#ends a little abruptly but that’s okay 😌 i just wanted to write a little bit of unhinged lance

[autisticlancemcclain]

Shiro has seen Mean Girls so many times it’s actually disgusting. He quotes the movie in his sleep. (He didn’t believe that when Adam initially told him, but then he woke up one morning to Adam shoving a video of dead-asleep him muttering “Boo, you whore,” before rolling over and accidentally smacking Adam’s face with a flailing arm, and he could deny it no further.)

Because he’s seen the movie so many truly horrifying times, when he hears a constant, unbroken, furious scream echo through the castle, his brain immediately assumes he’s at home, mouthing along to Regina George’s tantrum as Adam sighs (fondly, although he’s rather snort powdered arsenic than admit it) at him from beside the couch, so it takes him a couple minutes to shake that off and react.

“Who is yelling?” he asks, as soon as he’s oriented. Everyone working in the briefing room with him — Pidge, Coran, Lance, and Hunk — offer some sort of murmured confusion.

“Is it maybe a burst pipe? Those sometimes sound really shrill,” Pidge suggests.

“I don’t think so,” Shiro says. “That sounds…angry, almost? As if —”

He’s interrupted by someone kicking — no, literally kicking — the door clean off it’s hinges. Allura storms in, still screaming, Keith following behind her several dozen healthy steps away.

“I hate it here!” she shouts.

“Do you,” Pidge mutters sarcastically, forgetting about Altean superhearing, and then immediately cowers behind Hunk upon Allura’s terrifying reminder (in the form of shifting some fangs into her mouth and literally hissing at Pidge. Yikes).

“What’s wrong, dear?” Coran tries, much warier and gentler.

Allura just yells again and stomps over to the chair Lance has pulled out for her.

“It’s that asshole Empire general we have in custody,” Keith pipes up, still a very safe distance away from Allura. “We did everything we could think of to make him talk, and it isn’t working.”

“He doesn’t believe us at all!” Allura shouts, throwing her hands up. “He calls our bluff every quiznacking time, and we can’t get a single thing out of him! And he is so smug, believe me, if I could wipe that look off his face —”

She cuts herself off as she takes a sip of water, looking gratefully as Lance, who must have gotten her a glass.

“He’s lucky I have morals and won’t gut him,” she says darkly, glowering at the space in front of her. (Shiro imagines that she’s thinking about all the possible ways she could, in fact, gut him.)

“I mean, none of us are you going to be particularly upset if you gut him,” Hunk says. “Like, he sucks, right? Experimented on children? I don’t actually think it’s all that immoral if you gut him.”

Allura growls and says nothing, curling up as tight as she can and continuing to glare at the wall.

Keith speaks on her behalf after it becomes clear she’s done. “We need information from him, unfortunately. A lot of it, at that. So killing him wouldn’t exactly help us.”

“And so we’re at a bit of on impasse,” Shiro surmises.

“Yep. The Blade has… resources, to force information, but they’re currently going through a system’s update and are unreachable, for at least the next couple of days. And the longer we hold this guy the better his chances of escaping, so.”

“I’ve been trying for hours,” Allura says, and for the first time she starts to look more upset than angry. “I can’t do this anymore. He just — he keeps bragging, about every horrible thing he’s done. I can’t listen anymore.”

Lance, having procured a blanket from what must have been thin air (since they are in the briefing room, which has no blankets or pillows or anything, and he was definitely not holding a blanket when he came into the room — how did he do that?), wraps it around her shoulders and squeezes them gently.

“Don’t worry, ‘Llura. You’re done. We’ll get him to talk, okay?”

“How?” Allura asks miserably. “The only thing he’s afraid of is dying, and we can’t kill him.”

Lance grins.

Shiro would not call it comforting.

“Oh, don’t worry. If death is what he’s afraid of, I’ll get him talking. “

Keith raises an eyebrow. “What’re you gonna do, torture him?”

Lance shrugs. “Not, like, technically.”

“You’re not going to torture him,” Pidge says. “I call bullshit.”

Lance hums. He reaches over to pat Allura on the head, then unclips his bayard from his belt. He closes his eyes, concentrating, and then the bayard is enveloped with a familiar, neon-blue light. When the light fades, a shiny revolver is left behi —

Wait.

A revolver?

Shiro blinks. The revolver remains where it is, so it’s no figment of his imagination. And it’s not even white and blue, like his other bayard forms. This just looks like a human revolver — shiny silver, with a wooden handle worn smooth, fitting seamlessly into Lance’s thin hands.

“What the fuck is that,” Hunk says, voicing what everyone is thinking.

“A gun,” Lance says cheerily.

Coran’s eyebrows furrow. “It looks a little… different, from your usual forms, lad.”

