A Portal Klance AU for @cheritsundere since she is not feeling too well. I put it under the cut because it is pretty long despite me trying to make short and put it in bullet format.
So, Lance wakes up in a plain, white room. The last thing he remembers is the AI HaGGAR going rogue while he was at Aperture Science where his dad works.
Lance was just about to beat Keithās project with the potato he mixed with one of his dadās chemicals at the Bring Your Child To Work Day Science Fair before everything went South.
When he wakes up, heās greeted by Hunk, a nervous core AI that is sarcastic and seemingly always one step from a panic attack.
Hunk tells him whatās been going on, that HaGGAR had placed the children from the fair in a cyrosleep and has been using them one by one for her testing. When one dies, she just revives another.
Lance asks about the other people in the facility, and Hunk explains that all the scientists were killed by neurotoxin by HaGGAR. It hits hard, but Hunk doesnāt seem to notice as he wants Lance to hurry along.
Hunk explains that Lance is the only one who can free them from Aperture Labs, because heās the only one left. HaGGAR is onto her second to last test subject, and so he finally worked up the courage to do something.
There is an empty feeling in Lanceās chest as he thinks about Keith, and how heās probably dead.
Hunk leads Lance into the defunct testing chambers that HaGGAR tossed aside early on so that they can retrieve the Portal Gun and make their escape to the outside world.
They manage to get the gun, but now just have to make it past HaGGAR without her noticing for the final leg of their escape. Except Hunk, nervous from being so up close to HaGGAR, knocks into a pipe just as they are about to reach the emergency stairwell.
HaGGAR tosses Hunk aside and then drops Lance into the testing facility until she can figure out what to do with her extra test subject.
With no other way out, Lance begins to solve the complex puzzles laid out before him, armed only with the Portal Gun he stole.
As heās testing, Lance begins to notice that parts of the test will unlocked without him doing anything or Companion Cubes will be in places that he didnāt leave them.
Heās done a few chambers when HaGGAR announces that she knows what to with him and asks him to exchange his Portal Gun for a new one. As he canāt move on without her consent, he begrudgingly does as she asks.
She then instructs him to open a portal on the nearest wall, which he does, not seeing the point.
The wall opens to reveal Keith, who looks battered, bruised, and exhausted, while HaGGAR tells them that they will be testing with a partner from now on.
HaGGAR tells Keith to step through the portal, which he does without question, seemingly used to her giving him commands.
Lance hugs Keith, glad he isnāt dead, but Keith pushes him off, saying that Lance messed up everything. He reveals that heās been testing for nearly two months with barely any rest and surviving only the spare supplies he found while testing, but all that was going to turn around since he discovered Lotor, an abandoned personality core.
That is when Lotor reveals himself from a panel above them. He informs Lance of their plan to replace him with HaGGAR, and then once he is in control of the facility, heāll let both Keith and Lance go free.
Lance doesnāt trust him, wanting to know how they can be so certain that he wonāt turn around and kill them the moment he has control of the facility.
Lotor says he has no interest in killing or testing them, only that he wishes to end HaGGARās reign over him and the other Personality Cores.
Lance still has his doubts, but Keith snaps at him, saying he has no idea what it feels like to be in his shoes.Ā Keith says that heās tired, and while Lance was sleeping, he was surviving for his life and just wants all of this to be over.
Realizing that Keith is going to do this with or without him, Lance decides to help him with Lotorās plan to make sure he can protect him in case anything does go wrong once Lotor is in HaGGARās place.
It starts with Lotor getting them out of the testing facility and into the inner facilities so that they can shut down HaGGARās weapons so that she wonāt have anything to use against them while theyāre switching cores.
They come across their abandoned science projects, with Lanceās potato having grown wild. The two of them reminisce slightly about that day. Lance talking about his father while Keith talks about his brother, Shiro. Keith nervously says he has confession to make, only heās cut off when HaGGAR discovers that theyāve escaped the testing chambers.
They manage to evade HaGGAR and shut down her weapon systems before finally confronting her in her main chamber. As Lance distracts HaGGAR, Keith sneaks into the core controls so that he can switch HaGGARās corrupted core for Lotor.
Keith manages to switch Lotor for HaGGAR, but this proves to be a mistake as Lotor instantly betrays them as soon as he has control over the facility. He taunts by pretending to let them leave in the elevator but brings them back down, laughing at how gullible they are.
HaGGAR taunts Lotor, saying that he has no right to be in power since Keith and Lance did all the work for him. She says that he never would have taken her place if he was on his own.
Lotor is enraged by this and begins to rant how he is a master strategist, that of course he wouldnāt do his own work, while taking apart her core and placing into one of the nearby potatoes from the science fair.
