Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“I don’t know, boss. Might have to call it a bad day and split.”

Tarnoc scowled at the screen in his hand. “Not yet. Still plenty of stragglers.”

Drash groaned and thunked his head back against the wall of the worn little hut they were clustered behind. Swap moons didn’t offer much in the way of permanent structures, so they made do with what cover they could get. 

“I keep telling you. No one’s any good in this quadrant. All the decent ones got nabbed by Qhune’s outfit.”

Looking at the screen, it was hard to argue the point. The crowd being picked up by their hovering drone was a sea of blue and yellow, which wouldn’t even power the sweeper they were using to see them, let alone anything anyone with money would pay for. But they needed something, or they wouldn’t be able to make it to the next moon.

“We could always go back to good old-fashioned robbery,” Drash was saying, but Tarnoc missed the rest of the sentence as his screen lit up with a very distinctive, and very exciting, color. 

“Shut up,” he snapped at his partner. “We’ve got a red.”

“What?” Drash peered over Tarnoc’s head, easily twice the size of him, and exhaled a shocked breath onto the screen. “No way. When was the last time we saw a red?”

“Years.” Tarnoc tapped his sharp nails along the underside of his screen. “Red burns the strongest and the longest. Someone will pay good for this one.”

“Then we’d better get it before someone else does.”

Tarnoc grinned, baring serrated teeth. 

“Let’s get it done.”

“Found it yet?”

“Not yet.”

“Well, keep looking. Someone around here has to have a dynamizer rod.”

Keith sighed and rolled his shoulders. The whole team had been spread across the swap moon all day, scouring for some important mechanical part the Castle needed, but so far none of them had been successful. 

“Coran, are you sure this thing still exists?” Pidge asked through the comms. Usually she was excited to go digging through space junk, but even she had her limits. 

“Of course it exists! There are five others in the engines right now.”

And they, unfortunately, needed six. 

“I’m just saying, the Castle is ten millennia old. Maybe we should be looking in a museum instead.”

“I hope not,” Shiro muttered. “I don’t feel like pulling a heist at the moment.”

“Oh, but that would be so cool though! Like Mission Impossible, but instead of rappelling in we turn the gravity off!”

That was all Keith was interested in hearing. He muted his comms as Lance’s voice rose to dominate the channel, refocusing his energy on the mental image he had of the mechanical part in question. There were still a lot of scrap piles to look through. 

He passed what had once been a small building, but was now reduced to a few standing walls and some cloth draped over the empty roof. He paused to peek inside, but the floor was bare aside from a few scattered rocks and wires, so he continued past it and towards the ragged tents he could see nearby. Or he tried, at least; he was barely two steps past the building when a heavy weight slammed into his side. 

Keith hit the ground hard, feeling like he’d been body slammed by a killer whale. For a half second he thought it was an accident, until he felt a huge, rough hand close around his wrist. 

“Got it,” a growling voice said in his ear. That was when the adrenaline hit, and Keith slammed his knee into the person’s side as hard as he could. He felt his skin split– the person had a hide tougher than rocks– but it knocked the breath out of them long enough for Keith to worm his way out from under their bulk. 

“Drash you idiot!” shrieked a cracking voice as Keith rolled onto his feet.

“Shut up,” the other voice roared back.

Keith was already running, and the only other detail he saw about his attackers was that the one who had tackled him was navy blue, and at least as big as Sendak, if not bigger.

It didn’t matter. Big meant slow; he could outrun them, get back to the Castle, and–

Thwack! Something snapped around his ankle and held tight, sending him back to the ground. There were other aliens milling around not far from the scuffle, but if they noticed anything, they weren’t doing anything to help. 

Keith scrabbled for his knife, but before he could get a grip on it the blue hulk was upon him again, pinning his hand next to his head with enough force to break the bone if he wanted. The angry look on his lumpy, boulder-like face said he wanted; luckily that creaking voice from before piped up again. 

“Don’t break it! Damaged merchandise never sells.”

The fact that his wrist wasn’t currently bone dust was a relief. The words that had prevented that circumstance were the exact opposite. Allura had briefed them on this quadrant, on the rampant trafficking and slave market, and from the sounds of it, he’d just fallen right into the hands of some traders. 

With a muffled grunt, Keith swung his free fist at Drash’s side, where the kidneys would be on a human. Drash caught his other hand just as easily as the first, and with his entire elephant weight straddling Keith’s chest and making it a labor to breathe, there wasn’t much else Keith could do except squirm, raking his skin raw on the rocky ground. 

“Let me go!” he spat furiously as he struggled. He really, really regretting muting his comms now. “Let me go or you’ll regret it!”

“Oh really.” The owner of the second voice came into view. He was much shorter than Drash, wider than he was tall, a tough shell covering his back and thick skin laying in heavy wrinkles around his joints. His face was wide, too, with wicked serrated teeth. In one clawed hand he held some kind of tablet, but Keith wasn’t in a position to be wondering what it said. “Why is that?”

“I didn’t come here alone.” Keith’s breath came fast and panting. Every cell in his body was vibrating, screaming to get free, but with this  mountain of an alien holding him down, there was no way out. “They’ll know I’m gone, they’ll look for me.”

Neither of the aliens looked fazed. The shorter one waved his hand and said, “Doesn’t matter. Turn around is fast on these deals, you’ll sell even faster.”

Rage twisted in Keith’s chest and rushed up his throat, ready to scream. Before the sound could make it out Drash fisted one massive hand into Keith’s hair, pulled his head up, and slammed it back to the ground. 

In an instant everything went black.

The next time Keith swam towards consciousness, it was to an intense, pounding pain in his head, his wrists and ankles bound, and his comms missing from his ear. 

“It’s damaged,” he heard from far away. It hurt to think, but he tried to focus on the words. 

“Just scrapes and bruises.” That voice belonged to the shorter of the two aliens that had grabbed him. “Besides, it’s red. People would think it’s defective if there wasn’t some kind of scuffle.”

“Hmmmm, true. How much do you want for it?”

With difficulty, Keith forced his eyes open. He knew already from the change in pressure that they weren’t on the swap moon anymore, and what his blurry vision was able to pick up corroborated that. He saw silver metal, darker than the Castle, and a pair of talon feet in front of him, one of the toes tink ing against the floor as it tapped thoughtfully.

“No less than five thousand GAC.”

The unknown voice laughed, the talon pausing its tapping for just a moment. “Please, that’s a swap moon price. Four thousand.”

They’re talking about me, Keith realized, stomach twisting. He couldn’t just lay there while these aliens bartered over him– concussion or not, he had to do something. He could still feel the weight of his belt on his waist. If he could manage to get a grip on his knife he might have a chance.

“Forty five.”

There was a moment of considering silence. Keith closed his eyes again and concentrated on making his clumsy fingers respond to him. The material gouging into his wrists felt like rope, if he could just wiggle enough to get his knife out of the sheath–

“Deal.” 

The word was immediately followed by a flurry of noise and motion. He heard his kidnappers murmuring excitedly, heavy footsteps ringing through the metal floor, and before he could get to his blade, hands clamping down on his shoulders and arms to haul him upright. His head spun and his ears rang; it was all he could do to keep from vomiting as the few details he’d been able to see of the room disappeared into a gray swirl. 

“Take it to processing.”

“Found it!” 

A cheer went through the comms at Pidge’s victory, and Shiro let out a relieved sigh. It would be a long walk back to the Castle, but knowing that the search was over made his feet ache just a little less.

It took a full hour to get back to the Castle from where he was. He must’ve been the farthest afield, because almost everyone was waiting at the Castle entrance when he arrived. The engineers and the Alteans were going over the part they’d found, making sure it was in working order, while Lance was sprawled out on the ground nearby, languishing in his exhaustion. The only person missing was Keith. 

“You doing alright down there?” he asked Lance, who groaned and threw an arm over his eyes. 

“Not right now, Shiro, I’m languishing.”

Shiro chuckled to himself and glanced around. They’d parked the Castle a little away from the main market area, up on a slight rise where they could see a decent distance, but he didn’t see Keith’s distinctive red jacket anywhere in the crowd, which had thinned significantly as the hours passed. 

Still sweeping the crowd, Shiro tapped on his comms. “Keith, are you there?” He waited, but all he got was silence. He tried again. “Keith, sound off.” Nothing but silence. 

Shiro turned back to the group. “Hey, are you guys still hearing me in your comms?”

A collection of distracted nods was his answer. The only person who seemed to pick up on Shiro’s burgeoning worry was Lance, who sat up and fixed him with a concerned gaze. “Keith’s not answering?”

“Yeah. It seems like the comms are working, but I’m not getting anything back from him.” Come to think of it, Shiro hadn’t heard Keith’s voice over the comms in… a while. A couple of hours, maybe, and that realization made worry fully bloom sickly in his stomach. 

Lance got up and joined Shiro at his vantage point. Shiro let him search the crowds as he had– Lance had better eyes than he did– but after a minute or two Lance shook his head. 

“I don’t see him anywhere.” 

That made up Shiro’s mind. Maybe it was nothing, maybe just interference or bad signal and Keith was on his way to them as they spoke, but the universe was rarely so kind to them. Better paranoid than sorry.

“Pidge,” he called over to the huddle. “The comms units have trackers in them, right?”

“Uh, yeah, one sec.” After reluctantly relinquishing her find to Coran, Pidge stepped away from the huddle and tugged her little tablet out of her hoodie pocket. “Are we looking for Keith?”

Allura sighed before Shiro could answer. “Please tell me he hasn’t gotten himself in trouble again.”

Pidge tapped around on her tablet. Shiro heard a slight chime in his comms when she activated the trackers, then she frowned and squinted at the screen. 

“What is it?” asked Hunk, leaning over her shoulder to see. She brushed him away impatiently and shook her head.

“It says he’s by some old building, but he’s not moving at all, and apparently he hasn’t moved in–” She squinted harder. “Almost three vargas.”

“I didn’t know he could sit still that long.” Hunk was joking, but he was right, and that put Shiro in a very not-joking mood.

Allura, reading the look on his face, turned to Coran. “Coran, will you please take the rod down to the engine and get it installed? We may need to leave quickly.”

“Right away, Princess.” He scurried off into the Castle, leaving the rest of them with increasingly solemn expressions on their faces. 

“Pidge, where’s that building?”

It took twenty minutes of winding and weaving through the disorganized mess that was the swap moon marketplace, but eventually they arrived at the crumbling building Pidge had specified. Keith was nowhere to be found, inside or out. 

“It doesn’t make sense,” said Pidge, flicking her tablet in irritation. “The tracker says he should be right here, and all of our positions have changed, so it’s not lagging.”

“Maybe there’s a basement somewhere?” Hunk suggested uncertainly. 

Shiro took a deep breath and turned a quick 360, looking in all directions, but saw nothing that could have indicated where Keith had gone. He had good reason to be concerned– they were in Empire space, and though they hadn’t seen any soldiers or drones on the swap moon, it wouldn’t be hard for a spy or assassin to conceal themself amongst the chaos. Damnit, why had he let them split up? Stupid, a rookie mistake. 

“Guys, look.” Lance had crouched down in the dirt, and as the group converged, plucked something out of the dust and held it flat in his palm. It was exactly what Shiro didn’t want to see: a busted comm unit, and no Keith. 

“Quiznack,” Allura muttered.

“This place is huge,” said Hunk, wringing his hands. “How are we ever going to find him?”

“I think we need to be more worried about why he’s missing,” said Pidge, “And who’s responsible.” 

Shiro was silent, already formulating a plan for what to do next. They had to assume the worst, that Keith had been gone for several hours, and that someone had taken him. First they should try to question the people near here, though it was unlikely that they would be willing to talk, then they should divide the moon into quadrants for a search. Breaking out the Lions might intimidate anyone who was involved into giving themselves away.

He opened his mouth to start issuing orders, right as a quiet voice spoke from behind him.

“Um, ex-excuse me?”

The owner of the voice was a little green alien, shorter than Pidge, who cringed back when the whole group spun to look at them. They were wrapped in a ragged blanket, and had a horn right in the middle of their forehead, directly above their one eye. 

Despite their obvious trepidation, they continued, “Are you– you are looking for someone, yes? A– a member of your… species?”

Shiro’s heart soared. With some difficulty, he tamped it back down; just because the alien had seen Keith didn’t mean they knew where he was. “Yes, have you seen him?”

The alien gave a hesitant nod and shuffled forward a few steps. Glancing around surreptitiously, they spoke even softer. “Some vargas ago I saw one who looked like you. He was… with Drash and Tarnoc.”

“Who are they?” asked Pidge. 

The alien blinked at them. “They are traders. Petty thieves. They make a loop through the system, visiting the swap moons. Today they had– had their sweeper out.” The alien shivered, burrowing deeper into their blanket like a cold wind had just gone down their back. 

Allura was next to step up, asking, “What do you mean by that? What is this sweeper?”

The little alien’s mouth quirked, as though amused, though their voice still trembled. “Ah, you are not from here, yes? The sweeper looks at crowds. I don’t know what it sees, but whenever someone has a sweeper, you know they’re looking for someone to take.”

Shiro’s stomach dropped like a ton of bricks. He wasn’t the only one, as Hunk stammered out, “Ta-take? Take where? Why?”

“Anywhere the price will be good.” 

Shit. When the alien said ‘traders’, they didn’t mean normal merchants. They meant– fuck. 

All of them muttered various curse words under their breath. The little alien gave them a sad, pitying look. 

“I am sorry. My womb-mate was taken from me by such traders, many decaphoebs ago. There is little we can do.”

Shiro’s fists clenched at his sides. Maybe there was little these aliens could do, but they didn’t have Lions. “Where can we find them?”

“Oh.” The alien shuffled their feet nervously. “Tarnoc and Drash usually land their ship there,” they pointed past the dilapidated building, out past the boundaries of the market, “in the wastes. It’s very old, and has a circular symbol painted on one of the wings in blue.”

Shiro couldn’t see it from where they stood. They’d need to look from the air.

“Thank you,” Allura said, ever gracious. “You’ve been a great help.”

“Good luck,” answered the alien as they shuffled away. Once they were out of earshot, Shiro turned to the rest of the group, all of them wearing grim, determined expressions. 

“We should take a shuttle,” said Allura. 

“Why?” Pidge protested. Her knuckles were white around the edges of her tablet. “The Lions will be intimidating. It’s a lot harder to keep secrets when a ten-ton metal cat is standing over you.”

“But they’re also recognizable. The last thing we need right now is the Galra descending on us while we’re trying to find Keith.”

“Fine,” Shiro said. He agreed with Pidge, but Allura was being practical, and this wasn’t a decision they could afford to waste time on. “Come on, if we move fast we might catch them before they leave.”

On their way back to the Castle the comms were noisy as Allura explained the situation to Coran. Shiro tuned all of the words out, too consumed by the dread churning in his stomach. Honestly it may have been better if it was an Empire agent that captured Keith– at least then they would know what they wanted and how to get him back. Slave traders could do any number of things, take him anywhere, and it took considerable effort to ignore the worst-case scenarios flashing through his mind. 

Keith was feisty. He wouldn’t bow easily, and that would get him hurt.

Chapter Text

“Processing”, as it turned out, was the place where they took all of his stuff. 

Jacket, boots, gloves, belt, knife, hell even his shirt were all stripped away from him. He made it as difficult as he could for them, but anytime he struggled too much all the guards had to do was jostle him until his eyes wouldn’t focus and pain seared through his brain, then all of his effort went into not being sick. 

The ropes his kidnappers had used to bind him were replaced by Galra style magnetic cuffs, at which point they strapped him into some kind of open-air healing pod that glowed a sinister green. Unlike the healing pods in the Castle, this one didn’t put him to sleep during the healing, and the back of his skull burned like hellfire as the concussion was healed. 

Keith dug his teeth into his lip and refused to make a sound. This pod didn’t seem to care about the smaller injuries either, so he kept the bites and the bloody scrape on his knee from Drash. 

Once the healing was over he was able to think much more clearly. When the cuffs magnetized behind his back and two of the guards marched him out of the processing room, he drank in as many details of the place as he could.

The hallway wasn’t much to talk about, just that dark silver metal and unassuming doors, blue lighting turned low. There weren’t any signs that he could see, in any language, so even if he managed to get away from the guards, finding any kind of vehicle hangar would be difficult. 

The guards themselves seemed to be of the same talon-footed species as the person he’d been sold to. The talon-feet were reminiscent of birds, and the rest of their bodies fit the theme, festooned in feathers in varying shades of purple and blue. Unlike birds, those feathers felt more like sinew or rubber than actual feathers. They also happened to be more than two feet taller than Keith and were obviously much stronger, which would make it hard to get away.

