Langst: One Shots

Hope.

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It gripped him like an icy sting, making the area feel colder than it was and chilled his core.

All any of them could do was stare.

They were too late.

The planet the paladins had been sent to defend against a seemingly mild Galran attack.

It was far from mild, and it made Hunk sick within moments of them stepping from their lions.

Bodies were strewn here and there, literally.

You could find a torso, and then look around and find it’s missing pieces a few feet away. Heads were blown up, people bent in nightmare-ish angles and bones sticking out.

Closed eyes, blackened eyes, bloodied and blind eyes, no eyes…

Lance took a shuddered breath, and he was the first to step forward, bayard at the ready, and slowly walk around. He was frozen, no longer in place, but in disgust, shock, failure…

Children, women and men.

It was gruesome, and it was horrible.

It was preventable.

The other paladins started to disperse in a silence, because what there was to say when you came to a planet made of blood? Blood that was spilled because they weren’t here soon enough. How could this have happened? What had happened for things to escalate like this?

“Keith, take Pidge and look for survivors.” Shiro said, voice hushed. The same thought was going through all of their minds. Survivors? As if. Take a look around.

A planet of blood.

A planet of death.

It was sickening.

“Hunk and I will scout the area for enemy lurkers, or bombs, anything.” Shiro said, guiding Hunk to start moving. The man had just managed to control his vomiting. It only added to the scent.

Lance watched the pairs break off and do their assigned duties, frowning at the fact he had been left without a duty. His mind went elsewhere though, swallowing the hollow ball in his throat.

Lance listened as his boots tapped against the dusty ground of the planet, and it reminded him of Earth’s moon. He loved the moon more than anything, for him it was like a personal friend.

You could depend on it showing up every evening, sometimes it lingered in the morning, but unlike the sun, the moon felt like something all your own. You look up in the sky at night time and you see the moon, and you feel welcome.

Connected.

Everyone can look up and be blinded by the sun, complain about it’s heat, etc.

But who wakes up at two in the morning with you and looks up at the moon and complains about it? Who is there when you are awoken by those demons of the night in your head?

The moon. She’s a different kind of friend.

As Lance stepped across craters and bodies, all the reddish-yellow blood that came from the species that had occupied this bloodbath of a planet, he couldn’t help but imagine his moon.

His moon covered in blood. His friend.

These people had believed Voltron to be their friend, their hero, an ally.

But Voltron, the paladins, they hadn’t come to the rescue in time.

And now look where they were.

Lance felt tears well up, which he wiped from under his helmet. He knew that feeling.

Feeling alone and left behind by friends that were supposed to always be there for you.

He looked back at the direction the paladins had disappeared, where he had come from, and of course the only bodies he saw were those of the dead. Where were they out there?

What would he do one day if the moon didn’t come up some day?

He hadn’t seen his Earth moon for years now.

Did she miss him? Did she feel left behind and abandoned?

Lance took a shaky breath, stopping as he came across the nearly perfect corpse of a Galran soldier, his thoughts unfinished and cut off.

The soldiers armor was not bothered, no scuffs or holes or blood, no missing limbs or anything of the sort. It looked as if the being or machine underneath the armor had just gone to sleep, no injury in the slightest to be seen.

The blue paladin squinted, suspicion rising and he crouched. “How did you die…?”

The answer to that was, in fact, the soldier had NOT died.

A hand reached out and grabbed Lance by the throat and whacked the gun from the paladin.

“Wh--- GUH!” Lance wheezed out a shocked breath, kicking the Galran as it stood to its feet.

“Guys---“

Lance felt like an earthquake just shook through his entire skull. A metal arm punching into the side of his helmet to break the communicator that resided within. “Huh….”

His Bayard gun slipped out of his fingers as the planet swam before him in a realm of black, between consciousness and unconsciousness, and his eyes rolled back in his head without his permission.

Someone took off his helmet.

Something hard was pressed to his forehead.

Maybe it was Lance’s own imagination, but he swore he could hear someone screaming his name. Keith? Pidge? It wasn’t as deep as Shiro or Hunk’s voice, and it tended to crack.

He wouldn’t know, before another thought could be processed, there was a gunshot, sounding extremely close and there was a scolding heat at his head, a brief moment of pain…

And nothing.

- - -

Keith stumbled as the giant gun went off in his hand, and he prayed to whatever deity was out there that he hadn’t accidentally shot Lance. He couldn’t bear the thought of that.

“LANCE!”

He looked back briefly to see Pidge standing and staring, before running after him, spouting things into her communicator for Shiro and Hunk to get their location. Lance was hurt.

The Galran soldier was hit straight in the face and he fell back, dropping Lance and the duo made sickening thunks on the gravel-like ground. “LANCE!” Pidge yelled.

Keith made it to Lance and he only kicked away the soldier, falling to his knees next to his teammate and panting from his run. Sweat dripped down his forehead, and he quickly fixed Lances helmet so he was still receiving oxygen. “Lance, c’mon… Lance?”

Pidge came up next to him, “You grazed that side of his helmet. And he is bleeding on the side of his head, he needs a pod quickly.” “On it!” Suddenly Hunk and Shiro were with them, crowded around Lance.

“The Princess h-has C-C-Coran landing the castle ship…” Hunk stammered, staring at his best friend on the ground. “He’s bleeding… his face…”

Keith stood, letting Shiro lift Lance, and he put a hand on Hunk’s shoulder. “He’ll be okay.”

The four conscious paladins looked at each other, and the same thought passed between them all. It was like they were all in sync, thinking in tune to the worry and tragedy.

They all hoped he would.