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Shiro opens the doors to the paladins’ cell. When he steps in Keith smiles at him. Lance, however, tries to hide his trembling. Every time Shiro comes to visit them there’s a 50/50 chance he’ll drag one of them away to pain.
“H-hey, Shiro, how goes it? Same old stuff? Is today gonna be… eventful?” asks Lance.
“No one has plans for you two today, you can relax” says Shiro. Lance lets out a relieved breath.
“Uh, Shiro, uh, is the new right way to um… every one?” babbles Keith. Normally Shiro loves to hear him talk even if it doesn’t make sense anymore but today Keith’s voice is weak and raspy and it worries Shiro even more than usual.
“Yeah, Keith. Tell me more” says Shiro. He sits down on the floor.
“Right, um. Never if it says… even more than… ow” Keith winces. He lays down and curls in on himself, moaning in pain. Lance curses.
“I don’t even know how long it’s been now. Have you been keeping track?” asks Lance. Shiro shakes his head.
“It’s not like they help me keep time or anything. It could be days or weeks and we wouldn’t know.”
They aren’t talking about how long Keith and Lance have been captured. They’re talking about how long it’s been since they’ve stopped giving Keith food. When Keith lost his mind the galra knew that they were no longer able to get any of Voltron’s secrets out of him. But instead of doing away with him they kept him alive to torture in an effort to get Lance to speak so they would stop.
Lance almost gave in a few times but the fear of putting his five friends, his other friends lightyears away, in danger stopped him. Plus, no Voltron means a universe in the hands of the galra.
“Maybe the next time they make you shove food down my throat I could make myself barf it up when I get back here and feed it to Keith” suggests Lance completely seriously.
Shiro sighs. “Maybe, but it might just make him vomit.”
“Ugh, I’m gonna vomit already just talking about this… and it probably wouldn’t be enough food at this point anyway…”
Keith whimpers and reaches for Shiro. Shiro takes his hand.
“Hey, um, Shiro? We little it’s on… home? Go home? Home…” says Keith weakly.
Shiro grits his teeth.
“We’re gonna go home soon” he reassures Keith. Keith calms and closes his eyes, either falling asleep or blacking out.
“Fuck” swears Shiro. Lance has never heard him curse like that before.
“Shiro…” says Lance.
“Stop calling me that already!” snaps Shiro. “I’m not him. I’m not a friend. I’m just some pawn that’s too weak to fight off that witch’s magic!”
“But you are Shiro! You have the same memories and the same personality and you didn’t even know you weren’t the original when you woke up!” yells Lance. “The clone that was with us before was you, too. You’re you, he was you, the Shiro that’s off looking for us is you. If there are more clones that we don’t know of then they’re you, too. Every Shiro is Shiro.”
Shiro blinks once, twice, then laughs.
“You sound like a lunatic. You make less sense than Keith sometimes.”
“But I’m a right lunatic, and you are our friend.”
“…okay. Thank you. But don’t forget that they could make me do anything to you. Don’t trust me.”
Lance shakes his head. “Those actions aren’t you. No matter what they make you do I’ll always trust you”
It’s easy for Lance to say now but a couple of days later when Shiro’s got his hands around Lance’s throat he forgets everything and all he can do is scrabble and claw in instinct at what’s crushing his windpipe.
“I’m sorry Lance, please hold on, you can do it-!”
Shiro’s words get cut off as he feels the druids’ magic gripping him and muting his voice. He’s forced to watch in silence as Lance’s throat bruises and his face turns colors before he finally gurgles one last attempt at a breath and his eyes roll back into unconsciousness. All at his own hands. His hands that are still around Lance’s throat even though he’s already passed out- they’re going to make him kill him!
Shiro releases Lance and hears him finally breathe, his gasps wet and sore but breathing nonetheless.
“Take him away. If he survives return him by one movement” a druid orders.
Shiro carries Lance back gently and places him on his cot in the cell. Keith whines from his and reaches for Lance, worried but lacking the strength to speak at all anymore.
“It’s okay, buddy. Lance’ll be okay.”
Keith keeps reaching for Lance.
Shiro holds Keith’s face in his hands.
“Keith, sweetheart, look at me. Lance needs rest. You do, too. Sleep, okay?”
Keith’s eyes beg Shiro for something that Keith’s own brain doesn’t even know.
Shiro wraps his arms around Keith and holds him chest-to-chest before lifting him up off of his cot and dragging him over to Lance’s. He lays him down against, almost on top of Lance. There isn’t much room. Shiro takes Keith’s hand and holds it again for a moment before laying it over Lance’s heart.
“Do you feel it? He’s alive. Now sleep, please.”
Keith does.
The next morning Shiro finds Lance sitting on the edge of the cot with Keith still laying beside him.
“Lance…” says Shiro. “Lance, I’m so-”
Lance holds up a hand. “Stop, just stop” he rasps. Shiro can see the bruising on his neck. “Don’t worry about it. We have bigger problems. He’s going to die.”
Shiro looks at Keith. He’s fighting to stay awake and to even breathe. It reminds Shiro of Lance’s desperate gasping under his hands the day before.
“…yes” says Shiro, unsure of what else to say.
“We’ll probably be getting water later today but he needs food now. I have an idea.”
Shiro’s eyebrows raise up. “Yeah?”
Lance smiles wryly. “From here” he says, making a chopping motion against his thigh. “The thigh probably has enough meat for now.”
“You’re… you’re serious aren’t you? No. Absolutely not. I never even thought… look, if it comes to that it should me. It’d be one way to make up for how much I’ve hurt you.”
“I figured you’d say that. You’re selfless. But I… I’m gonna take advantage of that and point out that if you get hurt they’ll send someone else to be in charge of us and they’ll be a hell of a lot harder on us than you.”
Shiro knows that. He just can’t stand this. “They’ll probably just do that anyway if I let you go through with this” he says. “And they’ll probably kill Keith anyway. They might just kill us all.”
“I know that. But this is the last opportunity to buy Keith some time.”
Shiro glances at Keith again.
“I cannot believe that you’re talking me into this.”
“You’ll need to cook it with the heat from your arm.”
And fasion a tourniquet, cauterize some arteries… thinks Shiro. He takes a deep breath.
He positions his bionic hand on Lance’s leg a couple of inches above mid-thigh.
“Here, you said?”