#wounded mecha who have been -abandoned- and had to start turning to others as -fuel-

[spymeister]

It's that time of year where I think about Bayverse Jazz surviving the whole incident with Megatron, and legit dragging his half-torn body out of the Mariana Trench. Granted, he would have survived by consuming what he could from the other frames dumped there with them.

The pain, abandonment and desolation would literally turn him into the worst version of himself.

[anthropedia]

Chapter Summary: Lance: If anything, his second year at the Garrison went even better than the first. Keith: If anything, his second year at the Garrison was even worse than the first.

If anything, Lance’s second year at the Garrison went even better than the first.

Though really, the entirety of it was just a rollercoaster. One thing after another.

As rollercoasters usually do, everything started at a low point; about halfway through summer break, news broke of the failure of the Kerberos mission, and it devastated the entire world. It was hard to believe that this mission, which was the first of its kind and had been made up of only the best the Garrison had to offer, had been felled by pilot error.

Takashi Shirogane, who had been the pilot on the mission, was a celebrity. Everybody knew of him. An ace pilot and the sweetheart of the space program, he had been a shoo-in for the mission. Lance and Hunk even had a poster of him in their dorm room, per Lance’s insistence, of course.

But the summer’s tragedy quickly got pushed to the back of his mind as soon as school started back up. All it took was a glance at the class roster board on his first day back. He had been moved up to Fighter class!!! And Hunk was going to be his Engineer!!! And to top it all off, that too-good-for-school Keith was nowhere to be found!!!!

Of course, it wasn’t all fun and games. Being upgraded to Fighter class brought with it a whole new level of expectations from the teachers, who had no problem reminding Lance of exactly how much of a failure and nobody he really was.

And without his old vice, he really didn’t know how to take it all.

There were SO many nights, after Hunk had fallen asleep, when he was left alone with his own thoughts where he just wanted his old release. But he couldn’t do it. And it pissed him off.

He couldn’t bring himself to cut. Not when doing so brought him face-to-face with unavoidable proof that someone out there knew his secret and cared about his wellbeing.

Those three words were all it took.

And he found himself hating the person who wrote them on his wrist. Not only because they had taken away the most effective tool Lance had in his arsenal against the demons in his head, but because they were an utter idiot.

How DARE they have done such a thing, whoever they are. For LANCE of all people. Here they were, someone so kind and self-sacrificing that they carved words into their own skin. And they had done it for someone they could have only known by his self-induced scars he must have left stained on their skin.

Of course, he hadn’t known he was hurting anyone else with his actions. But there was no way for them to know that.

So for all they knew, Lance must be some broken, selfish, screwup who couldn’t handle life and didn’t care about the person on the other side.

Yet they had carved themselves up for him anyway.

They were such a stupid idiot. Utterly wasted on him.

But now that Lance knew his wounds hurt someone else out there, he just couldn’t bring himself to make them anymore. And it sucked.

But eventually, he got used to it, as people tend to do with such things.

Lance didn’t cut a single time over the year that followed.

Instead, almost in compensation, it seemed, the maker of the words on his wrist started leaving their own marks.

They weren’t on purpose, that much was clear. They were too random and varied for that. But every so often, class would be interrupted by Lance crying out in surprise as an invisible force sliced across his ankle or jabbed him in the side; leaving the telltale maroon marks in its wake.

The last of which left a mark tracing the lifeline on his palm, thin enough that you couldn’t see it unless he stretched his hand as far open as it would go.

To be honest, he didn’t have much time to dwell on what the sudden influx of markings might mean. Not between the added pressure of being a Fighter pilot, and getting to know the third member of his team, who was actually proving more difficult to befriend than Lance had expected.

Which was why it seemed perfectly rational to follow the dude up to the roof on that fateful night at the start of the first semester of the second year being on a team with him.

Years later, it would all feel like a blur when Lance looked back on that night. One minute he and Hunk were checking out what Pidge was up to, ya know, team bonding and all that. The next, an alien ship had crash-landed and he was sneaking his hero, apparently back from the dead, out of a Garrison’s ambulance ship with the help of Keith of all people. Keith. The asshole with a mullet who had mysteriously dropped out a year ago.

The next day was even more surreal. He’d spent the night in his mulleted rival’s secret hideout hut in the middle of the desert with the previously mentioned back-from-the-dead hero going on about aliens and something called Voltron. Which was super weird since Pidge had been going on about it right before they’d found Shiro. Then they were out in the desert searching for cave markings. Ya know. Like normal people. It was all very exciting even if none of it made sense.

