You know, for all I really love the episode “Crystal Venom” I can’t help but see how rough it was on Lance. And he doesn’t hide it, not one bit. It starts with getting locked in the healing pod, he obviously isn’t very thrilled about that. But we get to see how much it really affected him once he gets out of it:
He’s on an alien ship with fancy advanced tech that just froze him and locked him away. And he’s Lance, he can roll with the punches, but that’s a little much. He’s fine as long as Coran talks to him, but as soon as he leaves he just-
-and runs. He’s still hugging himself when he walks along the halls of the castle before the lights go out:
And I don’t even need to provide screenshots from how freaked out he was when that happens, we all remember that. But while he’s screaming for help there are moments where he looks positively defeated – he genuinely thought he was going to die there:
Once Keith saved him, he just sits like that for a while:
Close to the ground where the wind can’t reach him, legs still in position to run away. Just looking at that I can feel how shaky and weak he must be feeling. And once he meets Pidge and Hunk, he actually legitimately gets angry at them for “floating around” while the castle was trying to kill him. He’s agitated, he’s shaken up, he is fucking done with everything:
But the most important part is probably when they run to Allura after the alarm has sounded. He has reached his limit, he is done, he can’t deal with even more weird stuff that’s trying to kill him. As soon as he catches sight of a pretty much sleepwalking Allura, he hangs back:
No more. Lance loves his friends, he has proven in the exact same episode still that he would run down a haunted hall to save Coran – but that turned out to be a trap, so he’s not taking any chances anymore. He is scared enough that he doesn’t join the other paladins in running forward to help Allura. And once he finally tentatively catches up-
-he’s still in the very back, body turned away, ready to run. Just. I hope he got a lot of sleep after this episode was over, he deserves the rest more than anyone D:
reckless & terribly gay 