Keith’s head sneered. He’s dead and it’s your fault. You got your own teammate killed.

He shook the unwanted thoughts away and took a step closer, hissing as the wound in his side pulled. Lance wasn’t dead. He wouldn’t allow himself to even consider such a thing until he saw for himself. It was bad enough that Keith hadn’t been able to protect him from getting hurt, so he couldn’t possibly be dead.

Slowly he made his way over, one hand wrapped around his middle and applying pressure to the bleeding hole left by the creature’s sharp tail. The first thing he noticed about Lance was the blood on the side of his head. The second was the unnatural twist of his left leg.

“Quiznak,” he whispered, then louder, “Lance. Lance, can you hear me?” Reaching out with his free hand, he hesitantly placed two fingers against his pulse point.

There. A steady heartbeat. He released his breath in a whoosh, wincing at the pain that shot through his abdomen. Lance wasn’t dead. Just unconscious, which frankly, wasn’t a whole lot better in their situation.

They were in the middle of the jungle, just the two of them, with their Lions, their team, the Castle, any hope of help miles and miles away. Something about the density or the material of the trees was blocking their comms signal. And clearly, the jungle was not a safe place to be. Staying here left them as sitting ducks, a nice, injured and helpless snack for the next alien creature that came along. So staying was not really a choice at all, but leaving would be a whole lot easier if Lance was awake.

“Lance. Hey.” He used the hand that had checked for a pulse to lightly pat his cheek. “Time to wake up. We gotta go.”

Nothing. He patted harder, falling just short of a slap, and dropped his hand to shake Lance’s shoulder. “Hey. come on. Let’s go.” Still nothing. “You. Cargo Pilot.” Not even the nickname he knew Lance couldn’t stand brought a reaction.

Keith swallowed hard. His head injury must be really bad if he couldn’t be roused at all. What if he had internal bleeding? What if there was brain damage? What if he never woke up?

Stop it. Stop worrying and just deal with the situation. Clearly he was going to have to carry him, no matter how much his side protested that idea. First things first, he needed to try to stabilize both their injuries. Thank goodness for his knife. A couple of branches and both his sleeves later, Lance’s head was wrapped and his leg in a splint of sorts - not perfectly set, but held still so that it wouldn’t bounce too much while walking - and Keith’s waist was bandaged.

Now came the hard part, and he was already exhausted. Maybe it was blood loss, but the wound seemed to be sapping the energy straight out of him. Didn’t matter, though. He had to get Lance out of there. Had to get them both back to safety, back to the team. As gently as possible, he pulled Lance up by his arms to a sitting position, then turned and draped the arms over his shoulders, trying to make sure his head was resting against one of them in a comfortable position. When he was satisfied, he reached back and hooked his hands underneath his thighs.

The sound that came out of him when he struggled up to his feet was somewhere between a whine and a groan, and he was glad that Lance wasn’t awake to hear it. Straining like that hurt. He took a moment to breathe, to let the pain ease and get used to the weight on his back. It was a good thing that Lance was skinny, and not quite as muscular as Keith. Being taller was bad enough. His legs were so quiznaking long, he could barely keep them from dragging the ground.

Alright. One step at a time. Slowly, he began to trudge forward. His side twinged with every step, but after a minute or two he found a bit of a rhythm, was able to ignore the pain and the way his chest was heaving for breaths already, at least for a while. He tried his best to keep his mind on the task and his surroundings, not on how creepily, unnaturally still Lance was, or how any tree could be hiding a new threat, or how at this rate it was going to take him twice the couple of vargas the trip out had taken.

Just one foot in front of the other.

Ignore the pain, it’s not getting worse, that’s just your imagination.

Don’t trip on that root.

It’s definitely not spreading, those are just muscles you aren’t used to using.

Gotta get over the log. Don’t drop Lance.

You’re just dizzy because you haven’t had food or water in a while.

He wanted to stop far sooner than he allowed himself to. How long he had been walking, he had no idea, but was hoping it was at least a varga. He had a feeling it was less. Putting Lance down almost wasn’t worth it, thinking about how he’d have to get them both back up in a few minutes, but he knew he had to rest and at least drink a little water from his canteen. It wouldn’t do Lance any good if he keeled over from dehydration or exhaustion before he got them out of there.

A quick check of his bandages told him that the bleeding had at least slowed down, if not stopped, which was good. What wasn’t good was the cold that had creeped in from out of nowhere and seized his flesh. The jungle was warm and humid, so it certainly wasn’t atmospheric. Keith shivered, pulling his legs in closer to his body and laying his forehead on his knees. A fever? It kinda felt like it, but it was far too soon for an infection to have set in.

