St. Elmo's Fire: a meteorological phenomenon in which luminous plasma is created by a coronal discharge from a sharp or pointed object in an electrical field in the atmosphere. Named for Saint Erasmus, the patron saint of sailors, and often considered a good omen.

Shiro found himself on the detainment level for perhaps the third or fourth time since the Castle of Lions left Arus. It was a bad habit, and he knew it, but if he was up and nothing else was happening, sometimes he'd find his feet wandering down towards the cryopods to check on their prisoner.

Well, perhaps 'detainee' was a better word. 'Prisoner' implied some sort of sentence to be served, after all, while they were planning to hold Sendak...well, until they could figure out what to do with him. The Galra had collapsed after the fight for the bridge, and Shiro and Allura had carted him down to the detainment level. He'd been in cryostasis ever since, too dangerous to release on a planet, too competent to defrost for questioning-the last time he'd been loose in the Castle, he and his compatriot had nearly taken off with it and Voltron, and Shiro didn't like thinking about a possible repeat of the incident. He didn't like thinking about Sendak , period. But he kept finding himself in front of the cryopods anyway.

"Shiro?"

He jumped at the sound of his name and spun towards the door-but, of course, it was only Coran. The Altean was just inside the door, watching Shiro with odd intensity.

"...Coran," Shiro said slowly, nodding his head in greeting.

"What are you doing down here?" Coran asked, walking over to join Shiro in front of the pod.

Shiro rubbed the back of his neck. "I...I don't really know," he said.

Coran settled his hands on his hips and turned his gaze to the pod. "I find myself down here a lot, too," he said. "If Sendak is any indicator, the Galra as a species have changed a great deal. Back in our day, none of them looked anything like this."

Shiro hummed in acknowledgement. "I wish there was some way we could question him, find out what he knows without worrying about him lying to us. He's a commander, he has to know something about…"

"About?" Coran raised an eyebrow at him. Shiro felt his cheeks warm, and he looked away.

"About anything," he said, feeling lame. "Troop locations. Bases. What Zarkon wants with Voltron." What happened to me while I was their prisoner , he wanted to add. Sendak knew something , that was for damn sure.

Coran's brow furrowed slightly. Then he said, "Well...we probably can't question him without risking him misleading us, but we might have a way to get information from him regardless."

"...Then we should use it," Shiro said. "If Sendak has information we can use to our advantage, we need to get it."

The Altean hesitated. "Well, here's the thing, Shiro. This technology-it was only ever used to preserve the memories of willing participants, not to interrogate prisoners. I don't even know if it will work on a Galra, much less an unwilling one."

Shiro sighed and took a moment to take stock of the situation, reevaluate the parameters and his stance on the matter. Coran's offer of technology that could extract memories-thus negating any possibility of Sendak lying to them-was tempting, but it also might not work or could malfunction horribly if it wasn't compatible. At best, it simply wouldn't work, and they'd have to try something else. At worst? If it worked directly with the brain it could kill Sendak-destroying any of his information-or scramble him, or break his mind, both of which would have essentially the same effect-and they would make Shiro feel guilty. He could live with killing Sendak, but the idea of damaging another person irreparably in pursuit of information-

He shuddered, scrubbed his flesh-and-blood hand over the elbow of his prosthetic. No. Not a chance. He would not become the people who had hurt him. But he had to protect the other Paladins, too. Whoever took his arm wouldn't hesitate to do the same-or worse-to them.

"Could we run a test to check without hurting him if it isn't compatible with Galra?" Shiro asked.

"We could, certainly," Coran said.

"Then we should do it."

"Alright. You go retrieve the rest of the Paladins, I'll run a preliminary analysis and get the equipment set up."

Shiro nodded and headed for the elevator to the main 'residential' floors. He had no idea where Pidge might be-she'd taken to exploring some of the unused floors lately, when she wasn't tinkering or poking at the crystal Sendak and his partner-in-crime plugged into the Castle. Most of the time Lance and Hunk went with her, so the three of them could be virtually anywhere in the Castle. Keith, on the other hand? Keith was reliable. He made routines and settled into them, and at this time of day he was probably holed up in his room. He'd done that a lot at the Garrison, too-when he wasn't flying sims or in class or the cafeteria, he was in his dorm room, doing...something. What 'something' was varied from week to week.

