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Lance caughed the first petal after Keith left for the Blade. When it was all said and done, and everyone was back doing their own thing, as if an important piece of Voltron hadn't just left, Lance went back to his room, his lungs burning and his heart pounding. it hurt.
He shouldn't feel this way, yet he knew he would miss Keith. Although, probably, the feeling wasn't mutual.
Why would Keith miss him? He'd been making things difficult for him for a long time, and while he'd tried to be a half-decent right-hand man, he hadn't done much of a job.
Furthermore, a bad part of him feared that Keith had left because of him, thus depriving the paladins of a truly useful member, making them settle for Lance, of all people.
"Now he will find out more about himself. He doesn't need to take on my problems too. Maybe it's better that he left..."
His thoughts were interrupted by a violent cough, so loud it made him double over in pain.
When he recovered, drops of blood had fallen to the ground, and in his hand he had a red petal.
Months in space had taught Lance one crucial thing: if needed, Coran would definitely listen.
Allura was fantastic, yes, but Lance had the unpleasant feeling that she preferred to be with him as little as possible, and now that Lotor was here, she certainly wasn't going to give her time to him.
Coran, however, Coran was always willing to listen. Lance liked to think that the old Altean had taken a liking to him, but that would be lying to himself: the truth was that Coran was like that, he helped them all, like a strange space uncle who felt guilty seeing children fight a ten thousand year old war.
"Hey, Coran..."
"Lance, my boy! Here, take this," he told him, shoving some kind of crystal into his arms. "I need to clean some things. Your help will be essential."
"Uhmm yes, of course...but first..."
"The prince said he expected something different from the castle!" the councilor complained, and at least it was nice to see that someone else hadn't immediately joined the Lotor fan club. "I will show him the magnificence of the past! This castle was built by my great-great..."
It sounded like an interesting story, but Lance hadn't exactly come here to hear the whole story of Coran's family. So he had to interrupt, "Coran, if one of us suddenly started coughing up petals, what would you say?"
The man froze, as if someone had thrown a bucket of freezing water on him. He was deathly pale as he said, "Who? Please tell me!"
"Coran..."
"Please, not the princess! Oh, if that damned man seduced her and then broke her heart..."
"It's not Allura."
"So Shiro? Of course, it would explain his current behavior."
Lance gulped, "No, It's not him either. Actually...it happened to me..."
Coran's eyes filled with tears, and he did something unexpected: he hugged Lance, but because of the crystal Lance couldn't hug him back.
"My poor boy...my dear, poor boy...who did this to you?"
"This what?"
Coran broke the embrace, his eyes red and bright with unshed tears, "Whose fault did you contract hanahaki, boy?"
Hanahaki disease, also called broken heart disease, was well known in Altea: if a person fell hopelessly in love, his body slowly began to suffocate with flowers, until, in the most serious phase of heartbreak, the heart itself it would have stopped.
There were two ways to get rid of it: that the love was reciprocated, or to undergo a delicate operation to remove all the seeds from the lungs, but also causing the erasure of all the memories linked to whoever had caused the illness.
Coran said it was a small mercy; why continue to remember if the other person had not shown himself capable of reciprocating? If he then violently rejected the patient's feelings, the illness would end up worsening.
Forgetting was better, and the chances of that person contracting the same disease a second time were zero.
"Unfortunately, here at the Castle we no longer have what is needed for the operation," the Altean said with a sincerely sorry expression. "I will do some research to find a planet advanced enough with the technology needed to perform the surgery and save you from the flowers."
“You said there was also another way to heal.”
"Yes, if the person reciprocates your feelings, but..."
"You think it's not my case," Lance said, and tried not to feel offended, because after all he knew who he was. Really, who in their right mind would want to deal with his nonsense?
"It's not because there's anything wrong with you," Coran was quick to reassure him. "But if you contract hanahaki, it's because the feeling is either not reciprocated or worse, the love is rejected in such a way that the heart can't stand it. I don't want you to suffer for someone who doesn't deserve you."
It was kind of sweet that Coran would say something like that, when it was more likely the opposite.
Lance took a shaky breath, "I want to do this."
"Do what?"
"I want to tell her. If she doesn't reciprocate, I'll have the surgery and forget. But I want her to know...I don't want to have any regrets."
Coran looked at him with pity, but didn't try to stop him. He must have already had a good idea who Lance wanted to talk to.
"You deserve someone to treasure your heart, my dear boy. It's a fragile thing, it breaks easily."
Lance nodded. He already knew it.
Lance's plan was simple: talk to the princess alone, confess his feelings to her, then deal with the consequences.
Despite what Pidge believed, he wasn't so full of himself that he believed a princess could give him the time of day.
He was a realist, and with Lotor now joining them, the chances of Allura suddenly discovering that she felt an eternal, immortal love for him were zero.
So yes, the confession was more to put one's heart at peace than anything else.
There was only one flaw in his otherwise perfect plan: it wasn't Allura the cause of his disease.