Especially since there were so many of them. Their march down the hall wasn’t long, but they passed more than two dozen guards in that time. Security was valued here, clearly– maybe not the best place to try to get away from. It made shudders go down his spine to think about it, but if and when they sold him, he might have a better opportunity. 

The others would be looking for him by now. He might not need to get out on his own at all, but it was always better to have a back-up plan. 

At the end of the short hallway one of the guards pressed a long, bony finger to the scanner next to the door. Keith really didn’t like those fingers, especially where they were wrapped around his biceps– they felt like being grabbed by ET. Keith had never liked that movie. 

The door swished open. The room he was taken into was split in two by the decor, one side filled with cushy chairs, decorated with draping silk and glittering metal and jewels. The other side was a stage, bare and austere, with metal poles spaced across it. Keith’s stomach twisted, and when the guards tried to move forward, he instinctively braced his feet and tried to resist. 

The guards didn’t even pause. They just lifted him off his feet and carried him the last few yards, up to the front of the stage where another bird-person was waiting for them. 

“Oh, good,” they said as the guards deposited him in front of them. Keith recognized their voice; this was the person who bought him from his kidnappers. Their feathers were a pale lilac, and their big, owl-like eyes drank him in with undisguised eagerness. “The centerpiece is here.”

Keith bared his teeth at them in a snarl. There was no point in demanding to be let go, but he could at least be an inconvenience. 

The alien tsked at him, though how they made the sound when they had a curved beak rather than teeth escaped him. “Now, now, don’t be like that. You’re in luck. We were already planning an auction for today, so you won’t even have to be put in holding. Trust me, that’s a very good thing for you.”

“Fuck you,” Keith snapped back. That only made the alien step closer, look at him more closely, and the stoic guards prevented him from backing away. 

“So feisty. Red indeed.” They reached up; Keith shook his head, desperate not to be touched by any more of those fingers, but couldn’t prevent the alien from grasping his jaw and holding him still. “And pretty, too. Regardless of the function they want you for, you will certainly sell tonight, and sell well.”

“Get off of me!” He wrenched his head back, trying to get away, until one of the guards grabbed a handful of his hair and forced him forward again. He thrashed in their grip, shouting again, “Get off!” It was useless, of course, but he couldn’t help it. The unwelcome hands made him want to claw the skin off of his body until he didn’t have enough nerve endings left to feel them, and the obvious, looming threat of the stage and the pillories were putting nightmare scenarios in his brain. 

He had no idea what they meant when they kept saying he was red. It might be a quintessence thing. He really hoped it was a quintessence thing, because if it wasn’t, that comment about him being “pretty” implied things he just couldn’t stomach. 

The alien stood back and watched him struggle with his big, utterly unreadable, eyes. 

“Should we sedate it, sir?” asked the guard who still had a grip in Keith’s hair. A shot of rage mixed with genuine panic went through him– he chose to focus on the rage at being called an ‘it’ rather than the fear of being put under and let it fuel his continued struggling. 

The boss waved a hand carelessly. “No. Let the buyers see what they’re paying for. It’ll be a good show.”

“You want a show?” Keith growled at them. “I’ll give you a fucking show.” He swung his foot back with all the force he should muster into the guard’s shin. The guard let out an undignified squawk of pain, and in their surprise, their hold on Keith loosened. He yanked himself free, then spun and nailed the second guard in the gut with his scraped knee. 

Before he could pull away from the second guard the first recovered, locking an arm tight around Keith’s throat. Keith used it as leverage to swing both of his feet at the second guard’s chest, and had the satisfaction of knocking the bird-alien flat on his ass. 

The arm around his neck tightened. Keith managed a last strangled breath before the guard cut his air off entirely. All the while the alien in charge just stood and watched. Keith couldn’t read their owl-face, but there was an air of amusement about them that made Keith’s blood burn. 

“An excellent show,” they said smugly. “Do gag it, though. We want a show, not a ruckus.”

If he wasn’t in the process of being choked unconscious, Keith would’ve shown them the definition of the word. The guard he’d kicked picked themself up, grumbling something under their breath, and produced a piece of cloth that was summarily forced between his teeth before he was allowed to breathe again. 

“Put it in its place,” the leader said with another wave of his feathered arm. “There’s only a few vargas before the auction.”

They were in and out of the Castle in record time. Allura grabbed a gladiator staff from the armory, and the others their bayards, while Shiro got the shuttle ready to fly. Coran ran a sweep of his own from the Castle’s sensors and sent them the coordinates of several ships parked in the wastes beyond the market. Shiro wasn’t sure how fast the shuttles could go, but he would probably be finding out as he took them out into the muggy green sky. 

Lance was the one to spot the ship, more than a mile out from the market. The little alien had told them the truth– their ship was old and beat up, several panels missing from the outside to expose the inner wires and workings of the engine, and on one ragged wing was a blue symbol of concentric circles. The ship appeared to be powered down, though for how long it had been that way was impossible to tell. 

Shiro flew a short distance away before touching down. As he did so, Lance asked, “Are we being stealthy for this?”

“Only until they spot us,” was Shiro’s terse answer, and silence fell as they all climbed out of the shuttle. 

They approached carefully, using the boulders and various pieces of rusted metal sticking out of the ground as cover. There was no one standing outside the tiny ship, which was barely bigger than their shuttle, but as they got closer Shiro noticed the front compartment was open, and voices floated out over the wastes. 

“Come on, boss, this was a good score, we should celebrate.”

A second voice scoffed. “You mean like last time, when you gambled away everything we earned?”

“We don’t have to go somewhere like that, we could just get some drinks. I thought that was why we came back to this stupid moon to begin with.”

“No, we came back here to plan what we’re going to do with all this GAC. Which is hard to do when you won’t quit yapping in my ear!”

There was a good thirty feet of open space around the ship. From the edge of their cover Shiro could see the two occupants: a big blue alien impatiently drumming thick fingers against the ship, and a short, squat one tapping rapidly at a tablet. That one wouldn’t notice their approach, but the big one definitely would. 

He turned to the others and whispered orders. Then he stood up, put his hands in his pockets, and sauntered towards the ship, casual as you please.

The three eyes of the blue alien locked onto him immediately. Shiro pretended he didn’t notice the intense gaze as he approached, and got halfway across the open space before they elbowed their companion. The other alien squawked and clutched the tablet to their chest.

“What do you want?” they demanded, squinting down at Shiro as he came up alongside their ship. 

He leaned his shoulder against the rusted metal hull and shrugged. “Nothing. Just heard you guys scored big today.”

The short alien bared serrated teeth while the bigger one glowered at Shiro over their head. “None of your business. Now scram, before Drash puts your head in the ground.”

Shiro took his clenched fists from his pockets. Both aliens glanced momentarily at his metal arm, then seemed to both conclude that it wasn’t that big of a threat. That was their first mistake. 

Well, second. Their first was messing with Shiro’s little brother. 

“It is my business.” He tried to keep the angry growl out of his voice– if they were going to get Keith back, he had to keep himself from giving in to emotion– but it wasn’t easy. Looking at these aliens, knowing that they had taken Keith, had potentially already sold him, all he wanted to do was put his Galra hand through their heads. “Your score was my brother.”

The shorter alien scowled at him. “Not our problem. You can buy it back from the auctioneer if you’re so upset about it. Drash, get rid of this idiot.”

Drash lumbered to their feet. Third strike, you’re out.

Before they could get out of the ship, or even take a step, a laser blast from Lance’s bayard hit them in the shoulder. They let out a grunt of pain, overbalanced, and toppled out of the ship with another cry that sounded more like frustration than anything else. 

Bracing his foot on the hull and one hand on the lip of the front compartment, Shiro hauled himself up and grabbed the other alien by the throat. They let out another squawk and tried to dig their claws into Shiro’s arm, but they pinged uselessly off of the metal as Shiro dragged them from their ship. He didn’t hold back when he slammed them up against the hull. 

“Drash!” the alien shrieked, voice cracking. “Drash, help me!” 

“Drash is a little busy,” Shiro said darkly. If they were following the plan, Drash would be pinned down by Hunk and Allura, covered by Lance with his bayard. He leaned in closer. “Where did you take Keith?”

The alien wasn’t done struggling. He swung with his claws again, this time for Shiro’s face, but before they could make contact the growing green wire of Pidge’s bayard snapped around his wrist, pulling his arm tight. 

“I’m not going to ask again.” Shiro let his hand glow, just with a hint of heat around the alien’s neck, a quiet threat, and the alien’s eyes widened in terror. 

“Ok, ok, we sold it to Ox’Lakas’ barge! They’re off-world, they’re having an auction tonight!”

“Tarnoc!” Drash shouted from the other side of the ship. The alien, Tarnoc, just closed his eyes and shuddered in Shiro’s grip.

“Where?” 

“No idea, they don’t invite people like us.”

This time Shiro let himself growl and kicked the heat of his hand up a notch. He wasn’t sure if the adrenaline was helping or hindering his efforts to keep his composure. 

“But I know where they’ll go after! There’s a station they always go to the day after, to refuel before they leave the system. I can give you the coordinates, they’re on my tablet!”

From the corner of his eye, Shiro could see where said tablet had fallen when he dragged Tarnoc out of the ship. “Pidge,” he said, and didn’t have to elaborate. She kept the bayard wire taught as she fetched it from the dirt. 

“There, you have what you want, will you let us go now?”

Shiro considered it, but he had one more question. “Why did you take him?”

Tarnoc let out a hysterical, tittering giggle. “What kind of question is that? It–” Shiro squeezed, and they scrambled to correct themself. “He’s red.”

“What does that mean?” He had a sneaking suspicion he knew the answer, and that suspicion was confirmed. 

“He’s got something red in him, I don’t remember the word, something with a Q, quint-something, I don’t know! All I know is that red puts out the most power, lasts longer, so people pay a lot for it.” 

“Puts out the most power?” Pidge asked, butting into the interrogation, and Tarnoc had the gall to look annoyed even with Shiro’s glowing hand wrapped around their neck. 

“Yeah, you know, for engines or whatever.”

Shiro’s stomach dropped at the same moment as Pidge’s jaw. “They’re going to use Keith as a battery?”

The sad part was that Shiro couldn’t even be surprised. Nothing in space could faze him anymore. The only thing that mattered to him was getting Keith back. 

“I’m going to let you go,” he said to Tarnoc. “And we’re going to walk away. If you try anything, this thing can get way hotter than this. Understand?”

Tarnoc nodded and Shiro slowly, carefully, released his hold on them. Tarnoc let themself fall to the ground and didn’t seem like they were going to get up again, so Shiro backed away.

“Come on, guys. We’re done here.”

“Don’t do anything stupid,” Lance warned, keeping his bayard trained on Drash as Hunk and Allura got off of him. Drash didn’t seem inclined to attack either. They had a blank expression on their face, almost contemplative– maybe they were reexamining their partnership with the person they’d been calling ‘boss’ only a few minutes earlier. 

Good, Shiro thought. Maybe they’ll be less successful slave traders apart. 

Neither alien did anything as the group walked away, though Lance kept glancing over his shoulder, making sure they weren’t being followed. No one spoke until they got back to the shuttle. 

A question from Pidge broke the silence. “Allura, is it possible? Could you really just hook somebody up to an engine and use their quintessence to power it?”

“It’s… possible, theoretically.” Allura sounded dazed. “But as far as I know, no one on Altea ever thought of it. Or at least they never tried it.”

“You guys had that Balmera energy exchange thing, though,” Hunk pointed out from the back. Shiro numbly powered up the shuttle and got them back into the air. 

Allura shook her head. “That’s different. It’s an exchange, an amount of quintessence for a crystal. Done properly it doesn’t hurt you, and after a time your quintessence will regenerate. Just drawing it out of someone to power a machine, especially if they’re not given time to recover…” She shook her head again, like she couldn’t even fathom the idea.

“It’s like the Komar,” Lance said grimly. “What Zarkon and his witch do to planets.”

Shiro’s breath caught. Is that what would happen to Keith? The life sucked out of him, reduced to a blackened husk?

Before Shiro could go fully into his panic attack, Pidge started talking again. “It probably won’t be that fast or that intense. That alien said that red quintessence lasts longer, right? If they want to use him as a power source, they’d want him to last a while, like a battery back on Earth. No one wants a battery that can power something for five minutes and fry the circuit board like the Komar does.”

She was reasoning things out, the way she always did, and following the line of her logic helped. 

“So what you’re saying is that we have time,” Hunk concluded. 

“They said they would stop at that station tomorrow, right?” Lance asked. 

“That would be after the auction though,” said Pidge. Her voice was accompanied by tapping as she went through Tarnoc’s tablet. “If what they said about red quintessence is true, Keith will be gone by then.”

“But,” Allura jumped in, “We could find out who they gave him to and find them.”

The Castle was in sight. Shiro took a steadying breath. 

“We can look around the system tonight, do a few scans. If we can find the auction, great. If not, we ambush them at the station.”

Pidge let out a triumphant aha! “Found the coordinates for the station. It’s not far from the moon.”

“Nothing’s far from anything when you have wormholes.” It was Lance’s attempt at lightening the mood, and it worked enough to get a few wane smiles, but not enough to stop the heavy silence from returning.

Shiro didn’t want to wait until tomorrow. So much could happen in twelve hours, not even counting the time Keith had been gone already. But it was the most reasonable plan, as much as it made him want to scream with impatience. 

“We’re gonna get him back, guys.” That was Lance again, so quietly it was almost inaudible. 

Pidge murmured a soft agreement. Hunk sniffled. Allura pressed her hands together and stared straight out the windscreen at the looming hangar door. 

Shiro clenched his hands around the controls until the knuckles on his left hand turned white. He repeated it to himself, we’re going to get him back, like a prayer. A promise. 

No matter what it took.

Chapter Text

They left Keith on that stage for hours, the cuffs keeping him pinned to one of the metal posts. After nearly dislocating several different joints trying to pull or wiggle out of them, he gave it up and sat back against the post, staring at the ceiling so that he didn’t have to look at the rest of the room, so richly decorated for people who would be coming to buy other people. God, how was this his life now?

Eventually a dark curtain dropped across the front of the stage. More of the taloned aliens were bustling around on both sides of it, and as the sound of cluttered voices grew, guards began escorting more aliens onto the stage to join him. Most were beat down, bruised and disheveled, all were shackled to their posts, and none would meet his eyes. They weren’t going to be staging an uprising any time soon. 

So Keith returned to himself. He was thirsty, tired, aching, but he had to pay attention. There would be an opportunity for him to get out, he just had to spot it. Patience yields focus. 

He took a deep breath and let it out slow. Patience yields focus. If he didn’t see a way out, the others would find him eventually. Patience yields focus. 

A guard stopped beside his post and prodded Keith’s knee with his talon. Keith shot a glare at him, but received only a blank look back. 

“On your knees. The auction will begin soon.”

Patience may yield focus, but it wouldn’t make him less stubborn. Keith pointedly leaned back against the post, not forward like the guard wanted, and raised an eyebrow. 

The guard didn’t hesitate for a second before kicking Keith in the gut. He instinctively crumbled forward, gasping around the gag that was cutting into the sides of his mouth.  The guard grabbed him by the shoulder and forced him into the position he wanted. 

“You’re lucky,” the guard growled down at him. “If you weren’t the first lot up, I would have put my claw right through you.”

Keith let out a few rattling, painful coughs and refused to look up. The guard scoffed and stalked away, leaving Keith to try and get his breath back. 

“Esteemed guests,” said a booming voice. It was that alien again, the one in charge, speaking over some kind of intercom, and the chatter on the other side of the curtain died down in response. “Please take your seats. The auction will now begin.” 

More rustling, people getting to their seats, and Keith’s stomach filled with razor blade butterflies. It could’ve also been internal bruising from the kick. Hard to say. 

“Tonight we have a special additional lot not listed on your programs, acquired only vargas ago. A power source of red quintessence.”

The curtain flew open, and Keith was suddenly blinded by stage lights that rendered the crowd into nothing more than a dark haze and slightly darker blobs. A disbelieving murmur rose from the haze as he squinted into the lights. So it was a quintessence thing. That was a relief, though the words ‘power-source’ were concerning. 

“Bidding will begin at ten-thousand GAC.”

Keith’s first thought was jeez, those guys got ripped off. Then his skin began to crawl with the gazes of dozens of people that he couldn’t see, but knew were looking at him. There was a long silence where no one spoke, until a gruff voice rose from the back of the room. 

“How do we know it’s the real deal?”

“Ah, I see, you have concerns,” said the voice on the microphone. Another dark blob moved at the edge of the crowd, going back to the person who had spoken, and a dim blue light glowed as a screen was turned on. “See for yourself. Red quintessence, through and through. It could put out the power of a star with the correct equipment.”