Shaking off the concern, he took one last sip of water and set about getting Lance onto his back. Exertion should keep him plenty warm.

Just keep walking. Just keep walking. Just keep - great, now he was singing it like that stupid blue fish on that stupid movie the team had made him watch.

Exertion was doing nothing for his body temperature. Pretty soon he was shivering, his eyelids burning in that tell-tale way that meant he most definitely had a fever. His throat felt as if it was stuffed full of cotton balls, leaving only the tiniest of holes for him to breathe and swallow through.

A moan from near his ear brought him to a stumbling halt. “Lance?”

Another moan, this one accompanied by movement. “Wha-...ow.”

Keith shut his eyes in relief, then opened them quickly when he realized he was listing to one side. “Lance.”

“Keith? What...what’s goin’ on?”

“We’re on our...way back. T-to the city.” Speaking it out loud reminded him that he should still be walking, so he gritted his teeth and stepped out again.

“What...happened? My head…”

“Yeah, you...you hit it...pretty good. Broke your...leg...too. M-monster...remember?”

Lance shifted against his back, seeming to become a bit more alert. “Oh, yeah. I do remember that.” He sucked in a breath through his teeth as one or the other of his injuries flared.

“Take...it easy. Don’t...don’t…” Keith stumbled, almost falling, losing what he wanted to say in the meantime.

“Hey, you okay? Why don’t you stop and rest a minute? It can’t be easy for a shorty like you to carry me for long.”

“Can’t. Just...stopped. Gotta...get…”

“Yeah, but you don’t sound so good. Come on, Mullet, just for a minute.”

His body and mind were at war over the idea, but his body and Lance’s pestering won out in the end. Getting down proved much easier with Lance awake and able to stand on one leg and support himself against a tree. Once he was sure that Lance was sitting comfortably, he nearly collapsed to the ground, curling in on himself again.

“Geez, you look even worse than you sounded.” Lance leaned in, brushing the hair off of Keith’s forehead with one hand. “Dude, you’re burning up! What happened to you?”

Keith shook his head. “His tail...got me. Don’t know...why...fever…”

Lance raised one eyebrow at him. “You mean the tail that looked a lot like a scorpion’s? Oh gee, Mullet, I dunno, how ever could that have given you a fever?”

The cotton from his throat had moved into his brain now, causing him to just stare at Lance with a blank gaze. Seeing this, his friend seemed to take pity on him and softened his tone.

“It was probably venomous, bud.”

Venom. Right. That would make sense. A wave of dizziness washed over him, and he pressed the heel of his hand against his forehead. “We gotta...we gotta keep goin’. Not...safe. You n-need…” Suddenly remembering the head injury, he looked up and grabbed Lance’s chin, turning his face to the side. “Gotta...get help. Could be…” The words floated away again, leaving him shaking his head in confusion.

“Hey.” Lance took his hand and lowered it. “I’m okay. I’m more worried about you right now. You’re right, we should get going, though. We need to get you back to the Castle, stat.”

Keith nodded, then struggled up to a crouch and turned his back to Lance, waiting for arms to be thrown around his neck.

“Oh, no. No way am I letting you carry me. Just help me up and we’ll walk together.”

Keith glared at him over his shoulder. “Your leg...is broken.”

“Yep, and you’re gonna be my crutch.” He gripped the tree trunk and started trying to pull himself up, leaving Keith no choice but to stand and help him before he hurt himself even worse.

With Lance’s arm across his shoulders and his hand gripping Lance’s belt on the opposite side, they were able to get started again, going even slower than before but going, regardless. Keith would never admit that he was grateful for the new position, since he still thought Lance shouldn’t be walking, but he honestly wasn’t sure how much longer he would have made it otherwise. Even as it was, his body felt like it was burning from the inside out, his vision kept going spotty, and he definitely felt like Lance was supporting him just as much as the other way around. They had to stop to rest far too often, and more than once they had to pause and let Keith throw up, or at least attempt to.

It was nearing dark by the time they finally broke out of the jungle and saw the city where the team was waiting for them in the distance. Lance gave a quiet, tired cheer. Keith celebrated by dropping to the ground, nearly dragging Lance down with him, every muscle in his body spasming involuntarily.

Vaguely, over the sound of blood rushing in his ears, he could hear Lance screaming his name before slipping into Spanish for several sentences. It felt like an eternity before the convulsions stopped. Eventually, he became aware that his head was pillowed on Lance’s good leg, and the blue paladin was looking down at him with wet eyes.

