Terminal Velocity • Voltron x Terminal List

IV

Lance hopped in the passenger seat and shut the door, nodding without looking over for Keith to hit the gas.

The truck lumbered forward for a few paces before gradually picking up momentum.

"Everything go okay?" Keith asked, his voice quiet and inquisitive but not too inquisitive. He'd wanted Lance to wear an earpiece. Lance had rejected his call on the grounds of not wanting to alert the federal government that he was working with anyone if things went south, but in reality, Lance just didn't want Keith to hear him slowly going insane if, in fact, he truly was going insane and had just tried to kill a completely innocent Federal agent. Thankfully things hadn't worked out that way.

"Routine," Lance said, still refusing to look over.

"And the fed?" Keith pried, which was a bit out of character for him and that told Lance something. That maybe Keith doubted him, doubted his version of the truth. Or maybe he was worried. Neither option was ideal.

"Taken care of."

"...Is he dead?" Keith asked, which was just a nicer way of asking Did you kill him? And that was equally odd for Keith, to go out of his way euphemism-hunting.

Lance still couldn't look over. He wasn't sure if Keith was disappointed in him. He knew the look because he'd seen it a thousand times. Less within the past few years, but more than enough when Voltron had been starting out and Lance had felt like he could only make mistakes, especially in the eyes of the all-perfect pilot Keith Kogane.

"He gave up a name, and then I killed him," Lance summed up succinctly, and Keith didn't say anything, just hummed to himself and kept driving, but the questions stopped, and Lance let himself relax a fraction of an inch and stared out the window as the night flew by in a series of guardrails glinting under the headlights and hills rising and falling under their beams. "Where are we going?" Lance asked after a few minutes, finally looking over at Keith, but now it was Keith's turned to stare straight ahead.

"It was too risky to head back into town. Did you know they've got you on the news now? Running all the time. Can't risk a positive ID." Keith nodded at the inky sky spread out through the windshield. "There's a safe house not far from here. Figured we'd crash for the night, stock up on whatever we need, and then track down your new mystery man."

Lance nodded, looking back out his window. "Sounds like a plan," he said, but the words felt hollow to him. Even killing the federal agent from before had felt hollow. He'd killed lots of people, the vast majority of them bad people who'd more than certainly had it coming, but he'd never killed one of his fellow countrymen before.

He'd also never been betrayed by one.

The hollowness was all he'd felt since...since that moment in the kitchen, he supposed, when he'd cradled his dead sister and dead nephew in his lap and wept at his inability to protect them, to shield them, to do his damn job and keep them safe and–

"Shit," Lance snapped driving the base of his left palm into his forehead as though he could remold the shape of his skill with enough brute force.

"What's wrong?" Keith asked immediately, looking over, eyes alert.

"Just a- fuck- it's this headache that won't fucking go away," Lance ground out, biting down hard with his teeth and trying to massage his knuckles against his temple.

"Hold tight, we're almost there," Keith said, and the engine gave a roar as he pressed down harder on the gas.

"Just a headache," Lance said, still massaging at his forehead and trying to ignore the small voice in the back of his head that told him he was weak, that he was letting himself get pushed around by a mere migraine. "Shut up," Lance snapped, thumping his fist again the armrest adjacent to the door.