Word Count: 2,874
Heads up, this is one of those..... weirder ones, a random quote I made up ("We're all made of glass, some just have more cracks than others.") ended up popping back into my head a few days ago and I just couldn't shake the need to do something with it that involved the fantastic Voltron paladins, so here we are!!
Also, points to whoever recognizes the tiny comic piece I used for the chapter pic, I've reread that amazing thing over and over too many times to count by now, and though I'm not as nearly as big of a Klance shipper as I was, I still friggin love it ^-^
...
Contrary to popular belief, transitioning to the Paladins of Voltron was no easy task.
To be quite honest it- it was painful.
And the only reason that they were even here at all was because the previous paladins couldn't be put back together again.
Yeah, you heard him right.
The paladins fell to literal pieces.
Even Pidge had had a hard time understanding just what Allura meant once she gathered them all in the control room one quiet day. They'd launched from Arus only a few days ago, and even then they were excelling faster than the previous paladins had in forming Voltron, operating as a team, forced to work together with the impending doom of war lingering over everyone's heads, and all-in-all, Keith didn't think they were doing all that bad.
Being a paladin couldn't be an easier job, and with the clear obviousness that he had nothing to go back to on Earth, this was a complete and utter breeze.
But- there was a twist that came with that fancy title.
A twist that required- a body procedure? Keith wasn't sure how else to word it besides that it was weird, interesting, and weird all at once.
"You see, all paladins must undergo what might be understood as a binding process, it helps to ensure that in a time of great destruction, we can easily put you back together without the wait a healing pod would bring," Allura explained, hands clasped in front of her.
"What exactly do you mean, 'binding process'? What is that? Is it a good thing? If so, how long is that going to take?" Pidge questioned, pushing up her glasses, no doubt still on the track of finding her brother and father while she was out here.
"Yeah, and I'm a little hooked on the 'putting us back together" part? If you guys can put limbs back together that's great, but I don't think we humans really have that capability." Hunk nervously tapped his index fingers together, brown eyes wide.
"Quite right," Coran chuckled, "you may not have those capabilities now, but this here castle can make that right as a ruflox."
"Wait, what? What are you guys saying exactly?" Lance questioned, "Are we gonna be, like, immortal or something?"
"No, no, no, of course not, that's a ridiculous idea," the advisor waved the question away with a shake of his head. "The princess is merely saying that the role of paladin requires your bodies to become nearly unbreakable, it's essential as a paladin. Of course you'll be injured, that is certainly a given in war, but this process will ensure even if the injury is serious we can, twist, pop and-" he broke off, clapping his hands together making Pidge jump as she looked up from peering over the princess's shoulder, "-just like that!"
"Er," Allura chuckled, the holo screen in front of her disappearing into thin air as she stepped off the castle platform, walking with purposeful steps towards them, not at all looking at all bothered by what the royal advisor was describing, "what Coran is trying to say is once we place you into the pods to begin the process, your bodies won't succumb easily to cuts, instead, if it happens to become hurt by some immeasurable force skin will merely crack off which we can fix in seconds here. It is very helpful in the heat of battle and only takes moments to heal."
Keith raised a hesitant brow at the explanation, a fuzzy image of what she was meaning materializing in his head, all of them looking like cracked porcelain dolls dressed in alien armor, but it was Shiro who spoke up to the silence, Keith only crossing his arms tighter across his chest trying not to look so freaked out by the 'new' requirement of a paladin placed in front of them- "So you'll be turning us into glass?"
"Well, I don't know what this glass of yours is, but if it's stronger than gartubulix steel and withstands the weight of nearly decphelion transufics than you're on the right track!" Coran's overly peppy voice replied.
"Does- does it hurt?"
"Yes, you paladins are in for a quite deal of pain-" the advisor's voice dropped a few octaves.
Hunk squeaked at that.
"-But, this is quite a treat! This was considered at great honor back in my day. Only wealthy Alteans could afford to undergo such a process, and to think, all five paladins undergoing the procedure at once, it will be quite exhilarating, to say the least!" He looked about as excited about the impending doom as they felt uneasy.
"How does the procedure take place actually?"
"It's quite simple number five," Coran straightened, thumbing the collar of his shirt as he turned to the green paladin. "It consists of a high technological liquid that's injected just under the skin in various places-"
If Keith didn't know Hunk had a deathly fear of needles, he knew now.
"- the fluid will harden under a cooling process, spreading into one continuous plate. The hardened product is virtually unbreakable and will only act unless there is force applied to the body."
