Voltron Legendary Defender (Spy AU) - martinis, girls & guns [13] [Sheith + Allurance]

[scriveyner]

Title: martinis, girls & guns [13]
Fandom: Voltron Legendary Defender
AU: Spyfic
Characters/Pairing: Shiro/Keith, Lance/Allura, Hunk, Pidge
Rating: M
Length: 1971
Summary: "Is my brother even alive?"

"Is my brother alive?" Pidge asked, her voice level. That wasn't the first question that Allura expected to be asked, she knew, but the obvious was in the open at the moment, and frankly while Pidge was quite vindicated that there was definitely more going on under the surface than she'd even begun to calculate, she had her priorities.

The room that the two guards had escorted them to was not a prison cell. She'd expected a brig or something of the sort, instead they were taken to a fully-furnished suite. It was mildly disconcerting, in the midst of some kind of clearly military endeavor that someone would take the time to furnish multiple rooms in plush comfort, but she wasn't going to take the time to question it. She'd seen a lot of mercenary folk dump funds into the strangest avenues and it wasn't the weirdest thing she'd come across in a mission as of yet, anyway.

Not that Pidge had a wide range of data with which to compare, usually the team member who got captured was Lance, and they had to go rescue him. If she had the opportunity she was going to grill him about the decorating choices of the various underworld kingpins that he had run afoul of so far.

They were left alone in the room, the two purple-skinned guards closing the double doors firmly behind them. Allura stood in the entrance of the suite, a far-off expression on her face that left Pidge a bit off balance, so she walked to the drape-covered windows and pulled aside the heavy curtain. There were no windows behind the fabric – just lights meant to simulate the shape of one. Pidge let the fabric fall back into place and turned around, looking back at Allura.

"I don't know," Allura said finally. "I don't know anything about him, Pidge."

"Bullshit you don't," Pidge said, and clenched her fists at her side. "I'm sick of the lies, tell me what you know, now!"

"You're in the wrong business then," Allura murmured, and Pidge felt the flush hit her face hard. Angry at herself for letting the emotion even get to her, Pidge half-turned away, looking along the length of the wall. There were several sets of draperies – more false windows – and a fireplace that was also, undoubtedly, false. Before the fireplace was a pair of couches and several chairs; and the room opened up further to the left, showing the corner of a spacious bed. Allura crossed the room and seated herself demurely on the couch. "I never lied about my goals," she said as she slipped off her heels and left them lay on the floor. "Or the mission. Only my nature, and only there by omission."

Pidge snorted, and folded her arms. "I don't give a shit about any of this alien crap." Allura's head shot up then, her face betraying her surprise. "I'm not stupid," Pidge said. "It's aliens all the way 'round, isn't it? That's why we hadn't heard of Sendak, that's why my algorithms couldn't recognize the cipher Hunk copied down, that's why you were so eager to get out of town fast." She sighed a bit, and shook her head. "I should have put it all together sooner."

Allura took off her earrings, one after the other, and left the glittering rock jewelry on the table between the couches. "You wouldn't have put it together," Allura said, sounding very confident in that. "No one has, not without being told." She held out her wrist, now bare without the teal-inset bracelet. She inspected her skin, looking for bruising. When Pidge remained silent, she looked up at her and found that Pidge was watching her with a peculiar expression.

"You're rather calm," Pidge said.

Allura looked toward the entrance of the suite, a set of double doors. "We're in a great position," she said. "Sendak just took us straight into the center of his camp. We can cripple his operation from the inside." Her expression had hardened into something unrecognizable, almost grotesque. "If we destroy the resonator -- or even better, his power source – that will slow him down considerably."

"Or, you know," Pidge said. "We could kill him."

"That was implied," Allura said, and then looked back to Pidge. "I swear I don't know anything about your brother, Pidge. He was long separated from Shiro when we freed Shiro from Sendak all those months ago."

Pidge said, quietly, "Sendak had Shiro?"

There was a bare moment of hesitation, as if Allura realized she had let something slip that shouldn't have been said. Then she nodded her head.

"They've been on Earth for a while, haven't they? What would they want with Shiro? Or Matt?" Pidge's voice cracked just slightly on her brother's name.

"I don't know," Allura said.

"Shiro didn't tell you anything?" Pidge said. Allura stared at Pidge, and Pidge looked away. She'd let her emotions run high and hot for too long, and was forgetting some very basic things that had been drilled into her at the Garrison. One of which was the assumption that there was always someone listening. "Fine," she scoffed quietly, more to herself than to Allura, but Allura's head tilted just slightly, indicating that she heard anyway. Pidge sighed; those ears were ridiculous.

There were more important things to focus on, anyway.

