Chapter Text
Breathing Under Water
I'll follow you down any rabbit hole
Come find me when I sleep
And tie anchors 'round my feet.
“Keith, if I don't make it out of here-”
“Shiro-”
The chains hold fast even as Keith tugs intermittently at where the thick metal disappears into the walls.
Over the grind of the engines Shiro hears Keith growl. Curse. The clatter of metal on metal almost fades familiar into the background when it stops completely, and Shiro is aware of Keith slumping, just barely, but he doesn't move.
There are cameras in the pod. The knowledge comes unbidden from a fuzzy corner of his mind, the ones that dangles half-memories and shadows that linger in his peripheral vision, but Shiro knows this to be true, and he trusts it to be true as he holds sleeping-still with his back pressed against his bound arms and the wall. It's not comfortable, but Shiro has known tenfold worse and he can deal.
He moves his lips, slight, and tilting his chin to his chest. The movement is practised, and Shiro knows he'll remember, later, and he'll regret stirring the still waters of his memory so much, but for now he braces a hand against the shore and plunges a hand deep in.
“Keith.”
The short hairs at the back of Shiro's neck shift, and he feels perspiration slip down his back between his shoulder blades. Focusses on that one bead of liquid as it traces down the knobs of his spine, heavy against his hyper-sensitive skin, and when he closes his eyes in a blink, his memories shift beneath the still-surface and it feels like fingers on him. Like a hand, and hair wisping over his shoulders, a presence over him and the roar of a crowd that ripples down to a whisper in his ear. Ripples down to Champion.
“Keith.”
Shiro repeats the name. Tastes it in his mouth and pulls himself back into the present. When he opens his eyes the room is still dim-purple and he feels desperately sick. He swallows, the movement pricking pain all the way down his throat, but it's enough, and he continues. Keith's eyes are on him, he knows without moving, muscles tensing up for fight or flight. The room lurches to one side and Shiro sucks in a breath slowly. Holds it for One. Two. Three. Exhales on the fourth, the sound too-loud even against the artificial din around them, and though he opens his mouth again to speak, Keith cuts him off with five words that twist into Shiro's gut.
“They're taking us to Zarkon.”
Shiro's neck breath whistles out of him, hitching off at the end as he aborts the motion and he shifts in the chains despite himself, curling his knees up to his chest so that he can rest his forehead on them. He closes his eyes tight enough for the memory of light to burst across the backs of his eyelids until he almost convinces himself he can see the whites and blues of the Castle of Lions.
The faint thrum and vibrations from the engines have stopped, and Shiro is vaguely aware of silence settling over him, a tangible weight, and he doesn't move.
Doesn't move.
Someone might be calling his name, but the sound is distant, distorted, and he's sure it's a memory, and he doesn't move. He's sure that he can't even if he tried, and he needs to save his energy. The chains won't give, knows this, and knows the weight around his wrists, around his throat, dragging his chin down to his chest, and he chokes around it as it pulls tight and his throat closes up-
Pain blossoms out from his side, and Shiro gasps as his eyes open and for several seconds he sees only blurred shadow. There is a weight against his side that wasn't there before and he lets himself rest into it, breathes in slowly through his nose and around the lingering scent of blood and the burn-metal-plasma scent he has come to associate with Galra, he smells something else; he smells the faint tang of sweat, sandalwood, desert dust and artificial soap from the Garrison laundry rooms and-
“Keith?”
The weight beside him shifts, and when Shiro opens his eyes again he focusses a little faster and Keith is looking back at him and the shift unbalances him for a moment.
“Where did you go?”
Shiro doesn't have an answer, but when he shakes his head Keith lets it lie, and Shiro closes his eyes again. Bites the inside of his cheek and lets the pain keep him there.
“We stopped a bit ago. I don't know what's happening now.”
There is a pause, and Shiro takes it, uses the silence and Keith's commentary to try and fill in the gaps. He has no way to know how much time he has lost inside his own head, but Shiro can't bring himself to care. If they have already docked in Zarkon's main fleet he's sure it won't matter anyway. He doesn't remember how they came to be here, and he can't trust his memory when he tries; flashes of what could be truth or fiction, and it feels like thinking through thick mist, enough that when Shiro wrenches himself out of it he feels physically drained, and he thinks Keith might have made a noise when he slumps sideways but he's not sure and he doesn't ask.
Keith doesn't comment. Shiro feels himself being nudged upright again and then the weight on his temple is back, but it's one-sided and soft, and when he leans into it, just a little, he sees the corner of Keith's mouth curl upwards and, trick of the light or not, Shiro holds onto it tight and keeps his eyes open as the lights brightened and beyond their metal prison he hears the clatter of Galratech soldiers and he knows they have run out of time,, that they had been out of time from the start, and Shiro knows this for a fact.
* * *
Being cold is familiar to Keith.
Years of third- and fourth-hand clothes, living in drafty rooms in run-down houses, and his shack in the desert that let the wind and the sand in, and now space, with its infinite blackness and only a handful of solar systems, and it's almost like breathing. He focusses on this and lets the heat seep out of him in waves. Every sensation become knifepoint sharp and Keith grounds himself, keeps his eyes open and on Shiro. Keith managed to hold onto consciousness a little longer during their capture and he can still see with stunning clarity the moment where Shiro turned near feral with desperation. There is a red stain down Shiro's right arm and right side, stark against the white of his armour, but Keith's no longer sure if it's human or Galra blood. From this distance he can't even tell if Shiro is conscious.