"Coran," the paladin said, while it was just him and the Altean in the engine control room. The confession to Allura had required courage, a lot of it, and privacy, which he had only been able to have by knocking on the door of the princess's room at night. Allura's confusion might have been almost comical, except that she already knew, because of the mice.
And wasn't it pathetic, being outed by space rats?
"From your tone, I guess it didn't go well," the other man said, looking at him with pity. He looked away, because he couldn't tolerate pity at that moment.
Yes, it was pathetic, he knew it. So pathetic that an alien princess had preferred not to say anything about his feelings so as not to hurt him with her refusal, so pathetic that Allura had said she was sorry, but Lance, you are a precious paladin companion to me, but I cannot reciprocate.
It was pathetic and the worst part was that he wasn't even in the friendzone. He wasn't even considered a friend, just a fellow paladin.
“I already knew,” he said, his lungs burning, the pain barely managed. "I knew I wasn't up to her..."
"Oh, dear boy..."
"But the point is another," Lance cut short, before having to hear the classic platitudes that were said when you were mercilessly rejected by those you liked. "I wasn't feeling bad. The point of this illness is to make you suffer for unrequited love, right? But when she said she didn't feel the same...I felt almost relieved, as if I had a weight off my shoulders."
"Oh..."
"I want to have that operation, but..."
"But you're starting to think that if the rejection didn't produce any reaction, maybe she wasn't the person who cauded the disease," Coran finished the sentence for him, as perceptive as ever.
Lance nodded, "Am I right?"
The other sighed, "Unfortunately, yes. After the rejection, you should have had a very strong reaction, but if nothing happened...then she wasn't the person you should have talked to."
"Oh," was all Lance could say.
He didn't know what to feel. He was in the midst of confused and conflicted feelings.
Was he really so superficial that he didn't realize who he fell in love with? Even if he had forgotten who guaranteed him that it wouldn't happen again?
Obviously only the idiot of the team fell so in love without knowing who.
Truly, Lance had hit a new low.
He clenched his fists, “Please look for a planet where the technology is available to rid me of the flowers in my lungs.”
“Of course, my dear boy!”
“Ah, and Coran…I know I've already asked you a lot but…but could you not tell anyone?”
Coran's eyes widened, and he couldn't understand why he would keep such important information a secret.
But Lance, already considered the clown of the group, who was barely a champion and not even that good, didn't want his teammates to think of him as even more of a weakness.
He could handle the heartbreak on his own. After all, it wasn't the first time he'd done it.
“Lance, I…”
“Promise me, Coran. I beg you."
And there must have been something in his look that finally convinced the alien to promise, bringing some peace to the boy's heart.
Life went on, between missions in which Lance was always lacking, Shiro who was always very critical of him, the teasing of Hunk and Pidge, and Lotor who insinuated himself into the group like a cuckoo.
He seemed to be the only one who saw something wrong with Lotor's new relationship with Voltron, especially with Shiro, but when he tried to tell anyone about it, Pidge would brush him off, “You're just jealous. Grow up, Lance.”
(If he didn't have hanahaki, if he wasn't so sure that Allura wasn't the cause of his heartbreak, maybe Lance would have believed her too. But he wasn't, and he couldn't say it without revealing his condition, his weakness. So he was silent, enduring the teasing, even though he knew, even though he was the only one whose opinions were always mocked even though he was right)
He still didn't know who he had fallen in love with, and maybe it was for the best: if he coughed up petals that he then immediately destroyed without knowing who they were for, how much worse would it be knowing?
At the moment, the disease was manageable, Coran was putting all his energy into finding a planet where they could help Lance, but with the Garla having exploited planets for millennia, finding someone who hadn't fallen under their yoke was terribly difficult.
They had to be patient, and hope Lance didn't die first.
Then they received a communication from the Blade that Keith was missing in action and Lance vomited red rose petals and chrysanthemums.
“It's Keith,” he revealed to Coran hours later, when there seemed to be no more petals to cough up and his lungs burned as if a knife had been scraped through them. “The person I fell in love with…”
“Oh, Lance…” the old man simply said, knowing that it was somehow worse than loving Allura. Allura was an unattainable goal, but she was there. Keith was gone and now that he was lost, the heartbreak could only increase, making Lance's condition worse.
Really, if Lance wasn't so stupid, he should have realized it was Keith sooner, but then, at the same moment the paladin left, Lotor insinuated himself between them, stealing all of Allura's attention.
How had he not realized his feelings before? Although, in retrospect, the story of the rivalry seemed like the classic pulling the braids of the girl you liked to get her attention.
Only it didn't help, because Keith had never noticed him, and Lance had understood too late, and now he won't even be able to tell him because Keith had disappeared and no one knew if he was alive and if he would return.
It was tragic, and maybe he was deluding himself, but part of Lance believed that Keith, unlike Allura, might return his feelings.
Lance's health subsequently declined. Even Hunk noticed, and he was now immersed in his own little scientific world with Pidge.