A chill went down Keith’s spine. He felt horribly exposed, literally in the spotlight with only his pants, bound and gagged in front of all these people while they talked about him like an engine or a battery. 

The blue light in the back of the room went out, and the same voice spoke again. “I will give ten-thousand.”

“Excellent. Do I hear eleven-thousand?”

One of the dark blobs shifted, as though raising the equivalent of a hand. 

“That’s eleven-thousand. Do I hear twelve?”

Keith tried his best to keep his face locked in a glare. He wasn’t going to let his fear show. He wasn’t going to cower and break, not to these people. If they wanted red quintessence, they would have to take it with burned fingertips. 

“That’s seventeen-thousand five-hundred GAC. Do I hear eighteen-thousand?”

The number kept climbing. In the back of his mind Keith wondered how rare red quintessence really was. Maybe it was only rare in this system, if they were all getting snapped up by slave traders, or maybe it was artificial scarcity, spun by the auction master to get more money. Those thoughts managed to keep him distracted until the voice said:

“Going once for twenty-five thousand.” None of the blurs in the crowd moved. “Going twice for twenty-five thousand.” Keith bit down on the gag and tried not to hold his breath. “Sold for twenty-five thousand GAC.”

Immediately a guard emerged from the wings. The blinding light passed away, focusing on the alien to Keith’s right, but his eyes didn’t have time to adjust to the darkness before the guard detached his cuffs from the post (but not from each other) and pulled Keith to his feet. 

He staggered on his first step, his legs tight and sore from sitting in the same position for so long. The guard just grabbed him by the back of the neck and kept pushing him forward, off the stage and towards the exit. 

A new kind of alien was waiting in the hallway, discussing something with a bird-alien holding a tablet– probably paying his bill. He was a large, hulking thing with red skin and curved horns protruding from his forehead, like some kind of demon, complete with hooved feet. As if the universe could be any more clear with its symbolism. 

He gave a dangerous grin when he saw Keith. “Ah, my new acquisition. Lovely.”

“Will it be installed on your ship, sir?” asked the guard. Keith gave a petulant jerk, but the guard merely tightened their grip on his bicep until he was sure it would bruise. 

“Yes, if you please.” The demon turned back to the alien he was speaking to before. “Does this barge offer a disposal service for used up power-cells?”

“Yes, sir. There are scientists who prefer living specimens for their research, and certain pleasure barges have a demand for pliant slaves that don’t need to be trained. I’ll send someone down to collect yours after the installation.”

Keith’s mind whirled with a thousand thoughts. None of them were good: what exactly they meant by using him as a power cell, the concept of being used up and disposed of, rogue alien scientists conducting experiments on living breathing people, pleasure barges. Most of all he was thinking that the others needed to hurry up. 

“And the payment has gone through?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Excellent.” He turned to go down the hallway, idly waving a hand to indicate they should follow. The guard shoved Keith forward again. 

Once again, Keith watched everything around him as closely as he could, looking for a hole in the net, a way out of the web, but again there was nothing. Just an unchanging labyrinth of silver and cold metal under his bare feet. There was no indication that they were about to go into a hangar until the door slid open and they were in it, surrounded by dozens of alien spacecraft in a dizzying array of designs. That could’ve also been the adrenaline– hard to tell. 

The ship they brought him towards was wide and black, hunkered close to the ground like an armored beetle, but as they got closer Keith noted spots of rust on the edges of the metal panels, and the door that opened on the side let out the horrible screech of unoiled hinges. 

All of that left his mind when another demon alien emerged from the ship, a limp body slung over their shoulder. 

“Sir,” said the second demon to the first. “What shall I do with the old power cell?”

“Just wait a moment. They will take the old one once the new one is in place.”

The second demon nodded and stepped to the side so that the entourage could enter the ship. Keith got a full view of their face, thin like an Olkari’s, but far too sickly pale to determine what color their skin was supposed to be. But the worst part, the part that made Keith’s heart rate tick up a few notches, were their eyes. Glassy and half lidded, unseeing, more fit for a corpse than someone who was still breathing. 

He couldn’t let them take him on that ship. Once he left this place, it would take the others that much longer to track him down. He braced his feet again, buying himself an extra second to look around the hangar while the guards manhandled him forward; there, to the right, was a spacecraft small enough to be comparable to a jet. Fast and agile– hopefully. He just had to get to it. 

Suddenly, a huge red hand grabbed him by the jaw, jerking his gaze back to the monster who had bought him. 

“Ah-ah-ah,” he crooned. “Don’t make a scene. It will only make things worse for you.” 

Keith gave a defiant grunt and squirmed in the aliens’ hold. The grip made it obvious how fast and heaving his breaths were, and he couldn’t help how his eyes flicked back to the unresponsive person slung over the other alien’s shoulder. The one holding him chuckled. 

“Don’t worry, little red. That one lasted two decaphoebs powering the shuttle, and he was only a green.”

With that he let Keith go and stepped back. “Of course,” he added, “You’ll be powering much more than a shuttle. Take him in.”

This time Keith didn’t go quietly. He screamed obscenities through the gag, kicked and wiggled and fought, but it got him only a couple seconds more before one of the bird-aliens lifted him off his feet and hauled him on board the ship. 

The inside was no less dingy than the outside. Wires protruded from gaps in the plating, and when his toes brushed the floor it was coated in a fine layer of dust and grime. The lights were turned so low he couldn’t see a thing until he was dragged into what looked like a cockpit. A long panel wrapped around the room, full of blinking lights, the part in front of the windscreen obviously a dashboard of some sort. 

They took him to the other end. There was some more machinery at the end of the panel, some thick pipes and a metal drum with something looped around it. One of the guards held him tight by his elbows while the other began to unloop mysterious something– chains. Chains with thick, chunky shackles that even Allura might’ve had trouble breaking out of. 

Shit shit shit. 

The guard holding him must’ve heard his breath start to pick up again. Before Keith could try any more desperate struggling they gripped his elbow tighter and twisted. A grunt of pain punched out of him, distracting him just long enough for the other guard to snap a cuff around his wrist. It was as heavy as he’d feared, and there was no wiggle room, metal to skin all the way around. 

“Turn him around,” said the voice of his new owner. The bastard almost sounded bored. “I like to see their faces.” 

The guard obligingly turned him so that he faced the room before fastening the other cuff. Keith gave them a few testing tugs, but as he’d feared, the chains didn’t so much as creak. Of course they had to be the one part of the ship that wasn’t rusted to hell and back. 

“Is it to your satisfaction, sir?”

“Yes, thank you. We’ll be departing shortly.”

Both of the taloned bird guards snapped their heels together and bowed stiffly to the demon, who was now lounging in some kind of command chair, before marching off the ship again. Several more aliens of his new captor species took their place, bustling around the cockpit to prepare for takeoff. 

The head alien perched his chin in his hand, watching Keith with a sharp, eager grin. The chains were too short for Keith to reach up for the gag, so he settled for glaring back. Without taking his eyes off of him, the demon called, “Xana, start the engine. Let’s see what our new acquisition can do.” Behind him, an alien with purple skin and horns that made her at least six inches taller threw a switch with a clunk. 

He was ready for the pain. It was a hot burn that twined through the fibers of his muscles, like all of the times he’d pushed too hard and too long in training or a particularly long, arduous battle. What caught him off guard was the way his legs immediately crumbled underneath him, dumping him to the metal floor. He only managed to stay upright by leaning back against the metal contraption he was bound to as the chains began to glow gold in his periphery. 

It was the strangest sensation. Like the machine was stealing the tiny flashes of electricity that flew between his brain and his muscles, directing them somewhere else and leaving him weak, barely able to move. His thoughts began to fog over next, and the metal floor shuddered underneath him. 

Someone let out an impressed sound. “Wow, look at the readings. Looks like it was worth the money.”

He heard the low tones of the dem-alien in charge answering back, but the words wouldn’t process. 

Think, come on, get it– together– don’t let them–

It was too much effort. His thoughts scattered. The phantom burn of weak muscles mixed with the very real burn of pain, and despite all of the burning, a wave of goosebumps spread up his sides and over his arms. The ship jerked and Keith’s head knocked against the metal, but it barely registered. 

The last thing he felt before sinking into the haze was the rumble of an engine beneath the floor, and the familiar drop of his stomach as the ship took off.

Shiro stood in front of the Castle’s large screens, staring out at the distant smudge of light that was the station Tarnoc had told them about. They’d spent hours scouring their section of space, searching for the ship that Keith had been… “given” to, but there was just too much empty space, too many ways for them to conceal themselves. Eventually they had to admit defeat and just wait until the auction-ship showed up the next day. 

Shiro had been standing in this same spot for hours. The others had scattered to prepare or distract themselves as needed, but Shiro couldn’t budge. It wouldn’t do Keith any good, of course, but he couldn’t shake the urge to stand guard, hold a vigil, whatever anyone wanted to call it. As though it would somehow tell Keith that he wasn’t going through it alone. 

The door hissed behind him. The sound of heels stepping into the room told him exactly who it was.

“Allura,” he said before she could say a word. “Please don’t ask me to try and sleep.”

“I wasn’t going to.” The click clack of heels grew louder, closer, until he could see her silver hair out of the corner of his eye. “Just thought you could use some company.”

He let out a noncommittal grunt, but didn’t argue. He could feel Allura’s evaluating gaze and fought  to keep his face as impassive as he could; unfortunately Allura was a diplomat, and could always read him no matter how hard he tried. 

“You’re blaming yourself.”

“Of course I am,” Shiro scoffed without thinking. “The buddy system is safety 101, but I let us all split up, and I didn’t notice when he stopped talking on the comms, and–”

“Shiro. You know what Keith would say if he heard you talking like that.”

Shiro huffed a sigh, but she was right, he did know. Keith would tell him that he was only human, that everyone makes mistakes, that there was no point fussing about the past when it couldn’t be changed. Still, the acknowledgement came reluctantly. 

“I know. I just…” 

He knew what it felt like. To be trapped, at the mercy of people who see you as little more than an object, a toy to be used and discarded when they grew bored of it. The loss of control, the loss of even feeling like a person. The loss of reality as he drew in on himself to escape the pain and fear. 

No one deserved to feel like that. Especially Keith, who had been through enough already. 

“I’m supposed to protect everyone. That’s a leader’s job. The others are just kids.”

“I understand.” There was a touch of guilt in Allura’s voice too. “But the universe is a dangerous place. We can’t protect them from everything.”

Some days it didn’t feel like Shiro could protect anyone from anything, let alone the entire universe. He didn’t let that thought escape– it wouldn’t have helped anything. Instead he said, “We should have Lance get a sonar of the ship with Blue when it shows up. Knowing the layout could help.”

Allura nodded, a silver blur in the corner of his eye. “I agree. I’ll tell Pidge to focus on hacking their systems to find out where Keith was sent. We can plan in more detail once we know more about the ship.”

For a moment there was silence. Shiro rubbed his forehead, trying to dispel the headache, but couldn’t hold back the yawn that cracked his jaw right afterwards.

“Sleep wouldn’t be a bad thing,” Allura murmured. He just sighed again, this time in defeat. 

“Yeah, ok.” 

Allura’s heels filled the room again. Shiro hung back, just for a second, before turning to follow. 

We’re coming for you, Keith. Just a little longer.

Chapter Text

The endless vibration in his bones faded. Keith blinked; the room was starting to piece itself back together, or maybe his eyes were turning back on, it was hard to tell the difference. There was metal, dim light, strange people with strange skin, and hey, that burning pain was gone. With a bit of effort he focused his eyes on his hand, lying beside him against the metal, and experimentally wiggled his fingers. To his relief, they moved. 

Thinking felt like wading through mud. He fought through it, dragging himself back towards coherence, until reality settled back within its lines. 

Unfortunately, reality still sucked. 

“You did well, little red.” A rough hand surrounded his bicep and peeled him off the floor. Keith’s whole body ached with phantom pain and laying on metal for however long it had been, his throat burning dry and the gag gouging into the corners of his mouth. “Let’s see how you deal with something a bit more powerful.” 

The person holding him up undid one of the cuffs around his wrists. Keith let out a hiss of pain as it fell to the floor– the skin underneath stung like someone was shoving needles through it. 

“Bring him along. T’aazi and Ylka should be waiting.”

Keith stumbled over his feet as he was led out of the ship. He should be trying to escape, should be fighting, but he could barely think, and his limbs felt like limp noodles. He wouldn’t be going anywhere under his own power, and damn if it didn’t piss him off. 

The hangar they emerged into was smaller than he expected. Small and dark, like a cave, with only a few pale lights showing the way towards the door at the other end. It probably could’ve held a few more ships, but it was empty except for the one they’d flown in on. Even if he could get away from the guards there wouldn’t be anything for him to steal. 

When their little entourage reached the door, it didn’t slide open easily like the ones in the Castle. It stuttered, like there was rust caught in the seams, and let out a horrible keening sound that made Keith cringe. Beyond was a long hallway, just as dismally lit, and on the other side four more of the weird demon aliens were waiting for them. Two were clearly guards in their armor. The other two were dressed in simple cloth, one wearing a golden collar and holding their chin high, the other with their eyes on the floor, hands clasped behind their back. 

“My lord,” said the one with the collar, bowing so low their long horns almost brushed the floor. “Welcome home. Your son is eager to speak with you.”

The leader scoffed and waved a red hand. “He always is. Boy talks far too much for his own good. You two get our new power cell hooked up. You know the procedures.”

“Yes, my lord.”

The guard who had been dragging Keith along abruptly dropped his arm. The two servants stepped aside, letting the head alien and his guards continue down the hall with heads lowered in deference. All eyes were away from him– he almost started to step back, maybe if he was quick he could run back out in the hangar, but faster than he could track the alien with the golden collar snapped out a hand and fastened it around his wrist. 

“And where do you think you’re going?” they hissed with narrowed, golden eyes. “You are a servant in the lordly house of Scar’fel. Treat your superiors with respect, or we will beat it into you.”

Keith made a muffled, defiant sound. The alien rolled his eyes and gestured impatiently to the other, who gave a barely perceptible flinch. 

“Ylka, remove that disgusting thing.” 

Carefully, like they were scared of him, the other alien shuffled closer and reached up to pull the gag out of Keith’s mouth. Up close their skin glinted an iridescent purple, and even though their claws were several inches long, they were gentle with them. 

At first all Keith could do was cough, but he did it with his best withering glare. The mean alien, who must’ve been T’aazi, glowered back at him. 

“Take his arm, Ylka. Make sure he doesn’t make a run for it.” He waited for Ylka to obey, then released Keith’s wrist and turned smartly on his heel to lead them down the hall. Ylka didn’t pull so much as guide him, and for the moment with no other options, Keith had to play along. He nearly jumped out of his skin when he heard a sudden whisper in his ear. 

“Try not to resist too much,” Ylka whispered. “It will only make things worse if you do.”

Before he could decide if he wanted to respond another voice echoed down the long hall towards them. 

“You spent how much?”

“Did I stutter?” asked the voice of the lord, cool and disinterested. “Twenty-five thousand.”

“On one battery?!”

“It’s red, it’s more than capable.”

“For the shuttle, maybe, but here? Even at a quarter power it’ll burn out within a couple of movements!” 

“What else would you have me do?” The lord was beginning to sound annoyed as T’aazi stopped before an unmarked door. If he craned his neck, Keith could barely see the lord at the end of the hall, in a tense standoff with a blue-skinned alien with short horns and a spiked tail that lashed behind them with annoyance. “Let the manor go dark?”

The blue alien huffed and folded his arms. “I’ve told you before, we could move the manor closer to a star and–”

“Absolutely not!” The screeching of the door opening drowned out the beginning of his next sentence. “-- never have panels like a pauper! Especially not for the ball!”

“Hold on, you said you canceled it! We can’t do something like that, the battery won’t be able to–” 

T’aazi impatiently yanked him into the room, and the voices were too muffled to make out anymore. 

The room was small, dark, and bare. The only thing Keith could make out in the gloom was how one of the walls protruded more than the others, and another pair of the thick shackles from the ship hanging from it. Keith balked at the sight of them, but T’aazi merely gave him another shove, forcing him inside. 

“Hook him up.” 

Ylka led him forward. They had an almost beseeching look on their face, pleading with him to not put up a fight. Keith didn’t– he had a different idea. 

“I have friends.” He kept one eye on T’aazi as he spoke softly in Ylka’s ear. They seemed preoccupied with getting something out of a small locker on the opposite wall. “They’re coming for me. We could help you.”

Ylka shook their head. They pushed Keith up against the cold metal wall as gently as they could and reached for the first shackle, still never meeting his eyes. But he wasn’t deterred. 

