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Chapter Text

Lance sat at the head of a crashing plane with a nervous Hunk in the back seat vomiting his lunch into the gearbox and Pidge snapping at her, insubordinate and stubborn, and thinks there really isn’t any way this day could get worse.

They fail the simulation, because of course they do.

Lance had been posturing and overconfident as she tried to hide the way the simulator controls made her skin itch and jaw tense. Always so stiff and feeling wrong, wrong, wrong. But excellent simulation scores were necessary for fighter class pilots, regardless of how good she might be in an actual plane.

(Regardless of how every instructor at this school has seen her fly a real plane perfectly well, damn her simulation scores. But telling them that the simulator feels off and not at all like a real plane only ever got her scrubbing the mess hall floors. So eventually, she learns to shut her mouth and bear it with a grin.)

The trio exit the simulator, all lined up and waiting for the firing squad that was Iverson’s very public verbal undressing. He picked apart their individual flaws, then tore their teamwork to shreds. He even asked the other cadets what they did wrong, let their vicious peers get a good strike at them too.

Lance stood there, eyes forward and standing at parade rest as they’re supposed to as he berated her leadership skills. Yelled and mocked and did his level best to make her feel like a failure.

It wasn’t quite personal. Iverson did it to every cadet that failed or stepped out of line.

That didn’t make anything that he was saying easier to hear though.

“The Galaxy Garrison exists to turn young cadets like you into the next generation of elite astro explorers,” Iverson’s gravelly baritone reprimanded them, something like disappointment and frustration in his voice. “But your arrogance and foolishness are leading you down a path of failure. If you don’t shape up quick, you’ll find yourself making the same mistakes that took the lives of the men on the Kerberos Mission."

Pidge stiffens at her side and Lance has a second to curse every deity she knows for burdening her with a teammate who doesn’t know when to keep his damn mouth shut before said mouth is open and practically snarling at Iverson.

“That’s a lie!”

Lance is breaking out of formation and slapping her hand over his mouth before Iverson even has the opportunity to turn around.

“Care to repeat that cadet?” he says, voice low and hard and nope. No. Nuh-uh. That is a very bad idea. Do not repeat that. Do not pass go. Do not collect two hundred dollars, thank you very much.

“No! No, definitely not, sir,” Lance hastily replies, even as Pidge struggles in her hold, spitting rage and scowling. Lance looks at Hunk out of the corner of her eye but knows she won’t be getting any help from her best friend in this particular disaster.

Hunk is terrified of Iverson.

“He must’ve hit is head when he fell in the simulator. And he’s been staying up too late trying to get his grades in tip-top shape. He’s just overtired is all,” she finishes with a weak smile. “We all heard you loud and clear—and with the utmost respect—sir.”

Iverson glares down at the pair of them, before bending slightly so he can get right up in Lance’s face. Pidge immediately stops struggling, finally reading the room.

“Then I’m glad you know your place, cadet. I’m sure I don’t need to remind you how close you are to losing your spot as a fighter pilot, or how you only got it because the best pilot in your class dropped out.”

Lance stares up at Iverson wide-eyed and heart in her throat. The circumstances of her elevation were a sore spot everyone and their mother knew about. One that Iverson always loved to exploit.

Lance bites her tongue so hard it stung in order to keep herself from saying something. She will not let him win. Will not give him the satisfaction.

He stands there a second longer, staring at her before turning his back on all three of them.

“It’d be a shame if you were to follow in his footsteps, Martinez. Class dismissed.”

***

After the call for lights out, Lance goads Hunk into sneaking out with her and finding Pidge for a night on the town. She’s using ‘team bonding’ as an excuse but they both know it was her magical kicked puppy eyes that made him agree.

It’s always her puppy eyes that make him agree, though he’ll deny it until he’s blue in the face.

They’re dressed in their civvies, seeing as the whole point was to blend in and not get caught. But, as usual, Hunk didn’t get the memo.

Her dear friend was trussed up in enough yellow to be mistaken for the sun. It looked good on him, she wasn’t going to lie about that, but it hardly made him inconspicuous. Any guard that happened upon them wouldn’t even need a flashlight, Hunk practically glowed in the dim shadows.

Lance, well used to sneaking out of the Garrison, was dressed more practically. Blue and dark greys, colours to blend with shadows. She had her signature combat boots, worn-in leather jacket from Mace, and hair pulled up out of her face and piled atop her head. She’d done her makeup like she always does when she can get away with it. Her own version of warpaint, she tells Hunk whenever he asks.

An attitude she’d no doubt picked up from Francisca the same way he’d picked up fingerless gloves from Mace. Her sisters were such horrible influences.

“This is such a bad idea,” Hunk worries at her side. “We’re going to get caught and then we’ll be in so much trouble and then both of us are going to get expelled. Auwe! Koʻu makuahine ua hele e pepehi mai iaʻu-”

“Hunk!” Lance whisper-yells at him as she peeks around a corner, checking if it was clear. “You are really killing my vibe, honeybee. Your mom’s not gonna kill you because she’s not gonna find out. Tranquilízate.”

“Sorry,” Hunk has the decency to look sheepish and lower his voice. “I’m just saying, for the record, that this is a bad idea.”

“For someone in a space exploration program, you don’t have much sense of adventure,” Lance quips.

Hunk huffs as they crawl beneath the window to the Teachers' Lounge.

The amount of security in this place is just lazy. It’s like they actually expect a bunch of teenagers to be well behaved and not sneak out regularly.

Idiots.

“You’re the one who told me to join.”

Lance grins back at him, smile wide at the reminder. It always gave her the warm and fuzzies, him saying that. It wasn’t just her, of course. That would be stupid on both their parts. But luckily, the Garrison’s engineering program was one of the best in the country with more funding than you could shake a stick at.

Of course, he could have easily gone to the one in Europe, the one that was more focused on cutting edge technology rather than military training and piloting, but here he stood.

It meant more to Lance than she would ever know how to express.

“Also,” he says, continuing his thought as they sneak along the wall towards Pidge’s room, “all your little ‘adventures’ end up with us in the principal’s office. I don’t call that not fun!”

“Don’t be so dramatic,” she teases, “We don’t always end up in the Principal's office.”

“That is so not the point.”

Lance opens her mouth to retort when Pidge suddenly steps out of his room, backpack fit to burst, and runs off down the hallway away from them. Lance and Hunk blink at each other.

“Where do you think he’s goin’?”

She starts off after him, Hunk groaning behind her but following along anyway.

***

They follow Pidge to the roof.

The boy’s sat in front of some sort of mess of equipment and beeping doohickies that Lance isn’t even going to try and guess the names of. Years of being friends with Hunk have taught her that she’s utterly incompetent with advanced technology.

Hunk is staring at it all with interest, rather than concern, so she figures Pidge isn’t constructing a bomb a least.

She steps farther onto the roof when Pidge shows no signs of knowing that they’re there. He doesn’t so much as twitch when she stands directly behind him, too engrossed in whatever’s playing in his headphones.

She rolls her eyes at his obliviousness, and bends herself over the boy, slapping her hands on his shoulders and putting her face upside down in front of his.

“What’cha listening to? She asks as Pidge squeals in alarm. Lance has to bite back a laugh at the sound. It reminds her of a kitten, all high pitched and cute.

It takes a second, but the younger boy eventually pushes her off when he realizes who she is.  “Lance, Hunk…” He fiddles with his glasses anxiously. A nervous tick. “Fancy meeting you here.”

Lance narrows her eyes at the skittish routine Pidge is doing. Does he think they’ll report him or something? They were sneaking out too. Pidge would normally pick up on that, the little brainiac he is.

Lance crosses her arms and cocks her hip, eyebrow raised questioningly. “Mhmm,” she hums like her Mamá always did when she was in trouble. It’s that type of sound that explains exactly how much you’re being believed at the moment. “And why are you up here, exactly?”

“No reason,” he says too quickly and winces. Then, slower and with forced ease, “Just… looking at the stars.”

Hunk, who she guesses deemed it safe enough to try crawling over to the technology gold mine in front of Pidge, slowly reaches out to touch the small satellite lazily spinning on its base. He doesn’t get very far at all before Pidge slaps his hand away without ever taking his eyes off Lance.

“Stop it.”

Hunk lets out a startled whine and backpedals wildly. Lance doesn’t even bat an eye at him. He’ll do it again in a second, she knows. Her best friend is too curious for his own good.

It’s why he actually agrees to so many of her ideas.

Lance pointedly looks to the tech Hunk was circling around. “What’s that then? A telescope?” she asks, sarcastic. “There’s no way it’s Garrison.”

“Nope,” Pidges says, popping the ‘p’ and looking very smug. “I built it.”

Lance looks at him impressed but not surprised. She figured it was something like that. You’d have to be deaf and blind to not realize Pidge is a genius. No way the classes they take are enough to keep him interested.

“Okay, but what does it do?”

“Well,” he says proudly. “With this, I can scan all the way to the edge of the solar system. Every frequency and message.”

Lance looks at him, practically preening he was. All fluffed up with pride. Hunk was staring at him, something like awe in the twist of his mouth, so it’s likely the pipsqueak deserves to gloat. Must be an achievement of some sort she’d not quite grasping.

“And you built something like that?” he asks, hand reaching out to tap at the keyboard despite his earlier warning.

“Knock it off, Hunk.” Pidge slaps his hand away again and Hunk groans in frustration.

Poor baby, she thinks. She can practically feel his need to take apart the computer and see how it ticks.

“Edge of the solar system, huh?” she says, purposefully casual. “All the way to, say… Kerberos?”

