Keith slipped through the shadow like a blade slicing through the dark. He started slowly at first but picked up speed with each step, knowing he didn't have much time before he was spotted, gradually turning his careful lurk into a full on run by the time Veret's eyes widened in surprise. And when the Galra soldiers with him - oh fuck, there were five of them not two how had they both missed three entire people - noticed the sound of Keith rapid approach and armed themselves, Keith made his attack.
He dashed straight towards Veret with single minded intent, knife drawn tight and ready in his grip. As he'd suspected this is exactly what everyone had expected him to do, which is why Keith suddenly pivoted to the right mid-step just one foot away from their old friend Chico, swerving right towards him instead of passing by to Veret. No one reacted in time to stop Keith from jamming the sharp end of his blade into the Galra's neck, watching with collective surprised horror as Chico's body fell to the ground with a heavy thud. The other Galra were starting to scramble together by the time Keith kicked Chico's abandoned gun towards Lance with as much force as he could, so he didn't have time to watch the weapon's noisy slide across the cement floor. Instead he was turning back to see Groucho's sword swinging towards his face. He ducked low out of the way, falling one knee to the ground to dodge the strike only to find himself straight in the line of sights of a second gun. Before he could even think about countering it the quiet laser of a gunshot went off, and the Galra currently locked eyes with Keith exploded blood from the neck and fell to the ground with wide, vacant eyes still open and staring.
"What the ever-loving fuck ," Veret's voice was sharpened with uncontained rage as he spun on Keith. "YOU! You just can't fracking make anything easy, can you?!" His knife appeared from inside his sleeve, spinning naturally into his grip. "Not on yourself, and CERTAINLY not on me!"
There were a few more stray shots from around the corner where Lance was hiding, drawing two of the remaining Galra to chase after him. Keith, still half crouched in an attack stance, looked at the one Galra soldier who hadn't run with them. Groucho hesitated, looking like he had intentions of taking another swing at Keith, but when Lance fired off a few more shots behind them and one of the Galra who'd gone after him swore in a distinctively pained curse he rolled his eyes and ran off to leave Keith alone with Veret.
Veret had all four eyes trained distrustfully on Keith, knife ready and glowing in one hand. The other was doing something rather unexpected though, and Keith watched as one of the metal braces holding his legs together into a makeshift knee fell to the ground with a clatter.
Keith had no idea what the purpose of letting his tentacles fan out freely like Ursula the Sea Witch was, and didn't think he wanted to find out. He tried to utilize the distraction of Veret reaching down to his other leg to launch another attack, but he wasn't fast enough to make a difference.
His blade didn't even come close to making contact. Just as Keith got in range Veret was snapping two of his tentacles out, whipping mindlessly in Keith's direction as the rest of his body tipped forward, and Keith had to leap out of the way of being smacked in the torso. The second knee brace clattered to the ground and Keith watched the tips of Veret's fingers anchor themselves to the floor. The knife that had been in that hand was being spun into the air to be caught by a tentacle, and as Veret settled with one hand on the ground and six tentacles swinging menacingly in the air, Keith figured out pretty quickly why only two legs would have been so limiting to him.
Keith had a plastic knife and no shield. Veret had six tentacles, a knife and a gun.
He could work with this.
Veret's knife glowed for the sole purpose of drawing your eye to it. Keith kept this in mind and didn't let himself be distracted, and when two of Veret's legs whipped out into another strike he brought up his forearm to block them. The move caused the stray ring of the handcuffs he hadn't been able to remove to bang against his wrist, and Keith's eyes widened as opportunity struck him with inspiration.
The knife flipped from one tentacle to Veret's left hand, his weight shifting onto three of his legs to try to take a proper stab at Keith's shoulder. Keith let a smirk scrawl across his face as he flipped the ring of his empty left handcuff into the waiting fingers of his right hand, and the Galran blade bounced off the metal like Wonder Woman blocking a goddamned butter knife.
