Chapter Text
“You have thirty-ticks,” Kolivan’s voice murmurs in his ear. Keith ignores it, grimacing in concentration as he deflects Haggar’s attack with his Marmora blade. She winks out like a flashbulb in front of him and Keith stumbles a bit as he slashes through thin air.
“Shit,” he mutters, his eyes darting around the cargo bay, wary of allowing Haggar to get the drop on him.
“Keith,” Kolivan says, “twenty-five ticks to detonation.”
No shit, Keith wants to say. He’s the one who set the charges, strategically scattering them throughout the glowing vials of quintessence stacked inside the cargo hold. The combined explosive force should be enough to take out at least three ships in the convoy, interrupting the Galra fleet’s fuel supply for the foreseeable future.
Although, he’d prefer not to be on the ship when that happens.
“Twenty-ticks,” Kolivan says flatly. “You know the code.”
Yeah, he knows the code. Every man for himself.
He glances over his shoulder. There’s nothing standing between him and the open door at the end of the catwalk. He makes a break for it, spinning on his heel and sprinting for the door.
He gets that feeling, that prickly feeling that makes him want to jump out of his skin, and suddenly he knows where Haggar is going to be. Without breaking stride he tosses the blade from his right hand into his left and slashes a wide arc through the air just as Haggar reappears in a flash of black… whatever.
She shrieks, dodging his blow like a cat. “You’ve interfered with my plans for the last time boy!”
Boy, why does everyone insist on calling him that? He hasn’t been a boy in… He’s never been a boy. Shiro used to say that Keith was born ninety, but then Shiro used to say a lot of things that Shiro never says anymore.
Haggar raises her clawed hands. A ball of dark energy pulsates between them. Keith dives onto his knees and slides past her just as a crackling bolt of energy shoots over his head. He leaps back onto his feet and sprints through the door, Haggar’s enraged scream following him out into the corridor.
“Kolivan, you still there?” He huffs a little breathlessly, but the only answer is dead air. Nope. Gone. Change of plans.
He calls up the ship’s schematics from the data storage unit on his wrist and consults the virtual display for a moment. Then he pulls a sharp left and darts down the corridor. He’s got thirteen-ticks to make it to the escape pods.
Two drone soldiers appear in front of him. Keith dodges their fire, violet energy bolts racing past him as he continues to run. The blade in his left hand shrinks to dagger size. He tosses it into his right hand and launches it at the nearest drone. It strikes the robot square in the chest.
Sparks fly as Keith races past it and plucks the dagger from its chest before it even has a chance to hit the floor. He runs straight at the other one, planting his foot on its arm and his hand on its shoulder, he vaults over its head and yanks the laser rifle from its hand as he goes. He shoots it from behind and turns to find two more drones rushing towards him. He dispatches them both with the laser rifle then chucks it and continues racing down the corridor.
He reaches the first pod in the bay with five-ticks to spare and quickly punches the control panel with his fist. The pod doors split apart in front of him. His skin starts to crawl. “Shit!” he gasps, whirling around a second too late as Haggar materializes directly in front of him. She lunges at him just as the first charge goes off.
Something cold and sharp bites into Keith’s side and he screams, stumbling backwards into the pod. Haggar falls on top of him and Keith gasps in pain as something twists inside him like broken glass. She claws at his face as the pod doors snap shut behind them and the pod automatically disengages from the ship.
A chain reaction of explosions rocks the pod and they’re suddenly tumbling through space on the crest of a giant shockwave. Alarms blare as the runaway pod sends the two of them flying, tossing them around the tumbling cabin like a pair of broken dolls.
Keith slams into a control panel and falls onto his hands and knees, spitting blood. He’s lost sight of Haggar. He shivers and falls backwards onto his heels and discovers the black hilt of a dagger protruding from his abdomen. Coils of steam rise from the wound melting the filigrees of white frost coating the ominously glowing blade.
That can’t be good.
Haggar comes at him again. She reaches for the dagger in his gut, her face twisted in calculating fury. Keith has no idea what she’s planning to do. He grabs her by the wrists, preferring not to find out. She’s strong, almost preternaturally so. Keith grits his teeth, desperately trying to hold off her raking clawed fingers, but his entire body is starting to go numb, as if the frigid blade in his gut is slowly turning him to ice.