Today, 'something' was knife maintenance. Keith was seated cross-legged on the floor, knife in one hand and some sort of alien sharpening tool in the other, shaggy dark head bowed as he ran the tool from hilt to tip. He glanced up as Shiro opened the door, then returned his attention to the blade in his hands.

"Hey, Shiro," he said.

"Keith," Shiro said, leaning against the doorframe. "We're going to get information from Sendak. Can you help me find the others?"

Keith lifted his head and set the sharpener aside to brush his overlong bangs out of his eyes. Then he shrugged, wiped the blade on his pants, and tucked it back into its sheath.

"Lance and Hunk headed for the elevators like an hour ago," he said, standing. "I think they were planning to go exploring." Another shrug. "Dunno where Pidge is."

"Thanks. I'll get Lance and Hunk, you see if you can find Pidge." Shiro hesitated, then added, "She's probably down in her hangar again."

Keith hummed, acknowledging him, and slipped past Shiro into the hall. Shiro waited just long enough to confirm he was headed for the hangars and walked back to the elevator. If he'd kept track of their recent explorations, Lance, Hunk, and Pidge had already checked out most of the floors above them-between the bridge and the residential floors-so the two of them were a floor or two down if Shiro had to hazard a guess.

The boys were easier to find than he expected-he took the elevator down two floors and the doors opened just in time for him to catch Lance's distinctive, jubilant whooping somewhere else on the floor. Even if he was the loudest of the Paladins, Lance had to be close to be that loud. Shiro waited for the next whoop to get a sense of Lance's location and, when it came, hustled down the right-hand corridor. He made three more turns-this level twisted and flowed like a waterway, for some inexplicable alien reason-and then rounded a corner and bumped into Hunk. The Yellow Paladin lurched forward with a squeak, then spun around. His whole face lit up.

"Shiro!"

"Aw, man ," Lance said, from the other side of Hunk, and Shiro peered over his shoulder. A door, half-hidden as a wall panel, was open, and Lance's hands were full of bright patchwork cloth.

"...Are those blankets?" Shiro asked.

"Yeah," Hunk said. "They had the linen closet hidden-it's pretty cool, right?"

"We were planning a surprise blanket fort in the common room," Lance said. He pouted and began folding the blanket he'd grabbed.

"I won't tell the others if you don't want me to," Shiro assured him. "But that's going to have to wait-Coran thinks we might have a way to question Sendak, and he needs us on the detainment level."

Lance and Hunk shared a look , one weighted heavily with meaning Shiro couldn't quite grasp. He got the gist of it, though-Lance had to be uncertain about dealing with Sendak again, after the Galra almost killed him, and Shiro couldn't blame him for it. Not while he remembered what it was like to have the massive claws of Sendak's cybernetic clamped around his chest.

He'd enjoyed watching Pidge take it to pieces to figure out how it worked a little too much, if he was going to be honest.

He stepped in and grabbed the other end of the blanket, helping Lance fold it up neatly again, and then let them lead him back to the elevator. Hunk and Lance obviously knew this floor better than Shiro did, which made sense if they'd been roaming it for the last hour or so. Lance had an excellent sense of direction-he'd proved as much on the Balmera a week before, and he proved it again navigating back to the elevators.

Keith was waiting for them just outside the doors on the containment level, lounging against the wall with a sour look on his face.

"Where's Pidge?" Shiro asked.

"She locked herself in Green's hangar. Says she's too busy to come out," Keith replied.

Shiro sighed. "I'll ask Coran to call her down."

"What, she wasn't interested in interrogating Sendak?" Lance asked.

Keith shrugged.

"She might be playing with that crystal again," Hunk said. "Last time we worked on it she thought we were pretty close to a breakthrough."

That sounded promising. "If this doesn't pan out, we'll have to ask her about it," Shiro said. Then he stepped past Keith and into the main room of the detainment level.

Coran was leaning on a clear tube full of some sort of fluid he'd set up beside the cryopod and tossing a palm-sized disk back and forth between his hands. He glanced up as they entered the room and tucked the disk into a pocket in his jacket.

"There you all are! I was wondering when you'd-wait, where's Pidge?"

"In Green's hangar," Shiro said. "Keith couldn't get her out."

Coran sighed. "I'll see if I can get her on the comms." He pressed his hand flat against a panel on the wall, which lit blue under his touch. "Pidge?" His voice echoed back from hidden speakers somewhere in the walls, half a second behind and reverberating oddly. "Please come down to the detainment area."