He tries again to move closer, but the chains hold fast; each link is as thick as one of his fingers and they glimmer faintly purple in the low light, enough for Keith to wonder if they're not magical too. It's a futile distraction, and Keith feels frustration bubble beneath his skin like a million little insects, his skin almost itching with sensation and he suppresses a shiver just barely. He tries to heed Shiro's advice, mouthing the words to himself and staring at a point on the opposite wall until the outline of it stays in his vision even as he blinks.
It's useless.
Keith braces a foot against the floor, yanks at the chains again, and it's tight enough for him to feel the bones in his shoulder grate against the sockets, and he bites back a scream because if dislocating his shoulder is what it takes then-
“Keith,”
He slumps against the wall, licks the blood off his bitten-lips and turns to Shiro, but Shiro isn't looking at him so much as through him and Keith feels the scream creep right back up his throat again.
Shiro's voice is gravelly and low, and Keith listens to him stumble over the syllables in his name once more before he can take no more, and he tells him the truth. He tells Shiro the truth because he can't do this alone and he needs Shiro here now, and not light years away in his memory, and when he barely reacts Keith renews his fumbles with the chains.
“Where did you go?”
There is no answer, and Keith feels a sense of time return to him, even without a timepiece or the concentration left to measure it.
“We stopped a bit ago. I don't know what's happening now.”
There are ways to bring Shiro back, but Keith needs to be closer for that to happen.
Keith's shoulder gives before the chains do, and he's falling, lands on his arm and he blacks out just briefly from the pain, wakes again with it, and lets his knees guide him the distance, scant now with his arms free, to Shiro. He slumps against Shiro's side and lets his eyes close as his heart jitters against his rib cage. Keith breathes through the pain and forces his body to relax and release the urge to curl around hid injury like a wounded animal.
Extreme and sudden pain can send the human body into cardiac arrest. The fact comes to Keith's mind unbidden, and he somehow knows it to be true even if he can't remember where he heard it.
He feels Shiro lean into him, sucks in a slow breath as it jostles his arm, but it doesn't matter because Shiro is looking at him, focussing, and Keith recognises with a lurch that sends his heart jacknifing right up his throat that they are no longer moving.
They have arrived.
Keith stills his breathing and matches Shiro's after a few beats, makes sure that Shiro can feel him as he slows it down. Their chances of getting out as they are – injured, bound, unarmed – are low, but Keith has never put much into probabilities, and he won't let the Druids get their hands on Shiro again.
Against him, Shiro stiffens, raises his head for the first time since they woke up, and when Keith listens hard he can hear footsteps approaching, and he leans a little harder against Shiro.
“It's okay,”
Keith isn't sure if he's trying to reassure Shiro or himself, or if Shiro even hears him, but he says it over and over like a prayer as the single door to their mobile cell opens and Keith scrunches his eyes up against the bright light that greets them as it slides open. He squints back against it, and sees enough to know that there are too many to fight their way out, not without risking serious injury or worse, and Keith won't risk Shiro, not now, when he's half-way present and so frightened.
The soldiers release their chains from the wall and they are walked onto the main ship. Keith walks, ignores the pain in his arm, and keeps Shiro in his peripheral vision as he tries to map the corridors. They are as samey as every other Galra ship he has ever visited, and though he had expected no different, Keith feels frustration burn in him all the same. He doesn't have a plan, and that alone is enough to draw out the claws of panic that are beginning to scratch open old wounds on his shoulders and his temples.
He lets himself be led, keeps a tight hatch on everything, and bumps his shoulder to Shiro's. He can't see the other man's face aside his clenched jaw and the way his head inclines forward in just enough submission that Keith struggles against screams that feel like acute nausea, and he hopes it's an act as they are taken through another set of doors and into a large room.
The only lights are those around the door, and even squinting Keith can only see a foot or two in front of him. They are ordered to kneel, and close as they are, Keith can feel Shiro's thigh against his own and when he turns his head Shiro meets his eyes and smiles, just barely, but Keith catches it and mirrors the expression. It's enough, it's enough and Keith knows this like breathing as Shiro leans in and Keith meets him halfway. He presses his forehead to Shiro's, and the guards might be looking but no one interrupts them.
Keith presses his forehead against Shiro's until he knows it'll leave an impression of their skin, and he closes his eyes because it hurts to look at Shiro now, the too-tiny pupils and the the Keith feels his breath fall onto his chin, each exhale too-quick and too shallow.
“It's gonna be okay, Shiro,”
Keith whispers, the words barely audible over their breathing.
“It's okay, it's okay.”
“Okay.”
Shiro's voice is toned lower than usual, and Keith hears the guards either side of them turn to observe their prisoners' interactions then, but they don't interfere and for a moment Keith is intensely, fervently grateful and he leans in more, lets his body crowd up to Shiro's and curl the other Paladin's body up against his just a little, as much as he can muster as he breathes obedience into the instinct to protect.
In the darkness, something moves, and the lights come up at last.
Beside him, Shiro startles, but Keith barely flickers aside reaffirming his position, and lifting his chin just a fraction as a dark shape approaches from the other side of the room.
With the new light, Keith is just about aware that they are in some sort of holding room; a few metal chairs are arranged against a wall and Keith can't help but notice the shackles welded onto them. A monitor on the far wall glows red with the emblem of the Galra Empire, but it all fades into white noise as twin points of yellow and red burn brighter in the lingering darkness of the Galra's form and Keith wonders, absently, if Shiro can feel the way his heart is trying to beat right out of his chest.
This is no machine solder, but a flesh and blood Galra, and Keith distantly knows their chances of escape are slimming but he remains where he is, and he surges against the metal hands on his shoulders as across the room red and purple light bursts out of the Galra, and Keith leans himself in front of Shiro even as behind and beside him he feels Shiro bristle and hears his voice snarl a single word like an insult.
“Sendak.”