Chapter Text
***Post-Accident: Week 5, Day 1***
The room is quiet all except for the soft beeping of the heart monitor that rings through the air of the cramped hospital room he sits in.
It had been somewhat unsettling during his first nights here with Lance, the grating sound a reminder that they are not in a space that's their own. They were not at home, or in the castle. They were in a space that they had to be in… that they can't leave until Lance is better.
But that’s also partly the reason why the sound doesn’t bother him so much anymore. After (barely) resigning himself to their circumstance, he found solace in it as a reminder that Lance was, in spite of how it so often felt, breathing and alive. Each beep corresponds with Lance’s real heartbeats and oddly enough, it helps Keith to calm down, at least a little. The sound serves as indefinite reassurance that Lance had not left him yet. That there was still a chance.
It was nearing the end of Keith’s 5th week staying at this hospital. His 5th week of sleeping in chairs. His 5th week of bathing under the thick, intrusive fluorescent lights cast down at them. His 5th week of waking up every morning to the sight of Lance’s basically lifeless body, completely unchanged from how it was the night before, minus the adjustments that the nurses manually did, moving him this way and that to prevent blood clots.
It was his fifth week of simply trying to endure the agony that is living day to day without Lance, begging the stars above that the cursed heart monitor will never stop beeping. That the sound will be there, in the back of his mind, all the time, until it no longer has to be.
His attachment to the noise became one of many reasons though that, for Keith, leaving Lance’s side is nigh impossible.
Even the thought of leaving and not being able to hear it… having no way to know immediately if it had stopped… that was a stressor so great that he was fine to completely ignore life, and his own health, to be with him. To stay as close as he can be, visiting hours be damned.
Visiting hours. Keith huffs. The absurdity of it. The audacity. His being here past a certain hour has absolutely no effect on Lance’s well being. And to make a rule for the sole purpose of separating people from their loved ones when they probably needed them most? It makes him livid.
He’d spat these frustrations to the hospital staff directly, telling them if they wanted him out he’d put up a fight. This made him not only a problem for the hospital, but a problem for the Garrison.
In this hospital they weren’t meant to be battle trained soldiers ready for a fight. They weren’t supposed to be anything. But Keith doesn't give a damn. He doesn't give a damn about protocol or bureaucratic bullshit. It’s all pointless. Nothing matters the way Lance does. And his conviction in that successfully forced the Garrison’s hand.
In a matter of hours after they’d arrived, the arrangements had been made. No staff was to attempt to remove Keith from the room after visiting hours. Whether it was hush money or a flash of the ol’ “top secret government organization” card Keith didn’t care. It shouldn’t have had to be something he needed to fight for in the first place.
Needless to say, he’d earned a poor first impression with hospital staff that cared for Lance, but improving his relations with them has been low on the list of his priorities.
The staff though, to their credit, grew used to Keith’s constant presence pretty quickly. With time, they began to try and engage him in regular conversation, no doubt to break the frigid ice that Keith douses the room in every time someone enters.
The staff's efforts also allowed for them to get to know Lance through Keith, as asking Keith about Lance was apparently something they deemed to be a natural point of entry for starting a conversation with Keith. They asked him what Lance was like. His favorite color. The kind of music he listened to. Small things… to, in their words, better know how they could make him more comfortable during his stay.
Keith appreciates the effort- at least he does somewhere under his aching heart and the crippling panic that his mind is consistently trying to abate in his every waking moment. It also doesn’t help that he knows that the questions are deliberate tactics the staff uses to soften him up.
He knows he's being volatile. Keith assumes it’s the reason the staff doesn’t go much deeper with their questions about Lance. They’re trying to come across as genuinely caring without accidentally upsetting him even further.
Keith is not dense enough to be unaware of the fact that he’s making the younger nurses nervous. Keith’s glare is deadly focused and penetrating, his eyes conveying the not so subtle notion that if they were responsible for anything bad happening to Lance, he was perfectly capable of and completely ready to snap their necks in half. It isn't something he was necessarily conscious of doing when it happened, but it sits firmly carved into his brow nonetheless.
