Tick. Tick. Tick. Tick.

Coran had been wrong.

A tick was slower than a second.

Much slower.

Tick.

An eternity passed between each one as it echoed off the hollow interior of the chamber of cryopods, offensive to the stillness and the silence there. The emergency lighting cast an eerie glow throughout the desaturated metal paneling, making the room feel a few degrees colder than it really was and seeping a directionless chill into the otherwise tempered air regulation system. Meanwhile, the exposed pod hummed quietly nearby.

Tick.

It wasn't as though Lance made a habit of watching Keith sleep. He would notice, sometimes, through sidelong looks when the red paladin dozed off with folded arms and sullen expression still set firmly in place as he slouched in the common area, or other times when the five of them returned from a particularly harrowing mission and proceeded to contort themselves over various pieces of furniture long before they made it back to their quarters. Lately, he'd seen Keith sleep a lot, and for a moment, a memory came floating to the surface as he reminisced...the tinny melody of alien music echoing through an alien mall in the depths of unknown space as a familiar weight pressed into his shoulder, spreading a warmth that reminded him of home.

Tick.

But while Lance was busy not noticing any of that, what he did notice was how still Keith looked behind the glass, compared to all those other times. Even the display panel on the pod's exterior seemed more alive, the backlight flickering just for a moment each time it refreshed his vitals. A mechanical gatekeeper that reminded Lance how many more ticks he would need to wait, how far away he still was from morning. He just needed to wait until morning. That's all they kept saying, to each other, to him, to themselves, as though adding the word "just" would somehow make it go by faster.

It didn't.

For the first time since he had lost track of the ticks, Lance unfolded long limbs and rose slowly to his feet in a flurry of cracks and pops, stretching out stiff joints and slipping his hands into his pockets as he sauntered up to the glass. Beside the other paladin's quiet features, he could see his own troubled, slightly pouting expression reflected back at him. He wanted to know what difference a few hours would make, but Coran had only told them all to be patient, and eventually, the others had dispersed. They wouldn't have known he was still there...still waiting. Still wondering why he couldn't reach up and push the release on the side of the pod, just to convince himself that Keith really was still alive inside, that the digital display next to him hadn't simply malfunctioned.

Tick.

He wasn't sure what would happen once the pod opened. For some reason, he didn't want anyone else to be there when it did.

Tick.

Keith was probably hungry. Shiro had been, when he woke up.

Tick.

He was beginning to forget what Keith's voice sounded like.

Tick.

He'd found him in the snow.

Tick.

The low hiss of released pressure pierced the quiet of the chamber, and Lance's jaw jutted stubbornly as he hit the button and the front of the pod began to slide open. They could always close it again. It would only be for a few minutes, anyway. What would it hurt, when the scrapes and cuts that covered Keith's face had faded away hours ago.

Like any good teammate would, he reasoned, he just wanted Keith to open his eyes.

But moments later, stubborn determination quickly gave way to unanticipated panic, unable to undo what he'd done as Keith slipped from the pod into his arms in one swift motion, his body limp. Lance had hardly prepared for the sudden contact, time speeding up again too quickly for him to keep track as a million thoughts raced through his mind. He didn't have time to process what was happening before his arms came up to catch the other paladin, fear paralyzing his limbs a moment later.

His knees bent of their own accord until they made careful contact with the floor, not sure what else to do as his pounding heart revolted against his decision to open the door. He'd messed up, made another stupid decision, done something else that he couldn't take back, and it was all going to go horribly wrong-,

But Keith opened his eyes, a slight twitch in the limp knuckles that dragged on the floor by Lance's knees as he did so. Before he realized it, Lance found himself holding his breath, as though the next expulsion of air would break the fragile spell of consciousness seeping into Keith's features...and at the same time, horrified that the other paladin might wake to wonder why Lance was so close to him.

"H-hey man." After the perpetual silence, his own voice, the pounding of his heart, sounded awkwardly loud in his ears. "Take it easy."

He glanced down briefly, but Keith's eyes were on the far wall, or perhaps looking beyond it, and Lance swallowed the panicky tightness in his throat a couple of times,Keith's hair grazing his throat.

"I-it's...it's about time you woke up," he continued, lacking the confidence he tried to inject into his voice. "People...people were worried, y'know?"

All he could think about was that he'd never been so close to another person before. Not like they were now. Regardless, he didn't let go. He ducked his head.

"...Me too, a little," he uttered hesitantly. "I mean...we couldn't find you guys...even after we locked onto your coordinates, so, like, anyone would be worried."

