I've been taunting my readers on Tumblr with this idea, and figured I should go ahead and get started on it.

Keith desperately needs to cough. Each thumping footstep above him rains dust and dirt down into his eyes and nose, choking him on each breath in. He can't make a sound. Any noise will give away their position and force them to fight and run again. They might not be able to find another location to hide before they are surrounded.

The footsteps stop. The officer is listening. Takashi's wide eyes meet his own. They both hold their breathes and wait. One, two…ten seconds, the alien's footsteps can be heard thumping their way out the door. They're safe for now. As soon as the building is completely clear of police, they can crawl out from their hiding spot and figure out their next step.

Keith squeezes Takashi's still human right hand, and gets a genuine smile in return. He's been doing a surprisingly good job of keeping up for someone who was thrown into a life or death situation with no warning or explanation. His clothes are a lot mussed, the standard officer wear worn around the Garrison wasn't meant to go squeezing through crawl spaces, and he's got a nasty burn from a twitchy temple guard that didn't understand the meaning of not resisting arrest, but overall he's holding up better than expected. Then again, if Keith's guess about the situation is correct, Takashi is likely to age into one of the two seasoned fighters that are currently guarding the entrance to their crawlspace. Of course, he's already good at keeping his head under stress.

Shiro and the Champion, dubbed so after the fifth time Keith called 'Shiro' in the chase and got three yeses, have yet to ease at the guard's departure. Hopefully that's just their paranoia, and not a sign that a fight is still likely. He doesn't want anyone else to die just because they are doing their job. Shiro and Keith hadn't had much of a choice if they didn't want Lotor's mooks to get a hold of the device, but they had stolen a holy relic. The police weren't doing anything wrong by trying to apprehend them.

Not that everyone in their party seemed to care about if a death was deserved. The Champion is confusing. His first reaction on seeing Keith was to drop his guard and kiss him hard, like he was dream liable to go up in smoke any second. His second, to hug him tight in both his Galra arms and whisper his name like a prayer. His third, to take a defensive position in front of Keith when Shiro tried to intervene. Those weren't the actions of someone without emotions or who didn't care about others, but the way he killed that temple guard. The Champion had cut him down without hesitation. No trying to talk him down or subdue him. Just one second he had a gun pulled on them, and the next there was a hole in his chest. Champion hadn't even watched his body hit the floor. The most expression he'd shown over killing a man was to look sheepish at Keith's expression of horror. That wasn't a situation where sheepishness was an appropriate response.

There is a bang, as the door leading into the building slams shut. The officers must have deemed them not in this building. Shiro holds up his hand to wait, and carefully sneaks up to the floor above. His quiet steps out of the room barely cause a few puffs of dust. The wait for him is nerve wracking. What happens if there is a still a guard in the building? Will Shiro try to lead them off, or subdue him and come back for Keith? Things are hard enough with their guests tagging along. He doesn't want to have to search for Shiro too.

"They've moved on." Shiro's says softly from the door, "It's safe to come out, but keep quiet."

Time to try and salvage this mess.

End Note:

This fic might be a little slower on the updates than my last. This is the most active and relevant characters I've handled at once, and there is a lot of points I want to make sure I hit, so I'm having to plot out my chapters before writing them for once.

Rating will go up in later chapters.