For this reason, truly getting to know either himself or Lance has proved a bit difficult for the nurses. Keith knows he's coming off cold, angry, and extremely unapproachable, and Lance, obviously, is in a coma.
It took a while for Keith to come around and pull himself out of the void that was his inability to cope with the situation at hand, but Keith did manage to soften a bit over time, his protectiveness dying down the more he got used to everything. Though saying he is used to any of this is a major overstatement. It took a lot of coaxing. Like- a hell of a lot, but he did come around. And while it was probably more attributed to his despair growing heavier every day and extinguishing his fire bit by bit, there was also one nurse in particular that put in the work more than any of the others in her attempts to make him feel less on edge.
Keith, shockingly, has found that he is actually starting to connect with her… enough that he feels better when she is on shift. Better when Lance’s care was in her hands.
She feels genuine. Kind. And she has followed through on her words with her actions, bringing in a speaker from home so that Keith could connect Lance’s phone to it and play his music, demonstrating ways Keith could move Lance around like the physical therapists did so that he could play a part in keeping him heathy while Lance was incapable of movement. She’d even brought in a vase of some cuttings of a blue hydrangea bush from her yard to “liven up the space” after Keith had told her they were one of Lance’s favorites.
Thankfully, to the benefit of everyone, this has gone over exceptionally well with Keith, and successfully thawed him out quite a lot.
Keith knew beyond a doubt that Lance would have flirted with to no end if he had been conscious and not committed to Keith. Her presence actually helped Keith in that way, keeping his memories of him alive while Lance lay so still and lifeless.
He told the nurse as much, quite out of the blue one afternoon and she, despite her initial surprise, found it hilarious and begged Keith to tell her more about him. She since had remained very keen on helping Keith too- at least, emotionally, by asking more about Lance as it probably seemed to brighten him up. She listened fondly when Keith described him in such detail and with such love, and Keith knew it wasn’t just surface level, but that she was making a genuine effort to remember everything he said for future use. It wasn’t a ploy to get him to relax, it wasn't simple platitudes to mask an underlying frustration or annoyance. She's sincere.
She told him a few weeks into his stay that she enjoyed his stories because was able to feel like she knew Lance, despite never having spoken a word to him. Apparently, the way Keith described him made taking care of him a bit more meaningful for her, which, as she told him, was a very important thing in nursing. Having a connection with the patient made her job easier, especially with coma patients, where building any real relationship with them is near impossible.
She also told him, with an elbow to his side, that it was a refreshing side of Keith that helped his penchant for protectiveness make more sense to her. It was simply his personality, mixed with how deeply he loved him.
The nurse’s name is Anna. Keith decided that he would make an effort to commit her name to memory after realizing that he had no idea what it was after a week or so of talking to her.
They’ve grown on each other since then, and finally, a mutual respect was gained that eased all of the relationships with the staff that tended to Lance and made the hospital stay a sliver less terrible and a sliver more tolerable.
Still, though, Keith admits that he’s pretty helpless. When Shiro, Pidge, Allura, and Hunk weren’t there to remind Keith to eat and shower and take care of himself, Anna did. She always brings him food from the hospital cafeteria, even when he forgets to call down and order to the Cafeteria. And every time she brings the meal in, she forces him to snap out of his stupor and into another conversation.
She never insists that they be about Lance, but that’s usually where they ended up going. Like Anna said, talking about him really did seem to calm Keith down, and Anna, clearly, was not about to get in the way of that.
The best thing that Anna has offered him yet though was a reminder of the possibility that Lance might be able to hear him even though he was unconscious. That realization was big for Keith. He really took to that idea and began incorporating it in his day. Incorporating Lance into his day, and it had been somewhat of a game changer.
There were occasions after that where, unbeknownst to Keith, Anna would walk by and overhear whispers of a one-sided conversation he would be having with Lance, however rare they were to witness, and it broke her heart a bit each time she happened to stumble upon the interaction. Keith, leaned over Lance’s bedside, fiddling with the bangs resting on his forehead, whispering about his day or his thoughts as though Lance was listening intently beside him and talking back to him about his own.