“S-sorry,” he slurred. “I don’t...I...wanted...to get you...back. But…”

“Hey, no, it’s okay,” Lance whispered. “You got me this far. I’ll get you the rest of the way. Somehow.” He tore his gaze away from Keith’s face to stare off at the lights of the city. “I’m just...not sure how, yet.”

“Your...leg’s broken.”

Lance huffed. “Yeah. I know. You keep reminding me of that.”

There was a sudden explosion of presence in Keith’s mind, and he let his eyes slip shut with a smile. “Red’s comin’.”

“Red’s...wait, what? She is?”

A roar filled the air, and Keith relaxed for the first time since morning.

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dessam · 4 years

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A little pre-Weapon XI AU thing centered around the retelling of how Devin died and the half-truths Max likes to spin.

Warnings for violence, blood mention, and backstabbing

Or: if two Plumbers were on a mission escaping a heliokinetic psychopath and one shot the other in the back would that be fucked up or what?

The universe always seemed to get the last laugh in, no matter what Devin was doing.

“Max, he’s getting closer!”

Whether it was trying to make breakfast only to realize he didn’t have any eggs, or attempting to stop a galactic warlord from consuming stars on the weekend, he was always somehow the butt of a sick joke.

This joke’s name was Ragnarok, and Devin wanted nothing more than to wash his hands of the monster. He’d also like to wash his hands of the stupid, stupid man in the co-pilot’s seat next to him.

“Ship won’t go any faster, Devin!” Max hollers back.

Rolling his eyes, Devin mutters under his breath: “Have you tried flapping your arms?”

His current partner - a certain Magister Maxwell Tennyson - seems to find the whole bit some sort of joke, and was laughing through their last narrow escape from Ragnarok. Tennyson isn’t at all perturbed by the villain rapidly gaining on them, and a little voice in the back of Devin’s mind pipes up to remind him: you can’t trust a single one of them, not even your partner.

Which, obviously, was a lesson he had known long before he became a Red Spot, but was now a mantra he spoke every single time an incident like this happened.

Of all the bloody people to be partnered with, Maxwell Tennyson was a name at the bottom of a long, long list of Plumbers that--

“You with me?”

A voice cuts through Devin’s thoughts, and his partner is looking at him from the corner of his eye, grinning.

“What?” He says shortly, on edge.

“I said: Ragnarok really wants what we took, huh?”

Devin bites his tongue, resists the urge to snarl back that it’s his fault they’re in this bloody mess, that they had the element of stealth right until Max had to blunder their escape and alert every being with working cochlear nerves they were onboard Ragnarok’s ship.

“We couldn’t let him slaughter six billion people just to get his hands on the Sun’s energy,” he says instead, shooting Max a mocking grin. “Not my fault he didn’t like you stealing the key that activated his energy vortex. You’re welcome, by the way, for me bailing you out of there.”

Max’s expression falls immediately, eyes snapping forward and hands tensing on the ship’s controls, all comradery gone. Devin’s partner was never very good at saying thank you.

CRACK

Lurching in his seat with a grunt, the bulkhead rattles around Devin as the nav system sputters and whines before fading, and he watches with dread as glowing instruments suddenly wink out one by one, the ship going dark.

Next to him, frantically flicking switches and checking the backup system as it flashes a warning red, Max looks at Devin with wide eyes.

“Blast took out our engine couplings, our shields...we’re dead in space.”

Oh so slowly, a shadow overtakes them, plunging their vessel into darkness.

Swallowing hard, Devin tests the controls, tries to think of their fastest way out of here, all while Max just stares dumbfounded up at the massive ship overtaking them.

There’s a hissing vhmm from the rear door, and Devin glances back as the massive form of Ragnarok materializes in a blue haze onto their ship.

Red eyes boring into his own, the warlord sneers at the two Plumbers, back straightened and fists clenched at his sides.

“Where did you hide my key?” He speaks in a low snarl, lip curling back to reveal ugly yellowed teeth.

Devin shares a short look with Max, sees the gears turning in his partner’s brain.

Fuck this, he decides.

Standing and drawing both of his blasters, Devin unloads shot after shot at the ship’s newest arrival, and the human next to him takes just a moment longer before standing and unloading the clip of his weapon at Ragnarok just the same.

Ragnarok seems unperturbed, smoke clearing as the plasmabolts fizzle out, not a scratch on him. Devin growls, lunging behind cover with Max just as a vibrant yellow blast from Ragnarok takes out their ship’s main console with a resounding BOOM!

