Weeks passed, and the only thing Keith could say in their favor was that now Lance was avoiding Keith just as hard as he was avoiding Lance. Whether it was the tense, heavy silences of shared meals and training or their mutual efforts to arrange it so they never worked the stall together, their ironic cooperation on the efforts to not speak to or look at each other were running so smoothly they'd even mastered the art of not exchanging a single word in combat around one another well enough to avoid getting themselves killed. It was a little impressive, but… Mostly depressing.
In all the free time he now had thanks to avoiding Lance, Keith had mostly been talking to Pidge, it turns out. In a conversation that had started with Keith bursting into her room shouting, "But there are no tampons in space?!" (There indeed are not, it turns out, but she reported that kotex were not hard to jimmie together thank you for the concern) he had learned she'd been up to so far in the weeks they'd been on Elpis. She'd already admitted her personal strategy for digging up rumors was to wander down into Concordia's criminal underworld, a feat which she both decided on and accomplished when she'd stumbled across a gang of thieves trying to break into the back of a warehouse and graciously hacked the lock to get the door open for them. But what she revealed to Keith alone was that somewhere in the continued heists and break-ins she was participating in, she had started being responsible for orchestrating more and more of the plans, until before anyone knew it she had somehow been put in charge.
"We went from robbing store warehouses to breaking into databanks and now we're like, stealing big company secrets and selling them to each other and I was just trying to minimize the amount of like, illegalness and actual crime we were doing because how much harm could a little information be? But now we're dealing with like, actual real corporate espionage here and I'm starting to get concerned by how good I am at this!"
Keith had given the situation some careful consideration, before contributing, "...We did rob that guy for fun, didn't we?"
Pidge, not finding Keith's contribution reassuring, had buried her face in her tiny hands. "We're making so much money!"
The only half-helpful comment he'd had to offer was that at least she wasn't the only one proving to be better at being a criminal than a paladin.
It was a bonding moment. Keith would cherish it always.
Hunk on the other hand, had found his talents lie elsewhere. Much to... Really only his own surprise, Hunk had turned out to excel in the art of antiquing, because far away from just being the person making the most individual sales; he was single-handedly clearing out their inventory. He was just so fuckin' nice, not a single customer could bear to say no to him once he'd lured him into the shop.
So effectively was their friend at annihilating their stores of furniture, Allura had wound up having to go through the rooms of the castle again just to find more things they could sell. Their current stock was raided from a set of royal bedrooms she'd never intended to disturb, but they could hardly start selling off things they'd actually need like spare parts or medical equipment.
"And that's it, it's all in here," Allura announced with finality as she sashayed up to Inara's bridge with a checklist. "The complete set from the Royal Master Suite, all loaded up and ready for the store." She tossed herself elegantly into the unoccupied copilot's seat, and Keith figured her announcement he could begin Inara's takeoff. She looked back over her shoulder a little wistful as Keith carefully lifted the ship into a low hover, waiting for the bay doors to open for them. "Pitiful as it is to be selling off things from my parents' bedchamber, it's not like anyone was going in there anyway."
"No time for sentimentality in war," Keith agreed, taking the Firefly into speed. "Are we gonna sell off your old room after this?"
Allura looked at him as though the question were ridiculous. "We can't very well do that while I'm still sleeping there, can we?"
Which was a statement Keith found surprising himself. "You're seriously still sleeping in the same bed you did ten thousand years ago, when everything was still… before it was like this?"
From the look on her face, Allura was only just this moment realizing there might be something twisted about that. "I do suppose there are a lot of rooms in the castle with less… nostalgia attached to them."
"Right?" Keith offered reasonably. "Hell, you could take that Royal Master Suite, since it is yours."
At this idea, Allura straight-up grimaced. "That might be taking it a bit far. Taking my parents bedroom sounds… distasteful."
"The castle is generations old though, right? Doesn't that mean your father took it from his parents?" Once again, he apparently blindsided her with logic, as she sat in the copilots seat with her jaw hanging open like she had begun the start of an argument she couldn't finish. Keith nodded his head back towards the cargo bay behind them. "And it's not like you'd be sleeping in their bed, after all."
"That is true, but…" Allura hesitated.
Although he knew he probably didn't have much room to tell her anything about her life considering Keith didn't know what it was even like to have parents, but it felt like Allura wasn't quite understanding his actual point. "Allura. The entire castle belongs to you. You're literally the only person who can even make those wormhole things work."
Her eyebrows furrowed. " My castle..."
"You're the one who brought us together, guiding us as paladins, right?"
"I am," she agreed with a bit more confidence. "Even in the beginning when half of you were still trying to get out of it and flee home."
"Exactly! Because you don't take any bullshit from any of us, do you?" Keith continued, almost having dragged Allura into his pace.
"I certainly don't," she agreed, excitable and full of energy.