It was so uncharacteristic of him, at least, her interpretation of him. She didn’t know him well enough to make firm judgments, but throughout his time staying here she has stuck to trying to understand him as best she could. Paying attention to his little, nuanced behaviors and daily tendencies.
When he isnt talking to or about Lance with her, Keith distracts himself with physical exercise and drills. It’s remained somewhat of a force of habit for him, and after seeing him doing push-ups on the floor Anna brought him a yoga mat to use.
Anna therefore became someone that he genuinely felt he could trust, and while Keith has admittedly given her a lot of information she might not otherwise have known about in their conversations about Lance, Keith knows she still has only somewhat of an understanding of how he’d ended up in a coma in the first place. She knows that their history had largely been forged in battle, something Keith made sure to tell her was privileged information that was not to be disclosed to anyone that didn’t have express clearance, and she understood from Lance's file that he was a victim of PTSD.
From there Keith assumes that she was probably capable of coming to the conclusion that he and Lance had the same occupation and history, and he didn’t doubt that she assumed Keith was also afflicted with PTSD. Or at least that if he hadn’t been before the accident, he probably has it now after having had to witness his fiancé die and be revived into a coma.
She would be correct… if that was in fact what she had gleaned from their interactions, but he has no intentions of confirming or denying it outright. This is all conjecture on Keith's part anyways. Maybe she was completely unaware. She seems too smart to be completely clueless, but he intended to keep it completely to himself nonetheless.
She already knew they had endured terrifying wars, she just didn’t know that that war had anything to do with aliens, space, and massive magical lion spaceships.
She knew that their existence at this hospital was classified, but she didn’t know why, only that whatever they did was to remain a complete secret, even with the other areas of the hospital, and she was not to speak a word about them outside of her working hours.
She told him quite plainly that she has a lot of respect for the both of them that added on to the impressions she was making of them in her head, but to her, they both remained pretty mysterious people. In her words; They were both intelligent, strong, and skilled fighters, but one was so in love that he would never leave his partner’s side, and the other was described as so lighthearted and warm that she had trouble imagining him as both a soldier and as how Keith had described him.
Keith rarely ever elaborates on the war at all. If anything he avoids any talk of it. Granted, he had been explicitly ordered not to, but either way, he had only given her brief glimpses with things he said like, “We were extremely competitive in training at first,” or “He always had my back in battle, even before we were together.”
These glimpses never went farther than one or two words that alluded to war, and so he could reasonably see how, in Anna’s mind, Keith’s stories had made Lance out to seem like someone who had never known war in his life, with how fun-loving and teasing he was in Keith’s descriptions.
But that's the whole point of talking to Anna about him in the first place. To remember him at his brightest. To remember how much he loved him and all the reasons why. Talking about the war and reliving their every trauma together would be incredibly counter productive, and Keith really appreciates her for giving him that outlet that allowed him to avoid doing so. Well… several outlets, all without once having to ask for them. Somehow she'd made receiving help seem easy and non-burdening.
At this point, whether he likes it or not, she is probably his nurse almost as much as she is Lance’s.
On her days off though, or when she was done working for the day, Keith, albeit begrudgingly at first, forces himself to get to know the other nurses too. Shelly, the night nurse who is plump and far too friendly for the time of the night he usually sees her. Ben, a nurse that works on Anna’s days off, and a bunch of others that pop in from time to time when they are needed.
Shiro was also over more often than not, there to translate Keith’s angst for the nurses with a charm and extroversion that Keith had no ability to display, while also spending time with him and Lance, often bringing a deck of cards to keep his mind occupied when Keith wasn’t in the mood to talk.
Pidge, Allura, and Hunk come to visit at least four times a week as well, Hunk always bringing Keith a near week's worth of food, terrified that he'll go starving while cooped up in the hospital.
