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It started with Lance.
He looked peaceful in the pod, really, like he was asleep. In the white under suit, his normally brown skin looked much paler. Less pale than when he was limp in Shiro’s arms after the explosion, but unnaturally pale nonetheless.
Coran shooed away their worries the minute Lance entered the pod, ensuring the paladins that the boy would be ‘right as a red-tailed bushticker’... whatever that was.
He was much quieter when he told them that Lance would not leave the pod as smooth-skinned as he used to be. He handed Hunk a scar cream with a pointed look, patting the large man on the forearm and leaving them to their devices.
True to his word, when the suit was peeled off Lance’s upper body, a large, pink, star shaped scar covered his back. It was ugly and still in different healing phases, the very middle of it raw and obviously causing the boy some discomfort. When Keith pointed a mirror to it for Lance to see, the boy remained horrifyingly silent.
“Lance?” Shiro had asked, placing his flesh hand gently on the boy’s shoulder.
Lance remained quiet, swallowing a few times, before uttering, “A good story to tell my parents huh?”
It was supposed to be a joke, but the way his voice cracked at the end and tears filled his eyes lessened the effect. Pidge saddled up next to him, gripping his hand tight in a meager attempt at replacing a hug.
Lance looked around at his friends, gauging their reactions to the mess on his back. Hunk had tears of sympathy in his eyes, clutching the scar cream tightly in his palm. Keith wasn’t looking at him, but the way his arms wrapped around his own waist in a way to soothe himself told Lance everything he needed to know.
Shiro looked more resigned than anything else. And Lance understood. The man had seen enough gore and scars to tell a million stories.
It was the first time Lance had realized what exactly he and his friends had- unwillingly- gotten themselves into. This is a war. An actual, real, if-they-fuck-up-even-once-it-would-mean-the-end-of-their-lives war. There is an intergalactic tyrant somewhere out there with an army that’s taken over two-thirds of the universe, and he is actively trying to kill them.
They could die. They might die. Some of them will probably die, statistically. There’s 7 of them, the odds are very much against them.
But Lance hasn’t died yet. He stared at the puckered, pink scar painted on his back and took a breath. His friends are still around him, still breathing, hearts beating, blood flowing. They can only take this day by day and take on obstacles as they come.
He’s not dead yet. And he won’t let that fate befall his teammates, either.
—---
It continued with Shiro.
And he looked decidedly not peaceful. His brow remained furrowed, his hand clenching and unclenching. It looked like he was having a nightmare.
Keith was stuck to his brother’s pod like glue, arms crossed nonchalantly like he wasn’t pacing semi circles around the glass where Shiro lay. His own brow was pinched, watching the man’s form like a hawk for any discrepancies.
It was the first time they had dealt with a non-human injury. The plasma blast that burned through Shiro’s skin was covered by the white under suit, but Coran insisted that if anything was amiss, the pod would let them know.
Maybe it was the several hours Keith had spent by Shiro’s side on that desert planet, or the fact that the man had been in such imminent danger, the black lion had allowed Keith to pilot her, but he could not get himself to relax.
“Mullet, you gotta calm down,” Lance said, his eyes tracking Keith’s frantic movements.
“Seriously, dude,” Pidge added, “You’re gonna wear a hole in the floor.”
Keith didn’t respond, of course, he hadn’t since they returned and Shiro was placed in the pod. Hunk had tried valiantly to get the red paladin to eat, but no dice. Coran had tried too, but even his medical experience wasn’t enough to put Keith at ease.
“Number 4,” Coran said, “He’s going to be alright. I know it was a less than ideal situation, but he will recover.”
Keith just shook his head, lowering his gaze from Coran’s and biting his nails. The Altean sighed, “Lad, take a seat. Eat something. Shiro will still be here.”
Nothing got through.
Eventually, Keith fell asleep in front of Shiro’s pod. Hunk and Pidge had retired for the night, leaving Lance to watch over his two friends. He grabbed a blanket and covered it lightly over Keith, causing the boy to stir.