"That-" Shiro broke off with a frown, gathering his words, "that doesn't sound all that bad actually-"
"Ah, ah, ah, number one, it's the after-effects that cause the real conundrum. Since your frail human bodies can't stand the extreme low temperatures required to complete the process quickly I'm afraid you five will have to undergo the hardening without the aid of the pods. I believe you're all in for a very painful night."
All air was sucked out of the room at that. Lance's near-silent "What?" squeaking around the room, and Keith could catch wide blue eyes out the corner of his vision while Keith's head was going about a million miles a minute.
This- this was gonna be fun.
And that was putting it lightly.
...
Fast forward a few hours and Keith was stumbling out of a pod, head still fuzzy with antiseptic skin tingling uncomfortably. He bit back a sneer as Coran's voice, once again, echoed through the room. Something about "free to go" and "lay down" shot painfully loud in his ears, but he got the just of it, no longer finding the need to pay attention to the conversation, instead moving on to getting himself to focus enough on the castle infirmary to finally wake enough to move, willing his ears to stop ringing.
Thankfully he wasn't that much out of it to land face-first onto the floor, thank God because there was no one to catch him as he stumbled out, everyone else much in the same shape, stumbling out of the pods, and rubbing tired eyes that refused to focus on the room in front of them.
A light groan escaped his lips, pale fingers rubbing again at his eyes, and he jumped as a gentle hand landed on his back, his skin lighting up with a tingling numbness that sent his skin on fire and it hurt.
Keith clenched his teeth when the hand backed off after him stiffening nearly stone still at the touch, Hunk's quickly mutter apology only making his ears ring more and dammit, how can the guy still function?
"I- I feel like, like pudding," Lance groaned, voicing Keith's own emotions at that point, the Cuban finally giving up with his fingers and rubbing his arm across his face instead, eyes half-lidded, and despite being in suspended cryo for who knows how long his hair was a disheveled mess.
He probably looked a bit like that himself, and Keith selfconsciously ran another hand through his own hair, tugging at the strands to get himself a little more awake to his surroundings.
He caught Shiro out the corner of his eye, rubbing his head and wincing as his own fingers made contact with his skin, and, after a slight pause, Keith was quick to pick his way across the room to him, his joints feeling funny- almost stiff- but still movable as he nearly tripped over his own feet. "Hey. You okay?"
He watched the man look up, eyes distant before finally focusing on his face, giving a long slow blink in response to the question, hand carefully going up to scratch the back of his neck, "Uh, yeah. Yeah, I- I'm fine, just feel a little sore is all."
Keith looked between the pod and Shiro with a frown, watching brown eyes flirt back and forth before he gave a subtle hum and pretended to turn away, watching carefully as the man continued to look between two very close things.
The idle pod and the open room.
The very small pod and the very open room.
Oh.
Oh.
Right.
Shit.
Keith crossed his arms with a frown, turning back to him, almost feeling guilty for not noticing earlier, catching Shiro's tense shoulders as he finally turned away from the thing, brown eyes downcast, the teal glow of the pods behind them casting wonky shadows on the floor.
Coran continued to blabber about something behind them, probably urging them to go find a comfortable spot before the whole- he shivered- body bonding thing was supposed to happen.
In his honest opinion, it all still sounded pretty weird.
Why were they doing this again?
They had armor, this shouldn't even be happening, it wasn't like any of them hadn't gotten hurt before. Heck, Lance already had a pretty close encounter with death, and he was still annoying as ever.
Weren't they supposed to feel different?
Other than just the weird tingling?
"Do you feel any different?" Keith voiced the question, hoping he'd be able to pull Shiro back out of his head for just a little while.
He needed at least that much after all he's been through.
The black paladin's gaze flitted back up from the floor fixing on his face, and Keith's nerves rolled at the sight of how- how out of it he looked. What exactly had those aliens done to him?
Keith couldn't remember a point before Kerberos that Shiro had ever been afraid of small spaces.
It made him wonder what else was new, but, at the same time, a much larger part of him was just as hesitant to find out.
But, nonetheless, he couldn't deny the slight feeling of relief that washed over him as the seconds passed and the man seemed to come more and more back into himself.
That was good at least.
It was a start.
"To be honest I don't feel any different," Shiro's hand went up again to scratch behind his neck with a shy look on his face.
Keith nodded, crossing his arms, a quick look around told him the rest of the paladins had already cleared out, Lance's consistent moaning gone for now (he was glad for that, the guy was annoying as heck). "Yeah, and why did they have to put us in pods for? Those things are so small. You'd think they would've just set up an IV or something instead."
Tense shoulders loosened at the mention of the pods, and understanding took the place of cloudiness in the man's eyes as Shiro looked to the floor, the slightest touch of a smile on his lips as he realized what Keith was succeeding in doing, "Yeah, I guess you're right. Thanks."
