Purple Sky

By Keith Dreyar

Prologue

~Keith Kogane~

Keith woke up in a cramped corner with his arms awkwardly bent behind his back and his aching bones cracking as he stretched his long legs out gingerly. He hissed between his teeth and closed his eyes tightly against the flash of pain that flared from his left knee. A small whimper drew his attention and Keith peeled his heavy eyelids open with a wince.

The side of his head was throbbing and he could feel his hair sticking to his temple with sweat and dried blood. His eyes searched through the dimly lit space, what he saw was disheartening, four bare walls covered in twisted sheets of metal and no way out.

"Keith?" A small voice called, unsure and shaking. "Are you here?"

"Yeah, Lance, I'm here." Keith said, voice cracking from lack of use. "Are you okay?"

"My side is sore, I think I have a broken rib." Keith watched Lance struggle to sit up with his hands cuffed, Lance cried out. "Make that at least two. Where are we?"

A soft light fell over their heads, colouring the room in honey gold, and Keith shifted gently until he could gaze up to the small window of bars above them. His head swayed before snapping back against the crook in the wall.

"Some deep dark hole, I'm assuming in an unfriendly and hostile place that's going to try and kill us." Keith blew a chunk of hair out of his eyes and blinked away the spots of light dancing in the blurry corners of his vision. "I have a concussion."

"My nose is broken," Lance countered in a falsely light tone, a small whine of pain replacing the beginning of a chuckle in his throat.

Keith rolled his head in a vague gesture of showing he'd heard. "There's a gunshot wound in my knee that burns like hell every time I move." His body twitched involuntarily, the gaping flesh pulsing and Keith bit his lip to keep from screaming.

"My eye is bruised shut." The Blue Paladin murmured. "I can barely see."

Keith felt his muscles protest at the continued restraint of his arms and he pulled at the cool metal holding his hands. His fingers brushed the wall, the barest touch forcing Keith to jump away from the steel and slump forward instinctually, his leg screeching back in pain. "All the fingers on my right hand are broken."

Keith saw Lance's head turn towards him slowly, the ocean blue looking out of place in the dark and dingy cell. He could see the worry that had settled over Lance's face by the clench of his jaw and slight widening of his good eye. "It's not a competition." He tried to joke.

"You're only saying that because you lost." Keith replied, a defeated half-smile tilting the corners of his chapped lips.

"Ah, yes, I'm so incredibly jealous of your injuries." Lance bit out, his voice coloured in shame quickly as he spoke. Although he tried to hide it behind the ascending darkness settled over them, Keith could see it bright as day. "I shouldn't have been knocked out so early in the fight so I could outdo you."

"You should be, haven't you heard?" The Red Paladin attempted his signature smirk, but his scratched and worn voice couldn't be ignored. "Chicks dig scars."

Lance's laugh was empty, like a hollow shell of the warmth that should be there. "Hearing the Keith Kogane say 'chicks dig scars' may have actually been worth all this. Remind me to jot it down in the history books if we get out of here."

"When, not if." Keith corrected, his eyes trying to focus on Lance's chest as he breathed.

Lance frowned in confusion, "What?"

"When we get out of here, not if we get out of here." He said again, more firmly this time. He hated how hopeless Lance looked down here. His face was the pale grey colour of ash and purple bruises blossomed over his skin like wildflowers.

His face closed away and Keith couldn't read what Lance was thinking when he whispered, "You can't know that."

"Alright, stop it. This is freaking me out. I'm usually the pessimistic one and I don't appreciate you trying to take that away from me."

He was quiet for a minute, but in the seemingly black hole that surrounded them, Keith felt like it was hours before he heard his teammate speak. "We don't know where we are, Keith. We don't know where our lions are or where the rest of the Paladins are. We don't even know how long we've been passed out down here! Whoever they are-" Lance broke into a coughing fit, his shoulders shaking violently. "We are going to die down here."

"We aren't dying in this pit like animals! We'll escape," Lance snorted at that but Keith ignored him. " And if we don't, the rest of the team is looking for us, all we have to do is hold on long enough for them to find us."

Lance studied him with a strange inquisitive glint in his eye before slowly nodding. "Who would have thought that the two of us would be stuck with each other like this?"

"I promise I'll take care of you." And he meant it.

~Three Weeks Earlier~

"Hey, Hunk?" Keith called out, to the concentrating boy stirring a bowl of green goo, from the door to the kitchen.

Hunk placed the dish back on the counter before turning towards his friend. "Yeah?"

"Have you seen my jacket?" Keith started. "I thought I must have forgotten it in the lounge last night but it's not there."

"No," Keith felt disappointment well in his chest, that jacket was apart of his home. The desert and the lonely cabin he called home back on Earth. "You might want to check with Lance, he and Pidge were cleaning up after Allura and Coran dashed off."

He nodded and, with a wave at Hunk, strolled down the hall towards Lance's room. He was hoping that the other boy hadn't flushed his favourite jacket into space as some sort of juvenile play of revenge.

To be continued...

Disclaimer: I don't own Voltron or any of the characters mentioned in here!

So this story would canonically fit into the beginning of the show, maybe before they defeated Zarkon at the end of season two. Mostly because I'm trying to just write an alternate version of the series, instead of trying to fit it into a weird mixture of season seven and AU. So here we go.

Hope you like it!

P.S. For Pidge I'm using she/her.