This is basically stemming from the sole idea of "put Shiro in a scenario where his arm isn't working" and see where it goes from there.
Please enjoy!
It was cold. That was the first thing that Shiro noticed. It was cold and silent and dark as he wrenched his eyes open and was met with blackness in front of his nose. He took a ragged breath, his lungs wheezing as though they hadn't been used in centuries. He breathed out; the air hit the glass on his visor and fogged up immediately.
Next came a cough as Shiro forced his lungs to get back to work. His body protested by sending sharp spikes of pain up into his chest, and it suddenly became a battle to try and even suck in air. His visor was closed, and Shiro didn't dare open it until he could get his bearings. He had no idea if opening his helmet would cause him to collapse in on himself. Space was a freaking nightmare when it wanted to be.
The memories of what had happened to get himself into this position were hazy at best, because a lot of things had gone down. It was coming back to him in chunks, but at least it was coming back to him, and Shiro was undyingly grateful for that, at least.
Voltron…a giant robot…the Black Lion...wings… a blazing sword…a lot of pain…and suddenly he was weightless, as if he'd been ejected into the void. He must've passed out somewhere around that time, because he really couldn't remember much past that. The last thing that he could recall were Keith and Lance screaming in one ear and Hunk and Pidge screaming in the other, and then…nothing. Shiro wasn't sure if he was relived about that revelation or absolutely terrified by it.
His gasping finally under control, Shiro took a deep breath to steady himself. The cold air seemed to go directly back into his brain, and the more he breathed in, the straighter Shiro could feel himself think. It was calming, reassuring. Shiro clung to that feeling like a life preserver.
Mentally, Shiro began checking himself. It was strange, because he felt both weightless and pinned down. He couldn't move his legs at all (though he could curl his toes, the only conformation that his bottom half was indeed still attached to his body), and his left arm barely shifted in place. His right arm was unresponsive, which was probably the most infuriating. It would have been so easy to activate his hand and just cut through whatever situation he was in, but no. it just had to be annoying. Shiro bit back an exasperated sigh and continued to assess his situation.
Curious, Shiro made a fist with his left hand and felt his hand curl around something. Even though his fingers were numb and he was absolutely freezing, he could still feel the cold wetness through his gloved hand. When he released it, the substance he had held still lingered on his hand, bitter and stinging. It crunched too. It almost felt like-
Snow, Shiro thought, amazed. I'm buried under snow. That explained why he felt so buoyant, yet also felt buried at the same time.
Immediately, he had to fight the urge to dig straight up as fast as he could. That was Garrison survival training 101; never dig straight down, because you'll bury yourself into your grave. Instead, Shiro mustered up a wad of saliva and spit it as straight as possible. It hit the front of his visor and slid horizontal across the glass to the right, almost perfectly tracing the reflection of the large scar that ran across the bridge of his nose.
That meant that the way up was above him on his left. Well, perfect, because his left arm seemed to be his best working arm at the moment. Shiro shook his shoulder to dislodge some of the looser snow around him and started digging. It wasn't long before the wet powder had seeped through his hand and even up into his arm, making the experience go from uncomfortable to excruciating in a matter of minutes. The only positive aspect of his situation was that the snow Shiro was clearing wasn't tightly packed, or else he could say his prayers and succumb to being the first human that actually got frozen in an ice block.
After several minutes of digging and wiggling, Shiro finally felt his hand break the surface. He felt around on the top of the snow and, pressing his hand as far into the powder as he dared, heaved himself up to the surface with a grunt. It felt very much like pulling himself out of deep water, mentally and physically. Shiro crawled away from the hole that his body had made and collapsed on his back to stare up at the sky, weak and panting.
He took off his helmet first, letting his shock of white hair fall across his eyes. When he breathed, he watched it stir slightly, then settle, as if it too was tired from the ordeal. It was a battle to keep his eyes open because it seemed that his eyelids wanted nothing more than to close for a couple of months. His helmet rolled out of his hands, but Shiro couldn't care less. Now that he wasn't in danger of suffocating, Shiro felt oddly ecstatic to be surrounded by snow, to be laying in it again, to feel the chill work its way up the back of his neck. He couldn't remember the last time he'd seen rain, never mind snow. It seemed like a blessing he would never see again, even if it annoyed him with the various ways it impeded his life back on Earth.
God, he missed Earth.
Shiro closed his eyes at last, suddenly feeling weighed down all over again. He exhaled, knowing that his breath was heading to the atmosphere of whatever planet he was stuck on. His finger stroked the snow under his hand, missing the sensation like an old friend.
If it were up to him, Shiro would've just laid down in the snow for the rest of his life until he shriveled up and died, but his damn survival instincts moved for him instead. Shiro rolled over and pushed himself onto his knees, taking in his surroundings for the first time.
