Stay safe out there. Remember to always wear facemask 😊
(believe it or not, the voltron page for once gave me an idea, lions facemasks can be good. I designed ones using the chibi versions that appear in hunk’s plan in s1 episode 7 ‘’Return to the Balmera’’)
Keith finally lost track of how much time had passed when the number of quintents ticked past a decapheeb. It was hard enough guessing in the first place, hoping he had been correct with his internal time clock. They brought him two meals each quintent, eight vargas (which they called hours here) apart, each a broad selection of food that he was never able to finish in its entirety. That is, except for the first time they allowed him to eat, a long, long time after they brought him to this small room, hooking cold metal shackles around his wrists. There was a cot that he was able to lie and get rest on, but the shackles still rubbed his wrists, and he was never able to get comfortable.
He had run out of space on his wall to make claw indentations to mark the passage of time, and he wasn’t sure that he could trust his eyes to re-count. His vision was often swimming, the air feeling just a little too thin.
He tried his best to keep up his strength. The chains were attached to the ceiling, and every day after his first meal, when he had the most energy, he wrapped his arms with the chains and pulled himself up as many times as he could.
His hair had grown so long that it started getting uncomfortable. The rare occasions he was brought a large basin of water to clean himself, no razor was given to him to take care of the length.
Once, one of the people bringing in his meal spoke to him for the first time. He had learned the language they spoke here, but it had been so long ago that it took him a while to figure out what the words had meant. “Do you want me to tie back your hair?” he was finally able to distinguish.
Now his hair hung in a heavy braid down the center of his back, but it was much easier to go about his usual actions without hair constantly getting stuck to his arms. During his next cleansing, he unbound the braid himself, learning the steps backwards so that he was able to recreate it after he was finished, if a bit sloppier.
Someone had just come by with his second meal of the day, and Keith found he had no appetite. Having lost count of how much time had passed since his crash landing on Earth and subsequent capture by its inhabitants darkened the little spirit he had left in him. The food in front of him looked like bile. He did stash some of it away under the blanket of his cot, however, so that when he did regain his hunger, he would be able to satiate it. An attendant came by and took the tray away some time later, none the wiser.
Vargas passed. Keith attempted some more pull-ups, just to keep his mind and body occupied, but he couldn’t do many before his body gave out on him. He ate some of his hidden food. It didn’t go down easy, but he knew it was necessary.
His door opened again, shocking him with the untimely presence, and he quickly covered his food stash with the thin blanket. Two figures stepped into the room. Keith immediately recognized them, and he tried not to show his fear.
“Come with us,” one of them said. And though Keith wanted to fight back, he still had the scars from his last attempt healing on his back, tender to the touch. With how weak he was feeling, he didn’t think he could make it even half as far as he had the attempt before. So, after a moment of hesitation, he held his wrists out and stepped forward.
Different chains hooked onto his wrist shackles, and he was disconnected from the ones attached to the ceiling. He followed the two from the room, wondering if he would ever see those scratched walls again.
They brought him down a dimly-lit hallway, and even the glass panes on the wall only brought in faint traces of moonlight. They walked for a long time, passing by several closed doors. Some had peep hole windows through which he could see sleeping figures on cots similar to his. He had never met any other beings like him that had been captured, but he had met many of these Earth humans, mostly in silent confrontations.
They finally got to a door with light streaming out from underneath it after winding through a few different hallways. Out of habit, Keith memorized the journey. Just in case.
The door opened after the one not holding onto his chain typed a pass code into a screen next to it and it suddenly slid open, disappearing into the wall. Keith was assaulted with light, and he closed his eyes, instinctively bringing his hands up to cover his face. The chains clacked against one another; he was suddenly pulled into the room, and he tripped. Knees hit the ground roughly, and his arms were pulled up as the chains attached to another loop in this ceiling.
Keith pried his eyes open, his instincts screaming at him to take in his surroundings and learn what he was being assaulted with. The ceiling was covered in bright, round lights that Keith could not look at for very long. There were three other people in the room besides the two that lead him there. They were all frowning down at him. One of them was holding a very sharp object that he recognized with belated horror.
This is my lowest point, Keith thought to himself, panic buzzing beneath his skin.
The lights in the room suddenly flickered and Keith could hear a loud sound muffled from behind the wall. That was most definitely an explosion, he was familiar with them. Everyone in the room looked at each other as one by one all of the lights began to turn red, and they all started talking over one another so quickly that Keith could not understand them.
The door slid open, and two of them ran into the hallway. Keith could now hear the explosions more clearly, and they were coming closer. Shouts and cries of anguish and happiness rose from the facility. Another one of the people in the room left. None of them came back, and the noise only got louder.
The two left seemed to be arguing, but Keith still couldn’t understand them over the loud alarm. Finally, they both looked at him, glanced at his shackles, and then left, the door sliding shut behind them. They made noise as they left, adding to the cacophony of chaos outside of the room, but their sounds soon disappeared in the mess of it all.
The red lights in the room faded in a swift moment, going back to a bright white. All sound ceased, and for a moment it was blissfully, scarily, quiet. Then, the door exploded open.
Keith ducked instinctively, but he stared at the intruder that blocked the doorway. Their arms were spread open wide, letting the light in the room flood out into the hallway and illuminate them vividly.
Tall, brown skin, darker hair, thin limbs, an odd attire not suited for breaking into secure facilities, and a grin so wide it made Keith feel something like hope for the first time in... four hundred and twenty-one quintents.
“I found you,” the figure declared. They had striking blue eyes. It reminded Keith of the oceans of Altea: breathtaking.
Keith stared.
“The name’s Lance,” they said. “And I choose you as my alien from the Area 51 Raid of 2019!”
“I am not yours,” Keith replied automatically. “But I will follow you if,” he rattled his chains, “you can get me out of here.”
“You’ve got yourself a deal, handsome-purple-cat-man,”Lance agreed, reaching for the chains and beginning to unhook them with some kind of expert precision. “I got you, buddy.”
This was my lowest point, Keith thought to himself, a wide, smirking grin breaking across his face as his wrists were finally let free. He locked eyes with Lance whose smile rivaled his. But it can only go up from here.
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