Word Count: 2,837
Season seven spoilers to anybody who hasn't seen it yet, did anyone else almost bawl their eyes out at the last episode, or was it just me?
...
I was running before the lions even hit the ground, even though I don't even remember sprinting out of the control room in the first place, but I was sure it happened at some point.
Shiro was somewhere, calling my name to come back through the communicator still in my ear, but I didn't listen, I couldn't, the only thing that seemed to run on repeat through my brain at that moment was how much I needed Keith, how much I wanted him to be alive, but all I could see was the explosion that rocked the ground, even though the massive robot was carried well out of the atmosphere, in my mind's eye, I kept seeing his lion dropping to the earth like a stone, purple streaks lighting the sky in some sick beauty as the lion fell, plummeting towards the ground and showing no signs of slowing down, I could still hear the entire team screaming in pain when, suddenly, I didn't hear anything at all.
"Keith!" I screamed into the comm. again, I couldn't hear Shiro's voice blaring through my ear every few seconds that I couldn't possibly run there in time before Keith crashed. He was right. I barreled out the only metal doors still intact after the Atlas's transformation, and fell on my knees onto the dusty ground just in time for the ear-shattering boom of all five lions crashing to the ground, smoke almost immediately swirling towards the heavens and I cried again, "Keith! Keith, answer me!" Silence greeted me; there wasn't static answering back like before he crashed.
Even Shiro didn't say anything anymore.
Ignoring the Atlas trying to get to its feet behind me, I ran faster, towards the closest column of smoke, just barely catching a glimpse of one of the bright red wings of the black lion, and the thoughts of Keith dying in the cockpit made me push myself to run faster.
I flapped my wings in a useless attempt to propel myself even further, falling to my knees as the force was greater than I had expected, but I didn't get back up, I was shaking so badly by this point I could barely even stand.
No.
No.
No.
No.
No.
He can't be dead, they just saved Earth, they should be celebrating, I should be hearing Lance's excited whoops and hollers, Hunk's saying how thankful he was to be back on the ground, Pidge's yes's as she celebrated, Allura's breathy sigh of relief that they did it, and Keith's "good job team" as he congratulated them all.
I should be hearing them, I should be hearing excitement and the applause of another job well-done by Voltron, instead I didn't hear anything. I didn't hear anything at all.
"Keith," my voice wasn't a yell anymore, and I almost laughed at how dull my own voice sounded now that the silence was closing in on me. "Keith," I repeated again, softer, and I felt the startlingly cold wetness of tears tracing down my cheeks, I barely noticed the car that had raced to a stop beside me. I said his name again, my voice now sticky with tears.
I think Veronica was trying to say something to me, but she couldn't get anything much out besides "get in, please. Lance, he-" she stopped, her voice on the verge of tears, mirroring my own emotion perfectly as she worried about Lance, and I curled into a ball on the ground, wishing somebody could kill me now. They had to be dead, there was no way they could have survived that blast.
"Acira, get in," a different voice said, a hand touched my shoulder as Shiro leaned down beside me, I looked up at him through my blurry vision, blinking the tears from my eyes as more replaced them almost immediately.
I finally nodded almost robotically as he led me to my feet and into the backseat of the car, the vehicle taking off almost immediately after that.
The ride was silent, but I looked up to see the still form of the black lion looming closer, and I jumped out of the car before I was even to a stop, beating everyone to the closed mouth of the lion, laying on its side, its legs splayed out in different directions, its eyes no longer looking alive.
"Keith," that was all I could say, and I put a hand on the beast's massive jaw, pulling back on my emotions enough to speak. "Please, you have to open, please."
Nothing happened, and my insides tied itself up in knots at what its silence could possibly mean.
"Open, up, please, you can't let him die, I need to see him."
It was getting harder to swallow, by this point, Shiro had joined me, and I could hear the sound of a vehicle taking off and, for some reason, I could perfectly picture Veronica behind the wheel, pushing the pedal down as far as it could go as she raced to her brother's lion, trying not to let her emotions cloud her sight so she wouldn't crash before she got there.
"Please," Shiro murmured beside me, both hands pressing on the lion, "please, you have to open, you have to let us in, I can't lose another-" his voice tempered off as I heard him inhale a shaky breath, a few minutes of us just repeating ourselves and the lion's jaw suddenly groaned open just a sliver, enough room for someone small to squeeze through.