#

The jeep banged along the unpaved road, striking just about every rock and pit in that existed. Keith would have assumed that Lance was getting back at him if not for the fact that Lance kept swearing under his breath every time they hit something. As it was, Keith kept one hand looped in the fabric 'oh shit' handle on the passenger side and a tight grip on his phone with the other. "How are we doing?" Lance asked, a split-second before they hit a very large hole masked by downed leaves and brush. Even with the seatbelts, Keith felt his hair scrape the canvas roof of the jeep. Lance swore again.

"Not far," Keith said. "Maybe twenty klicks." He shifted his hand to the interior frame of the jeep. "The resonance keeps echoing at the same frequency, so we've at least got that in our back pocket if we get lost and the GPS goes to shit."

Lance grunted an acknowledgment, too focused on driving to take the bait and dial up his snark level with Keith. Keith glanced sidelong at him, then returned his attention to the phone itself. "What are the odds this thing is still there?" Lance asked, as the shocks on the jeep barely did their job once more. "I mean, how long ago was it hidden? A decade or so? We talking pre-recent conflicts? Cold War?" Keith was silent, and Lance spared a split-second glance away from what could be jokingly called a road. "Do you even know how long it's been there?"

"Long," Keith said.

Lance was silent. "If it's from before World War II it's not going to be useful," Lance stared at the road out ahead of them. "Not at all. In fact it would probably just be dangerous to us because it's so old, which means the only reason we're racing these other guys for it is because it contains nukes or something worse."

"It's Altean," Keith finally relented, just a little. "And it's at least a thousand years old, if not older than that. I'm one hundred percent certain it holds up better than your random military crap that's barely a fraction of its age."

"Nuclear alien tech that's older than half the countries on the map," Lance said. "And this is the good plan? What were we relying on as a plan 'B'?" More silence from Keith, because he was tired and pissed and really didn't want to be trapped in a jeep trawling the foothills of a mountain with Lance but Shiro had looked to him to complete this facet of their mission and dammit if there was one person on this lousy planet that Keith was still loyal to it was Shiro. He exhaled through clenched teeth and tried to ignore Lance's barbs.

A distinct lack of reaction from Keith meant that Lance let the issue drop for at least a little bit to concentrate on where they were going. The jeep was a rental from some tourist company who provided guided tours; Keith had pressed three times the going rate in cash into the guide's hands and said 'enjoy your day off'. This meant that while it was well suited to go up and down the regular paved roads, it was hardly a proper military vehicle and was doubtless unused to being driven at this speed off-road.

Not that any of that seemed to bother Lance at all.

Keith held on as they hit another bump, although this time Lance braked. The road was washed out a bit ahead, muddy water running thick through the trees. Keith frowned, it didn't look deep or even like it was moving; but Lance had a peculiar expression on his face as he stared out the windshield. "... and we're stopped," Keith said, but Lance didn't appear to have heard him, brow furrowed and concentrating. Then, without warning, Lance yanked the gearshift, throwing the jeep into reverse, and twisting the steering wheel so violently that Keith almost hit his head off the interior frame of the vehicle. "Hey!"

"This way," Lance said, abandoning the unpaved road completely. Keith glanced back at the road, and then forward, suppressing the urge to duck as branches smacked off the windshield with painful regularity ... at least until they broke through the scrubbrush to find another unpaved road, in even worse condition, running a bit parallel to where they were before.

"What the fuck, man," Keith said, as the resonance seemed to drag out and away. They were going the opposite direction. "Lance, you're a moron, we gotta go northeast."

"No," Lance said. "We don't. In fact, we don't want to go that way at all."

Keith held up the phone that showed the GPS map with the resonating location heading very quickly for a corner and off the map. When Lance didn't glance over, Keith huffed loudly. "Pull the jeep over, I'm driving."

Lance shook his head sharply. "No, we – we don't want to go that way. If we follow that thing, something bad's waiting there." He chewed his lip for a moment, concentrated on the road ahead of them, watching it slope up quickly but not quite gunning it, keeping the jeep at the same rate of speed. "It's a gut feeling, Keith. My gut doesn't steer me wrong."

"Oh really," Keith said sarcastically. "Your gut is steering us away from the fucking resonance point, McClain."

"Dude, shut the fuck up," Lance snarled right back. "Trust me on this, okay? We need to go this way. I don't know why, but this is the right direction."

"Sure, fine," Keith said. "It's only the fate of the world that's at stake no biggie." He gripped the fabric handle tight as the road grew rockier, the trees starting to thin out a bit on either side of them. "You get to explain to Allura why we let Sendak's goons get to the resonance point before we did, though, got it?"

"The weapon's not at the resonance point," Lance said, a confidence in his voice that made Keith pause. "It's a decoy."

"Yeah?" Keith said. "And how do you know that?"

"Trust me," Lance said, and Keith scoffed but held on, glancing back down to his phone. The coordinates were gone off the map, now, and he looked up, through the windshield, at the road ahead.

"All right," Keith said reluctantly.