The visits are far more sullen than any of them would like them to be. Even though Lance was right there in his bed, nobody can ignore how palpable his absence is.
Pidge is particularly closed off whenever she comes, and Keith is sure it's because she simply can’t stand it. She hates having to see Lance like this. Hates the hospital. Hates that being there forces her to acknowledge how fragile everything still is. Keith can see it in her posture. The pinched expression she wears and in the simple fact that her eyes are almost always puffy, like she’s seconds away from excusing herself to cry.
But she comes to the hospital anyway. Every week without fail. Because it was Lance. Her family, her friend... her brother. She comes because she knows- they all know that Lance would be there every second of every day if it had been any of them. She comes because as much as she hates seeing him so lifeless, and so unlike Lance, she also can’t bear to not see him at all.
So while Keith is well and truly surrounded by support, and he is happy that there are people who care enough to try and keep him functioning, not having Lance is… beyond crippling. So crippling that the word- any word he could use to attempt to describe it would be inadequate. He was completely and wholly destroyed. Like a part of his soul was missing. Like he might honestly never feel happy again. Not until Lance came back to him.
It was on nights like these when it’s the worst, in the darkness, only the sound of the heart monitor beeping softly and his own breathing occupying the space, Shelly probably shuffling around somewhere else in the hospital, nowhere near Lance’s room. It’s on nights like these when he can’t handle it.
Some nights, well... most nights, when sleep is an impossible idea and never a reality and his heart starts to pound at the intrusive thoughts that begin to scream in his head to fill the silence, the only thing he can help to do was crawl into Lance’s bed, careful not to disturb any of the equipment he’s hooked up to, and cuddle up close to him, resting his head in the crook of his neck with a hand on his chest to feel the subtle thump of his heart beneath it.
All he can do to calm his panic is bury himself in his scent and soak up the warmth he radiated even in comatose. Study every little detail of Lance’s face as he slept and memorize it. The blank look he wears that, somehow, also managed to look peaceful and calm. The way his lips rested slightly parted. The way his hair fluffed out in a chronic state of bedhead.
It’s on nights like these when he ends up on the verge of tears, holding Lance’s face in his hands and running them through his hair as he gives him gentle kisses that he hopes beyond all hope that Lance can feel, just like how Anna said that he might be able to hear his voice. He whispers to him how much he loves him, unable to let his usual pessimism tell him that there was a chance Lance is numb to it all.
Being with Lance like this... It’s one of few things that manages to feel normal and familiar, and real. Words he wouldn’t associate with his hospital stay thus far at all.
When he’s pressed up against Lance, in the comfort of his embrace and the familiarity of his body, he can sleep, pretending that it was all a dream of which he was woken up from in the arms of his love.
______
***Pre-Accident: Week 1, Day 1***
“No, I’m sure!” Hunk said, with a dramatic slam of his hand against the table. “That’s all it takes is to reconstruct this hardware, make some new wiring here, and we can totally make this happen. It doesn’t have to be so complicated.”
“I don’t know Hunk…” Pidge replied, her eyebrows knitted in concentration. “Altean technology is just… too complex to be compatible with earth technology. Especially something this old…”
“Do you want to play this game or not, man,” Hunk replied with a frown.
“I do!” Pidge huffed defensively. “I just don’t think the solution is that simple. It could ruin the counsel I made if we screw up.”
“Hey, yeah, I get it, I know, but if we just- ”
Pidge and Hunk jumped suddenly as the doors to the lounge opened, Hunk with a hand clutched over his heart as they both turned around to face the intruder. To the surprise of them both, its Keith. Keith who had been off ship for... longer than either of them bothered to keep track of anymore. Keith who looked... exhausted and possibly fresh off of a battle. Keith, who's moments of contact and updates with the team were few and far between.
He didn't notice them immediately, his eyes cast down at a tablet. His hair was tousled a bit wildly, and his eyes looked bruised with an exhaustion that also sat plainly on his face. He was still in his Blade suit, the tight under-armor seeming to emphasize how warm out he actually was in the slump in his spine and the drag of his steps.