But a mild reassurance was enough to convince him that Lance was fine, there was nothing to worry about, certainly not a broken heart and deadly flowers that were slowly suffocating him.
Lance had been right, realizing the truth had been worse, and on top of all the knowledge that Keith might never come back was increasing the pain.
The petals he coughed up were aspholodeum, adonis, chrysanthemum, narcissus, and they mocked him, reminding him that it didn't matter if in the end, by a pure miracle, he understood, it was useless.
Keith wouldn't come back, he wouldn't save him.
Coran did what he could to ease his symptoms, giving him medicine to slow the growth of the flowers. They sucked, but for a while Lance could breathe, albeit with difficulty.
“Will I die, Coran?” one day he asked, after a rather bad crisis, and received a scandalized look from the Altean.
"Absolutely not! I've almost found the right planet for you to operate on! Of course, I haven't made contact yet, lately we don't have a moment of time without there being some emergency, but I'm confident!”
He envied the man's optimism. Lance only saw petals and blood.
Keith wasn't dead. Keith returned, with his mother, a wolf, and an Altean girl.
He came back, and he had no time for Lance.
It was right, because Lotor was a traitor, Shiro was not Shiro, and there were more important things than Lance's heart.
Too bad his body didn't agree, and the petals he coughed up were enough to make a child choke.
“Lance, I'm sorry. I'm so sorry,” Coran apologized.
Lance wanted to reassure him. It wasn't the man's fault that they had lost the Castle of Lions, and with it the coordinates of Zeta-9, where they could have taken Lance for surgery, and now there wouldn't even be time to find the planet because Earth was under attack and they had to return.
It wasn't Coran's fault that Keith had come back different, more grown up, wiser, less inclined to be the boy who saw Lance underneath all the pranks and silly jokes.
Now Keith didn't even look at Lance, and Lance knew he could never measure up to him.
Why settle for Lance McClain when you could have a former Lotor general?
(And yes Pidge, this time it was jealousy.)
(Keith had stayed behind to help Acxa. Perhaps a little masochistically, Lance wondered if he would have stayed behind if Lance had been the one in trouble. He hated not knowing the answer.)
Coran had done his best, and that should have been enough.
“It's not your fault,” he tried to say, but his throat hurt and every breath was torture.
Coran understood, “Don't push yourself, my boy. I think I still have some medicine left..."
“Coran, don't waste it.”
"But…"
“We have limited resources,” the boy said, placing a hand on Coran's shoulder. “We must avoid making waste.”
“It's not a waste if it's used for you!” Coran said, full of disdain. “I can give you some time, and once on Earth maybe…”
“Coran, maybe…maybe I won't make it to Earth,” he admitted in a small voice. “Not if Keith keeps treating me like trash.”
Coran's face turned red with anger, “You should tell him! If nothing else, to make him moderate his behavior! It's outrageous to..."
“Coran, even if I told him, his refusal would kill me,” Lance tried to reason with him. “ Now, I've reached a point where I really couldn't stand harsh words. Because let's face it, Keith wouldn't be as kind as Allura in his rejection. And it would kill me, in every sense.”
He saw Coran open and close his fists, “So what, we're not going to do anything? Will we wait for a miracle?”
“I want to go home, Coran. If I die…I want to do it at home.”
He had to know that the Universe loved not giving him what he wanted.
“I don't want to spend eternity with Lance.”
As if an entire game created specifically to humiliate Lance wasn't enough, Keith's vote was the last straw, the stone in Lance's grave.
Had Lance been such a bad teammate that he didn't even deserve a kind word?
Was it really that impossible to love him?
It didn't matter anymore. The game was over, and when Lance woke up, he couldn't breathe.
Allura was the first to help him, and when she noticed the blood in his mouth and the blue petals on the ground, her expression was like Coran's the first time Lance asked him about hanahaki.
“Lance, why didn't you say you had hanahaki?”
“I didn't want…I didn't want to be considered…a weakness…”
Those were his last words before the pain in his chest took over, and all he felt was cold.
(He didn't see Allura's attempts to revive him, nor the pain of Hunk, who knew something was wrong, but hadn't had the time, and perhaps the desire, to understand.)
(He didn't see Pidge's tears or hear her pleas not to die there, not when they were so close, how could he die now that he could return to Earth?)
(He didn't see Coran slap Keith, because even if the altean hadn't been in the dream, he knew that Keith was responsible if what he now considered his son was dying, because he couldn't be kind even to those who were supposed to be his friend. )
(He didn't hear Coran yell at the black paladin, telling him that he didn't deserve Lance's heart, and that it would take very little, very little, to not break it, to be able to get at least as far as Earth, )
(He didn't see the sheer horror on Keith's face, nor how the realization of what he'd done hit him hard, causing him to fall on his knees. He couldn't give any convincing reasons for his behavior, and there was no need for an apology, no while Allura was trying to save Lance, fighting against the flowers that were squeezing the boy's heart.)
(“I…Lance, please, I…)