Not Gonna Die, Skillet.

Christ, I swear I barely blink and a month passes. Yet it also feels like a thousand years.

This was a fun chapter for me to write, mostly bc it's from Matt's perspective and is a flashback chapter, which are always fun to play with. Tw for mentions of blood and injuries.

Galra Headquarters. October 28th, 2014. 7:13 am.

Matt woke up with a headache that felt more like a hangover and his wrists tied to a pole over his head. For a moment, he sank under the pain of his migraine, let it wash over him enough to wake him up fully. He wished he had his medication.

Foregoing that, he pushed the pain back as much as he could and cracked open one eye, taking in his surroundings without alerting anyone that he was up. Wherever he was, it was probably the Galra's doing, and he could only hope his dad or Shiro had gotten away with the intel they'd had before he was captured.

That thought was wiped out when he turned his gaze to the right and found his father chained up next to him. Instead of his hands over his head, like Matt's, his were cuffed at his hips to a bar in the wall. Shiro was on the floor several paces away, slumped against the wall with his arms strapped in a painful way behind him. There was a long, rigid cut across his nose that hadn't been there the last time Matt saw him.

He took a breath and shut his eyes, tilting his head back against the wall. His arms were numb from being up for so long, and his legs ached. He had no idea on the time, no idea on the date, no clue where he was. They were undercover, and their check in wasn't until Saturday. No one would miss them for at least four days, if it had only been one day since they were ambushed.

Matt huffed and clenched his fists, tried to regain some feeling in his fingers.

Ambushed.

One misstep, one guard that saw their pickup truck one too many times in the area and got nervous. It didn't matter that Sam was police chief, didn't matter that Shiro was in prime condition and police captain, didn't matter that Matt was the smartest person in Altea and had taken every technological precaution. That one mistake cost them their whole mission, and it might end up costing them their lives.

He was 23.

Had a sister. A mom. Maybe a shot at a boyfriend, if he played his cards right with that cute guy at Best Buy and didn't break another standing display.

And he was going to die in a fucking Galra prison.

The whimper slipped out before he could stop it and Matt shut his mouth, pressed his lips tight.

"Matt?"

It was Shiro, soft. Matt opened his eyes and blinked through the tears to find Shiro looking out the cell door. "Shiro?"

Shiro looked at him sideways, smiled in sympathy. "It'll be okay. We'll get out."

"We don't have check in for days, Shiro, no one knows where we are."

Shiro nodded and tried to adjust his right arm, hissing as it twisted the wrong way. When he shifted, Matt could see the long, jagged cut that ran down it. Dried blood clung to the sleeves of Shiro's shirt, sealing the fabric to the wound. The inside was a nasty, pus filled trench, brown on the edges and seeping. He almost gagged. "What the fuck?"

Shiro's lips twisted. "Got me while I was trying to get the information away. They wanted all three of us. Don't know why."

Matt snorted, dry. Tried to avert his gaze from the cut but kept drifting back to it. "I can think of a couple."

Shiro's gaze searched him for a moment, settled on his jaw. "Your face okay?"

"Rude."

"You know what I mean," Shiro said, rolling his eyes.

Honestly, Matt had no idea what he was talking about. If there was something on his face, he couldn't feel it. Certainly couldn't see it. His arms and legs were screaming and his brain was trying to pickaxe it's way out of his skull. Whatever was on him was nothing compared to that. "Probably," he settled.

Shiro hummed and tested his restraints again, this time with his left arm. His nose still wrinkled in pain and for a second he went cross-eyed, staring down the length of his nose at the cut there. It would have been comical, if not for how obviously it hurt him. After a second of processing, he looked over at Sam. "Commander Holt?"

No response. "Dad?" Matt tried, keeping his voice low.

Still nothing, so Matt reached out a foot to try and poke his father. He was just barely too far away, just out of reach, which somehow didn't surprise Matt in the slightest. There was no way he'd be chained up if he wasn't alive, but the lack of response still made Matt panic. "What do we do?" he asked, dragging his eyes away from his father and back to Shiro.

Shiro opened his mouth, shut it again with an audible click. He straightened as much as he could, jutted his jaw out. Matt followed his gaze to the door and instantly stood up, ignoring the shooting pain in his wrists as the Galra opened their cell door.

"Took 'em long enough," the left one sneered. He was tall, one of the tallest men Matt had ever seen in his life. He had to duck to get into the cage. "That one's not up yet. Wake him."

