Chapter Text
Keith groaned as the world came back into being. He breathed in sharply. Fuck, his neck hurt something awful. Whiplash, he knew immediately as he brought a hand to it. Any fighter pilot worth their salt would be able to put that together. From there though, Keith struggled to think. What caused it? What happened?
“Hello?” He slurred out groggily.
The first thing he noticed, at least externally, was the overwhelming silence in response. Even if everyone was being dead silent, it wouldn’t explain the complete lack of noise. Ships, even as advanced as Red, were constantly in motion. Creaking and ticking and whirling, not this.
With the lack of anything but his own breath in response, his eyes lazily made their way around the edge of the display. Or at least, where the display should have been.
Red’s front panel, usually as familiar as the back of his hand, was warped into something… dissonant, like an old song played in reverse. Red always had something up, even if just in the corner. Usually diagnostic or comms, something only the time, but now everything was powered off. Almost complete darkness swallowed him. The only light right now was from a distant star reflected a million times through the metallic graveyard that encircled him, and even that only reached the very front of the ship.
“Shiro? Anybody?” He tried the comms again, only to once again be met with nothing.
An unsettling feeling slithered its way up his spine. He pushed at the controls, but nothing moved. What was happening? Why weren’t they flying? Why was there complete silence? Even in his own head? Where was Red? Where was her presence?
His brain was shot, too momentarily scrambled to remember the specifics all at once. He was flying -faster than he’d ever thought possible- and then on a dime, Red lurched, convulsing as she came to an abrupt stop, throwing Keith forward.
Keith’s heart twisted, an echo of panic running through him. There was a moment in between those two events, a flash in the pan. He followed the strained memory’s actions, wading through them as he tried to piece it together. Between flying and stopping, he’d looked up only once from his path, only once to look at…
Lance.
Cold, stark realization flooded his whole body as his vision narrowed in on what was in the void. The blue lion, curled in on herself, floating dead in the air.
Any remaining bit of sluggishness was wiped away immediately. Keith clawed desperately at the buckle of the seatbelt as he forced himself up. He floated, not fell, forward as it came undone. Weightlessly, he forced himself to spin around and was met with complete darkness.
No power, no artificial gravity, no lights. He couldn’t see a thing beyond the chair, all of the back of the lion was lost to the shadows.
Shit, what was he-? Where was he supposed-? Fuck, fuck, he had to get to Lance, he had to get to Lance, he had to get to Lance.
Stop it, stop it! Panicking would do jack-shit in a situation like this.
He gritted his teeth, forcing himself to think rationally. He needed to get Lance, and then get Lance to Pidge, and then they’d be able to do whatever tech bullshit to fix him. The first step though, the first step.
If there was no power, then he had to find the emergency exit. The hatch was marked with Altean symbols they’d had to memorize as ‘EMERGENCY ONLY’. A fact that was now utterly useless in the face of the complete darkness that engulfed the back of the cabin.
Still, while there clearly weren't any emergency lights embedded into the ship, Keith knew for a fact that the paladin armor had precautions in case of complete power failure.
Blindly, he felt against the wall, making sure to use his other hand to counteract the lack of gravity. He switched his grip from shelf to shelf like a rock climber, scrambling blindly until he found it - the little handheld emergency light.
Essentially a glow stick, the resounding crack that echoed in the ship signaled the new light being brought into existence. Keith cursed as dim, orange-tinted light flooded out only about as far as his arm outstretched. It would be enough though, it had to be.
Light now attached to his suit by a wire, he kicked off the wall hard, like… like Lance in the Castle pool in the vague direction of the top of the ship. He dragged the light across the ceiling, looking for over every inch until he found-
The exit. There it was.
The hatch was double-sealed, one part on the inside of the ship and other, door to the outside. Keith pulled at the latch, yanking open the first door and clambering inside.
The space was cramped, claustrophobically so, but he sealed himself in without hesitation. In theory, once the first door was closed, the second could be opened.
Red was ancient though. Over ten thousand years of sitting had worn down unused parts like these. Keith grunted, putting his whole weight down on the handle, pushing and pushing until-
The second latch exploded out, air rushing out as the space instantly depressurized.
In an instant, his whole world twisted, up became down became nothing. The utter and absolute silence of the void swallowed everything except his own ragged breath. The sporadic light cycled between blinding and complete darkness as it bounced through the metal debris field.
Keith instinctively grabbed at Red's exterior, catching it by the skin of his teeth. Something in his shoulder twisted violently, the sharp snap accompanying it enough to make him cry out in pain.
His head spun as he held on tight to Red, his eyes watering from the pain radiating from his arm. Fuck, fuck, fuck. Keith hit his foot hard against Red repeatedly, a poor attempt at getting his mind to focus on anything but his shoulder.
Gritting his teeth, Keith forced himself to stop wallowing in self-pity. He would live, he'd be fine after the pods, but he didn't know if he could say the same for… He internally snarled at the thought, dragging his eyes across the thick mess of scrap.
He found it in the faintest glimmer of blue. Lance’s lion, completely still, looked scarily at home in the mechanical graveyard that surrounded it.
Everything in the universe narrowed down to that one point.
Keith could barely think, could barely breathe. The only company he had was the sound of his own heartbeat pounding in his chest as he got closer and closer to Blue.
He couldn’t remember the path he took, couldn’t remember getting to Blue, only the vague feeling of hitting against the scrap metal floating between them in a desperate scramble to get there.
Keith’s feet planted with a thud against the ship. Immediately, he dug his way into the slight opening of the hatch. His shoulder burned something fierce as he ripped open the outside hatch, but it was a drop in the ocean compared to the intensity of his focus.
Once again, the pocket between the two emergency doors was air-tight as he climbed in, a sealed-in purgatory only illuminated by the orange glow of the emergency light. Secured pipes and wiring weaved their way below him on the interior hatch, watching intently like he was an intruder.
Desperately, he pushed down on the handle like he had in his own ship. More and more and more, but unlike the last, this one wouldn’t budge.
“No,” Keith breathed out, rattling at the broken handle, “No, no, no.”
He was inches away from Lance. Inches. He couldn't be stuck here. No, not now. Not this close. He had to get to Lance. He looked around for missing screws or loose hinges or something -anything-, but there was nothing.
“Just let me in,” He begged the hatch.
The dim light only made the space between the closed hatches smaller. The exposed pipes felt as if they were enclosing around him like vines, slowly trapping him in this place between places. He twisted violently, his back hitting the exterior hatch.
“Come on!” He yelled, striking his foot against the jammed handle.
Maybe… maybe this was the universe trying to keep him from what was inside. To stop here, where fate was still up in the air, where the box hadn't been opened yet, where the metaphorical cat was still simultaneously both alive and-
“No! Let me in!” He threw his shoulder into the hatch, using his full body weight.
Burning, burning, burning, his arm was on fire with the hit, but Keith did it again without a second thought. The other outcome, that outcome, was an impossibility to Keith. There was only one option. This wasn't a paradox, this was a goddamn obstacle in his way. He had to get to Lance, he had to, he had to.
“You- piece- of shit!” He slammed into the hatch with percussion-like hits, accenting each and every word, “Fuck you-! fuck you-! FUCK YOU-! FUCK YOU-! PLEASE!”
Whatever was wrong with his shoulder before was certainly worse now, but he’d break every bone in his body a million times over if he had to. He would offer up every bit of himself on an altar if it meant that just this once the universe would listen to him.
So one more time, he reared back. Everything -everything- Keith had went into one last hit, and just this once, the universe listened.