She shakes her head. Magini won't want to share a bed with her, which hurts, but it would hurt more to call attention to it. 

"No, you two should share the loft; we need you to recover and Keith to be well-rested if he's going to drive" and if you're split up he won't sleep at all. 

"I'll take the floor. I did it all the time growing up." She's stretching the truth here a little, but she doesn't care. She won't sleep any better on the couch, and Magini probably will. 

Nobody objects to this counteroffer. Shiro looks like he wants to, but then (maybe noticing that Keith does in fact look happier with this arrangement) decides better of it. 

"Alright, that works. I suggest we set an alarm for long enough before sunrise that we can eat and be ready to go at first light. ...what time is it, other than the middle of the night?" 

"11:38 pm," she reads off mechanically. (Is Ami giving her the couch as an apology? She... doesn't know how she feels about that, besides vaguely bad).

"I'll set an alarm for 6:30?" It's definitely not enough sleep, but she can't bring herself to care. 

"Sounds good to me." 

...he's used to waking up that early, but he has no idea what time his body clock thinks it is right now. It'll be fine. Probably. 

Keith shrugs and heads up the ladder to get some spare bedding. 

He just about managed to keep to the Garrison's schedule while he was a cadet, but it sucked and he hated it and he stopped bothering to fight his natural semi-nocturnal sleep cycle when he was kicked out. He's been trying to wake up before noon recently so he has more daylight to explore the caves, but "before noon" is a long way from "before sunrise" even in November.

He is not going to be functional at 6:30 AM unless he just stays awake the whole night, which he's seriously considering.

Magini is still avoiding looking at her except for the occasional startled-then-hurt glance when Ami opens her mouth after a period of silence. She hates it, but the least she can do is avoid acknowledging it, and avoid making it worse by staring back.

She wants so desperately to ask Shiro more questions, but that can wait. He might remember more in the morning.

She takes the bedding from Keith with a murmured thanks, and finds herself a place to curl up that's out of sight from the couch.

(It's hard to sleep, especially when Magini's occasional shaky breathes puncture her exhausted thoughts with worry, helplessness, and guilt, but she eventually manages to nod off.)

He's not trying or expecting to fall asleep. Shiro is back, Shiro is right here lying across from him, and he wants to do nothing more than stare at Shiro's face and memorise every inch of it, the way the new scar falls across the bridge of his nose, the changed cast given to his features by the streak of white hair at his brow... 

But he's warm and comfortable, and happy for the first time in months, and the part of his brain that's constantly tracking whether he's safe says that of course he is, Shiro is right there...

He drifts off. 

A few hours later, probably, something wakes him. A noise, maybe. 

Across from him, Shiro's face has lost the relaxation of sleep, and is scrunched up in pain. His whole body is tense and shaking with it. Another tiny whimper—the noise that woke Keith initially—escapes from his mouth. Someone more than a couple of feet away wouldn't have heard it. 

Keith is instantly, abruptly awake, but it takes him a moment or two to orient to the situation. Shiro is in distress—are they in danger? There doesn't seem to be anyone else up here, the girls downstairs are still asleep...

Oh. Gotta be a nightmare. 

He reaches out, not really thinking about it, to nudge Shiro awake—

Shiro moves, very suddenly and violently awake. 

His metal hand shoots out, grabbing Keith's wrist in a too-tight grip. His breath comes harshly, and his teeth are bared in a silent snarl.

For a long, terrifying moment, he stares straight through Keith, with no recognition in his eyes. 

Aaaaaaaaaaaa he holds very very still.

"...Shiro?" 

A moment of confusion. "...Keith?" 

—he drops Keith's wrist as though it's burning hot and shoves himself away, curling in on himself. "Sorry. I—nightmare. Are you alright, did I hurt you—" 

"I'm fine," he lies reflexively. It's fine. His wrist doesn't hurt that much. Calming Shiro down is way more important right now. 

"Do you think you can get back to sleep?" He hesitates. "I can go sleep somewhere else?" 

"I think it should be fine as long as you stay over there. Just...don't touch me when I'm having a nightmare like that. I don't want to hurt you." 

"Okay." 

(It's not okay, Shiro isn't okay, but he doesn't know how to fix it. Listening to Shiro is the best idea he's got right now.) 