Wherever he was, it wasn't Earth. It wasn't a planet he had been to, either. Hell, it didn't even look like a planet. Planets had life on them, but this? Snow stretched out as far as his eye could see, whiting out the landscape across every horizon. There wasn't a cloud in the sky, and Shiro had a creeping suspicion that snow was a common occurrence on this place. The terrain on all sides of him was uneven, hills and mountains raising out of the ground like the teeth of a giant beast. Shiro himself had crawled out of a mountainside, and unfolding below him was a great valley that looked more like a sea than a landscape. It was nighttime, and green and purple hues colored the night sky above him. There were multiple moons that hung in the air, some close, some far. Shiro counted eight in his view, but he suspected there might have been one or two hiding behind one of those peaks. With no light source anywhere on this planet, the stars had come out in full force, each a tiny pinprick on the dark canvas.
When he'd boarded the castleship God knows how long ago, Shiro had gone straight to Coran and started to keep a list of the constellations he saw in the different galaxies he'd encountered in case he ever got lost and needed to get his bearings. Well, here was a perfect opportunity to put his new knowledge into action, and he was drawing blanks. No matter how hard Shiro stared or squinted or traced the paths between the stars in his mind, he couldn't find any pattern that seemed familiar to him.
A list of questions sprang up in his mind. First, where was he? Second, how did he get here? Third, what the hell had happened? Forth, what happened to everyone else? Fifth, where did he go from here?
As he sat there pondering those questions, something odd struck Shiro. He whipped around, studying his surroundings. His hole that he had emerged from was the only blemish across miles and miles of snow as far as the eye could see. There were no ships in the sky, not even Galra cruisers (not that Shiro was exactly eager to be hitching a ride on a ship that would surely land him back into enemy hands). Even worse, the Black Lion was nowhere to be seen. That was what burned a hole in the pit of Shiro's stomach, because he'd spent so long just trying to get the Black Lion to trust him. He'd finally done that, and now everything had slipped right out of his hands.
Oh God, what if Zarkon had the Black Lion?
Shiro stubbornly pushed the thought into the back of his mind, because he knew that nothing good would come from dwelling on it.
Sighing, Shiro lifted his nose back to the stars. They were quite lovely. Bright specks on light that, despite all odds, shone through light years of distance. It was oddly encouraging. Shiro used to hear philosophic shit like that all the time from Matt when he was dragged to the roof of the Garrison to go stargazing. Earth views were never as good as these were.
There was that aching nostalgia again. That longing for Earth that burned a hole through his heart each time he thought about it, until his blood would simply stop pumping. Shiro shoved that thought to the back of his mind too. It wouldn't do him any good to focus on the past.
Shiro allowed himself one more bitter sigh before standing. As he did so, his right arm swung limply at his side. Confused, Shiro shook it. It jostled a little at his side, but that was about it. He tried activating his hand, but it remained motionless.
"You can't be serious," Shiro whispered to himself as he grabbed his right wrist with his good hand and held it up to his nose.
When he was given this prosthetic replacement of the three-forths of his right arm that had been taken away by the Galra, it had worked so seamlessly that there would be some days that Shiro would forget that his arm was almost entirely mechanical now. Now was not the time to be appreciating that technological wonder. Shiro tried flexing his arm, bending his elbow, even curling his fingers. But his mechanical arm refused to respond, as if it were dead in his hand.
For the first time since waking up, Shiro felt a genuine stab of terror. His dominant hand—not to mention his only means of self-defense—was now completely useless, more of a liability now than anything. He let it drop out of his grip, and it fell back to his side and danced in the air like a wind chime. He didn't even feel anything, which gave Shiro two scenarios. Either his brain's neurological connection to his hand had been severed when he landed on the planet, or his arm had poo-pooed on him at the worst time and needed to be replaced. Neither was a fabulous solution to his problem when he was stranded alone.
Oh shit, where were the others?
Shiro seized his helmet and stuffed it back on his head (albeit awkwardly; it was hard to do with only one hand) and turned on his radio. His visor's screen came to life, blinking and beeping in his ears as it searched for a signal.
"Princess?" Shiro croaked into his coms. "Keith? Pidge? Hello? Is anyone there?"
But only static greeted him.
Fighting down panic, Shiro switched to a new station to increase his frequency and began again. "Is there anyone out there? I've been stranded on this…this planet. I don't know where I am. Please, if you hear this…please send help."
Halfway through his broadcast, he wanted to curse into his radio because if the Galra were listening, then they'd be descending on his location with outstretched talons. He'd given only the bare minimum of details, but nothing that would help get him off the planet. Shiro wanted to pound the ground and scream his frustrations to the sky, but he was down to one good arm. It had been a long time since Shiro had felt this irrationally angry, and even though it was mostly at himself, he couldn't help but think back to what he could remember of the battle.