Without another thought I practically threw myself at the opening, leaving Shiro behind as I fell to the floor on the other side, shaky legs pushing myself to the cockpit in a stumbling run and I froze once I got there.
I couldn't see anything. No body on the floor, no bloodstain, I didn't even know what to expect when I walked in and my mind immediately went to the moment we all rushed into the black lion, finding nothing but Shiro's bayard still in the port, but no Shiro.
Keith could be like that right now. His body no longer there, trapped in the conscious of the black lion. Dead.
I forced myself to take more steps further into the cockpit, noticing a limp hand thrown over the chair and almost fell when I stumbled the rest of the way to the black paladin's side.
He was pale and unresponsive, a large gash was dug into his forehead, blood matted to his hair and slowly creeping down his face. His helmet was nowhere to be seen and he was slumped forward over the controls, one hand still holding limply to them, face strangely calm and peaceful despite the macabre sight he was in.
"Keith," I pulled him up so I could better see him, only intensifying my view of how beat up he looked. His wrist was bent at an odd angle and judging by the large dent in the console in front of him, I was willing to bet that he had broken multiple ribs during the fall, "oh, Keith, please." My shaking fingers made their way to his neck to check for a pulse, and I almost cried when I felt the faint beat thrumming against my fingertips. He was alive, his pulse was weak, but he was alive.
I sudden white flash filled the cockpit and Cosmo whined beside me a moment later, I didn't even know how that dog got there, and I watched as he nosed Keith's limp hand, pushing hard for a reaction when Keith didn't move. I just kneeled down and ran my hand through his soft fur as he whined again.
"He's okay," I whispered to him, and the dog zapped out of the cockpit in response, leaving my hand out over nothing but open air.
"Acira!" I jumped when Shiro's voice sounded behind me, he must've gotten in somehow as I watched him almost sprint straight to the black paladin's side to check for a pulse, I couldn't move my tongue to tell him that Keith was alive, my limbs didn't seem to want to cooperate right then and I watched as he nearly fell to his knees in relief at feeling Keith's weak pulse, and pulling Keith closer to him as Shiro grasped that Keith wasn't dead.
... ... ...
I shut off the TV when Shiro's speech ended, tired of being reminded of the day Voltron almost ceased to exist.
I turned back to the figure in the bed, taking in Keith's closed eyes and the thick bandage wrapped around his head. It's almost been a week since the fight with Sendak, and almost every single one of the paladins were awake by now, all except one.
Cosmo stood beside me as I continued to look at the figure on the bed, sitting on a chair close to his bedside as my fingers robotically combed through his fur.
The doctor had said that Keith had a minor skull fracture; they had to be careful with what they did to him, but after hours of waiting for who knows what,they finally were able to get him to a stable condition and he was now still unconscious in bed, has been since I found him.
"How is he?"Krolia walked in, dressed in her blade uniform, looking about as dead as I felt. She was carrying two Styrofoam cups of coffee and handed one to me, I took it in both hands gratefully as I looked at Keith's still form again.
"Okay, he hasn't woken up yet, but there isn't any sign of brain damage, and the doctors don't know what else they can do but wait for him to wake up." I sighed, repeating the same thing as yesterday, getting a serious sense of déjà vu from the time I was camped out by his healing pod, what felt like, years ago.
She sat down on the chair situated by his bed as we both stared at him in silence. I could hear the sound of laughter coming from the room next to us, the sound of Lance's voice laughing at his niece and nephew as I listened to their giggling as they did whatever Lance was laughing at. If I listened hard enough, I could hear Matt's voice filtering in through the wall on the other side of the room, the walls to thick to actually hear anything he was saying. But in this little room, we were silent.
"I'm worried about him." I said, crossing my arms after putting the cup down on a nearby table, my voice low.
"I think we both are," her voice answered back, still looking at her son, motionless and I tried to imagine how she felt. Coming back to Earth, hoping to find her son well and alive, only to see him unconscious, and lying in a hospital bed.
The sound of Kolivan coughing to get our attention had us both looking up to the Galra with blank eyes, "How is he?"
"Nothing's changed since the last time you came in," I muttered, if Kolivan caught the slight edge in my voice, he didn't show it.