In the blink of an eye, Pidge goes from prideful to pouting, like a switch was flipped. He draws in on himself like a turtle, an unreadable expression on his face. Something like frustration. Sadness, maybe.

It’s so different from the fiery anger he normally directs at the people who bring up Pluto’s moon. Lance isn’t sure if that's a good or bad thing.

“Okay. What’s the deal? You go ballistic anytime it’s brought up!” Pidge just curls further inwards and Lance softens. “We’re a team, okay? You can trust us. You don’t need to keep whatever this is to yourself.”

Pidge gives him a look that tells Lance just how much he believes that, but he sighs and starts talking anyway.

“Okay, fine.” He takes a deep breath, “The world as you know it is about to change. The Kerberos mission didn’t go down due to pilot error or crew mistake-”

Pidge abruptly cuts himself off and turns to glare at Hunk who was fiddling with one of the wire panels on Pidge’s monitor. Pidge’s six sense with this technology stuff is actually getting kind of scary.

“Stop touching my equipment!” he shouts.

Hunk pouts, falling onto his side like a lame dog.

Lance nudges him with her boot sympathetically. “Well, yeah,” she says before Pidge can speak again. “The people on that mission were top of the class. Best of the best. They wouldn’t have just gone down.”

Lance never liked the official story on the lost Kerberos Vessel. And neither did most news stories on it and gossip magazines. It stunk of a cover-up of some sort.

Shirogane was her piloting hero. Was almost everyone’s. A story of him going down because he couldn’t keep control of his ship? No one was going to take that quietly. And according to Hunk, the Holts were practically legends in the scientific community.

There are plenty of theories flying around in the newspapers about the Garrison’s equipment being faulty. Of an engineering error so bad that the Garrison had reason to hide it beneath this farce of a story in order to stay at the top of the space exploration game.

Lance said that, in fewer words. Her distaste for the story and its illogicality.

Pidge is staring at her, surprised until the end. Then he starts shaking his head. “No, no, no. See, that’s where they’re losing it. The ship didn’t crash at all.”

“What?” Lance furrows her brow. “So they just lost it? That doesn’t make any sense.”

“Exactly!” Pidge exclaims snapping his fingers at her. “It doesn’t make any sense. Contact lost with a lunar vessel is, well. It’s certainly not good, but it isn’t enough to cover it up with a crash landing story like that. So why would they? I wanted to find out, so I’ve been digging through their files-”

“Wha? That’s illegal!” Hunk sits up abruptly, a part of the conversation again.

Pidge ignores him. “-and scanning the system looking for the lost ship. Any S.O.S. frequencies or strange radiation readings. Instead of finding either of those things, I’ve been picking up alien radio chatter.”

Hunk gets even more panicky. “Aliens? What do you mean aliens?”

Lance frowns. The idea of aliens has been widely accepted in scientific communities for years now. Plenty of universe out there beyond their solar system, and plenty of perfectly habitable planets in the parts they can reach for their scanners and telescopes, nevermind farther.

It’d be stupidly arrogant to believe they were the only planet with life on it.

But aliens near Earth? Sentient, advanced species coming after them and, what? Attacking their ships? Is that what Pidge is implying?

That’s insane.

She tells him so.

He scowls at her. “I’m serious,” he snaps, grabbing a notepad and shoving it in her face.

Most of the page was covered in colourful doodles of random things, but there were a couple of spaces in the margins that looked like he was trying to figure out the spelling of random words. Some bits were crossed out and rewritten over and over again. In the middle, there’s a large word circled in red a few times.

“Most of its complete gibberish. Noises and words that aren’t apart of any known language on Earth; I’ve cross-referenced all of them. But they keep repeating certain words, one of them being ‘Voltron’,” he taps the circled word for emphasis. “Another being ‘Earth’.

“But tonight,” he gestures to the monitor where Lance can see the sound frequencies on the screen. They’re moving erratically as if someone really is talking on the other side. A lot of someones. “The radio is going crazier than I’ve ever seen. I think they're looking for something. And they’re looking here.”

As if from some divine dramatic cue, the Garrison alarm chooses that moment to blare high and loud. All three of them jump in surprise as Iverson warns all students to stay in their barracks until further notice. That this is not a drill.

“Zulu-niner?” Lance repeats, thinking back to the book of codes she was handed during her first term at the Garrison. “That’s an unrecognized object in our airspace.”

All three of them look to the sky at the same time but its Hunk who spots the… thing rocketing toward them first. It looks like it’s on fire, ripping through the atmosphere at unreasonable speeds and seemingly heading straight for them.

Lance’s heart leaps into her throat. “What the hell is that?!”

Pidge whips out binoculars before she even turns around, the boy focused intently on the object. “It’s a ship!”

“What?” Lance grabs the binoculars, dragging Pidge with them when he doesn’t let go. It doesn’t matter that Pidge told her it was a ship; when she sees it actually flying towards them her brain short circuits. “¡Dios mío! ¡No puedo creerlo!” Lance exclaims, eyes wide. “That is not one of ours!”

The trio gazes up at the sky in wonder and fear.

“No. It’s one of theirs.”

Pidge’s eyes are practically sparkling as they watch the ship crash into the rocks a mere mile away. The ground shakes with the force of it hitting the ground.

Pidge scrambles away like a bat out of hell, quickly and precisely shoving all of his equipment into his backpack.

“Wait. so like, aliens are real? That’s a thing that’s definitely happening now?” Hunk asks, wringing his hands and shifting his weight from foot to foot.

Lance gives him a wry grin as she turns back to Pidge. The younger boy is pulling his backpack over his shoulder and looks up at her, excitement dancing behind his eyes. He’s practically vibrating in place, hopping from foot to foot like Hunk as if it physically impossible for him to stay still right now.

Lance grins, she’s not much better off.

“We have to see that ship.”

Lance couldn’t agree more. Real-life aliens? That’s a piece of history she's definitely not missing. She grabs Hunk’s hand and drags him off after Pidge.

“Come on, darling. The adventure isn’t over yet!”

Lance laughs when Hunk just groans in response.

“Worst team-building exercise ever.”

***

Fifteen minutes later, the three of them are set up on an outcropping above and away from a military tent set up around the crash. The Garrison had gotten there way before them with the land rovers and set up everything with scary efficiency.

Pidge has been fiddling with his equipment, hacking into something by the looks of the raw code dancing across his screen. Lance laid herself out on the ground sniper-style not long after they’d arrived, Pidge’s high tech binoculars put to good use as she surveys the area, reporting it all to a beyond nervous Hunk.

She’s sure he hadn’t heard anything she’s been saying, too busy muttering to himself and shuffling his feet. He hasn’t even sat down yet, too skittish.

She’s focused on the ship that crash-landed, surprisingly intact for something that hit a giant rock at a thousand miles an hour. It’s nothing she’d ever seen before. All sleek angles and dark metal. Lance’s fingers itch to run across the hull, to curl around the controls and see how she flies.

She moves to scan more of the area and maybe, kinda, gets a little distracted by a commanding officer coming out of the tent.

“Who is she?” she asks no one, voice silky smooth. Pidge hits the back of her head hard enough to make her yelp. Lance rips the binoculars from her face to glare at the boy. “What the hell, Pidge?”

He just gives her an unimpressed look before turning back to the screen. Lance huffs, going back to surveillance. It’s not Lance’s fault she was pretty. Can’t she appreciate pretty things?

“So,” she says, loud enough to be heard over Hunk, “good news is that the Garrison finally stepped up their security. The bad news is that they got their shit together when it was inconvenient to us. I don’t think there’s a way for us to get inside, not without risking bodily harm. And I prefer my body unharmed, so…”

Hunk, unsurprisingly, suggests just heading back to the barracks and forgetting about the whole endeavour entirely. Saying that they should raid the barrack’s kitchen for food as a bonding experience instead of spying on the military and alien spaceships. He even spins around to start back down the hill before Pidge speaks up.

“Hold up. There’s a camera in there. Look!”

Pidge has somehow acquired the feed of whatever camera set-up there was in the room. Lance doesn’t even ask how. It’d probably hurt her brain.

The feed is a bit fuzzy but clear enough to see a circular medical room with personnel roaming about dressed in hazmat suits. Equipment and tests were being set up by the busy little med techs, all of them furiously writing on their clipboards.

But what really caught her eye was the fact that in the middle of the room, there was a human person strapped to the table like a goddamn science experiment. He looked strange, weird rags for clothes, all torn and filthy, and looking in need of a good meal or ten despite his obvious strength.

The straps holding him down strained as he struggled against them, yelling and pleading with the med techs around him. His words fell on deaf ears by the way they were acting.

He looked scared. Frantic and so terrified that it took Lance a full five seconds before she realized who she was looking at.

The man on that table was Takashi Shirogane.

The pilot of the Kerberos Mission.

Her hero.

He’s alive. Roughed up and half-starved, with new scars and white hair and a robot arm—but alive.

It’s a goddamn miracle and the people in there are acting like he’s nothing but an interesting test subject. Anger rises in the back of her throat, hot and acidic and she stops herself from sneering.

She tells the other two who he is as Shirogane talks on the screen. She can’t hear what he’s saying because Pidge has the headphones, but he is freaking out. And still, none of the scientists even bat an eye at him. They aren’t even listening to him.

Pidge looks at the screen with a mixture of curiosity and something darker she can’t categorize. Something more desperate. “Where’s the rest of the crew?” he asks impatiently, under his breath. After a moment he informs Lance and Hunk that Shirogane’s talking about ‘Voltron.’ That they need to find it somehow.