He stayed on the defensive after that, giving himself time to study Veret's bizarre upside-down fighting style before doing anything stupid. Without the makeshift knees slowing him down, every move Veret made was fluid and graceful with a boneless liquid-ease, but more than that they were fast . He seemed to try to keep one hand anchored on the ground at all times, but from what Keith could tell each one of his tentacles was capable of supporting his entire body weight for a couple of seconds. Anything other than a quick landing or redirect he tried to have at least three feet on the ground for, and so far he'd never used one of his tentacles to attack with the knife. Possibly the limbs weren't precise enough, but either way it meant Keith always knew when to expect an attack from it.
So basically, if Keith could take out four of his legs, he'd probably be fine, right? That couldn't be so hard.
When Keith felt comfortable enough to start his counterattack, he went in high. Veret kept his head low to the ground, so that meant he moved to block Keith's strike with a tentacle. Keith let the limb harshly smack away his knife hand in order to catch it with his left, wrapping his fingers around the thin leg and yanking it towards him. Before Veret could wrest it out of his grip Keith was already plunging his knife into it, his reward a shout of pain and four more tentacles all swiping directly at his face.
They slammed into him hard enough to bowl Keith off of his feet, ears ringing where a hard limb had beat into it. He didn't recover quickly enough to avoid Veret's retaliation, either, seeing the glowing purple of Veret's blade coming at him and raising his arms into a block only in time to suffer a heavy slice to his forearm running nearly to the elbow.
The pain was immediate but familiar, and Keith found it was easier to ignore than he'd dared to hope. Veret hadn't expected Keith not to be bothered either, and Keith was able to twist sideways out from underneath Veret and take out another tentacle with a well-aimed slice of his own.
Veret jerked away from Keith with an angry hiss, drawing his two heavily injured legs back in towards himself protectively. "Gorram fracking twunt ," Veret cursed vehemently, flipping the knife in his hand to change his grip.
The next gambit they both lost. They met in another attack, both trying to twist around to strike each others' backs at the same time. It ended it a bizarre 360° back-to-back maneuver, Veret spinning around to drive his knife into the joint of Keith's shoulder at much the same time Keith jammed his own blade into Veret's ribs. Or, where his rib cage would sit, provided he had one at all.
The pain from his own wound proved a bit too much to deal with. When he felt Veret's knife sinking into him Keith jerked bodily, and the red plastic of his serrated headband finally gave in and snapped in his hand.
Veret reeled back with another curse, half of Keith's knife still lodged in his torso and rage burning in his eyes. A low snarl hissed out from clenched shark teeth and he was moving again, a rapid slither towards Keith that only barely gave him enough time to flip the ring of his handcuff back into the hand of his already-sliced left arm.
The knife was deflected to slide easily into the metal loop, and when Keith felt the blade catch he didn't even think. Just jerked his arm back as hard as he could, yanking the knife out of Veret's hand and sending it flying off to clatter to the ground a few feet away.
Keith and Veret locked eyes instantly, bodies equally ready to dash out and try to grab the only weapon that either one of them had and only waiting to see if the other had already moved first.
That was when they heard it.
A noise so startlingly loud it seemed to shake the very ground underneath them. Or maybe it wasn't that sound itself that did that, but instead the actual explosion that had just torn its way out of the narrow hallway nearby. The hallway Lance had lured those three Galra soldiers into.
Keith and Veret both looked from the smoking tunnel back to each other again.
They broke out running at the same time.
Keith didn't even think about it; just knew he had to get to where Lance was and make sure he was okay. Didn't know or care why Veret was running too; maybe it was because he knew Keith would go and was chasing after him, or maybe it was to check on the Galra soldiers he had been with. Maybe it was just because he'd dropped his wallet down that hall and wanted to make sure it hadn't blown up, but either way he was right there a step behind Keith in the scramble.