“Lance?” Keith slurred.
Lance gave him a gentle smile, “Hey, Red, you doin’ alright?”
Keith shook the sleep off of him, moving to stand on shaky legs, “Gotta- I gotta watch Shiro-”
He stumbled slightly, his exhausted body unable to take his own weight. Lance caught him by the arm, pulling the boy back to the floor and leaning him against Shiro’s pod.
“It’s okay, it’s alright, Keith, I’ve got him.” Lance soothed.
Keith’s eyes were closed again, but he seemed tense even seconds away from sleep. He mumbled, “He can’t- can’t leave again, not again.”
Lance felt a pang in his chest, pulling the blanket higher on Keith’s shoulders as the boy’s breath evened out. Keith had been very tight-lipped about his time in the desert, but Lance got the feeling that it wasn’t all sunshine and rainbows.
He’s also well aware of the kind of relationship Shiro and Keith have. The way the older man teases and cares for Keith can’t be mistaken for anything other than brotherly. It reminded him painfully of his own brother, Luis.
It’s understandable that this would be the way Keith reacted to Shiro getting hurt. Lance truthfully worries about what would happen if it were the other way around. Hopefully, he never has to learn (he knows it’s wishful thinking, especially with Keith’s ever growing sacrificial tendencies.)
Early that morning, Shiro stumbled blearily out of the pod. Keith had startled, all but pushing Lance- who had ended up drooling all over the red paladin’s shoulder- onto the floor. He was immediately at his brother’s side, holding the older man up by his arm.
He walked Shiro to one of the exam tables, calling for Coran once he set the man down. The examination went well, even with Keith fluttering slightly in the background, glancing between Coran and Shiro worriedly.
Lance sighed, clapping Keith on the shoulder and giving him a look, nodding at him to just stand by Shiro. Keith rolled his eyes but acquiesced, going to stand by his brother.
“Just a scar left over, lad, but you’re right as rain, as you say!” Coran finished, fishing out a lollipop-esq looking candy and handing it to Shiro.
Shiro chuckled, turning to his little brother and handing him the candy instead. “You deserve a sweet for all your troubles,” he said teasingly.
Keith walloped his brother over the head, scoffing slightly, but the worry that had filled his eyes since they arrived at the castle had been replaced with overwhelming relief.
Lance smiled, leaving the boys to their turmoil and entering the hallway. A dark part of Lance wonders who’ll be next in the pod. It’d only been a couple weeks since Lance’s back got burned. Hunk, maybe, considering his body size and natural desire to protect the people around him. Keith is more likely, though, what with his ‘shoot first, ask later’ mentality.
He shakes the thoughts from his head. If Lance is honest, he’s really starting to hate the med bay. He would be happy if he never had to step foot in there again.
And then Pidge lost her first finger.
—---
“We can start working on a super sick prosthetic as soon as possible, yeah?” Hunk said gently, running his large hand through a practically catatonic Pidge’s hair.
Tear tracks covered the girl’s cheeks, fogging up her glasses. She was staring off into space, her eyes wide but dead, the color gone from her face.
It’d been a complete accident, no one’s fault but the Galra soldiers who programmed the computer to blow up the second after all of its data was downloaded.
Coran was sitting silently, working on wrapping what was now a nub on Pidge’s right ring finger. Allura sat on Pidge’s other side, rubbing her arm soothingly, staring at her worriedly.
Pidge wasn’t really…taking in anything. She’s always been an analytical person, working on facts because that’s what she understands.
And what she understands is this:
- She hadn’t gathered enough intel on the Galra ship they were infiltrating.
- She had gotten cocky about her hacking skills and forgoed her normal routine of checking for any traps or tricks.
- She no longer has a finger because of it.
Her glazed eyes scanned the med bay, Hunk’s and Allura’s voices filtering through her ears, but not entering her brain. Lance and Keith were huddled together off to the side, glancing at her every so often with pinched faces.
Shiro walked in a few seconds later, food goo in hand, and set the plate by her side.
