I can't think of anything to say about this one haha, other than it has a good ending and was an interesting change of pace for me to write. Make sure you check the warnings, as always!

Day 15 - Magical Healing/Science Gone Wrong

Warnings: claustrophobia, blood, broken bones, mild body horror, mild gore, mild eye trauma (super mild, because eye trauma is a personal squick)

Keith had never had to go into a pod before. He had gotten plenty of bumps and bruises during his time in space, and even a few more serious wounds, but never anything bad enough that he couldn't patch it up himself. He had gotten pretty good at self first aid over the course of his life, especially while living in the desert.

And he was pretty happy about that. The thought of being locked in a pod, unconscious, completely helpless and unaware of what was happening to him and around him, made his stomach roll a bit. Obviously he'd never tell anybody that he was...not scared, definitely not scared, but...nervous about using a pod. That was something he'd just keep to himself.

But now...now he had no choice. And honestly, he didn't care. He was in so much pain, so disoriented, that he just let everybody strip off his clothes, wrestle him into a pod suit, and usher him straight to the pod without even a word of protest.

He had taken on a Galra commander by himself. He wasn't too proud to admit that he had lost miserably. The commander was huge, and he had managed to get a hold of Keith, wrapping one of his ginormous hands around his entire waist, before slamming him into a nearby wall. Repeatedly.

Pretty much everything on the right side of his body was broken and/or bleeding. Including his poor, cracked armor. His helmet had been knocked off, so his skull had taken plenty of damage, with blood still pouring down and sticking his eye shut even while the pod was prepped. He was pretty sure something in his face was broken, too. Maybe more than one something. It was difficult to separate one pain from another.

"Alright, lad, in you go."

Keith barely held in a yell as he was lifted in, managing to stifle it to a strangled groan.

"I know bud, I know." Shiro gave him a tight, worried smile. "You'll just go right to sleep now, and next thing you know you'll feel all better. Promise."

There was a momentary flutter in his stomach at the thought, but the idea of sleeping and no longer being in pain won out over his apprehension. As the glass slid shut, his other eye did, too.

He felt the blast of cold that filled the chamber.

He felt his body succumb to the gas that froze him in place.

He didn't fall asleep.

Any second now, he kept thinking. It'll happen soon. There's just a little delay that no one mentioned. Maybe they didn't remember. I probably won't remember any of this later, either.

But the longer his body remained paralyzed and his brain aware, the more panicked he became. And then the healing began.

You'd think that would be a good thing. Healing takes away the pain, right?

The first thing to start was his head. He hadn't been aware that the pain there could get any more intense until it did. Bone fragments started shifting, locking themselves back into place, and he could feel every little bit of it. He could feel the broken skin beginning to knit itself together, millimeter by millimeter.

He wanted to throw up. He couldn't. His body remained passive and completely out of his control, not responding in the least to his racing thoughts.

Why why why why why why why why why why why why why is this happening why did no one say this would happen this isn't supposed to happen is it this doesn't make any sense it hurts it hurts it hurts it hurts make it stop please make it stop Shiro help me get me out of here make it stop make it stop

But his body remained still through it all. He couldn't twitch a finger, couldn't open his eyes so that the others would know he was still awake. Were they still watching? Did they have any idea that something was wrong? For all he knew, he was alone, and he wouldn't be released from this nightmare until everything was healed.

Ribs were next. They slid slowly back into place, grinding against each other, slicing through muscle and tissue on their way. It hurt worse than anything he could have imagined.

His arm and shoulder healed simultaneously, but still took an eternity. That was the worst part, how agonizingly slowly everything went. A doctor setting a bone worked quickly. There was pain, yes, but it was a sharp spike followed by relief. This went on for ages, healing every little crack and tear along the way as each bone was dragged back to where it belonged.

The only thing worse than that was not even being able to scream.

He hadn't even realized anything was wrong with his knee until that got twisted and pulled straight again. The very last thing to heal was his face, starting with the bones in his cheek and around his eye, and ending with the eye itself, which was less excruciating in the pain sense and more in the fact that it felt like something was in his eye, pulling and probing and scratching, and he couldn't even lift his hand to rub at it.

The good news about the whole process was that once something was healed, the pain did ease, leaving him with less areas hurting than before.

