Marked For Death | klangst

Four.

"Lance!" Kieth called, trying to mask the panic in his voice. But it was no use. The terrain muffled his voice, bouncing it back to their original position, and the mist was so heavy, the three Paladins had to be two feet away from each other to see what they were all doing. Keith breathed laboriously, trying extremely hard to push down the feeling of hysteria rising up within his chest. "No, no, no..." the Red Paladin mumbled almost incoherently, starting to quickly pace in front of Hunk and Pidge. "This isn't happening, this is not happening."

"What do we do now?" Pidge asked quietly, her voice small and afraid for her friend.

"What do we do..?" Hunk repeated in a queer voice -- almost as if the answer was very obvious. "We need to find Lance."

Pidge rested her gaze on the yellow Paladin. "How? Our communications are down, and Lance could've ventured off at any time..."

"So? He's our friend, and we have to find him before that two hours is up!" Hunk insisted in defense, a frown forming on his mouth.

Keith knew they had to find Lance -- they just had to. But he couldn't ignore the risks. If they didn't find him... If they ran out of time... They had to complete their mission, though...

"Keith?" Pidge asked, turning to him. "What do we do?"

He responded by looking in her eyes. "We need to find Lance, yes. But we still have a mission to complete..." he trailed off, avoiding Hunk's shattering eyes. "We need to do both, but we just can't right now. We need an extra set of hands to help."

"You mean Allura?" Pidge clarified before furrowing her brows. "How do we talk to her when our coms aren't functioning properly?"

"Backtrack," Keith replied. "We'll retrace our steps to the last place we had communications with them. Allura will fly down, then we'll be able to split up an--"

"Split up?" Hunk intervened, a slightly horrified expression crossing his face. "Do you think that's wise?"

Keith sighed. "It's the only way we can complete this mission and find Lance, all within the allotted time."

Hunk didn't like the idea, but he knew it was the only way. "So who's going where?" he asked, accepting Keith's plan. "I'm going to find my best friend, so who's going to complete the mission?"

Pidge looked to Keith. "Not that I don't like Lance or anything, but I'll go find Zarkon's commander," she offered boldly.

"Not alone," Keith said firmly.

"Why?" Pidge asked, her voice slightly hurt. "Is it just because I'm the youngest? Or is it because I'm a girl?" She said the word with spite and force, a tone that shocked everyone else.

Keith's eyes hardened in defense. "Neither, Pidge. Why would you ever think that?"

She relaxed her shoulders a bit. "From personal experience," she muttered. "I'm sorry..."

"It's alright," the Red Paladin replied solemnly. "I don't want you going off alone because this is one of Zarkon's top commanders. Remember Sendak? You may have tricked him several times -- and that was amazing -- but it took all of us working together to defeat him."

Pidge turned her gaze to her feet. "Yeah, I suppose."

"Now, it sounded like Allura knew what we were looking for when she described what his hideout would be. She'll go with you and look for this guy while I go with Hunk to find Lance... hopefully," Keith continued on, explaining the rest of his loose plan.

"Come on, then," Hunk said, starting to walk back the way they came. "Every minute we stand here and discuss things is another minute that we don't have to find Lance or Zarkon's commander."

Without bothering to hear a response from either Pidge or Keith, he continued walking, leaving it up to them to decide whether or not to follow. Of course, they trailed after him, Keith allowing Pidge to go ahead of him. He didn't want her to notice the way he dragged his feet across the dusty ground or detect how his shoulders sagged sullenly. He didn't want her to think too much on the fact that he was being more distant than usual. He didn't want her to discover that she wasn't the only one that had dealt with an identity dilemma.

The mist thinned out. Their coms came to life fuzzily, as if they had just woken up from a nap. Keith tried to pick out distinctive sounds out of the jumble of static radiating in his ear, but could come out with nothing.

They kept walking until they saw the deep imprints of their boots from where they landed on the cursed planet. Finally, a couple of muffled voices faded into hearing.

"...might be wrong, Coran! I have to go!" It was Allura, her voice a bit shrill with worry.

"Allura's right..." It was Shiro this time. He sounded exhausted with concern and dolor, his spirits weighing heavily down. "I hate not being down there!"

Keith chose to step in before he listened to their distress anymore. "Guys, we're here."

Everyone heard Allura breathe an exasperated sigh of relief. "Paladins! Oh, thank goodness nothing happened. We lost communications there for a moment."

"We could tell," Hunk commented, his voice slightly bitter.

The Paladins could feel Allura frown. "Hunk? What's the matter?"

"Princess, you need to come down here as soon as you can -- next to where we landed," Hunk chose to reply instead of answering her question.

"I don't understand," Allura said, her voice puzzled. "What's going on?"

Keith bit the inside of his cheek. "Allura... Lance is missing," he revealed dolefully.

"No..." the Altean princess gasped. Even though they couldn't see, the Paladins knew that Allura had buried her face in her hands, feeling responsible for everything.

Shiro was the first to speak. "It isn't your fault, Allura..." He paused and asked, "How?"

"We don't exactly know..." Keith replied guiltily.

"What do you mean you don't know?" Shiro pressed, his tone gaining an accusatory note. "How can you just lose one of your teammates?"

"Shiro, it wasn't like that," Pidge intervened, sensing the growing tension between the two. "Lance was keeping a lookout from behind everyone else. And we weren't talking so it's not like we could notice his absence. For all we know, he might've seen some danger and went off to get rid of it."

"He would've said something," Shiro answered, his voice tight.

"Are you sure?" Keith asked. "Since when do we know Lance to let others in on his wild plans?"

"As fair as that point may be, I specifically told you all to stay together. As much as Lance likes to disregard explicit instructions, he would've listened to me," Allura brought up, her voice still tinged with guilt.

"That's true," Hunk confirmed. "If she told him to jump out of the air lock without his armor, he would in an instant. He hangs on her every word."

"Okay, now that we've gotten that established," Pidge interjected again, "we're losing time."

"Not to worry, Pidge," Allura told the Green Paladin in a confident voice. "I'll be down there with you all in a couple of doboshes. After that, we can look for Lance."

"What about the mission?" Keith asked in confusion.

Shiro sighed. "Some things are more important than completing a mission. Finding Lance before it's too late is one of them. It's the right thing to do, and at this point, the only thing we can do until time is on our side once again."

Even though he knew Shiro couldn't see, Keith nodded, taking notice of the decisive tone in his voice. "Right," he replied meekly.

"Okay, I'm leaving now, Paladins," Allura informed the three of them. "I'll see you in a few ticks."

Hunk swallowed a lump in his throat. "Hopefully, we'll see Lance soon, too." Keith hoped so, as well -- more than he had ever done in his life before.