SRPA Chapter 3
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(Content warning for hallucinations, dissociation & PTSD episodes!)
—
In late evening of the next day, Keith messaged Lance.
All members of their team had retreated back to their rooms (though Hedrox and En suspiciously left together), and Lance had just finished a call with his mom. She apologized like she did in all of them, for crying. But she clearly missed him just as much as he missed her.
As Lance grabbed some tissues from the shelf above his bed to blow his nose with, his phone next to his pillow dinged; the specific beep to indicate one of the old Voltron crew was messaging him. He dove for it.
A text from Keith, “Samurai 😫✨💦” in his phone, read: “Meeting with the team tomorrow. 0700. Deploying in the PM. See you then.”
One thing Lance found really endearing about Keith was his old person way of texting. If someone mixed Keith's texts in with his dad's, they'd be practically indistinguishable aside from the subject of the texts. He scrolled up to their last conversation.
“Good training. En wanted extra pointers. Staying behind for a bit.”
“K, I'll save u some of those spicy green chips u like 👍”
“Good luck........... Chip fiend Hedrox won't be happy. L. O. L.”
“🤣 Thanks for the heads up man! See you soon.”
“Over and Out.”
“🫡”
“L. O. L !”
“🫡”
He set his phone down and buried his face into the softness of his mattress. Then he threw his pillow across the room for good measure. He went about his nightly routine a little lighter despite the homesickness pulling at his chest, and wondered what they'd be doing tomorrow. They still hadn't gotten a replacement for Torat, and Hedrox confirmed there was still possibly a weeks-long wait before they could move on any intel from the bugged base. Maybe they'd be going on a super spy infiltration somewhere? Though there were plenty of other things the Blade of Marmora was doing these days too. They were trying to become a more public-facing organization, after all.
Slipping into a hazy state of half-consciousness before long, Lance only vaguely registered a far away blue flash against his closed lids, and an oddly familiar fuzzy jostling of his arms before falling asleep.
—
0700 on the dot. He arrived at the team meeting room, same one as where they gathered the last time, only now without Torat leaning up against the wall. As Lance walked in to see the others already there and waiting, he wondered what the big guy was doing now. He'd been transferred to a different team, but that was about all he knew.
“Morning, Lieutenant.” Kestin, though usually pretty quiet, was the first to notice him, and waved. Keith looked up from the hologram table he was studying with En and Hedrox, and smiled.
“Mornin'.” Lance was still a little tired despite mostly adjusting to the longer day cycle, but everyone else seemed full of energy. En sharply saluted him, then turned back to face Keith.
“Hey Lance, sleep well?” Lance nodded in between a tired yawn. “Pff, you sure?”
“I got my nine hours, I just had a super weird dream..” He'd dreamt of one of those pretty furry moths back on Earth, except huge, that kept trying to lick his face and sit on him. It was mildly terrifying. “Anyway, I'm good. What's going on with this mission?”
“Big supply delivery to a colony. I'll show you the details.” From all around, everyone approached the table and regarded the screen sat within it. Just as before, a series of images with accompanying text lit up in the 3-d display. Lance eyed a familiar looking planet.
“Elysium-2?” Keith nodded.
“You've seen the news, then. Good. The refugees from the original settlement landed about half a year ago, and we're gonna hand out some medical and food supplies that are running lower than initially projected.”
“And actually—the Blade wasn't the only one to volunteer to offer supplies, but the Inter-galactic Coalition thought it might be good PR for us,” Hedrox supplied as he raised a lanky finger. “Looootta people are still afraid to trust us since, y'know. Most of us are half-Galra and all..”
There was a brief silence, then En leaned forward and regarded his teammate with lowered brows. “A prejudice we shall eradicate, in time.” Hedrox tilted his head back and forth in a strange motion before letting out a watery chuckle.
“That we will! Anyway, what are our roles, Commander?”