“We could take you with us. You just have to help me get out of here, and then we’ll both be free. We’ll get you out, I promise.”

“Hush,” Ylka breathed out. One shackle fastened around his wrist, and Keith’s stomach sank. He’d lost his window to get away. “Talking like that will only get you in trouble.” 

“Can’t be worse than this,” Keith said bitterly, jerking his wrist as Ylka fastened the other shackle. He didn’t immediately feel the sensations from the shuttle, but as it closed a light overhead flickered on, filling the room with ominous red light. 

“Yes, it can.”

“But–” 

“Enough!” T’aazi snapped from across the room. Ylka ducked their head and jerked to the side, revealing the dark object in the other alien’s hands as they stalked towards them. “You think I can’t hear you whispering?”

“Fuck you.” He could feel his temper starting to warm up again and embraced it. It meant he was still alive, still him, not a lifeless body being disposed of. “You’re no better than us. You’re just property to him too.” 

T’aazi’s hackles raised, revealing wicked canines. “Hold him,” was all he said, but Ylka cowered back with a whimper. 

“Already? Maybe–”

“Are you questioning me, whelp?” 

There was a brief, tense silence. T’aazi glared holes into the top of Ylka’s head while they tried their best to become one with the wall, but ultimately, as Keith suspected they would, Ylka gave in and slunk the few steps back to him. 

The chains still had enough slack for him to dodge Ylka’s first half-hearted attempt to grab him. He didn’t want to fight them, but if it would delay the pain and blankness he’d felt in the shuttle for even a minute, he’d do it. 

Unfortunately, it seemed like T’aazi was sick of his defiance. Rolling their eyes, they stepped over to the control panel on the wall beside the door and pushed a button. Keith heard gears grinding behind the wall against his back and his wrists lurched upwards as the chains retracted, pulling up, up, up until his arms were stretched over his head and he was forced onto tip-toe to avoid straining his shoulders. 

“There. That should stop your squirming.”

Keith growled and kicked back at the wall in pure frustration. He was so sick of being pushed around and restrained and manhandled. Not for the first time, he wished he had something like Shiro’s Galra arm or Allura’s strength just to get the fuck out. 

“Ylka.”

The alien’s eyes were sad as they came close again, but Keith didn’t care. His attempt to turn them traitor had clearly failed, so he reverted back to what he knew; coiling his hands around the chains for leverage, he hoisted himself up and threw a kick in their direction. It was pitifully easy for them to dodge it and slip in behind him. 

“Remember,” T’aazi said as Ylka put their hands on either side of Keith’s head, rough skin pressed against his temples, “You brought this on yourself.”

“You’re pathetic,” Keith snapped back with enough acid to melt through one of the metal walls. “Acting like you’re above everyone else because you’re his favorite pet.”

T’aazi moved forward. Keith continued his tirade, his heart pounding in his ears. 

“You only have authority because he gives it to you, and no matter how much you grovel and stab other people in the back, one day he’ll throw you away like trash, and no one will care!”

As T’aazi raised his hands, he finally realized what the black, metallic object they were holding was, and rage twisted into panic. 

“No!” His voice rang against the walls as he tossed his head, trying to avoid it, but Ylka’s hands held him still. “I’ll kill you, I swear, I fucking swear I will–”

The words ended when T’aazi grabbed him by the jaw and forced his mouth closed. The metal was cold under his chin and over his cheekbones as the alien fastened the muzzle in place with tinny clicks. 

Keith screamed through clenched teeth and started throwing kicks with abandon. One of them actually got T’aazi in the gut hard enough to make him double over, but the satisfaction barely registered under the overwhelming sensation of confinement, his breath pushing back over his cheeks with nowhere to escape to. 

T’aazi growled something that sounded annoyed. Keith was too busy losing his shit to hear what it was. Ylka stepped out from behind him, meekly obeying whatever order T’aazi gave them, and in the moment hatred for both of them burned hot in Keith’s chest. Until Ylka pressed another button on the control panel and the golden glow lit up in the edges of his vision, and the burn of hatred turned to the burn of pain. 

It was so, so much worse than the shuttle had been. The burn engulfed him, his wrists protested as his legs failed, and any conscious thoughts began to slip through his fingers like sand. The red glow of the overhead light brightened like a road flare, casting stark, sharp shadows as the aliens left the room, leaving him to stare sightlessly at the ceiling and try to keep his cries behind his teeth.

“Where did you send him?”

Ox’Lakas, backed into a corner, gave Shiro the most sullen look a bird-man-alien could manage. “You’re going to have to be more specific.”

The barge was massive, but it was built for carrying cargo, not fighting. Between four Lions and the Castle, it had only taken minutes to bring the ship to a standstill, and even less time to secure it; despite the number of guards in the place, none of them seemed particularly loyal to the ship or its owner. They barely put up a fight. The owner wasn’t any better. Maybe Shiro was just that intimidating, but Ox’Lakas had let himself be cornered. He didn’t even carry a weapon. 

“Yesterday. At the auction.” 

The alien gave a  little contemptuous sniff, like some kind of offended Victorian lord. “We sold over thirty units at that auction. Do you expect me to remember all of them?”

Shiro’s fists clenched as he fought down more rage. If it had been the Galra who had taken Keith, they would’ve at least understood the importance of their captive. But these people talked about him, and all the other people they abducted, like they were nothing more than merchandise. It reminded him of how Haggar and her druids would peer down at him as they poked and prodded and cut him open like a fascinating science experiment. His scar thrummed across the bridge of his nose. 

Before he could lay into the alien, he heard the hiss of the bridge door opening. It was Lance and Hunk, Lance armed with his bayard, and Hunk carrying a metal box.

“Hold was empty,” Lance reported as Hunk set the box down on the floor. “They must’ve cleared everybody out.”

“But we did find this,” said Hunk. Reaching into the box, he pulled out a piece of very familiar red cloth. Keith’s jacket. 

“Oh, you meant the red one.” 

Shiro snapped back around, fastening a glare on the alien, who had straightened up with an almost bored look on his face. 

“We sold that one to the house of Scar’fel. I was surprised to see the lord there, honestly, what with all the rumors of their financial ruin, but the GAC came through without a hitch.”

He took a deep, cleansing breath, and managed to keep his voice even when he asked, “Where are they?”

The alien just shrugged. “Their coordinates are in the system. I have hundreds of clients, I’d never be able to remember all of them.” 

Shiro, not taking his eyes off of the alien, tapped on his comms. “Pidge, are you in the system?”

The alien jolted, and for the first time, something akin to concern began to appear in their eyes. He didn’t know how sensitive this species’ hearing was, but he hoped it was enough for them to hear Pidge’s answer. 

“Yup, it was child’s play. What am I looking for?”

“Coordinates, for a place called the house of Scar’fel.” 

“10-4.”

Lance stepped forward to stand alongside Shiro. He had his bayard on his shoulder, pointing at the ceiling, but the tension in his frame said that he was ready to fire at any moment. With a second set of eyes on Ox’Lakas, Shiro looked back at the box that Hunk was still shifting through. 

“Anything else in there?”

Hunk nodded. “Boots, belt, shirt, and his knife.”

Shiro breathed a mental sigh of relief. Keith would’ve been devastated if he lost that. 

“Got the coordinates,” said Pidge in his ear. “Looks like a space station. Sending them to the Castle now.”

“There you are.” Ox’Lakas waved a sinewy, feathered arm. “You have your information. You can go and rescue your friend and let me get back to business.” 

Everyone’s eyebrows rose at that. 

“You expect us to just let you go?” demanded Lance. 

“You’re literally slave traders,” said Hunk. 

The alien merely shrugged. “This is how it goes, isn’t it? I sell someone, their friends get angry, delay me for a few hours, and go steal them back from the buyer. Not my problem.”

Lance and Hunk turned aghast eyes to Shiro, who didn’t know what to say. The angry, protective part of him wanted to burn the ship to slag, with or without its occupants, and leave it for the void. It would be easy– there weren’t any other abducted people on board. Just the complicit ones. 

But could he live with that many other lives on his conscience? More importantly, could the others? 

“Pidge, wipe their system. And make sure there’s no back ups.”

The alien’s beak dropped open, owl-like eyes widening in horror as Pidge gave a diabolic laugh over the comms. “Oh hell yeah.”

“Wait, no, this isn’t how this works–” 

Shiro just stared them down, unmoved by the babble of alternating pleas and threats, while they all waited for Pidge’s confirmation. Lance had a grim, satisfied look on his face, but Hunk remained anxious and antsy, probably eager to keep on Keith’s trail. Him and Shiro both. 

“Aaaaaaaand done.” Screens around the room, displaying various ship stats and databases, all blinked off for a moment before Pidge’s laughing gremlin cartoon began bouncing around them, like an old screensaver. “Bye-bye massive contact list.”

“No!” Shiro had never known that a bird’s face could twist with anger, but this one did as Ox’Lakas took a messy swing at Shiro. The alien obviously had never thrown a punch before; Shiro easily blocked the strike and drove his human fist into the alien’s gut so hard they staggered back into the wall, wheezing pathetically. 

“Come on, guys. We’re done here.”

Coran, Allura, and Pidge were waiting for them on the bridge when they got back, the box of Keith’s belongings in tow. 

“The coordinates are in,” Allura said as the three of them came in. “As soon as you’re ready.”
Shiro nodded to Lance and Hunk. Hunk handed off the box to Lance before proceeding to his seat. Lance put the box down on Keith’s chair– Shiro’s throat tightened– and went to his own. 

“Shiro.” Pidge was waving him over.

Swallowing back the lump in his throat, Shiro complied. “What is it?”

Her voice was quiet, not intending the rest of the bridge to hear. “When I was in their system, I saw their bank accounts– or what aliens use like a bank account, I guess. There was a lot of money in there.”

“What did you do with it?” Money could help them, especially when it came to finding obscure, ancient parts for the Castle, but the idea of using it made his stomach turn. Judging by the scrunched look on Pidge’s face, she felt the same. 

“I didn’t take it. I probably should’ve asked everyone first, but I didn’t want any of it. I just–” Her eyes darted up to meet Shiro’s, just briefly, and must’ve seen the same feelings projected back at her. She shook her head and sat up a little straighter. “There are some organizations operating in this system and a couple of others that are dedicated to ending the slave trade. A lot of them just got a very generous donation. Anonymous, of course.” 

Shiro allowed himself a proud smile and ruffled Pidge’s hair. “Perfect.” She managed a smile back before he felt Allura’s eyes burning holes in the back of his neck. 

He didn’t go up to his place at the front. Instead he hung back behind Allura’s podium, giving her a solemn nod when she met his eye. 

The Princess turned back to the windscreen and closed her eyes. The blue light of the wormhole opening filled the bridge, Shiro’s stomach lurched as it always did, and the Castle shot off into space.

Chapter Text

In the shuttle, he hadn’t been able to feel the pain. The drain turning his thoughts loose made it drift away unnoticed. But this time he could feel it. Even with his inability to form a complete sentence in his head, he could still feel the pain burning through him, turning his blood to ash, and there was nothing else he could focus on. It was overwhelming. 

The muzzle only made it worse. He couldn’t breathe, his lungs ached like his wrists and his shoulders as he hung limply from the glowing chains, and he couldn’t even open his mouth to scream. All of the pain and fear got stuck in his throat, unable to escape, and made the pain burn that much hotter. 

He had no idea how long he hung there before the door opened again. Everything was blurred together in a red miasma, but it had to have been a few hours at least, if the sharp ache in his shoulders was anything to go by. 

Two familiar shapes entered the room. One stayed by the door while the other approached him, a bowl in their large hands. Keith cast about his mind for any scrap of information he could get hold of, and luckily that information was the name of the person standing before him– Ylka. 

“I’ve brought you water,” they murmured, almost inaudible under the constant buzzing of energy in Keith’s head. “Don’t make this a fight, please, or T’aazi will take it away.” 

After a moment of silence, Keith recognized that they wanted an answer and gave a delirious nod, though it looked more like lolling, and made his vision swirl even more. 

“Good.” They knelt, setting the bowl aside on the floor, and when they stood back up, undid the metal clasps holding the muzzle so tightly against his chin and cheekbones. He took big, greedy gulps of air, and when Ylka held the bowl of tepid water to his lips, he took big, greedy gulps of that, too. It didn’t feel nice at the bottom of an empty stomach, but his burning throat was soothed– for now. 

When the bowl was empty Ylka stepped back and put it back on the floor. His stomach plummeted when they stood back up with the muzzle in their hands again; he couldn’t move his body, but if he concentrated, he could pull words out of the red and gold haze and push them out of his mouth. 

“Please.” It scraped against his throat, his voice cracking, and he thought he saw Ylka’s hands tremble. “I– I won’t talk anymore, ju-just don’t put it back on, please.” 

Ylka looked over their shoulder. Keith couldn’t make out the shape in the doorway, but when they turned back to him, they simply murmured an apology and reached up towards him.

“No, no, please.” With immense effort he managed to turn his head, but it was much too slow and weak to impede Ylka. 

“I’m sorry,” they said again as they pushed Keith’s jaw closed, muffling the sob that punched out of his chest. “It’s the rules. I have to.” The latches snapped shut, encasing him in suffocating metal, and though the same panic rushed through him, there was nothing left in his body to make it react. All he could do was hang there and try not to cry too obviously. 

Ylka retrieved their bowl and returned to the door. The two shapes left, and with nothing to anchor his focus on, Keith sank back into the burn. 

Overhead, the red light flickered.

“Is that it? It’s tiny!” 

Shiro squinted out the Castle’s windscreen. Lance was right– the illuminated shape before them was much smaller than he thought it would be based on what Pidge pulled from the barge’s system. But there was something off about it, and it took another moment of staring before he noticed that some of the background stars were blotted out. 

“There’s more to it,” he said, pointing out the windscreen to trace the dark silhouette with his finger. “It’s just not lit up.”

It looked like only a quarter of the station was running. Maybe it was because of the “financial trouble” Ox’Lakas had alluded to, but it didn’t really matter. They just needed intel. 

Allura parked the Castle as far away as she could while keeping the station within the Castle’s scanning range. Shiro sent Lance and Blue out to get a sonic map of the place while the rest of them ran a battery of sweeps and scans of the structure. 

While waiting for the scans Shiro stood at the windscreen, much as he had the previous night, watching the station. There were a surprising number of smaller ships flitting around, barely visible against the dark backdrop of space. They would fly in, pause for a few minutes at the bottom of the station, then take off again, freeing up the space for the next ship. Deliveries, maybe, but why so many and so quickly? 

Hunk’s voice pulled him back. “Shiro, come look at this.”

The Yellow Paladin was hunched over the back of Pidge’s paladin seat, both of them muttering over something on her screen. Shiro obligingly joined them; on the screen was a rough outline of the station, a cloudy, red gradient spilled over the bottom quarter of the shape. 

“It’s an energy overlay,” Hunk explained without waiting for Shiro to ask. “Right now, it looks like most of the energy generation is at the bottom of the station, and that generated energy isn’t going far, just staying within that lit up section.”

“Once Blue gets us the sonic layout, we should be able to compare the two and figure out where the engine room is,” Pidge added. 

Shiro finished the line of thought: “And if they’re using Keith as an energy source, they’d probably keep him close to the engines.”

“That’s the theory,” said Hunk with a nod. 

The comms system crackled, and Lance’s voice projected across the bridge. “One sonic map, coming right up.” Pidge’s screen blinked. Her fingers flew. “Hey, is it just me, or are there a lot of little ships coming into this place?”

“It’s not just you,” Shiro responded. “Pidge, would you be able to get into their system and find out what all the fuss is about?”

“Yeah. Hunk, I’ll send you the sonic and the energy map.”

“10-4.”

Lance made a low, considering sound. “Hey, guys, I flew around to the other side of the station, just to see, and there are some bigger ships over here. Bigger and waaaaay fancier. Like, Castle fancy.”

“Can you transmit an image to us?” asked Allura. The windscreen flickered and was replaced by a picture of several large spacecraft approaching the other side of the station, and eyebrows rose all around the room. Lance wasn’t exaggerating– one of the ships resembled the Castle with its tall spires but were far more ornate, with flying buttresses and large, dark windows that looked almost Gothic. Another was long and low like a manor house, and the third was covered in gems and glass that reflected the dim starlight. 

“What the fuck?” said Pidge, incredulous, and Shiro thought she was talking about the ships until she said his name, drawing him back to her seat. The image on her screen wasn’t any less confusing than the ships outside– it was written in an unfamiliar alien language, but even so the script seemed overly fanciful, framed by curling, leafy designs. 