Keith paid him no mind, imagination reeling with all of the horrible things that could be waiting at the end of that tunnel. Even when he arrived, swerving around the corner so fast he nearly twisted his own ankle, his panic didn't dissuade. The smoke was thick and acrid, stinging his nose and tearing his eyes enough to impede his frantic search, and the explosion itself had taken out all of the nearest light fixtures in this hall to throw the whole area into shadows on top of it all.
His eye was caught by movement on the ground, the body of a Galran soldier as it shifted up off the floor. Before keith had a chance to panic the soldier flopped bonelessly off to the side, pushed over by a familiar hand as Lance shoved away the half-burnt corpse he'd been using as a shield.
The instant Keith saw that Lance was alive he snapped back around. It was just that moment Veret caught up, having been slowed down behind Keith by his injured legs and lack of endangered boyfriend. Keith let his body move for him, the assurance that Lance was relatively well and un-killed enough for him to hurl a punch into Veret's surprised face just as it rounded the corner.
Veret stumbled backwards, clutching at his face. Keith happened to see it then, during that backwards jerk - the butt of Veret's forgotten pistol tucked into his belt, exposed by the open flutter of his coat.
Keith moved before Veret was even done righting himself, tackling his good left shoulder into his chest. He and Veret both went down, Veret's back hitting the ground with an oddly squishy thud, and Keith's fingers curled around the butt of the gun just as Veret whipped Keith off of him.
Keith landed on his own back, the cement painfully cracking the joints in his spine when he failed to brace for the impact. But the gun was in his hand, and okay yeah, it wasn't like he could actually aim the damned thing or anything, and Veret was too close to him to even give him time to try. But the important thing was this meant Veret didn't have it.
He watched as the robbery registered in Veret's eyes. Having no way to know whether or not Keith was capable of shooting anything, he went low. He rooted his hands to the ground and twisted his entire torso like a dreidel, all six legs whipping out to strike at Keith with the lightning-fast menace of a cat o' nine tails.
Keith leapt backwards out of the way, but Veret was using the momentum from his boneless torsion to already bounce up to face upright again. Not expecting this change of tactic Keith found himself caught off guard, missing it when the tentacle he'd earlier stabbed came whipping out to wrap around the barrel of the pistol Keith still had in his hand.
What happened after that was all too fast for Keith to really understand. Or maybe it wasn't the fact that it happened quickly, but the fact that the next few seconds were pretty much complete chaos. Yeah, the chaos was probably the problem, come to think of it.
He knew, to start, that he and Veret had been in the beginnings of some sort of struggle for the gun. But the first thing to go sideways was the wide-eyed look of sudden panic as one set of Veret's eyes watched something behind Keith's shoulder, and even stranger was when the squid barked out the shouted warning; "Behind you!"
Before Keith could even think to wonder if it was an actual threat or a weak trap, there was the sound of a gunshot. It was the muffled zap of a laser rifle, so at first Keith was confused that he had heard it so clearly. Even more strange considering it ought to have been drown out by how loudly Lance's hoarse, panicked voice was screaming his name.
He even managed to notice the wetness of his own blood before the actual pain kicked in. And then suddenly he was falling to the ground, legs collapsing as the white-hot sharpness of pain narrowed his entire focus to a single point in between two of his ribs, starting from just underneath his shoulder blade and running in a searing line straight through to the front of his body.
He foggily drew together enough logic through the pain to want to know what the fuck had just happened and pushed himself up onto one elbow. He craned his neck around to see, view more upside-down than right side up, following a pair of blurry feet up thick legs. And at the top was Groucho the Galra, looking cindered, worn, and ready to shoot Keith again with the very gun Keith had worked so hard to get to Lance.
Keith wouldn't have had time to react even if he'd been standing. Lance was already behind Groucho with a scavenged Galran polearm, and even from fifteen feet away Keith could see the tunnel-visioned focus of red hot rage burning a light behind his eyes.
