He had the sense of time passing.
He had the sense of being lost.
"Shiro…?"
He knew who that was.
He couldn't say anything back. His body wasn't listening to him.
"It's okay, you're okay…"
He didn't feel like he was okay.
But there was no shouting, no alarms, he wasn't even cold.
He felt someone touch his hand.
He knew who that was.
And then he saw him. Either he'd only just opened his eyes, or they'd finally started working again.
It was a light like you would see on Earth. Warm and yellow, floating dust specks, crisscross shadows of a window on the wall.
And Keith.
He couldn't tell if it was real or not.
"You're with me now, you're gonna be okay…"
That wasn't something Keith should have to say to him.
He tried to move. Keith helped him sit up.
The blanket fell to the floor.
"Keith…"
His head was killing him.
"Give him some water," someone said.
He felt the cup on his lips and the drops spilling down his front.
"Is that really the best you can do?"
"How about you shut up."
There were several people in the room. Humans. He didn't know who they all were.
They were kids.
They looked pretty worried.
He wanted to tell them everything was okay, but he couldn't.
Keith put the cup on the table.
"You're back. You made it back to Earth somehow," Keith said to him.
It was good to have that cleared up.
"You crashed in the desert last night in some kind of weird ship."
That sounded fairly plausible. There was a quarantine…
"You were gone for a year."
Oh, no.
"So what happened to the Kerberos mission?" one of the others asked.
"Jeez, would you GIVE him a moment?"
The Kerberos mission.
"Captured," he said. That was all that would come out.
That was all he could remember.
He didn't know how he'd gotten out.
He was getting cold again.
Someone picked the blanket back up. They must have seen him shivering.
"It's gonna be okay," Keith said again.
That was something people only said when things were most definitely not okay.
And Keith didn't even know…
"They're coming."
"Who?"
"Aliens."
"Can you maybe start from the beginning?"
He couldn't. He didn't know where the beginning WAS.
They all looked disappointed, and even more afraid.
"Keith, is there any food in here?" someone said.
"Top shelf."
He heard the sound of a can opening.
It sounded like Earth.
"Here. You must be hungry."
He was.
He could barely hold the fork.
They were staring at his hand.
"Thank you."
They looked away.
"Are these your friends?" he asked Keith.
"Uh…"
"Classmates," one of them said. "Or, at least, we WERE."
"Well. Pleasure to meet you," he nodded.
It may not have looked it, but it really was. Back on Earth, with humans who were ALIVE. Keith, and people who knew him.
"My name's Lance," the boy spoke again. "And my friends here are Hunk and Pidge."
"Shiro," he said, putting his hand out.
"Yeah, we knew that, you're a little famous," said the one who had been indicated as Hunk.
"Really? What for?"
"For being amazing," Lance said.
"And for crashing a ship on the farthest rock in our solar system," said the one called Pidge. "But I know that's not what REALLY happened."
For all he remembered, it might have been.
"I don't… remember what happened after they found us."
"Not even what happened to your crew?"
"No."
They'd all run. They were so far from help.
After that…
"Hey, Pidge, don't be such a downer, okay?" Lance said.
"You want me to heat that up?" Keith said to him.
"Hmm? No, it's fine."
Little chunks of canned stew, he couldn't tell what kind, the grain of the meat, the slick edges of the vegetables, textures and colors and salt.
It felt like an old memory.
He dropped a bit on his shirt.
"No one else is hungry, right?"
"We're fine, Shiro, just eat."
The light of the window was travelling down the wall. The sun was getting higher.
Earth.
"So… what exactly IS this place?" Lance said to no one in particular.
Or, he thought it was to no one in particular, but everyone else looked at Keith.
"Not sure," Keith shrugged. "But I live here now."
He had to be lying about not being hungry.
"So…" Shiro began.
"Things didn't exactly work out at the Garrison," Keith said to him.
He'd been afraid of that.
"I'm sorry."
"I'm just glad to have you back."
"I missed you too."
He didn't think anyone had ever said that to Keith before.
"Is this thing some sort of communicator?" Hunk asked, pointing toward a device by the wall.
"I don't know. Probably," Keith said.
"You've been here all year and you have no idea what it is?" Lance eyed Keith.
"I've been busy."
"Doing what?"
Keith looked away.
Shiro thought he might know what it was.