Pidge took her sweet time getting down to join them, it seemed, because she came slouching into the room almost fifteen minutes later looking sullen and vaguely rebellious. Then her eyes lit on the tube, and her whole expression brightened.

"What's that ?" she asked, head tilting to study the equipment like a curious bird.

"This," Coran said, "is a Biologically-Acquired Data Containment System-for downloading and storing a person's memories in an accessible and easily-interpreted fashion."

Pidge's eyes flickered towards the cryopod. "And we're going to use it on him ?"

"Well, we were-but there's a problem we need to address first," Coran said.

Shiro resisted a groan of frustration. "He isn't compatible with it, is he."

"No, no, his brainwave functions are similar enough to process accurately, but this technology can be a bit...particular. To get an accurate map of his neurology, we need a clear scan, and recent head injuries have caused the extraction process to, well, go awry before, so when I remembered you all had at least two fights with him before he was captured I ran a scan. I'm afraid he's rather concussed, and being in cryostasis means he hasn't been given an opportunity to recover from it."

"...Alright. So what are our options?"

"Well, we could always take him out and interrogate him the old-fashioned way. There are secure cells on this level we could put him in, and after how long he's been in that cryopod he won't be lucid enough to hold out long." Coran paused, brows furrowing thoughtfully. "Or we could transfer him to the cryopods in the med bay and program them to go just long enough to fix the concussion, and use the extractor on him up there."

"Why couldn't we just do that down here?" Lance asked.

"Because these pods are just for containment, not healing injuries," Coran replied.

"...Oh," Lance said.

Shiro exhaled. "We'll make the decision as a team. What do you all think?"

"I say we use the extractor," Lance declared. "No way should we give that guy another chance to come after us."

"For once, I agree with Lance," Keith said, crossing his arms. He glowered at the cryopod, upper lip curled.

"Thanks, buddy," Lance grumbled.

"No problem," Keith muttered back.

Shiro only just kept from rolling his eyes. "Hunk? Pidge?"

"...I dunno, man, it seems really creepy to just go digging around in someone's head like that," Hunk said. His big shoulders hunched uncertainly-especially under the look of betrayal Lance shot him. Shiro offered him a reassuring smile.

Pidge eyed the cryopod. "What are the chances of him getting loose if we transfer him upstairs versus leaving him in a cell down here?"

Coran stroked his moustache thoughtfully. "Fairly slim on both counts when we transfer him out. These pods leave their occupants disoriented for at least a varga after they wake up, even after short periods of time, and he's been in there for three movements. I doubt he'd be conscious for the first varga after we take him out. Transferring himback into these pods will be the tricky part-he'll have recuperated enough to resist, and it's a much longer way from the med bay than the cells."

"Then we should do an in-person interrogation. We can't have him get loose," Pidge said.

"What do you think, Shiro?" Keith asked. There was a note of concern in his voice.

"We could leave him in the med bay pods once we finish the extraction, couldn't we?" Shiro asked, looking Coran in the eye.

"...Well, yes, I suppose we could," Coran said. "They'll contain him just as well as the ones down here."

Shiro hesitated. All eyes were on him. As the Black Paladin, and the only paladin to remain undecided, the weight of the decision rested entirely on him. He looked back at the cryopod, studying Sendak's impassive features. He looked practically harmless, a blank, neutral slate, incapable of the damage he'd wrought. His lone eye was closed, but Shiro remembered his baleful, predatory yellow gaze with a chill. He wasn't going to subject himself to it again unless there was no other option.

"We'll transfer him to the med bay cryopods and extract his memories up there," Shiro said decisively.

"Are you sure ?" Pidge asked. She stared at him like he'd lost his mind, and for a split second, Shiro doubted his choice. Pidge had been put through the wringer when the Castle had fallen under Galra control, and he never wanted her to go through that again. Matt would never forgive him if Shiro let anything happen to her-not that he would need Matt guilting him to regret it for the rest of his life.

"If we interrogate him in person, we have to be ready for him to fight back," Shiro said. "I'm not willing to take that risk."

Pidge scowled ferociously, but she didn't argue. Shiro would have to do damage control later, make things up with her-and with Hunk, too, who looked uncomfortable and disappointed-but right now he had another task to focus on.

"Well, no time like the present," Coran said. "Hunk, Lance, if you wouldn't mind taking the containment system up to the med bay?"