Lance swung the staff as if it were a thug's baseball bat, a single angry arc slicing the air to crack against Groucho's temple. The noise of impact was louder than the gunshot that had downed Keith had been, bone shattering under steel so devastatingly that the soldier was probably dead before he even hit the ground.
Lance didn't stay on his feet long, the staff falling out of his hands as the momentum from his own swing carried him to the floor.
Keith was using his injured forearm to prop himself up, and fell in similar time. When he forced himself to sit back up once more the reality that greeted them was ominous and unpromising.
All five Galra soldiers had now been taken out. Keith had been shot and Lance had just exploded. And there stood Veret Everett, with only a plastic knife in his torso to slow him down and a gun held in the delicate grasp of one of his legs.
For a long few moments no one moved. Veret had the facial expression of a deer in headlights, eyes wide and frantically flickering from Keith and Lance to the rubble around them like he'd somehow find an explanation for what had just happened. And then his eyes landed on the gun still twisted into one tentacle.
His body shuddered for a half a second before he dropped the pistol like it was on fire, backing away from it like it was somehow still a threat even from the smoke-blackened floor.
"Nope," Veret said decisively, shaking his head. "I can't - I'm out. I'm not doing this anymore, I just quit."
This seemed… like an odd direction for this situation to turn. Veret had them both completely at his fucking mercy, and instead of killing or properly securing them he was… kind of freaking out?
Veret had buried his face in one hand, shielding his eyes like as long as he couldn't see a problem then no problem existed. "There is absolutely no way you're more useful than you are trouble. I can't - I don't even care anymore. Both of you should go die, and you should do it out of my sight because I am done ."
Keith turned to look back at Lance, who had sat up to watch this bizarre spectacle himself. Veret ignored them both to flop dramatically onto his face on the floor. "No one even has to know I gave up. Your stupid lover's stupid explosion took out the only camera in the hall. I'm just gonna say you guys took me hostage when all these other guys died." He lifted his head to shoot a glare at Keith. "Your stuff, by the way, is WAY BACK in the room right next to where we locked you guys. So good luck with that, jackass, because I don't even know how you got DOWN here from there."
Keith and Lance looked at each other. Then back to Veret, still prone on the ground. There was of course, the chance this was some kind of weird trick, but… Why? They were both already half-dead.
And besides, they really didn't have much choice, did they? The explosion had been too loud and they'd just killed too many men - this place would be swarming with more Galra soldiers in minutes.
Lance was slightly less injured at this point and got to his feet first, helping Keith up. He drew Keith's left arm up around his shoulder to help bear some of his weight, and slowly, they limped off into the maze of underground tunnels.
The adrenaline didn't take long to drain Keith's system after that, and with it came the onset of tremendous pain. He'd been stabbed, shot, and sliced today, and he was still losing blood even now. Even the dizziness from that loss wasn't enough to distract from the pain, and Keith wouldn't have been able to concentrate on the path in front of them even if they'd had any idea of where they were going.
His vision was starting to get blurry, Keith eventually noticed. He was looking at the ground as they walked - why was he looking at the ground? Was it on purpose? Did his head just fall or was it to watch the slow trail of blood crawling its way after him?
"We have to…" Keith started weakly, forced to begin again when his voice was too quiet to be audible on the first two words and cracked on the third. "We have to stop, Lance. We gotta find some way to tie off my bleeding."
Lance looked worriedly at Keith's wound, cursing lowly. "Shit," he agreed, eyes darting back to the path behind them to make sure it was empty as they collapsed against a wall. Keith unwrapped his arm from Lance's shoulder, falling against the cold cement of the wall with one hand pressed on his exit wound.
Keith watched Lance out of the corner of his eye, shrugging off the remains of his half-burnt trenchcoat. "What about you?" He suddenly thought to ask. "You just fought… And you were in an explosion, are you really okay?"
A slightly hysterical laugh tore from Lance's throat. "No, but at least I didn't get shot today," he answered in a high pitched voice. "Well," he swallowed. "Actually I did get shot? Like three times? But they all hit my coat and kind of fizzled off and I THINK it might be lazerproof."