A strange sort of tingling shoots up his spine and suddenly his skin is crawling again. It feels like a thousand bugs are rending his flesh, burrowing into the gaps in his spine and punching holes in his gasping chest.
He cringes, blinking cold sweat from his eyes. His grip on Haggar’s wrists slips and she breaks into a ghastly smile. The tingling sensation reaches the back of Keith’s neck and crawls over his scalp, setting his hair on end. Then Keith’s eyes go wide as something explodes inside his head.
Everything shifts around him. His stomach flips and the pod bleeds into racing streaks of light as Haggar transforms before his eyes into a young Altean woman with lilac colored hair and amber eyes. Keith startles, his mind flooding with memories that don’t belong to him. Honerva, that’s her name and she loves to laugh. She hates wearing shoes. She’s a reader. She reads, anything and everything she can get her hands on. She’s studying alchemy at the Altean Academy of Sciences. She’s got a soft spot for animals and she loves the smell of libraries.
Abruptly Keith returns to himself, his mind recoiling like a rubber band stretched to its limit before it suddenly snaps back to its original shape. His hands are still wrapped around Haggar’s wrists, but she’s tense and completely still, frozen in his feeble grasp.
The pod tilts precariously before its flightpath finally straightens out and the hood slips from her head revealing the Honerva from his vision, save for the leached white hair and Altean markings bleeding down the length of her face.
She looks… horrified, and Keith instinctively knows through their shared memories that she’s horrified at herself, at what she’s become. “Harbinger,” she whispers incredulously, and Keith flinches because that’s when the screaming starts.
A hundred voices, a thousand, ten-thousand, all screaming inside his head in dark impotent fury. They’re coming from her. They’re coming from Haggar, spinning around her head like invisible harpies. Keith doesn’t know how she can stand it. He flinches away from her, his hands clawing at his temples as the enraged wailing reaches a crescendo, carving a searing path into his head like a hot knife. He screams, his voice lost inside the howling multitude swirling around him.
Something dark and snakelike uncoils from Haggar’s chest, a living oil slick glowing with deep violet quintessence. It rises up and heads directly for Keith. He tries to scrabble away, ignoring the bitter pain racing up his side as he crashes up against the console at his back. The thing slams into him and everything goes black. He can’t move. His voice fails as the pressure inside his head builds, until he’s sure his skull will blow apart.
Then it stops. It all just stops, the screaming the paralysis the pressure, everything, and Keith is left gasping in a crumpled heap against the auto flight console. Haggar is hunched in front of him looking like Haggar again, though she makes no move against him. Her expression is unreadable.
Keith lurches onto his side and vomits bile onto the metal floor plates. Haggar’s expression barely shifts. He brushes the sticky hair from his eyes with one shaking hand and freezes, staring cross-eyed at the pure white strands. “What… the,” he gasps in dismay. “What the fuck did you do to me?!”
Haggar slowly slides the hood back onto her head. “I’m sorry,” she says simply, then she’s gone in a noxious cloud of black…whatever.
Keith can’t even imagine what the fuck that was all about. He sags, each breath a study in pain so bitter cold, it burns. He tries to sit up, but his limbs are like lead, numb and unresponsive. His head is splitting. He can’t seem to keep it from hitting the floor with a muted clang. Everything fades to murky gray.
Keith! a voice calls tensely, Oh God, Keith!
“Sh… Shiro?” Keith murmurs hopefully, opening his eyes and glancing around the dimly lit flight cabin, but there’s no one there. He’s alone. Of course he is.
The pod doors clang and Keith’s stomach flips as the pod abruptly changes course. A few minutes later, the doors split open, revealing the broad figure of a man backlit from behind by a brightly lit landing bay.
“Shiro?” Keith pleads.
It’s Kolivan. He charges into the cabin and crouches down beside Keith. Keith blinks away disappointed tears as Kolivan quickly sizes up the situation, the white hair and the poisoned blade protruding from Keith’s abdomen.
He does not look happy. “You are going to be the death of me, little one,” he says, sighing deeply.
Keith pulls a face. “Don’t call me that,” he mutters.
Then he blacks out.