The three of them watch as Shirogane is examined and then put to sleep, still struggling. It makes Lance’s blood boil. How dare they?

“They didn’t even ask about the rest of the crew!” Pidge protests angrily.

“What are they doing down there?” Lance snarls. “This cannot be regulation.”

Pidge looks up determinedly, “We need to get him out of there.”

Lance opens her mouth to agree when Hunk suddenly stands up. “Mhmm, okay. Hate to be the voice of reason, always,” he shoots a look at Lance that she returns with a feral grin. “But weren’t we just watching on the screen because there’s no way past the guards?”

He uses wide gestures, sweeping hands and fast motions like he does when he’s making a point.

“Well, buddy, that was before we were properly motivated.” She tilts her head questioningly at Pidge. “Maybe we could tunnel in?”

“Or we grab some hazmat suits and sneak in like med techs,” he offers.

“Or, hear me out, or, we dress like cooks, sneak into the commissary… have a little late-night snack?” Hunk tries weakly.

Both Lance and Pidge give him unimpressed stares.

She taps her knuckle against her jaw, face scrunched up in thought. “No, what we need is a distraction.”

BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!

Not a second after she finishes speaking, four loud booms in rapid succession sound off behind her. The ground shakes, forcing Hunk to the ground and rattling Lance and Pidge enough to shake their teeth.

“What the hell?!” Lance exclaims, whipping around towards the explosions. She can see the land rovers already speeding off towards them.

“Are they here? Oh god, are- The- Is that the aliens? They got here really quickly!” Hunk panics behind her as Lance snatches up the binoculars she set to the side.

Pidge, who was the first to recover, squints off the side of the cliff and points in the distance. “No, those were a distraction! For him!”

Lance zooms in with the binoculars and the moving dot turns into a person riding a red hoverbike. The bike is getting steadily closer to the tent and Shirogane. Whoever it is doesn’t even wait for the bike to fully stop before he’s jumping off and running for the entrance.

She can just make out a red jacket and black hair in the dim light and Lance feel indignation rise up in her throat. She’s completely missed what Pidge had been saying.

“¡Hijo de puta!” Lance swears, shoving the binoculars into Pidge’s hands and running for the cliffside. “If he thinks he’s going to beat me in this too he has another thing coming! ¡El nervio de este cabrón!”

“What?” Pidge asks, confused from both her anger and her Spanish. She’d forgotten he didn’t speak Spanish for a moment, most people do these days. “Who are you talking about?”

“Keith!”

“Who?” Pidge asks, even more confused now. But Hunk, bless him, understands immediately.

“What? Are you sure?”

“I’d know that mullet anywhere!” she calls, already halfway down the cliff.

Pidge stands at the top for a second longer, asking again in a tone that sounded more like a whine, “Who’s Keith?” before following behind.

Lance sprints across the clearing and past knocked out guards until she charges into the main room, breathing heavily. When she gets there, the technicians are all on the ground and Keith is already lifting Shirogane off the table. Hunk and Pidge arrive, breathless behind her.

“Nope. No, you don’t- no, no, no, no.” Lance shoves the stupid metal table out of the way to come upon his other side to help bare Shirogane’s weight. “I’m saving Shirogane.”

Keith looks at her in confusion and suspicion. “Who are you?”

“Who am I? The name’s Lance Martinez,” Lance pauses but no recognition appears on Keith’s face. Anger sparks in her gut.

She knew Keith wouldn’t remember her. After all, she didn’t matter to the star pupil. Wasn’t a threat. But she can’t help but push it farther, force him to know her now. Being forgotten, being unimportant terrifies Lance and it doesn’t matter that she doesn’t even like Keith. She wants him to know her. She doesn’t want to be insignificant.

“We were in the same class at the Garrison,” she reminds through clenched teeth, as she forces herself to look away from Keith and towards the door. She starts moving because they need to get out of here, and she recognizes that even as anger burns inhumanly bright in her.

“Were you an engineer?” he asks, face blank, as if it wasn’t the most insulting thing said to Lance in the last year. No offence to Hunk.

“No! I’m a pilot,” she throws out the title like it means something—because it does. It means everything to Lance.

“Oh!” He finally remembers, eyebrows furrowed as he thinks back, “I remember you. You’re the cargo pilot.”

Lance can’t stop herself from snapping, “Fighter pilot, now. Thanks to you washing out.”

Hunk gives her a sharp look. She’s never willingly brought it up before. To be second best, the second pick for something that dominated her dreams for so many years… Lance is actually surprised at herself for bringing it up.

They make it to the rock that Keith had hidden his hoverbike behind.

“Congratulations,” Keith remarks flatly.

Lance fights the urge to punch him in his stupid, arrogant face and reminds herself that she’s holding up Shirogane. She couldn’t punch Keith without letting him fall.

Hunk comes up behind them from where he and Pidge had been watching the progress of the returning military. “Hey, uh, mind if we catch a ride with you? It’s just that they do not look happy.” He’s jumping from foot to foot again.

They must be on their way back. The five of them clamber on the bike hurriedly.

Lance is settling Shirogane on the bike when it abruptly jerks back onto its tailfin. She just barely grabs Shirogane’s head away from the bit of metal that would have slammed into it, probably giving him a concussion or brain damage.

She turns to glare at Hunk who gives only a sheepish smile in return.

He starts babbling about weight-bearing and available seating areas so Lance lets his voice fall to the background. She’s more concerned about making sure Shiro won’t fall off the second they start moving. With Pidge’s help, she manages it a second before Keith fishtails them in a circle and speeds off in the other direction.

Lance practically throws Shirogane into his arms so she can grab onto something before she falls off, hers being the most precarious position on the bike.

Once she gets situated—and it’s almost like wind-surfing, actually—she turns around to find the Rovers eating up the distance between them easily.

“Uh, can’t this thing go any faster?” she asks because going to jail wasn’t on her list of things to do today, and she’d rather it stay that way. A sentiment shared by everyone present, most likely.

Keith doesn’t look back when he answers. “We could toss off some nonessential weight.”

She actually looks around the bike before she realizes. Her expression sours like she bit into a lemon when it hits her.

“Oh, haha. That’s an insult. Funny,” Lance replies in the same tone dull tone he used.

The next three minutes of her life were spent in heart-stopping fear and begrudging wonderment. Unsurprisingly, fleeing from the military on a hoverbike with four other people, one of whom was officially dead an hour ago, was not how she foresaw her day going.

But the worst part was how beautifully reckless Keith was when he drove.

Lance wanted to hate him for it, but the thing was, he was good. Amazing, even. He took turns without thinking because he knew he would make it instinctively. He took out Rovers by outmanoeuvring them in ways Lance could only dream of doing. And he did it even with the extra weight on the bike depleting his steering and speed, directing Hunk to lean one way or another in order to make up for the deficiency.

It was breathtaking piloting skills and if it had been anyone else Lance would be worshipping the ground at their feet.

But it wasn’t anyone else.

It was Keith.

And Lance would sooner dump grape juice on Francisca’s favourite white lace dress before she admits to being impressed by Keith in any way.

(Even if the pilot in her longs to pepper him with a thousand questions on manoeuvres and tricks.)

***

They end up in front of some sort of shack in the middle of the desert, the sun just coming over the horizon when Keith finally stops driving. The five of them hurry inside, Hunk carrying Shirogane and placing him on a couch that looks like it should have been tossed three years ago.

It takes him two hours to wake up.

In the time waiting for him to wake up, Lance had been wandering around the shack, poking at this and that and generally being nosy.

Sue her. She was curious as to what the other pilot had been doing for the last year.

It also kept her from focusing too intently on the strange tugging sensation in her chest. Not painful, and it wasn’t even really a feeling if that made sense. Which it probably didn’t.

It felt almost like someone was calling her. Tugging on her sleeve for her to follow off to places unknown. Only, instead of her sleeve, it was a pressure behind her sternum. A strange force that ebbed and flowed like waves on sand.

It was… familiar in a way. Like a memory she couldn’t quite reach, something she couldn’t quite remember.

Shiro wakes up and she shoves all her thoughts about it away. They have more important things to worry about at the moment.

Keith stalks right up to a covered wall right after both he and Shiro come back inside from whatever brotherly talk they had outside. She’s sure it was suitably emotional and caring and filled with heartfelt ‘I’m glad you’re back’s. Heaven knows that’s how it would go with her and her family.

He pulls the sheet away, revealing a bulletin filled with… something. Shiro is the first to speak.

“What have you been working on?”

“I, I don’t know. I was lost after you-” Keith stops hard as if he bit his tongue. He starts again, “After the Garrison. I was drawn out here.” Keith points to a place on the map circled over and over again labelled ‘energy source.’ “It was like some feeling in my chest-” Lance breaths in a sharp breath, hand flying back to her own chest at the reminder of its existence. It almost surges, more forceful like it knows she’s thinking about it. “-was telling me to search.”

“For what?” Lance croaks out a second before Shiro can, their voices overlapping.

Everyone turns to look at her and Keith seems almost annoyed. But he must see something on her face because he answers instead of snapping at her or something. It’s more than Lance would have done for him.

“I didn't really know… until I stumbled across this area. It's an outcropping of giant boulders with caves covered in these, ancient markings. Each tells a slightly different story about a blue lion, but they all share clues leading to some event, some arrival happening last night.” Keith looks to Shiro, eyes wide and vulnerable. “Then you showed up," he says in a voice so quiet, Lance almost doesn’t hear it.