"We're on it," Hunk said. He and Lance set to lifting the tube, careful not to slip and drop it, and headed out of the room.

"I'll get the pod ready," Keith offered, disappearing after them.

Coran nodded approvingly. "Shiro, get ready to catch him."

Shiro moved directly in front of the cryopod and braced himself for impact. Coran punched in a sequence on the pod's control panels, and the glass front hissed and receded into the floor. For a long moment, nothing happened. Then Sendak's eyelid fluttered open. It was impossible to tell where he was looking-or if he could even focus on his surroundings-but Shiro felt the weight of the Galra's stare before the eye slid closed again. Sendak toppled forward, boneless, and Shiro barely caught him. Sendak wasmassive , impossibly heavy deadweight. Shiro stumbled, struggling to keep both of them upright.

Then Coran stepped in, shoring up Sendak's right side and taking most of the weight off Shiro-and, more importantly, letting Shiro put his cybernetic between himself and Sendak. He didn't want to take any chances in case the Galra came to sooner than expected. They staggered towards the elevator, which Pidge operated for them, and made their way to the med bay.

One of the cryopods was already up and open, and Lance and Hunk had just finished setting up the tube beside it. They maneuvered the Galra into the pod and sealed it. Coran fiddled with the settings on the control panel for a minute or two, then stepped back and set his hands on his hips, studying his handiwork.

"It'll be close to twelve doboshes before he's ready for the extractor," the Altean said.

"Wait, really ?" Hunk asked. "Lance was in there for like a day!"

"True, but we're not trying to heal everything here," Coran said. "A full recovery from all of his injuries would take fifteen vargas at least."

Inside the pod, Sendak's face tensed, heavy brows furrowing and ears twitching. Shiro jumped. The Galra stilled, then stirred again, more faintly that time. His fist clenched and released.

"What's going on?" Shiro asked. The fingers of his cybernetic prickled, on the verge of activating.

"It's alright, just involuntary brainwave responses," Coran assured him. "It's not at all unusual, considering which part of his anatomy the pod is focused on."

Shiro wished Coran's words were more comforting, but he couldn't focus on anything outside the way the Galra's lip curled. A second later, a faint whine reached his ears-unmistakably Sendak's voice, an improbably pathetic sound to come from someone like that . Shiro looked away and pretended he hadn't heard.

Twelve doboshes was entirely too long.

An eternity later the pod beeped, and Coran stepped forward and placed three flat disks on the front face of the pod. The tube hummed and whirred, bright blue light shining through the fluid inside. And then nothing. The light shut off.

"...Uh, is that what's supposed to be happening?" Hunk asked.

"Well, no," Coran said.

"Let's give it some time," Shiro said, settling his stance a little more comfortably.

Seconds stretched out endlessly, becoming impossibly long minutes as they waited for a sign of activity. Shiro was prepared to wait hours if he had to. The paladins, apparently, weren't. Keith excused himself twenty minutes into the wait, grumbling something about the training deck. At around the thirty-five minute mark Pidge took off as well, presumably back to Green's hangar to continue her work on the crystal. Hunk left almost an hour in for breakfast, and Coran followed on his heels, Lance in tow, for Castle maintenance. Shiro remained, steadfast, staring at the pod and waiting for something, anything, to let him know the extractor was working.

He waited.

And waited.

He lost patience after another hour where the minutes circled back on themselves like ouroboros, repeating endlessly until he lost track of how long he'd been standing in the med bay waiting on a response that would never come. Shiro stalked forward and slammed the side of his hand against the front of the pod and glared at its occupant.

"I know you're in there, Sendak," he said quietly, trying to keep his tone level. "I know you have all the answers. Give them to me."

Sendak remained unresponsive, failing to even twitch.

Shiro vented a shout of frustration and slammed his fist against the pod again. "You're a broken soldier, you can't hold out forever!"

Sendak himself didn't respond, but a second later the tube glowed again. Soft violet tendrils grew down from the top into the clear fluid inside, branching and unfurling from a main stalk, growing out in all directions in a complex web.

Shiro allowed himself a hint of a victorious smile. "So you can hear me." He took a few paces back and crossed his arms, trying to feel official. "What was the first rank you held in Zarkon's army?"

Nothing.

He tried again. "Where did you find the Red Lion?"

Still nothing. Not even a hint of a reply.

