Archive of Our Own ^beta

The day started like no other, with him waking up in his bed.

Well, he did wake up in cold sweat but that was because he had a nightmare but that was fine.

Everything was seriously fine!

It was an occupational hazard to have nightmares in their line of work as paladins. Their work as paladins had both taxing effects on their physical and mental states.

It was fine until it wasn't anymore.

He stumbled out of his room, into the hallways, trying to catch a breath.

Why couldn't he breathe? Why was the room all spinny? Why was he tumbling?

Who was holding him?

"Hey breathe with me Lance," a soft voice cooed at him, urging him to take a breathe and so he tried.

"I can't. I cant. I can't. makeitstopmakeitstopmakeitstop."

"You have to. Tell me what you sense around you. Please, Lance. Tell me."

Lance tried, but

Sorrysorrrysorrysorrysorry

"It's fine Lance, but please, tell me what you feel."

Okay, that was easy, he could tell what he felt around him. He took a second to take a breath. And wow, what a relief he felt and he said, "The walls, they are cold. Your hands are warm."

"That's good Lance. Anything else?"

Did Lance feel anything else? He didn't think so.

"No," he said finally.

The voice hummed and said, "That's fine. Can you open your eyes now Lance?"

Could Lance do that? Yes, he could do that.

And with an enormous effort (it should be criminal to have that much effort to open a pair of eyes, that in fact was his), he cracked open his eyes to see his saviour.

To his horror, it was none other than Keith.

Lance jumped back, almost like he was shocked and then socked in his jaw. The fuck!

The universe was really against him today, huh!

First, he woke up to a bad dream, and early that it, then he had a major panic attack, and then his cru-no rival, definitely rival was staring down at him with a curious look in his eyes.

"Um, was not okay for me to touch you. I mean, you looked pretty scared and I am kinda experienced with panic attacks and so yeah," Keith said awkwardly, not meeting Lance's eyes.

"Yeah, no, it was fine. I was kinda surprised to see you here. That's all," Lance said.

Keith seemed to internally melt in relief at that and Lance thought, "Cute. Wait what?"

What Keith did next melted all of Lance's internal resolve to be strict with himself to not go awwww.

He smiled that soft little rare Keith smiles that almost none of them got to see even after staying with them for almost a year and some others even more (cough*Shiro*cough).

Lance did what he was not supposed to do. 

That was one thing that was not supposed to happen.

He melted.

After breakfast, Allura asked all of them to move into the ship's control centre.

"So beautiful, what's the problem," Lance drawled out, in some semblance of his flirty ways to ignore his morning problem. Well, it is true what they say, ignore a problem until it goes away.

Keith frowned at him and why the hell was Keith looking at him.

Ok, why was he looking at Keith?

It might be related to the incident in the morning but-

His chain of thoughts got cut off but Allura spoke, "This morning, the castle ship received a message. Coran decoded it."

Everyone leaned on the edge of their seats in anticipation of how it was going to turn out. What was it?

"It's a transmission asking for help from one of the planets in the solar system we are now gonna pass through."

Allura pulled out a hologram map and said, "Sol is the fifth planet in the Anarchy solar system. They are under Galra occupation and will need our help to rescue them. This will be an important mission as Sol is the sore producer of a type of medicinal herb that is on-demand across the whole universe and therefore we must free them before the Galra have an upper hand on us."

Lance nodded along with Allura’s speech. It was necessary to make sure that the planet does not fall into Galra's hands because it would be one, very disastrous and two, horrible.

“Princess, when do we take off for the mission,” Shiro, the ever-dependable captain asked for them, the socially awkward bunch.

“Get into your suits Paladins. It would be wise to get to Sol without further delay in our plans. Every moment wasted is giving the Galra an upper hand on us,” Allura said.

And with those words, it had all of them rushing out of the common room and into their lions.

Keith knew something was gonna go wrong as soon as he stepped on the planet.

He knew that something felt wrong, deep in his bones, that either someone was gonna get hurt or their mission was gonna do a complete one-eighty and leave them stranded on this stupid planet.