"You don't!" Keith agreed with equal enthusiasm. "You don't because it's your castle and you're the damned Queen!"
Allura's fist slammed down on the empty space next to her control panel. "I am the god-damned Queen!"
The sound of her hand slamming down against metal and the slight metal ring left echoing was enough to snap both of them back to reality, where they realized they had been shouting for literally no reason whatsoever. A bit awkwardly, Allua settled back into her seat. "Well. I still doubt I'll take the master bedroom, but I think it is time to move out of my old chambers." She smoothed out a nonexistent wrinkle from her coat. "Today might perhaps be a day for some new furniture shopping, after all."
The thought was sliding out of Keith's mouth before he could control it, and he was offering, "You could take Lance with you. He'd probably be amazing at it." And then immediately winced at his own words, only just remembering how desperately he did not want to think or talk about Lance right now.
Allura didn't notice, looking ahead out the window in front of them instead of at his face. "Oh that would be fun, he has such fascinating tastes."
Changing the subject away from his boyfriend as quickly as possible, Keith added, "And you'll definitely be able get something nice, with how much money Hunk has been making for us."
"Yes," Allura agreed thoughtfully. "No need to get too extravagant of course, it never hurts to be frugal in trying times."
See, and this was why Keith liked Allura. Someone needed to be sensible around here, and lord knows Keith hasn't been shining in that department lately.
There was, for a few moments, a comfortable silence between them as they watched Elpis fly past their window. It was not to last, however, as Allura eventually offered a hesitant, "You know…" into the empty bridge.
Keith glanced over at her, only to notice her biting her lip worriedly. "Not to involve myself in matters I have no part of," she started. Fuck, this was bound to come eventually. The only reason everyone had to have left this him-and-Lance situation alone for so long is because they haven't needed to form Voltron in that time, but if they ever got around to finishing or abandoning this mission… "And you and Lance have proven you're perfectly capable of handling what's between you with no interference from anyone else, so I don't intend to pry or pretend to offer advice, but…"
Not quite able to smother the sigh escaping from his nose, Keith prompted, "But?"
She drew in a breath, still looking straight ahead out the window. "Just, as far as whatever is causing the rift between you two right now, I wanted to say," she turned to look him straight in the eye. "I don't think you should worry about it."
He blinked. That was... not what he'd expected to hear. "Don't worry about it?"
She nodded fiercely. "Yes. Don't waste your energy being concerned by it. I'm completely certain that once we make contact with the Queen and get back to space and working on an attack strategy against Zarkon, everything will work itself out."
"Seriously?" For some reason he'd expected Allura to disapprove of their relationship before anything. Not that she seemed cold or anything - just… The two of them fought enough without the huge emotional investment in each other. Their relationship was basically a shoebox of flint pieces bouncing around the back of a truck bed: fairly harmless and potentially useful, but inevitably bound to spontaneously set itself on fire. As far as the perspective of someone with the fate of Voltron and an entire universe on her hands, it seemed more like a bad idea than a good one. Or at least that's what he'd assumed?
"Oh, completely," she assured with more confidence. "It's a stressful time for everyone right now, and I know you especially must be feeling like a caged skag with nothing to do like this. I'm sure once you get back into Red and let some of that blood boil off in a good fight, you'll feel so much better you won't even remember why you were mad at each other!"
"That…" Did not sound completely unlikely, to be honest. She sure had him pegged, huh? "You really think so?" he asked, embarrassed by the hopeful lilt in his voice.
Allura grinned. "Absolutely. I have complete faith you two will be just fine. Give it a bit of time, is all."
There was a tight feeling in his chest, and he felt his grip around Inara's steering wheel go white. Would they really, though? "What makes you so sure? You don't even know what went wrong between us."
She shrugged easily, looking concerned by his doubt. "You two have been good for each other. There's a bit of disparity in how seriously either of you take things, but together you balance out one another's extremes." There was a bit of laughter in her voice when she continued, "And for one thing, your involvement with him made something I once thought impossible a reality - I actually made friends with Lance!"
At that even Keith had to chuckle. "Yeah, he was pretty… Relentless about hitting on you, wasn't he?"
She rolled her eyes so hard her whole body went with her, slumping back into her seat. "I couldn't even stand having him around in meetings, I'd never have imagined we'd be having actual conversations!"
Keith snorted, still smiling. "Honestly for those first few days out in space, neither did I. It's like he goes out of his way to make himself seem as unlikeable and douchey as possible, I'll never understand it." Hey wait, there was something about that sentence that seemed…
Allura was already speaking again. "You'll never imagine how shocked I was the first time we ever spoke an entire exchange without him making some awful innuendo at me. I was so sure it was still coming I just kept prodding him and dragging out the conversation, just to see if he was really capable of a complete hundred ticks without being annoying."