Well, that settled it. He was pulling out the big question. "What is Zarkon's greatest weakness?"

"What makes you think you could possibly defeat him?" Sendak's voice came from nowhere and everywhere, reverberating off the walls and echoing from the ceiling. Shiro glanced between the tube and the pod.

But Sendak didn't say anything else, and Shiro tried again. "If you were to attack Zarkon, where would you strike?" He kept his gaze on the tube. Coran had said the memories could be accessed from there, right?

When Sendak replied, his voice seemed to come from the pod. "Why strike at all," he said, his voice velvet-soft and even, "when you could join him?"

The front of the pod flickered, and for a moment Shiro had the impression that Sendak's eye was open, that the Galra was staring directly at him. Then he blinked and, sure enough, his eye was still closed. It was just his imagination. It had to be. He couldn't look away. Fear curled tendrils down his back, like ice dripping down his shirt.

"We're connected, you and me," Sendak said, practically purring the words. "Both part of the Galra Empire."

"No. I'm not like you," Shiro refuted. He couldn't keep a tremor of fear out of his voice.

"You've been broken and reforged, just like me. Look at your hand."

Shiro couldn't help staring down at his cybernetic. It was on pins and needles again, burning where it plugged into the remains of his arm. Wrongfully stolen. Someone had unmade him and build him again . Was that even his hand now? Did he control it, or was he the weapon?

"That's not me!" he shouted, not sure if it was directed at Sendak or at himself.

"It's the strongest part of you. Embrace it." Sendak had taken a more aggressive tone now, fierce and urgent. "The others don't know what you do, have never seen what you've seen. Face it, you cannot hope to beat Zarkon. He has already defeated you!"

It was true, every word of it.

"I'm not listening to you!" Shiro clamped his hands over his ears, clutching at his temples, fighting to block out Sendak's voice.

The Galra continued, and Shiro couldn't ignore him-the voice sounded like it came from inside his own head. "Do you really think a monster like you could be a Voltron paladin?"

"Stop it !" Shiro shouted, as loud as he possibly could, and smashed his fist through the tube. It had to be the source of the noise, Sendak couldn't possibly be speaking to him from cryostasis. Blue liquid spilled everywhere, oozing in viscous puddles. Shiro paused, took a deep breath, and glanced up from the floor to the pod.

The front of the pod flickered again, and Sendak's eye snapped open, cold and venomous. He bared fangs at Shiro. All he could focus on was the way Sendak's cruel mouth opened to devour him.

Shiro punched straight through the front of the cryopod, grabbing Sendak by the front of his armor and hurling him to the floor. He had to stop the Galra before he could do anything. Sendak rolled onto his side. Shiro's fist blazed white and violet. He lunged, smashing his fist into the floor. Missed by inches. Sendak rolled again, scrabbled almost upright. Shiro smashed a foot into the side of his head, knocked him back down. He hauled back, fist raised. And froze.

What was he doing ? Sendak was down, unmoving, curled up on himself and clearly trying to shield his face with his remaining arm. He hadn't fought back. Shiro couldn't land the final blow. Not on an unresisting opponent. He lowered his arm and took a half-step towards the downed Galra.

Sendak curled up tighter and whimpered . Shiro stepped back and looked around at the mess he'd made. The memory tube was an unsalvageable wreckage of glass and metal. He'd smashed a hole in the floor, charred black and smoking around the edges of the fist-shaped crater. The blue field on the front of the cryopod flickered erratically, still displaying Sendak's snarling face despite the Galra himself lying on the floor a few feet away.

Something was wrong.

Shiro grabbed the collar of Sendak's uniform, hauling him partway off the ground, and shook him. "I don't know what kind of game you think you're playing, but you'd better cut it out right now."

"I-I don't-" Sendak choked out. He flinched away, eye squeezed shut.

"Don't lie to me," Shiro growled. "I know what you were doing."

"I didn't-what are you talking about?"

"You're going to tell me you weren't just trying to mess with my head?"

"Yes!" Sendak's ears lowered. "...No? I-I haven't-" He clutched at Shiro's wrist. "I can't breathe."

Shiro let go, allowing Sendak to sink back to the floor. The Galra gasped for breath, palm braced flat against the metal. His whole body shook violently, and he coughed twice before lifting his head and squinting at Shiro. Shiro did his best not to shake as the aftereffects of adrenaline ran their course. He took a few paces back, putting himself between Sendak and the wide-open door.