Magini is clinging to the back of the hoverbike. Her eyes are screwed shut but it doesn't help, the headlights are so bright. After what feels like an eternity, she feels the change in the wind as the bike goes over the cliff, and then they're falling, falling, falling, falling... 

She forces herself to open her eyes, but all she can see is blackness. Reckless Keith has turned off the engine, for some reason, and all she hears is the sound of the wind howling and the 3 of them chatting as they continue to fall into the void. She calls out to Keith, to Ami, to Shiro. None of them respond; none of them care. She's alone. 

She sees the hoverbike hit the ground, on the classes' holoprojector. The explosion is cartoonishly large, engulfing the display - the four chibi faces representing her, Ami, Shiro, and Keith update to have their eyes x'd out and the word DECEASED overlayed diagonally in red. Total mission failure. The teacher sounds bored. "Who can tell the class what went wrong there?" 

Vincent has his hand up, but Ms Li ignores him. "Magini?"

Mouth dry, she answers. "Keith didn't turn the engin-" 

"Wrong," Ms Li interrupts. "Even if he had, this would still be a failure. Please tell Magini why, Vincent."

"The real mistake was when they kidnapped Lieutenant Shirogane from the landing craft and fled from Garrison first responders. The Galaxy Garrison is obviously the best-equipped organization on the planet to handle first contact with spacefaring aliens, and Shirogane needs real medical attention. What were you going to do if you had survived, look up 'head injury' on medhub and follow the basic instructions? Stupid. You should have stopped them."

Magini feels herself wilting. "I - but Ami said -" 

 "Ex-cadet Glass has fallen far from the tree," says Commander Iverson, frowning. Magini blinks in confusion. "She's nothing like her older brother was. She's untrustworthy, manipulative, and dangerous. You should have reported her when she asked you to spy on us, instead of helping her commit espionage and then sabotage during what might be the most dangerous moment in our species's history!" He takes a step closer, and she shrinks back. "What were you thinking, Zils?"

She opens her mouth, but no sound comes out. 

Iverson snorts. "You weren't, obviously. She was nice to you, and you believed that meant that you were friends. And after how you abandoned Thrana and Kani when they needed you, you were desperate to try not to ruin this too." The commander shakes his head. "Loyalty can be a valuable trait, Zils, but only if you're careful about who you're loyal to, and you weren't. You let Glass and Kogane lead you off a cliff with your eyes closed." 

No. no...

"You had promise, ex-Cadet Zils, but there's no coming back from this. You can spend tomorrow chasing a fairy tale in the desert, but it won't make a difference. We'll catch the four of you, and you'll spend the rest of your life in jail for what you did today."

Magini wakes up sobbing.

Eventually, she calms down enough to sleep a bit more. 

6:30 comes obnoxiously early. Keith has maybe, technically, had a few hours of sleep, but he feels worse than he did before they went to bed.

He drags himself down the ladder to start on breakfast anyway, because Shiro needs to eat. (He redirects Shiro from insisting on helping with breakfast by persuading him to take a shower instead.)

Magini had a 'usefully' timed nightmare, so she at least wakes up on-cycle. She mechanically takes her meds, folds up the blanket, and then goes looking for Shiro to do a secondary concussion screen. 

(She looks terrible - her eyes are still red from her earlier crying.)

Shiro will cooperate with this once he comes back inside, hair damp and dressed in clean clothes; Keith seems to have found some clothes in roughly his size somewhere. He looks a lot better this morning, and claims to be feeling better too: he says the headache from last night is almost gone, and he still doesn't feel dizzy or nauseous. 

He doesn't have any trouble remembering his birthday (February 29th, 2380), Magini's name, the headmaster of the Galaxy Garrison Academy (Iverson), where they are (Keith's place), how he got here (on Keith's bike), and what they're planning to do today (find Voltron before the Galra do). He still doesn't remember how he ended up in the ship that crashed, or more than bits and pieces of his year in Galra hands.

He doesn't wince at bright lights, but he does flinch at the loud noise when Keith drops a can. (He doesn't think that's the concussion, but doesn't elaborate.) 

Honestly, pretty reassuring! Startling at loud noises can happen for lots of reasons - she yelps when she hears it, then looks mortified.

"I think you're probably ok? It's still best practice to get lots of rest, but - none of the worrying signs are there." 

(Her voice and face continue to broadcast some amount of misery.)