Disturb the Sound of Silence

Keith seemed a little surprised at what I had said. Honestly, I was kind of surprised I'd said it out loud. He pressed his lips together in a strange, uncomfortable expression. He looked at me for a tick or two. "Are you saying you care about me?" he asked, sounding almost confused.

"No!" I insisted quickly. "No. I just mean, well..." I think I was as uncomfortable as him at this point. I exhaled slowly. "What I'm saying is you've earned you earned your place on the team. And everyone on the team matters to me. None of us is expendable. And just 'cause you're a total doofus sometimes doesn't mean I can't respect you."

"Doofus? What are we, twelve?"

My eyes narrowed. "Just 'cause I respect you doesn't mean I won't hurt you." It was a joke. Mostly.

"How far away is your pod?" Keith asked, brushing aside my comment.

"The hike took three and a half vargas," I told him.

Keith nodded. "Go back to the pod and get Allura, the navicomputer, and any supplies you can carry."

For a second I thought about pointing out he wasn't the Black Paladin anymore; he couldn't just show up and start giving me orders. But I realized there was something more important for him to understand. "Um, Keith… Allura was hurt in the crash."

Keith frowned. "And you left her alone?"

My face felt warm. No one was going to accuse me of not looking after her. "It's not like I wanted to! But what's left of the pod wasn't going to keep us alive for long. I didn't have a choice."

Keith looked down. "Sorry, I didn't mean it like—I was just surprised."

"If it was up to me I'd never leave her alone."

He looked back at me and frowned slightly. "You say that about all the ladies."

Really? He was going to go there. "Dude, you know what I mean!"

For a microtick his lip twitched, almost like he was going to smile but never actually got there. "I know. You might do something stupid, but you'd do it for her."

"Exactly… w-wait, what?"

"How bad is she?"

"She says she's OK. But her leg is pretty messed up. There's no way she could walk this far."

"We don't have a choice then. We'll carry the power supply and few quintants of supplies back to your pod. Eventually we'll need to figure our way to get her back here."

"Why?" I asked.

"Unlike your pod, my fighter might actually fly again. Between the spares I have and what is left from your pod I think we could jury-rig new inlets."

I looked over at the crashed Galra fighter. Even if we could takeoff, the thing wouldn't hold together for long. "Uh, Keith, I hate to be a downer, but that thing isn't getting back to the Castle."

"There may be internal damage," Keith admitted. "The engines will probably fail before we get out of the Nebula. But it might get us far enough to find the cruiser.

Suddenly I understood. "And if we get to the cruiser, Allura might be able to power it up… and then we fly out of here in style." I gave him a half smile. "Not bad."

"It's not perfect," Keith admitted. "We don't know the condition of the cruiser, though I think we'll be better off aboard it than down here. The bigger problem is I've spent the last three quintants searching. That's why the location of the mine is so important."

"If we can connect your beacon's power supply to the navigation computer, we should be able to get that data," I said. I took a deep breath. "Which is, ya know, also assuming the ship was anywhere near the mine."

Keith shrugged. "I can't think of any reason for them to randomly mine the nebula they got stuck in. And if it was launched for defense, it shouldn't have ended up too far from the cruiser."

I had to give Keith some credit on the logic, but I still had one big question. "If the mine was near the cruiser… shouldn't we have detected it too?" After all, the ship—and its crystal-would be way bigger than the mine.

"You've seen what Altean technology can do, and this ship was advanced by their standards. Part of the reason the Galra are interested is the stealth technology they think it has."

I shuddered. If the ship really had that kind of tech, and the Galra got their claws on it, they might be able to sneak right up to the Castle and attack before we could even launch the Lions. Maybe Keith wanting to complete his mission so bad wasn't totally crazy.

I spent the next half varga disconnecting the power cell while Keith organized his supplies and made a make-shift sled out of a cargo container lid. It actually worked pretty well: with the two of us pulling we could move the heavy power cell without much trouble.

It was a long walk back to the Pod, and spending that much time alone with Keith was kind of weird. He's pretty quiet, which is normally a good thing since most of the time no one wants to hear what he has to say. But after a full varga of listening to nothing but the wind and our footsteps I started thinking some conversation would be nice.

Silence has a way of letting my thoughts wander. I couldn't help but wonder about Allura. She had seemed OK. She had said she was OK. But was she really OK? Would we get back and find her in pain, or passed out, or…

I looked over at Keith. He had his Blade mask covering his face, but it probably didn't make a difference. That dude has the most blank, hard to read expressions ever. I wondered how upset he was with me. I had shot him down and ruined his mission and stuff, but he should have been over that by then… right?

And then there was Keith's plan. The more I thought about it, the more things I realized that could go wrong.

In my free time I normally hang with Hunk and Pidge, who are definitely not quiet. Allura and Shiro are almost always up for a conversation. And Corran talks even if no one is listening… or there. The point is the silence was starting to drive me crazy.

"Keith?"

"What?"

"So, you've been doing a lot of missions with the Blade, huh?"

"Yeah."

"Any interesting stories?"

"No."

"Really?"

Keith turned to me, and I tried to imagine what he was doing under that weird mask. "Not that I can talk about." He looked ahead again.

So he wasn't about to spill any interesting details. But I wasn't ready to give up yet. Maybe something more mundane. "Is that mask comfortable? It looks comfortable."

Keith sighed. I think he realized I wasn't stopping. "If you're going to force a conversation, at least make it about something important."

"OK… so, the Cruiser. It got stuck, right?"

Keith nodded.

"So if Alteans couldn't get in unstuck… how do we?"

"We hope the cruiser has drifted out of whatever phenomenon stranded it, or that the phenomenon has weakened over the last ten thousand years."

Ten thousand years was a long time. Still, I was hoping for a plan B. "And if it hasn't?"

"We hope our friends find us before the Galra Empire does."


A/N: As always, thanks for taking the time to read. Please let me know what you think!