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Shiro comes to consciousness with a cry, flinching violently back into wakefulness, arching against the floor. His heart’s pounding, screaming a tempo of panic inside his chest. Everything hurts. He can’t get enough air. His arm’s on fire, the nerves are alight and he’s gonna - he’s gonna -
Calm. Shhhhh.
Shiro sucks in a breath like a drowning man, too little and out too fast. It slips through his fingers, oh god, his fingers, his hand is agony, something’s cracked twisted slipped out of place and, and -
Shhhhh.
A wave of calm presses down on him, gently but firmly forcing stillness onto his trembling shoulders. Shiro shakes, struggling to catch his breath, to catch his bearings. Everything’s so dark.
A press of darkness-stillness-hiding-black-pitch-as-night floods into his senses, a blanket instead of a fear.
Black.
“Black?” Shiro manages, through cracked lips. He tastes something: copper. It hurts. Did he bite his tongue?
The pressure in his mind colors with affection and a confirmation so distinct it’s nearly tangible. The Black Lion is here. She’s listening. She’s with him, wherever here is. She fills him with images, a gentle onslaught of clouds rolling easily across an orange sky. Trees swaying in the breeze. Ships, splitting through clouds of pale blue, with bright sails like he’s never seen before as they ride upon the wind.
Breathe, the Black Lion insists, not in words but in warmth and gentle caress, a parent cradling a child. Eyes still closed, Shiro does, in-out, in out , in and out until the world stops spinning. He can’t tell if his eyes are open or closed.
Things start to trickle back, piece by piece. Flying. Deciding to save the planet. Running into the ambush. Allura’s wormhole. The castle taking damage. The others going in, he’d follow - Keith taking a hit. Shiro pushing him through. The wormhole closing.
Turning back to face the surprise Galra fleet, the surprise reinforcements, all on his own.
Managing. Taking the hits. Giving back as good as he got, until…until he…?
His arm hurts so much.
Black croons at him, a whisper of a memory floating to Shiro’s pounding head. There’d been too many. Swerving to avoid one blast; slamming into another. Something broke through the shields. Shiro remembers that, an alarm blaring, turning the air red and his ears inside out with the noise. Sparks flying from a nearby panel. He’d unfastened the seat belts to get at it, I can fix that echoing in his ears in tandem with the sirens, but while working on it something - heaved -
Apologies trickle into Shiro’s mind, a tinted memory poking past red-tinged darkness at the edges of his vision. He sees the blow coming and twists to avoid it, spiraling into a turn. He feels more than sees himself lose his footing as the Black Lion spins in evasion, head over heels. Feels more than sees his tiny self slam into the panel he’d been trying to fix, arm first. Feels the crack of bone -
Oh.
Oh,
His arm -
Panic overtakes him neatly and without warning, swallowing him up like an ocean might a stone. Shiro drowns in it. Hot pain flares from his arm; it’s burning, his lungs are on fire, he can’t breathe for screaming. Someone’s standing over him, backlit in fluorescent lights. He can’t see their face. Their faces are masks with violet flames for eyes, saying hold him still, the whir of an electric blade and he can’t move, he can’t, it’s on fire his arm his hand his -
No, a voice insists, and the clearness of the word shocks him into stillness. The word resonates in his ears like a bell. Black feeds him the memory one more time, slower. Distantly Shiro watches himself slam into the control panel as one might roll a marble in the base of a cup, tossed in the Black Lion’s cockpit as she swerves to avoid the hit that would have killed them. He sees himself knocked unconscious. He sees himself break his left arm.
Different, comes the feeling pressing down on him. The images float through: nothing purple, nothing restrained. Left, not right. Not the same.
Oh.
The pain threatens to consume him. Shiro clings onto the reassurance tucked tight in apologies and warmth - did what we had to - and forces himself to the surface. By the time he can draw a full breath again he’s shaking, drenched in sweat.
Here, whispers the voice, brushing just at the edge of his thoughts. It’s too far to catch but too certain to miss. Shiro breathes.
Left arm. It’s his left that’s throbbing. It’s still attached: every inch of it, every inch of burning agony along his forearm, all the way down to his fingers. He can’t see how bad it is. He’s not sure he wants to.
“It’s so dark,” he says, aloud. Has he already said this?