“..We'll be working distribution and security. There's a couple of teams on this for the different areas of the settlement given how big it is, and we'll be stationed here.” He pointed to a glowing yellow point on the planet-sphere in front of them. It swiftly zoomed in to show a 3-d rendering of the area. Two additional yellow spots appeared. “We'll drop down and hand out supplies here, and monitor security over here.” One of the dots was placed within a very modern looking building, similar in design to the ones quickly built back when New Altea was being settled.
“There's been reports of potential suspicious movement in the system, so in case anything happens, we want our best on sight.” Keith looked at Lance. “You in?” Immediately Lance's face grew hot. He certainly didn't feel like he deserved to be called their best, but he cleared his throat and gave a assured 'mhm!' regardless. “Good, that's everyone on board, then. We'll go over the specifics of the layout and the expected timeline for everything going down. After that we'll grab our gear and Kestin will take us in.”
Pre-mission anxiety skimmed and bubbled in the pit of his stomach once again, but this time Lance found it a little easier to ignore.
—
Touchdown was at 1300. Kestin joined up in the atmosphere with two additional fighter pilot personnel manning the supply ships to make up B squad; Keith's team, Kolivan's team, and another Blade commander called Thiga's team. Landing went without incident from teams A to D who kept in close contact despite the miles of distance between them. Lance gripped his sniper rifle's strap across his torso tightly when the ship lurched to a stop and snuck a subtle glance at his friend beside him.
For this mission, he'd be separated from Keith. Lance was, embarrassingly, more anxious about that than anything else. It was important for higher profile blade members like Kolivan and Keith (as well as Krolia in D team) to be the face of the operation, and so they would be handing out supplies to the residents. There was potential danger there if the reports of suspicious movement were to be believed, and so Lance was pretty sure that's why Keith delegated Lance to overseeing the security division of their group. He and Hedrox would rendezvous with the blades under Thiga's command in the building across the way from the supply ships, then from there observe to make sure everything went smoothly. He didn't like the idea of Keith openly risking himself while stashing Lance away, but was surprisingly too embarrassed to say anything. His mask was activated, and as the doors to the shuttle hissed open, Lance headed towards the exit.
“Hey Lance.” He turned around to face an also masked Keith. “Watch my back out there, alright?” Lance thought about his only strength—his aim, and how he'd probably be useless if he were at Keith's side like he wanted to be.
“..You bet. Careful out there, Keith.” He nodded, and Lance picked up his pace to meet up with Hedrox.
His nest this time was a lot different from the last; A large office-like space within the building had been cleared out to make way for several massive server-looking machines that were clearly Marmorite-y in design. He had no idea what they were for. Hedrox and Lance entered to find the security team already there and settled in. When they noticed their approach, all but one of the members of Commander Thiga's team whipped up and gave sharp salutes. “Lieutenant!” There were six of them in total, all of various size and race behind their masks, and stood stone rigid in front of him as he shifted uncomfortably. Normally Lance would have loved to be treated with such clear importance, but he was distracted by the unease of not being able to see if Keith was okay.
“Uh, at ease, soldiers.” He wanted to get himself set up at the windowed opening straight away, but realized he should probably do the leader stuff he was meant to do. “Status?”
“Ready and at your command, Lieutenant!” The shortest blade rumbled in the deepest voice Lance had ever heard. “And might I add what an honor it is to work alongside a Paladin of Voltron..!” Lance jerked, then immediately caught himself and stiffly walked over to the windowed opening. He turned away.
“Cool, cool, uh, I'll set my stuff up here, and you guys do... your thing. Let me know if anything happens.”
The stony line of blades once again saluted, and quickly set about their work. Hedrox pulled out some supplies from their blade-issued backpack, and sidled over to Lance.
“You good, Lieutenant..?” He whispered through their personal comms as he set up several tablet devices next to Lance. With his rifle now pointed towards the platform in front of the supply ships where Keith was standing, Lance breathed out a small chunk of worry. His right ring finger tapped the comms button on his palm.
“Why'd Keith make me leader? I dunno how to lead! I'm just here to shoot bad guys if they show up.” Hedrox snorted.