"You mind explaining what the hell just happened, then?" Shiro asked.

"Not until you dim the lights," Sendak retorted. "I'll tell you nothing until I can see ."

"Explain first and I'll consider it," Shiro said, crossing his arms emphatically.

Sendak's ears lowered and he returned his gaze to the floor. "I don't know what you're asking." Hesitation. He lifted his hand and pressed it against the side of his head where Shiro had kicked him, leaving a bluish smear on the floor. "Perhaps you should explain it to me ."

Shiro wanted to punch him.

"So you're telling me you didn't just tell me that I should give up and join the Galra Empire, because there's no way we'll ever beat Zarkon?"

"I think I would remember if I had," Sendak scoffed. "Now lower the lights ."

Shiro hesitated. Lowering the lights would swing the advantage to Sendak-Galra had much better night vision than humans by a long shot. On the other hand, Sendak had given him an answer, and while it wasn't the one he wanted, he had answered. He backed over to the panel by the door, keeping his eyes on Sendak the whole way. A fumble, too-smooth surface slipping under his fingertips, and the lights dimmed to half their initial brightness. Almost half a minute passed before Sendak lifted his head, blinking and peering around. He heaved a sigh and settled back on his haunches. His ears tilted.

"Do you routinely torture prisoners by assaulting and blinding them?" he asked, sounding entirely too casual for Shiro's taste.

Shiro stalked back towards him, coming to a stop just out of Sendak's reach. He opened his mouth to justify himself, then hesitated. If Sendak really hadn't been messing with his head…he glanced back up at the cryopod. The half-demolished front still reflected Sendak's face, wide-eyed and snarling, a sharp contrast to the Sendak sitting on the floor and watching him intently.

Instead, he said, "I'm sorry. It was uncalled for."

Sendak huffed and muttered something under his breath that sounded an awful lot like "damn straight." He tilted his ears the other way and said, "Now, I assume, the interrogation begins."

Shiro shook his head, looked at the cryopod again. "No. If that wasn't you, something or someone else tried to get me to kill you." Fear tingled in the pit of his stomach. Hadn't Coran said something about the Castle systems needing repairs? If a system as crucial as the med bay could malfunction like that, who knew what was happening elsewhere in the ship? "Sendak, get up. Now."

"And why should I follow your orders?"

"Because I can't leave you in here unsupervised, and if you refuse I'm going to try putting you back in a glitchy cryopod to stop you from trying anything." God, Shiro hoped that was a credible threat. Or at least that it sounded credible.

Sendak's ears flattened immediately, and he looked away. "...I suppose following you is preferable," he muttered.

Shiro took a couple of steps back to give the Galra room. Sendak stood, one long, fluid, sinuous motion, and Shiro retreated a few more steps. He'd almost forgotten just how big Sendak was, when he stood under his own power-at least eight feet tall and staggeringly broad. Shiro came up to his armpit, maybe, and no higher. They stared at each other for an uncomfortable minute, and Shiro did his best not to shift uncomfortably under Sendak's glower.

"...You ready to go?" Shiro asked.

"I suppose," Sendak said. His ears were still flat, displaying almost feline aggravation. If he was smaller, Shiro wouldn't have been able to take that look seriously. As he was, Shiro was leery of pushing the Galra much further.

The hallway lights were out. Shiro could have sworn they'd been on when he'd dimmed the ones in the med bay, but no amount of fiddling with the lighting settings would bring them back on. The hairs on the back of his neck rose, and not just because Sendak was breathing down it. The Castle was often quiet, but not like this . The silence, the darkness-Shiro felt like he'd been dropped into one of the horror games Matt had enjoyed back on Earth. Abandoned space, potentially unhinged and murderous companion, unable to fully trust his senses, the only thing it was missing was a monster with too many teeth lurking in the darkness.

Sendak shifted behind him, metal clinking on metal. "This doesn't look like going to me," he said.

"It's really dark out there," Shiro replied, squinting into the gloom. Was that a flicker of light farther down the hallway?

No, it was pitch black as far as he could see. Just his mind playing tricks, then.

Sendak grabbed his wrist-the cybernetic, not his natural one-and brushed past him into the darkness.

"Maybe to you ," he said snidely. "But not to me."

"And why should I trust you not to lead me off somewhere and kill me?" Shiro snapped.

He couldn't see Sendak anymore, but the Galra's scoff was loud and clear. "Do you have another choice?"