There had been several screams, and he could pick out each of the other paladins by voice alone. There was another scream, too, one besides that. It was female. Allura? Coran had mentioned that her life-force was tied to the Lions the first day that she had met them. Perhaps she was feeling their pain? Could the Lions even feel pain? They were machines. Sentient machines, but Shiro had only ever worked with a machine that was built for a single purpose. Go here. Do that. He was still grappling with the idea that his spaceship could now communicate with him, never mind the idea that it could think and act of its own accord.
Before he could consider it for much longer, Shiro was literally slapped out of his thoughts when a large gust of wind hit him in the face and nearly knocked him over. He had to stagger backwards a few steps, his mechanical arm swinging uselessly.
All of the sudden, the cold weather seemed to catch up to Shiro. He became painfully aware of how little shelter he'd seen before him, and how little warmth his paladin armor actually provided him. His hand and feet were numb, and Shiro dully wondered whether frostbite was setting in. How long had he been lying there? Long enough for snow to trap him a few feet below the ground, apparently.
It then struck him that if it had snowed enough to cover him, then it could very much snow again. He couldn't walk through a snowstorm like this, with his body temperature already dangerously low.
"Move," Shiro said softly. He treated it like a command, hoping that it would trigger some sort of Pavlovian impulse in him, but his feet stood firmly rooted to the ground.
Where would he go?
Shiro stared at the great expanse in the valley below him, then back towards the peak of the mountain he was stranded on. Heat rose, so if he went upwards he might just warm up a little. Plus, there was definitely nothing for him if he went down. At least if he headed up and over the mountain, Shiro could find something that would be better suited to his chances for survival.
His mind made up, Shiro turned and began his long trudge up the mountainside. He passed the hole he was buried in without a second glance backwards.
The road upwards was shaky and precarious. Shiro didn't realize just how debilitating it was to be down an arm, and his lack of coordination paired beautifully with the waist deep snow that seemed to pull him down further with every step. He found himself wobbly and uncontrolled, so much so that he snapped his visor fully closed. The last thing he wanted was to die from suffocation because he fell face first into the snow and couldn't free himself. What a way to go that would be.
The road was long, the travel draining. Each step sapped his energy and stole his breath. The air fogged up his glass visor and made it nigh impossible to see because he was breathing so rapidly. He wheezing into the open coms he had left on, desperately hoping for something to replace the persistent static buzzing in his ears.
By the time Shiro reached the peak, he felt like he'd bee walking for hours and had nothing to show for it. When he turned around, he could still see the shifted snow where he had emerged, miles and miles away. Before him, more mountain peaks. There were several in the immediate distance, and more concealed in the mist behind them, silhouetted and hiding in the depths of the oddly colored sky. The tallest mountain before him had a divot in the side of it's tallest point, as if something had crashed right through the rock and left an exit wound in it's side. It wasn't pretty, and it wasn't comforting. A knot in Shiro's chest tightened, and his legs seemed to get weaker at the mere sight of it. "Jesus…" he breathed, half in awe and half in despair.
"Hello?"
A voice on the end of his coms nearly cause him to jump out of his armor.
Shiro felt his pulse start racing, almost not believing he'd heard something. A voice, out here, in the middle of the galactic equivalent of Antarctica? But before he could even consider the idea that he was hallucinating due to exhaustion, the voice popped up again, faint and overlaid with static. "Hello? Does anyone copy?"
"Hello? H-hey, who's there? Please, come in," Shiro practically yelled into the radio, all pretenses forgotten.
There was a pregnant pause before the voice piped up again. "Hello? Who is this? What are you doing here?"
Ignoring the voice's demands, Shiro instead pressed forward almost rabidly. "Who is this? Are you Galra?"
"Galra?" the voice on the other end of the line was very feminine sounding. "No, I'm not Galra. Are you Galra?"
"No," Shiro answered.
"How can I know for sure?"
"You can't," Shiro admitted, "and as much as it sounds absurd, you're just going to have to take my word for it."
Another pause. "'Taking your word for it' isn't going to be enough for me to just outright trust you, you know."
Deep down, Shiro knew that the voice's uneasiness was completely justified, especially if they weren't Galra. However, he was far beyond the point of caring. He wasn't daring to let his only source of aid strand him in the middle of a wasteland. "Look, you live on this planet, right?" he waved his arm around even though he knew the voice couldn't see him. "And if I came here, I'd have to be on a ship. Have you seen any Galra cruisers enter this planet's orbit?"
"That's just it. We haven't seen any ships enter the planet's orbit," the voice said. "So either you appeared on this planet out of thin air, or you snuck your little battle cruiser past our radars and are looking to find my location right now."