“Keith!” Hunk spoke happily, calling his attention. “Hey, buddy, welcome back!”
Keith looked up, a little startled as Hunk got up to run over to him, squeezing him in a crushing hug as they collided. “Oh,” Keith stammered, “Hi Hunk. Just got in.”
If his appearance and mannerisms hadn't already conveyed enough exhaustion, his voice surely did. It was rough and sounded as though he could have been screaming earlier, which, for all they knew, was entirely possible.
Pidge followed after Hunk a moment later and gave Keith a little nod and a smile. “What are you doing here?" She asked. "And how long are you staying for?”
“The night,” Keith replied simply. “I have to leave early. I’m just here for a meeting with the Blade. We have to be gone soon after.”
Pidge and Hunk frowned a bit at that.
Keith was never in the castle for more than a night anymore, and to Pidge and Hunk it seemed as though there was more to it than a busy schedule, but voicing that suspicion to Keith was a level of honesty that neither of them were willing to test out.
"Look, I’ve got a mission tomorrow that I need to be ready for." Keith said, his patience seeming to be thin and looking for a quick way out of this dialogue. 'You all should be training too. If you need me, you know where to find me,"
And then he walked past them, not offering a smile, not waving goodbye, just averting his eyes and rushing forwards, as though he couldn’t get out of the room quick enough.
Hunk looked to Pidge, who sighed and shrugged. "Must... have a lot on his plate." She offered.
They go back to their work, and if theres a hollow in their stomachs, they ignore it. War wasn't easy. They didn't blame him.
How could they?
______
Keith sighed as soon as he knew the two paladins were out of earshot and slowed his pacing.
Things recently had been.... rough for him. It was less than two days ago that Keith was certain he would die, and was perfectly okay with it, and now fucking Lotor was on this ship and he just... he didn’t know how to deal with it all.
It was one of a list of reasons why he wanted to be off of this ship as soon as possible. Also pretty high on the top of that list was the potential for a particular conversation about his almost death that he was in no interest to have and a strong suspicion that he'd be forced into it if he'd managed to cross paths with a certain someone while he was here.
The thought alone quickened his pace down the halls, his head on a swivel as he b-lines it for the training deck.
To his delight, he'd successfully avoided any unfortunate run-ins in the hall, and the training deck was, blissfully, empty. He ended up being able to train for multiple hours uninterrupted, going back through all the training simulations he'd set up and working through each one to higher and higher levels. The adrenaline high from it all was a godsend, pumping through him and making him numb, his only thoughts focused on chasing the satisfaction that came from cleanly finishing off drone after drone after drone. Working up a sweat that made his entire body ache and tingle.
It had been his way of coping for as long as he could remember- one of few things that he'd always been able to successfully rely on to take his mind off of his problems.
Before Voltron, if he ever started to think about his elusive mother who abandoned him? He went straight to the Garrison's gym and beat the living hell out of a bag. When he was young, if he ever got to thinking about his dead father who left him as an orphan at the age of 6? He used to run for miles until he lost track of where he was, focused only on the rhythm of his feet and so winded by the end of it that the feeling completely replaced the hollow in his chest. And back at the shack, when his only friend and brother figure was said to be dead in space after he'd left him alone on Earth? He would work day and night on fixing his dad's old hover-bike, or any other greasy, hard house maintenance to exhaust his mind and sidetrack his brain.
Now, his emotional frustrations had another great outlet on the training deck that he was more than happy to take advantage of. It's what he had always done. It’s how he had always coped with anything.
The last drone of the round fizzled and sparked at the end of Keith’s blade where he had impaled it. He stepped on the robot's chest to un-wedge it from its place of impact and retracted it back into a knife and sighed. That, he supposed, was enough for now. If he had it his way, and exhaustion posed no risk to his ability to train at peak efficiency without injury, he'd have spent the whole night here. In hindsight he should have just... slept on the training deck floor. It wouldn't have been the first time. But damn him and his damned effort to be responsible and not end up sore in the morning because of course, no sooner than the doors to the training deck had closed behind him, his name was called from somewhere down the hall.