He had a point.

"...Lead the way, then," Shiro said.

Not for the first time, he hated the way the Castle hallways seemed to wind back on themselves. Every minute was torture. The whole floor was totally dark-Shiro couldn't have seen his hand if he'd held it directly in front of his face-and the only sounds were their footsteps and Sendak's rough, oddly shallow breathing.

And then, up ahead, light flickered. Blue light, bright enough that Shiro almost covered his eyes. He thought for a second that a door had opened. No. Wrong shape. Humanoid, probably no larger than Shiro himself, bluish-white and glowing .

Sendak dropped Shiro's hand.

He had the briefest impression of the Galra hurtling towards the light before it went out. The sudden absence painted red-orange afterimages on his eyelids-or maybe just in the air. It was too dark for there to be any difference. He strained his ears, listening. Sendak's heavy footprints moved rapidly away. Nothing else. No doors, no machinery. Sendak stopped moving. Shiro froze. Fight or flight response. Where was the threat?

"Sendak?" he called into the darkness.

"There is nothing here," the Galra rumbled. A pause. Footsteps moved back towards Shiro. A hand closed around his cybernetic wrist, tugged him into moving.

The silence stretched uncomfortably.

"...You could have taken off there, and I wouldn't have been able to stop you," Shiro said. "Why didn't you?"

"Safety in numbers," Sendak replied. "I don't trust you. I like you even less. But I prefer the risk I know to the one I don't." A quiet huff. "I didn't live this long by being stupid."

Shiro shrugged. "That's fair."

They fell quiet again after that, and aside from the occasional warning about corners, stayed quiet until they reached the elevator. Sendak halted in front of the doors-not that Shiro could tell. They might have been an inch in front of him, or several feet away, or further up the hall.

"Where to from here?" Sendak asked.

"We're looking for the other paladins," Shiro said. "Coran and Allura, too, if we can find them."

He paused, thinking. Pidge would be the easiest to find. If she was hunkered down with that crystal again, she wouldn't budge until someone forced her-but he didn't trust Sendak not to attack her on sight. Hunk was probably done with breakfast and could be anywhere in the Castle. The same went for Lance and Coran.

"Keith," he decided. "We'll get Keith first." He reached out and groped for the elevator control panel, which thankfully lit up under his palm.

Sendak released Shiro's wrist and shielded his eye from the elevator light. "...Which one is 'Keith'?" he asked. He mangled the name slightly, replacing the 'th' with a soft 'd'.

"Red," Shiro replied. He strode into the elevator, pretending not to be worried it would shut down on them. "He'll be on the training deck, so we're going down a couple levels."

Sendak hummed and followed him into the elevator, still covering his eyes. The rim on his cybernetic eye rotated, making a soft sound almost like gears on a bicycle shifting. A couple seconds later the sound stopped, and he dropped his hand. His organic eye was squeezed shut against the light.

"I should have warned you about that," Shiro said guiltily.

Sendak huffed. "I'll live. I always do."

"...I take it that eye lets you see in conditions that blind you?"

"Do you need verbal confirmation for everything ?"

"Could you stop being an ass for five seconds?"

"Having an ass doesn't make me one."

"No, I meant-" Shiro groaned and pinched the bridge of his nose. "It's an expression back on Earth. I meant you're being rude."

"I am rude, just ask Hax-" Sendak broke off on a choked sound, and Shiro turned around in time to watch Sendak conceal his stricken expression.

Something in Shiro's chest ached in sympathy. "...For what it's worth, I'm sorry about what happened to your-" Underling? Partner in crime? "-Friend."

Sendak snorted. "Don't bother lying to me."

"What makes you think I'm lying?" Shiro asked, struggling to keep his frustration out of his voice.

Sendak looked away and didn't respond.

It took too long for the elevator to ping and the doors to finally, finally open onto the training level. Shiro poked his head out and was relieved to see the lights were dimmed but not off-no way was he doing another pitch-black floor. Sendak seemed relieved too, when he trailed Shiro out of the elevator. His organic eye opened, and his massive ears tipped and swivelled like satellite dishes. Shiro kept half an eye on him and made for the training deck.

They didn't make it past the first intersection when, somewhere else in the Castle, someone screamed.

A/N: ...Okay, so I changed the title around between the last chapter of When We Fell and this, and I'm a day late, but...close enough, eh?