“Oh, I dunno, Lieutenant. Maybe because the Commander always goes on about how much everyone respects you, and how insanely skilled you are, and how much he trusts you?” Lance whipped his head up to look at them so quickly his neck clicked.
“H-He said all that..?!”
“Uh-huh. It's also favouritism for sure, but you still absolutely deserve to be here if that's what you're worried about.”
“Distribution commencing, Lieutenant,” a blade informed from off to the side. Lance studied Keith in his scope next to Kolivan and some other masked blade that was probably that Thiga guy, and swallowed to help with his suddenly very dry throat. En was there, too, loading the heavier of the alien supply crates onto hovering carts.
“U-Understood, thanks.” He pressed the button on his thumb once again. “I didn't know Keith said all that stuff!” Hedrox once again tilted their head strangely as they typed away.
“Really? I thought with how obvious the both of you are about your feelings for each other, you already knew..” Lance nearly fumbled his rifle then and there. His pulse picked up as his face grew sweaty.
“F-Fee—Um! What?!" Quiznack, why were they talking about this?! And how did he know?!
“Lieutenant... Come on. Or, actually... Would it be helpful if I told you how much I love the intricacies of human social interactions? And humans in general. You guys are so cool and interesting, so uh. I tend to notice that sort of stuff.” From beneath his hood, Hedrox's little sunflower bots fluttered to life around him. “But both of you are also super obvious.”
Lance was at a loss for words. Under his mask he knew he was red as a beet as he watched Keith unmask and start handing out supply kits to the forming lines of residents. His ponytail had gotten a bit loose and strands once again framed his handsome face. He was smiling.
“Keith's—I mean. He's—into guys?” His hands were sweaty now too, with his arms beginning to shake from holding them so tightly still. He hoped nothing was going to happen, because his aim was definitely shot!
“Maybe not all of them, but you? Yeah, Lieutenant, yeah. Very. It's really sweet how much he likes talking about the stuff you guys used to do together! Hmm.. I just assumed you two were already a thing, though, so maybe it's not really my place to talk about this. My bad.”
“No, uh, I was—Like I didn't know if Keith was into—“ Lance lifted his right hand away from his rifle to gesture at himself and distantly wondered how crazy he looked to the other blades who couldn't hear their conversation. He retreated back to his position. “So I didn't wanna. Assume? A-Anyway!” Frantically Lance desperately searched his mind for something else to talk about, because this was quickly becoming too much to deal with. “Human behaviours? That's your thing? How'd that come about?” Hedrox chuckled.
“Subject change, understood. Yes! Humans are the coolest—I'm gonna move to Earth someday, so I started studying your speaking and social patterns so it's easier to fit in. And because it's fun.”
From through his scope, Keith raised a hand to his ear, nodded, then continued to pass out supply canisters. “Huh.. Why us? I'm pretty sure there are a bunch of cooler alien species out there than plain old humans.”
“Now that's where you're wrong, Lieutenant! Humans are fascinating. All so similar, yet none exactly the same.” They pressed their back up against the plain, modern wall next to Lance. “..On my planet, conformity was umm.. kind of a given. Our ancestors were actually a hivemind, so.. we stay close to our roots and expectations.” A hivemind? Lance could recall only a single occasion where team Voltron interacted with one of them, and it was super weird.
“Data crunching comes really easily to most of us,” Hedrox continued. “And I actually found out about Earth when I was snooping around the Blade database of our highest ranking members and found—um, the Commander's mom. Super classified, by the way, don't tell anyone I was doing that.” Lance laughed.
“Reminds me of Pidge, but yeah, my lips are sealed dude, don't worry.”
“Coolies, thanks. Anyway when I learned about Earth I quickly discovered all of the amazing things you guys have like movies, and music, and so many different cultures, and—and individuality in general! Also, related, I'm insanely ugly by Yorith standards. Look.” Lance obeyed and turned his head to watch as Hedrox's mask shifted away from his face,
and one of the most shockingly attractive faces Lance had ever seen appeared. Blue tinged skin, rosegold eyes with soft lashes, near-glowing long golden locks curling around a sharp but also somehow soft jawline, intricate neon swirling designs tracing around the outer portions of his face and onto his horn... Maybe not as much of Lance's type as Keith was, but man oh man he was hot hot.
