At long last, they were all seated around the dining table, looking down at the plates Hunk set out for each of them. The food smelled amazing, and Shiro's fingers tightened around his fork. His mouth was watering, and he was eager to dig in. But they were all waiting for Lance to have the first bite, since this was a present for him (and Hunk would smack anyone who jumped the gun).

Lance looked down at his plate, his eyebrows twisting together. He was still a little pale, sagging in his seat with persistent exhaustion, but his eyes were bright and clear. Hunk patted his shoulder before plopping into the seat next to him with a satisfied sigh, eyeing his own plate with contentment.

Lance picked up his fork and prodded at the chunks on his plate with the tines. They were fried and crispy, and a very pleasant scraping sound rose in the room. "These are..." Lance looked over at Hunk, his eyes narrowing. "Hunk, these papas fritas are purple."

Hunk grinned and nodded. "Good eye, dude. Also..." He picked one of the little leafy things scattered over his own purple chunks and held it up. "The cilantro is pink."

"I noticed." Lance leaned over and took a long, contemplative sniff of his food. He seemed to relish his newly returned ability to take deep, long breaths without his body complaining or stopping in the middle, and who could blame him. "It smells pretty good. Not like Mamá's, though."

Hunk rolled his eyes. "I didn't say they were going to be like your mamá's. I said they would be better. Now are you gonna eat them or not? Because I will take them back if you aren't sufficiently grateful."

Lance flashed him a broad, teasing grin, revealing that he had just been messing with Hunk the whole time. "Of course I'm gonna eat them, dude. I'm starving, and I know already it's going to taste incredible." He suited actions to words and loaded his fork with two or three fried purple chunks, then stuffed them all into his mouth at once.

They all watched Lance's face for his reaction, Shiro no less attentively than Hunk. As usual, Lance was animated and expressive, revealing everything he felt. His face lit up at the first taste, and he grinned around his food as he chewed ferociously, then slumped over his plate and pounded his fist on the table, eyes watering. "Holy quiznak, that is spicy." He did not sound sad about it.

Hunk thumped his back, grinning triumphantly. "Did I find the right level for you?"

"You bet your booty you did." Lance loaded his fork again, even fuller than before, and jammed it into his mouth. Then he looked around at everyone and talked through his full mouth, lips stretched around his food. "Whad're y' wadin' for? Ish delishush!"

They all smiled and dug in, even Pidge and Keith, who usually viewed unfamiliar dishes with extreme distrust. The response was immediate. Keith coughed and grabbed his glass of water, then sucked it down all in a gulp, his face fiery red. Pidge chewed determinedly on, but tears streamed from her eyes. Hunk grinned, savoring every bite with evident glee. Coran cried, too, but they seemed to be happy tears, and he was vociferous in his praise. Allura ate so happily and calmly that Shiro might have been fooled into thinking she was consuming tea and cookies on a sunny veranda.

Shiro liked it a great deal. But then, he had been the kind to sneak wasabi powder from the tiny can his mother kept in the back of the cupboard, so he might have been an outlier. To him, the balance of fierce spices and hearty tubers tasted just right, and the creamy yellow sauce Hunk had provided on the side cut any discomfort for him.

Shiro saw Hunk looking to him for his reaction and gave him a big thumb's up. "You were right," he said. "I love your papas fritas!"

Hunk laughed joyfully and gave him a thumb's up back.

"Okay, no, " Keith gasped after a manly and, Shiro thought, quite admirable effort. "That's enough for me, thanks. I'm full." He pushed back from the table and rushed into the kitchen, where they heard him rummaging for something that might cut the heat better for him.

Not longer after, Pidge squeaked and slid under the table, panting feebly. "Fried potatoes," she said, her voice echoing mournfully. "It just means fried potatoes. Why does it taste like magma."

"More for me, then," Lance said cheerfully. He hooked a finger in the edge of Pidge's plate and pulled it toward himself.

