#please I just horrible practical effects body horror I do NOT want shrinking spaces

[loveafterthefact]

Love After the Fact Chapter 40: A Completely Unrelated Chill

Keith wakes to a third party.

TRIGGER WARNING:

-Violence

-Blood

-Magical Violence/Torment

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Keith stirs, gelid air dragging over his cheek. He sighs, settles back into his pillow. His head hurts, his throat burns, and his mind is too slow for thought. The cold can-

Wait. A completely unrelated chill rakes down his dorsal fur like icy claws. Lance closed the doors. He’s sure he remembers Lance closing the garden doors.

It’s probably nothing, but that line of fur down his back is still stiff. His ears catch the slightest rustle, a sound so unlike Lance’s.

Instincts nagging at the edge of his consciousness, Keith drags his eyes open.

In the future, Keith will blame the alcohol. It pacified him, sedated him, weighed down his brain. He’ll say he could have moved faster, that it wouldn’t have been quite so close if only he’d behaved himself.

But right now, a six-limbed, cowled intruder leans over Lance’s sleeping figure, hovering on legs, one pair of arms while a second pair hangs above his spouse's chest, prepares to plunge a wicked knife into the young prince’s chest. They’re dressed only in dark clothes, silent, movements unimpeded, but body vulnerable.

The cold. The garden doors. Someone came in through the garden- This person is here to kill his chosen mate.

It only occurs to Keith after he’s coiled himself tight, launched himself at the assassin with a feline yowl, that he is unarmed and the intruder is decidedly not. What the intruder does not have are claws, and Keith willfully, vindictively digs them into their soft flesh. He feels a warm wetness welling wherever he claws at his foe.

Lance jolts awake at Keith’s alarm, eyes wide as his spouse hits the floor on his side of the bed. The kit’s grappling with an assailant, rolling across the floor.

Instinctively, Lance floods the castle with his quintessence. The desperate cry for help rings in every occupant’s mind until it finds its target: his father, the most effective warrior Lance has ever known. The man he knows would do anything to keep him safe.

The moment he registers a flash of alarm, a familiar presence in his mind, Lance comes back to himself. Throwing himself from the bed, he runs for a panel in the wall, pulls out his bow just in time for Keith to reach his knife on the end table by their sofa.

He strings his bow in ticks, knocks an arrow in another, draws it back to his cheek, but Keith’s already won. The Galra kit shoves the would-be assassin away only to throw his knife, lodging it high in the intruder’s chest.

Blood gurgles from their mouth, dribbling blue down their chin. More of the same blossoms dark on dark fabric. The assassin falls to the floor. They lay there, choking, gasping. The spark in their eyes leaks from their wounds. Reaching out, Lance feels their life draining away. He wouldn’t try to save them even if he thought he could do it.

Lance carefully relaxes his bowstring, rushes forward. “Are you alright?!”

“I- I think so,” Keith pants. “Th- They were-”

“Nevermind! Allura!” Tugging urgently at Keith’s arm, the Altean drags him to his feet.

Keith ignores a sudden ache in his side, darts forward to retrieve his knife, runs with his spouse out of the room and down the hall before their enemy is even dead.

Keith collides with his littermate, a disheveled Adam pulling up alongside. Both are in nightclothes. Shiro’s eyes are wide, pupils fully dilated. His ears flit this way and that in search of an enemy. “What happened?! I- I felt a scream-”

“Your Majesty, what do you need?” Adam asks, jamming his glasses on his face. His eyes are blazing as he takes in the princes.

“I need you both to go to Romelle. Keep her safe, bring her to the clinic. We'll all meet up there.”

Adam bows, sprints down a hall, Shiro hot on his heels. Lance takes Keith in the opposite direction. As they run, he keeps his arrow still knocked. He’s never killed a person before, but for his sister, brother-in-law, and their unborn child, he’ll do it in a tick. Less than that. It takes less than a tick to draw his bow, less than half a tick to fire an arrow.

---

Shiro stares, wide-eyed and shocked at the image before him. Romelle, blonde hair loose, wild as it frames even wilder eyes. Her hands shine with white light as she forces a six-limbed intruder to their knees with what seems to be her mind.

The intruder starts to scream, eyes bald and unseeing. They claw at their skin, trying to rip themselves apart. The veins pulsing beneath their skin begins to glow brighter and brighter. Back arching, their body spasms as their neurons shriek.

Romelle is screaming, her soft, unused voice breaking. Shiro takes a step back toward the hallway. His eyes are wide with horror.

“Oh, gods.” It’s horrible. Disturbing, watching someone try to claw their way out of their own body. Shiro’s not sure what to do. He’s terrified. Never in his fifteen decaphoebs of service, of war has he seen such a thing. Not from an Altean, not from anyone else.

He shrinks back, hissing, hair standing up straight all down his back. It’s Adam that steps forward as the intruder ceases their screams. The coarse, olive-toned fur covering their body begins to burn away under their clothes.