“Hey, Pidge,” he said gently.
She looked up at him, and for some reason the way the man was looking at her was so reminiscent of Matt, it brought her to tears. Her lip trembled as she looked at the way Shiro’s face crumbled slightly, moving to cup her cheek.
Pidge’s breath hitched, “What am I gonna do?”
Shiro gave her a small, sad smile, “It’s gonna suck for a while, kiddo, and I’m so sorry about that. But you and Hunk are gonna come up with something super smart and something I’ll never be able to comprehend-”
Pidge let out a small giggle, making the rest of the people in the room smile.
“-and you’ll be back to hacking through computers before you know it.” Shiro finishes.
Pidge nods, still refusing to look at the hand that has one less finger than it should. Lance and Keith had walked over, giving her encouraging looks and small squeezes on her arms.
“It’s all gonna be alright, Pigeon.” Lance said gently, smiling at her.
Pidge took a deep breath, glancing at the gauze surrounding her hand.
And she believes him.
—---
Lance hates when he’s right.
Hunk is a wall. He’s 6 '4 and over 250 pounds of mostly muscle. The man is a target even without the bright yellow of his suit.
They fight on planet more often than Lance ever would’ve thought. When they formed Voltron, he assumed they’d be doing a lot of the fighting in the black expanse of space. That’s decidedly not true.
Luckily, Lance usually takes point, so he doesn’t have to worry as much about face-to-face combat. He’s more than happy to have his friend’s backs as they infiltrate and fight against the Galra (He’s less than happy when he has to patch up the lacerations covering Keith’s torso and arms, but he doesn’t mind getting to scold the boy.)
But Hunk is big . He’s big and he doesn’t move as fast as the rest of them. The man can usually get away with a few scrapes and cuts, but this battle was more than even Shiro can handle.
Three shots ring out across the battlefield. Lance can only watch in horror as three bullets enter and exit Hunk’s body. Torso, shoulder, kneecap. He hits the ground hard , blood beginning to seep from the wounds.
Everything goes blurry after that for Lance. The next he knows, he’s in front of a suspended Hunk, who’s in the same white under suit Lance was in.
And now he understands Keith intimately.
He doesn’t want to leave the pod. He wants to ask Coran a million questions and more. He needs to know if his brother is going to walk again, breathe again.
Pidge sits at the stairs by Hunk’s pod, watching the man’s vitals closely. His heartbeat is strong, his brain waves are normal, but she can’t get her hands to stop shaking.
Hunk’s not in the pod for very long, but he isn’t able to stay on his feet when he tumbles out. Shiro and Coran are there to catch him, wrapping his arms around their shoulders. The man is disoriented and exhausted, slumped against the exam table.
Coran moves about his examination, humming when he runs a thumb over the healed scar on Hunk’s shoulder. He presses lightly against the puckered scar on the man’s torso, nodding when Hunk rates it a 2/10 pain.
He tests Hunk’s reflexes, rapping a wooden mallet against Hunk’s knee, frowning when there’s no movement. He tries again, nothing. He asks Hunk to stand and bear as much weight on his knee as he can handle.
Hunk shifts his weight for only a second before he crumples to the floor. Shocked, the man attempts to get up, waving away the hands trying to help him up. When his knee can’t handle the weight again, Hunk sits back on the floor, his breaths heaving in panic.
Shiro immediately drops to the ground, guiding the yellow paladin through a breathing exercise. Once the man is calm, he looks up to Coran with pleading eyes, “Please tell me that isn’t permanent.”
Coran’s eyes are sympathetic and tired. Hunk crumples, his hands pressing to his eyes. Pidge immediately runs to his side, whispering to him about making splints and crutches, ways for Hunk to move around and still be a part of Voltron.
Lance can only close his eyes, pressing his forehead onto Keith’s shoulder, and beg the universe to give them a break.
—---
Keith is the last to see the pod.
It’s honestly surprising that Keith was the last of them. That’s not to say there hasn’t been opportunities where he definitely should’ve used it. He’s got pink and white scars marring his arms, torso, and legs where swords have sliced through his skin.