“What is it?” He had a guess, but he waited for Pidge’s opinion.

“It’s– I think it’s an invitation.” She shook her head bemusedly. “They’re throwing a freaking party.”

“Shiro, I got the maps up.”

He crossed to Hunk’s seat. His head was starting to spin; having a crowd of civilians on the station would only make it harder to get to Keith unnoticed and get out again without collateral damage. Thankfully, Hunk had an answer.

“There’s this big room on the lowest level, see?” he said, pointing it out on the schematic to Shiro, bathed in red. “Along the hallway leading to it, there’s a bunch of these little rooms. And this one, closest to the engines,” he pointed to a little box, right in the middle of where the red was deepest, “seems to be where the energy readings are coming from.”

That’s where Keith is. Shiro’s human hand tightened on the back of Hunk’s seat. 

Lance stopped transmitting his image, letting the windscreen clear as he said, “I’m on my way back. What are we thinking, infiltrate the party?”

Allura shook her head, despite the fact that Lance couldn’t see it. “No, that would take far too much time. Hunk, can you see on the schematics where those delivery ships are stopping?”

Hunk flicked the map down to the opposite end. “There’s a loading bay on the same level as the engines–” A burst of sudden light from the windscreen cut him off. The station was powering up, lighting up level by level until the whole thing was finally visible against the backdrop of the stars. Everyone watched in tense silence. They were all thinking the same thing: all of that power was coming from Keith, and whoever else the owners of the station had locked up on that bottom level. 

“Coming into the hangar,” Lance reported. “Wait, Allura, something’s wrong with Red. She’s all flopped over.”

Allura’s voice took on a mournful tone. “I know. The bond between Paladin and Lion is formed through quintessence. Keith must not have enough to keep it going.”

Shiro’s heart thudded against the inside of his ribs like it was trying to break them, but he took a breath and closed his eyes, forcing himself to think calmly. When he opened them again and spoke, his voice was steady. 

“We’ll take Green. Her cloaking should be able to get us right up to the loading dock.” 

Almost there, Keith.

Keith screamed into the muzzle. He could barely hear himself under the roaring in his ears as burning pain consumed him. He couldn’t even thrash or try, even futilely, to get away from the shackles draining his life away. All he could do was release muffled wails, until his voice failed him too, and a chill began to invade his limbs on the heels of the burn. 

It felt like bleeding out. He had no idea how long it was before his vision began to fuzz over with static, or when exactly the shivers took hold of his body. His head fell back. The red light was flickering, stuttering in time with his heartbeat, which grew more uncertain with every excruciating moment. 

He tried to focus on it. Just for a second. Just to keep himself awake, to keep himself together, just a few seconds, until… until… 

His focus slipped. Until what? No one was coming to save him. When had anyone ever come to save him?

A little voice in the back of Keith’s mind protested. There was someone, but he couldn’t find them in his memory– it all slipped away before he had time to grasp it. Everything was slipping away, even the pain that had been his constant companion. The world was dissolving into red mist, and when had it ever been possible to catch mist and make it something solid? 

Keith faded away from himself, leaving only the mist and the flickering red light.

The Green Lion bumped ever-so-gently into the edge of the loading dock. It was only a split second of contact, but it was enough for Shiro and Allura to be deposited right at the airlock door before the Lion drifted away again to avoid a crash with the freight ships. Shiro had a hacking device on his belt, but it wasn’t necessary; the airlock opened easily at his touch, probably left unlocked for the deliveries that were still coming in. 

Thankfully, no one was waiting for those deliveries on the other side of the door. The interior of the ship was barely lit, and when they proceeded to the next door that would let them into the hall they needed, it scraped open with a horrible screeching noise. It made Shiro’s pulse jump for a moment, but there didn’t seem to be anyone around to hear. The lower level of the place was deserted. As useful as that was for their rescue, Shiro couldn’t help but be uneasy. Were there security measures that they couldn’t see in the shadows?

Allura was thinking the same. Activating her comms, she murmured, “Coran, can you do a scan of this level?” 

A moment of silence, then: “The Castle isn’t picking anything up. You should be clear to proceed.”

He didn’t have to tell Shiro twice. It was hard to be sneaky in full armor, but he muffled his steps as best he could, sticking close to one of the walls as the two of them crept down the hall as quickly as they dared. 

Doors lined the hall all the way down, every three or four feet. He and Allura didn’t check all of them. It would take too long, and they couldn’t risk the noise if all of them were as jacked up and rusty as the first had been. There had been one room that had glowed the brightest on the energy map– the one at the far end of the hall, the closest to the engines. That’s where they would check first. 

“It’s so dark,” Allura whispered. 

“We shouldn’t turn on our lights,” Shiro said back. “It could attract attention. Hunk, keep an eye on the map and tell us when we get to it, ok?”

“10-4.” His voice was tense. The others had all been silent since they left the Castle, like they were all holding their breath. Shiro certainly was. 

It was the longest hallway of his life. Maybe it was just the dark, or the stress, but it felt like they walked for hours and still saw nothing but rusted metal. Until they turned a corner, passing a large door that Shiro recognized from the maps as the door to the shuttle hangar, and suddenly the hall filled with a flash of red light. 

He instinctively yanked himself and Allura back behind the corner, expecting to hear a blast or the buzz of a trap going off. But there was silence, and the light on the wall flickered out for a moment before stuttering back on, filling the hall with soft, uncertain red rather than the steady brightness he’d learned to expect from traps and weapons. It reminded him, morbidly, of someone struggling to breathe. 

“Coran, there’s a light in this hall,” he breathed into the comms, barely peeking around the corner. “Can you see any traps?”

“No, I don’t.”

“You’re almost to the room,” Hunk said. 

Cautiously, Shiro leaned around the corner. The source of the light was a thin break in the sealing around one of the rusted doors at the far end. “I see where it’s coming from. Let’s go, Allura.”

His heart thudded louder and louder in his ears with every step. The red light was only growing more unsteady, and the way it cast eerie, sharp shadows around the hall was adding to the dread that was building in his stomach. This had to be it. If Keith wasn’t here… 

They reached the door. Allura took up her position on the other side of it, and the two of them met eyes for a moment before she gave a tense nod. Shiro loosed a breath and pressed his hand to the door control. Lo and behold, this door wasn’t locked either, and scraped open the same as the others had. Shiro stepped in first. 

The red light was simultaneously too bright and too dark, but in between the bright flashes he could make out a golden glow against the opposite wall, and a dark shape beneath it. Shiro rushed forward, no longer thinking about traps. As he got closer he realized that the golden glow was coming from a pair of chains and shackles hanging from the wall, but that was secondary to the fact that their light illuminated the face he had been hoping so desperately to see. 

“We found him,” he heard Allura say into the comms, and received a collective release of breath from the others in return. 

Shiro made the exact opposite sound, a harsh inhale through his teeth as he finally got close enough to see the condition Keith was in. 

He was unconscious, hanging limply from the golden chains. He’d been stripped of everything but his pants, one knee of which was torn and crusted with old blood, and maybe it was just a trick of the light– God Shiro hoped it was just a trick of the light– but his skin looked ashen gray. 

“Keith.” Shiro held up his metal hand to Keith’s cheek, trying to wake him, but it stopped just short of skin with a metallic tink. The comms were buzzing with the others’ questions and Allura’s attempts at answers, but all the noise faded away when he tilted Keith’s chin up and saw the dark metal clasped over his cheekbones and under his jaw. Rage curdled in his gut. 

They’d muzzled him. Like an animal. 

Suddenly Keith’s chest heaved with a large, struggling breath, and at the same moment the red light overhead flickered so alarmingly it pulled a fraction of Shiro’s attention away from Keith. Allura was wide-eyed, her face far too thin in the stark shadows. 

“Shiro, the chains!”

Right, the chains; they must’ve been what was draining Keith. In a half second Allura was at his side, taking a firm grip around Keith’s torso. Once Shiro was sure she wouldn’t drop him (unlikely as it was with her Altean strength), he powered up his arm and severed both chains in a single precise swipe. 

He heard Keith drop, heard Allura’s grunt as she caught him, but he didn’t see it. The moment the chains were severed the red light in the room died– and so did the not-so-distant hum of the engines. 

“Woah!” Hunk exclaimed as Allura and Shiro stood stunned in the dark. “The whole place just went black, what did you guys do?”

Even in the dark, Shiro could sense Allura’s horror, an echo of his own. “Allura,” he began, having to stop and clear his throat. “Were they… powering the whole station… on just Keith?”

Allura’s throat clicked as she swallowed. “Let’s get out of here, before they come looking for the problem.” There was a moment of rustling and clanging, probably from the shackles still around Keith’s wrists, before it went quiet again. “Would you like to take him, Shiro?”

Strategically, it was a bad option. Allura was stronger than him, could carry Keith’s weight easier, and Shiro had the weapon between the two of them. Disregarding strategy entirely, he croaked a soft affirmation. 

Their fiery Red Paladin was limp and lifeless in his arms. Shiro tried his best to smother the emotions– he had Keith back, but they still had to get off this damn station without getting caught. 

“I’ll lead you,” Allura said. “Coran, keep an eye on the biometrics and tell us when people get to this level.”

“Yes, Princess.” Coran’s voice was soft, almost softer than Allura’s. They were back to holding their collective breath. 

The door scraped open. Allura and Shiro took a few cautious steps in the hallway, turning back the way they’d come, when Shiro caught the barest of shocked gasps, coming from behind them near the engine room door. Instantly he spun on his heel, keeping his shoulder towards the noise so he could pivot to protect Keith if he had to, but no laser blasts or blows rained down upon him. Instead they got a shaky voice, small and cowed. 

“He– he said he had friends, but I– I didn’t…”

Allura stepped closer to the voice, her shoulder brushing against Shiro’s armor. “Are you a prisoner here, too? You could come with us as well, if you wanted.”

Urgency itched under Shiro’s skin. He wanted to be moving, he wanted to get Keith off this station five minutes ago, but he did still have a conscience. 

“Me? No– I– I couldn’t. I can’t.”

“Allura…” 

Allura’s silence said that she knew what Shiro was thinking, that they didn’t have time to convince or kidnap a reluctant prisoner, especially when the all-too-familiar vibrations of running footsteps on a metal floor began to reach them. 

“But,” the unseen voice took on an unexpected quality of determination. Not solid, not unafraid, but stronger than a moment before. “I’ll try to slow them down.”

“Thank you,” said Shiro, and he meant it. Then he and Allura turned and fled back down the hall as quickly as they dared in the dark. 

“Pidge, we’re going to need you right at the airlock,” Shiro instructed. “Keith doesn’t have a suit.”

“Roger that. Gonna have to bumper-bump this freighter out of the way, but–”

“Tragic,” interrupted Lance, deadpan. “Hope they have invisible Lion insurance.”

It was crazy, but it almost made Shiro laugh, even as breathless as he was trying to haul Keith along with him at a jog.

“I’m locked in, Shiro. Door’s open.”

“Coran.” Even Allura sounded out of breath, but they were almost to the door. Almost there. “Get the Castle ready to move as soon as the Green Lion is aboard.”

The footsteps of their pursuers were now audible, no longer just vibrations in the floor, and there was dim shouting from down the corridor. Shiro pushed himself faster and prayed that the mystery voice in the shadows had slowed them down enough. 

Shiro’s eyes had adjusted enough to the gloom to see the outline of the airlock door coming up. Allura got there a couple of steps ahead of him and smacked the door control. It was disconcerting, throwing himself headlong into what appeared to be the void, but they only fell for a moment before his knee-pads clanged hard against the metal floor of the Green Lion. Another clang to his right as the Princess landed (on her feet, much more gracefully), then her voice in his earpiece. 

“We’re on, Pidge, go!”

“Hold on!” Pidge answered, and Shiro was knocked onto his ass as the Lion lurched forward. Somehow he still held onto Keith. When the G forces settled enough for him to move, Shiro settled Keith over his lap and discarded his helmet to get a proper look at him.

He looked even worse under Green’s bright lights. His skin was a sickly ash gray– no trick of the light– and his eyes were sunken and darker than a black hole. Shiro, still panting from their mad dash, reached for the clasps on the muzzle, but his fingers fumbled as they shook. 

With a soft, “Let me,” Allura knelt on Keith’s other side and deftly undid the clasps. Shiro was the one to take it off of him, throwing it viciously across the cargo bay before turning back to Keith and wishing he’d thrown it even harder when he saw the deep grooves it had left behind over Keith’s cheekbones. Not deep enough to last… hopefully. 

Removing the glove from his human hand, Shiro pressed two fingers under Keith’s chin. His own heartbeat nearly stopped when he felt how cold Keith’s skin was, like he was already– no, no, wait, that was a pulse. Shiro gulped down the spike of panic and tried to focus on if he was breathing. He was. 

“Shiro?” Hunk asked, dim and buzzing from his discarded helmet. “Is– is he–”

“He’s alright, Hunk,” Allura answered for him. “He’s breathing. When we get back we can do a proper scan and see what he needs.”

They only heard the first half of Hunk’s relieved sob before he muted himself. 

Pidge’s voice was next, this time from the helmets and the speakers in the Lion’s hold. “We’re almost back. Get ready.”

Allura tossed Shiro a questioning look. Shiro gathered Keith back up in his arms and held him close. Allura gave him a tiny smile and a nod, then picked up Shiro’s helmet for him as the Lion shuddered to a bump and a stop. 

“Go, Coran. I’ll get to the teladuv as soon as I can.”

“Yes, Princess.”

Shiro carried Keith out of the Lion and to the infirmary. The second he was outside Green the rest of the Paladins were there, following along like a group of anxious ducklings. If Keith hadn’t looked like a hollow husk, it might’ve been endearing. But the moment they set foot in the infirmary, Allura was in charge again, and Shiro wasn’t proud enough to pretend it wasn’t a relief. 

“Lay him down and try to get those shackles off,” instructed the Princess. “Pidge, fetch a scanner. I should be able to give him transfusions for the missing quintessence, but we need to know if he needs a pod as well.”

Pidge scampered off as instructed. Lance and Hunk hovered anxiously near the door as Shiro laid Keith on one of the infirmary cots, taking the time to brush his dirty, blood matted hair out of his face. As soon as he was well enough, Shiro resolved, he would help him get it clean again. 

“How are we gonna get the shackles off?” Lance asked from right behind him, and Shiro was so tired he didn’t even jump. 

“We could use your hand,” Hunk suggested, also having joined the cluster around Keith’s cot. “Melt as far as you can and then snap them off?”

Shiro shrugged. “I don’t have any better ideas.” 

Carefully, more carefully than he’d ever done anything, including when he planned the flightpath for the Kerberos mission, Shiro pushed a glowing fingertip through the metal circling Keith’s wrists. When it was as thin as it could be without burning the skin, Shiro gave it a hard wrench and it snapped off like a hex-key in a too-tight screw. 

For the fiftieth time today, Shiro held back a horrified gasp. Underneath the cuff Keith’s skin had turned black and begun to split, dry and cracked and definitely painful. 

“Hunk,” said Shiro. His voice was gruffer than he’d intended. “Bring some bandages, please.”

“Right, right, yeah, I’ll just– uh– I’ll do that, ok, what cab–cabinet does Coran keep them in–” 

While Hunk searched for supplies, Shiro cracked the other cuff like a glow stick and checked that the other wrist was the same. It was. Pidge wound up doing the scan while Hunk wound bandages onto Keith’s wrists, all while he lay there, dead to the world despite all of the touching. 

Wait, no, bad analogy. He wasn’t dead. He wasn’t. He was just… tired. Drained. He could recover from this. He had to. 

Pidge’s white knuckled grip on her tablet loosened. “Besides the scraped knee, and the quintessence levels and a little dehydration obviously, the scan says he’s ok.” 

“Lance–”

“Already on it.” And Lance was out the door, searching for wherever Coran stored the water pouches. 

Allura knelt at the head of the cot. She looked worse in the light, too, eyes wide and cheeks pale, but her hands were steady as she laid them gently against Keith’s temples. 

“I can give him quintessence to help him heal,” she said. It took Shiro a moment to realize she was talking to him, trying to catch his eye. “Like with the Balmera. But it will be in much smaller doses, and take much longer.”

“But he’ll be ok, right?” His voice cracked, but Allura was kind enough not to mention it when she mustered a strained smile.

“Yes. It will take time, but he’s not going to have permanent damage.” The smile faltered. “I– I hope. I’ve never seen it this bad in a person before.”

Unwelcome anxiety twisted Shiro’s stomach tight. He forced himself to take a deep breath, to untangle it just a little. Allura had healed an entire planet-sized organism. She could heal Keith. 