Keith turned his head to gawk at Lance as he attempted to strip pieces of fabric off the tattered jacket remains. "What?"
"My coat," Lance clarified unnecessarily, managing to tear a chunk of sleeve off. "I think it's from a real space pirate. Allura said half of the costume trunks were actually just old prisoner effects, right?" He nodded to Keith to lean forward, and went to trying to wrap the coarse denim around Keith's shoulder to start with the stab wound. "Fucking laser proof," he said again, low and disbelieving like he was saying it only to himself.
Keith immediately thought back to the first instant he saw this ridiculous jacket, and how his first thought was that it was going to get Lance killed. He burst out laughing so hard he nearly split open his bullet wound.
They got moving again as quickly as they could, but it was too late for all the damage that had been done. With every step they were slowing down and Keith could feel Lance's body as it started to shake with exhaustion. He looked down, and without the obstruction of Lance's coattails Keith was finally free to notice his legs.
His pants were in an even worse state than his jacket had been, at least in some respect. They weren't shredded and burned like the coat, but rather instead looked like it had just melted directly onto Lance's skin to merge with it in an ugly red sear. "Lance -" Keith jerked in shock, nearly knocking over both of them. "Lance your legs ! What the fuck are you doing walking?!"
The tightly drawn line of Lance's eyebrow twitched, but he didn't look at Keith or even stop trudging. "Yeah, harder to protect those from grenades than just my head was, it turns out," he gritted through clenched teeth. "And it's not like I have the choice to not walk right now."
God fucking damn it. Stupid useless man trying to bear Keith's weight when he couldn't even walk himself. And he probably hadn't even thought about it, hadn't considered for a second that he should leave Keith to walk on his own to conserve his strength.
Keith huffed out a sigh, deep and heavy. He wrapped his arm underneath Lance's torso where it had been had been hanging between them before. Hefting himself up so he wasn't supported entirely by Lance's weight anymore, Keith fought through the slice in his right arm to use it to help keep Lance's back steady and tall as they moved.
Lance looked at Keith out of the corner of his eye, light surprise coloring his features.
Keith tried not to be embarrassed by the gaze. "It'll be easiest if we bear each other's weight, right?" The very little blood left in Keith's body felt like it was all in his face. "I mean, between us we've got one good arm and two legs. That's gotta be more than enough."
Lance huffed out a tiny laugh and adjusted his grip on Keith's waist. "Heh. Except this time you're the legs and I'm the arm."
The trouble was, no matter how much effort and willpower the two may be capable of displaying in the name of hope reality was much crueler. Time passed dangerously long, getting them no closer to the surface but instead leading them further towards unconsciousness with every step.
If Keith's sight had been blurry before, now it was downright nonexistent. Endorphins had rushed in to drug Keith with painless grogginess, and his vision swam so much there was little left but the same shapeless fog clouding his thoughts.
Oh god. There was no way for them to get out of here, was there? Getting captured by Veret would have been better than this, they were… dying lost in the sewers like rats. Lance… Fuck, Lance. Was there any way Keith could convince Lance to abandon him? His legs were burned, but if he only had to bear his own weight he might still be able to escape…
"Hey, Keith?" Lance's voice was soft with worry, and Keith dreaded the question that would come out. "Do you think…" He swallowed thickly, and Keith forced his sight to focus on him enough to catch the slight tremor in his lip. "Do you think that guy I hit could have survived?"
"...Wait, what?" Keith took a few seconds to respond, not having registered the unexpected question. And also having blacked out for a second, but that had already happened a few times now so was hardly worth mentioning. Blood loss and all that.