He insists that the pod isn’t necessary, that he can handle a few stitches with the Altean version of morphine. What a laugh, Shiro thinks. His kid brother can handle 37 stitches without taking an hour in the pod.
Unfortunately, Keith no longer has a choice.
They’d entered a Galra cargo ship with a weapon on it that would tip the war in the Galra’s favor if they got a hold of it. It was suspiciously quiet as the five of them navigated the purple hallways.
They split up, each with their own missions to shut down the ship and take or kill the weapon, whatever it ended up being. Shiro took the west wing, creeping down the hall, Galra arm activated.
“ East wing clear,” Lance’s voice came over comms.
Pidge’s voice came through only seconds later, “ Cameras are shut down. Keith, there’s a secured room on your right in about thirty feet. I’m getting an unnatural heat signature from inside.”
“Copy,” Keith whispers back.
Once Hunk confirms his wing is clear, Shiro orders them to rendezvous at the meeting point where the ship is waiting invisibly. The next few things happen in slow motion for Shiro.
Coran confirms that the three paladins have made it safely onto the ship.
Shiro clears his wing.
Keith starts screaming.
“Keith? Keith!” Shiro yells, pressing his hand to his comm desperately, turning on his heel and booking it in the other direction, pulling up his holomap to track his brother’s location.
The other paladins are just as loud on the comms, calling Keith’s name, but Shiro hears none of it. He skids around a corner, sprinting down the next hallway.
“Keith, answer me now!” Shiro abandons all protocols, his tunnel vision focused on his own dot getting closer to Keith’s.
The kid has since gone quiet, his comm cutting out with his screams. Shiro gets closer, listening for the sound of his brother fighting. He enters a dark room, immediately cringing at the smell of blood.
He lights up his Galra arm, jaw dropping at the sheer amount of blood covering the walls of the room. For a moment, Shiro’s heart seizes with the thought of it being Keith’s until he spots the prone form of what was obviously the weapon the Galra were transporting.
It looks more like an animal than anything else, something akin to a gorilla, but 5x bigger. It was absolutely mutilated, blood gushing from all over. Shiro grimaces at the sight, his breath heaving.
“Shiro?” A small voice calls from his right.
Shiro’s neck snaps to the sound, lifting his arm to get a better look. His heart drops to his feet at the sight. Keith is covered in blood. Head to toe, crimson drips from his body. Shiro rushes to his side, dropping to his knees, his hands hovering but not quite knowing where to touch.
He has more Galra features than normal, his teeth are sharper, his right eye’s pupil is slit like a cats, and his skin has a purple undertone. It suddenly makes sense why the monster on the floor behind him has been left the way it has. Shiro shudders slightly, trying to shove away the thoughts of the Galra side of his little brother.
Keith keens in pain, and Shiro finally gets a good look at his face. There are four distinct claw marks slicing through the skin on his brother’s face. The corner of his lip is torn almost in half, blood gushing down his chin. But the worst is his left eye.
There’s almost too much blood in the eye to even see what’s going on. There’s obviously trauma in the eye, but Shiro can’t get a good look at what.
“Shiro,” Keith slurs again, tears mixing with the blood on his cheeks.
Decision made, Shiro picks his brother up, apologizing silently when Keith yelps in pain. He ignores the calls of the other paladins in the comms, all but sprinting to where the castle is waiting.
The frightened looks of the paladins and Alteans will stay with Shiro for the rest of his life. The despair on Lance’s face, accompanied by his cry of Keith’s name is something made for horror movies.
A quick rundown of Keith from Coran tells them that aside from multiple cuts and bruises, his body is relatively okay. His face, on the other hand, is a major problem.
Keith’s in the pod for the rest of the day and well into the night. And just like his brother, Shiro does not leave Keith’s side. He watches as the pod stitches the torn skin of his brother’s face back together, leaving pink, jagged lines in their place.