“........Dude. You're hot, what?”
“I know, right?!” Quickly, they reactivated their mask when they saw the other blades turn to examine them. “One day me and En are gonna settle down on Earth and I'm gonna be a crazy popular stone—er, rockstar, that is. That's my dream.” Some of his tiny floating bots scooted out of the window as he curled his legs in close, and Lance wondered what his and En's relationship was. “But only once the empire is totally gone.”
From the opening his rifle was pointed out, excited chatter from the beings below drifted upwards and into his ears. There was a sizable crowd now, and Lance listened to Hedrox as he kept his eyes peeled for threats. “Yeah, I get it. Too risky otherwise. My family's in New Altea just in case they keep attacking..”
Hedrox sighed. “Yup.. The empire invaded my home planet half a millennia ago and everything sucked, of course. But when I was growing up it was at least always.. quiet. Then one day they sent in some giant planet cracker and destroyed it. For some rare material near the core used to make ship parts.” Lance went cold, and thought of his old house, half buried beneath rubble and waves.
“Geez.. Sorry to hear that.”
“It's okay.. I've had a while to get over it. That's also where I met En, actually! He was in charge of the mining operation before he double-crossed the empire for killing most of his crew.”
“En.. worked for the empire?” Sharp, immediate fear pierced Lance as he watched the very same alien pass close by keith with a large hover cart. He obscured his vision of Keith for a moment before continuing on to the residents below. “C-Can we trust him?!” His breath sped up, and his scope immediately honed in on En's masked head.
“Yeah, don't worry, Lieutenant, he's trustworthy. His non-Galran half makes it so that, when he bonds with someone, it's a lifetime thing. He's got a rough exterior, sure, but only to keep his extra soft inside parts safe!” Lance still felt queasy watching them move around so closely to Keith. “And if you need more convincing,” Hedrox began, and pulled off one of his gloves. He lifted up his palm, and it glowed a brilliant color Lance couldn't even put a name to. “On top of all my amazing gifts and genius, I can read souls.” His fingers wiggled. “Hivemind remnants, and all that. He's good people, I checked very thoroughly, since originally I was gonna, uh. Kill him.”
Man, that was a lot to take in. “...Okay, I guess—Yeah, I trust you, at least. I'm just worried about—I dunno, something happening to Keith.”
“I get you, Lieutenant, all of us are pretty much the same. The Commander's the whole reason we were even able to do anything with our lives, after all. We basically owe him everything.”
Before Lance could respond, he noticed a subtle shift of Keith's head, before his eyes widened. A blade made a noise of concern from beside him, Keith shouted something, then En dashed towards Keith and grabbed him. Lance moved to immediately take him out, and then—a massive explosion.
The force of it reached Lance and the rest of the security team as the building gave a violent shudder, though he couldn't see an impact crater. Dust and smoke filled their view, and Lance quickly pressed his comms. “Keith?! You okay?!” Rapidly he pulled his scope around to try and see past the debris. Hedrox sent out all of his drones, then began furiously typing away at his console. For a moment there was no response. Then,
“Ugh.. I'm alright.” Keith's strained voice filtered into his ears, and he coughed. “En's hurt. D squad was just attacked too. Can you see anything from up there?” Lance quickly scanned the horizon again, still just as obscured. Screams and wails came from down below.
“Just getting smoke and dust up here..!”
“Must be a smokescreen. Kestin, what's your status?”
Kestin spoke in a mildly panicked tone into their comms. “The ship's controls are jammed. Something external. If we can get it online I can activate thrusters to help with visuals. Hedrox?”
They were already out the door. “I'm grabbing En, then I'll come help.” Lance turned back and squinted through the obscurity. In the corner of his eye, a hundred or so meters away from Keith, something glowed. Purple. He swivelled and pointed his rifle, zoomed in, recognized the glowing insignia, then fired.
“Your 3 o'clock, incoming sentry drones, guys!”
