"This is the worst, Sam!" Lance sobbed and sobbed, and Sam's heart was breaking. "This is the worst. This is the worst!"
They hadn't even dragged him away to some torture room to do this. When the guards came today, they tore Lance away from Sam's grip, as usual, then hustled him into one of the isolation cells off the main communal cell. They pushed Lance to the floor, kicked him, spat on him. Then they stomped on his legs and broke them. They had all heard the sharp cracking sounds, one after the other, all held their breath in horrified silence until Lance split the air with a high-pitched yowl of agony.
The guards laughed. They left him there, crumpled on the cold stone floor, writhing in pain. They locked the door and left him there.
Sam now lay on his stomach outside the isolation cell, head bent down to the floor, to the gap between the bottom of the solid door and the rocky ground. He was grateful, for once, that this was an old prison. The cell door was rusted and twisted on its hinges, and here at the bottom there was a gap. If the prison had been newer and more carefully built, there would be no gap. Turned out that there were advantages to being imprisoned in a medieval dungeon.
The gap was small. A couple of inches high at the most, smaller than that for most of its length. It was too tight to pass through anything of significance. Sam doubted they would even be able to feed a blanket through it, though he badly wanted to. A Galra would not be able to fit their hand in the gap. Zalyk proved that when she tried. Maybe that was why the guards hadn't bothered to rehang the door and fix the gap.
Human hands were smaller. Not by much, but enough. Sam tried to squeeze his hand through, couldn't quite get in, but he could tell it was close. Lance was more slender than Sam, even more so after the starvation, and he was able to slide his hand under the door.
It had taken him a while to get there, crawling military-style on his elbows over the floor, choking down his yelps and screams of pain as the movement jarred his broken legs. All Sam and the others could do was kneel by the door and talk to him through the walls, trying to encourage him as much as possible. It took a monumental effort of will to ignore Lance's broken sobbing and tell him to just keep moving, keep hurting himself as he crept across the cell at a snail's pace. Finally, finally Lance reached the door and got his hand through the gap, and now Sam was holding it.
Lance's knuckles were pale with the force of his effort, but his grip didn't hurt. It didn't hurt at all. The boy had no strength, almost nothing left in him. Sam squeezed back as tight as he dared. Lance's fingers were shaking against his, and the sight of the scrapes and welts around his wrist made Sam want to cry. But at least he could hold his hand.
Sam wrapped both of his hands around Lance's, shielding his fingers from the cold floor. On the other side of the door, Lance was still naked from the waist up, unable to lift himself off the rocky surface. This was all Sam could do for him, so he was going to do it.
It was all Lance could say for minutes on end. "This is the worst. This is the worst."
Sam wanted to destroy something. "I know, sunshine," he soothed, fighting to keep his voice from breaking. "I know it hurts. I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry, sweetheart. I wish I could help."
Lance didn't seem to hear him, whether because the door was too thick or the pain was too loud. "Make it stop, Sam! Please, please make it stop!"
He sounded young. Terribly young. Unforgivably young.
Sam had never wanted anything more. He pressed Lance's hand between his and blinked away the tears. "I can't, honey. I'm so sorry. Please hold on. Please hold on just a little while longer."
They didn't want to kill him, Sam had to remind himself. The Galra didn't want Lance dead. They wanted him in agony, maybe in mortal peril, since that seemed to be a trigger for the lions to come after their paladins. If they killed Lance, it would defeat all of their plans. They wanted him hurting and desperate.
They had it.
Lance broke down completely, able only to sob and mutter fractured phrases in Spanish. Sam wasn't fluent, but he understood enough. "Por favor" was in there a lot. "Ayudame," too. Please. Please help me. All he could do was hold Lance's hand and cry with him.
Eventually, Lance cried himself out. His hand was slack in Sam's, but Sam could tell by the way he was still sniffling and panting that he hadn't passed out. It might have been kinder if he had.
At some point Sam had curled up in a ball as close to the door as he could get, forehead and knees both pressed against the cold metal. He was hiding Lance's hand in the curve of his body as if he could shelter him, as if he could offer even a modicum of warmth and comfort. "Lance? Can you hear me, sweetheart?"
"Yeah." His voice was soft and slurred and ragged. Worn paper-thin.
"Is it better? Did the pain get better?"
"Kind of. I'm...numb..."
Sam pulled in a shaky breath. It was probably a good thing. Don't think about shock, dropping blood pressure, the possibility of broken blood vessels in Lance's legs slowly draining out and killing him. The Galra didn't want him dead. They just wanted him in pain.