Keith exits the pod normally, no stumbling or falling, but his eyes remain closed. Shiro holds him up by the shoulders, tucking his black hair behind his ears to get a better look at the boy’s face.
“Keith?” Shiro calls quietly.
Slowly, so slowly, Keith pries his eyes open. Shiro can barely hold in his gasp. Keith’s left eye is a milky white, his cornea clouded over.
The boy blinks a few times, adjusting to the light, before he makes eye contact with Shiro. Immediately, he realizes something is wrong as he reaches to touch his face. His fingers map four long scars running over the left side of his face.
A few minutes of silence later and Keith looks up to Shiro, giving him a wry smile, “Guess we match now, huh?”
Shiro huffs, his throat tightening as he folds himself around his little brother. He feels Keith wrap his arms around his waist, burying his face in Shiro’s shoulder. He can feel his shirt dampening and squeezes tighter, pressing a kiss to Keith’s hair.
“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, kiddo.” Shiro whispers.
Keith shakes his head, pulling away and wiping his eyes.
“I’ll adjust. I can still fight.” Keith says determinedly, furrowing his brows.
Shiro nods, “I know, I know, I don’t doubt it. I’ll be there every step of the way.”
Keith nods again, knocking his head against Shiro’s shoulder. A sniffle from their left causes Keith to perk up, making eye contact with a red-eyed Lance. His little brother smiles, walking over to cup Lance’s cheek and pull him into a hug.
Lance crumbles into him, crying into Keith’s shoulders. He clutches the back of Keith’s shirt hard, breathing in the- arguably, pretty bad- scent of Keith’s skin. He smells like blood and sweat and fear, but he’s warm and alive and that’s all that matters.
Lance pulls away, giving Keith a watery smile.
Keith grins back, his face turning into something more amused, “Am I ten times more handsome now or what?”
Lance snorts, wiping his nose and resting his forehead against Keith’s. He raises his hand to run his fingers over the new scars, rubbing over Keith’s closed eyelids, the divots in his cheek, the missing chunk of his lip.
His lips replace his fingers, pressing soft kisses to the scar tissue. Keith sighs under him, melting against Lance’s warmth. Lance kisses him on the lips softly, reveling in the fact that Keith came back changed and hurt, but he’s still here.
Keith is still here, still by his side, still watching his six, still kicking and fighting and real.
And for right now, that’s all that matters.
—---
They’re all sitting around the table eating dinner.
It'd actually been a pretty calm day. One of the few days where the paladins didn’t have anything to do at all. No missions, no training, no reports to finish.
Pidge left the room a few minutes ago, promising she’d come back within a few minutes, but her program was nearly finished running and she needed to make a few adjustments.
Lance stretches, wincing at the sharp sting at the pull on his back. Even a year after his accident, it was still giving him grief occasionally. Keith gives him a sympathetic look, placing a hand on his back and rubbing some of the problem places.
The man had been doing remarkably well since becoming half-blind, his physical therapy coming along very nicely. He and Lance had started sparring again a couple weeks ago and they’re nearly at the point that they were before everything went down.
Hunk has good and bad days, some days where he can walk pretty much normally and others where he’s bed bound. It makes him frustrated, but Pidge will bring him tech to tinker with to make him feel better.
They’ve made accommodations for all of them, changes to the castle being made to make life easier.
A loud bang from across the castle startles all of them. There’s a comedic pause where they all stare at each other, wondering if it’s a pod situation when Pidge enters the kitchen again, covered in soot, her hair sticking up in all directions.
“I’m fine.” She says bluntly.
Lance lets out a loud cackle, prompting the rest of the table to dissolve into giggles at Pidge’s situation. With a smile, Shiro sighs and walks over to the fridge, erasing the 9 from the ‘ Days Since Near Death Experience’ before replacing it with a 0.
Coran shakes his head, placing it in his hands.
“You’re all on concussion watch.” His muffled voice comes through.
This is war. It’s hard. It’s painful. It’s terrifying.
But they’ll be okay. They have to be.