Voltron Legendary Defender - Shining Like the Stars [19] [Klance]

[scriveyner]

Title: shining like the stars [19]
Fandom: Voltron: Legendary Defender
AU: slts
Characters/Pairing: Keith/Lance, Team Voltron
Rating: M
Length: 1378
Summary: When Lance got shot, it came as a total surprise.




When Lance got shot, it came as a total surprise.

They had made it through the hallway – Lance took point, with the weapon, although Shiro seemed to have mustered up something, and was using his Galra prosthetic arm to fight despite the obvious agony he was in. Lance leaned back against the bulkhead, panting openly, a path of destruction carved behind them through Galra drone-soldiers.

"Which way to the pods?" Lance asked, as Shiro leaned against the wall beside him, sweat running down his face under the visor of his helmet.

Shiro shook his head once and then gestured vaguely a direction with his left arm. He was doing his level best not to cradle his right against his chest, trying clearly to fight through the pain. "Right," Lance said. "Got it."

He stepped away from the wall to sweep with his weapon when the plasma bolt spun him and he dropped.

It was sudden and surprisingly painless, he was upright one moment and the next he was on his back and staring at the ceiling, stunned, his own weapon fallen from his hands and slid away on the floor. Then the pain hit, lighting up his left side in sheer, surprised agony. "Lance!" Shiro yelled, but Lance couldn't see him at the moment, the only thing existing was the pain.

He heard the return plasma fire even as he clamped his hands down on his side and they came away tacky with burnt flesh and blood. The fact that he'd been shot was so bizarre, what they were experiencing wasn't real; this was a memory, and Lance had been treating it as such... he hissed as Shiro dropped to one knee beside him, holding Lance's bayard in one hand.

"They shot me," Lance said, voice gone high with surprise and pain.

"Hold on," Shiro said, pushing Lance's hands aside. "It's just a graze, the armor took most of it."

"Just-" Lance gasped, as Shiro peeled aside the part of his suit that was sticking to the wound.

"The plasma bolt cauterizes, it's that hot," Shiro said. "You won't bleed out."

"Goody," Lance said, as Shiro grabbed him by his right arm and started to pull him upright. "Oh, no," Lance said and then bit down on the way his body screamed in agony as the fresh wound was jostled and stretched. "Nope," he said again as Shiro sat him upright against the wall. "Just leave me with the bayard," he said. "The pods are down that way, right? It's just a memory, I'll be fine, we need to get you off this ship."

Shiro said, very plainly, "No."

"Shiro," Lance hissed, as the bayard returned to its shape as a plasma rifle. "Go. I'll hold them off, let me be cool for once, okay?"

"This isn't a video game with a reset button," Shiro said, gripping Lance's right arm and firmly hauling him to his feet. Lance gave out a strangled yell and almost went down again, but this time it was Shiro supporting him. "We're getting out of this together," he added.

Lance sagged against Shiro, breathing raggedly. "Anyone ever tell you you're really difficult?" he asked Shiro, as they hurried down the corridor as well they could with Shiro half-carrying, half-dragging Lance.

"My evaluators used to call me 'tenacious,'" Shiro said, head swinging back and forth as he tried to identify which corridor to take. He chose one and they kept moving.

Lance laughed a little, then wheezed in pain, as he swung the rifle on his hip and pointed it behind them. His accuracy suffered trying to shoot the plasma rifle one-handed, but it was still possible to lay down cover fire when a new contingent of the drone soldiers came down the corridor following them, packed tight.

Time passed oddly, Lance noticed. They were in the corridor then they weren't, then they were by pod bay doors. "Don't do this to me," Shiro said to Lance, who blinked at him slowly, unsure what he was talking about. Shiro had his hand on the control door that opened a pod, and Lance realized he was leaning, shoulder in, to the wall beside Shiro.

"Oh," Lance said. "Did we make it?"

"Yeah," Shiro said. The pod opened, lit in fuchsia and magenta, and Shiro shoved Lance in, strapping him in to a seat carefully. "Stay with me, Lance," he said, pressing Lance's bayard back into his hand.

Lance looked down at the bayard in his hand curiously, because he hadn't remembered at what point he dropped it. "I thought you said that it just grazed me," he mumbled, the edges of his vision gone hazy. He was really, really tired.

"You're in shock," Shiro said, dropping into the pilot's seat and flipping switches. "Just hang on with me for a little longer, okay? We're gonna getting out of here."

"Yeah, okay," Lance said, his eyes slipping closed. It was the last thing he remembered.

#

Allura stood in front of the memory core. It had been torn from its spot, rooted into the floor of the Galra ship, and now stood, out of place and foreign, in the middle of the castle-ship's training room. Hunk's lion had carefully carried the obelisk in its mouth, followed by the smaller green lion. Keith had returned the speeders to their lions, the blue and black lions could be recalled by the ship given their proximity, and he had escorted the pilotless lions just to be on the safe side.

The purple obelisk pulsed, slightly. "It is based on Vertruian designs," Coran acknowledged, "but it is definitely Galra in origin."

Allura nodded her head, her hands clasped before her as she watched the lettering light faintly in gold and then fade. The obelisk had started reacting like that while it was in the mouth of Hunk's lion, pulsing every so often, following by certain runes and writing lighting up in sequence and fading. "I'm afraid that there's nothing we can do to speed up the process," she said softly.

Pidge was in the process of hooking up sensors to the monolith. "Maybe it's reacting to Altean technology?" she suggested. "I don't know what runs the memory core, if it isn't a ship's systems or a crystal; it doesn't make any sense."

"They're run off of magic," Allura said, as she stepped forward, her eyes closed and pressed a palm to the covered-surface.

"Right, magic," Pidge said, disbelief evident in her voice. She looked over to Keith, who was the only one still in his paladin armor, having practically thrown himself out of his lion and rushing to the training room and not moving since. Keith had barely said a word since they got back, focused entirely on the obelisk as if he could draw out Lance and Shiro by sheer force of his will alone.

As Allura's palm made contact with the obelisk, it was like an electric current ran through the room. The lettering that had been flashing gold in turn all lit in creamy white and stayed lit. Pidge's eyes got wide, and she looked down at the laptop she had hooked to the memory core, and back up at Allura, as the glow enveloped Allura's arm.

"That's the same-" she said, but it wasn't, not really, because the light that had taken Lance and Shiro had been amber before it grew to bright to look at directly.

Then the monolith pulsed again, and again. "Come free," Allura said, eyes closed and voice magnified. "Children of the stars, release."

A final pulse, with a dazzling light, but as the light faded everyone could hear the impact of bodies hitting the floor. Pidge scrambled to her feet as Hunk moved forward quickly past her, but not as fast as Keith. By the time Pidge's vision had cleared Hunk had Lance scooped up in his arms. "Lance!" Lance's face was ashen under the visor of his helmet, and he wasn't moving.

Keith had Shiro, he was kneeling beside him on the floor. Shiro was laying face down, also still. Allura had been knocked down by the final pulse, but she was sitting upright. "Take them to the medical pods," she said. "Right away!"