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Hold a breath. Let it out.
Tick. Tick. Tick. Tock.
Hold a breath. Let it. Out.
Tick. Tick. Tick. T-Tock.
Hold. . .Hold a breath. L- Let it out.
Tick. Tick. Tick-ck. Toc-
“Keith? Keith, can you read me? KEITH, are you there? Please-”
Buzzing static scratched against his ears. He needed to respond. Someone was asking for him. The weight collapsing into his back and shoulders strictly prohibited any of the excess breaths necessary for proper speech, so nothing but a wheezing groan whistled past his lips.
“Oh, thank god. Keith, you with me, buddy?”
There laid a numb strip of flesh between his teeth, unmoving and uncooperative. His tongue. It felt heavy and weighted to the underside of his mouth. It would not move, but it could still taste. Pennies. Copper pennies and viscous bile, sludging along his useless tongue. He opted for another grunt instead of words.
“I need you to wake up for me, Keith-“
Wake up? He’s been awake for days. Listless, mindless days trapped under an unknown expanse of iron and clay. Unable to breathe, unable to release the building pressure against his ribs. He’s been here for days-
“Listen, I’ve been trying to get in contact with Lance too, but he’s not answering his comms. Do you have eyes on him?”
Lance? Lance was. . . where? Here?
Pushing away from the tendrils of unconsciousness that presented themselves oh so blessedly, he cracked open his eyes to the suffocating expanse that surrounded him. Walls of debris closed in, a few inches from his nose, a few feet? He didn’t know, but he could feel it. Closing, void-filled, trapped, trapped, trapped-
“Keith? I need you to breathe for me, dude. You’re hyperventilating right now, okay? I need you to calm down and tell me what you can see. Okay? Keith? You’re kind of scaring me right now. . .”
The voice was wavering, emotional. Like too much responsibility with too little attention for rest. He hoped the voice was okay. It kept tapering off in anxiety. Like it wanted to panic but refused to show such a stark lack of control. He hoped the voice was okay. . .
Lance.
Right. He needed to look for Lance. Because Lance. . . was. . . someone important? Someone. . . someone special. Yes. That fit better. Lance was special, and he needed to find Lance. He needed to move, aching limbs or no, and find Lance. The voice asked him to, and he trusted the voice.
Keith braced his arms on the ground, muscles spasming and shivering beneath his armor, weak with fatigue. He needed to move. Because of Lance.
Hold a breath. Let it out.
Tick. Tick. Tick. Tock.
Hold a breath.
He inhaled through his nose, lungs sticking to his ribs as dirt and debris filtered through his cracked visor.
Let it out.
Exhale out the mouth, a harsh cough racking his body.
Tick. One. Tick. Two. Tick. Three. . . Tock.
Move.
He shifted forwards, the weight on his back shrieking and groaning above his position of intentional disturbance. Like a cacophony of hell’s threats, the structures shifted as he forced his beaten body forward, onward. The littered ground dug glass shards and twisted nails into his forearms and abdomen, piercing through the stripped gaps in his armor. Another wheeze hissed out between his teeth.
“Jesus Christ, he sounds like he’s dying!”
“Pidge, you’re not helping.”
A couple of new voices stuttered through his coms, making him wince against the stabbing in his skull. They were asking him. . . if he was okay? But he wasn’t okay, of course, he wasn’t. Everything had a foggy haze to it except for that crystal-clear thought.
It had been days. Days of laying pinned under rubble on a middle-of-nowhere planet, waiting for help that was off on their own missions on a different planet. He had come here with Lance. . . yes, that sounded right. He came here with Lance for. . . something. Important. But when things went wrong the others were already so far away.
Alone. For days.
No food or water, just a little hydration cycle from his leaking suit to keep him alive.
Where was Lance?
------------------------
He crept on, crawling forward. There was a gap up ahead, barely large enough to fit through. Hands feeling carefully along the edges of the space, he jerkily pushed through the opening into another alcove created by a pair of collapsed archways.
“How’re you doing down there Keith? Have you found Lance yet?”
“We’re trying to get to you as fast as we can, buddy!”
“Keith? Can you respond at all?”