"You don't know how surprised I was when our first date didn't end in a fist fight," Keith admitted, earning laugh from Allura. They had still argued here and there, but there hadn't been any real tension in them. Maybe because instead of working against each other they had been trying to cooperate; their arguments during missions were never tense or truly angry, either. Also one of the arguments had been about whether Han Solo could beat Captain Kirk in a fight and there was literally no way to take THAT seriously. Like, really - Kirk ? Yeah right. The Enterprise was an exploration vessel full of freakin' scientists , how many times had they had to ditch planet because they'd gotten into a bar fight with a crew full of bounty hunters? Significantly less, that's how many.
There was a break in conversation, well-timed since Keith had just arrived at the barrier to Concordia to get their passports checked. It was still another half hour flight at least to get their ship parked close enough to the shop to unload, and for the first minute after they'd resumed their flight neither of them said anything.
"Well, and," she started up again, laughter coloring her voice. "It's a bit of a silly superstition, nothing to take too seriously…" Keith looked back at her in interest, not sure what a superstition would have to do with anything when the last thing they'd been talking about was Lance. "But there have been quite a few generations of paladins, as you know, and some patterns here and there were noticed. And they say that, ah, when it comes to romantic entanglements, the Red and Blue paladins are historically quite compatible."
He wasn't sure why it was this of all things that made him flush, but the sudden embarrassment rapidly warmed his face. "I- They - That's a thing?!"
"That's not even the only 'thing,'" she grinned. "They also say, for instance, that Red and Green romances tend to be very short-lived.
Keith snorted. "I don't know why, but thats hilarious." So much for that sort of information not getting passed down, huh? Guess it all depends on who you asked. History is in the eye of the beholder, they say.
Allura seemed to genuinely think everything would work out for the best, didn't she? Keith just needed to cool his head, he was an inferno of stress and pent-up aggression right now. It wasn't even safe to interact with Lance when Keith was this desperate to pick a fight with anyone.
Keith needed to get out of this rut Elpis had stuck him into. Needed to make something happen, prove that they hadn't been here for weeks already for no reason and no gain. Keith needed to strike out, be aggressive and proactive. That was his nature, wasn't it? He'd been holding himself back for nearly a month, he needed to lash out and take action .
He could only think of one possible lead, one idea to get him any closer to anything.
He needed to find out what the fuck Veret was up to.
"So…" Keith eventually broke the silence with a smirk. "You're the 'God-damned Queen' are you? I thought Altean only had one swear word."
Allura flushed with embarrassment herself. "Well you are the one that started that," she smiled. "And, I must admit, I have grown a bit taken with the sheer amount of variety Earth curse words have. And not to mention versatility! Why the word 'Fuck' alone took me a full month to comprehend, so plentiful its uses."
It might have been the sound of the word "Fuck" falling from their princess's regal tongue, but Keith laughed so hard he nearly crashed their spaceship into an overpass.
--
Concordia worked in Keith's favor, because over the next few days Keith learned his way about the city well enough that he was confident he could track someone moving through without being noticed.
Even if, for example, this person happened to have a second set of eyes increasing their field of vision. Once he was confident in his ability to maneuver his way through the city as he pleased, it wasn't hard to start figuring out Veret's routine.
Veret had a set series of shops he seemed to be assigned to, and and spent a large portion of his day wandering around from booth to booth checking on them and, much to Keith's surprise, actually providing legitimate help for some of his charges. But then it wouldn't have made much sense for Veret to be actively bad at his job, and since his actual job seemed to be something akin to Human Resources being helpful was kind of unavoidable.
It was after Veret was finished with his real work that Keith had more trouble following him. The first day Keith had tailed him he'd lost Veret at the MGE Headquarters building, giving up too soon on the hopes that he'd see the alien remerge from the building. The next two days after that Keith stayed the several hours Veret had been inside, only to lose him in the cramped and crowded upper tiers of the city soon after. By the fourth day Keith managed to keep him in sights, tracking Veret all the way from blue sunrise until he reached the apartment building Keith soon realized he lived, by which time Keith had to start heading back because he'd skipped dinner again and needed to get at least a little bit of food and sleep into his system to be able to try again tomorrow.
By the end of the week, Keith thought he might finally have something. Veret's routine was mostly randomized, seeming to keep the time schedule of a man who couldn't read clocks. But there were a few constants in his mess of variables, like the obvious fact that the red daylight hours were reserved for his actual job.
Another constant Keith had noticed was that after work hours, all of Veret's business was always up high in the lower-class tiers of Concordia. There was in this pattern only one exception - every other night the last stop before he went back to his apartment was on the very ground level, a building dug straight into the dirt of Elpis. It wasn't even a large or particularly noticeable building, either - practically carved into the back of an alley, Keith had the feeling that wherever the only door in really led it was probably straight underground into a basement.
