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sentiantpanda · 14 days

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Fade

@spaceboomerang made this awhile back for Klangst week, and I haven’t been able to get it out of my head. I meant to like, write the whole story, but apparently the aftermath is all my brain wanted.

(sorry in advance)

Somehow, he manages it. Somehow, Lance picks himself up off the floor, muscles trembling and lower lip clamped between his teeth, and picks Keith up off the floor and gets them to their lions. And somehow, by some mercurial fortune they needed ten minutes sooner, they don’t run into any trouble. By the time they make it the tears are beginning to dry in crusty streaks along his face and he doesn’t have any hands free to scrub them away.

It itches.

Eventually, finally, they get to the hanger - Keith’s arm slung over his shoulder and blood trailing behind them in scattered, despondent drops - and Lance hears the voice of the Red Lion in his head for the first time in his life; he wishes he couldn’t.

He wishes he couldn’t because she keens, long and high, and the metal floor vibrates beneath their feet from the strength of her grief and Lance’s heart rends to pieces all over again, the tiny threads he’d tried to patch it with shredded between one aching beat of the tender muscle and the next. His lip quivers and his eyes fill with tears and apologies spill from his mouth like raindrops. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

The Blue Lion bends down, then, and brushes through his mind, wrapping him up with the soothing warmth of her boundless sympathy and pushing the overwhelming pressure of Red’s pain aside a bit.

Paladin.

He’s shaking, head bowed and exhausted in every way he never knew he could be - limbs heavy, feet dragging; an empty cavern in his chest. But they still have to get back, they’re not safe yet.

“Red,” he says, and flinches when she doesn’t even respond, her mournful dirge ceaseless and echoing back on itself over and over again in his mind. “Red, I gotta take him back with me. You’re gonna have to get back to the castle on your own.”

She doesn’t say anything, doesn’t stop crying, but slowly - so achingly slowly - she gets her feet underneath her, rises up from the floor and drags herself out into space.

Lance watches her go, knowing the other lions will spot her and guard her back, and sucks in a breath, forces his gaze forward. Walks up Blue’s ramp and into the cockpit. He tries to put Keith down, but his shaking muscles finally give out and he slumps back against the wall, pulling Keith close to protect him, and they slide to the floor in a graceless heap. “Blue…” he says, lip trembling. “Blue, I’m sorry, I can’t-”

She shushes him with a voiceless purr, her consciousness settling over his as she stands and pilots herself back to the castle - soft and comforting and shivering with her own quiet, distant sadness.

Lance lets out a breath and tilts his head back against the wall, eyes shut tight, and tries to swallow around the lump in his throat.

They left their helmets behind - Keith’s, lost soon after they boarded the ship; Lance’s ripped off and thrown down alongside Keith’s chestplate. No one else knows what happened. No one else knows and Lance is going to have to tell them and he doesn’t even know how to breathe properly, right now.

But a muffled clang reaches his ears as Blue lands in the castle hanger - a hiss of steam resounding through the cockpit as she lowers her ramp - and Lance cringes, curling over as if it will block out the sounds of everyone moving around down below. Murmurs of confusion echo up to them from the direction of Red’s hanger and Lance swallows, mouth sticky and tight and painful, and makes the slow journey up to standing - Keith’s arm still slung over his shoulder - and starts down the ramp.

He’s so goddamned tired.

There’s only a few feet left to go before the others spot him and start running. Lance takes the last few steps down to the floor and sinks to his knees.

Shiro gets there first, arms reaching out in haste to take the burden of Keith’s frame from Lance’s own before his hand freezes - pausing an inch away - with wide, quivering eyes. “…Lance?”

Lance’s heart clenches in his chest, the aching muscle torn and shredded and throbbing. A sob rips itself from his throat, tears falling to the floor. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry, I couldn’t-” He hears the rest of them approach, gasps and cries sounding all around him, and sees Shiro reach out and press two shaking fingers to Keith’s neck. The sound he makes is wretched, the most awful thing Lance has ever heard and it yanks another sob past his lips.

There’s nothing else he can do.

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sentiantpanda · 1 year

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