Under My Skin

Chapter 1

It startled him more than a little and a very pissed off Keith leapt from his seat in an attempt to charge at Lance. Except, he had seemingly forgotten about his injury and promptly fell face-first onto the ground as his ankle gave out.

Keith cursed loudly! The harsh words echoing in the large room and Lance heard Shiro groan in exasperation. But that didn't stop Keith, the boy soldiered on regardless of the pain and limped his way over to the mats to face off with Lance.

Good. Great. Awesome. Lance loved a challenge.

Keith lunged at him, but the weight of the bayard in his hand, coupled with the force needed to swing, made him drop to his knees again in pain. He pushed himself up but nearly dropped again at his first step.

Keith cursed under his breath but forced himself to press on, he moved towards Lance with a gleam in his eyes as he let fly a wicked right hook that would have hurt like all hell if Lance hadn't blocked him with the frame of his gun.

Keith growled in anger and pain. "That's fucking bullshit!" He yelled. "You're cheating!"

Lance stormed closer, back into striking range and threw his bayard to the ground behind him. "There, no weapons - now AT ME BRO!" he challenged and was immediately met by Keith's advances.

They fought back and forth for a minute tops before Lance swiped Keith's good leg and the weight on his injured ankle was too much for him to bear. The Red Paladin crashed to the mats, hard, and the loud snap almost seemed to echo.

Lance froze for a second, just long enough to watch the expression on Keith's face morph from frustration to shock to confusion. He tried to get up, to force himself to stand but there was no way it was happening, it was as if he didn't notice that his ankle was completely broken.

Shiro rushed the scene first, dropping to his knees beside Keith, and ordering Hunk and Pidge to get Coran. The Yellow and Green Paladins left in a flurry, Hunk muttering under his breath a litany of concerns.

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The healing pod opened approximately two hours later and Keith stumbled out into Shiro's waiting arms. His ankle was obviously still sore, based on how he favoured it, but at least the break had been healed.

Coran explained to them all that the pod could heal the break but it couldn't fully repair the wound given Keith's mixed blood. Something about the way Galran and Human muscle structure differ from one another enough to cause an error in the pod's system. Coran went on to say that he would work on correcting this for future injuries but that he would essentially need to enter Keith as his own species and blah blah blah Lance had stopped listening.

Keith looked ... well, upset. That was the best way to describe it. On the surface, he was taking the news that his biology was completely different from the rest of the team pretty well, but Lance had gotten to know his tells like the back of his hand. Knowing when Keith was upset was pretty useful when you'd made it your life's goal to piss him off, after all. So Lance felt confident in his conclusion that Keith was not taking the whole "Put you in as your own species" thing lightly.

On top of that, Coran advised Shiro not to let Keith participate in training sessions until his ankle was healed. Keith almost seemed to take that news worse. Classic Keith.

"What do you mean I can't join? I can still contribute!" Keith had argued, stepping forward to challenge Shiro and wincing at the spike of pain from doing so.

"Keith, you can't," Shiro tried to reason with him, his voice calm and understanding. "You're injured and you need to heal. If you join our training sessions you're only going to make the injury worse. You heard Coran, no running, no jumping, no fighting. I'm sorry but this is how it needs to be."