It was here, Keith knew. Whatever there was to find, whatever happened from here, daring to enter that single rust-orange door was what was going to start it.
One more day of planning, and Keith was ready to act. Veret always left MGE HQ after no less than about three hours, and was the one place he could be relied on to be at the same time every day. This left Keith a window, a set time before he'd need to be even in Concordia at all, and Keith gratefully used it to to make sure he was well-rested enough for whatever was going to happen tonight.
Before he'd even reached Concordia, Keith started to feel… Alive again. Heart beating strong and loud from anxious excitement, the fear of getting caught and really being killed set Keith's blood boiling in his veins. There was nothing like this feeling - no training could come close, fighting the Gladiators he could always call off at any moment was no substitute for the adrenaline one got from a life-or-death situation.
Keith felt fucking fantastic .
Even the act of waiting on a roof, watching the MGE building with the magnifying scope glasses he'd swiped off of Lance because wearing them was less suspicious than wandering around town with binoculars strapped to his face like a jackass, was no longer tortuously boring. Instead Keith was ready, body and mind high-strung with anticipation, waiting (a bit ironically) like a sniper with his finger on the trigger.
Unfortunately, it took an hour for anything to happen. Even more unfortunately, that hour of inactivity gave Keith time to think . And thanks to Allura what he ended up thinking about, once again , was Lance.
The fact that no one had said anything about their obvious tension meant that the others, like Allura, figured everything would eventually work itself out between them. But no one knew what had actually happened, so could they really make that kind of judgement? That night that he and Lance stopped talking to each other… What had happened that night… Keith had never realized anything between them was capable of being so ugly and so twisted.
It was hard to clear his head for a while after that. Dark thoughts lingered in his brain as he kept vigil, filling him with perhaps more doubt than ever.
Toxic relationships, and cutting people out of your life. A fish and a bird, unable to find middle ground. The sharp intensity of remembered rage, and the desire to lash out and hurt .
And, the loneliness. The last few days had been so lonely .
Finally, after a long impatient hour of waiting, Veret was emerging from his workplace and Keith's world snapped out of his mind and narrowed back down to the excited tension of a mission in progress.
He couldn't say how much time passed after that. Keith might have been following him across Concordia for hours and would never know, too focused on the chase to let the petty troubles of the outside world distract him from his quarry. Following silently from the safety of higher ground, staying out of Veret's expansive line of sight took up pretty much all the energy Keith had to expend on anything. He was anxious, and nervous, and wanted to run ahead to the building where he knew Veret would eventually be headed but the risk of Veret wandering over from an unanticipated direction and spotting Keith was too high to be worth it. He had already judged Veret's blind spot was directly behind him, and it wasn't safe to stay too far out to either side or risk being caught in peripherals.
It was made both more and less challenging by the ubiquitous sea of alien life populating the city so insistently, providing extra cover to keep Keith out of sight with the double-sided edge of ramping up Keith's social paranoia and making it hard to focus on his one target among the many possible threats. But Keith also already knew their final destination, even if not when or how they'd get there tonight, and that made it easier to keep from losing his way.
When Veret reached Elpis's floor Keith had to abandon his higher ground to follow, no skyways or tiered roof conveniently set up near the low block for Keith to take up post in. So closer and closer to Veret he was forced to stray, the danger from the increased proximity making Keith's every individual footstep ring like thunder in his own ears, drowning out the persistent excitement of his heartbeat.
Down the slip of an alleyway they went until at last Keith was watching from afar as Veret unlocked the bronze door, sliding inside and out of Keith's sight.
And this was the problem. The door closed far too quickly behind Veret for Keith to have any chance of following behind him, and locked again as soon as it was shut. But Keith had waited until Veret had arrived instead of trying to break in on his own for a reason - it was only right now that Keith knew there was no one else expected to come by. And so, it was now that he had the chance to try to get that fucking door open. Keith had faith he could do it. He'd broken into a dozen buildings of all levels of security by this stage in his life.
Waiting a few minutes to make sure that whoever was inside was far enough away from the door to not hear him, Keith slowly approached. The lock, like most every lock and door in all of space, was electronic. Which was a shame because padlocks Keith already knew how to break into in like two minutes, but this bullshit was more Pidge's territory. Keith's first instinct was to just stab the lock pad and see what happened, but apparently Shiro had managed to be a good influence on him after all because he wisely gathered up the patience required to examine it instead.
It looked more like a keypad that any kind of bio-scanner, which boded well for Keith. Even this much he'd broken into before back on Earth, although not without being greeted by an alarm upon success. Keith would just have to make sure he had more… finesse this time.
