Chapter 11:

Getting Out

"What," Lance says flatly, his eyes wide in surprise.

They'd managed to gather the elders together and told them about the bombs and the Galran Empire's ability to remotely kill the facility's life support. The reaction they just got wasn't what any of them had expected in the slightest.

"We have always known about this," one of the elders, who went by a name that roughly sounded like a sneeze and Keith wouldn't dare try pronouncing on his own, explains to them.

And that's when Sneezy the elder says something that immediately gets everyone's attention: "You needn't worry. Feyulja sent his man to disable them."

Keith exchanges a surprised glance with his fellow Paladins and, with one look, he knows they must all be thinking the same thing he is: did they really just hear what they thought they did? However, one look at Allura and he's not so sure anymore.

An incredibly awkward silence falls as Allura's expression pinches. It is as if she finds something funny but it really is not funny at all.

Out of the corner of his eye, Keith sees Hunk leaning over to Coran and whispering, "Um, why is she making that face?"

Coran whispers back, "It's that name. It's… ridiculously pretentious – a bit of a joke, really, if you must know."

"He's basically calling himself Mister Good Guy," Shiro comments, distantly. His expression doesn't look quite right at all and the fingers of his prosthetic hand twitch.

He is not here right now. Keith can tell.

Pidge snorts and crosses her arms over her chest. "Right," she drawls, dragging the word out with as much sarcasm as she can manage. Her eyes, however, slide to Shiro's right hand and then back to Keith. She purses her lips and tilts her head, silently asking.

Keith nods.

Pidge frowns and shifts her position, glancing at Coran.

"It's not just being good, it's being good at being everything a proper Galra should be," Coran quietly admonishes Shiro. He presses his lips together ever so slightly as he meets Pidge's gaze and his mustache twitches: he's seen it, too, then.

Good, Keith thinks to himself. Now, if they can just hurry this up, then they can get Shiro out of here before they have a repeat of the Sendak Incident on their hands, this time with the last people who deserve to be spaced.

Allura, meanwhile, seems to have recovered and found her footing once more. "Is the one he sent still here? I need to speak with them, if at all possible."

"We are sorry, blessed child," a different elder pipes up. This is the one that had told the story of Allura's cousin. "If he is still here, we cannot say. He is as you are, and his true face is not known to us."

At that, both Allura and Coran startle.

"Okay, as interesting as that all is, can someone please explain why we're still on this rock?" Lance cuts in.

For the first time, Keith really notices just how absolutely agitated Lance is.

Lance wants out and he wants it yesterday.

Keith has never seen Lance this upset and, quite frankly, it gives him the willies. Lance doesn't do upset, not like this, and the fact that he's practically chomping at the bit to get everyone out of here is ringing every alarm bell in Keith's head.

Lance may have a habit for sticking his foot in his mouth, but his instincts are good. If he thinks that they need to go, they probably should.

"Guys, he's got a point," Keith admits, hesitantly, and shoots a look at Shiro, silently pleading him to snap out of it. "We still don't know if that fleet got a signal out to Zarkon or not."

Shiro's eyes seem to refocus, as if he is waking up, and his lips pull in a thin line as his attention turns to the present. He nods, once, and turns to Allura and then the elders. "They're right. Whatever happens next, whether you're coming with us or not, we need to figure it out right now."

Lance looks like he's about to say something when the storyteller cuts him off.

"We will not be coming."

"What?" Lance shrieks in clear horror.

Hunk's face falls in surprise and disappointment and Pidge gives the elders a look that says she plainly doesn't understand. Allura and Coran do not seem surprised, just resigned. Shiro's face, on the other hand, is an unreadable mask.

"But, you don't understand! They are going to come back! You will die if you stay here," Lance protests loudly.

The elders look at Lance with a sort of strange amusement and, perhaps, fondness. It's the same kind of odd expression that Shiro's parents had once looked at him with, and the same one that Shiro, Allura and Coran sometimes have for them when they think they're not looking.

"Tell me, blessed of water, where do you go from here?" the storyteller asks, gently. She approaches him and takes his hands in her own. "Do you know when your next battle will find you?"

Lance's eyes mist and his frame trembles a bit. "But…"

"You go to war, dear child," the storyteller explains and reaches up to brush away his tears. "The battlefield is no place for us or our children."

"We can protect you," Lance protests weakly. "The Castle of Lions…"

"…Has not been seen for ten thousand years, not since the Battle of Ancah on Narabass, and you are all that remains of the crew. Seven people cannot care for the needs of hundreds, you know this," the storyteller chides him kindly.

She pauses and gives him a smile that shows no teeth, drawing back. "Besides, this place is all we know. Where should we go from here? Who would hide us, we who have nothing left but our memories?"

Allura finds her voice once more and, when she steps forward, it is as if she has stepped once more into the title of princess and is now something so much larger than herself. "Bin'ahjar ohsal, some of our friends remain still, in these darkest of times. Please, let us bring you to them."