A small hoard of bright, glowing purple poured into view. They weren't running, no—there were barely visible bursts from jet-boosters coming from the swarm's backs. Some of the other security blades began firing away on their own rifles alongside Lance. But there were what looked to be hundreds. The telltale sound of galran rifle firing began at the same time as another explosion roared off to his right. The foundations shook. Lance couldn't breathe.
Focus. Focus! Find Keith. Keep him safe.
The smokescreen thinned slightly for a moment and Lance spotted Keith next to Kolivan, carrying a limp En with his arm under their shoulders. Another set of glowing insignia's erupted from his right.
“9 o'clock too. Couple hundred drones on both sides!”
“Keep us covered until Hedrox can get us into the ship.” He watched as Keith immediately vanished from his view, followed by Kolivan and then En. From his wrist, he watched as the battery on their cloaking began to drain.
Didn't need to tell him twice. “Roger.” He switched his rifle to rapid-cooldown mode so he could fire off more shots, held his breath, then began to take them out.
Easy. No complexity to their movements. Lining themselves up to be mowed down. Hedrox's cloaking went up, too. More screaming from down below. Couldn't worry about civilians. Keep Keith safe. Exhale, inhale, position, fire, position, fire, position, fire, position, fire. Exhale. Distantly,
“Alrighty, in we go!” The doors to the shuttle opened, but some sentries from his left had nearly made it there already. Nope, no no no! Not today. Immediately he took them out.
“You six, focus on the eastern sentries!” Lance barked a command to the other blades with him. They were all obnoxiously slow, and he couldn't rely on them to help with the sentries already too close to Keith. He had to do it himself. The sky brightened, and so did the ground, and Lance, once again, took aim.
It was impossible to say how long it was until Hedrox and Kestin brought the ships back online and activated their thrusters. He was lost to the repetition of taking aim, firing, taking aim, firing. His vision swam, his wrist ached, his rifle was his old bayard again, but he was going be damn sure no one could hurt his friend.
And then, wind. The flash of light and familiar sound of the ships bursting to life; a booming twister whipped up the smokescreen that was making his job harder until it was nearly cleared away. Civilian bodies on the ground came into clear view. Don't look.
To his right, through the light filling his mask, too many sentries were still closing in. Still a threat. Keith. Inhale, position, fire, position, fire, position, fire, position, fire.. No response?
His rifle was overheated. The other blades were still too slow. Useless. He arose from his weapon, and would apologize for bruising egos later on after Keith was safe. The other sniper closest to him was the big one who didn't salute, though was easy enough to pry off and throw out of the space he needed to work. Back looking through a scope, inhale, position, fire, position, fire, position, fire. The sentries fell like flies. He could do this, he could be helpful.
“Lance, status?!”
“East and west sentries just about taken care of.” ..Was that his voice? He sounded weird. Like he was talking through a mile of water. Huh. His bracers had at some point shifted into his paladin uniform again, too. Now that Lance had a second to think about it, that was also pretty strange. Was something wrong with him?
“Huh?!”
“Commander, look—he's right! How'd they—”
“—Com..mand..er! These tactics.. are known to me.. We are being.. herded. Southern f-forces... We must needs—evacuate.” Man, En spoke annoyingly slow. The rest of the sentries to his left and right were already downed by the time they finished gasping out the intel. Lance grabbed another blade's sniper rifle and slipped through the opening of the building, activating his boosters so he could get around to the other side and start taking care of the rest. His pulse was surprisingly quiet as he landed down on the ground next to the corpse of Silvio.
“Heyy, uhh, Keith?” Several miles of water now, his voice was barely audible to himself. He wasn't sure if Keith even responded. “'Think something might be wrong with me. Dr. Nguyen was prob'ly right. I'll tell you after. ” He laughed at how easy it was to admit to Keith now, when he promised himself he'd never breathe a word.
A whisper of a voice. Keith? Impossible to tell. The light in his mask was near blinding, but he rounded the first corner of the building, watched a hilariously massive swarm of sentries arise from a crater in the ground, looked back for a second at the ship Keith was on, then, somehow, looked at it from above.
