Alternate Reality (Klance)

Chapter 1

Lance stirred in his sleep. His own movements causing his headache to worsen. The feeling of sore muscles and an uncomfortable stab in his ankle finally forced him to open his eyes.
Lance blinked rapidly as the blinding sun appeared right above him.

It took a few moments for Lance to get used to it and realize, there was a whining sound not too far away.
Lance knew that sound. "Kosmo?", he asked, but his voice sounded strange.

May it be the years of war, harsh training and both mental and physical scars that had caused his voice to darken over the years, in the morning it was usually at it's lowest.

Now? Now Lance's voice sounded like that of a teenager in the middle of his voice break.
To be fair, Lance was already eighteen when the cracking finally stopped.
Never the less, there should be no reason for it to return.

The thought only haunted him for a second, as a panicked dog tried to jump around in the field of tall grass.
Grass? Should it not be crops? Was Lance not on his farm?

Apparently he was, but everything looked – different. Younger – somehow.

And then Lance finally saw Kosmo. It was only a split second, but Lance immediately knew, even through the grass that this was not Kosmo. At least not the Kosmo he knew.
Still, as Lance called him, the dog jumped towards him. Panic rising as it barked at Lance, staring at him strangely, as if he was searching for something in Lance to recognize.

"Kosmo? Is that you?!", Lance asked again. Because of all the small changes he had just taken in, the question demanded to be asked.
The dog, a giant husky, with dark black fur, barked loudly as if to affirm Lance that he was indeed, Kosmo.

And he was. Lance knew, because of three things.
First of all, the eyes and the white pattern around his eyes were exactly the same as he remembered.
Secondly, the voice of the dog was oddly familiar.
And last but not least, the choker.

Lance remembered that when Keith had come to visit him last, he had brought a small stone from a planet, close to the quantum abyss with him.
The quantum abyss, to those of you who don't remember, was a place Keith had spend two years of his life with his mother and a cosmic dog. All while in Lance's time, merely a month or so had passed. Time works differently in the quantum abyss.
Anyhow, Keith had assured him that nothing was - in what way so ever - bizarre about the small purple gem stone. And he had attached it to Kosmo's choker. Even though it had been a real fight to get Kosmo to wear the thing, somehow he seemed to like the stone.

But something was wrong with it, Lance could feel it. And he knew, whatever was happening right now, was the stone's fault all along.

"Ssh, it's alright Kosmo. I have no idea where we are, but it's the two of us, we'll be fine.", Lance said reassuringly as Kosmo curled himself up in Lance's arm.

Then again, how could Lance promise something like this, while not knowing what was going on himself?

The answer is quite simple, actually.
Lance was a war veteran. He had fought and won and survived battles, most people his age could not even imagine. Other than perhaps in some extravagant TV shows where they would point their fingers at the hero's and say: "Are they dumb? They could have done this and that and then nothing of this would have happened."

But to Lance, it happened. And he was one of the people who had to spend month's to realize certain things about life, the future, the past, the war, time travel, parallel universes, etc. etc.
He did not have all the important facts sorted out for him, he needed the help of the smartest people in his universe to find these things. And even then it was always them who made the calls. It made sense for him not to worry.
Keith had said it to him once, "things will work themselves out." And so far, he had been right. They always did, somehow.