The woman next to him was much shorter, barely coming up to his chest, but somehow she was scarier than the man. She held herself with an air about her, like she knew everything and wasn't afraid to show it. Like she'd let you have your fun, but shoot you in the head without thinking. Her hair was cropped close to her head, and there was a knife strapped to her thigh wrapped in cloth. She wore plainclothes, like she had been out grocery shopping and then gone on a murder spree.

When she looked at Matt, something in her eyes caught him. They were almost…sympathetic? They hardened instantly, but for that brief second, she'd let her guard down for him. As she started for Sam, Matt found his voice. "Don't touch him," he croaked.

The man smirked. An actual smirk, a facial expression Matt rarely saw expressed. "Aw, cute. You think he has a say."

"Shut up, Darkotta," the woman snapped. The way he shut his mouth told Matt that this woman outranked him, even if he did try to order her around. "Unstrap the captain, check that wound. It should have been treated by now. Don't need Zarkon's intel dying of infection, now do we?"

Darkotta blanched and instantly moved to Shiro's side, avoiding his kicking feet. Focused on them, Matt didn't see the woman until she was right there, reaching up to unlock his wrists with a touch as gentle as his mother's. "Help me with your father," she said, and though it sounded like an order out loud, her face spoke volumes over it.

She didn't want to hurt them. Matt wasn't sure if he was being optimistic or naïve, but this woman, in some way, was on their side. He lowered his arms slowly, cringing at the feeling of blood returning to them, and rubbed his hands down his legs to get some feeling back. He looked to the door, once.

"Don't try it," she warned. "There's guards up and down the halls."

And it was phrased like a threat, but to Matt it sounded like a warning. So he turned to his father, knelt and cupped his face while the woman went to work on his cuffs. "Dad? Dad, it's me. Matt. Wake up. Please."

He tapped at his cheeks gently, and a weight fell from his chest as his father grunted and screwed his eyes up. He wasn't THAT old, but for a scary second, Matt was sure his father was pretty much dead. His eyes opened behind his glasses – cracked in one corner – and he squinted at Matt. "Matt? Where…?"

The woman grabbed Sam by the arm and hauled him to his feet, leaving Matt to scramble up after him and glare at the woman. "Don't you dare-"

Darkotta whipped him back by the shoulder before Matt even realized he was storming to the woman. His skull cracked against the wall and Matt whimpered, clutching at his scalp. The room spun around him, and he was dimly aware of Shiro straining against his cuffs, his wound open and bleeding like it was fresh.

"Darkotta!" the woman snapped. "One piece!"

"Zarkon said one piece, not unharmed," Darkotta growled. He started for Matt, clearly pissed off.

Through a haze, Matt watched the woman reach behind her back. Pull out a shotgun. Shoot it. It only registered what happened when Darkotta pitched forward and crumbled to the ground, a hole in the back of his head. He blinked once. Twice. Stared at the body. Promptly twisted to the side and vomited.

Cause yeah, he was an officer on the police force. But he was the tech guy, the one people went to if they wanted to track a van, find a hideout, locate a missing person with the last spot on their cellphone. He didn't go out in the field often, and he'd certainly never seen anyone murdered in front of him like that.

The next thing he was aware of was his father hovering over him, hands on his back. The woman was there, watching two other Galra drag the body out like it was nothing. Another was guarding Shiro, still strapped to the damn wall.

She turned back to Matt, and there it was, one more time – sympathy. Or maybe that was the throbbing pain in the back of his head moving up to join his migraine. "Sorry about that," she said, with not a single ounce of sincerity in her voice. "Couldn't have him harming any of you. He's always been out of line. Zarkon would have done the same. I just did it more quickly than he would."

I didn't torture him was what Matt heard. Somehow, that only made him feel more sick. He pressed a hand to his mouth, used his other to grip his father's shoulder. "What…what does he want?" he finally asked. "With us?"

The woman's eyes – Matt couldn't figure out if they were blue or purple or some weird in between – hardened. "You tell me," she said, crossing her arms, glancing back at the ongoing cleanup. "You three were the ones caught monitoring us. Sloppy."

She sounded disappointed, like she was upset they got caught. Like they were pathetic for it. Matt flushed under her scowl and looked back down, straight at his vomit. He grimaced at the sight of it and turned away, leaning on his father for support. There seemed to be an agreement between the three of them – the lady let Matt and his father be together, and she didn't kill them.