"And for me," Allura said, her eyes sparkling no less than Hunk and Lance's. She took Keith's plate for her own while Keith yelled for help in the kitchen. Coran stood up and patted Hunk on the head to thank him for the food, then went to assist him, tears still falling down his cheeks.

Lance laughed at them all, eating away. He asked Hunk where he had found this ingredient or that, and Hunk excitedly described his multiple quests all over the jungle planet. Turned out the tubers were half the planet away from the cilantro, and the peppers came from somewhere else entirely. Nothing, Shiro was pretty sure, actually came from the swampy lake area where he and Lance and landed. He was grateful for that, in a petty and distant way. Nothing good could possibly come from a place that had caused them both so much pain.

Allura got in on the action, too, asking Hunk to share his cooking techniques. Apparently the Alteans had never heard of deep-frying. He turned to her, grinning all over his face, and told her all about it while she nodded with evident interest.

Shiro kept his eyes on Lance. When Hunk and Allura weren't paying attention to him, he seemed to shrink into himself. He kept eating, but his smile faded, and he looked down at his plate and steadily shoveled food into his mouth. Even his shoulders slumped. Then Hunk turned back to him, and he brightened and sat straight again, a smile once again overtaking his features.

Shiro understood, or he thought he did. Lance was tired, and he was sad. The ordeal in the jungle had left a mark, however he might try to hide it from his friends. Lance had taken no permanent physical damage from his injuries and illness, but the healing pod still couldn't repair everything. Shiro knew that well. He would have to keep an eye on him. But he didn't get a chance to talk to him for the rest of the day.

That night, Shiro had his first nightmare since before Blue crashed into that lake. He knew he'd been getting too much sleep lately. This one was particularly disturbing, with some new features he'd never seen before. Perhaps it wasn't surprising, after everything that had happened.

Of course it was about Lance. The dream started out with Shiro leaning over him in the hot jungle bracken, pumping his chest and begging under his breath, trying to make him breathe again. He failed. It just went on and on, and he felt Lance's ribs crack under his hands, and eventually he knew. Lance was dead. Shiro wasn't going to be able to bring him back. He had failed.

Lance was never going to smile at Shiro again. Never going to cuddle up to his side in the night and tell him about Nicky and Javier and his step-dad. Never going to confess that Shiro reminded him of his worshipped big brother, that he looked up to him as a hero. Never going to cry on his shoulder, never going to hug him back when Shiro tried to offer comfort, never going to fall asleep curled against him. Never going to pull the trigger to take a shot, steely-eyed and grim, to save Shiro's life as well as his own.

So Shiro was dead, too. He couldn't survive this place without Lance. And he wasn't sure he wanted to.

Shiro sat back on his heels, trembling and gasping, and stared at Lance's slack face with burning eyes. Then Lance started to rot. His eyes and cheeks sunk into his face, flesh turning gray, then black. His hands shrank to skin and bones until his fingernails stood out like claws. A worm crawled out of a hole in his cheek.

The surroundings morphed from leafy, overgrown jungle to bare, dark stone. Shiro stared around, his breath speeding up, becoming more shaky and harsh. He knew this place. He knew it. It was the cells, the cells below the arena. He heard the tramp of Galra soldiers in the hall outside. The stink of rotting flesh was thick, overpowering, stomach-churning, and he gagged on his own spit, then began to choke.

Shiro woke, bolting upright in his bed with the breath strangled out of him. He raised his hands to his throat and pressed them there, heaving and shaking. He was covered in sweat, and his blankets were sweltering. He kicked them aside and stood up, sucking in breath after breath of clean castle air.

A dream. Just a dream. He said it to himself over and over again, standing there in the dark with his hands pressed to his chest. It was just a dream.

He walked out of his room and into the hall, bare feet cold on the metal floor. He stopped outside the door to Lance's room and stood there, his hand hovering in the air. No. Lance needed his sleep. He was still recovering. Shiro turned on his heel and walked away.

