Voltron Legendary Defender - Shining Like the Stars [54]

[scriveyner]

Title: shining like the stars [54]
Fandom: Voltron: Legendary Defender
AU: slts
Characters/Pairing: Shiro/Keith/Lance, Team Voltron
Rating: M
Length: 1744
Summary: Nothing about this made any sense.



Nothing about this made any sense.

Lance crouched behind a speeder in the repair bay of the Garrison. There had been no alarms tripped by the strange man in black, or the two guards that Lance had barreled through. He'd clobbered one with a chair and took the other's gun and yet no alarms were going off, there didn't seem to be any uptick in patrols, in fact he would be hard-pressed to tell that this day was any different than any other Tuesday on the base.

Except it was different. He wasn't supposed to be here. Neither was Hunk. By Tuesday they were all aboard the Castle of Lions on Arus, not still here on Earth. Lance put his hand flat on the speeder and tried to put his thoughts in order, so much of it was muddy swirls that he couldn't pull the entire picture together. All he knew for certain is that he wasn't supposed to be here any more; and that he had an ache in the back of his throat, the knowledge that he could ditch all of this, grab the unattended speeder, and head for the coast and his family.

But, Pidge was in trouble.

And if they hadn't been there for the stolen Galra ship's crash, to see Shiro being brought in by Garrison officials, then he was in trouble too. Lance touched the back of his neck again and swallowed. And Keith...? He would have been captured as well, unable to hold Shiro on his custom speeder and pilot it well enough to get away.

He didn't even know where to start.

You could always start in the brig.

Yeah, that made sense. Except it didn't, because he'd just made his way out of the labyrinthine corridors of the base; and while there was still no hint of an alarm, turning around and storming into the prison area was a guaranteed way to light the base up like Christmas. Besides, they wouldn't have stashed Shiro in the brig; too many people would see him. They would want to keep his arrival on the down low, like in the tent in the valley by the wreckage of the ship.

Lance smacked his hand against the speeder and stood up, setting his gun on the seat and unzipping the uniform jacket as he did so. He discarded the coat and got on the speeder, before staring down at its controls. The last time he had ridden one of these Hunk was clinging to him and yell-crying something about them possibly getting expelled, he didn't entirely remember the conversation, but felt that black ball in the pit of his stomach that Hunk had stayed. That was a betrayal he hadn't expected.

The man in black's scarred face and gold eyes popped into his head again, and Lance shuddered, before kick-starting the speeder and shooting out of the mechanical bay.

There were no mechanics to stop him.


#

The sun was high in the sky, intense and bright. Lance had stopped the speeder on a cliff opposite the Garrison, overlooking the emergency tents that had been constructed. There were several transports parked all around, and guards here. He stood up in the saddle of the speeder and shaded his eyes. The goggles protected some from the glare, but not enough — he wasn't as stupid as Keith, he wasn't going to go charging in to a fully-staffed base; even with some kind of distraction there were just too many people down there for him to be effective at anything; and that was with the assumption Shiro was still down there.

Lance kicked the speeder back to life, and peeled out. If he had to do this solo, it was either go big, or go home.


#

He wasn't entirely sure that he knew where he was going; it had been dark and between being shot at and yelled at and the entire world coming down around his ears he had been just a tiny bit distracted. He ate through at least half the speeder's fuel reserves before he hit the plains, and not long after that he found the small, piece of shit shack that Keith had apparently been calling home.

Time seemed to be passing weirdly; and he noticed. The sun was still high in the sky although it felt like he had been riding for hours, there was sand in his hair and grime all over his face; he pulled the goggles down around his neck and washed his face in the water collection barrel, before opening the door.

It wasn't the same.

Lance hesitated in the open door. It was Keith's shack, it had to be; he remembered the outside of it but the inside was worse, a table with its cement blocks kicked out and debris scattered across the floor, the chart that took up one entire wall torn down, strings connecting nothing fluttering slightly with the change in air pressure from Lance standing in the door.

He nudged detritus with one boot as he walked the length of the room once. There was something like panic now, blossoming in his chest; when he kicked a chunk of cement away he found a cigarette butt and that feeling crystallized.