“Yep! My other bayard forms are all Altean, so they’ve all got the laser shots. I needed bullets.”

“That… should not be possible.”

Lance looks at Coran in confusion. “What do you mean? I do it all the time! The bayard is supposed to manifest into into whatever weapon you need most, right? I summoned a bronze spear last week. Why would this be any different?”

“You made a spear?”

“Uh, yeah? I was fighting a new level in training and I let the gladiator get too close, so long range wasn’t going to work, but I’m not great at sword fighting yet so I had to adapt. I didn’t beat the level, though.”

Lance looks dejected. As if the fact that he didn’t beat a training level somehow negates the fact that he’s unlocked more than one bayard form, and many of them aren’t even Altean.

“Sometimes I forget that the rules of the universe don’t seem to apply to you,” Shiro says, because that’s the only sentence he can think to say that would adequately voice his complete bewilderment.

“That’s what I’ve been fucking saying!” Hunk cries, startling everyone in the room with his intensity. “I swear to God! He does things because he decides he should be able to, physics be damned!”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Lance says loftily. “I’m normal.”

Everyone speaks at the same time.

“No, you’re not.”

“And we love you for it, dear,” Coran adds.

Everyone nods hastily (Keith also blushes, which is hilarious and absolutely something Shiro is going to mock him for later).

Lance goes a little red. “Stop being mushy,” he complains. “I’m about to go threaten to shoot somebody. You’re going to knock me off my game.”

“Deepest apologies, Mr. Mafioso,” Hunk teases. “Lead the way.”

Grumbling, Lance does, and everyone follows. (Even Allura, who explained that while she is tired of hearing the asshole speak, she has complete faith in Lance and will not miss him scaring him into spilling. She admits, however, that she has no idea what the hell Lance has planned. Shiro is as curious as he is apprehensive.)

“Okay, all of you go away now,” Lance says as they reach the doors of the holding cell. “You can still watch, or whatever, but no one can come in with me.”

Endlessly inquisitive, the team piles into the tiny observation room attached to the cell, looking through the one-way glass.

Their prisoner sits, bored, handcuffed to the chair he’s sitting on. He stares at the ceiling, eyes vacant.

Shiro thinks about how he smiled as he tortured children, babies, for his own intellectual pleasure, and feels his heart harden.

Lance walks into the room calmly, which isn’t what Shiro expected. He’s not sure what he was expecting, but it surely wasn’t Lance, completely expressionless, walking quietly into the room to stare at the general wordlessly.

After several minutes of careful assessment, the general snorts.

“I have just been threatened violently for hours by an Altean royal and a half-Galra Blade,” he says, amused. “And it did nothing. So now they send a scrawny human?” He sneers, voice turning taunting. “How do you expect to break me, runt? Am I meant to laugh myself into looser lips, so you can earn insight into the fraction of the information I hold? No common jester will make me speak, boy. In fact it is a mockery for you to try.”

Without even blinking, Lance raises an arm, aims his gun at the general’s face, and shoots.

The deafening bang of the gun hides any noise the general may have made, but his face clouds in terror before it narrows into rage. He attempts to raise his hand to the side of his head, but the handcuffs keep them firmly below his knees.

“You shot me!” he yells.

“You’re welcome,” Lance says, tilting his head. His expression remains unchanged — terrifyingly blank.

“You insect! You mite! You speak of dirt beneath my heel! Why would I lower myself to thank you for anything, especially an attempt on my life?”

“That was no attempt on your life.”

“You have carved a wound into my skull with a bullet!”

Lance inclines his head. “Yes. And you are alive to speak of it. I have shown you mercy. You will thank me.”

The general spits on the ground in front of Lance.

“I will do no such thing.”

“Okay,” Lance says evenly. “I will warn you again.”

Before anyone can process, he raises his arm again, and shoots.

This time, it takes less time for the general to react.

“I am remarkably resilient to pain,” he snarls. “No matter how many times you graze me with a bullet, I will not tell you anything.”

Lance nods again. “You’re right. How foolish of me.”

The general spits again. “Yes, you picture of insolence.”

“I waited a long time for access to you,” Lance continues, as if the general had not spoken.

The general actually looks confused, which is a welcome change from his insufferable smugness, even though Shiro’s not sure how it’s helpful.

“I am not Allura. Nor am I Keith. They are very noble, and are so endlessly enthusiastic about positive change to the universe. They are too determined to cut their losses and find other ways to gain information.”

For the first time, Lance grins. It can only be described as shark-like.

Cruel, even. Shiro has never thought Lance cruel, before, and it’s startling.

“I have no such reservations. You have no use to me, and I will not waste the Coalition’s resources.”