On top of that, the instance he had with Lance in the morning-

He gave Lance another worried look, the idiot should have taken a day off after what happened to him in the morning, if anything at the very least told someone that he was compromised, then they could lighten his load.

And if Keith knew anything about battle planning, which to say is a lot, Lance should have stayed on the castle ship because probably his long-range weaponry would play a crucial role in helping them from far and if Lance was not feeling well, their mission might just fail.

And Keith was not at all worried about Lance, not at all. He was just worried that their mission would just go horribly wrong.

“Are you in position Lance,” Shiro asked through the comms.

“A thumbs-up from my location. Hunk is also ready and is asking you guys to be careful,” Lance said, winking at Hunk beside him.

He could almost hear Shiro smiling at him as he said, “Of course, we’ll be careful, you should be too.”

And with that their mission started.

“A Galra is coming towards you at twelve o’clock,” Lance reported.

“Thank,” Keith’s sharp, professional voice cut out anything he might have to add and Lance pouts when Keith turns off his comm.

“Having troubles,” Hunk said from his end, giving Lance a look that made him want to bang his head on a nearby wall.

“No, it’s not like I’m ever not having troubles with Keith-” Lance started but then he felt a sudden pain in his sides.

And he blacked out but not before he heard Hunk panicked cries of his name and he slipped out.

“Damn it, Lance,” Keith curses, running a hand through his hair. “This is serious, alright? Shiro is on the bench for this mission, that doesn’t mean you get to goof around and mess this all up.”

Lance pushes down his irritation, but can’t help but bite back with, “also doesn’t mean you need to pretend to be Shiro.”

This mission is taking a bigger toll on them than they would like to admit. Shiro had been injured in the previous mission and had only been out of his healing pod for twenty minutes before another distress call sounded nearby. They had assured Shiro they could handle it without him, but now…

Lance shakes his head. No, they can handle it. They will handle it. He’s totally not freaking out. Not panicking. He’s calm and collected, and he knows what he’s doing. Lance panicking? Pssh. Yeah, right. As if.

“Maybe we can attack it from below, you know? Like, maybe we can distract it by going around and around and around in circles until it gets, dizzy? And then we attack it before it has a chance to stand still and––and you know, regain its senses, I don’t know, maybe, Blue can ice it again, or” He’s definitely not rambling because he’s panicking, nope. “Maybe we can like, trick it into––”

“Lance, for God’s sake!” Pidge shouts, distraught. “We need to focus, okay?”

“Okay!” Lance exclaims, exasperated. “Okay! But if you haven’t noticed, we can’t exactly form Voltron right now! I mean if we could, then I could have used my bayard and we could have used it to shoot the heck out of this monster but––but Shiro’s not here, and we can’t form Voltron, and I’m trying to think of ideas!”

If the other paladins notice his voice growing shaky and loud towards the end, they don’t comment on it. Instead, Keith brings Red to a halt and grounds out, “We’re all aware of that, Lance, but if you don’t have anything useful to contribute, then keep it shut.”

Lance’s jaw clenches, and he exhales heavily through his nose.

Then it occurs to him: the monster’s only using its right arm for an attack, and its left arm for defence. If they can disable its defence system, then it would be vulnerable to attack its left side, which would give them time to also distract it before it could fire again…

“Hey, guys, I think I got an idea,” he says.

He thinks he can hear Keith mutter something under his breath.

“No, seriously,” Lance pushes on, shaking his head. “Look, it’s only using its left side for defence, and it’s right arm for an attack, so if Hunk and I try to disable its––”

But no, apparently the team has other ideas. Okay, that’s totally cool. Lance is not going to comment on how Keith, Pidge and Hunk all decided to attack the robot’s head (which they’ve already tried, but look how that went), leaving Lance behind, unsure of where to aim.

So Lance decides to aim for her left arm. Maybe that will make it more vulnerable to attacks from the other paladins, and it may distract it from them momentarily.

But as he is Lance, and as the universe is never on his side, his plan for “distraction” ends up with his lion spiralling straight down to the ground after a turbo blast aimed right for it.