Garrison soldiers had been here.

Blue.

If they were here, could they have found Blue, too? Hunk had known, had put it all together right there in front of them but there were people so much smarter than either of them already graduated, working for the top brass, did they know? Had someone already found her?

Lance slammed out the door to his speeder; somehow in the handful of minutes he'd been inside hours had passed, the sun was already sinking past the horizon. He hopped astride his stolen speeder and stared at the blood-colored western sky, before he pulled his goggles down and started the speeder again.


#

It was another quarter of his fuel reserve to get to where the Blue Lion had been hidden, thousands of years ago. He wasn't alone; Lance cut the power to the speeder and coasted to a stop around a corner; the light from the camp was bright, and unhidden.

He could feel her, under the ground. It was a soft pulse, a recognition of something he had been taking for granted for weeks now. "Sorry, girl," Lance said softly; he left the gun on the speeder but kept his goggles on. "I didn't mean for this to happen, but we'll figure this out."

The tents here were not as large as the crash site for the stolen Galran ship; but there was at least two transports and several guards he could see. There was not going to be any way for him to get to the cave's entrance, they had it completely under guard.

You don't need the cave.

He didn't need the cave. Lance crept up on the tents; the guards assigned were cadets doing their rotation; they weren't expecting anything to happen, and as such their circuit around the small cluster of tents was erratic, and they would occasionally stop and chat with each other. Wholly unprofessional. Lance smiled to himself, they were gonna get the dressing-down of a lifetime when this was all through.

He slid around the first open tent when there was a gap in the patrols, and he ducked through the flap — and came face to face with Pidge; who was sitting on a cot with her hands cuffed behind her back and a gag stuffed in her mouth. Pidge's eyes went wide with surprise, and Lance almost laughed in his relief. "Pidge," he said, and pulled the gag out of her mouth. "Are you okay? They haven't hurt you, right?"

"Lance!?" Pidge was completely nonplussed to see him. "What the hell are you doing here?"

"What, can't a guy rescue his teammate from certain doom without getting the third degree? Turn around," he said, and she scooted on the cot just a little so he could work on jimmying the cuffs open. "I can't believe they use regular handcuffs," he said. "The budget cuts here are ridiculous."

"Lance, for real, what are you doing here?" Pidge said as the handcuffs fell off her wrists. She rubbed her clearly sore wrists and stared at him. "How did you know where to find me?"

"Is it just you?" Lance asked. "Is Shiro here? Or Keith?"

She stared at him blankly. "Keith?" Then she shook her head. "How did you even know about Shiro?"

"Keith," Lance said. "Mullet, charming personality, looks like he swallowed a box of tacks?" Also, I'm pretty sure I'm in love with him. Lance covered his mouth with two fingers and looked concern, uncertain if that last one had escaped out loud. Pidge didn't seem to hear, though, as she ran over to the table in the small tent, where her backpack was sitting.

"Do you know why they brought us here?" she said. "Something to do with something called Voltron, I don't know what it is but I've been picking up all sorts of signals lately—"

"There's no time for that," Lance said. "We have to find Shiro and Keith, and get back and grab Hunk-"

"They brought Hunk, too," she said, and Lance froze.

"What?"

"He rode out here with some creepy guy, not Garrison crew." She slung her backpack on. "It all has to do with Voltron, somehow?"

Lance shook his head, then switched over to a nod. "It does," he said, sucking air in through his teeth. "It's hard to explain, we need to find the others. Do you know where they've got Shiro?"

"Not only that, but I bet I can get him out," Pidge had pulled out her phone; a few quick taps on the surface changed it from a fairly normal looking device into something more akin to a data pad.

"Pidge, you're awesome," Lance said.

She looked surprised. "Thanks, Lance," she said. She went to push aside the flap of the tent and froze, then took a large step back as two armed guards stepped into the tent ... followed by the dark-haired man in the black suit.

He looked over at Lance and seemed to ignore Pidge completely. "Well, then," he said with a slow drawl and a smirk. "What took you so long, cadet? We can't get this party started without you."