The voice was not only being difficult—they were being secretive. They were very careful with their words, not letting an ounce of information that could be useful to Shiro be leaked out. It was enough to make him get to his knees and start begging. "You're right," Shiro said grudgingly. "All I remember was waking up, buried under snow so deep I could have made that my grave. I dug myself out and all I want is to find shelter before I freeze to death."
"Who are you?" the voice interjected, sounding dubious.
"Not Galra," Shiro repeated, stubbornness getting the better of him.
"I'm going to need a name before I even consider helping you, Mr. Not Galra."
Shiro cursed under his breath. The last thing he wanted to do was give his actual name and awake to find the Galra carrying him back to the gladiator pits. His mind raced before finally settling on the only answer he could think of; "You can call me Holt."
God, Matt was going to murder him if he found out he was using his last name as an alias. If I ever see Matt again, the irrational part of his brain (which, amazingly enough, was also the part of his brain that Shiro despised the most) told him.
"I can call you Holt," the voice mused. "I can only assume that isn't your actual name?"
Despite his bleak-looking future, Shiro couldn't help but smirk. "You asked for a name. You never asked for my name."
For a while, there was only static. It droned on for so long that Shiro thought he'd chased away his only chance at rescue for good before the voice returned, sounding equally as smug. "Well, Holt, if that's the case, my radar station is classified as number 959229. So that's what you can call me."
"That's a little long, don't you think?"
"Take it or leave it, Holt."
Desperation drove his next words out of his mouth before Shiro could stop them. "Listen…I-I was separated from my friends and I genuinely have no idea where I am. My arm is broken and my feet are going to freeze into solid blocks before the sun can even rise," Shiro broke off. "I can't make you trust me, but I need your help. Please."
The voice on the other end of his coms let out a pained noise, like it was thinking hard. "You really are in trouble, aren't you," it said. It wasn't an accusation, nor was it a taunt. It was just a statement. A defeated statement, like it pitied him.
"My right arm is a prosthetic, and I think it got broken when I landed here," Shiro confessed. "Please, I…you're the only person I've heard on this planet and I've been walking up the side of a mountain for an hour now, maybe longer. I have no idea what to do."
I have no idea what to do.
That thought hadn't crossed his mind since he was back in Galra captivity.
There was another long pause, and then…"Alright, I'll help you," the voice said, "but this better not be a mistake, Holt."
Shiro wanted to cry, but merely settled on a single "thank you" instead, nearly breathless with relief.
If the voice noticed his change in attitude, they ignored it. "Alright, Holt, I need you to take a good look around and tell me exactly what you see. I can't find you on my radars, which isn't necessarily a bad thing because these pieces of junk were built for detecting ships and not singular life forms. It's got a five hundred jurblash radius, so hey, maybe you're closer to salvation than you think."
Eyes cast to the horizon, Shiro began rattling off his surroundings. "I'm on top of a mountain and can see seven different peaks in front of me. Two of them are smaller than the other, and one of the taller ones has a chunk taken out of it's side-."
"That's it!" the voice interjected. "That mountain. Tell me, is the chuck missing on it's left or it's right side?"
"Right."
The voice was silent for a moment, and the only sound on the other end of the radio was that off furious typing and faint beeps. It continued on for a little while before the voice returned, sounding vexed. "Alright, Holt. I have good news, and I have bad news."
"I'll take the bad news first, if that's alright with you."
More typing. "The bad news is that there are more storms coming fast from the direction you just walked from. Big ones. You're going to need to find shelter, and you're going to need to find it fast, or else you really will get snowed into your grave."
Shiro grimaced; the option of racing for his life through waist-deep powder wasn't entirely a fun one. "And the good news?" he inquired dryly.
"Actually, there are two pieces of good news. If you're on the peak that I think you are, then you're about four hundred and ninety-three jurblashes away from my recon center, which falls just into my survival radius. Any further out, and we would be required to send a vessel to rescue you…and, well…that's kind of impossible right now."
"Wait, are you alone?" now it was Shiro's turn to interrupt, unable to bite back his astonishment.
"That's none of your business…but yes, I'm alone at the moment. Do you want to hear this other piece of good news?"
Shiro shrugged, and then remembered the voice couldn't see him. "Yeah. Give it to me."
"The other good news is that there are a couple of caves and natural shelters not too far from your position. I can guide you to them. If you hurry, you can take shelter in one of those until the storms pass and you can get moving again."
The prospect of a full-fledged plan, however brief it was, was like a breath of fresh air in Shiro's lungs. Eyes locked on the peak, Shiro took his first few steps forward. "Alright," he said, "I'm listening. Guide me through it.
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