The silence was deafening, but all the things he'd wanted to say, all the things that had been building up over his own private eternity, everything vyed for priority at the surface, and he found that he didn't know where to start.

In the end, he cut past the rest and got right to it.

"...You and Shiro have been gone for three weeks."

He shook his head. After he said it, he felt foolish. As if Keith didn't know it. He probably thought it had been longer than that. Probably thought they had given up.

"One minute, we were talking to Shiro and got a read on you guys, and the next...we still don't know what happened. Shiro's still recovering too, and he said it's all just a blur. F-figures, huh? I mean...for a while there after we lost the signal, we...we thought that..."

Keith said nothing.

"But...then later, we found both of you. G-good thing, huh?"

Behind them, the cryopod retracted back into the floor. Lance cleared his throat hastily.

"Oh...and just so you know, I'm the one at found you."

I thought...you were dead.

"S-so...so you can just tally that up in the old, 'things-I-need-to-thank-Lance-for' book...Keith?"

He glanced down, but Keith's listless gaze was unchanged, and as the silence settled again, the gripping panic and tumultuous nerves quietened within Lance, leaving instead an icy, rigid calm of which he wouldn't have thought himself capable.

Something was wrong, and suddenly, he didn't care what Keith thought of him bringing his hand up to rest against the back of the other paladin's head, tightening his hold around his limp frame just a little bit more.

"...What the hell happened out there?" he asked quietly. The silence was agonizing, but he endured it. "Hey-,"

His breath caught as a pair of thin arms lifted up off the ground at last, abruptly folding around his body to firmly grip the material at the back of his shirt. To Lance's surprise, the embrace was strong, all-encompassing, just the kind that deep down, he'd never really thought he would be on the receiving end of...he felt suddenly as though he was the one that had gone missing, and that Keith was not only relieved to see him, but that Keith was relieved to see him. And once again, it was as though an eternity was passing him by, but this time around, Lance didn't mind so much...even if, in reality, it was just a few minutes, and more ticks than he cared to count. Whatever he had been about to say suddenly didn't seem important, because it was just them, alone in the dark and quiet of the empty chamber.

In the end, morning came after all before either of them moved from their crumpled positions in the middle of the cryopods. The kitchen hardly boasted anything in the way of morning coffee, but it had something else that Coran had always insisted was probably just as good, and Lance slid a steaming paper cup of it across the island. Keith caught it in slightly bruised fingers and drank a little. He had lost weight in his absence, unsurprising considering the lack of sustenance available beneath the frozen tundra of the balmera, but his appetite had yet to catch up to him.

Lance settled across from him and diverted his gaze elsewhere, idly sipping at his own drink just so that he would have something to do. From within the depths of the castle, he could hear distant noises as the rest of its occupants began to stir. The silence that had accompanied them throughout the night would soon take its leave, and he couldn't decide how he felt about that. It had grown heavy, but he had become accustomed to it, and it was something that they alone had shared. Perhaps that was part of what stopped him from asking Keith what had happened again while he still had a chance. Where he'd gone. About the condition he'd been in when Lance finally reached him and lifted his upper body from beneath the falling snow. How he and Shiro had even survived. Why the hell he'd pulled such a stunt in the first place, just to get a damn crystal for the sake of Lance's lion (they had found the crystal in its cracked state at the place where they had first locked on to Keith and Shiro's coordinates, but it had still been in better condition than the two missing paladins. One way or another, they had done what they set out to do).

Lance sat back, tapping restless fingers on the countertop. Keith obviously still wasn't in much of a talking mood – not that he ever was – and fatigue was beginning to settle in. For all he knew, the other paladin didn't even want him there by that point, and just hadn't said anything about it.

And so, he stretched in what he hoped was a casual manner and stood up.

"Weeell, it's getting late...in the morning...so, I'm gonna go, and –,"

"Don't."

Lance faltered mid-stretch, sure he had imagined the short utterance that had forced its way out of the hunched paladin on the other side of the island, who did not look up from the paper cup he was still gripping.

"...Not yet," he added, his voice quieter and less sharp than it had been a moment ago.

He did not elaborate, however, and Lance threw his lanky frame back down onto the stool without question, growing quiet again. Bony elbows settled over the countertop as he looked over at Keith, imploring, but Keith's eyes were still downcast, scowling vaguely into his cup.

"...Yeah, man. I'm not going anywhere."

He nodded, then welcomed the silence back into their midst as he sat there and painstakingly watched Keith's fingers shake.