The room is silent. The ‘you could hear a pin drop’ kind of silence.

Lance isn’t one for believing in gods or mythical beings, but there’s something going on here. Too many coincidences for it to not be on purpose.

***

It’s kinda creepy that the graph Hunk made of Voltron’s emission spectrum looks exactly like the outcropping of rock Keith found the cave systems near them.

The feeling of absolute certainty in Lance’s chest that that is the place they're looking for is far worse.

***

“Okay… this. This is officially freaky,” Lance announces as they make the trek out to the rocks, Hunk’s gizmo going haywire over the alien element signatures… or something.

The party of five carefully picked their way down cliff faces and through ravines, following the sound of beeping. It was hot in the midday sun and Lance had taken her jacket off and redone her hair into a more sturdy bun to keep it out of her face.

The entire time, her hand barely left her chest, the pressure growing stronger and stronger the farther they walked.

No one wanted to talk much, and that left Lance to bounce around in her own mind.

She focused on the pressure in her chest, studying it as well as she could. She wasn’t sure why, but the more they walked, the stronger the feeling got. More insistent and real.

The longer it went on, the easier it was for Lance to describe it. It felt like the pressure build-up in the air right before a thunderstorm, static dancing along your skin as you wait for the rain to break. That weightless feeling right before the wave crests and you haven’t yet caught the tide of it with your board but you know you will.

It feels like anticipation. Like suspense. Like a promise for things to come.

It sets her on edge. She can be patient when she wants, but it feels like her rope has gone beyond the point of fraying. Just jittery with the feel of it, her fingers tapping patterns and tracing shapes over her heart over and over again.

By the time Hunk leads them into the cave systems, Lance doesn’t think she could stand still even if she wanted to, she’s humming with so much energy.

Their merry band of misfits get only a few steps into the cave before they’re stopping in amazement.

Inside, the whole cave is covered in carvings. Lions and people and battles from long ago, all painstakingly carved into every square inch of the rock walls around them.

Lance leans in to study the markings, memories of Sabre ranting about different art styles and impressions of different ancient civilizations tickling the back of her mind. When she’d come back from her studies in India, it had been all she talked about for months. The old carvings and what they could mean and how you could tell them apart, Lance had never seen her sister so animated before.

She was far from an expert—that was her parents and Sabre’s area, not hers—but even she could tell there were quite a few styles lining the walls. Some were flowy while others were jagged and harsh, some plain while others look like they might’ve been colourfully painted once upon a time.

It was odd to see so many styles in one place. Too many tribes here. Too many overlaid styles. It didn’t make much sense to her but maybe Sabre could figure it out. The second she’s able, she’s dragging Sabre back from Africa so she can study these immediately before anyone gets to them.

Her sister is going to have kittens when she sees the cave, Lance can already imagine her face.

Lance reaches out to trace a carving of a lion lunging with the tip of her finger, the lines sleek and fluid like water. She barely grazes the rock, but it feels like lighting zapping through her hand, arcing up her arm into her chest, into the very core of her

 The carving glows a brilliant blue, starting from where her fingers had brushed against it and flowing outwards like a ripple in a giant pond.

Within seconds the whole cave is lit up, every carving glowing bright and serene and electric blue.

“They’ve never done that before,” Keith feels the need to interject and yeah, Lance had kind of assumed. Glowing cave drawings seem like something someone would mention.

She doesn’t get the chance to say that out loud because a second later the floor crumbles beneath their feet and they’re falling through the air.

She screams though she can’t hear it over the roaring in her ears. Terror crushes her heart, strangling it in its grip as she falls before finally splashing into a body of freezing water.

It shocks her and she snaps her mouth shut. Her lungs burn for air—all of it expelled when she screamed—and so she kicks upward quickly. She breaks the surface, coughing and discovers the roaring wasn’t her ears, but the giant waterfall on the far side of the cave. It echoes around her, bouncing off walls and reverberating back tenfold, drowning out all other sounds.

The others pop up around her before she can get concerned. They’re all coughing and gasping for air, though she can’t actually hear them doing either.

“Where the hell are we?” Keith calls over the waterfall.

He doesn’t look happy as he slowly swims over to where she, Hunk and Pidge are treading water. His hair is hanging in his face and a scowl is set firmly on his face.

Lance looks around the cavern. There’s no sunlight, but she can see perfectly fine. More carvings line the walls in here, glowing bright enough to light the whole space. Which is an accomplishment, seeing as wherever they are was about the size of a football stadium.

It had to be huge she supposed. What with the island in the middle of the vast pool of water, where something giant and blue and glowing sat, serene and patient.

The Blue Lion, something whispers to her.

She’s climbing from the pool before she’d even made a conscious decision to do so, drawing to the island by some invisible force.

She was breathtaking.

She towered over them proudly from behind her force field, chin raised elegantly as she waited for them to arrive. A mountain of gleaming metal, sleek and graceful from her snout to the tip of her wickedly sharp tail.

Bright, ocean blue curved gracefully over her head to move down the length of her back, spilling across her chest as it went. Her muzzle was a powerful, black and white interlocking pattern reminiscent of teeth and lions’ lips. The white of her snout continues up the line of her jaw after the black stops, curling beneath endlessly blue eyes and sweeping up into the sharply pointed ears.

She was the epitome of sleek ferocity. Danger curled into a gorgeously lethal body.

A deep rumbling fills her chest as she stands before her. It vibrates so hard she feels like she might shake apart with the force of it.

Lance steps forward, that same invisible force still pushing her forward. She looks up into those blue eyes, deep and dark as the ocean and just as terrifyingly alluring.

“Is this it? Is this the Voltron?” Pidge asks into the silence.

“No,” Lance answers without thinking, her voice sure. “Not all of it.”

“What? How do you know?” Keith asks, tone suspicious.

As if like an answer, the cave falls away and Lance is suddenly somewhere else.

Places and visions and people appear and disappear rapidly. Surfacing and falling away faster than Lance can keep track of.

Five Lions standing in front of her, roaring as one as they charge into battle.

A giant warrior standing in front of a planet, shielding it from harm. Hundreds of battles fought thousands of years ago.

Planets she'd never seen before but knew somehow.

People she doesn’t know but who spoke with familiarity.

Flying through the stars.

Warriors. Dozens of them dressed for battle and standing beside their Lions. Grim-faced or laughing or snarling.

The feeling of belonging, of being One, of becoming more than just herself, of-

Of being shoved back into a body too small and too lonely and too weak. Lance gasps and almost falls to the floor with the weight of her loss, with the deep, broken longing calling for her. Her blood roars in her ears louder than the waterfall as she tries to reorient herself.

“Oh my god. Oh my god. Oh my god-”

“This is what they’re looking for.”

“Incredible.”

They’re all talking over themselves, awe-filled voices swirling together into indistinct chatter. Lance stumbles for the barrier, legs wobbly and hands shaking with the force of things to come. In the back of her mind, something whispers too quietly for her to make out any words.

She slams into the barrier and the second she touches it, electricity courses through her veins. It zaps across her skin, jumping across the space between her fingers like miniaturized lightning.

The wall falls.

The voice is loud, crystal clear in her mind.

Paladin. Paladin. Paladin. Paladin-

It chants to her, reverent and euphoric.

It is not as unsettling as it should be.

The Lion moves with a muted mechanical whirl, tail swishing behind her from where it had been neatly resting across her paws as she climbs to her feet, regal and elegant and an otherworldly kind of graceful. Pidge squeals behind her and grabs her arm, latching onto it with a death-like grip.

Lowering her head, the Lion lets out a ground-shaking roar, the previously still cave air whipping around them with the deafening force of it. It echoes around them, a dozen answering calls back that Lance has the hysterical desire to join in on. To add her voice to the wave of sound.

It wraps around her, fills her up fit to burst.

The others yell at the sudden movement and noise, scared and confused, but Lance revels in it.

Pidge tries to haul her back when the Lion delicately lowers herself to her level, but she stands firm. The Lion bows before her and opens her gaping maw, the interlocking design parts, the black ‘teeth’ lining the top like gleaming stalagmites.

The irony of literally walking into the belly of the beast is not lost on her. She just doesn’t care.

She runs inside without a second thought, without even a look back at the others. Her grin is wide enough to split her face when, at the end of the short path, she finds the most incredible cockpit she’s ever seen.

Hunk’s standing in the doorway before she’s even sat down, expression pinched with worry.

She doesn’t expect the seat to move and squeals at the suddenness of it before laughing, loud and carefree. There’s an answering chuckle in the back of her mind. A soft vibration edging down her neck, cool and light.

The screen in front of her lights up, glowing a soft blue like everything else as it displays the cave—like she’s looking through the Lion’s eyes. She runs her hands along the controls and buttons, everything perfectly within reach, like it’d been tailored to her specifically. 

Her hands just barely brush the grips but it’s the same electricity from before, intensified. Like pure energy flowing through her, as if she’d downed three cups of coffee in as many minutes. Her chest buzzes and it’s as if she can feel all the stars in the sky and every atom of water in the universe.

Her laugh turns breathless. Unbelieving.

“Hey, baby girl,” Lance breathes, voice no louder than a whisper as she runs her hand along the control panel. “You’re a beauty, aren’t you?”

The Lion purrs in the back of her mind, a deep rumbling that sounds like waves crashing over themselves. “I am much older than you, my dearest paladin.” An all-encompassing affection swathes her psyche. “Thousands of years, in fact. Older than even your oldest civilizations.”