The blue halogen lights of the backup systems flicker before maintaining, secondary life support still online and running smoothly.

It does little to calm Devin’s nerves as he presses his back to the offhand weapon’s console, and glances to Max at his side.

His partner looks pale, staring straight ahead with his jaw clenched and right hand clutching his blaster. Devin watches him reload the clip in one movement without looking, recognizing the confirmed remaining charge of the weapon: seventy-three percent, glowing in luminous green.

“I’m going to go for the Null Void projector,” he grips Max’s arm for a moment, forcing the human to look at him. “Cover me, understand?”

“Devin, wait--”

But he’s already up, sprinting towards the main weapon rack on the far wall, ducking under another blast from Ragnarok that singes the hair on the back of his neck. Behind him, he can hear Max swear something in terran before more plasmabolts are fired off, and Ragnarok roars in frustration.

Devin slams his hand on the access panel, snatches the mobile Null Void projector from its rack just as another blast nearly takes him out, the explosion throwing him back against the port window and sending the Null Void projector clattering into the corner.

“Devin!” Max hollars, lunging out from behind cover and sending another round of bolts at Ragnarok.

The heliokinetic monster is grinning now, yellow energy glowing in his palms as he slowly stalks towards Max, and Devin has a split second to think before he focuses on an exposed electrical panel inches away.

Bingo.

Yanking a glove off with his teeth, he grabs one of the loose wires as he stands and lets the raw energy pulse through his body, instantly feeling woozy.

He only needs a short charge - thirty-five hundred watts should be enough - and the electricity extends from the fingertips of his left hand to the fingertips to his right hand, gathering at his wrist. Devin narrows his eyes, focuses, and fires.

A sharp blast of energy sparks off, lancing out to strike Ragnarok square in the back.

He screams, sinks to one knee, and Devin grins in triumph, dropping the wire.

The heavy smell of ozone hangs in the cockpit, and he tries to shake off the last jitters of electricity sparking off his hands before snatching the Null Void projector off the floor, levelling it at Ragnarok’s torso.

“Any last words?” He asks, unable to help the smug smile that crosses his face.

“You will know true suffering, Osmosian,” Ragnarok spits, pupils dots in a sea of dark red and yellow as he stares unblinking back at Devin. “This isn’t over, none of it. As long as you’re alive--”

Devin scoffs, flicks the trigger, and Ragnarok’s words turn to an enraged scream as he’s sucked backwards through the warped portal of the Null Void.

“Blah blah blah, you'll rue the day, et cetera. I’ve heard it all before.” Devin grins, sheathing the Null Void projector and inspecting the dark smear where Ragnarok once stood.

He can hear his partner stand, and turns to double-check their nav system.

“Computers will need a reboot, but we should still be able to get a signal out for pickup. Could be worse, I suppose.” He sighs, drags a hand down his face, feels the start of a migraine coming on. “Not a bad shot, eh Max--?”

POW!

Blindingly white-hot pain overtakes him as he hears the sound of a blaster go off. Staggering, falling to one knee, hysteria instantly grips Devin’s mind.

I’ve been shot. Max shot me.

His thoughts are confirmed as he collapses onto his side, glancing up blearily at the shape of his partner, silhouetted by the ship’s overhead lights.

“I’m sorry, Devin, I’m so sorry. I had my orders.” Max rasps out, crouching beside him, taking one of his hands in his own.

Devin almost wants to laugh, or scream. To tell Max he’s a brainwashed idiot, that things didn’t have to be like this, that he could’ve found another way. Really, he doesn’t even know why he’s surprised at this point.

“Orders, eh?” He chokes out, tasting copper. “So Ragnarok was a distraction, to get me to slip up?”

Max shakes his head, squeezes Devin’s hand.

“No. Ragnarok was...he was supposed to finish you off back on his ship, quick and clean. But if you want something done right…Devin, I’m so, so sorry.”

“I know,” Devin gasps, agony shooting through his body with each syllable. “Max just, please, promise me one thing.”

His partner squeezes his hand a little tighter, nodding.

“Tell my wife and son I love them.”

Any compassion drains from Max’s face, taken over by horror and dawning realization.

“Your what.”

Devin grins, finally knowing he got the last laugh in. Fuck you, universe.

#max tennyson is a liar and a backstabbing loser #ain't that just the way #there's more to come #ben 10 #Weapon XI AU #writing #fanfiction #my writing #devin levin #max tennyson #maxwell tennyson #blood mention #violence #murder

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