Lance's voice was small and shattered when he responded. "I've never… I think I just killed a man, Keith." Finally Keith recognized that slight shake, and Lance continued on with a voice that sounded like it should be sobbing. "I saw him shoot and I saw you fall and… I felt it, Keith." A pause for Lance to gather a shaky breath, and the next words were barely loud enough to be a whisper. " I felt his skull crack open like a fucking melon. "
Keith looked at Lance… or at what he could see right now, anyway. Did he… did he not realize they had all killed hundreds of people by now? The entire battleships full of Galran soldiers they'd ruthlessly annihilated as Voltron? Oh shit. Keith didn't know how to deal with this. Oh fuck, this was bad.
"I killed a man too, tonight," was all he could think to offer, but… But the thing was…
Keith wasn't bothered by it.
He had stabbed a living, thinking man in the neck and hadn't thought about it since the second he saw the body fall. Even now, Keith couldn't bring himself to truly care about the life he'd taken.
Oh fuck, didn't that make him some kind of sociopath?
No; animals, he thought to himself dizzily, snapping back to reality where he'd lost another few seconds. Sociopaths killed animals and Keith could never hurt a dog even if it had bitten him first. Well still, this was really something that should bother him, wasn't it?
It was bothering Lance. Lance was more worried about having killed with his own hands than Keith could ever hope to understand, was reacting like a normal human being would. Lance would remember this for the rest of his life. Remember all four of the men he'd killed tonight, and maybe even the one Keith had taken out, too. They were trapped in an underground tunnel about to die, and Lance still had the energy to hope that somehow the man whose skull he bashed in had lived.
Somehow, it was that that made everything suddenly make sense. Maybe it was the blood loss and endorphins twisting his thoughts in strange ways, but Keith instantly understood. Understood everything about his whole life, in a way he never had before.
Every single part of him; every personality disorder that made it impossible to fit in with normal society. The social anxiety telling him to stay away from crowded spaces and untrusted people. The paranoia telling him that the universe was trying to kill him and he had to be on guard at all times. The restless need driving him to training, and the way fighting was the only thing that ever truly cleared his head and let him relax.
He wasn't broken, and he wasn't crazy.
Keith was built for war.
Every single part of Keith, from his body all the way down to his very brain chemistry was built for the sole purpose of survival .
Something about everything was suddenly ridiculous. It could have been the epiphany, or the despair of the fact that they were still going to die here, or even just the delirium of the last few seconds of consciousness. But either way Keith found himself laughing, loud and long and admittedly kind of hysterical. Kind of completely hysterical, actually.
Lance of course, looked at him worriedly, stumbling when Keith missed the next step. They fell gracelessly to the floor, separating enough for Lance to look him in the eye. "K-Keith? Hey, sweetie, you feeling okay?"
Oh, Lance. His beautiful, gentle Lance. Never meant for this war like Keith was, but still completely invaluable to it. Poor sweet Lance who tried so hard to take care of all of them, who was never supposed to leave the impersonal distance of his sniper's scope to feel blood splatter onto his face. Keith reached out to him, trying to wipe the purple stain of Galran blood off of Lance's cheek, only to leave a smear of his own red in its wake.
Keith barely noticed. Just held Lance's worried face against his palm, and tried to convince Lance is his most reassuring tone, "It's okay, Lance."
Lance, if anything, looked more worried. "Keith…"
Keith shook his head, cutting Lance off with a hush and leaning in to bring their faces inches apart. "Sssshhhhhh. No, you don't understand, it's okay, Lance. I'll protect you." And he would. Would make sure that from now on it was only Keith whose hands got dirty, that Lance would never have to watch another enemy die from that close again. Make sure Lance could sleep at night, so he could do what it was he did and take care of all of them, keep them together by being stronger than any of them. The important support Voltron relied on to keep them standing, useless and far too rigid without him. "It's my turn to take care of you now, okay?" Keith repeated, patting Lance's cheek lovingly and thinking the wet slap of blood it made really was a shame.
Lance winced at the sound, too, cringing enough for Keith to see even with his vision going dark all around the edges. "Keith…"
You know what else was really a shame?
That that was the last thing Keith had said before he passed out.