A/N: So this sort of has no set timeline in regards to the show, but I would say it happens after Lance is attacked by Sendak, but before Shiro is kidnapped and swapped out with the clone.
"I can't believe I got stuck cleaning the healing pods!" Keith groaned as he looked the machine in question up and down. Pidge glanced at him from across the room and rolled her eyes. She was trying to work and Keith's constant whining had definitely been making that a lot harder.
"Maybe if you stopped complaining and actually started doing some work it wouldn't seem so bad." She told him shortly, adjusting the glasses on her face. Keith turned to look at her then, using this as another distraction to delay his chores. He walked over to where Pidge's computer was synced up with the control panel on one of the cryopods.
"What are you even doing in here?" He asked, picking up one of the wires and examining it before he let it fall back into place again. This struck a nerve with Pidge, she was normally very patient, but she couldn't stand when people touched her stuff.
"I'm trying to see if there's a way to speed up the healing time on the pods." She sighed, trying to dumb down the science of it for Keith. "It's great that we have the pods, but do you remember how long it took for Lance to heal after he got hurt in that fight with Sendak?"
"I remember." Keith said too quickly. He liked Lance, a lot, but hadn't worked up the courage to tell him and he thought the rest of the team was too oblivious to notice his secret crush since he was always arguing with the boy in question over something stupid. The week Lance had been in the cryopods was one of the longest weeks of Keith's life. He constantly went into the room to check on Lance and make sure his vitals were stable and that the strange technology hadn't done anything to hurt him. Pidge pulled Keith out of his thoughts by continuing her explanation.
"If one of us gets hurt in a fight and needs a pod to get better, the Galra might not always wait a week to attack again. The faster we can safely heal each other, the better it'll be in the long run." She shrugged like the idea should have just been common sense.
"Well, I guess that's a good point." Keith mused, thinking about it a little more as he moved to look over Pidge's shoulder at the computer screen. "So how does it work?" He asked, raising an eyebrow at the formulas and sequences Pidge was going over. He was definitely more of a pilot than a mathematician.
"I just started out a couple of days ago, I'm in the early stages of gathering the information I need to- what are you doing?" Pidge's eyes followed Keith as he walked around her to the pod.
"I'm just looking." He answered as he peeked inside the pod at all the flashing buttons. Pidge pinched the bridge of her nose, she was over it.
"Keith! Just go back to cleaning like you're supposed to be doing. You've been down here for an hour and haven't done a single thing yet!"
"So? I'm not hurting anything." Keith retorted, circling around the outside of the pod, hanging on one of the bars with one hand as he let himself pivot around it. The simple action in itself would have been enough to make Pidge stop working in favor of finding Shiro to come pull some law and order on Keith, but to make matters worse Keith's foot caught on a wire as he came back around. He threw his arms out to catch himself before he fell, his hand falling to press a million different buttons before he fell into the pod and the glass came down. Pidge's eyes went wide then and she instantly abandoned her laptop and rushed to the glass. Keith pounded on it, fear in his normally hard eyes as he realized he couldn't get it open.
"Keith!" Pidge tried to press the release button, but nothing happened. She pressed her palms against the glass and tried to get Keith's attention. "I'm going to get you out! Don't worry!" She promised him, though he couldn't hear anything through the glass.
"Get me out of here! Let me out!" Keith screamed, suddenly starting to feel very sleepy. Slowly he stopped banging on the glass and his frantic cries became faint mumbles until they stopped all together and he was asleep.
Pidge rested her head against the glass once Keith slumped over, she was going to be in a world of trouble over this if she didn't get it figured out. She took a minute to collect herself before she started trying to figure out what sequences Keith had plugged into the machine, but she was met with her first obstacle right away… Keith had crashed her computer by entering so many codes at once. Pidge groaned, this couldn't possibly get any worse. She spent hours trying to get her computer back up and running, but she'd lost what she'd been working on that day. Of course she had backups from the previous day, but she'd lost her progress from that point on and would have to start the day's work all over again just to catch up to where she was before Keith fell.
Hours into Pidge trying to retrace her work the cryopod hissed and she looked up, she hadn't been expecting the machine to let Keith out any time soon. She wasn't going to miss the opportunity to get her friend out though, she hurried to the pod and her heart lurched when she saw Keith. The boy had been shrunken down to the size of a toddler, maybe four years old. Little Keith yawned and rubbed the sleep out of his eyes, not yet aware of what was happening as Pidge took him out of the pod before the glass closed again and she couldn't get to him.
"Keith?" She asked, holding her breath as she waited for a response. The boy blinked up at her and his face contorted into one of fear, tears prickling at his eyes. He had no idea who Pidge was and he was scared. Pidge cringed a little as he started crying, she was definitely not the right person to be left in charge of kids. "Shh! Keith it's okay!" She tried frantically, scooping him up and bouncing him on her hip to hopefully get him to calm down a little bit. It took a few minutes to get him to stop crying and as soon as he did Pidge hurried around the castle to look for the others, she needed help on this one. When she finally found everyone they were all sitting down in the common room doing various things. Shiro was talking to Allura about how Altean Crystals worked, Hunk and Coran were swapping recipes for the space goo, and Lance was trying to teach the mice how to do a few new tricks. When Pidge walked in all eyes turned to her as she set Keith down. The poor boy looked terrified as the five sets of new eyes landed on him. He sniffed hard and rubbed his eyes as tears pricked at them again. Lance frowned and immediately went to him, crouching down beside him. Sure Keith was his rival, but he hated to see a child upset.
"Hey buddy, it's okay. Please don't be sad." He whispered, running a hand through Keith's hair, he knew how to care for children because of all the time he spent looking after his siblings and cousins back at home. Keith sniffled and hurried into Lance's arms, hugging him hard as he cried. Lance wrapped the little boy up tight and looked at Pidge asking the question everyone else wanted to know the answer to. "What happened?"