"Do you think he's going to be alright? He's been unresponsive for nearly a week while the other paladins appear to be doing just fine recovering from that blast."
Krolia shrugged at his question, not saying anything.
We all drifted off to silence then, but it was getting harder and harder to breathe in that room as the minutes ticked by and I finally couldn't stand it any longer. The silence was suffocating, and I needed to breathe.
"I'm going for a walk." No one acknowledged me as I walked out into the hall and I immediately felt the tears begin to flow.
I turned around and punched the wall by the door, not even being able to walk three feet without my emotions bubbling to the surface and I was left with getting ahold of myself right outside Keith's room. I was almost tempted to scream useless curses and bang my head against it until I passed out.
I couldn't take this! I wasn't as strong as everyone seemed to take me for, I'm not some emotionless robot, I'm human, just like the rest of them. This wasn't like back at the castle, Keith was doing just fine in the healing pod, it took a little longer than anyone had expected, and it was just the wait that seemed to kill us all, but now that the castle was gone...
I sucked my bottom lip in to keep myself from just yelling uselessly.
-now he might not wake up this time.
I took a steadying breath and sunk to the floor by the door, putting my head in my hands, I felt the tears come then and I broke out in hopeless sobs, my choking echoing down the hall as I tried to clamp down on my emotions, but it was no use, the tears continued to stream down my face as hospital personnel and patients walked past, their footsteps sounding like a funeral march in my ears.
I cried harder.
"Whoa, hey, Acira, hey." Clark's voice sounded beside me. I didn't look up to know it was him, there was only one alien I knew whose voice sounded like that.
I felt the touch of his hands on my shoulder as he sat down on the floor next to me and I immediately leaned towards him, burying my face in his shoulder as I cried harder.
"Keith. He. He can't, Clark, I don't want him to-"
"I know, it's going to be okay, you're going to be okay, you shouldn't worry like this."
I just buried my face further into his shoulder.
Clark had managed to survive the hunt for Marmoran members for the three years that we disappeared, he made it to Earth not long after the fight with Sendak, he's been doing his best to help in any way he can and part of me was surprised that he was able to get away to see me at all today, and a part of me, an incredibly small part, felt weak for him seeing me like this.
"I don't- I don't want him to die, Clark." I sniffed as he wrapped his arms around me.
"I know, I know. He's going to be okay, Acira, I'm sure of it." He hugged me tighter, but it did little to tighten the hole in my chest that felt like it was swallowing me whole.
"I can't take it anymore, Clark, I just can't."
"Shh, don't talk like that, Acira, you're strong, and you're both going to get through this."
"How. How do you know?"
My question seemed to take him by surprise, I managed to look up at him after a few minutes of him not saying anything. "Because-" he sighed, looking a little frustrated for not being able to get his feelings into words, "because you're the strongest person I know."
I sniffed and hugged him tight, burying my face in his chest as the tears continued to fall. I could feel his arms wrapping tighter around me, but I was caught by surprise when I felt more than one set of arms enveloping me in a hug.
"We've got you Acira," Lance's voice whispered in my ear a moment later and my overwhelming emotions bubbled back up to the surface again just after I was beginning to get them under control.
"Did you really think you were in this alone?" Hunk's voice said, and the group hug tightened.
"We're all here for you, don't you dare forget that." Pidge spoke up and I caught Matt's light chuckle at his sister's words.
"I know you're hurting, Acira, but we're all in this together, Keith is going to pull through, I can feel it." Allura whispered, and the whole group hugged me tighter.
You're not alone, Clark's thoughts whispered to me, and I felt him lightly kiss the top of my head in response to the sudden warmth and love around me.
"Acira!"
We both jumped as the door suddenly opened, I was surprised to see Krolia looking down on us out of the open door, her face no longer looking sunken and dead, but alive.
I took the message from her expression almost immediately and jumped to my feet, barreling into the room faster than I thought possible.
I locked eyes with Keith, who was slowly coming around and I refrained myself from jumping onto the bed with him, and crushing him in the biggest hug I could manage.
Instead, I walked up to his bedside, leaned over him, and kissed him, hard.
"My God, Keith, don't you ever do that again." I scolded him and he chuckled, coughing a second later.
"I don't think you have anything to worry about," he said, voice light after not using it for so long.
I kissed him again, just to be sure.