His bones felt strange. There was wind pushing all around him. Oh, he was flying. How did that happen? He tried to laugh but water came up.
And for a second, he thought he heard Blue.
-
CLIFF HANGER! okay so one of my goals has been to get across that Lance is a very unreliable narrator, and has avoidant tendencies where he doesn't like to think about the things that upset him (let alone talk about them!!), so I hope that's come across in these chapters! I wanted to vaguely hint at things like, for example, his old therapist (Dr. Nguyen) at one point recommending Lance not becoming a soldier again. Or how Lance planned on never telling Keith about that since obviously Keith wouldn't have invited him to be a Blade if he knew, & would probably feel really guilty! But I also worry I'm being too vague, so. I at least want to offer some clarity and context here. 🤣 Apologies if it's confusing at times!
ALSO. Kosmo has taken to teleporting into Lance's room and cuddling with him almost every night. This will be revealed to Lance later on LMFAO.
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We were robbed of this
Guys Keith and Allura are besties. I hate that they only had an interaction when dream works needed her to create racial drama for him. And once they make up, they go back to being distant.
———————-
Does Keith have a random collection of art supplies hidden in his closet?
Nope.
He goes to Allura’s room instead. Thanks to their shared experiences and mutual feelings of unbelonging, they’re actually best friends. (Shiro and Coran are family, so don’t worry, they aren’t being replaced.)
Allura practices hairdos and makeup on Keith while he puts her untouched art supplies to use and spills his guts to her. It’s a win-win, Keith gets things off his chest that he can’t say to anyone else, and Allura gets all the gossip.And, of course Allura shares a bit, but she finds it easier to listen to others and find comfort in that.
Which is why she feels horrible betrayal crawling through her gut when Shiro and Keith got to the Marmora base and won’t tell her anything anymore.
She knows it’s because he’s worried that he’ll crack and gush everything to her ( can never keep secrets from the princess) but she doesn’t understand what could be so bad that he doesn’t want to get advice from her.
It feels like she’s losing him.
She finds out that he is half Galra and explodes internally. Not only had she told the enemy her darkest secrets, but she actually valued him.
It had to be a mistake, or maybe Keith is even faking it to cover up something else.
But the deep hurt that floods his eyes any time she looks at him is very clearly genuine.
She’s never seen him looks so wounded. Wait, yes she has. He looks like this when he talks about his dad running into a flaming building and leaving him behind forever without a second thought.
And Keith has been getting more stressed without a creative outlet as well, and the whole team notices the tension when Keith makes it past level 183 on the training simulator.
Lance has gotten more protective and it is common to see him with an arm around Keith protectively and sending Allura loathing looks.
Keith and Allura make up when she realizes how crappy she’s been but doesn’t know how to apologize as sincerely as he deserves.
She takes her chance after Keith announces to the team that he and Lance are are officially dating. Allura had known about Keith’s crush for a long time now, longer than Shiro.
Allura slides up to Keith during dinner.
“So. You did it. Make sure you hang on to him, he seems like a good one.”
As the resident lesbian of the castle, Allura does not understand the men she is surrounded by, but Keith is the only one willing to indulge in ‘girl time.’
When Keith only raises an eyebrow at her sudden interest in him, she starts blabbing apologies.
“I’ll never be able to make it up to you, you deserved absolutely none of my crap, but ple-“
She’s cut off by Keith hugging her. One thing about Keith is that his surprisingly small frame makes him great for hugging. He almost seems delicate like this.
His voice wobbles when he speaks, which drives a stake through Allura’s heart.
“It’s alright. I just missed my alien twin bestie. You’ve already done so much more for me than you think.”
Lance has clearly gotten to him, but Allura ignores that. She’s just happy to have her friend back.
(His weird habit of mimicking other people’s behaviors just comes was part of him.)
————————-
I think platonic love is SO important.
Side note: Someone said the word delicate to my art teacher today, and THIS QUEEN starts singing the song, and agh I started singing it too, and I love her so much, she SLAYS.
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