“Keith! Hey! Wait up!”
The voice, he was beginning to recognize, came from Matt, who had just recently taken residence in the castle after what had to have been a very exciting day of reunions. Of course, Keith hadn’t been there, so he hadn’t yet gotten to know the mysterious older brother that Pidge was so determined to find for so long. Not in person anyway. Granted, Keith was happy was alive and able to be with Pidge, not to mention how much he'd already been able to contribute to the missions and to Pidge's work... there was just the small issue of Matt knowing... the whole story.
Turning, he looked over his shoulder to see him running up to his side with a friendly smile. Keith did his best to try and return it but was sure as soon as it happened that it looked as fake as it felt. “Hey, Matt. Good to see you.” He said tiredly.
“You too, Keith! You staying here for long or are you leaving again soon?”
“Leaving,” Keith replied. “I’m just here for the night.”
Matt nodded, this clearly being the answer he expected to hear given how he doesn't look surprised at all and picked up his pace to stay walking next to Keith as he continued down the hall. He'd probably planned out the whole thing. Looked up any future meetings that were scheduled with the Blade, asked around to know where he'd be able to find him. waited for Keith to be done training so that he'd be tired and less willing to literally run away. Keith was naive thinking he could avoid this. This was a Holt he was talking about. Matt clearly never would have let him.
“Oh shit, well, in that case, I better say this now, rather than miss the chance altogether.”
“Say what?” Keith asked. Mentally knowing and dreading what his response would be. needing desperately for him to just get on with it.
“Well, it’s-I just wanted to delay it if I could but considering you need to leave I should say it now. I’m just sorry I have to abruptly spring this on you, it wasn’t my intention.”
Bullshit.
“Matt.” Keith prodded a little less patiently. “What is it?”
“I uh…” Matt began. “Well, I was hoping to talk to you.. about Naxcella.”
Keith immediately bristled at the word in spite of the fact that he'd known the whole time that it was coming. He hated that it still had that kind of an effect on him.
“There’s nothing to talk about Matt,” Keith replied quickly, trying to shoot him down before he had the chance to continue.
“Hear me out, Keith, come on. I just never got the chance to check on you. See if you’re ok…”
“I’m fine,” Keith answered shortly.
“Keith, you were going to die… Surely you understand why I want to see how you are, make sure you’re good. Tell you that your life matters. I know that everyone here wants that too, but I’m the only one who knows what really happened. I kind of feel it’s my responsibility to be there for you if-”
“You have absolutely no responsibility when it comes to me.” Keith cut in.
“Keith…” Matt said with a look of concern.
“Look, Matt, I appreciate the sentiment, really, but Lotor being there was luck. Nearly the entire rebellion would have been wiped out. In the grand scheme of things, my life is not worth losing that. Nothing is. It was the only logical thing to do. It made sense.”
“But Keith-”
“Allura was right when she said the Blades had lasted this long without me,” Keith continued, cutting Matt off. “So my loss wouldn’t have compromised them. Voltron has five great paladins. Bottom line Matt, I wasn’t needed. It was everything I could do! It’s not always victory or death... Sometimes victory comes at the cost of death. I wasn’t going to hesitate knowing my one life could save literally countless others, so I don’t need your empathy!”
Matt let his lips fall together in a worried line. “Well yes…” he spoke up softly, finding it very difficult to argue with Keith about this. Any way he framed it would be best out by Keith’s cold hard logic and come across as stupid and selfish and wrong.
“I guess that I don’t want to accept that,” Matt elaborated. “There had to be another way... that’s just how I think. Maybe it’s that hopeless optimism that’s gonna get me killed. I don’t know, maybe by even suggesting it I come off as a selfish, illogical, idealist, but your loss would have hurt the rebellion. Whether you believe it or not. You aren’t as expendable as you make yourself out to be Keith…”
“I disagree,” Keith said finally. “You would have moved on eventually. Hell if I was really that important I could have become a martyr.”