He grunted out a negative and forced his body to move onwards. A permanent shiver had resided in his bones after the second day down here, now it tremored up his spine and locked his jaw tight in a grimace. Cold everywhere, his toes, his fingers. . . and his mouth was so dry. . .and his stomach hollowed out-
A startle jolted him as his raw hand brushed against something soft.
Soft and silky. And sticky.
“What’s going on? Are you okay?”
It felt like hair. Hair with. . . blood. Keith squinted futilely into the darkness and coughed against the suffocating void. He brushed his hand through the hair again and hacked on the disrupted dirt.
“Lance?”
“Lance?! Keith, did you find Lance?”
“Is he okay?!”
“Keith, what’s going on?”
Keith groaned against the buzz in his ears as his vision whited out for a moment, shivering a tick later when the darkness claimed back his sight. “Shh. . .” The voices quieted down immediately and Keith felt grateful for that.
He ran his hands along the rest of the form, feeling his way to understand what his eyes couldn’t see. Hair, a nose, a chin, neck, shoulders. . . paladin armor for sure. Lance. This was Lance.
But. . .
Lance wasn’t moving.
“Lance?” Keith’s voice croaked out, raspy like stone against an iron grater. “Lance? . . . awake?” He nudged at the unmoving form, scraped knuckles tightening on the collar of the suit. “LANCE!” He shoved at the body again, harder. Harder and harder. Lance needed to wake up! Keith shook him again, and again, and again-
“K-“
He froze.
“. . . Keith?”
“Is that Lance?”
“Oh, thank god. They’re both alive!”
Keith’s breath stuttered and he coughed harshly, curling in on himself. He felt a vague brush of fingers on his hand. Sticky with blood, there was so much blood. Another cough stuck in his throat.
“Keith. . . you. . . are you. . . okay?” A voice, breathy and faded, ghosted against his ear. His chest released enough for a gasp, but little else. He nodded.
“Guys. I need you to listen to me. We’re shifting through the impact zone, but it’s a large area, and we can’t get a lock on your locations. We need you to try and make your ways more towards the surface so we can find you. Okay? You don’t need to make it all the way, but half the city was built down into the planet’s surface, so just got out of that zone, okay?”
“Okay.”
Keith wondered if Lance had heard the voice from Keith’s helmet, he didn’t know where Lance’s helmet went. It was probably lost in the earthquake. Keith didn’t know what he and Lance had expected to have happened after they found their target city completely abandoned, but a subsequent earthquake probably was not on the list.
“Keith, we. . . we need to move. . .”
“Okay.” Another wheeze. Why was it so hard to breathe?
Keith reached out for Lance’s shoulder, “Come on, let’s . . . go.” He felt a hand grab his own shoulder and point him away from the direction he had come from. Not that Keith could tell the direction anymore, his existence was nothing but inky black. He almost forgot what sunlight looked like. Days without light. . .
It took Keith’s mind a moment to catch back up to the present. He was half-dragging, half-leading Lance down another tunnel, one going more up than before. That was good. They could do this.
Hold a breath. Let it Out.
Tick. Tick. Tick. Tock.
“Wait. . . wait. . .”
Keith turned towards Lance’s voice. “What’s wrong?”
“My leg just. . . give me a minute. Okay? Just a minute. . .”
“Lance. We have to keep moving.” Keith coughed out, something thick coating his lips again. “We. . . we’re getting out. I promise.” Lance shifted beside him, his breaths coming out in pants.
“I know. . . I know. . . it just. . . Keith, it hurts.” Keith’s heart split at Lance’s words, this wasn’t fair. This whole thing wasn’t fair. “My leg. My head. They hurt so bad.” Lance sounded so young, like a child soldier caught in a war he never started. But that wasn’t fair from the truth though, was it?
Keith’s ribs shifted under his breath and he shuddered as Lance continued.
“I miss home. . . I miss my family. . . Keith. I want to go home. We’re so far from home. . .”
The red paladin hissed out through his teeth, “I know, Lance. . . I- I’ll get you home. . . I promise.”
“You can’t promise that.”
Keith tremored out another cough, weaker than before. “I promise, Lance.” He grabbed his friend’s arm and tugged it over his shoulder, ignoring the yelp of pain from Lance, ignoring the scream of pain from his ribs.