Eventually he found himself up in the control deck, sitting with his back to the wall and staring out at the stars drifting by. He had dreamed about his teammates dying before, even dreamed that he'd failed them, that he was responsible, but this one felt particularly realistic and cruel. If events had gone just a little more badly down there on that planet, it could have been true. He had a vivid image in his head of what Lance would look like dead, because Lance had seemed almost there, near the end with his skin washed of color, his breathing persistently halting in his chest until Shiro held his own breath every time, waiting for it to go on.

He hugged himself and shivered. Should have brought something to wrap up in. He usually remembered, these nights when sleep failed and the only alternative was wandering about, then sitting silent against a wall somewhere, but it had been a while, so he'd forgotten.

"Shiro?"

Lance. Shiro half sat away from the wall, looking for him. He was standing in the door, drapped in a blanket, his face hesitant. Not sure he was allowed, just like that night in the tree. Shiro smiled and sat back, then held out his arm for him. "C'mere, kiddo."

Lance came. He opened the blanket and snuggled up next to Shiro, then tugged the blanket around them both. Shiro got them settled, got his arm around Lance's shoulders and pulled him in close. Lance tucked his feet up next his rear and nestled his head on Shiro's shoulder with a tiny sigh.

"Is this okay?"

"More than okay," Shiro said, so quickly that he almost didn't give Lance time to finish the question. "More than okay, anytime. Anytime at all." He reached his hand up and ruffled it through Lance's hair, then let the hand slip back inside the blanket and pulled it tight around them again. "But what are you doing up? You need your rest."

Lance sighed again, more heavily this time. "Nightmare."

"Oh." Shiro was sorry, more sorry than he could express. A lump rose up in his throat. It felt bigger than a world.

It wasn't fair. Lance didn't deserve this. None of them did.

Lance's shoulders shifted in something like a shrug. "'Sokay. I'll get used to it. It's stupid, anyway."

"What do you mean?"

"Just..." Lance pressed his head a little harder into Shiro's shoulder, as if he could hide there. "It's not like... It's not like our hands are clean. Any of us. We've all blown up Galra ships, formed as Voltron or apart. We know... I know... Those weren't just robots and drones in there. Those were Galra, too, living creatures, even if they're evil madmen. And..." His voice lowered to a whisper, each word coming out stretched and hard-won. "Maybe even...prisoners. Innocent people. Dead at our hands. Who knows? We can't know. Maybe...we shouldn't know."

"Yeah." Shiro tightened his arm around Lance's shoulders. He was pretty sure he knew where this was going, and it hurt him so badly that it took his breath, his words, far away from him and scattered them to nothing.

"But..." Lance took a breath, then went on. "But that guy, on the planet, at the end... Something was different about that. It felt different, even if it wasn't, not really. I...shot him between the eyes. I killed him where he stood."

"Yes, you did," Shiro said solemnly. "You saved both of our lives."

Lance shivered against him. "I know that. I do. But...I can't forget... I can't forget what that looked like. His...face. With...with the new hole I put there."

Shiro had nothing else he could say. He brought up his other arm and wrapped it around Lance's front, pressed him in, and rested his cheek on the top of his head.

"I... I don't even know his name."

"Ragnak," Shiro whispered. "His name was Ragnak. And he deserved to die. But I wish you hadn't had to be the one do it. I wish that with all my heart."

Lance heaved a sigh and turned his head so his forehead rested against the exposed skin under Shiro's chin. "I know you do. But... I guess it had to be this way."

They were in a war. Shiro knew that. But it didn't always hit home, not like this. He was in a war with four teenage kids and two aliens who had been locked away from the universe for ten thousand years. None of them were prepared for this. None of them knew what they were doing, least of all Shiro. They had to muddle through, somehow, someway, because it was the only option they had. But, oh, it hurt sometimes. It cut like a thousand knives.

"My step-dad..." Lance's voice was starting to get a little fuzzy. He seemed more relaxed now than when he'd begun, curving into Shiro like a cat.