Lance’s mouth goes dry at that. The sheer power and wisdom within this great beast utterly terrifying. And it’s talking to her as if she’s special. As if she is the most important thing in the universe. Her hands shake so she tightens her hold on the grips.

She doesn’t know how to respond to that, so she does what she always does when unsure of a path. Pulls confidence over her like a well-worn coat and fakes it.

“Well,” she practically purrs at the Lion. “You don’t look a day over two thousand.” 

“Lance?” Hunk interrupts, voice weary and tired as the others crowd inside.

She turns to him slowly, blinking at him with bright blue eyes and an unabashed grin. “Yes, popsicle?” she drawls sedately.

Hunk wrinkles his nose slightly. “Are you flirting with the giant robot cat?”

She raises an elegant eyebrow at him. She knows it’s elegant because she practised it in the mirror for hours after she’d seen Francisca do it and send a boy falling over his own feet in response. “Do you really need to ask?”

“Sometimes I just hope you know?” He tells her tiredly. Lance laughs at him and his face falls further.

The Lion recaptures her attention with a sensation not unlike a cat rubbing up against your leg. Only instead of her leg, it’s her mind.

It catches her off guard and she jumps in her seat.

“Come, my paladin. It’s been too long since I’ve seen the sky. Show me how you fly,” she challenges. It’s playful and such a very human thing to say that Lance can’t help but laugh out loud.

She follows the gentle prods and pokes as the Lion guides her hands over the controls. She instructs with a gentle crooning that reminds her of starlight and murmuring creek beds. After a few seconds, Lance grabs the controls in a confidently firm hold.

She’s never flown an alien spaceship before. But, hey! There’s a first time for everything.

“Okay, let’s do… this,” was the only warning she gave the others before thrusting the controls forward and sending the Lion through the wall so quickly Lance hit the back of her seat. Pidge and Hunk squealed while Shiro and Keith made much more dignified grunts of surprise.

She barely registers the damage she must’ve done to the cave walls and carvings because she’s suddenly in the open air and can feel the elation the Lion has coursing through her at the simple joy of the sun on her back. Can feel how she revels in it, and through her, Lance revels too.

Flying the Lion is exhilarating. It’s everything the simulator isn’t, everything the fastest planes on earth aren’t. It’s freedom and happiness. It’s the joy she gets every time she flew as a kid but multiplied. She spins and twirls, backflips and does figure eights all while whooping and hollering with such bright joy in her chest.

She and the Lion play along the desert terrain and Lance can’t remember the last time she felt like this. 

The others aren’t having as great a time as she is though.

“Make it stop! Oh, Akua, make it stop,” Hunk calls from Lance’s left where he has her armrest in a death grip. He’s looking distinctly green, even with his tanned skin. Lance winces, she’d forgotten about his motion sickness in all the excitement.

“If Yellow’s kit throws up in me, I will spit him out,” The Lion says matter of factly in her mind.

“Yellow’s kit?” Lance asks confused, as she evens out their flight pattern. She looks back at her best friend confusedly. “You mean Hunk?”

Now Lance is thinking about him with tiny kitten ears and toe beans and as a chubby, little calico who still wears his headband. It makes her want to coo at him.

“What about me?” The boy in question asks weakly, still swaying oddly even though he’s on his knees.

Lance pats his arm comfortingly, “Nada, cariño. Just calm down,” she pauses. “And don’t throw up.”

“Paladin,” Her Lion sounds tense and with the slightest hint of contempt dripping from her voice. Lance’s shoulders go up, back straightening in response.

“What, baby girl? What happened?”

“What is the Lion saying? What’s wrong?” Pidge asks and Lance raises a hand at him, silently asking for a second.

“Galra,” she growls, the sound harsh and scraping.

“‘Galra’? What the fuck is a galra?”

“Galra,” Shiro repeats, voice low and panicked.

Lance turns around to look at him and finds him staring back at her. The pink scar on his face a stark contrast to the deathly pale skin around it. Lance’s gut clenches at the expression.

Something that can terrify Shiro that much is not something she ever wants to meet.

Out of the corner of her eye, she can see Keith reach out to the older man, bringing Shiro out of his thoughts.

“The galra are conquerors, destroyers of the universe. They are plagues.” Blue shows her blurred images, memories from long ago, battles won and lost. They all show the same thing; cruel creatures intent on control. “They are currently approaching your Earth.”

A screen flashes to her right, indicating an object heading toward them very quickly and confirming what Blue just said.

“What?!” Lance cries, yanking the controls to come to a grinding halt. She stops so abruptly, Blue skids across the desert sand, tumbling over herself before coming to a stop in a decidedly ungraceful heap. The passengers inside are jostled around violently and curse at Lance and her flying skills.

Blue huffs at the rough treatment but stands up without a problem. She shakes herself off harder than necessary to the annoyance of those in the cockpit. “Calm down, my Paladin. These filth are of little concern to you,” she tells her primly.

Lance whispers under her breath fiercely, voice strained, as she tries to keep the words from the others. “Baby girl, there are evil warlords headed for my home. It is very much a concern.” She can feel the worry and terror and panic welling up within him. Her family is on this planet. Oh god.

Her Lion rumbles at her, concerned at the force of her emotions. Then, apparently coming to a conclusion, she tells her, “Then we will get rid of them,” before jumping into the sky without warning.

“Where the hell are you going?” Keith demands, his grip on the back of her seat so tight Lance can hear it creaking. But Lance doesn’t have the energy to snap at him right now, she's too busy trying to shove the panic down from where it’s crawling up her throat.

“There’s a Galra ship approaching Earth. Blue says we’re getting rid of them.”

“What?” Pidge snaps, “What is it saying exactly?”

“It’s not like, words words. She’s a lion, she can’t exactly talk,” Pidge glares at her and Lance glares back, neither willing to back down until Hunk speaks again.

“Well, this is the weapon they want right? Why don’t we just give it to them?”

Panic spikes in her chest and she doesn’t think it’s entirely hers.

Lance flips around in her seat so fast she gets whiplash, “No!” she shouts at the same time Shiro says, “You don’t understand,” in a sharp voice.

The four of them look at her questioningly—Hunk more worried than the others—and Lance realizes she might be a bit overprotective for someone who only met her alien, lion-shaped weapon-ship fifteen minutes ago. It probably doesn’t say good things that she thinks of Blue as hers. Though her Lion started it first.

“Uh,” she wets her lips, thinking carefully. “She doesn’t want to go with them. The Galra, they’re not- Blue says they’re bad. Very bad. Right, Shiro?”

His face goes grim. “Yeah, I’d say they’re pretty bad.”

“Uh,” Hunk raises his hand, “how bad? Like, exactly?”

Shiro looks at him, eyes piercing, “They spread like a plague, conquering planet after planet. They destroy all who oppose them and won’t stop until everything is either destroyed or theirs to control. There is no reasoning with them. There is no mercy. They are the living nightmare of the whole universe and there is no waking up.”

The air in the cockpit is tense and heavy. Lance, who never turned away from Hunk, watches his face slowly morph to a mix of sheepishness and terror.

Lance squeezes his hand comfortingly.

“Okay, uh, that’s pretty bad. So that’s a no on the giving vicious alien species advanced superweapons. What are we gonna do instead?” he asks.

Hunk doesn’t get his answer.

Because at that moment, Blue finally breaks through the atmosphere and then there is nothing but open space in every direction with Earth laid out below. The part that catches her attention though, is the warship floating menacingly in front of them. It creeps closer and closer and the air in the cockpit is thick with fear.

The others are tensed behind her, all of them staring dumbly at the ship more advanced than anything Earth could even dream of.

Lance feels like panicking. Panicking sounds like a great idea and if the way her heart is pounding at her rib cage is anything to go by, it agrees.

Having a panic attack and curling up in the corner for an hour or so, sounds like a grand idea. Just like the good old days.

Lance is pulled out of her dark thoughts when Blue shouts at her. “Paladin, move!”

She jerks the controls without thought, dodging the laser beam directed at them by a hair's breadth. The warship is firing on them and Lance’s heart hammers in her throat as she twists and spins, dancing away from the oncoming fire as best she can.

The cockpit is chaos. The others are screaming, trying to back seat pilot or just making unintelligible, distracting noises.

Pidge’s voice, unsurprisingly, rises above the rest. “Lance, if I die, I’m coming back and haunting your ass so hard!”

“Language, Pidgeon!” she screams back as she does a barrel roll away from a giant blast headed for their chest. “Also, hey! Baby blue and I got this covered!”

“This isn’t the simulator, man!”

No shit. Lance thinks. The simulator had never felt this fluid. This intense. It’s everything real flying feels like and more.

Instead of saying that, she laughs tightly, pulling her easygoing persona more securely around her. “Well, that’s good! I always wrecked the simulator!”

“Paladin, we must take the fight away from your home planet. We can lead them away. It’s not your planet they truly want, but me. If we run, they will follow.”

Lance nods, “You got it, sugar.” She pushes them forward, charging the warship and slashing along the side with Blue’s wicked claws before dancing away from the laser beams and shooting off past them, away from Earth.

“I hope you know it’s really weird hearing you have only half a conversation,” yells Hunk as he hangs on for dear life.

It takes a heart-stopping second, but the warship does give chase, doing a one-eighty frighteningly fast and rushing after them. Lance realizes with dread that they are much slower than them. The warship is gaining, eating up the distance between them like it means nothing.

Keith speaks again, the first time since they left the atmosphere. “Where are we?”

Lance doesn’t answer him, half because she’s busy piloting a ship and half because she’s petty and doesn’t care.