“Keith, liste-” Matt tried, but Keith cut him off again.
“Look, I’m alive so the good thing is that we no longer have to think about it.” He said simply. Matt sighed, exasperated.
There was no changing his mind. No talking to him at all. Keith was aware of this. It’s exactly what he had intended. But Matt was nothing if not determined, trying again to make any dent in his shields one last time.
“I don’t know you all that well yet, Keith,” he began. “When I got here, you had already left. But Katie... Katie I know. Based on her actions... how she describes you... the way she is around you... you are as much a brother to her in her mind as I am. She admires you, Keith. Whether or not you’re aware, if she had lost you, it could have been equally as detrimental as her losing me.
You, Shiro, Hunk, Lance, and Allura and Coran. You’ve become incredibly important to her. Maybe she would have moved on after a given amount of years, maybe she would find some kind of peace, but that scar would never go away. She would never truly heal. None of us would. What I’m trying to say is that you shouldn't keep flinging yourself into stars, Keith. Because you’ve got a family now too.”
With that, a silence fell between them that seemed to stretch on for forever, or at least far longer than Keith would have preferred it to, but Keith had nothing to say. He just stood there, fists clenched and gaze cast to the floor. stubborn and unmoving.
After a while of nothing being spoken, Matt sighed. “Look, I’m beat," he said sadly, "so I’m going to get some rest. I’ll be in my quarters if you need me.” Matt walked past him and down a hall to their left, leaving Keith alone, his words stirring threateningly in his head.
Keith allowed himself to sigh only after he could no longer hear Matt's footsteps, letting his guard down a bit as he slouched with exhaustion instead of standing up at attention with his back perfectly straight.
This... all this. It was a waste of time and energy. It accomplished nothing. It didn't matter. He was fine and the war was not yet lost and they'd all made it out. That was the end of it. He didn’t have time to wallow of feel sorry for himself or whatever the fuck Matt was attempting to get him to do. He had a meeting to prepare for. A mission to accomplish. Keith didn't have enough fingers to count out all the things that took precedent over him and his emotions.
So Keith turned on his heel. Headed for the door to the kitchens that he and Matt had stopped in front of on the way down the hall. He needed to sleep, and this was a shortcut to his room. One that maybe if he'd arrived sooner, Matt wouldn't have been able to catch him.
But when the doors opened, he suddenly was peering directly into large blue eyes.
Lance.
Keith didn’t want to see this. He knew as soon as their eyes met that this was not good. Possibly the last thing he wanted, because Lance looked... terrified. He looked almost sad. As though Keith had actually died rather than almost died.
Of course, Keith could have tried to ignore it. Pass it off as something out of context, but Keith had put the pieces together too quickly. Lance had to have been standing there in the kitchens, behind the door for a while now, and he'd probably overheard everything, his hurt expression most definitely a result.
Heat rushed to Keith’s face in embarrassment? Guilt? Self-consciousness? He didn’t know, but he ducked away and stormed down the hall before either of them could determine it.
And Lance let him go. He didn’t call after him, he didn’t run to stop him... he just let him go without another word. That at least didn’t surprise Keith. Lance was genuinely the person he expected to be least affected by that information, but with how devastated he had just appeared to be… he was honestly not really sure of anything.
Anything besides knowing that under no circumstances did he want to open himself up to more vulnerability. A hodgepodge family of soldiers in a war that was sure to go out in the most devastating way possible was possibly the worst idea ever. You were basically setting yourself up for pain.
That was perhaps the greatest reason he had left. He was getting too close, and he didn’t want to get hurt. He was feeling for these people more than he had felt for everyone in his life, all except Shiro maybe, but he got close to Shiro before they all were thrust into an intergalactic war.
He left so that none of this would happen, before realizing too late that it already had. He cared. Deeply.