Shiro remembered. "He was an army sharpshooter."

"Yeah. Sniper. Special unit. He told me once, when we were at the range, practicing together... You never forget. You think you will, but you don't. Sometimes they blur together, but... You remember every single one. You always will, when you least want to, when you wish you couldn't. So you have to know... You have to know, every time, what you're getting into. You have to be willing to accept it before you pull the trigger. You have to make up your mind, or you have no business holding a gun."

"You made up your mind," Shiro murmured.

"Yeah. Long time ago. As soon as we ended up out here, fighting Galra. Before that, I just wanted to be a pilot. I just wanted to explore the universe. But this happened instead, and... That first planet Hunk and I went to, and I thought he was dead... I accepted it. I thought: Blood on my hands is okay. It's okay, as long as my friend is alive."

Shiro stroked his hair.

Lance drew a breath. "My step-dad... I just call him Dad, most of the time. My biological dad is Papá. But Dad... He shot terrorists. They deserved to die, every single one of them, and he is absolutely sure of that. But he still remembers. He still has dreams. He still gets up and paces the house sometimes, checking on all of us kids. Don't know how many nights I'd wake up, just a little, and he'd be standing in the doorway looking over me and my brothers or sisters or whoever was sharing the room at the time. I didn't mind. I felt safe. I slept better after he left."

"Oh."

Lance sighed and settled himself a little further under Shiro's chin. "Thought you might like to know."

"Yes. Thank you, Lance."

"So anyway. What was I saying? Oh yeah. I knew. Before I took the shot. I knew, at least I had some idea, what it would be like. But..." His breathing started getting a little ragged. Not because his lungs were crowded, this time. At least, not with pneumonia.

Shiro fought against the lump in his throat and stroked Lance's hair. "You didn't know it would be this hard."

"No. I didn't."

Lance cried, then. Not a lot. He was too tired for a big, messy demonstration of emotion. It was quiet and still and very subdued. But it broke Shiro's heart, all the same.

When he was done, he moved his head back to Shiro's shoulder, almost limp against him now. "Was that okay?" he asked.

"Yes. Anytime. It's not stupid, Lance. Don't ever think that what you're feeling is stupid."

"Okay." Lance yawned and blinked out at the stars. "You're not stupid, either, Shiro."

Shiro laughed quietly, gently. "All right. Thank you, buddy. I'll do my best to remember that."

Lance fell asleep then. Shiro thought he wouldn't, himself, thought he would just sit there all night, holding him, listening to those soft breaths that came so easily and freely now, but he slept too. They woke hours later to a new dawn rising over a new planet, and they both knew that nothing would ever be the same.

AN: I'm pretty sure papas fritas are not actually supposed to be that spicy, but chalk it up to Lance's preferences and Hunk's skill in meeting them. Or maybe Pidge and Keith are really, really sensitive. But anyway, fun scene.

So! This is it. Thank you so so so much for all of your reviews and comments and likes and everything. It means more than I can express. This story has been a rollercoaster, and I am grateful beyond words for all of you who shared the ride with me and let me know that you enjoyed it.

Also! My lovely friend, haikyuusetters, has made art! You can find it on my tumblr, where I am maychorian, under the "boom crash" tag.

Also! There will be a sequel to deal with the changes in Shiro and Lance's relationship, as well as the reactions of everyone else on the ship. Some of them are happier about it than others. When I originally started writing this story, I meant it to be like an episode, a stand-alone adventure that you could imagine happening sometime in Season 2 after the gang has gotten back together. But yeah, then Shiro and Lance had that heart-to-heart, and now poor Lance has some PTSD that needs dealt with, and Lance is also much more aware of the problems Shiro is struggling with... So things change.

The sequel will be titled "Sell Me Your Nightmares, I'll Trade Them for Dreams." Watch this space.

Again, thank you very much! Your support means the world to me. (And makes me write faster, too.)