A fair agreement if anything.

"Captain," said another woman at the door.

The first woman turned away from Matt and Sam and saluted the officer, who saluted back. "Acxa. Report?"

Acxa frowned, lowered her arm. "Zarkon has returned from the mid-town front. He's stationing your son there. And he wants to see you."

Ah. That explained the sympathy. This lady had a son. Probably close to Matt's age, or maybe Pidge's age, if he was getting a job. They trained them young here, apparently.

His gut twisted at the thought of Pidge, and Matt resolved then and there that he wasn't spilling anything, no matter how much they pried. His sister would not get caught up in the middle of it, not if he could help it.

"He's upset, I take it."

"Pissed, ma'am."

The woman scoffed and turned back to Matt and Sam, nodding her head. "Come on. Acxa, take Captain Shirogane to the med bay, please? I'd like for him to not be bleeding all over the floor if we can help it."

Acxa waved over two other guards, and together they got Shiro up off the floor, arms still twisted behind his back. He locked eyes with Matt, made it very clear – if they saw the chance, go. Don't wait for him. Get out.

Matt didn't plan on obeying that order. Not that he thought he could get out anyway – he wasn't a fighter, he was a hacker. The Galra didn't have use for people who didn't fight. He was either going to survive the night and become a torture toy for police information, or he was about to die.

The woman led him and Sam down the hall. Despite the fact that it was only her and one other guard, Matt didn't dare think of trying to fight back. Based on the way his father wasn't reacting, he knew he was thinking the same. She'd taken out one of her own methodically. Cold. With little hesitation.

Still, something about her gave Matt pause. She gripped his arm tightly, but not tight enough to hurt. Her pace was quick, formal, but slow enough that Sam could keep up while still chained at the ankles and limping from a cut that Matt hadn't noticed. Her thumb, pressed against the fat of his bicep, rubbed in a circle almost subconsciously.

How a parent could work somewhere like this, Matt had no idea. You had to be cold blooded to work for the Galra. In another dimension, they were probably reptiles. Fish, maybe.

The thought of the Galra as fish, flopping around the floor, almost made Matt smile.

And then they were pushed through a non-descript door and into what was clearly an office. Behind the desk at the other side sat Zarkon.

Matt had never met the man. Didn't need to. The gang was notorious in the country as being one of the most deadly, rising up from good deeds to petty crime to straight murder and homicide. His picture was in every precinct in the state, in hundreds across the country, even across the globe.

He stayed out of police grip only because of the hold he had on individuals, because he was notorious for not caring who he killed, because he had a way with words. And money.

"Ah. Commander. Officer," Zarkon said. He rose, and rose, and rose. If Matt had thought Darkotta was tall, this man was a mountain in both height and size. His shoulders were broad, his arms jacked. His hands were the size of Matt's face. He wore a suit, cut perfectly, because of course he would. He walked around the desk and sat on the edge, like this was just a casual get together before brunch and he had some fun news to tell them. His gaze was piercing. "Glad to see you both made it in one piece. Captain Shirogane?"

"In med, sir," the woman said, standing up a little straighter. "He was injured in the initial confrontation and none of the guards thought to see it fit to check on him. It's a severe injury. Could cause lasting damage."

Zarkon pursed his lips. "They used the serrated poison?"

Poison?

"Yes sir."

Zarkon hummed. Matt was still stuck on the word "poison," almost missed him speaking again. "Kill those guards. And find whoever used that weapon before initial testing approved it. I want him cut so far down he doesn't make it out of the canteen doing dishwashing for the rest of his duty here."

Another guard left the room quickly and Zarkon finally turned his attention back to Sam and Matt. "These two are injured as well."

"Nothing serious, sir. A quick wash and clean up and they'll be perfectly fine."

"Hmm. Good. You are dismissed, Krolia."

The woman – Krolia, Matt amended in his head – bowed just a little at the hip and then turned. Made eye contact with him. One more time, he saw it – that flash of sympathy, turning quickly to hardened determination. She left the room quickly and Matt swallowed, looking back to Zarkon.

The man was eyeing him and his father like they were pieces of steak he planned to have for dinner. When he smiled, it sent chills down Matt's spine.

"Gentlemen. I'm dying to hear all about your time working for the Altean Police Department."