He didn't know what the buttons on this thing said, but he wasn't sure he needed to find out. Maybe if he pried off this panel with his knife to get to the wiring underneath… The edge of his knife slipped easily between the plastic cover and the wall. Keith was just about to use the leverage to pop it off, but he stopped with his blade still halfway in the wall, tensing at the feeling that he might perhaps no longer be alone.
"Well, I'll be an elchor's ass," a deep voice said from just behind Keith's back, and his blood froze solid in his veins. "Someone really DID show up. I guess Everett was actually telling the truth, after all." Slowly, degree by tiny degree, Keith turned his head, dread swelling with every long millisecond that passed as his eyes finally crawled up to land on the mildly intrigued violet face of a Galra soldier. And then, his eyes craned the last bit down required to see the barrel of the laser rifle pointed directly at Keith's skull.
There was no way to pry his weapon from the wall it was jammed in faster than the Galra could pull his trigger. Keith slowly raised his hands in the air in a nonthreatening surrender, eyes trained on the knife he was going to need to figure out how to get back in his hands.
There was no time. The soldier looked pleased at his lack of resistance, and prodded the back of Keith's head lightly with his gun. "Good," he crowed, deep voice grating into Keith's ears. "Let's step inside, you and I."
--
Upon his unceremonious march inside, Keith was faced with the realization he'd put himself into pretty much the worst situation possible. The room beyond the door was tiny, looking like some sort of staff break room from a shitty warehouse. It was barely larger than his entire shack, and the major portion of space was taken up by small tables covered in unidentified bottles and dirty plates from old meals, with four plain chairs scattered around the small space. Chairs which were of course, occupied by two more Galra soldiers and naturally even Veret fucking Everett.
He grinned at Keith, giving him a friendly wave hello. Keith's entire body shook with the effort of restraining himself from trying to stab his stupid fucksquid face.
"Well if it isn't my lovely friend Mars, how nice to see you! Although to be perfectly honest I was actually expecting you a lot sooner. " Veret smirked, gesturing towards the two men sitting with him. "You've made these poor gentlemen wait with me nearly a full week! I mean, they were starting to think I was just leading them on when I said I could get them a Paladin of Voltron. Thanks for showing up, you really saved my reputation there!"
The space was too small with too many enemies, Keith had no room to maneuver and the only door was behind him. There was, at this moment, nothing he could do without being killed. Keith didn't know if he hated himself or Veret more, but couldn't stop himself from gritting out the question, "How?"
Veret grinned, and the other two soldiers looked like they were trying to decide if they were gonna need to get their asses out of their chairs for this while he gleefully prompted, "How…?"
Keith was shaking with the white-hot curl of suppressed rage, and the Galra behind him adjusted the aim of his gun to press in between his shoulder blades. "How did you know," he bit out. "That I wasn't who I said I was?"
All four of Veret's eyes turned to lock on Keith's. "You gave me back my wallet," he said simply.
Keith blinked, actually a bit startled. Of all the things to have given him away, it was that ? "Seriously?"
"Didn't even take anything out of it, I checked." Veret turned down the douchiness in his facial expression so his smile was more matter-of-fact. "Which meant you were either actually flirting with me, which seemed pretty unlikely considering I can feel your disdain for me roiling off of you like a miasma," he wiggled his fingers in a gesture that was apparently supposed to be pointing at Keith's general aura. "Or, that you were a lousy thief. Which you couldn't be to have gotten it off of me in the first place!"
Keith's eyes squeezed shut so tight the angry draw of his eyebrows was actually painful, spots floating behind his vision. Himself. He was definitely more angry with himself . All that fucking work only to be done in by some sort of… natural impulse to not be a terrible person, son of a bitch !
Veret continued to be the worst person ever to exist. In an obviously consoling tone, he added, "But, you were convincing enough that I was really only about eighty percent certain you were a paladin. That other 20% was high enough for me to have to set up this little… introduction, instead of sending them right to you guys at your stall!" a pause. "Well, no. I couldn't have done that anyway, that's bad business. The MGE takes first priority, after all."
When Keith reopened his eyes it was to find the Galra looking restless. One of them, with thick eyebrows and too-round glasses that made him look a bit like some kind of bizarre alien Groucho Marx, stood up out of his seat. "So what are we supposed to do with him, now? It'll take a mile of red tape before we can get any word of this to Zarkon."
"Well first you'll need to find the other one," Veret offered easily, gesturing towards the door. "There's no way this guy's alone, there's got to be at least one more paladin floating around as his backup."
There was conviction in this statement, enough for Keith to be taken aback. Except that he was alone. He probably shouldn't be, because a sudden heavy weight in his stomach informed him he could have maybe at least tried to tell someone about his suspicions about Veret and that maybe this whole thing would have gone ten times smoother if he'd just fucking thought to bring Pidge along. She'd have even believed him, probably! Was Keith capable of fucking handling nothing in his entire life right now?!