“We’re by Kerberos,” Shiro answers, sounding surprised and awed, gazing around the cockpit disbelievingly. The feeling is shared by all five of them.

“What?!” Pidge exclaims. “It takes our ships months to get out this far. That was five seconds.”

Lance beams with pride. Her baby girl is so fast.

In the space between one second and the next, a giant swirling mass of… something, flares to life in front of them. It’s huge and unsettling and a deep inky black that absorbs all light. For a second Lance thinks it’s a black hole before she realizes that the thought is ridiculous.

“What is that?” Hunk asks, voice shrill. He grabs her upper arm, choosing to hold on to that instead of the armrest. He squeezes tightly, just on the right side of painful, still cautious of his strength even when terrified.

“Paladin,” Blue stresses. “You need to go through the wormhole.”

“I need to do what now?”

“What is the lion saying?” Shiro asks. The calm, confident leader they need. Lance doesn’t even think to question his authority as she normally does with anyone else who tries to boss her around.

“She wants us to fly through the wormhole.”

“Where does it go?”

Her Lion stays silent despite her mental prodding. “I- I don’t know. Shiro, you’re the senior officer. What do we do?”

He’s quiet for a moment and Lance is hyper-aware of how much time they have before they reach the wormhole anyway or get run over by a warship. Her fingers tap anxiously on the grips, waiting.

“The Lion knows more than we do. I say we follow her,” he stops and looks at each other them, children compared to him. “But we’re a team, we decide together.”

The other three look at each other, unsure of their decisions. Lance holds her tongue. Her decision was made the second Shiro agreed with Blue, but he also said that they decide together.

She knows what they’ll choose, but it’s not about that. That’s not why Shiro asked for their opinion.

Slowly, the three all nod to her. She breathes a sigh of relief and pushes Blue faster towards the wormhole, hoping to make it there before the warship is upon them.

The grins she wears is far from genuine and her voice is too flat, but she makes the joke anyway.

“Looks like we’re skipping class tomorrow.”

Chapter Text

Thousands of impossible colors and shapes dance in front of her eyes. The universe laid bare to her in vivid technicolor. Her sight swims but the world is as crystal clear as it has never been before.

Her eyes burn with visions she shouldn’t see.

Things whisper just beyond her reach. Too quiet to hear properly but if she just reaches out, she might-

The stars catch her attention, singing silent songs in terrifyingly sweet voices. Great monsters that whisper secrets to her, sorrows and joys and everything tucked into the crook of the cosmos.

Her eardrums screech and split with the force of their not-voices.

Time and distance mean nothing. A planet is both light years and inches away from her open hand.

Her companions are here-not-here. She doesn’t know where they are, doesn’t know how long they’ve been there, how long they’ll stay, doesn’t know where she is compared to everything else, can’t understand the Starsong and the colors and space and-

And then she’s spit out of the wormhole, dizzy and sore with bile rising in the back of her throat.

Lance groans at the lingering feeling of wrong wrong wrong the wormhole gave her. She can hear the others echoing her sentiment wearily from where they’re all sprawled across the floor.

Hunk’s grip on her forearm tightens a fraction and it’s the only warning she gets before he’s puking all over the floor, the rancid smell of vomit filling the cockpit and doing nothing to help her queasy stomach. Lance screws her eyes shut in an effort to not follow his example, pulling her feet up onto her chair to avoid getting any on her shoes.

Blue growls in the back of her mind, a deep annoyed rumbling as she snaps her teeth at Lance. She tries to soothe her Lion, gently explaining he couldn’t help it and that throwing her best friend into the void of space would make her really, really sad.

“Oh, god. I’m so, so sorry,” Hunk mumbles from where he’s still crouched on the floor.

Pidge just sighs. “I’m honestly surprised it took you this long.” His face is pinched, nose wrinkled and covering the lower half of his face with the neck of his shirt as he rolls his eyes.

Lance groans and reaches out to pat him on the back. “Just try not to do that again buddy. Blue doesn’t really like the whole, ‘vomiting in her head’ thing.”

Hunk goes pale. Well, as pale as he can get with his mocha dark skin. “Oh god. I am really, really sorry.”

“You better clean that up when we land,” her Lion growls but Lance is already nodding her head, resigned. She’s just tired at this point. How many hours has she been awake? She thinks she’s starting to hit that metaphorical wall.

“Of course, baby blue,” she says placatingly before the words actually register. When they do, she sits up straighter. “Wait, land? Where are we landing?”

Her Lion huffs, “Open your eyes, Paladin.”

A planet almost blooms into existence before them, though more likely they just hadn’t noticed it was there. It looks like Earth, only with continents twisted into shapes she’s unfamiliar with.

Lance soon discovers that the ride into an atmosphere is much bumpier than the ride out of one.

The others crowd around the back of her seat, forcing her to lean forward or be squashed. As it is, she’s bent uncomfortably, and people need to move right the fuck now.

“Personal space!” she yells. “That’s a thing we should have, like, right now. And Hunk—buddy, darling, light of my life—I love you, but your breath is rank, and you need to get away from my face. No offense.”

Hunk does indeed backup along with the others with a wince, but keeps one hand on her shoulder, the other on her seatback. He looks over the screen of the planet, studying the strange terrain.

It all just looks a little wrong, the rocks too shiny or too jagged. She can’t really put her finger on it but it’s off. Just a bit.

He gets that look on his face and she knows what’s going to come out of his mouth before he even says anything.

She’s mid-sigh when he speaks. “Okay, but is anyone else suddenly having second thoughts about this whole thing? Like listening to a weird robot cat? Cause, you know, ‘stranger danger’ and all that.”

Lance purses her lips at Hunk’s second-guessing, a trait he’s had since she first met him and, despite her best efforts, has retained no matter what she does.

“You’re tiptoeing again, sugar cake. You need to strut,” Lance drawls, easy and bright while Hunk wrinkles his nose at the long since familiar phrase. “Besides, she got us away from that alien warship, didn’t she?”

Hunk gives her a look that says she’s missing the point, but her attention is stolen when Keith straightens fully, a scowl firmly set across his mouth. Lance idly wonders if it’ll get stuck that way. Then she wonders if it already had.

“I don’t know if you noticed or not,” he says annoyed and Lance has to close her eyes to stop herself from hitting the arrogant off his face, “but we’re in an alien warship.”

Lance shoots him a look over her shoulder, smirking challengingly because it’s better than the sneer she wants to throw at him.

“What? You scared?” she taunts, and she readies them to land.

“With you at the helm?” He scoffs and Lance knows without turning around that he’s crossed his arms. “Terrified.” His voice is flat, with just the barest edge. It makes her hackles rise.

“Alright! Knock it off you two,” Shiro interrupts.

Lance bares her teeth in a facsimile of a smile and the grips creak under her hands where she’s squeezing hard enough to turn her knuckles white.

Hunk doesn’t so much glare at Keith—he’s too nice for that—but he does look severely disappointed in him. Pidge, on the other hand, has no such reservations of going bitch face on someone and hits him with all he has.

Her Lion growls loudly in the back of her mind and Lance gets the feeling she would be pacing back and forth agitatedly if she could, tail lashing out behind her.

“Red’s cub should show some respect,” she hisses, no shortage of venom in her voice. “His bond isn’t even solidified yet! He’s lucky he isn’t my Paladin or else I’d-” Blue rants in her head.

Quietly, Lance agrees with her, but it isn’t Blue’s battle to fight. It’s hers.

So, she takes a deep breath and rubs her thumb along the grips, an action that calms her and her Lion. Another time, she promises. There are more important things right now.

Her Lion grumbles but reluctantly quiets. She can still feel anger pooling at the base of her skull, but it’s more subdued. Dulled.

Gently, Blue touches down in front of a castle, padding forward surprisingly lightly for something that weighs well over a ton. Once she reaches the courtyard area, she paws at the ground before settling herself into a comfortable lounging position, paws crossed in front of her regally as she waits.

Shiro grabs the attention of everyone in the cockpit, looking them all in the eye individually before speaking.

He’s handling this a lot better than she thought he would; then she thought any of them should be. This is a really weird situation, okay? She’s definitely going to freak out about this later and she’d feel a lot better about it if someone was as weirded out as her.

For christ’s sake, there’s a lion that’s not actually a lion in her head. Ugh.

“If we're going to get through this, we do it together. Lance,” she straightens at her name. “Where are we?”

“That’s a good question,” Lance replies, leaning forward to fiddle with the control panel. She taps here and there to bring up different readings and information screens but none of them are what she’s looking for. It takes her a few seconds but eventually she brings up a map with Blue’s help.

She leans casually against the control panel, mindful of the buttons, and reads out what she sees. “It says the planet’s known as Arus. Or used to be at least.” She flicks through a couple more things before Blue takes pity on her and just pops up the information she wanted. “Oh, uh, breathable atmosphere and fairly Earth-like gravity and pressure though you might feel a bit on the lighter side. Normal temperature range, if a bit hot. Hum-da-dum. All safe to leave I guess,” she shrugs turning back to the others.

She finds Pidge looking at her with his face screwed up in confusion. “How are you reading that?” He leans into her bubble in order to read the screen himself. But when he pulls back, he just looks more confused than before.

Lance looks back at the panel and everything displayed across it in perfect Spanish. Pidge knows he speaks that language and it’s easy enough to recognize.

Lance tells him as much.

“That,” Pidge waves a hand at the screen, “is not Spanish. That is some gibberish right there. There aren’t even any proper letters!”