"Okay," Sam said gently. "Okay. That's good. I'm glad you're feeling better. Good job, Lance. Good job holding on."
Lance made a noise of pure misery. "No."
Sam went still. "What do you mean, honey?"
"No. Not a good job. I can't hold on. I can't do this anymore, Sam."
Sam had thought he was drained of tears. He was not. He caressed the back of Lance's hand with his thumb and wished that he could do much, much more. "That's okay, sunshine. It's okay."
"I want this to stop. I wish they would just kill me."
Sam almost choked on the lump in his throat. He had to lay still for a while, swallowing and swallowing, before he could speak. "That's okay, Lance. No one can blame you for feeling that way. But I'm going to be selfish again and ask you to hold on for a little while longer. Okay? Can you do that for me?"
"I'm not a hero, Sam. I'm just a boy from Cuba. I don't know why Blue chose me. I think she had some wires crossed in her metal brain after ten thousand years alone. I did my best to fake it, I tried so, so hard, and I think I kind of succeeded for a while. But I'm really tired, and I really hurt, and I want this to stop." He didn't even sound ashamed. Just exhausted. "I want to die."
Sam squeezed his eyes shut. For a moment, he couldn't breathe, couldn't think. And yet, he wasn't surprised. How often had he thought about death here, himself? And they hadn't even tortured him. Trapped in despair like this, down here in the dark, death seemed like an escape. A relief. Nothing to fear.
He pressed Lance's hand between his palms and wished with all his heart that he could hold him in his arms. But for now, all he had was words. "I'm sorry you feel that way, sunshine. I don't blame you. I understand. But I wish you weren't hurting like this. You don't deserve it, and it isn't fair. I know you can't believe it right now, but you absolutely are a hero, no matter how you look to yourself. There's nothing wrong with you for feeling this way, and it doesn't stop you from being a hero. I think every hero has moments when they don't feel like they're a hero, when they feel like they can't do it and they want to give up.
"But I'll tell you again, I'll tell you over and over, that you are a dear, sweet, brave boy, the best hero anyone could ask for. Did you know that I wanted to give up, too? Before you came here, I had stopped caring about pretty much anything. It was just...too hard. I was tired, and afraid, and I wasn't doing anyone any good, not even myself. More than once I thought about fighting the guards, provoking them to hurt me. Hopefully to kill me. At least then I wouldn't be here any longer.
"But I held on, and I'm glad I did. You know why? Because I got to meet you. If I had given up, I wouldn't have been here when the Galra brought you to this horrible place. I never would have gotten to see your smile and listen to your voice. I never would have gotten to listen to your stories and see how much you make things brighter for everyone around you. That was worth...a lot. More than I can say.
"I would miss you if you weren't here, sunshine. So, so much. That's how I know that all of your friends are missing you, too. If they were here, I know they would be selfish, just like me. They would ask you to hang on, even though it hurts. They would beg you to be patient for just a little while longer. They're on the way. They'll be here for you soon.
"So I want you to hold on, Lance. Please. I'll do everything I can to help you, and I wish I could do so, so much more. But no matter how hard it gets, no matter how much you want it all to stop, I'm begging you to hold on. Can you do that for me, sweetie? Please?"
Silence. Sam pressed his ear to the door and thought he heard Lance's shuddering breath. He hoped the boy hadn't passed out partway through that speech.
Then Lance's fingers flexed in Sam's, the merest franction of a movement, and Sam's breath punched out of his lungs in explosive relief. He was still here. Still listening.
"Okay." Lance's voice was almost inaudible, broken and soft and weary beyond the telling. But Sam heard him. "I'll hold on."
Sam closed his eyes and squeezed his hand. "Thank you, darling. I really, really appreciate it. Is there anything I can do to help?"
Lance was quiet for a moment, breathing. Then, "Could you sing for me? That song from yesterday?"
Sam smiled, though his heart breaking. "Of course, baby. Which one?"
"The one about...sunshine...when it's cloudy..."
Sam cast his mind back and found it right away. "Ah. I know the one."
He pressed his forehead to the metal door again and sang into the gap, just for Lance. "I've got sunshine on a cloudy day. When it's cold outside, I've got the month of May..."
Sam's voice was broken and halting and far from beautiful. He wished he could sing better, wished he had something else to offer. But after a few bars, Lance started humming along, shaky but sweet. Sam didn't stop, not for hours. It was the least he could do.