The apology trickles back, mixed with firm purpose and assurance. It’s dark, yes, but he’s not alone. Lights come to mind, bright pinpricks glowing on cockpit consoles, on corners of armor, out of the eyes of his Lion stark and gold in the night. It’s overlapped quickly with the image of many bodies in hard purple-tipped armor, holding weapons, standing en masse on the surface of a planet, directing each other downward into tunnels or upwards as groups.
They’re searching for someone.
“Oh,” Shiro manages. His voice echoes in the cockpit, a bouncing whisper just between them. He probably doesn’t even need to speak.
Dark, the Black Lion supplies, a hint of sorrow clad in sincere protection and decision and shhh.
Shiro tries, really he does. Everything’s a blur, vision and memories alike. His head hurts, too, though it’s nothing compared to the sharp burn in his (left not right) arm. “Where…are we? Did you get us - somewhere?”
Fond amusement colors the response. Here is far away from the Galra, at least for now. Here is far away from the place of the rescue-gone-wrong. She shows him a blur of speed, of planets passing, of the other end of the solar system and the one beyond, of doubling back, of going on, of going to ground. Shiro closes his eyes, dizzy.
Here is safe. It’s troops on foot now, the ones above, small from her perspective like ants as they lead the searches into the tunnels. The tunnels are big. The caves are wide. Here is safe. Here is -
Shiro frowns. “Underground?”
That explains the eerie silence. Shiro strains but can’t hear anything dripping, anything moving, no footsteps overhead. Underground’s so antithetical to them. “Why underground?”
In response: the bright purple of a tractor beam, wide and powerful as it sucks an imagined Lion from the surface, plucks them out of space.
Underground.
“…good thinking, Black. Thanks.”
He lays still for a while. Time slips in and out through his fingers. Shiro grasps at it, straining for slippery equilibrium. He has to reorient, to deal with and compartmentalize the pain. His arm’s throbbing, but it’s attached. His head’s pounding, but he has to focus. He’s glad for the dark, really. The Galra prison cells were never like this: there was always a sliver of light poking through some crack or other. Under the door, around the edges of the panels where they’d slip in food. The horrible window set into the door itself, no privacy. The light from the hall shadowed only when someone was at the window, pressing their nose in to see if he was still in there, or, worse, to take him out -
Shhh, the not-voice murmurs to him again.
- to take him out to fight, a prisoner, free only to fight for his life but thrown right back in, trapped, caught, an insect in a web and a cycle he couldn’t, he couldn’t, forced to -
No.
The word shatters his panic like a bell shatters silence, tolling deep and certain. Reassurance sings through him like echoes, like ripples, breaking through his sea of fear. The force of it sends him reeling, too fierce, too large.
Never again. I will not let them. The Galra will not have you. Not tonight. Not tomorrow. Not as long as you are mine.
It’s the first time the Black Lion’s spoken to Shiro in as many words.
Her succinct eloquence slices neatly through his traumas and insecurities, rooting deep in his core. It’s a lifeline, thrown and tied, taut. He clings to it like a child, weary and worn and desperate for relief.
Mine, the Black Lion repeats, affectionate, possessive. Mine.
He should match her eloquence word for word. Such a moment as this is deserving of a mighty response, something poetic, something to explain how her simple words are saving him. A buoy in the sea. A chord resolving a song he’d forgotten.
Shiro tries. Tears prick at the corners of his eyes, stinging his vision further. His right palm presses to the floor of the cockpit, stretching, needing. He can’t draw in the breath.
I know, his Lion murmurs, in few syllables and in love. The floor of the cockpit rocks gently with her purr, as low and deep as the bell.
Shiro’s questing fingers find the edge of the pilot’s chair.
Yes, she tells him.
He can do this. This dark, this silence, is different. It’s different. He’s not alone. His Lion is here.
Yes, she purrs, and her warmth is a light. A beacon. A promise. Mine.
He can do this.
Shiro grits his teeth and pulls himself up.
The pain nearly takes him out again. The whole world tilts dangerously. Bright bursts of light flare behind his eyes as grey spots threaten to overtake him. His arm is screaming as he jostles it, bangs it on something in the actual dark. A trail of liquid runs down his face, hot and sticky along his temple. Shiro bites down a cry. He can do this. He’s been through worse. He’s broken bones before -
- standing straight, somehow, only standing because his opponent’s not moving, a terrifying alien with seven limbs and grotesque fangs. The crowd’s roaring, a wall of white noise pressing in from every side. Shiro’s barely standing. His arm’s hanging at his side, elbow twisted at an angle that shouldn’t be, it’s hot and burning and he’s swallowing his scream, his hand’s crushed and mangled and he can’t look at it, he can’t, it’s the right -
Breathe, the Black Lion interrupts, her presence a balm and her word a song.