Lance’s brow furrows and gives Pidge a look that tells him she thinks he’s crazy, but when she looks to the others, they’re just as confused. Hunk has actually leaned in and started pressing buttons and tapping screens, though nothing happens when he touches them to his disappointment.

“The panel is designed with the same connection to you as I have,” Blue informs helpfully. “Only you may speak to me, and so only you can understand the panel unless you were to give permission to another paladin. Which you will not.”

“Oh,” Lance says intelligently. Taken aback by the force in her Lions voice at that last bit. What’s wrong with letting someone else read the panel? It seems useful to her. But, well, aliens. She’ll ask about it later. “The panel’s psychic, I guess.”

Pidge looks at her like she's crazy but also like he is very interested in the implications of this discovery. Before he can bombard Lance with questions though, Shiro decides they should head inside the castle and ushers them all out.

Lance trails her hands across the control panel as she leaves, pointedly ignoring the puddle of vomit. She’ll clean it up later after she finds a mop or something.

Do they have mops in space? Space mops? Lance shoves that idea off for later.

“Keep your guard up,” Shiro tells them gruffly, stance tense as he leaves the Lion.

Pidge looks over at him questioningly, “Is there something wrong?”

Shiro looks down at him for a moment before continuing to walk forward, back straight and face grim. A soldier's stance, Lance realizes. “I’ve lost my crew once. I’m not letting it happen again.”

Pidge looks as stricken as Lance feels, but nods stiffly, continuing on with his head staring at the ground.

Once they all have exited Blue, her Lion raises her head above them and roars. Both Shiro and Keith drop into defensive positions, Keith going so far as to move to grab the knife strapped to the small of his back. Pidge curls inwards at the noise and it startles Hunk so badly he leaps behind Shiro to babble about being eaten and dying on alien planets.

Lance hadn’t really moved, almost expecting the noise a split second before it happened. She just raises an unimpressed eyebrow at all of them as the castle doors open with a loud scraping sound.

She can tell Blue is judging them too by the tilt of her head when she settles it back on her massive paws.

Hunk blushes madly, “Oh. The door is open. Uh, sorry again, Lion.” He shuffles his feet nervously as he stands back up. Lance shakes her head at her friend’s antics and walks over to him. She pats him on the back and smiles up at him, ushering them towards the others who were heading to the door.

“It’s no problem, honeycomb. You’ll get used to it eventually.”

Hunk gives her the ‘I don’t really believe you but you’re my best friend, so I’ll trust you anyway’ look. Lance softens and hip checks him. He doesn’t even stumble. “It’ll be okay,” she tells him in Hawaiian and watches as his shoulders visibly droop.

They did this a lot. Switch languages in the middle of conversations. Most of the time it was comforting, a subtle way to say you’re not alone. Or good practice back when they were both still learning. Other times it’s just nice to be able to talk shit right in front of someone, though Hunk normally frowned upon that use of it.

“How can you be sure?”

“Because we’re together,” she says simply. “And as long as I have you, I know it’ll all be okay in the end.”

Hunk gives her a small grin and Lance returns it, bigger and brighter.

The five of them step into a large circular room with towering ceilings and a grand staircase that leads to a second level above them, an interior balcony that surrounded the room. The air was stale and heavy with dust and Lance had to hold back a sneeze. The walls and floor all seem to be made of white marble with elegant accents here and there, but it’s hard to see in the low light.

“Hello?” Hunk yelled suddenly, startling Lance who was still right beside him. His voice echoes back at them eerily and Lance shoots him a look. He just shrugs.

The five of them stand there for a minute, all of them on edge, waiting for something to jump out at them. But the castle remains lifeless. Dark and musty and void of life.

After another minute of waiting, Lance starts forward, hands twitchy again and just ready to get this over with. They weren’t going to learn anything by just standing there, that’s for sure.

She makes it two steps before she activates something in the middle of the room, a loud zap filling the air as the lights suddenly flickered on, shrouding the room in an unnatural, dark blue glow.

A crisp, even female-sounding voice from nowhere speaks in a language none of them understands.

“Whoa!” Glowing rings of light climb from the bottom of her feet, up her legs and torso before dissipating at the top of her head. The effect is mirrored on the others as well.

Shiro eyes the light warily, “What do you want with us? Why are we here?” he asks the voice, but it doesn’t respond to him.

The dark blue light in the room abruptly shifts to a more natural, yellow light. “Scan complete. Welcome, Blue Paladin,” the voice greets in English this time, her voice smooth but emotionless. “Please make your way to the Sleep Chamber, posthaste.”

Lance blinks at the ceiling confusedly. “Uh, where is the Sleep Chamber?”

At the question, more lights flare along the walls, leading down a certain hallway. Lance assumes that’s where the ‘Sleep Chamber’ lies.

“Thank you?” she says unsure. The voice doesn’t reply.

Lance looks to the others helplessly. Shiro, their de facto leader, is tense and has his hands clenched into fists but he straightens up and is the first to walk forward.

Everyone follows silently.

***

The hallways twist and turn into a maze around them, so much so that Lance is sure she’d lose her way if she tried to backtrack. The lights lead them to another large circular room. This one with strange, round panels lining the floor and a console in the center of it all.

Pidge makes a beeline for it, curiosity sparking in his eyes before anyone could stop him. He taps away at it before it suddenly activates, causing them all to jump.

A low hissing sound fills the room as the panels in the ground open to reveal two futuristic pod-like objects rising from below.

Lance steps back in surprise when she sees that there are people standing within them, eyes closed and seemingly not breathing. The glass is foggy and it’s hard to see inside but it looks like a man and a woman, both of them standing well over six feet tall.

“Oh, Akua. They aren’t dead, are they?” Hunk panics.

Suddenly, one of them opens, revealing the woman. Her eyes pop open and she breathes out a word none of them understands, distress evident in her tone as she reaches out for no one. She leans forward too far and Lance shoots forward to stop her from crashing into the ground. Her weight crashes into her and Lance almost falls to the floor.

The woman is disoriented and confused as she looks up at her, the grip on her upper arms just shy of bruising.

She has sharp features and dark skin, darker than hers or Hunk’s. Sharp, sickle-shaped, pink markings line the high rise of her cheeks and her eyes are a blue so bright they almost seem to be glowing with pupils that gleam purple in the light. A mass of curly, white hair falls over her shoulders and is only held back from her face by a golden circlet decorated with sapphire like gemstones.

When she looks around the room distractedly before finally settling on Lance, she can see long, pointed, elf-like ears poking out from under her hair.

She has an otherworldly sort of grace that reminds her of Blue and a face that could go on the cover of magazines.

In a word, she’s beautiful. Lance begins to give her a winning smirk and a one-liner, but the woman’s voice stops her. She speaks a language that Lance has never heard before and has a sound to it that almost reminds her of French.

The woman looks at her expectantly and her expression falls as Lance’s brow furrows. The woman cocks her head to the side and speaks again, this time a rougher sounding language, then one that seemed to consist of mostly clicks and chirping.

“Uh, I’m sorry. I don’t understand you like, at all,” Lance apologizes. And the woman’s eyes light up before swooping in and kissing her. She can hear the others make noises of alarm and Lance’s eyes bug out of her head when she feels the woman’s tongue brush against her lips before she pulls back completely.

She stands up on her own, hand still on Lance’s shoulders. Lance has to crane her neck up to look at her as she stands an entire head above her.

The woman’s eyebrows furrow together as she licks her lips in thought.

“Um?” Lance asks, thoroughly confused and feeling vaguely violated. “What the fresh hell was that?”

The woman blinks in surprise before her face grows thunderous. The hands on her shoulders turn painful and in the blink of an eye, the woman has a hand clamped on her wrist. Lance cries out as she spins her and forces her to her knees with her arm twisted between her shoulder blades.

“Who are you?” she asks through clenched teeth, voice strangely musical even as she vibrates with anger. “What are you doing here and where is the King?”

Hunk steps forward to help Lance but the woman pulls Lance’s arm further behind her, causing her to cry out. Hunk stops dead in his tracks.

“We were brought here by the Blue Lion!” Lance gasps, struggling a bit in her hold.

“Liar!” the woman spits.

“We aren’t lying!”

“What happened to her paladin?” she demands. “Where is the King?”

Shiro steps forward, hands up placatingly and his body language non-threatening. “We don’t know what you’re talking about. We aren’t here to do you any harm, perhaps you can tell us who you are. We might be able to help.”

She can’t see behind her as to what the woman is doing or what her face looks like, but after a second, she drops Lance. Hunk is by her side in an instant, sending the woman unkind looks as his hands flutter around Lance’s shoulder.

She smooths down her regal silver dress, not a hair out of place despite how she just threw Lance to the ground. “I am Princess Allura Raunne of Altea and this is the Castle of Lions.” Something flickers across her face before she moves over to the console Pidge had been fiddling with earlier. “I need to find where we are and how long we’ve been asleep.”

She places her hands on the panel and it begins to light up a calming blue, screens like the console in the Blue Lion appear before her. As she taps away, the same fizzling noise of the pod opening sounds behind Lance and she whips around, Hunk still holding her shoulders.

The man standing behind them had slicked back, fiery orange hair and skin a shade lighter than Lance. A large mustache adorned his upper lip and the same sickle-shaped markings lined his cheeks, only his were blue. Expressive, purple eyes with the same reflective pupils of the princess were rimmed by deep laugh lines, denoting the man as a creature of happiness. He stood even taller than the Princess and was dressed in deep blue, formal attire.

He reminded Lance of her own Tío, though the two shared almost no resemblance besides the mustache.