“Lance!” Hunk calls out in concern. “You okay?”

“Yeah,” Lance tries to reassure them, gulping nervously. He takes a look back up at the robot now towering above him and notices that his attack, at least, had worked. Its left side is completely open. “Its left side is vulnerable, you guys should––ah, shit!”

Blue crashes into the ground, hard, and Lance is thrown out of his seat. His shoulder collides with the wall, and he bites back against a scream as he feels a pop. He shuts his eyes, inhaling through his teeth, praying that that is not a dislocated shoulder.

“Lance?” It’s Keith now, and Lance is surprised to hear the hint of concern lacing his voice. “You alright down there?”

“Great,” Lance mutters, pushing himself to stand up. Yep, that is definitely a dislocated shoulder. And it hurts.

A lot.

He walks back to the cockpit, but before he slides back into the seat, he hears the other paladins calling out for him in alarm. When he looks out the window––technically, Blue’s eye––to see what’s going on, he feels his heart drop.

Another turbo blast headed right towards Blue.

Before Lance can react, the turbo blast hits them, and the lion rolls over across the harsh terrain, taking quite the beating when it begins to roll down a hill.

Lance takes an even worse beating, however, when he is sent to the other side of the cockpit, crashing against the wall, and ow, his shoulder, that hurts. Then he falls forward when Blue rolls over again, then falls back, then he’s thrown across the cockpit again––

He doesn’t know how long it goes on for, only that when Blue finally stills, he rolls over to his side and vomits. His head is thumping, and black is dancing around the edges of his vision. Sometime during the process, his helmet had fallen off his head, now lying across from him with a crack running down its centre.

His shoulder is burning, his ankle is pulsing with pain, his head hurts and he wants to throw up again… Sitting up is not something he even wants to think about, but he can hear his teammates calling for him through the coms. He just has to reach his helmet. Simple.

You can do it, Lance, he tells himself, and rolls over onto his stomach before pushing forward and crawling over to his helmet.

His entire body screams in protest, but finally, he reaches the helmet. “Guys?” He croaks.

“Lance!” It’s Shiro. When did Shiro get on the coms? “Are you alright?”

Lance remains quiet for a few moments, contemplating an answer. Is he alright? No, not really. His lip begins to tremble as the pain washes over him, and he shuts his eyes. But he can’t tell Shiro that, can’t let him down––It was the one mission they had without him leading and wasn’t it enough that Lance had gotten himself into this mess? “I’m good,” he lies in a small voice.

Shiro pauses, sceptical of the boy’s answer, but lets it slide. “Okay. We’re heading your way now, with the castle. Can you fly Blue?”

Shit. Can he? Lance closes his eyes, searching for the bond with Blue, searching for his lion’s thoughts. Can she fly?

Yes, he feels her say, albeit tiredly. He’s never felt her this tired before.

“Yes,” he echoes to Shiro. Then, after deep inhales, he pushes himself up to his knees, shutting his eyes when all he can see is black. Inhale, exhale. Slowly. Regain your footing. He opens his eyes again, then bites down on his lip when he grips the arm of the pilot chair and pushes himself to stand up.

“Let’s do this, mi more,” he whispers to Blue, and the seat slides back closer to the control panel, which glows at his touch.

The flight is wonky, at best, but Lance manages to reach the castle. What he expects when he finally makes it to the ramp is to be carried off to the healing pod, where he can actually relax and sleep for as long as he needs to.

What he does not expect is for the entire team to be scowling at him, and certainly not for Keith to rush over to him only to jab a finger into his chest.

“What the Hell, Lance?” Keith is angry. Why is he angry? “Why don’t you ever listen to us? We were all attacking its head, and you––you decided to attack its arm! You didn’t help us, and you left yourself open for attack!”

Lance flinches, his growing headache definitely not appreciating Keith shouting at such proximity. “You didn’t even say what you were planning to do! I was telling you we should attack its defence, ah,” his ankle throbs painfully again, “and you guys were just off attacking the head again!”