Shiro’s gasping by the time the memory passes, swirling away in sands and purples. He can’t dwell on that one. Not now.
I am here, his Lion reminds him. Shiro’s shaking, exhausted, sweating, but he’s sitting up. He’s in the chair by touch and grace alone. He did it. He’s upright.
He swallows thickly. “How long was I out?”
Black’s answer is a mix of regretful confusion. Human time is too small for her.
Okay. Shiro forces himself to focus, squeezing his eyes shut against the ceaseless dark. How long would it take the others to come back for them? Allura’s wormhole jumps aren’t instantaneous. The fastest wormhole jump Shiro’s witnessed still took twenty minutes. It’ll take time to reconvene on the other end, too, to make sure everyone’s still there and in the Castle if they didn’t get in before the wormhole closed. Time to check on Keith and the Red Lion, make sure that they’re alright. Oh, god, Keith -
No. If Shiro starts worrying he’ll never stop. Keith’ll be fine. He’s with the castle. There are healing pods. Keith will be fine.
Breathe, his Lion purrs.
Shiro does, dragging his thoughts into order. It might take a few minutes on the other end, all told, if someone protests turning back for him. Absently Shiro hopes someone will, though he isn’t sure who. He wants to be found, of course, but he doesn’t need the team running straight into the trap they fled from in the first place.
“You said we ran,” he says, aloud. His voice echoes in the cockpit, stark over the absence of machinery, engines, tech. “How far did we get?”
The emotion Black sends can only be described as smug. Shiro’s lips twitch up in a half-smile.
“Thanks.”
Assuming twenty minutes out, ten minutes to reconvene, maybe thirty back (length of the wormhole plus the Black Lion’s distance)…he’s probably looking at an hour. At least. That’s also assuming their comms are working and the team’s able to find him immediately. Maybe the comms don’t stretch this far? They’ve never had an opportunity to find out. There hasn’t been a single burst of chatter over the comms since Shiro woke up.
Black floods his mind with regret. Shiro opens his eyes, frowning.
Oh.
The communication panel is the one that was damaged. He sees it not in the dark of the cockpit but in hindsight, a flash of Black’s memory once again. The panel sparking, not functioning, cracked just like his helmet. ...oh. His vision of the darkness is fragmented because of the spider-webbing fractures in the face shield over his right eye, broken but holding together. That would explain the pain. Regardless, cracked or not, the helmet did its job. His head’s still in one piece. A mild concussion’s nothing. Shiro’s dealt with worse.
“Okay,” he says, again. The sound of his own voice is a comfort. His Lion purrs; Shiro grants her a small smile, flickering in the dark. “We don’t need to worry. Allura’s found the Lions before. She’ll find us again. How’s this location? Can we stay here?”
Black sends him the perfect image of a feline, dark-colored and curled in the shadows as one might hide on a rug beneath a table, quiet but alert. Footsteps pass by, casting shadows, but not looking underneath. The ratio’s completely off but Shiro appreciates the effort.
“Thanks.”
Shiro has to stay awake, then, until the team comes. One hour minimum. That’s part of this, right, that’s part of a concussion? He has to stay awake for at least…at least an hour, if Black doesn’t know how long he’s been out. Shiro has no way of telling time without turning something on. He’s got to stay awake. He’s got to hold out. His arm throbs.
Maybe he can fix the comm console. He’s no Pidge or Hunk, but Shiro certainly knows his way around a ship. And his dominant hand’s still working. If he’s careful not to jostle his left, or to move too much or too fast, he can at least take a look.
It’s not as if he’s completely without resources, either.
“Will you talk me through this?” Shiro asks, hoarse. He doesn’t need to explain what this is. The Black Lion sees, sees his mind, sees him, and knows.
It is an imperfect union, but it’s perfect for them.
I am with you, the Black Lion whispers. Her purr is a comfort, singing in his bones, his throbbing arm, his soul.
It’s enough. They’re enough.
Okay, Shiro whispers back, and gets to work.