He quirked a brow at that, a soft smile bubbling up as he moved to the door, the fancy castle doors opening as they made their way out into the hall.
"You're welcome, old-timer."
...
If only he'd known what came next.
After they'd parted Keith had spent the following night curled in a cold sweat on the floor, the comfort of the matress making his skin itch as every cell in his body seemed to light itself on fire, his bones twisting and lurching under his skin without his consent, and he was pretty sure he'd screamed into his pillow a few times as the night progressed, unable to escape the "minor discomfort" Coran had claimed would go away in the next few hours.
Bull freaking shit.
Instead, it'd lasted the whole night and then some.
He couldn't sleep a wink even if he'd wanted to.
But, then again, he'd be willing to go back to that pain than have to deal with what he had to endure now.
He- he knew this mission had been a mistake.
Why did they think it was a good idea to split up again?
His chest throbbed painfully in response.
He winced.
Though, to be completely honest, Keith knew if it hadn't been for that 'procedure' he'd suffered through what felt like months ago, he knew for a fact he'd already be dead.
Of course, he'd never actually been shot in the chest before (who has and actually lived long enough to describe it, much less live through it-), but he'd seen enough battles and movies to know one does not simply slump to the floor, very much aware to his surroundings merely seconds after getting a blaster shot to the heart.
But he'd be lying if he said it didn't hurt.
Oh, and, of course, Coran had failed to mention that his skin wouldn't be the only thing hardened into literal crystal.
Yeah, that's right.
Crystal.
He could see it right in front of him, craning his neck further down to better catch sight of the hole in his chest, lined by dull red shards only strengthened the fact that he no longer had any organs.
How the fuck was he still living?
Was it magic?
Witchcraft?
Both?
Probably.
Little red pieces of what he could only assume were crystal surrounded his prone body, some sparkling in the purple lights of the hall he lay in, a few shards digging into his face as he laid there, trying to comprehend that one, he'd been shot in the chest and was still alive. And two, that he apparently was no longer human, but a walking humanoid figure made entirely of some weird, rock-like substance that was supposed to be stronger than any kind of substance on Earth.
What the actual fuck?
What was happening to him?
Er- what happened to him?
Because didn't this technically all happen when Coran and Allura insisted they all go in pods for that weird stuff to be injected into his skin?
Wasn't all of this their fault?
He was never going to take Coran and Allura's advice on what he should do ever again.
Even if it did technically just save his life.
"Keith? Keith are you still there?"
He coughed- fuck, he was coughing, but he didn't actually have any lungs, or esophagus, or spine, what the fuck- "Y-yeah, I'm here."
He caught the breath of relief on the other end of the comm, the sound of footsteps thudding in the background as Shiro presumably ran to his location, "That's good, Keith, just- just keep talking to me until I get there, I'm only a few minutes away, I'm coming."
"'Kay."
There was a pause then, the sound of screeching metal and the low thrum of Shiro's Galra hand igniting before the black paladin spoke up again a few seconds later, sounding a little more breathless than before, voice still pitched with worry-
Keith failed to mention that he'd been shot in the chest (he said he'd been shot though, that was close enough to the truth, right?), or that he was somehow still alive and he apparently was no longer actually human-
"How are you feeling?"
None of them were human anymore actually-
Stepping back to the question, he paused, thinking about it. His head hurt, his chest obviously hurt worse, but neither of it was some sparking, throbbing, undeniable pain that had him writhing in agony now (though it sure felt like it a few minutes ago right after he'd been shot in the damn chest-), and to be pretty honest- "Fine actually."
Another pause as Shiro probably thought about his bizarre answer before whispering to himself more than Keith- "My god, you're going into shock-"
"I don't think it's that, Shiro-"
"Just hang on, Keith, I'm almost there, I promise."
Despite the clear danger of their situation, Keith rolled his eyes, attention being drawn back to the tiny shards in front of them as echoing, but familiar footsteps grew closer, and Keith attempted to prop himself further up off the ground as Shiro made his way to his location.
He- he just felt numb for the moment.
He was probably in shock, if he was being honest with himself, actually taking the time to realize that he was realizing this little impossible situation in full depth. So, yeah, he guessed he was in shock, just not for the reason Shiro thought.
He'd been shot in the damn chest.
And for some odd reason, he felt fine? Okay? About ready to walk into the castle with a hole in his damn chest demanding just what the fuck those aliens did to him.
Coran would have one hell of an explanation to do once they got back.
Keith was not about to let this slide.
Not in a million years.