The storyteller clucks her tongue and gently chastises her, "Even you, most blessed, cannot promise another's hands open to us."

Allura blushes, her skin darkening as she ducks her head, chastised.

"What if we ask first?" Keith pipes up. "If we ask them and they're okay with it, it's fine, right?"

Everyone is suddenly looking at him and Keith inwardly bristles, a fierce blush spreading on his face at the sudden attention. It's not something he's used to at all and suddenly he panics, wondering if he's somehow made some kind of alien cultural blunder. "I'm sorry, I just thought – it seemed right," he blurts out quickly.

"Smooth, Keith," Pidge deadpans, "Real smooth."

Keith feels torn between wanting to glare daggers at her and pure embarrassment. Did Pidge really have to pull the brat card now?

Allura sighs, her expression softening, but it is the storyteller who approaches him.

"Ah, I should have known," the old woman pauses, humming a little as she takes his hand in her own. She smiles slyly, as if she is privy to some great joke, and adds, "Fire reveals the way we do not see."

Keith blinks as the hairs on the back of his neck prickle and a shiver slips down his spine. He's heard those words somewhere before.

But the storyteller is already turning away, back towards Allura. "Ask them and if their hands are open to us, we shall gladly go," she tells them. "For now, all we ask of you is some supplies to hold us through the long nights."

Allura purses her lips in obvious displeasure. She clearly doesn't want to leave them here anymore than Lance does. In fact, this might be the first thing they've seen completely eye-to-eye on, barring the green goo.

No one likes the green goo.

Allura nods, finally, her face schooled in a clear neutral, and she bows. "Then we shall take our leave with all haste. Let's go, Paladins. I don't want to leave them vulnerable any longer than strictly necessary."

"Oh, come on, Princess! You can't be serious," Lance protests, loudly. "What happens when the Galra come back and we're not here? Huh? They're sitting ducks here! Sitting ducks."

Sneezy leans over and, in what has to be the most exaggerated stage whisper Keith's ever seen, asks, "What is a sitting duck?"

Coran shrugs in confusion.

Hunk hums thoughtfully, rubbing his chin. "Maybe they don't have to be – sitting ducks, that is."

He pauses, raising his hands to mime a narrow width. "The asteroid field is pretty dense – we saw that ourselves, coming in. There's only a few safe approach vectors for ships larger than a light shuttle. We can use the asteroids as a kind of natural shield and force them to keep the fleet back."

"Yeah, well, what about their death rays, Hunk?" Lance asks, waspishly.

"We did find particle shield controls," Pidge replies, jerking a thumb in the general direction of the command center. "They're set to a lower output frequency than the Castle, but that's easy to fix."

"It'd buy us some time," Keith agrees, looking at Shiro and Allura.

He does not look at Lance on purpose.

Lance is furious and they all know it.

Hunk, meanwhile, turns to the elders. "Hey, what do you guys use in the mines – laser drills?"

"They're considered standard, yes," Sneezy replies, uncertainly.

Hunk grins, pulling out a notepad and a sharpie, and begins scribbling.

Pidge's eyes narrow as she peeks over Hulk's arm to his notepad and she raises her head to ask, "What about the bombs from the self-destruct? Do you still have those?"

"Of course," another elder says. "Only the transmitters are disabled."

"Are you thinking what I'm thinking?" Hunk asks Pidge, looking at her conspiratorially.

Pidge's grin is utterly savage and her glasses glint ominously in the light as she adjusts them.

"Oh no, Shiro, they're doing the thing again," Keith calls out.

Lance blanches, shuddering reflexively.

When Hunk and Pidge are on the same wavelength, nothing is safe.

"Don't worry," Coran assures Sneezy. "They know what they're doing."

Somehow, the elders don't look too convinced.

Keith can't blame them.

Notes:

Elder Waatchuk gets no respect from Keith, man.

Fun fact: Shiro has heard Feyulja before.

This chapter was part of the first update batch after the November election and, at the time, I'd kind of decided to drop this out in the open: this story, at its heart, is about a group of people trying to take on a system that is set against them and not really knowing or understanding the full consequences of how they're going about it or even the background that its based in; but - and this is a big but - it is also a story set against the background of an ongoing genocide and oppression of an ethnic and cultural identity spanning several nations, whose first victims belong to the very nation that has and is still perpetrating these horrible acts, acts that began when the political climate of the nation shifted to encompass and tacitly approve a policy of hatred and persecution in the name of greatness. Funny things happen, true, and this fic can get funny, but beneath it, there is a very serious story.

Fiction - and fanfiction, by extension - is a vehicle, sometimes, to talk about the world we live in and the things happening in the greater world around us.

This, as it is, is my vehicle. Buckle your seatbelts. It's going to be a bumpy ride.