Across the cot from him, Hunk finished bandaging Keith’s wrists, but he hadn’t let go of Keith’s hand yet. He had his fingers tucked against the underside of his wrist– feeling his pulse, as Shiro had done. Hunk’s eyes were full of tears, and Pidge’s voice was too when she pressed up against Shiro’s side. 

“He shouldn’t look like that. He shouldn’t.” 

Shiro wrapped an arm around her. She was right. He’d never seen Keith be so still in his life, not even when he was sleeping. There were always little motions, little jerks, little fidgets. 

“He won’t for much longer,” promised Allura. She rolled her shoulders, closed her eyes, and a familiar silver glow lit up around her, shifting down her arms to cover Keith as well. The Princess’s magic was beautiful, but now it only reminded Shiro of the golden glow of the shackles, and the red light that filled the cell, flickering like Keith’s life was a candle flame in an open window. 

It was working, though. Before their eyes color began to return to Keith’s skin, bringing it from gray up to a sickly pale, the dark hollows around his eyes lightening a few shades, looking more like bad bruises than voids. His fingers twitched, drawing an excited gasp from Hunk, and his breath grew deeper, more relaxed, less desperate. 

Sweat was beading up along Allura’s hairline. With a purposeful breath she drew the silver light back up towards herself, and just as she fell back on her hands in exhaustion, the door to the infirmary swished open. Shiro assumed it was Lance or Coran, but he wasn’t looking, because not even a half second after Allura stopped the transfusion Keith let out a creaky groan and his eyes opened the tiniest little bit.

Shiro let go of Pidge and grabbed Keith’s other hand with both of his. Keith’s hazy eyes found Shiro’s face first, then the others, then slowly flicked around the room. Everyone was holding their breath again, until he parted his chapped lips.

“‘M I dreaming?”

The tension released all at once. Hunk buried his face in his hands. Pidge buried hers in the cot, her knuckles white where they were fisted into the covers. Coran hugged Allura tight to his chest while she gave a tired, though triumphant, smile. Lance stood beside them, arms full of juice pouches and packets of food goo, a blinding grin on his face. 

Shiro leaned forward, squeezing Keith’s hand until their eyes met. “No, otouto.” He brushed his left hand across Keith’s cheek– still chilled, but no longer corpse-like– and nearly started sobbing like Hunk when Keith turned his head into the touch. “You’re not dreaming. You’re home.”

He blinked hard, coughed a couple times, cleared his throat. “Took you guys long enough.”

There was unsure silence. Then Lance laughed, rapidly followed by Hunk, then Pidge, then Coran, then all of them, even Keith was hunching up his shoulders and managing a few dry chuckles. Shiro immediately lost track of who was crying and laughing at the same time. He assumed it was all of them, especially when Allura got to her feet, wiping her cheeks and avoiding all of their eyes. 

“Excuse me,” she muttered, unsteady, and shuffled out of the room. 

Shiro couldn’t leave Keith, and Coran was booting up the scan Pidge had done, so he turned and made pointed eye contact with Lance before jerking his head towards the door. Lance nodded and followed the Princess out of the infirmary. 

And Shiro finally hauled Keith up into a hug.

“Princess?”

“I’m fine.” The sniffle that immediately followed negated the statement, but for the moment Lance hovered near the door and didn’t approach where Allura was standing in the middle of the hall, her back turned to him and her head bowed. Her battlesuit always made her look fierce, but also smaller than when she wore her gown. More breakable without her royal shield. 

“Look, I don’t know a whole lot about this quintessence stuff, but Mullet… really didn’t look good for a minute there.”

Allura let out a soft sob, her shoulders shaking. Lance took a few steps closer as she admitted, “No, he… he didn’t. He wasn’t.”

Lance finished closing the distance, but didn’t touch her yet, simply steeled himself. “How bad was it?”

Finally she turned around, and jeez, he hadn’t seen Allura this wrecked since they’d had to destroy her father’s A.I.. She was clearly holding her breath, trying not to let the sobbing get the better of her, and she clutched her hands to her chest like she was trying to give herself some kind of comfort; not too different, he realized, than Keith’s classic crossed-arms. 

“I– I have never seen quintessence used like this before,” she said between gasps. “It’s– if he’d been there even another varga, he could have– we–” She broke down entirely then, and Lance couldn’t resist the urge to pull her into her arms and tuck her head under his chin. She twisted her fingers into her jacket, and the rest of her sentence was almost lost in the cloth. “We could’ve lost him.”

“But we didn’t.” He cradled her head in his palm. What he really wanted was to run his fingers through her hair– not even in a flirty way, more like when his little niece or nephew would scrape their knee– but the updo she put it in when she went into battle was far too elaborate for him to undo right now. “We got him back. Just like I said we would. And do you know why?”

She looked up at him, eyes brimming with tears. “Why?”

“Because,” Lance said solemnly, “I’m always right.”

It was a stupid, cocky thing to say and he knew it, but it had the intended effect. Allura laughed and gave his shoulder an ineffective shove. 

“Of course. That must be it.”

“And that’s how I know he’s going to be ok.”

“Because you say so?”

“Because I say so.”

Allura laughed again and gently extricated herself from Lance, wiping her cheeks. “I think Keith may have something to say about that.”

“I’m sure he’ll wipe the training deck floor with me once he’s healed, but that’ll just prove my point even more.”

Allura shook her head with exasperated fondness. “Yes, I’m sure he will.”

Chapter Text

Keith still wasn’t convinced he wasn’t dreaming. It sure seemed like a dream with the blurred white of the Castle walls floating behind everyone’s heads, and the fact that everyone had been there when he woke up, crying. Crying for him, which even when he could string two coherent thoughts together wouldn’t make any sense. 

But it didn’t really matter. Whether real or imaginary, he’d take any break he could from the hell that was that station. 

Someone was holding him against their chest. Not pinning him there or restraining him, just holding, and their body heat was rolling over him. It couldn’t penetrate all the way to his core, where he still felt hollow and shaky and cold, but skin deep was more than enough. With what little strength he could manage he wiggled closer, and the arms around him tightened. 

A hand ran gently through his hair, and the chest beneath his cheek rumbled. Trying to ask him a question. The voice was familiar– the one he’d tried to hold onto before everything dissolved. 

Shiro.

Right, everyone was there, weren’t they? They were trying to talk to him. With monumental effort Keith managed to claw his way back to coherence and open his eyes again. 

“There you are,” Shiro said. His hand moved from Keith’s hair to his cheek, and he jerked at the unexpected contact. If he could feel it, then the muzzle must’ve been taken off– wait, right, he’d been talking earlier, hadn’t he? Shiro’s thumb rubbed over his cheekbone, steady pressure drawing him back out of his tangled thoughts. “How are you feeling? You keep zoning out.”

“‘M sorry.” He was slurring his words. God he was tired, but he couldn’t fall asleep. If this was a dream, falling asleep could break it. “‘S a little… hard to think…” 

“A symptom of quintessence deficit,” murmured another voice. Also familiar, but he couldn’t quite find the name that went with it. “Rest will help. He’ll regenerate quintessence slowly on his own in between Allura’s transfusions.”

Keith groaned and turned his head more insistently into Shiro’s hand. “Big words.”

Chuckles sounded all around him, but Shiro resumed his careful touches, so Keith’s goal was achieved. “It’s alright, otouto. Just focus on resting. It’ll get better soon.”

He’d barely finished his sentence when Keith’s thoughts started to come apart again. This time he fought it– he didn’t want to dissolve again, didn’t want to disappear, he wanted to be a person, be himself, not just a battery–

“Keith, Keith, hey, it’s ok, what’s wrong?” 

Keith. That was him. That was his name. He clung to it, pulling himself back into his body as the voice, Shiro’s voice, kept talking to him. 

“You’re ok, Keith. You’re alright. You’re safe.”

He forced his eyes to focus. Shiro’s black and white armor was above him, Shiro’s concerned face above that. 

“What’s wrong?”

He seized on the first sensation he could find in the confusing tangle of nerves they called the human body. “Cold.” And he was– he was covered in goosebumps, and the smooth plane of Shiro’s chestplate was getting in the way of warming up properly, not to mention the chill that was leaking out of the hole inside where something had been drained out of him. 

Shiro’s eyes immediately snapped away to someone else. “Hunk, where’s his stuff?”

“Oh, on the bridge, I’ll go–” A shape moved out of the corner of Keith’s eye, but to him it was only a blur. Shiro looked up at someone standing beside him, the owner of the voice that had spoken earlier, a painfully worried expression on his face. 

“How soon can Allura do another infusion?”

“Not for several vargas at the earliest. If we push too hard she’ll be down for quintants again, like she was after the Balmera.” A white gloved hand landed on Shiro’s shoulder. “You should get out of your armor. Pidge and I will stay with Keith.”

Shiro looked back down at him. Even in the haze, Keith could see the conflict on his face, and scraped together a few words. “‘S ok, Shiro.” Something dripped onto Keith’s cheek, and Shiro scrubbed a hand over his eyes. 

“Alright, but I’m coming right back.” 

Slowly, reluctantly, Shiro laid Keith back down. A spike of panic went through him as Shiro pulled away– Shiro was his anchor, his handhold, would he come apart again without him– two new hands took his, one with the texture of cloth, the other smaller than his, and two new faces leaned over him. 

Their names came to him. 

“Hey Keith,” said Pidge, clutching his hand tightly. “Hunk should be back in a second. We found your jacket and everything.”

Most of it slipped away, but there was something that he lost, something that he wanted back, if he could only think of the word. “My knife?”

Something in Pidge’s expression relaxed at hearing him speaking in words, and Coran smiled under his bright mustache. “Yeah, we found that too.”

“Don’t worry about a thing, Number Four,” said Coran. Strangely, even that nickname helped. “We’ve got everything taken care of. You’ll be fuzzy for a little while, but it will only be temporary, I promise you.”

Funny, he actually believed it. 

Pidge’s head turned. “Hunk’s back with your stuff.” There were footsteps, rustling, a thump on the floor, and this time when Hunk’s face appeared it was easy to fit the name and the face together. 

“Keith, buddy, you won’t believe how happy I am to see you,” he said as he knelt beside the cot . His grin, though unsteady on the edges, was bright enough that Keith didn’t doubt his words. “I checked, like, a million times and I’m pretty sure I got all of your stuff back, but you can look when you feel better and make sure.”

When you feel better. It was surprisingly settling, the reassurance that he wouldn’t feel like this forever. Back on the station, when consciousness had finally failed him, it was with a bone-chilling conviction that he wouldn’t be waking up again. But he had, and Hunk proudly holding up Keith’s usual black shirt like a trophy was the proof. 

For a moment his thoughts scattered again. A shiver wracked through his body, and when he gathered the pieces of himself back together it was in the middle of Hunk pulling his shirt over his head like he was a little kid. Immediately some of the cold died down. The soft, familiar cloth was a pleasant shock after days of cold metal and chains. 

Had it been days? It was hard to tell– he hadn’t slept, just had periods of drifting and unconsciousness, and he was pretty sure he hadn’t eaten.

“How long was I gone?” he managed to ask as Hunk laid him back down and pulled the blanket up to his chin. 

“Day and a half,” answered Pidge, fiddling with something in her lap. “Maybe two. Here, take a couple sips of this.” She held a water pouch to his lips. Keith was just with it enough to be grateful for the straw that meant that Pidge wouldn’t have to hold his head up or anything embarrassing like that. He already felt cracked and vulnerable, the last thing he needed was to feel like a burden on top of it. 

Pidge, he realized a few seconds too late, was still talking. 

“Coran said these pouches have something special in them, some kind of medicine that will settle your stomach so eating will be easier.”

Coran’s voice leapt into the conversation in a long stream of techno-babble about chemical compounds and enzymes. Normally it would be annoying, having his ears filled with so many words he didn’t understand, but now it was surprisingly comforting. 

He shivered and curled his fists into the blanket.

Allura and Lance stayed in the hallway long enough to see Shiro rush out of the infirmary in his armor and rush back a few minutes later in his civilian clothes. Then they stayed a few minutes more. For once Lance wasn’t talking to fill the space. He just stood with Allura as she tried to sort through her thoughts, occasionally giving her hand a squeeze or her shoulder a brief touch when he felt her start to tremble. 

Healing the Balmera had been a massive effort. Every cell of the creature had been dealt a mortal wound, and healing each and every one of those wounds had nearly drained her dry. 

But when she reached out for Keith it had been less like healing a wound and more like trying to pour light into a black hole. 

Subjugating the Balmera had taken the Galra decades. These people only had Keith for two quintants. For the first time, she had to confront the fact that evil in the universe did not start or end with Zarkon. 

“Hey,” said Lance, gently prodding her side. “I can hear you spiraling.”

Allura shook her head. He was right, but he couldn’t understand what it had been like, touching that hollow void inside of Keith where there should have been fire and life and finding only cold. 

“We should go back to the others. Shiro’s going to be fussing himself sick.”

Yes, of course. Shiro would be driving himself mad wanting to care for Keith and not knowing how. She might not be able to give another transfusion yet, but she could help this way, at least. 

“You’re right,” she said quietly, and Lance let out a little chuckle as he hooked his elbow through hers.

“What did I say, Princess? I’m always right.”

Back inside the infirmary was calmer than she expected it to be. Pidge, Hunk, and Shiro were clustered around Keith’s cot while Coran bustled around in the background as he usually did, but they were all sitting quietly. Keith had curled into a ball on his side, facing Shiro, who had one hand gripping one of Keith’s and the other buried in his hair. 

Shiro looked up as soon as he heard the door open. Keith appeared to be resting, but Shiro’s expression was still a painful mixture of relief and worry. 

“He keeps saying that he’s cold,” he said. 

“See?” Lance said softly in her ear. “Fussing.”

Allura shook her head at him. “Quintessence deficit can cause that. At this point I believe body heat would help more than just blankets.”

“Awww,” Hunk cooed. “Prescribed cuddles!”

Coran immediately bustled over. Shooing Hunk and Pidge out of the way, he pushed another cot up against the one Keith was lying in. Keith stirred at the bump, but didn’t open his eyes until Shiro pulled off his boots and climbed onto the cot next to him. None of the others said anything– it was obvious that it would be Shiro, and Keith proved them all right when he went easily into his arms and tucked his face into Shiro’s neck. His content sigh would’ve been answer enough, but Shiro still murmured, “Is this better?”

“Mhm.”

Shiro let out a quiet breath and ran his metal fingers through Keith’s hair again. “Good.”

Allura nearly started crying again. Instead she cleared her throat and said, “We should all get some rest while we can. It will be several vargas before I can give another transfusion, and we won’t be able to fight until Keith is healed.” 

They were all exhausted, but Hunk and Pidge still hesitated at the prospect of leaving Keith, until Coran set a hand on Hunk’s shoulder. 

“Don’t worry. Shiro and I won’t let him out of our sight for a moment.”

“Not like I’m goin’ anywhere,” Keith mumbled. He spoke slowly, slurring his words, and there was barely any humor in it, but all of them mustered up tiny chuckles anyway, and the Green and Yellow Paladins were assuaged.

“I’m going to make the best dinner any of you have ever had,” declared Hunk as the human trio fell in together on their way out of the infirmary. 

“That’s a pretty tall order. No one’s ever beaten my mom’s enchiladas.” Lance still had that lightness in his tone that he’d put on for Allura, but it seemed weary. 

Pidge shook her head. Any words that might have come with the motion were cut off by the infirmary door sliding shut behind them. 

Thin silence descended in the room. Allura needed to rest– she could feel her knees shaking from all of the energy she’d poured into Keith– but the gnawing anxiety had returned with reinforcements. What if something went wrong? What if Keith was still hemorrhaging quintessence from the wound his captors had left behind? What if they needed her–

“Princess.” Coran had materialized at her side, a gentle hand on her elbow as he’d done with Hunk. “You should rest as well.”

She forcefully swallowed back the buzz of nerves. “Alright, but call me if anything changes. Even if you don’t think I can help. Promise me.”

“I promise.” He squeezed her elbow, and suddenly Allura felt dead on her feet. “Get some sleep, Princess. We’ll be here with him.” 

Shiro certainly would be. There wasn’t enough treasure in the universe to make the Black Paladin stir from that cot, she was certain. 

She finally allowed herself to exhale. 

“Alright.”

Keith wasn’t even embarrassed by the whole “prescribed cuddling” thing. He was too busy soaking up Shiro’s body heat like a hypothermic sponge. The pressure of Shiro’s arms surrounding him was grounding, made it easier to hold himself together when his thoughts tried to unravel. Shiro always seemed to know when it was happening; every time Keith would press closer, searching for a hand hold, and Shiro would give him plenty: his fingers alternated between carding through his hair and rubbing the back of his neck, his voice murmuring reassuring nonsense as he let Keith cling to him. In the lucid moments Shiro would coax him into taking more sips of Coran’s special juice pouches, though he still didn’t have the energy to eat. 

