Author's Notes: Set immediately after season 3 episode 'Hole in the Sky.' It seems I have a penchant for abusing poor Shiro and now his AU incarnation Sven. A lot of fans were laughing about the "space hospital" line (myself included), but… the man took a potentially lethal wound to the chest. Here's a somewhat gory look into the aftermath.
Genres: Drama, angst, friendship
Stasis
by Crow-Black Dream
Voltron hadn't yet crossed the reality barrier into the Galra-dominated universe with the comet in its grasp when Slav skittered out of the hardware room down the hall to his fallen teammate. Sven lay exactly where the paladins had left him, still in the same crumpled position. The only change was the pallor of his skin.
Using his many arms Slav cradled the unconscious human as he pulled both of them up into the concealment of an air vent. Before setting off through the maze of ductwork toward the recon point he activated his wrist comm's distress beacon and resituated Sven, whose eyes were unfocused and half-lidded while his slack jaw lolled with every step taken.
"This is the reality where everything works out fine," Slav said repeated his earlier prediction. However, he looked down at his comrade and felt a surge of doubt. Several hands held pressure to the gouged flesh, though he wasn't quite sure he was holding any of it together. Blood pulsed slowly but rhythmically from the deep crusted wound in Sven's chest. He had seen Sven's human companions bleed out before. That had been a messy affair with lots of bright red liquid splashed about. What was seeping between his fingers now was a much darker maroon color, but just as bad. If not worse.
…
The base's infirmary walls were painted sterile white and one of the overhead fluorescent bulbs flickered mercilessly. Slav paced in circles feeling like he was full of high tension wires. Once the post-op debriefing was concluded he rushed over to check the welfare of his teammate only to be stopped at the operating room door. The Guns of Gamara had obtained two Altean cryogenic medical pods and they worked splendidly, but there were certain conditions that they could not heal beyond a certain point of no return. Severe blood loss and major organ damage, for example. They failed to revive the other humans after one fateful Altean ambush.
What was that last thing Sven said before he lost consciousness? "I'll be alright. Just get me to space hospital."
Slav's eyes crinkled with a smile. Sven was always throwing that word 'space' in with everything. Space rocket, space ship, even that time they made a stop to the trading post he called it a space mall.
"This is the reality where everything turns out fine," he reassured himself. He'd calculated the possibilities again and again. There was a significantly high chance one of them would end up injured, he was aware of that, but for all things considered it was supposed to be okay in the end. Then it struck him head-on, the one variable he hadn't considered: what if he was wrong?
Sven was cordoned off somewhere under a knife. There was a significantly high chance for irreversible trauma and infection or permanent handicap. There was also a chance that he had arrived too late altogether and the doctors were now filling out the death certificate…
Sven could be dead right now. That thought was enough to let the weight of the situation sink down.
Slav leaned against a wall and slowly slid to the floor as nervous oily tears soaked the downy fur around his eyes. With his tail folded up over his stomach and his legs drawn up to his chest he made a latticework of his arms, rested his forehead on the top hand and cried into the darkness created within the tangle of limbs. Tears weren't forthcoming in his nature, but now Slav sobbed heavily as his mind let loose the pained emotions he had held back for so long. There was the stark terror of losing first his family to the Altean invaders with their notoriously nicknamed 'brain drainers', then his home world which fell to ruin after its conversion into a mining colony stripped the planet of its resources. He'd been too busy surviving to cry then. There was the raw hatred that was born that day and grew with each atrocity he witnessed. There was the loneliness he had never grown accustomed to, burning worse than ever now that one of the very few people he could call a friend was somewhere between life and death.
He wasn't sure how long he sat there, though he assumed it was quite some time judging by the prickly nerves in his legs and tail. Finally as one of the camp's surgeons stepped out into the waiting room followed closely by the head nurse Slav stood and numbly limped over to meet them, noticing they were both freshly washed and wearing new scrubs. That was never a good sign. Usually after treating typical battle injuries they thought nothing of a few inevitable bloodstains. Crisp linen and clean skin meant they'd splattered in bodily fluids.
The doctor thanked him for rescuing his teammate in such good time, as everyone knew the astronomical distances on these missions severely reduced one's chances of surviving an injury.
Slav impatiently waved away the formalities. "Well? How is he?"
She went on to describe the surgical procedure with several anatomy terms his tech-minded brain didn't quite understand. When he stared blankly she explained, "He maintained good vitals during the surgery, I'll have you know. He's a fighter. The protective vest absorbed most of the plasma's heat. However it was still enough to burn through the underlying tissue. It destroyed one of the lobes of his left lung. Any deeper, though, and it would've been his heart. Parts of him were scorched that needed to be cut out."
"As well as parts of the protective vest that melted into the wound," the nurse added along with a morbid shudder.
The doctor shot her a sideways glare and went on, "After the debris was removed we took various stem cell samples and placed him in stasis. Once the replacement tissues are well established they will be grafted onto the wound, then an additional recovery period is necessary. This will require quite some time in the cryopod."
"And he will live?"
"There's always a minimal chance that something could go wrong-"
"Yes, I know that," Slav said haughtily.
"-but he should be past the worst of it."
Slav heaved a sigh of relief. "I want to see him."
"If you insist. However I must warn you that he still looks quite gruesome. He will for a while."
"I was up to my wrists in gore trying to hold the man together," he waved his hands for emphasis, the white fur of the topmost pair still stained rusty red despite rigorous washing. "I can handle seeing what's left."
With that he pushed through the doors into the darkened recovery room. The last of the nurses hurried out, leaving him alone in the green gloom. Warm light from the culture tables lit his path. It was odd and a little sickening to see opaque dishes that contained pieces of his friend, sheets of colorful tissue fed by heat and gaseous tubes.
The air whirred faintly around the operational pod at the far end of the room. Even when unconscious Sven's tall stature was slightly threatening from inside the chamber. He was a large creature especially to Slav, who stood before his lifeless form scrutinizing the neatly looped sutures running in a sunken diagonal gash across the human's chest. The fluid suspension within the tank had nourished the man so that his face no longer looked shriveled. The life support monitors beeped and the vital rhythms were even. He was in pieces for now, but he would be whole again.
Rather, as whole as he could ever be. Slav saw that he was fixed with a prosthetic right arm just below the shoulder. He had noticed the cybernetic hand from time to time when Sven used it to interface with certain computer programs, though he usually chose to keep it gloved. Slav never asked about it and until now he never realized how much of the arm was missing, just as he realized that he knew very little about the human. They had always seemed comfortable working together in the present, not having to look backward.
He placed a hand on the warm glass, his mind at ease for once. No probabilities, no numbers racing around. Only quiet restored confidence in his calculations. Though it may take longer than expected, though there were unforeseen hardships and this day was disastrous, the Alteans had lost their chance at absolute domination.
With a breath of strength Slav breathed a command between himself and his friend, "This is the reality where everything turns out fine."
++End++