[Shiro]

Wrists and ankles bound; a wire so thin and strong that warm, wet blood trickles down skin. Body stretched taut; cold, unyielding metal below him. Pain he can't localize because it stretches farther even than his entire body.

Eyes snap open. He's on a Galra ship. For no other place could be this…

He doesn't get to finish the thought because a face looms into his line of sight. A terrible face, marred by evil. A face purple like a bruise that won't go away. Beady yellow eyes watch him shrewdly from beneath a hood as he comes to. A mouth that looks like a slash across leathery skin twists up as horror fills his own eyes.

He knows before it happens that the pain he feels now is nothing. Nothing compared to what is to come.

The hooded witch raises a skeletal hand. Time slows down, sound goes mute, as a bright purple lightning bolt crackles its way across the short distance between her hand and his head. Electricity hums around him, the bolt of energy zaps his temples, white hot pain explodes from his head down to his digits. He's awake for it all; he's sure he is, because he feels every moment of it. But then the scene is changing. The cruel smirk of the gruesome mouth morphs into a beautiful smile. The bruise of a face becomes brown skin, the spotlight yellow eyes become ocean blue and bright. And just like that, in a way that he recognizes cannot be real, love and hope and beauty are smiling down at him, getting him through the torture. He keeps his eyes open, gives in to the hallucination. Wills away what is real in favor of what is not. What never will be.

[Lance]

It's a dream. He knows because it could never actually happen. He's lying on a warm bed, but he feels like he's standing up. He's comfortable though, because of the softness of the sheets around him but also because an arm is draped across his waist. A strong arm that ends in a cold metal hand. It holds him against a strong chest. It makes him feel safe.

Held so securely, he doesn't want to move. He doesn't know that he couldn't even if he did. He tries to remember how he might've ended up here, in a scene that wasn't his reality. A battle flashes before his eyes. Laser fire blasts around him, then into him. He falls.

He opens his eyes. Looks down at the bare, scarred arm, feels its comforting weight against his own body. This, he tells himself, this is better than any reality. He and his hero, safe and sound, together.

He tries to close his eyes again, but they're already closed. He doesn't see the clear pane of the healing pod. Doesn't hear the voices outside. He falls into his dream.