The Galra all exchanged glances with one another. Groucho nodded his head towards the door, making eye contact with the guy still standing behind Keith. And, fortune finally twisted just the tiniest bit in Keith's favor, and it was Chico with the gun to his back who stepped outside to check to see if there was another person around.
A person whom they would not find. And the other two Galra were not currently holding weapons in their hands, even if they could draw them in a moment. That moment was all Keith needed. Two barely on-guard Galra and a fucksquid spy who didn't like to get his own hands dirty? Keith had taken down bigger threats before he even got to space.
The door swung closed after the Galra, and Keith was moving by the time the lock closed with the sound of tiny metallic click.
He dove forward, ducking low enough to reach the underside of the largest table and kick it over, flipping the table sideways and bowling the heavy wood into the lap of the still-sitting Harpo Marx, successfully trapping him between it and his chair long enough for Keith to draw his bayard.
The solid weight of his sword materialized at the end of his wrist as comfortable as an extension of his own arm, and Keith felt like his life had just snapped out of a long dream and back into the sharp focus of reality. Groucho had just enough time to draw his own sword to meet Keith's attack, barely blocking before Keith was pulling back to spin around, sliding easily behind the Galra to deliver a stab that only cracked his armor and slid off it to cut a bit at the underside of his arm. Keith was already moving out of the way by the time the Galra turned around to slice at the air where Keith had just been, quickly taking a detour to stomp on the back poor Harpo's head, who had only just barely managed to get to his knees by then and immediately broke his nose on the floor.
The shining blade of Groucho's purple sword clanged against Keith's bayard, vibrations ringing from the point of contact all the way down Keith's spine. He was big but not very fast, the type Keith was best at dealing with, and Keith chanced a quick glance to the side to make sure Veret was still watching idly and not planning some kind of sneak attack. When the Galra drew his sword back to try for another strike Keith didn't bother to meet it, ducking low again to slide past his legs, extending the blade of his sword out as he past him to slice at the gaps in armor between his thighs and calves at the vulnerable side of Groucho's knee.
When Groucho went down, Keith didn't get out of the way fast enough to avoid the Galra's fist swiping at his face now that they were nearly at the same level. The blow hit Keith's cheek hard, sending him rolling across the floor to slam bodily into a chair, and the pain rang in his eyes and made his eyes swim for so long that by the time he recovered both of the Galra soldiers had, too.
Keith grabbed the leg of the chair he'd just landed on and flung it out, not caring if it hit either target as long as it distracted them enough for him to roll back into a standing position. Luck had his side again when Groucho used his sword to cut it in half before it hit his face, because one of the severed legs flew to hit his friend in the already-broken nose and he dropped his freshly drawn polearm to clutch at his face as he yowled in pain.
The yell startled the bespectacled Galra into glancing at Harpo, and Keith grasped that opening to launch another attack, trying to take down Harpo and keep him that way with a broad swing of his bayard towards his head. The Galra with the polearm wasn't fast enough to do anything but Groucho tried to intercept, kicking at Keith and throwing off his balance enough that the angle he attacked from changed and it was the flat of his blade that smacked against Harpo's temple instead of the slice to his throat he'd been aiming for.
Either way he went down, and Keith flipped around just fast enough to see the remaining Galra's sword as it came swooping towards his torso. There was no way to get out of its path up down or sideways, so Keith brought up his bayard in a block with one hand, palming his left hand to against the flat of his blade to help brace for the impact.
The strike was too powerful, bowling Keith over and sending him rolling across the floor again. He pushed himself onto his elbows to find Groucho already coming at him, but his injured foot wasn't enough to keep him upright during his attack and he ended up pinning Keith to the ground instead of the sword attack he had been trying for. He still had the upper hand, and the straining and creaking noise to his left went unnoticed in favor of the Galra on top of him and fitting his sword between them to aim at Keith's neck -
The Galra was suddenly gone, he and Keith looking at each other with equally surprised eyes as Groucho was yanked backwards about two feet away from Keith. He looked up to see Veret holding the Galra by the shoulder, and before the words "What the fuck?" could even come close to exiting his mouth an uncomfortable cracking noise brought everyone's attention to the door perfectly occupying the space on the left in between Keith and Groucho.
"Yeah, that lock's probably already broken," Veret observed just as the door burst open, flying on its rusty hinges to bang against the wall as its lock failed it as promised, and two figured came tumbling into the room and drowning out the second half of Veret's sentence. Chico the Galra raised himself up onto his elbows, and underneath him was the one person Keith probably should have expected but really, truly had not.
"Lance?!" Keith balked, scrambling to his feet.