But rather than feeling like a mere tick had gone by, he was aware of every single tick that passed for the entire two quintants that he was in the pod.

When the glass finally, finally opened and he stumbled out into Shiro's waiting arms, the first thing he did was open his eyes as wide as they could go, and open his mouth to suck in a lungful of fresh air. His body was his again. He could move.

The second thing he did was slump boneless to the floor, not even Shiro able to keep him upright. He buried his face into his arms to hide the tears that spilled over without his permission, but that did nothing for the way his entire body trembled and for the gasping sobs that escaped.

"Whoa, Keith! What's the matter? Are you still hurt?" Shiro's hands grasped his arms gently. "Talk to me, bud, what is it?"

He tried his best to get himself under control, hating the fact that he was breaking apart in front of everybody. The others probably didn't even think he was capable of crying before then. Lifting his head slightly, he wiped his face with the sleeve of the pod suit, then dropped his forehead back down onto his arms.

"I-it…" He swallowed. "It was awful."

"What do you mean?" He could hear the frown in Shiro's voice. "What was awful?"

"The p-pod."

A hand slid into his hair, cupping the back of his head. "I don't understand, bud."

"I was awake. The whole time."

Silence. Then, "What?"

Coran's voice broke into the conversation. "That's not possible. The first thing a healing pod does is to cryo-freeze its occupant. We saw it working ourselves!"

"It did freeze my body." Keith looked up finally, but couldn't quite bring himself to meet any of the several gazes that were on him. "Otherwise I would have been banging on the glass for someone to get me out of there. I couldn't...I couldn't move. But I was awake." For a while he had wondered if it was the same for everyone, if Shiro and Lance had refrained from telling him, knowing that he wouldn't want to go in. But eventually he had convinced himself that Shiro wouldn't do that to him, and it seemed he was right.

"You're telling us," Shiro began slowly, "that you've been completely awake and aware for two days, unable to move, while the pod healed all of those broken bones and everything?"

"Yeah," he whispered.

"That shouldn't be possible!" Coran repeated. "I've never heard of anything like it before! I can't imagine...unless…" He broke off into unintelligible mumbling, crossing to the pod's data screen and poking at it.

Hunk was next to speak up. "Keith...that sounds...terrifying."

Gritting his teeth, he tried for a small smile. "Yeah, it...it was." His brows pulled down. "I could feel all of it. All the bones moving, the skin and muscles and whatever going back together…" He shuddered, and if he wasn't mistaken, nearly everyone else in the room did, too. "I don't ever want to go back in a pod again."

Coran cleared his throat. "My boy, I'm afraid I have quite an apology to make." Keith looked up to see the advisor facing him again, but staring down at his feet. "It's, uh...well, we've never had someone of...mixed species use the healing pods before."

Keith shut his eyes. Of course. Of course it would come back to his Galra heritage.

"The data here indicates that the pod recognized you only as human, since it appears that most of your anatomy is, in fact, human. But the failure to account for the rest of your DNA is apparently where things went wrong. It obviously caused you great distress, and probably great pain, and...I'm terribly sorry, my boy. I should have taken more time to ensure that everything was set correctly at the beginning."

"It's not your fault, Coran," Pidge interrupted before Keith could open his mouth to say the same exact thing. She had shimmied her way between the advisor and the screen and was bending over it, the light reflecting off of her glasses. "This thing literally has no clue how to deal with mixed species." Looking over her shoulder at Keith, she smiled. "We'll work on that, starting right now."

"Well, still." Coran twiddled with his moustache nervously. "I should have known that already. I should have had it ready for Number Four before he needed it."

"It's alright. I forgive you." Keith mustered a smile, and Coran returned it brightly.

"Thank you, lad. Well, Number Five, are you ready to get tinkering?"

Pidge immediately launched into a longwinded explanation of her thoughts for the project, and Hunk quickly joined in. Shiro wrapped an arm around Keith's shoulders and pulled him in close.

"I'm really sorry you had to go through that. Looks like these three will have it all fixed for you if you ever need to go in again, though."

Keith tensed, glancing up at the still looming pod and swallowing hard. "Yeah. Well...I'm gonna...try really hard to not need it again."

Shiro squeezed him tighter. "That's a good idea, regardless."

A/N: Drop me a line and tell me what you think!