Chapter Text
Lance was being suffocated. He couldn’t draw in a breath, and there was something covering his mouth- the galra, the galra were torturing him. He whined, the sound low in his throat, and reached for the contraption in an attempt to pull it away, but a gloved hand stopped him by the wrist.
“Lance, no, leave that on. You need that to breathe,” someone said softly, their hand still wrapped around his wrist. They knew his name? This was bad. He struggled, trying to free himself from the strangers tight hold on him, but he felt weaker than ever and he was no match.
“Lance, you idiot, you’re hurting yourself,” someone said, almost fondly, and he rolled his head to the side to see-
“K’th?” he slurred, his lips numb and his voice weak.
“It’s Keith,” came the awkward response. Well, yeah. His vision was blurry but he’d know that mullet anywhere. What was Keith doing here? What was on his face again? Lance reached his other hand up to investigate, and was stopped yet again.
“It’s an oxygen mask. Just try to relax. Shiro and the others will be back soon.”
Shiro.
His eyes stung, and a single tear rolled from eyes before they slid shut.
Lance was in a galra prison. He was chained to the wall by two steel cuffs on his wrists, and a muzzle around his nose and mouth held him upright like a tightly-strung puppet. His cell was damp and hot, and his breath was fogging in the metal contraption strapped over his face. He couldn’t breathe through it, but every time he reached for it, the cuffs around his wrists pulled him back, like some cruel galra punishment. He nearly had it each time, but the grip of his cuffs only tightened.
“Hey, stop. It’s helping you, Lance, don’t take that off. Are you with me?”
Lance was in a galra lab, staring up at the stark white ceilings and the blinding lights exposing him. There was a tight metal restraint across his chest, tight and heavy, keeping him in place and restricting his breathing. He wheezed, but his chest only tightened with each puff of air. A galra contraption was strapped onto his face, and someone was sitting beside the steel lab table, a scalpel in hand, ready to extract his teeth. Lance prepared to snatch the metal device from his face when-
“Damn it, Lance, leave it!”
Keith.
Lance whimpered, and suddenly Keith, stone cold, stubborn, rival Keith, was apologizing.
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry. You’re okay, it’s ok.”
Keith was being gentle with him. His rival, Keith. Keith.
Lance was on a foreign planet, full of volcanoes and sweltering heat. He waded through volcanic ash,
“You’re burning up, Lance. I’m sorry.”
“No, don’t cry, don’t cry. Well, you can, if you need to. It’s okay to cry, but everything is going to be fine. Can you hear me, Lance? Everything is going to be okay. We’re gonna take care of you, okay?” He hoped he lived to remember this Keith, this version of him who was gentle and
“I’m right here, see?” a firm hand tightened around his, from where he had grasped it. Keith’s eyes were glistening oddly in the light. “Nothing is going to happen to me. I’m not going anywhere, okay?”
“They hurt you.”
“Nobody is hurting me. We’re here, at the castle, and we’re both safe.”
“You can’t let them… get you… I can’t protect you.”
“You don’t need to right now, okay? I’m here, and I’m going to protect you this time.” And Keith, he thought - his first lucid thought in a while - must have been very, very scared for him, because he was being soft, and gentle, and comforting, and so, so kind.
Keith is my friend, Lance thought.
“Hurts,” he said instead.
“I know. I know it hurts.”
“Don’t leave.”
“I’m not going anywhere,” Keith reassured.
And through the coughing and wheezing, the blood and tears, the fever and the chills, Keith stayed. He stayed when the team came running into the med bay, afraid that Lance had passed in their absence. He stayed when Coran found him a proper medicine for his illness, when Lance’s breathing became more even, his face more relaxed. And only when Lance began to stir, began to wake up from the deep sleep the medicine had put him in, did Keith’s courage fail him. He recalled the tenderness from the past few days, prayed that Lance was too sick and delirious to remember it, and fled from the med bay before he was caught in his vulnerability.