"Research, I bet," Pidge said, pulling a book off a shelf.
Not really Shiro's first guess.
"Yeah. That, too," Keith said.
"What about?" Pidge flipped open the book.
"You know. Space."
"So did you find anything?"
"I found Shiro."
That must have counted for something.
"They destroy worlds," he said without realizing. Everyone looked at him.
"Who are they?"
That was Pidge.
"There's an empire. They won't stop until everything is dead."
"Uhh… is there anything we can do about that?" Lance asked.
"I don't know. I don't remember…"
"Hey look, take it easy, okay?" Hunk said, taking the trembling items out of his hands. He didn't look like he was taking it easy himself. "But, uh… what did they do to your hand?"
He raised it up to the light.
Metal and rivets and plates.
It hummed when it moved. It didn't move like flesh.
"I don't remember."
"It's… sort of beautiful, in a way," Pidge said quietly. "Can I take a look?"
He extended it.
"Nothing like I've ever seen," Pidge muttered, turning it over. He could barely feel the warmth. It was a dead sort of thing.
"Iverson thought it might be dangerous," Hunk pointed out.
"Well, Iverson's not here."
He didn't know if it was dangerous.
"Do you have a full range of motion?" Pidge asked him.
"I mean… I think so."
"Can you like… bend your elbow the other way and stuff?" Lance asked.
"Uh…"
"Doesn't seem it," Pidge said, flexing his arm. "Can you feel that?"
He could hardly feel anything with it.
"A little."
"It must be incredible on the inside," Pidge breathed. "Artificial nerves soldered to-"
"Pidge! No one wants to hear this!" Keith snapped.
"Don't worry, it's fine," Shiro said.
It wasn't really that fine, but he didn't want someone as young as Pidge to get yelled at.
"Huh," Pidge said. "What's this?"
"What's what?" Lance bent closer.
A crease at the heel of his hand.
"It looks like…" Pidge squinted.
"Like a chip reader for your credit card," Lance finished, folding his arms.
"Yeah, actually."
"What? You thought I wasn't being serious?"
"No, I just didn't think you'd be RIGHT."
Lance scowled.
"Well THANKS."
"Does this thing open up?" Pidge asked. "I'd try it but I don't wanna hurt you…"
Shiro looked at it. He felt like he should have known.
"I don't know."
"Maybe it's seriously just a credit card reader," Lance shrugged.
"Lance, why would the aliens have credit cards?"
"I don't know, Pidge. Why do YOU have a credit card?"
"I don't. I'm not old enough."
"Well, we'll just have to try MINE!"
Lance flourished a card out of his pocket. Pidge snatched it.
"This is a DEBIT card."
"Whatever. Shiro, can I try out your robot alien credit card machine thing?"
"You should at least buy him a drink first," Pidge scoffed.
"What do you even think's gonna happen?" Hunk said.
"Anything! These are ALIENS we're talking about!" Lance swept his arms open.
"Well maybe the aliens will just steal your banking information," Pidge said, handing back the card.
"Well I don't know about you but I'M here to learn stuff and I would call that worth it," Lance huffed. Then he looked back at Shiro. "With your okay, of course."
Shiro looked at Lance and at the card.
"Might as well."
He could feel it on the way in.
It didn't sit right. Apparently the robot arm was capable of feeling pain.
"So, how about it, Shiro, do you know my account number now?"
"I don't think it did anything."
"Well, at least we tried."
He was glad when they took it out.
"Aliens wouldn't be using human credit cards, anyway," Pidge said. "There has to be something else they use this for."
"Well, bad news, Pidge, but we're not aliens and we don't have any of their stuff."
Shiro felt a hand on his shoulder.
"Keith?"
Keith was looking concerned, uncomfortable. He was holding a card.
"What about… this?"
Shiro had never seen anything like it before.
On the card was a woman, with open blue skin and bones made of steel. She was holding what might have been a baby, or what might have been the corpse of one. There was lettering on the card, in a script he didn't know but maybe, MAYBE it looked a little familiar.
It was the exact size.
"Oh my god. That's just creepy," Hunk said.
"Where'd you get that?" Pidge grimaced.
"Look, I don't know," Keith said. "I just think…"
The room was quiet.
Shiro took the card.
It fit without a hint of resistance.
It started to feel warm.
And weakly at first, then brightly, it began to glow.