He floated in and out of a doze for what seemed like hours. Occasionally he’d hear footsteps and a soft beep. After one such visit, Coran’s voice came through the fog. 

“He’s beginning to regenerate quintessence on his own. It should help him recover more quickly.”

Good for me, Keith thought, but couldn’t find the right link between brain and mouth to say it aloud. Still he felt Shiro relax a tiny bit. 

“Good. That’s good.”

As the hours passed he actually did notice an improvement. The periods of unraveling were shorter and less frequent, and the times between felt more like real rest than floating in limbo. But the more aware he became, the more he remembered what happened, what got him into this mess, and more guilt twisted in his stomach. He had caused all of this, scared Shiro and the others, distracted them from the war because he’d turned his comms off like an idiot. Just because he didn’t want to hear Lance talk. 

He didn’t get much time to brood about it. His grasp of time was admittedly weak, but it didn’t feel like long after that Pidge’s voice came over the intercom, asking Coran to come fix something in the kitchen. Not a minute after he left Allura slipped into the infirmary. 

“Princess?” Shiro asked. Keith was certain Shiro had dozed off at some point, his voice thick and rasping. “Is something wrong?”

“No.” Allura crossed the room to the cot, casting a quick glance towards the door before kneeling down next to Keith. “I’m just going to give Keith another quick infusion before Coran comes back.”

Keith drew back when she reached for his hand. “You sure? Coran said–”

“I can give a little more. Besides,” she smiled, the edges of her eyes crinkling, “we wouldn’t want you to miss dinner. Hunk’s quite proud.”

Well, she was the Princess, and who was Keith to tell her what to do? He let her take his hand, and it was fine. Then she started to glow and panic hit him like a train. 

He didn’t take the time to note what color the light was. It was light, it was quintessence, and that was enough to send him scrambling backwards, the most movement he’d been capable of for hours as he tried to escape the agonizing drain he knew was coming. 

His back crashed against something– no, some one– and his lungs seized as they exclaimed something he didn’t process. They were bigger than him. They were going to grab him, pin him, drain his life out of him and he was too weak to stop them, too weak to fight back, too weak to–

“Keith, Keith!”

That was him. His name. He gasped for a breath and clenched his fists into something soft just to prove to himself that he could. 

“You need to calm down, otouto. You’re safe. It’s just us, just Shiro and Allura.”

Shiro and Allura. His brother and the Princess. Keith closed his eyes against the bright lights and tried to breathe deep. The hand that had been holding his had let go. The weight across his middle, Shiro’s arm, wasn’t gripping or pressing down; it was just resting, and another gentle hand ran over the back of his neck and into the ends of his hair, too soft to pull. 

“There you go. You’re ok.”

And he was. There was no drain, no bruising hold. He breathed in and smelled clean metal and cloth, not rust. He breathed out and opened his eyes again. The stricken look on Allura’s face made him wish he hadn’t. 

“Sorry,” he croaked. 

Allura shook herself, schooling her expression back into something understanding. “It’s alright. I apologize– I should’ve warned you about what it was going to look like. Was it the light?”

Keith almost didn’t answer. There was a confusing, nauseating tangle of shame and residual adrenaline in his stomach that told him to retreat into his usual facade of fearlessness, but what would even be the point? They’d already seen past it. So he forced himself to nod, and Allura rewarded him with a soft smile. 

“I thought so. Close your eyes and we’ll try again.”

With Shiro still doling out reassuring touches, Keith was able to do what she asked. The Princess’ slim hand slid back into his, and a moment later he felt a deep, filling warmth begin to pour into him, running through his muscles and veins towards the cold pit in his core. It only lasted a few seconds before Allura drew it back into herself, but those few seconds were enough. For the first time since he’d been shackled in the demon-lord’s shuttle he felt like he fit inside his skin. Senses clicked into place, thoughts fit together, and though the exhaustion and hunger suddenly felt ten times worse, at least he was feeling it now rather than drifting just out of its reach. 

“How do you feel?”

“Better. And worse, but better.”

Allura just smiled at him again. “I think I understand. Do you think you could make it to the dining room if Shiro helped you?”

He nodded, and felt Shiro’s relieved sigh on the back of his neck. Allura’s smile grew. But before any of them could move the door slid open again and in came Coran, muttering to himself about silly human paladins not being able to manage something as simple as a dishwasher, until he spotted Allura. 

“Princess?” he said while Allura hurriedly got back back to her feet. “I thought you were resting.”

“I was, I just came to bring Shiro and Keith down to dinner.” She cranked the brightness on her smile up to ‘dazzling’, but Coran didn’t look convinced. 

Shiro came to her rescue. He sat up, pulling Coran’s attention to them as he helped Keith upright. The world was tilting at the edges of his vision and his muscles ached in protest, but with Shiro’s arm braced against his back, he was able to stay up, and Coran’s stern expression melted away into glee.

“Oh, excellent! The other paladins will be so pleased to see you improving.”

Allura wisely took this moment of distraction to slip out of the infirmary, evading the imminent lecture on pushing herself too hard. 

“Ready to try standing?” Shiro asked. Keith nodded again, and with a bit of maneuvering, Shiro got them both on their feet. 

Keith’s legs shook and threatened to fold. A spike of frustration went through him– he was so sick of feeling like a fucking rag doll– and he locked his knees, refusing to crumble. With the help of Shiro’s firm hold around his waist, he managed to keep his footing. 

“There we go,” said Shiro, sounding pleased. 

“It might take a while to get down there,” Keith mumbled back. Now that he was more awake he was starting to feel the pricks of self-consciousness that always came with feeling weak. 

Shiro was quick to respond. “Coran, will you run down and let the others know we’re coming? Just so that Hunk doesn’t start piling things on trays or anything.”

“Ah, good idea. I’ll see you two shortly.”

Then he was gone, and it was just Shiro and Keith in the cavernous room. 

“Are you sure you’re up for dinner?” Shiro asked. “You don’t have to go.”

“I want to,” Keith insisted. As exhausting as it would be, he wanted to be with the others, awake and aware and not being looked down at from a bedside like a dying monarch in a Renaissance painting. 

Shiro didn’t push the point. He just nodded and tightened his grip around Keith’s middle. “Ok. Let’s get going.”

While Lance and Hunk labored away at their culinary masterpiece, Pidge sat at the one counter that was still clean with her laptop. Copying the code from the GPS chip in Keith’s broken comm unit was easy enough; figuring out how to boost its signal enough to transmit over large swaths of space was the hard part. Still, she was determined to figure it out. Hopefully by the time she was done they’d have chips they could put in their clothing somewhere without being noticeable. 

She was sick of losing people. Literally and metaphorically. 

She was still working when Allura returned after their little heist with the dishwasher, and a few minutes later when Coran came bounding in with the news that Keith was feeling strong enough to come down to the dining room. 

It was clearly, obviously, a good thing. Everyone was excited, Hunk’s relieved grin taking up his entire face– so why was Pidge’s stomach twisting up? 

She bit the inside of her cheek and kept working while the others carted platter after platter from the kitchen to the dining room table. This feeling didn’t make any sense. They got Keith back alive, got away, and Allura said that none of the things currently plaguing him were permanent. So why did she still feel like she was walking a tightrope over the Grand Canyon?

“Pidge, you workaholic,” Lance said teasingly, pushing the laptop screen down over her hands. “Come on, it’s time for dinner.” 

Pidge reluctantly left her laptop. Shoving her hands into her pockets to disguise the tremble, she followed Lance out to the dining room. Her stomach cramped, though whether from anxiety or the fact that she hadn’t eaten all day she couldn’t tell. 

The spread waiting for them at the dining room table was truly lavish– Hunk hadn’t pulled any punches– and everyone else was already there, including Keith and Shiro. 

Abruptly, the anxiety eased out of her muscles. She had been bracing, she realized, to see Keith pale and listless again, his eyes never quite settling on any one thing, curled into himself and shivering. Apparently Allura’s second transfusion had done the trick; he was sitting mostly upright in his chair, and though he still looked exhausted, he finally seemed solid again. Present. 

He really is going to be ok. 

“Sorry, guys,” Lance was saying as the two of them settled into their seats. “The little gremlin was hyperfocusing again.”

Pidge made a performance of rolling her eyes, and smiles spread around the table, including from Keith, whose little smirk had a tinge of relief to it. He wanted normality, too. 

“Ok,” Hunk began as Pidge finally took her seat. “Everyone dig in!” 

It was like Space Thanksgiving. Pidge barely had room on her plate for half of the things Hunk had made– they would be eating leftovers for days. The conversation at the table was as animated as ever, and though Keith was quiet as he ate, Pidge could tell that he was listening, smiling at Lance’s jokes and Coran’s stories. Shiro was quiet, too, keeping an eye on him, but his shoulders no longer held the tension of a few hours before. 

Eventually, though, the fatigue began to creep back into Keith’s expression. His shoulders drooped, and somewhere around the two varga mark he slumped back heavily against his chair. 

Pidge wasn’t the only one to notice. Shiro, whose laser focus had hardly strayed from Keith for the entire meal, immediately leaned over to murmur in his ear. Keith nodded wearily, but ducked his head to hide behind his bangs when Shiro turned to look across the table at Coran. 

“Coran, is Keith clear to sleep in his bunk tonight?” 

Coran stroked his mustache thoughtfully. “I don’t see why not, so long as someone keeps an eye on him.” 

“Great.” Shiro pushed back his empty plate and stood to help Keith up, only for Hunk to suddenly dart out of his chair. 

“Wait! You’ll need bandages and stuff for his wrists!”

Shiro opened his mouth, but Hunk was already saying, “I’ll bring them to Keith’s bunk,” and rushing out of the room, leaving Keith and Shiro with bemused expressions while the rest of them tried to stifle giggles. 

“Better go quick,” said Keith with a slight quirk to his lip, “or he’ll beat us there.”

Shiro laughed, and the relief shining from his face seemed to be contagious, as all around the table faces relaxed and smiles grew wider. Pidge breathed out for what felt like the first time in days. 

We’re all going to be ok.

Chapter Text

Hunk did, in fact, beat them back to Keith’s bunk. They found him waiting outside, with two rolls of gauze and a container of Altean disinfecting/pain relieving cream. 

“Here you go,” he said once they were in range. “Coran said that it would be ok to take the bandages off if you wanted to take a shower or something.”

“When did you ask him that?” Keith asked as Shiro opened the door to his bunk. 

Hunk gave a sheepish smile. “While I was waiting here for you guys.” 

Keith managed a smile of his own. It still felt surreal, having everyone fawning over him like this; he didn’t know what to do with so much attention. 

The door swished open, and Shiro shoved his foot against it to keep it that way while he turned back to Hunk and retrieved the supplies. “Thanks for bringing these up, Hunk.”

“No problem.” He paused for a moment. His hands flexed at his sides, a gesture Keith couldn’t make sense of– until he was being scooped up into one of Hunk’s classic bear hugs. 

At first all of his muscles fought through the fatigue to tense up, expecting another fruitless struggle. Then he saw the Castle lights, so much brighter than the gloom of the other ship. He forced himself to breathe, to actually register that the pressure, though firm, wasn’t forceful. He wasn’t being dragged off somewhere. It was just Hunk. The tension eased.

“I’m so glad we got you back,” Hunk said into his shoulder, and Keith’s chest ached. Whether it was from the force of the hug or the words he had no idea. 

After a few more seconds Hunk sniffled and put him back on his feet, letting Shiro resume his role as the human crutch. 

“Ping us if you need anything, ok? And I mean anything.”

Shiro chuckled at the earnest expression on Hunk’s face. “We will. I promise.” 

One last watery smile, then Hunk went past them to get back to the dining room, leaving them to shuffle into Keith’s bunk together.

He didn’t have much decoration in his bunk, especially compared to Lance or Pidge, but even the bare bones of Altean furnishings were enough to make him relax a little more into Shiro’s hold.

Shiro set the lights to dim before helping Keith across the floor to his bunk. “How are you feeling? We were out there for a while.”

“A little achey,” he admitted, “but not that bad. Mostly just tired.” An itch ran over his scalp that he scratched at with irritation; his hair was filthy, but there was no way he had the capacity to wash it right now. And Shiro, in his endless vigilance, noticed. 

“Do you want help with your hair?”

All he really wanted was to topple over and go to sleep. A fog was descending over his mind— not the thought scrambling sensation from before, but like he’d pulled an all nighter cramming for a test. 

“I don’t think I have the energy to stand over a sink right now,” was what he ended up saying.  

Shiro tilted his head thoughtfully. “We could do it in the bath,” he suggested. “Do you still have your swim trunks?”

“I…” It took a minute to even process the offer. “Shiro, you don’t have to help me. It can wait.” As the words left his mouth, he suddenly became aware of the last two days of cold sweat and dirt and dried blood and rust and who knows what else that covered him like a film, and his skin crawled. Still, he bit his tongue and tried not to squirm. If it got too bad he could just haul himself into the bathroom and scrub it off with a washcloth, like he used to do back in his desert shack. 

Shiro had already spent all day dealing with the aftermath of Keith’s stupid mistake. He didn’t need to keep dealing. 

But Shiro didn’t budge from his place. He studied Keith for a moment, then said firmly, “I wouldn’t have offered if I didn’t want to help. If you’re not comfortable with it then that’s fine, I’ll leave it there, but I–” He took a breath, pushing his hair back with his metal hand, and in a split second his expression morphed from patient and thoughtful to clouded with worry. “I know what it’s like. I want to make it easier, if I can.”

Keith’s mind went back to their last night on Earth. Dragging an unconscious Shiro into his little shack, waiting for the sedative to wear off, deciding to try and wipe away some of the soot and dust from wherever he could around the prison uniform. He didn’t do it because he felt obligated; he did it because he cared, because when he woke Keith wanted him to know that he wasn’t alone. That he was safe. 

His eyes burned. Somehow he managed to speak through his tightening throat: “Ok.”

Shiro’s face practically lit up. “Great. Stay there, I’ll track down your trunks.” 

It was a relief when Shiro turned his back to look through his closet; it gave Keith a moment to rein himself in. He could break down over it all once he was alone. No one else needed to see. He just needed to last until Shiro left– maybe by then he would be too tired to freak out at all. He could dream. 

A minute later Shiro returned, bearing the red swim trunks that Keith hadn’t touched since the night he and Lance got stuck in the elevator. 

“Think you can get changed on your own?”

Keith immediately nodded. He wasn’t actually sure that he could, but no way was he going to make Shiro help with that. 

“Ok.” Shiro set the trunks down on the bed beside him and took a step back. “I’m going to go run the bath. Shout if you need me.” 

Another nod, and Shiro vanished into the bathroom. Keith waited until he could hear the sound of running water through the door before wiggling out of his clothes. All of the warmth he’d been building up until this point abruptly abandoned him, leaving him shivering in just the shorts, the messy scrape on his knee on full display. 

Now, how to make it to the other room? 

Bracing one hand against the metal wall, he slowly shifted his weight up and forward onto his legs; his knees shook and threatened to collapse, but by sheer stubbornness he stayed standing. Then it was just a matter of shuffling around the edge of the room to the bathroom door. 

God, he couldn’t wait to finally walk like a normal person again. 

Shiro looked up in surprise when the door slid open. “Why didn’t you call for me?” he asked, sounding almost wounded. “I would’ve helped you.” 

Keith just shrugged. The bath was nearly full, the air thick with steam, and the doorframe that he clung to was slippery with condensation. His fingers slid against the metal, his grip failed, and the only reason he didn’t hit the floor was that Shiro moved quickly enough to catch him around the middle. 

“Woah, careful.” Shiro said it with a touch of humor, while Keith felt like he was choking with frustration. 

“I hate this,” he hissed under his breath. “I can’t even fucking stand up—“

The smile on Shiro’s face morphed into concern— an expression Keith was rapidly getting sick of— but he didn’t say anything about it. Instead he said softly, “The tub’s almost full. Sit here for a second, ok?” With some gentle maneuvering he sat Keith on the edge of the tub, and when he was sure he could keep his balance, moved to turn off the faucet. 

Suffocating quiet filled the tiny room alongside the steam. For Shiro’s sake, Keith did his best to swallow back the anger that bubbled under his skin. He was already doing so much for him, he didn’t deserve Keith taking his emotions out on him like that; after all, it was all his own stupid fault. Guilt quickly replaced the ire caught in his throat. 