“Please. Keith. Please no. Just stop. Just, please. Stop a minute. Please.”
Keith crawled forward, pushing aside debris, dragging a struggling Lance behind him. He didn’t listen to Lance’s screams, he didn’t listen to the voices in his ear asking questions, he didn’t listen to his body turning inside out from moving far more than it should. He listened to none of it, because he was going to take Lance home.
-----------------------------
They crawled for hours.
Lance lost consciousness a while back from the blood loss with his leg. Or maybe a concussion making him pass out. Keith didn’t know which, but it didn’t matter. All that mattered was that Lance was still breathing, and Keith was still crawling.
Strips of skin had peeled off his fingers, stuffing the crevices in his palms with dirt and iron. His stomach turned in knots from hunger and blood bubbled up his throat with every cough. There was something wrong with his ribs. They felt completely broken off in some places, one of them putting dangerous pressure on his left lung. There was shrapnel in his abdomen, blood long-since soaked through his clothes.
Everything burned.
But he had to keep going. He had to get Lance home. To see his family.
Keith never had a family like Lance’s, the laughter and the warmth, so he would be damned if the other boy wouldn’t be able to enjoy his family for years to come.
Keith knew moving so fast was wreaking havoc on his body. That he was killing himself with every rest break that he didn't take.
Keith might not make it out. But Lance would. Lance had to.
Hold a breath. Let it out.
Tick. Tick. Tick. Tock.
-----------------------------
“Guys! We can see your trackers! We locked on your signals!”
“Hang in there guys, we’re coming.”
“Oh geez, that was so scary.”
Keith couldn’t talk. Couldn’t respond. His tongue felt too thick, too bloody. The voices were talking again, but all Keith could understand was that they had made it. That Lance would be safe soon.
He pulled the unconscious boy close to his chest, turning his head away slightly to expel the strips of flesh congealing in his throat. Then he nuzzled his face into Lance’s neck. Cold and pallid, but to Keith, it felt like everything a home should be.
Clutching Lance closer, Keith pressed a kiss to Lance’s jaw, then leaned his head down.
Lance would get home.
But Keith.
Keith already was home.
Hold a breath. Let it out.
Tick. Tick. Tick. Tock.
Every person's life had a timer ticking away. And Keith's was getting quieter and quieter.
Hold a breath. Let it out.
Tick. Tick. Tick. Tock.
The debris above their heads started shifting away just as Keith finally, finally, let his eyes drift closed. A contented smile caressing his gory face.
-----------------------------------------------
Hiss.
Pop.
A weightlessness in his bones just as he fell forward, before long arms caught his fall.
His mind felt fuzzy. . . off. Like waking from a long sleep on a too-soft mattress. Not wanting to become aware, but having daylight’s rays drag out consciousness anways.
keith blinked and swayed. Wait-
“I got you, Keith. I got you.”
Lance.
Lance was injured. He had been unconscious in Keith’s arms, and then... and then... nothing. Keith looked up, assessing the very much alive, yet very much exhausted boy in front of him. Had they been rescued? Was Lance safe now?
“Lance, you’re okay?”
There was a frustrated huff. “Of course I’m okay! Because of you. You idiot.” The arms clutched at his even tighter. “You almost killed yourself trying to get me out.”
“I promised I’d get you home.”
Lance pulled back, eyes wide and scared, “I don’t want to go home unless you’re going with me. Alright? This is a two-packaged deal, Keith. I need you to make me another promise. I need you to promise you’ll make it home with me. Okay?”
“But you are my home.”
Lance choked on a sob and pulled Keith back in for a hug. “You’re mine too. But I still need you to promise me. No matter what happens. Whether an earthquake buries an entire abandoned city and us with it. Or if the Galra attack with every cruiser in the entire empire. We make it out alive so we can go back to Earth someday. Together. Promise me.”
"But I-"
"KEITH!"
"Hey, Keith's awake!"
"I am so glad to see you up and about, Keith."
Keith sniffed as he heard the other paladins come racing into the room, voices concerned and arms reaching out to group-hug him tight. Through all the sudden noise, Keith wondered if maybe he already had a family like Lance’s. He looks up to catch a glisten of blue eyes.
Maybe he was a part of Lance's family too.
“I promise.”