And if that weren’t enough, when they did find the cave markings, they started glowing, and before you know it Lance was piloting a giant alien robot lion through a wormhole in an attempt to not get murdered by an alien ship with Keith, Pidge, Hunk, and Shiro along for the ride.

Then they actually met some aliens and fought off that warship with a lion-themed mecha after having an easter egg hunt for each of their respective robot lions and Lance’s life was never the same again. ________________________________________________________________

If anything, Keith’s second year at the Garrison was even worse than the first.

The news that started it all came at the beginning of the second summer session. Call him a nerd but he had figured it would be in his best interest to take as many classes as he could, finish school as soon as possible and all that.

He’d actually been at lunch, eating a rather bland meal of barbecued pork, mashed potatoes, and a mixture of cooked peas and carrots.

It’s funny how some memories stick with you, sharp and clear; while others from the same instance blur and fade as soon as they’re made.

What Keith did remember, aside from how the carrots and peas mushed together under minimal pressure from his tongue, tasting identical; was how every screen in the dining hall turned on at once.

What Keith did remember was the lack of emotion in the lady’s voice as it echoed through the hall announcing, “This just in. The Galaxy Garrison has released a statement reporting a loss of contact with and subsequent crash of the mission to Pluto’s moon, Kerberos.”

What Keith did remember was somehow managing to inhale his current bite of vinegar-drenched pork and started coughing loud enough to turn the attention of those around him away from the monitors to watch his show.

By the time he had his breathing under control enough to hear what the newscaster continued to say, a picture of Shiro, along with the father and son scientist duo was parading across every screen.

What Keith did remember was hearing “...crash was caused by pilot error, with no survivors…”

No survivors.

What Keith didn’t remember was how he wound up in a screaming match with Commander Iverson.

What Keith did remember were the words “Classified information.” and “Permanent Expulsion”

What Keith did remember was rushing to his room and shoving all of his belongings into a duffel bag and a backpack.

What Keith didn’t remember was breaking into the Garrison’s vehicle hold and stealing a hoverbike before escaping out the bay doors a split second before the entire campus went into lockdown.

What Keith did remember was happening upon an abandoned shack in the middle of the desert, right as the sun was dipping below the horizon.

The door was easy enough to jimmy open and there was just enough light left over from the setting sun for a quick search of the place to make sure it was truly empty.

And then night fell.

And for the first time since he could remember, Keith cried.

The tears were more in anger than anything else, though he didn’t know what he was so angry about. It hadn’t yet hit him that Shiro was never coming back, and he didn’t give enough of a shit about the Garrison right now to be truly angry with them. But whatever he was angry about, Keith cried himself to sleep that night, feeling more alone than he could ever remember feeling before.

The next day left Keith running on empty. No shits left to give, no tears left to cry, no voice left after screaming all night in his sleep.

But he also had no food to eat, no water to drink, and no real home to return to.

So, taking stock, he set out to fix what he could. Luckily, the bike he had stolen had a full tank of fuel, and he still had a decent amount of cash from not having any reason to spend his savings while at the Garrison.

It was only a 30-minute jaunt to the nearest small town, so Keith was able to stock up on supplies, something about his expression stopping the cashier girl in her tracks when she tried to strike up some small talk.

When he got back to the shack, he set about tidying the place up. Whoever had lived here before had already taken care of the basics. There wasn’t any bed, but there was a decent enough sofa, judging by his experience sleeping on it the previous night. The kitchen seemed to be in working order, water pipes connecting to an underground oasis by the looks of it. There was even a working generator in the side room attached to the main structure, and with the push of a few switches and a little elbow grease to help the thing along, it roared to life and voila, let there be light. And computers, apparently. Though the ancient boxy machines looked more like the artifacts of bygone eras you’d find in museums than anything that had been built in Keith’s lifetime.

Oh well. Waste not, want not, or however the saying went. Once Keith had finished putting everything away, he set about messing around with the dinosaur-esque computers, seeing if he could make anything out of them.

But that didn’t last very long. He just couldn’t sit still. Sitting still meant thinking about things and Keith was not about to do any of the sort, right now. So he decided to explore the area a bit more. On foot, because the ion fuel in the bike wouldn’t last forever, and that stuff was expensive.