“Romelle.” The Altean’s gaze is steady even as unsteady fingers reach out, brush the very tips of his fingers against her pale blue scales. “Romelle. Come with me. Let’s- Let’s find a new sky.”

“A new sky,” the girl whispers, breaths small and trembling. “Yes, let’s find a new sky for all of us.”

“That’s right.” Adam steps just behind her, cradles her left hand in his left, puts his right on her waist to steady her. “Come on. Let’s go find the others.”

As he walks by, Shiro can’t help but wonder at the strange glint in Adam’s eyes. He can’t begin to decipher all the thoughts hidden there.

Lance reaches Allura’s and Lotor’s room first, practically throwing himself through the doors. Keith is still rounding the corner. Allura has an assassin on the ropes, her whip wrapped around their neck. She reels them in, face vicious as she pulls a dagger from her clothes. The desperate intruder scrabbles fruitlessly at the floor even as they choke on the white cable around their throat.

Lotor is having a more difficult time. His assailant is clinging to the walls, firing at him from a crossbow. Lance draws his bow, lets his arrow fly. The arrow hits its mark, severing their spinal cord, either killing them or at least incapacitating them. Either way, Lotor slashes his sword through them, making the difference a moot one.

“Lancel!” Lance knocks, draws another arrow, fletching rubbing at his scales as his father enters the room. He lowers his weapon as Alfor runs over, pulls him into a quick, tight embrace. The king pushes him back, inspects him at arms’ length. "Are you alright?! Are you hurt?! What happened?!"

“Father, I’m fine.”

Alfor stares at the weapon in his hands, the arrow still knocked. He shakes his head, surveys the room. His hands are bruising into Lance’s shoulders. “Is everyone alright?”

“Everyone’s-” A clatter cuts off Lance’s words.

Keith leans against Allura’s old vanity, chest heaving, blood dripping heavy and red from his side. His arms are shaking, legs trembling as they struggle to bear his weight.

“Keith!” Lance tosses his bow aside, running to his spouse as red puddles on the floor. “Easy, beloved. Can you walk?”

Keith takes a deep breath, tries to steady himself. He’s in a lot of pain, fire pulsing through his neurons with every beat of his hearts. Lance peels off his own shirt, presses it into Keith’s side. He takes a scarf from the vanity and ties it tight to apply some pressure. “I- I think I can walk. For a little while.”

“Okay. We’re all going to meet up at the clinic anyway. I assumed someone would need care. Come on.” Lance slings Keith’s arm over his shoulder, puts the other arm around his waist. The kit hisses when his hand finds the slicked-up wound. “Alright, beloved. We’ll be there before you know it. I can carry you if you want, so just tell me.”

“Okay.”

By the time they reach the darkly lit clinic, Keith’s starting to feel cold, is definitely dizzy, and Lance is supporting most of his weight. Coran is already there, crying out in alarm as Lance lifts his spouse onto a pullout bed, pressing down on the wound with both hands.

“Dad, can you calibrate a pod please? Quickly?”

“I’m already on it, son.”

The others stay quiet, giving them space. Keith curls his fingers around Lance’s wrist. “What- What’s a pod?”

“A healing chamber. You go inside and it closes around you. Then you’ll go to sleep-”

“Lance, it’s ready! Keith, kindly strip off your clothes. We might as well give you a checkup while you’re in there.”

“-and you’ll wake up all healed. It’ll only take a few vargas.” Lance carefully scoops Keith up, not trusting him to walk any further.

“But-” Keith breaks himself off with a chirp, eyeing the pod with wide eyes, fur stiffening under his clothes. “Lance, please. Don’t put me in there.”

Lance takes a deep breath, sets the fearful kit down in the chamber, carefully removes his clothes, eyes averted. A lavender tail wraps around his ankle, all the fur raised. He looks up at his spouse, the height of the chamber reversing the height difference between them.

He brushes Keith’s bangs out of his eyes, rises up to kiss his forehead. “You need to, so you can heal. But I promise I won’t leave this room until you’re okay. I’ll have some fresh clothes and a blanket ready and waiting for you when you wake up.”

Keith gulps, nods, presses their foreheads together. He knows the other Galra in the room will understand what it means, doesn’t care. He trusts Lance not to leave him in this tube forever in the same way Lance trusts him to have his back in a fight. Wholly and completely.

Settling back in the chamber, Keith watches anxiously as the glass rises from the floor, encasing him. He spots Romelle’s lips moving: The glass. Water. The glass. Water.

Icy mist curls up from the base, slithers into his lungs with every breath. Even as he begins to panic, his already fogging mind feels heavy in his skull, eyelids too weighed down for him to open.

The last thing he sees before cold and sleep take over and he sinks into his dreams is Lance’s reassuring smile.

See you soon, beloved.

#LoveAftertheFact #LAtF #klance #galtean au #altean lance #galra keith #adashi #altean adam #galra shiro #voltron legendary defender #vld