And just like that, the exhaustion seemed to dissipate from Keith’s body and he was trudging right back the way he came. He barked out orders to the computer, setting up the difficulty level to be twice as hard from what it was when he left, and jumped right back into the fight, pushing himself harder than he probably should.
Keith stabbed his blade through another oncoming droid viciously, watching it die out and collapse.
He’d destroyed more droids than he could count with a terrifying vigor that even scared him. He was desperate to be distracted. Desperate to not let the image of Lance’s broken face when the doors opened cloud his focus. Desperate to forget that the past half hour had happened at all, even if it was just momentarily. Keith split a droid in half with an angry swipe of his blade. He felt that he had to do anything he could to keep the pain he saw in his eyes from the forefront of his brain.
Lance had probably become the worst of his problems and having to admit that fact to himself had not been easy at all.
Lance was obnoxious.
Irritating.
Loud.
Dramatic.
Egotistical.
Keith thought of each adjective with another blow to another droid.
Lance was the last person in the universe Keith imagined himself falling for, but here he was, angrily chopping up metal in a futile attempt not to think of him for one second of his god damn life. Keith still wasn’t exactly sure how it had happened. At first, he was annoyed. He had never hated him. He had never felt strongly towards him at all. His teasing pushed his buttons and swept them into this back and forth that somehow managed to get Keith to lose his cool far more frequently than ever before.
Then somewhere along the way that resent transformed into desperation, Keith wanting nothing more than to have Lance’s smiles and warmth and joy that he gave to everyone else be directed towards him.
The more time he spent with Lance, the more he realized how wonderful he actually was. He was personable and kind and encouraging... he was everything Keith wasn’t, and to Keith’s devastation, he was beautiful too. The honey brown of his perfect skin and the fluffy shagginess of his brown hair, mixed with those unexpected and dazzlingly blue eyes... there wasn’t much he could do to keep himself from staring creepily at him whenever they were in the same room. It was a nightmare.
Keith didn’t have the slightest clue as to why Lance was so hell-bent on challenging him and one-upping him and making fun of his hair, but his redeemable qualities for some inexplicable reason completely overrode his irritation most of the time.
There weren’t enough ways he could say it. This. Was. Not. Good.
For one thing, Lance was helplessly straight, crushing the slivers of hope he allowed himself on rare occasions when Lance wasn’t being a complete dick to him. But then he would flirt tirelessly with Allura and go right back to chiding and mocking Keith like their little bonding moments had never happened.
It irritated him to no end in the worst, most crushing way. Maybe Lance was never going to see him in the same way, but reaching a place of mutual respect and friendship where they could both be kind to each other and not be engaged in a mini-war of their own all the time was a hope that constantly got stomped on too.
When Lance had gotten hurt after the castle bombing, and Lance had shown him genuine trust and appreciation, Keith nearly went out of his mind having to wait for him to wake up. Maybe this was it? He had thought. Maybe, finally, after this, he and Lance could become acquaintances? Friends??
It wasn’t until he woke up and the second sentence to leave his mouth was a silly little flirt at Allura, that he regretted ever allowing himself to be hopeful. And then, as if it wasn’t agonizing enough, he then proceeded to completely “forget” that anything had happened between Keith and him.
To say the least, that was a devastating day for the training droids as well. Keith had grown far too fond of the blue paladin, making Keith act in ways, and feel certain things he never thought he even had the capacity for.
Lance destroyed his logic, crushed his indifference, and opened him up to extremely unwelcome emotions.
So he left, feeling too vulnerable, overwhelmed, and weak. He felt, most broadly, too inadequate.
So it really made him mad when despite him knowing without a doubt that he was right, and his actions at Naxella were totally justified, that he still on some level deep down, understood what Matt had said.
Keith had never seen a look so hurt and confused on Lance’s face. And if Lance of all people could look so devastated after hearing what really happened at the Galra cruiser, he couldn’t imagine how the others would react.
After everything that had happened though, Keith knew one thing for certain. For Shiro, for Pidge, for Hunk, for Allura, for Coran, and especially for Lance, love was absolutely out of the question.