“We should take these off first,” Shiro was saying as Keith went down his mental spiral. He could’ve just grabbed Keith’s arm and started unraveling the bandages, but instead he just held out a hand and waited, and for some reason the gesture hit Keith like a kick in the chest. 

Jesus, what was wrong with him? 

Still, he held out his arm and let Shiro take it. He expected to see bloodstains as the bandages unwound, but there was nothing– until the last layer came away. Underneath his skin was black, brittle, cracked like sunbaked desert soil, exactly where the golden shackles had rested. 

Keith’s stomach churned. That was only after a few hours; how far would it have spread if the others hadn’t found him when they did? And the previous people they had used as power sources, had they died this way? Or were they dumped when they were no longer energy efficient?

Shiro squeezed his hand, pulling him back into the steam filled room. “Does it hurt?” 

“Not really.” He tapped a finger against one of the broken open wounds and hissed as a bolt of sharp, stinging pain shook through his arm, all the way to the shoulder. “Ok, I lied.”

“We’ll be careful, then,” said Shiro. He held out his hand for Keith’s other wrist and quickly unwound those bandages as well. “Ready?”

Keith tore his eyes away from the wounds and focused on not toppling over as Shiro helped him turn and get his legs over the lip of the tub. The water was almost too hot, just the way he liked it (his year alone had quickly taught him to appreciate hot water on demand), and a sigh slipped out of him as he lowered himself into it. 

“Hot enough for you?”

“Yeah.” His scraped knee stung as it disappeared below the water's surface, but compared to his muscles relaxing one by one and the goosebumps receding, the pain barely registered. “‘S good.” In another moment or two he was leaning back against the tub, letting his head loll and his heavy, tired eyes close. 

It was strange, sitting in a bathtub in swim trunks, but it was even stranger having someone in there with him. He couldn’t remember the last time he took a bath rather than a shower, and knew for a fact that no one had seen him in a bath since before his father died. 

“Don’t fall asleep,” Shiro said, teasing, and nudged his shoulder. Keith just grumbled, getting a little chuckle out of Shiro. “We need to get your hair wet, remember?”

Right, right, the purpose of this was to get him clean, not just turn him into Keith-soup. He reluctantly opened his eyes again and slid down, letting out another sigh as the warmth flowed over his shoulders and twined through his hair. 

He allowed himself exactly one second to enjoy it before making himself sit up again. His arms trembled as he gripped the tub to hoist himself upright and he barely kept the scowl off of his face— he was so sick of this —

Shiro braced one arm behind Keith’s back, taking his weight long enough for him to regain his balance. Out of the corner of his eye, Keith thought he saw Shiro’s expression darken, brow furrowed and jaw clenched tight, but in the space of a blink it was gone.

“Which shampoo do you use?”

Keith pointed to the bottle sitting at the other end of the bathtub, then paused. “There’s more than one kind?”

“There is now.” Shiro picked up the bottle and upturned it over his flesh hand while Keith smothered a smile.

“Let me guess: Lance?”

“Who else?” Once the soap was lathered to Shiro’s satisfaction, he turned back to Keith, holding his hands over the tub so that he didn’t drip shampoo everywhere. “I think this will work best if you put your back to me.” 

With a bracing breath, Keith turned to face the wall, carefully keeping his hands against it where they wouldn’t dip the wounds into the water. Even though it was just Shiro, the knowledge that someone was behind him made chills spill down his spine. 

“Here we go.” Shiro’s fingers pushed against the back of his head and it took everything he had not to jerk away. “It’s ok, it’s just me.”

He forced his lungs to exhale, then inhale, then exhale again. Shiro was being gentle as he worked the soap into Keith’s hair, and despite the alarms going off in the back of his mind, the tension was already leaking out of his tired muscles again. 

Shiro made a soft sound. “There’s blood in your hair. Does your head hurt?”

“No,” he answered, shoulders slumping. “They had a kind of healing pod. Fixed it.” 

“How nice of them,” said Shiro with a sarcastic edge to his voice. Keith might’ve smiled or even laughed if he wasn’t so busy trying not to turn into complete mush. It was so warm, and the pain was finally fading, and no one had touched him this softly since his dad died, and… and… 

And he didn’t deserve any of it.

Just like that all of his muscles coiled tight again, an ache pulsing through his whole body. He was getting all of this special treatment, making everyone so worried and putting them out of commission for however long it would take for him to get better, and it was all because of his mistake. 

“Almost done,” Shiro said, mistaking the cause of his tension. “Just want to make sure it’s all out.” 

The stomach-knotting guilt returned. Shiro was practically waiting on him hand and foot because Keith got himself into trouble for the millionth time. Shiro was always the one who had to pull him out of his own messes, and the one time he couldn’t, Keith had gotten himself expelled. He was such a fuck-up, even as a Paladin, especially as a Paladin—

“I think I got it all. Ready to dunk again?”

Squeezing his eyes shut tight so that Shiro wouldn’t see the tears welling up, Keith nodded and let himself be turned again. Shiro gently led him back into the water, gently ran his hands through his hair to make sure all of the soap was out, and Keith had to bite the inside of his cheek. This wasn’t fair. He didn’t deserve this comfort, and he never got to keep things he didn’t deserve. 

Shiro’s steady hands drew Keith upright. Water ran down his back, the tinkling of drops returning to the tub nearly deafening in the silent room. Keith had to swallow three times to get the lump out of his throat long enough to speak. 

“Shiro, I—“ his voice cracked and he bit his tongue out of pure frustration. Could he not stop being pathetic for five minutes and just— “I have to tell you something.” 

His eyes were still closed, but he felt Shiro go still. “What is it?” He sounded like he was holding his breath, waiting for something, but Keith had no idea what. Did he already know? Had he spent this whole time waiting to see if Keith would come clean? 

The thought was broken by Shiro’s hand on his shoulder. “Keith, did they…” The pause at the end of the sentence was heavy with meaning, but it still took Keith’s tired synapses a second to connect the dots; once he figured it out, though, he felt his cheeks go even warmer than the air around them. 

“No, nothing like that. I— I just— It’s just that—“

The words wouldn’t come. Shiro squeezed his shoulder reassuringly. “It’s ok, you don’t have to—“

“It was my fault!” His voice was loud, far too loud for the quiet room, and he instinctively ducked his head to hide behind his hair, remembering too late that it was all slicked back from the weight of the water. “I turned my comms off for a stupid reason and the only reason any of this happened is because I’m an idiot that never thinks anything through and I’m sorry .”

“Keith.” There was no hint of the anger or disappointment Keith was expecting. Instead Shiro sounded sympathetic, understanding, the opposite of what Keith felt like he should be getting. “This whole time, I’ve been blaming myself for letting everyone go off on their own.” 

His stomach twisted. This was even worse. “You couldn’t have known what was going to happen.” 

Shiro raised a pointed eyebrow, not moving his hand from its spot on Keith’s shoulder. “You couldn’t have known either.”

“Yeah, but I should never turn off my comms—“

“And I should always make sure no one is alone in hostile territory.”

Keith ran his hands over his face, his fingers pruning purely from the steam in the air. He was too tired for this— his thoughts felt like they had to find their way through a maze before he could even process what they said. 

Thankfully, Shiro took pity on him. “Maybe,” he began with another squeeze to his shoulder, “we shouldn’t waste energy blaming ourselves when the only ones to blame are the people who did this to you.” His voice took on a protective edge at the end, and for some reason that was what got Keith to cave. 

“Ok.” He swayed a little, vision going fuzzy at the edges. He was running on empty. 

Shiro’s next words were soft. “Come on. I think it’s time for bed.”

For once in his life, Keith didn’t argue.

“This will probably sting.” 

Keith just grunted and waved his free hand, telling Shiro to get on with it. Through sheer force of will Keith had managed to get himself dried off and into his pajamas while Shiro made his bed as comfortable as he could, and now was allowing Shiro to treat the wounds around his wrists with minimal fuss. 

He still winced ever so slightly when Shiro started smearing on the healing cream, and Shiro had to clench his jaw tight to keep the anger contained. Every time Keith staggered, every time he hissed in pain, every glance at his pale skin and sunken eyes, made something in Shiro’s chest burn with rage. He did his best to bite it back; maybe later, when Keith was asleep, he could sneak off to the training deck to blow off the steam.

The wounds were worse up close. They reminded him of the pictures of necrosis he’d seen during survival training for Kerberos, dead, frostbitten flesh waiting to spread. He could only hope that Coran knew what he was doing and they wouldn’t have to put Keith in a pod to deal with them. 

“Let me know if these are too tight.”

Keith gave a noncommittal hum. The bandages going on seemed to hurt less than the cream, and Keith had his eyes closed, half asleep where he sat. It was going to take a few days at least to get him and Red back to fighting condition. 

Shiro lingered after he got the bandages fastened, swiping his thumb over them with the gentlest pressure. Keith would probably tell him to go, that he didn’t need babysitting, but the last thing Shiro wanted to do was leave him when he was so weak– and so dead-set on pretending that he wasn’t. 

“Coran said someone would have to keep an eye on you. Do you mind if I stay?” 

Predictably, Keith’s answer was a mumbled, “You don’t have to,” but when he peeled his eyes open they had a hint of pleading in them. 

Shiro forced a smile and ruffled Keith’s hair. “Sorry, doctor’s orders. You’re stuck with me.”

Letting out a tiny huff of amusement, Keith answered, “Better than Lance, I guess.”

That moment of levity, small as it was, made some of the anger fade. Keith had gone through hell, was beaten and battered and worn out, but he was still here, still him, and he was going to get better. Shiro would see to it. 

A yawn cracked Keith’s jaw, getting another tiny smile out of Shiro. “Come here. Let’s get you comfortable.” 

For once, Keith let him help without argument. Once his head was on the pillow and the blanket pulled up high, Shiro slipped off his boots for the second time that day and lay down beside him. Again Keith pressed close, resting his head on Shiro’s shoulder as the minute tremble that wracked through his body stilled. 

With a voice command he turned the lights to their lowest setting. Keith sighed and relaxed that last little bit, and Shiro couldn’t resist reaching up to run a hand through his wet hair. He wasn’t tired enough to sleep yet, but he didn’t mind. After two days of constant dread and anxiety and guilt, it was comforting to lay there with the absolute certainty that nothing could get to Keith again, not with three other paladins, five Lions, and Shiro standing in the way. 

Shiro pressed his cheek to the crown of Keith’s head and took a long, slow breath, putting the remaining resentment to the side. He was here, and he was safe, and that was all that mattered.

The light bathed the room in flickering red. Keith tossed his head, trying to dislodge the pressure around his jaw, but it was as unyielding as the burning metal around his wrists, searing into his skin and stealing the strength from his body. 

How long would he last? A week? A day? An hour? He got his answer when he forced his eyes open and saw through bleary vision the black, cracking skin crawling out from under the shackles, growing up his arms. They were draining too much. 

What would the others see when they found him? He pushed off the fear just long enough to hope that they never did— better to be lost as he was than found as a blackened, lifeless husk. Shiro shouldn’t have to see that. 

Somewhere behind him the dull roar of the engine cranked higher, louder, and he cried out uselessly as the burn tore through him. Please, he thought, please just let this be over soon. 

There was nothing else he could do. There was nowhere to run, nowhere to hide, nothing to fight. He was helpless, and if emotion could translate to quintessence then this damn machine would explode from the sheer force of his hatred. 

But that wasn’t how it worked. There was no way out— 

The whole room suddenly shook, and through the keening in his ears he thought he could hear a voice.

“—eith. Keith, wake up.”

That couldn’t be right. There was no one else here, just him and the burn and the light—

“Keith. Keith!” 

The room tumbled around him and Keith’s eyes popped open. For a long moment he just stared in confusion; the light was dim and warm, not flickering red, and there was no deafening hum of engines or ache in his shoulders from bearing his own weight. 

“Hey.” A metal hand, heavier than a flesh and bone one, ran over his hair and settled at the base of his neck. “Are you with me?”

“What…” his voice cracked. His throat was dry and his head pounded— what was going on? Nothing made sense. 

“You were having a nightmare.” 

Suddenly reality clicked back into place. He wasn’t on the space station. He was home, at the Castle, with Shiro trying to soothe the remaining tremors wracking through him. 

At first he felt a wave of relief. Then the tsunami hit with enough force to knock the air from his lungs. 

He had been sold. Auctioned off. Passed from hand to hand like an object. Hooked up to machines so that aliens could use his life to light their ballrooms. And he was lucky— they could’ve used him for other things— he was lucky that they had seen him as a battery and not as a toy, though they could’ve done both once he was out of juice, assuming he hadn’t straight up died. He could’ve become the alien that they took out of the shuttle, glassy eyed and pliant and empty— 

It was too much. All of the fear he’d locked away during the ordeal was suddenly crashing down around him and he couldn’t—

“Breathe.” Another hand pressed, gentle but firm, over his sternum. “You’re alright, you’re safe, just breathe.” 

He managed a breath, shaky as it was, and the burn in his lungs eased as he let it out again. 

“Good, you’re doing good. Keep breathing, Keith.” 

He squeezed his eyes shut and reached up to grasp at Shiro’s wrist, taking breaths that were more like gasps. He could feel Shiro’s pulse against his fingertips, slow, steady, and tried to time his breathing to its beat. The panic threatened to return, crawling up the back of his throat until he had to clench his teeth against the scream like he had in that damn cell, only for Shiro to tuck Keith’s head under his chin and wrap him in his arms. 

He should’ve felt pinned down and confined, but instead of more panic the pressure produced… calm. He sagged into the mattress, every muscle limp with exhaustion, and when the rushing in his ears faded he was able to hear what Shiro was saying.

“You’re ok, Keith. You’re safe here, I promise, you’re safe. I won’t let anyone get to you. I’m here now, I’ll protect you. You’re safe.”

Keith’s eyes burned, and this time he wasn’t able to stop the tears from escaping. Shiro must’ve felt them soaking into his shirt; his grip on Keith tightened and his next words were more than just reassuring murmurs. 

“Good, let it all out.”

“I—” Keith gasped again, now impeded by tears rather than pure fear. “I’m sorry—”

“You don’t have anything to be sorry for. This is a good thing.” Shiro kept his voice soothing, and yet didn’t slip into patronization, which would’ve made Keith bristle. “You couldn’t afford to feel it before, but now you can. It’s ok. I’ve got you.” 

Keith shook his head, the motion reduced from Shiro’s grip. “I don’t want to.” He didn’t want to feel like this: helpless, scared, weak, like prey. He clenched his fists tight around Shiro’s wrist and in his shirt, trying to turn it all into rage as he always did, but it was hard to find the steel when he was surrounded by so much softness. 

“I know,” said Shiro, and he sounded like he meant it. “But you need to, or it will only get worse. Trust me.”

Keith knew he was right. Even if he didn’t want to admit it, his body wasn’t going to give him a choice. He was shaking, his thoughts were fraying; if it wasn’t for Shiro’s arms holding him together he would’ve fallen to pieces. And yet a part of him still resisted opening the floodgates, keeping his teeth clenched tight and his breath trapped lest something sneak out on an exhale. He couldn’t show weakness. He couldn’t let them see that they were winning. 

“Set lights to zero.” The dim light of the room turned to darkness as Shiro commanded, leaving Keith blinking through watery eyes as they struggled to adjust. Shiro gave him a firm squeeze, then said softly, “It’s just me.” 

That was what got him. It was just him and Shiro here— no one he had to save face in front of, no one he had to pretend for, no kidnapping or slave trading aliens. If he trusted anyone to see him break, it would be Shiro. The tears overflowed from his eyes and streaked down his cheeks. 

And he broke. 

Shiro held him together as the fear and the sobs wracked through him. The last time he’d cried this hard was his first night in his little desert shack, when he realized that Shiro really wasn’t coming back. The last time someone saw him cry this hard was probably the night his father died. But Shiro didn’t seem rattled by the outpouring; he just held him, occasionally stroking his hair or murmuring a soft reminder to breathe. He never shushed, never tried to make him stop. He was patient. 

Keith had no idea how long it went on for. Long enough for his eyelids to grow heavy and his temples to throb dully. There was more emotion still, simmering beneath his skin, but he was too tired to feel them— he felt limp, like a mercilessly wrung dishcloth. 

Shiro didn’t loosen his grip, despite the fact that his shirt had to be soaked from all of the tears. 

“Good,” he said when the sobbing finally died down. “I’m so proud of you, Keith.” 

A million responses flooded through his mind. A pointed scoff. A denial, a reminder that all he’d done was get himself into trouble and then cry about it, or even just more tears. What came out was a hoarse whisper.

“I knew you’d come for me.” 

Shiro made a sound, a choked off little huff, and Keith felt his hands trembling where they rested against him. He got a whisper back. 

“Always.”