Work Text:
Shock
Adam had known, from the moment they got the diagnosis, that life with Takashi would have a time limit. It was something he had accepted, just like he’d accepted the fact that Takashi hated Adam’s curry, that he always insisted on sleeping with a window open no matter what the temperature was, that he was incredibly attached to the ridiculous floof of his preferred hairstyle.
Adam had known they had a time limit. That was why he had been planning to apologize when Takashi returned to earth. To try to make amends. To see if they could start over.
Now he never could.
Denial
There was no way it could be real. Certainly the Garrison would have contacted Colleen before this, before it went out on the nightly news. It had to be someone’s idea of a sick joke.
The Garrison had lost ships and crews before, of course. But they’d learned from those mistakes; she’d looked over all the schematics and the failsafes herself (despite the fact that she didn’t didn’t have the clearance for it) and everything had looked fine. The news report must have been a mistake.
She’d speak with Sanda in the morning and straighten this whole thing out.
Bargaining
Pidge hissed in frustration as another lead turned out to be a dead-end. It was the last in a batch of files she had downloaded off of Iverson’s personal computer, so for now she was stuck.
They had to be covering something up. She was just going to need to widen her radius. If there was just a way to get to Sanda’s system, or better yet, break her way through the Garrison’s firewall and get access to the entire network, then maybe she’d have a chance.
If she could just figure out what went wrong, what the Garrison was hiding, she could fix everything.
She could bring her family home.
Guilt
Lance had made it into fighter class.
He should have been happy, calling his family and convincing Hunk to sneak into the kitchens and bake him some cupcakes. This should have been the best day of his life.
But the victory just felt...hollow.
Even if Iverson hadn’t rubbed it in his face, Lance was fully aware that he only made it this far because Keith had been expelled. And he didn’t know exactly what kind of relationship Keith and Shiro had had, no one did, but you’d have to be blind not to realize that they were close. If something like this had happened to Ronnie, Lance was sure he would have reacted just as badly as Keith had, if not worse.
The Garrison had kicked out their best pilot for grieving, and here Lance was, reaping the rewards. He’d wanted to prove that he could do it, he’d wanted to prove that he was just as good as Keith.
It just didn’t seem right, after everything, to celebrate.
Anger
It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t fucking fair.
They hadn’t even been doing anything. Just three measly humans out in their own solar system, looking at fucking ice.
And now here they all were, prisoners of some alien empire, forced to fight for someone else’s fucking entertainment.
At least, he hoped, he had managed to protect Matt, and Matt could protect the Commander. Which left Shiro alone, fighting for his life in some god-forsaken gladiator pit. They’d taken his freedom, his dignity, his arm. And Shiro was angry, he was furious, but that fury was the only thing keeping him alive.
So Shiro stayed angry. And kept fighting. And winning. And surviving.
Depression
The days all tended to blend together when your life was meaningless. What does it matter if it’s Wednesday or Saturday, if it’s 4am or 7pm, when you do nothing and see no one?
Keith was about to run out of food, down to one ancient can of baked beans, but he just couldn’t bring himself to care. What was the point? A high school dropout, no family, no future. He knew Shiro would have been upset, but Shiro wasn’t exactly here to scold him, was he?
He wanted to lie here on the couch, hide away from the world and from everything else that could hurt him. But there had been a strange pull at his mind for a while now. It was odd, but a comfort. It felt like cool water after spending a day in the desert. It felt like a lifeline.
“Come find me,” it said. And it wasn’t Shiro, but it was all Keith had left.
Acceptance
This was not how Matt had wanted to discover they weren’t alone in the universe. He’d envisioned radio messages, tentative meetings, a mutual exchange of knowledge and curiosity.
What he got instead was...this.
He was out of the gladiator pits, at least, thanks to Shiro. And he had just been taken out of the cells completely by the strange group of rebel fighters that broke in.
They’d given him shelter, and medical care, and a choice.
And while he wanted nothing more than to go home, to hug his mom and his sister and his dog and hide under the covers and never come back out again, he couldn’t do it in good conscience.
So he'd made the choice to join the rebels. To fight with them against the Empire, against the odds, to save any person they could manage to save.
And maybe, someday, he’d be able to go home.