He opens the chamber of his revolver, delicately removes one bullet, and then shakes the whole gun upside down. The rest of the bullets fall to the floor with a clatter.

For the briefest moment, fear flashes across the general’s face, before it’s replaced by a snarl.

“Your games don’t frighten me.”

Lance shrugs, spinning the bullet chamber before slamming it closed, and re-aiming.

This time, he aims right in between the general’s eyes.

“It’s not meant to frighten you. It’s meant to amuse me.”

Pidge inhales sharply. “Is he actually going to fucking kill him? We need that information!”

“Have some faith,” Keith says breathlessly, eye transfixed on the scene in front of him. “When Lance says he’ll do something, he will, yeah?”

“Fair,” Hunk murmurs.

Each of them startles when the first shot rings through the cell.

A blank.

“You will get nothing from me,” the general hisses.

Lance doesn’t respond.

Another bang.

“I do not —”

Another bang. Then another, before the general can even open his mouth.

He is no longer trying to mask his fear. His terror is as plain on his face as it was on each of his victim’s faces, as they begged him to stop and return them home.

Lance laughs. The sound echoes, sending shivers down Shiro’s spine.

Another bang. Another blank.

A revolver only has six chambers.

No more blanks.

“Enjoy your final breath,” he taunts, and curls his finger around the trigger.

“Wait!”

Lance pauses. “Why should I?”

“I’ll talk,” the general begs. “I’ll talk. All the information I have. It’s yours.”

Lance hums consideringly, tapping the — loaded, Jesus fucking Christ — gun against his chin.

“No,” he decides, after a moment, re-aiming the gun. “I don’t care.”

“What is he doing,” Pidge hisses again, and this time Shiro is inclined to agree with her. He turns slightly to the door.

“Maybe we should stop —”

“Have some faith,” Keith repeats firmly.

Shiro swallows and forces himself away from the doorknob.

“Please, please, anything.”

Shiro doesn’t think he’s ever seen anyone look as desperate as the prisoner does now.

“Any information you need. I have more than you know.”

“Ooooooh,” Lance coos. “Now we’re getting somewhere. A trade?”

“My information for my life,” the general agrees hastily.

Lance pouts. “Aw, I guess I have to. Even though I was really looking forward to seeing your brains decorate the wall.” He sighs, petulant. “I guess you get to live. Start talking.”

The prisoner slumps forward, sweat and tears alike dripping from his face.

“Thank you,” he weeps. “Thank you for your mercy.”

Lance wrinkles his nose. “The more pitiful you look the less inclined I am to keep you alive,” he says, and the prisoner sobers up quickly. He immediately starts talking — he spills everything. Communication secrets, everything from trickle-down orders to secret projects organized by Haggar herself. By the time he finishes — hours later — they have more information than they have ever had in one place.

All because Lance isn’t afraid to get messy with a gun, apparently.

“Thank you,” Lance says when the prisoner’s stream of information trickles to a stop.

The prisoner swallows. “What now? Do I await trial?”

“Tell me,” Lance says sweetly, “how many children did you free, after you finished them? After they gave you everything they could? After you stole everything they had? How many of your experiments —” he spits the word, falsely saccharine tone dissipating to genuine fury — “did you show mercy to?”

Terror once again makes the general’s face grotesque.

“Please,” he says quietly. “I was only following orders.”

Lance does not hesitate. “I don’t care.”

No one stops him from shooting the prisoner point-blank. Even if they could, they don’t think they would. After spending the last several hours hearing what he had done… there’s no sympathy left for him.

Lance leaves the holding cells as neatly as he entered it, without a backwards glance at the body slumped behind him.

The team rushes out to meet him.

“That was horrifying,” Pidge says enthusiastically. “I’ll be real, you had me nervous at the beginning. But, damn. You got where you needed to go. I didn’t know you had that in you.”

“Neither did I,” Keith mutters, ears red, and somehow Shiro thinks he and Pidge are thinking two vastly different things.

Lance shrugs. “Me either! I wasn’t even sure if it was going to work, but I saw it in a T.V. show a while back so I thought I’d give it a whirl.”

Despite the literal execution he just witnessed and the splatter of dark blood on Lance’s forehead, Shiro can’t help the laughter bubbling up his throat.

“You are full of surprises,” he says, and Lance beams.

#ends a little abruptly but that’s okay 😌 i just wanted to write a little bit of unhinged lance #vld #voltron #lance #lance mcclain #shiro #takashi shirogane #allura #princess allura #keith #keith kogane #klance #pining keith #broganes #pidge #pidge holt #hunk #hunk garrett #coran #bamf lance #dark lance #angry lance #murder #torture #like only technically but whatever #team as family #mom friend lance #my writing #fic #longpost