Lance didn't look at Keith in favor of the Galra on top of him, wiggling out just enough leeway for himself underneath the heavy body pinning him to the floor to pull back a wind for a punch. The jab was aimed directly at Chico's shoulder, or more precisely at a bulletwound already inflicted in that area. The punch landed with the sickening squelch of blood splattering on the floor, the Galra clutching at his injured shoulder with one hand and leaving Lance enough room to shove him off and stumble the three paces away to where Keith was, barely grabbing his bayard on the way upright.
"FUCK!" Keith was still staring at Lance in his surprise, watching as the other paladin scanned the small room with a panicked, twitchy expression, eyes darting quickly in between the three Galra soldiers in varying states of battle readiness and Veret. "Are you kidding me, two more?! God damn it, Keith, this is exactly what I fucking knew would happen!"
That snapped Keith out of his dumbfounded shock back into the room. "You kn -" he clicked his tongue, back to watching Groucho as he and Chico apparently did about the same thing Keith and Lance were doing by taking stock of the situation now that the odds were about evened. "What are you doing here, Lance? Did you follow me?"
"God damn right I followed you!" Lance shouted, locking eyes with Chico as they both unconsciously aimed their rifles at one another. "You think i don't know how you think by now?! The minute I heard you were getting involved with this piss stain," he gestured his free not-on-the-trigger hand grandly towards Veret standing against the wall and grinning like this was the best show he'd ever been treated to, "I knew you were about to do something stupid and reckless and get into a fight! And LOOK!" An even grander sweep of his arm. "GALRA! Because you had to mess with probably the one person on this whole fucking planet that even CAN lead our enemies to us!"
Wait, was that why Lance had been mad at Keith that night? Keith shook his thoughts away from their mutual inability to communicate, instead snapping, "Yeah, but I was right !"
"So was I!" Lance shouted back.
Keith grit his teeth, the slowly dawning realization that he had just dragged Lance into this to potentially also be killed roiling chaotically in his gut, bringing up a newfound fear of this situation where before there had only been the manic rush of adrenaline. "How long have you been following me?"
Eyes still locked on the arguing pair of paladins, Groucho slowly bent down to grip the collar of the unconscious Harpo, dragging his body from the middle of the room to be dumped near a table where he wouldn't be stepped on. Lance was still locked gaze-for-guns with Chico, even as he ground out an annoyed, "Only tonight. I knew something was up when you actually stuck around the ship long enough to eat a full meal."
"So you just decided to follow me?!"
"Well what else was I supposed to do?!" Lance's voice cracked, bordering on desperate. "It wasn't like I could just fuck off and let you do something so stupid by yourself! If the only thing I can do when you decide to run off and get yourself killed is to follow and get killed with you, then that's what I'm gonna fucking do!"
The words shook Keith. Fuck. Fuck this was too much, he was feeling too many things right now. He was angry and terrified and elated and desperate, he couldn't even comprehend the idea that Lance, even in the middle of a fight so blizzardous cold they refused to even speak to each other, was still worried enough about Keith to dive side by side with him right into an obvious trap. And he very well COULD die, and it would be Keith's stupid fucking fault, and this was just new levels of overwhelmed completely unthought of before.
His hands shook around the grip on his sword, and Keith tightened his hold on it. Capable of only one form of communication right now in his mental turmoil, Keith screamed. Fuck this. Everything else could wait until they'd gotten their asses out of this stupid goddamned room. He tossed out a hand signal to Lance that Keith could only hope he caught, lunging at Groucho's already injured knee to try to sever the tendon the rest of the way. His signal was read perfectly because a shot of laser fire took out the Galra's other knee, distracting he and Chico both from Keith's swift dive and the tall Galra fell to the floor with an agonized yell in the form of an angry explicit curse, the slice going clean through deeply enough that he wouldn't be standing back up.
Groucho was short range and their attack had successfully grounded him, which meant as long as Keith stayed out of the reach of his sword he'd be no threat at all. Chico Lance could probably take care of on his own, he'd already gotten one good shot in to start and Keith was already too occupied by Veret muttering "Oh for fuck's sake," to give it much more concern.
Hearing that more exasperated than worried tone, Keith immediately realized he'd fallen for his bullshit again. Everything this guy did was calculated, and once he delivered Keith to the Galra he could have stepped out of this room and out of the line of fire at any moment.
Veret, he saw, was pulling out a blade of his own now. It looked small, only about the size of a standard bowie knife, but the look on Veret's face was the calm and determined expression of a man who knew exactly what he was doing, even if he didn't particularly feel like doing it.
This bastard wanted to be underestimated. Gave the impression of a useless douchebag so that people wouldn't want to look any further underneath to realize he is also a giant prick while he's at it. And if you got far enough to realize how manipulative he is, the last thing you'd expect is a close range fight out of him. Which meant it had to be his specialty, right? Keith may have passed emotional trainwreck to classify as an entire space station exploding, but he wasn't stupid and if there was one place his head was its clearest it was here .