HaGGAR continues to taunt him, saying that Lotor was created to make her more dependent on the scientists. If she couldnāt do anything for herself then she wouldnāt be able to murder them.
Losing his temper, Lotor throws HaGGAR at the elevator, causing it to break and plummet the three of them to the bottom of the shaft.
All of them survive (though HaGGAR is taken by a bird temporarily) and find themselves in the very first testing facilities in the pits of Aperture.
Since HaGGAR is the only one who knows the way out, Keith and Lance take her with them as they continue to work as a team to make their way out of this new testing area.
As they do, they uncover more about Apertureās owner, Zarkon, and his wife and lead scientist, Honerva. He talks about his rivalry with Alfor, the head of Black Mesa, while the company begins to take part in more questionable experiments. Such as turning moon rocks into paint to use as a surface for the Portal Guns and mantis men.
HaGGAR begins to remember things, and it isnāt much longer before she remembers that she used to be Honerva, but after an experiment went wrong and left her in a near vegetative state, Zarkon uploaded her consciousness into her latest experiment in an attempt to save her, but everything spiraled out of control from there.
She becomes more friendly towards the two of them as more of Honerva begins to come out while they make the last leg of their journey back into the main facility.Ā
HaGGAR also notes that Keith and Lance have become nicer, though more fidgety, towards each other than what they originally displayed when she first began testing them. She makes a comment about how she remembers how it felt to be in love, but both Keith and Lance deny having that emotion for each other.
They finally make it back to the facility, and Lotor has been busy. A whole assortment of mangled contraptions that are shoddily put together since he always has someone else do the designing for him while the facility begins to meltdown since there was no one there to do his dirty work.
Ā Still, Lotor captures Keith and Lance, deciding to have them test out his new creations while taunting HaGGAR about how much better he is at running the facility than she is.
Lotor puts them through few a tests but grows increasingly frustrated when each one of his tests fail to pass muster until he finally snaps and decides just to kill Keith and Lance to be done with it.
Keith and Lance manage to escape his attempt to kill them, though just barely, and make their way deeper into the facility as HaGGAR has a plan to stop Lotor by collecting corrupt personality cores while she stays behind to take of things on her end.
Lance chides her about her treatment of Hunk and the way she just discarded him, but she ignores him, urging them to keep moving forward before Lotor finds them.
They discover and befriend a green personality core named Pidge, who is an insufferable know-it-all, and then a pink personality core named Allura, who has odd ideas about human culture.
Hunk is the last personality core to be found, and Lance is overjoyed by the reunion, actually going as far to hug the personality core.
They reunite with HaGGAR and make their to the central chamber to confront Lotor.
Keith and Lance attach Pidge, Allura, and Hunk to Lotor, and they aid their friends by driving up his corruption reading so that HaGGAR will seem less corrupted than him
However, Lotor planned for that and rigged the controls to blow so that the switch wouldnāt happen like they did with him, and Keith is blown free while Lance is slammed against a wall by the blast.
Keith survives, though, and Lotor begins bearing down on him in anger, ready to kill him.
In a last ditch effort, Lance points his gun at the moon and opens a portal there and in the room.
Lance has a good grip of some equipment at first but notices that Pidge, Allura, and Hunk are being pulled into space with Lotor, so he lets go in an attempt to save all of them.
The portal is still open though, and heās being sucked in, too, but Keith grabs him, holding onto him long enough for HaGGAR to get back in control and shut the portal down.
She thanks them for helping her discover Honerva and her old memories, so that she can promptly delete them.
However, sheās grown weary of dealing with the two of them and decides theyāre too much trouble to kill, so she decides to let them go.
They both nervously climb into the elevator, loading up Hunk, Allura, and Pidge with them. As the doors close, Lance takes Keithās hand and squeezes it, since no matter what happens, they can make it through this as long as they have each other.
Turrets are lined up as they move to the next floor. They close their eyes and clasp their hands together tightly, ready for them to open fire. Instead, they begin to sing a farewell song to them while the elevator climbs.
Keith thinks he sees Shiro as all of them are riding up the elevator, but thereās no way off because not only is the elevator locked, but the turrets are in the way.
Eventually, the doors open and theyāre greeted to their first look of the outside world in they donāt know how long. And the first time for the personality cores, but they seem to be enjoying it.
Keith confesses that what he wanted to say was that he did in fact love Lance and had a crush on him even before all this happened. He was going to tell him at the science fair before everything went down.
Lance says that heās pretty sure that he loves Keith, too, and that heās glad that they both made it out safely, even if theyāre both a little battered and bruised.
They share a kiss and enjoy the fresh air for a bit before they head out and begin to walk away from the facility and towards whatever awaits all of them in the real world.