“Well, we didn’t say it, but we all agreed on it,” Hunk chimes in, “you know, through the lions’ bond. It was like we all had the same idea, and then it was like we all just decided to go for it.”

Pidge furrows her eyebrows. “You didn’t feel that?”

Lance lets out a sharp breath, and looks down, shaking his head… which proves to be a bad idea when the world begins to tilt around him, and his nausea begins to creep up again. “No, I didn’t, and apparently you guys didn’t hear me trying to offer a better plan.” He argues weakly.

“Of course you didn’t feel it,” Keith snaps, crossing his arms. “You weren’t taking the mission seriously!”

“The paladins…” Allura hesitantly adds. “The paladins should all be able to feel this.”

Oh, okay. Lance gets it. Paladins should feel it, and he didn’t, and it was his fault that the team decided to follow through with a dumb plan instead of listening to him, and it’s his fault that he can barely stand on his feet and his shoulder is hurting and his head feels like it’s about to burst open, yeah, okay. No, he gets it.  

“Look, maybe you just need to work harder on your bonding,” Pidge says. “In another mission… that could have cost someone their life. We need to all be able to communicate through our bond, Lance, and if you can’t, then it might really hold us back.”

His lip begins to tremble again, and Lance wants to curse this habit, wants to curse the fact that he has no control over it. He closes his eyes, and as he lets out the next breath, he drops to his knees, unable to keep himself upright any longer.

If his mom had been here, then she would have led him right inside, laid him down on his bed and made him some soup and gave him some painkillers… She would have hugged him tight and… and then she would have disciplined him…

But he’s in space now, he’s a defender of the universe.

He lifts his eyes slowly, and when they meet with Shiro’s, he drops his gaze immediately.

He can’t cry, not in front of his hero. Not in front of the team that already considers him to be their weakest. So he shuts his eyes and tries to even out his breathing. He’s not going to cry.

“I’m sorry,” he whispers instead. But Keith does not look smug when his eyes meet Lance’s; Instead, he looks very worried.

“We should bring him inside,” Shiro says, limping closer to Lance. “You don’t look so great, kiddo.”

“I always look great,” Lance fires back, attempting one of his big, toothy grins. It falls right off when Hunk touches his shoulder, however, and he hisses out in pain.

“Oh, jeez, I’m so sorry.” Hunk apologizes. “Hey, do you think you could put your arms across my neck? You don’t look like you can walk very much, and I don’t want to carry you if your shoulder is hurting… so maybe I can give you a piggy-back ride, just like our days back in the garrison?”

Lance nods, licking his dry lips, and wraps his good arm around Hunk’s neck when his friend gets into position. Pidge and Keith help him wrap his legs around Hunk’s waist, and Lance curls in on himself, shying away from their touch.

He must look terrible if even Keith had stopped snapping at him.

But as they make their way back to the castle, Lance cannot stop thinking about the fact that he could not feel the team’s bond.

Was he really not meant to be part of this team?

Lance wakes up in one of the capsules. 

The first thing he registers is that he is cold. He is shivering in the thin spacesuit that they are put in while they are healing and he faints but a hand steadies him.

"Whoa, there sharpshooter. You're not feeling that hot, I suppose. I took this shift to look after you. The rest of them are sleeping so I suppose you have to deal with me only then."

Lance tried to blink the tiredness out of his eyes and then moves forward, trying to put a name to the voice but he fails.

His feet lift from the ground and somewhere in the back of his mind he is very aware and embarrassed that he is being carried in princess style but that worry is for future Lance, so he snuggles in. The body freezes for a moment and then carries on, to what he supposes was his room and drops him gently on his bed.

As the person was about to leave, Lance grasps his hand and pulls them closer and next to him.

Perhaps they were too in shock or his training as a paladin had paid off and he's strong now, even in half sleeping mode.

In the morning when he woke up, to his horror, he finds Keith beside him.

But Lance doesn't have the heart to shake Keith awake because he looks cute when he sleeps.

No, he looks handsome.

No, he needs sleep. Lance nods along with his views then falls back asleep.

Both boys were mortified when they woke up and could not look at each other for a week without blushing.