Veret's blade started to vibrate in his hand, flickering into a purple light of white-hot plasma like a Galra blade. Just how far into it with them was this guy? Keith locked eyes with him, each with his weapon drawn and waiting to see where the other would strike from. Somewhere unseen even in this small space, either Chico or Lance fired their gun at the other.
Keith didn't look to see who it was, using the shot like the starter pistol of a race and launching himself towards the squid. Knowing a direct attack would be too risky Keith stepped to the right at the last moment, circling around to Veret's side to aim a swing of his bayard there. But Veret turned around even faster than Keith could get behind him, meeting the strike with his own blade easily and deflecting it to slide away into a harmless point towards the ground.
Fuck, it was worse than Keith had thought - fast and agile was the very same fighting style Keith himself had, without the benefit of apparent bonelessness Veret was working with. And the stupid second set of eyes on his temples, and the fact that Keith was still worried about Lance who was still audibly fighting the remaining Galra soldier in the background!
Keith shook off the impending panic. This was nothing. Lance was perfectly capable and Keith had attacked Zarkon him-fuckinself directly, this fucksquid was nothing more than a goddamned pebble in his shoe.
Veret was, for some reason, flipping his knife in the air and catching it by its handle in small randomly-timed flicks of his wrist. The shine of the blade's light spinning in the air for half a second every so often was almost blindingly distracting, so maybe the reason wasn't hard to figure out after all. But either way it left that second-or-so window where Veret had no blade in his hand, and Keith was eager to exploit it; he feinted to make it look like he was going in for another sideswipe, instead moving close enough to one of the fallen chairs to kick it at Veret's surprised torso.
His instinct was apparently to try to duck it by going low, but even the boneless fold of Veret's body wasn't swift enough to avoid the chair completely and it ended up nailing him in the head instead of his stomach, which was pretty fucking great as far Keith was concerned. He landed on his back with a surprised yelp, and Keith was not about to waste the opportunity, no matter what ominous thumps and cries form Lance's voice might be ringing behind his shoulder.
Knocking Veret off his admittedly wobbly feet turned out to be a bad move tactically. When Keith was close enough to aim another blow at him one of Veret's legs shot out like a snake, three tentacles wrapping firmly around Keith's ankle and immediately jerking upwards to bowl him onto his own ass, the leverage from Keith's fall even helping Veret to get back upright to stand over Keith on his free leg.
For a moment there was just that. Veret standing over Keith with both of them still armed, silver-blue eyes trained on Keith while the yellow ones flickered to the other side of the room where Lance and Chico were. All four of Veret's eyes narrowed, the ones on Keith even tearing away to look over at the spectacle and Keith couldn't even think to use that time to his advantage because it was more important he crane his head around to see what exactly had Veret so preoccupied.
Horror seized Keith at this sight. Lance was down on the ground, impossible to tell if he was awake or unconscious because of Groucho's large hand pinning his head to the floor by his face. Standing above them both was Chico, gun trained on Lance and Keith didn't have time to try to panic at the sight because Veret was moving, and Keith was whipping back around to see Veret pulling a previously unnoticed pistol from somewhere in his coat. "You can't kill them yet if you don't know where their fracking robot is, morons," he was hissing as he leveled his gun into an aim.
Keith's heart stopped dead in his chest, watching the barrel of the gun as it moved over him. Over him, past him, away from even the Galra to point towards the debris of one of the knocked over tables. In the instant before Veret pulled the trigger Keith watched the gills on his neck slam closed like shutters.
A crack of breaking glass was the only warning before a wispy chartreuse smoke was filling the room, Veret putting his gun away and stepping off of Keith casually like the paladin was no longer any concern of his. Chico and Groucho both blinked in confusion at the sudden gas quickly filling the room, before Groucho was cursing and hitting a button on the neck of his armor that brought up a the clear bubble of a helmet protecting him from breathing in the polluted air. "Gorram it, Everett, what do you think you're trying to pull here?!"
No one else in the room was as fortunate. While Veret who apparently did not need to breathe at all casually replied, "You're lucky I planned ahead to bring that. Dead pilots are easy to replace, you've got to be alive to give anyone information." Keith's vision began to swim and blacken at the edges. Despite his best efforts not to breathe any of the gas in he was losing the battle to remain conscious, a fight he watched Chico lose as he toppled to the floor next to Lance.
Keith could barely see through the blur his vision had become, blinking heavy sleep from his eyes as he tensed his right hand, trying to feel the grip of his bayard under it. He couldn't feel it - his limbs were going numb, fingers feeling like dead wood weighing down his entire arms. Even the panic was slipping from his mind, thoughts fuzzing out as his eyelids finally gave out and closed off the rest of the world from his vision.
It may have been the gas making him a little bit high, but the last thought that managed to crawl its way through Keith's mind before the lights went out was ' I should have just fucking brought Pidge. '