So he grabbed his water bottle and a snack, picked a direction, and wandered. At first he was concerned about getting lost, but for whatever reason, he had no issue staying in a straight line, as if he knew where he was going. Eventually, he found what looked to be the very last remnants of what would have once been an impressive canyon, a few millennia ago.

There were a few pillars of red rock poking out of the sand like stand-alone columns of ancient ruins before he reached a cliffside that stretched on, past what he could see.

This, he figured, would be a good stopping point for the day as he had already stopped for his snack and was nearly halfway done with the water bottle.

When he turned to head back, he felt a sharp pain against his left ankle. The pain was all too familiar, though the placement was new.

He couldn’t help the wave of excitement and relief that washed over him at the familiar pain as his head whipped down to get a look at the source of the sting.

The excited laugh that had been about to escape him died in his throat, though, when he saw, not the blue streak he was impossibly expecting, but a thin red line, growing bolder as blood began to trickle out from the scrape on his leg.

He had noticed the rock jutting out of the sand before but had apparently misjudged its proximity.

Just as the instinctual relief had done moments before, a wave of guilt poured through him before he could remember that there was no one to feel guilty for hurting.

It didn’t matter if he got hurt anymore. There was no one to feel his pain or worry about him if he got hurt. The only two people who might have done so were no longer alive.

So he did what any reasonable person would do.

He laughed.

He laughed at himself for a good, long while before wiping away the blood and choosing to ignore the sting for the trek back home.

Once he made it back to the shack, he set about dressing his ankle, and making himself some semblance of a suitable dinner; before clamoring his way onto the slanted wooden roof and finally allowing himself to think.

Shiro was dead.

He wasn’t coming back.

Keith was now entirely alone in the universe.

No tears came as this realization finally began to sink in. They had all been spent last night.

He just felt an emptiness where comfort used to be when he looked up, toward Kerberos.

But the longer he stared at the sky, the more his thoughts kept wandering back to the cliffside he’d stumbled upon earlier.

It was easier than thinking about anything else, so after a few futile attempts to reroute his thoughts, Keith started planning another trip out there tomorrow.

Eventually, a few more tomorrows turned into weeks which turned into months and then into what must have been going on a year or so. Keith lost track of what day it was to be perfectly honest. It was only at the very end of that year that Keith bothered to get a calendar.

But throughout the year, his curiosity with the cliffs turned into an obsession as something he couldn’t understand kept drawing him to them.

He marked time by his discoveries and how long it took each new scratch and scrape to heal.

First came the cave.

Then the gash on his side from losing his footing as he climbed up the cliff while looking for another entrance to said cave.

The cave drawings themselves were discovered the same day he sliced up his palm, thanks to taking off his glove to feel the markings themselves.

After a long while, once he had explored all he could, he wound up spending most of his time in the shack, studying the copies and pictures of the markings themselves. Each of his scars had fully healed by the time he’d managed to translate some of the more basic markings, and not a moment too soon, as it turned out.

The markings were mostly numbers. Dates. All pointing to some big, cosmic event happening on one particular day; which, once Keith had gotten his hands on a calendar and figured out the current date, turned out to be a week away.

Keith did his best to prepare for whatever event the carvings in the cave might have been pointing to.

But nothing could have prepared him for what actually happened.

There was no way he could have expected to find Shiro, alive but looking like an entirely different person from the Shiro in his memory. Robot arm included.

He couldn’t have expected to team up with three others who apparently knew him from the Garrison to break Shiro out of an ambulance.

And he certainly hadn’t expected his little desert shack to go from just him to bursting with five people overnight.

After not interacting with another person longer than it took him to pay for his groceries for roughly a year, the sudden onslaught of constant talking and human interaction was overwhelming, to say the least.

That didn’t mean he wasn’t able to appreciate just how amazing it was when the cave markings he’d long since memorized glowed blue as soon as the Lance guy touched them, or feel the thrill of excitement at the wave of information that burst through his mind as the blue mechanical lion woke up.

What it did mean, was that it wasn’t until the first night on the alien planet; laying in a bed for the first time in a year, alone for the first time in two days, that he was able to process any of the new information.

Shiro was really back. He wasn’t alone anymore. He was surrounded by people who relied on him.

It didn’t completely erase the loneliness constantly nibbling away at his insides. There was no way this bunch of strangers could ever do that.

But maybe he didn’t have to be completely alone, either.