The second the man’s eyes landed on her, they widened, and he shot forward out of his pod to lunge at her. Hunk pulled her out of the way, the two scrambling over each other and getting out of the way just in time. The man flew past them and slammed into the pod Allura had come out of.

“What is it with aliens attacking me today?” Lance laments loudly, dropping her head on Hunk’s shoulder as the man shouts at her in some alien language.

Allura speaks up from where she’s at the console, telling him something in the same language. He then stops and looks at Lance, eyes squinted in an almost comical fashion.

Lance stares back challengingly, “I better not be kissed again. I still don’t know what the hell that was about last time.”

Luckily, instead of swooping down and making her extremely uncomfortable—because honestly, he looked old enough to be her father —he saunters over to Shiro and plants one on him. If the way Shiro’s eyes bulge out of his head, the man was using a bit more tongue than Allura had.

The man pulls back with a wet pop, a smile on his face. “Well! Now that we got that all squared away!” he says, in accented English, completely ignoring Shiro’s stricken expression. He almost sounds British but just a shade… off somehow. The way so many things have been lately. “Terribly sorry about that, old fellow, but had to be done.”

Shiro’s mouth opens and closes without anything coming out of it.

His face would almost be funny if it wasn’t for how Lance related wholeheartedly.

Allura gasps from where she stood at the console, a desperate broken thing, and the man is across the room and at her side in an instant. Lance hadn’t even seen him move.

“What is it? What’s wrong, princess?” he asks worried, steady and fluttering around her at the same time.

“Coran,” she whispers, voice thick and sounding utterly shattered. “We’ve been asleep for ten thousand years. Altea is- It’s gone. The planet’s destroyed.” She brings a hand up to her mouth, eyes wet with unshed tears. Coran’s face falls, gaunt and pale as he stares at her. The two stare at each other in horror and pain and the air turns icy and thick with the weight of their grief.

Lance balks, tears coming unbidden to her eyes. An entire planet, destroyed. A whole people. Gone. She feels sick, the thought that if she hadn’t found Blue, if she wasn’t here, that could’ve happened to Earth.

Because Allura might not have said, but it doesn’t take a genius to figure out who did that to her home.

Hunk pulls her tighter against him and she buries her face in his chest. Her heart aches with sympathy, with horror.

“Our home,” Allura forces out, “The entire solar system just-” her voice hitches on a sob and she slams her hand down on the console hard. “Zarkon,” she spits the word like it’s poison on her tongue and Lance flinches back at the hate in her tone. It doesn’t matter that it’s not directed at her, that she isn’t even looking at her, the acidity in her tone leave no one untouched.

She raises her gaze to look at the others and finds them all in similar states of shock or sadness, but Shiro’s the worst of them. 

He’s coiled like a spring and staring off into the middle distance. That hundred-yard stare she’s so used to seeing on her Pipo. That shuttered look Lance could never fix with a joke or smile. Memories and stories never told of things she’ll never understand. Horrors she’ll never want to.

Hunk notices her looking at Shiro must see the same thing she does when he follows her gaze. His arms squeeze around her, mouth coming to press against her forehead.

“¿Estás bien?” he asks, voice low. She nods and doesn’t look at him. “¿Qué estás pensando?”

“Nada.” He gives her a look. “De verdad. No te preocupes.” She smoothes the worry lines on his forehead with a gentle finger. “I’m just… thinking.”

Hunk snorts. “You just told me you weren’t thinking.”

“Yeah, well…” she starts but doesn't say anything else. She’d never been good at minding her own business. It was kind of her thing in the family. Sabre had her stubborn anger, Fransisca had her determination and soon-to-be fashion empire, Mace had her punk rocker look and easy way with kids. And Lance? Lance had her uncanny ability to connect with people, to adapt and flex around them easily.

And a good thing, too. She’ll be needing it quite a bit for the foreseeable future.

***

Twenty minutes later, all the humans are gathered on the floor eating food Coran had brought them, watching the ginger alien try and get the princess to eat. She staunchly refuses until, eventually, Coran gives up and joins the humans on the floor around the console, a sort of pinched expression on his face.

Shiro clears his throat, “I can’t believe your civilization created all of this, ten thousand years ago. It must have been an incredible place.”

“It was.” Coran smiles but it’s small and sad, the expression of a man adrift in sorrow and grief. He looks up towards Allura. “But now we’re the only ones left… The last alteans alive.”

Lance kind of wants to punch Shiro in the shoulder for being so tactless, hero or no hero.

But, something about what Coran said irks her. The hopelessness in his voice, the surety of his entire civilization just being gone. They couldn’t all be gone. If the princess and Coran escaped there had to be others out there, right?

She doesn’t realize she’s spoken out loud until Hunk elbows her in the side and she sees the sharp looks she’s receiving from the other humans.

“What do you mean?” Coran asks, voice desperately hopeful and trying to hide it. Behind him, Allura had stopped moving, frozen as she listens.

Lance’s throat goes dry. She hadn’t meant to speak, hadn’t meant to insert herself into this situation. She doesn’t know Coran or Allura well enough yet, hasn’t gotten an accurate read on them yet. Can’t tell if she’ll help or just make it all worse.

But… she can’t say nothing. Not when they’re looking at her like that.

“I only mean… I mean you had to have people off-planet, right?” she starts sounding so unsure she wants to hit herself. She was supposed to be confident goddammit. She tries again.

“It’s just, you have all this technology around you. Even on Earth, when a civilization was wiped out, there were people who survived, or remnants left behind. And there’s even more of a chance you survived because of your resources. There has to be someone out there, is what I’m saying.”

Pidge tilts his head thoughtfully. “You know, that actually makes sense.” Lance looked over at him curiously. He never agreed with her ideas. Not until yesterday anyway. “You were a highly advanced race capable of space travel. You had to have diplomats or merchants who weren’t on the planet at the time. Or, even as Lance said, people who could escape as you did.”

Coran looks off in thought, the corners of his eyes a little happier—less tense. Allura on the other hand, has the opposite reaction, shaking her head harshly before returning to her buttons.

“Even if they are out there, we have no way of finding them. We’re still alone,” she says a tad harshly.

Lance face twists, her hands clenched in her lap. She regrets bringing this up.

The room is silent, no one sure how to break the tension.

“You’re never truly alone,” Hunk says after a moment and Lance looks to him in surprise, he’s staring down at the goo in front of him with an oddly serious expression. He looks up at Allura, his eyes flicking to Lance for a fraction of a second and Lance sees something there that’s achingly familiar but can’t name. “Ohana is always connected, even in death. You’ll find them again, you just have to wait.”

Allura purses her lips but doesn’t respond. Lance has a distinct feeling that she doesn’t really understand what Hunk said but she looks pensive anyway.

“Okay, so this is really bugging me though,” Pidge announces dramatically, drawing everyone’s attention to him. “How in the hell do you speak English?”

That… is actually a good question. The humans all turn towards the aliens, curious.

“Oh! I never explained. How rude of me.” Allura starts, a blush coating her cheeks as she looks mildly horrified. “Alteans have the ability to learn languages near instantaneously through contact of mouths. We call it the Gift of Tongues. It’s one of the reasons we became such successful diplomats and merchants.”

“Oh!” Lance exclaims, “Good. I was wondering what the whole kissing thing was about. I thought you guys were just, like, an exhibitionist species or something.”

Allura and Coran blink at her in surprise and Pidge reaches around Hunk in order to smack her upside the head.

“Shut up, Lance.”

“Hey! You weren’t the one she locked lips with!” she defends. “I was mildly terrified the whole time.”

“My sincerest apologies, Lance,” Allura tells her earnestly. “I had not known the implications of such an act at the time. I was too concerned with… other matters at the time.”

“Nah, it’s fine,” Lance waves her apology off, having been mostly joking. “Normally I’d demand you buy me dinner first but you’re pretty enough I can forget my rule just this once.” Lance plants her head in her folded hands and bats her eyelashes at the beautiful alien.

Allura’s eyes widen then narrow as she purses her lips. She doesn’t respond to Lance’s come on to her disappointment.

“Castle-ship diagnostics complete, Princess,” the same voice they’d heard in the main hall speaks—coming from nowhere once more.

“Display diagnostics, CORINN,” Allura commands and in front of her new holograms pop up displaying information in a language Lance can’t read. Coran rises from the floor to look over her shoulder and after a moment, the pair’s expressions fall; Coran looking worried and Allura like she’s sucking on a lemon.

“Bad news?” Shiro asks tentatively.

“Very. I had expected the Castle to fall into disrepair but this…” Coran lets out a large gust of air, and it looks like he goes almost boneless. Maybe he did. Aliens, ya know? “This is much more than I had anticipated.” He rubs his forehead, sounding tired. Allura places a gentle hand on his arm and then he’s grinning again, if a bit woodenly.

Lance understands pretending to be happy when all you really want to do is cry and so doesn’t call him out on it. He’s entitled to his coping mechanisms.

Allura straightens up, which, in Lance’s opinion was wholly unnecessary considering she’s already like, seven feet tall and they’re all still sitting on the floor. “We should focus on finding the other Lions for the time being. Come, I’ll need to be at the main hub for this.”

She begins walking out a different door than they had entered from, Coran and the humans following close behind.

Pidge, ever curious, starts asking questions again before they’re even out the door.

“What exactly are the Lions? And Voltron, for that matter.”

Allura hums at the question, but Coran beats her to the answer.

“An excellent question, smallish one! Thousands of years ago, long before the war started, the Lions were created by Altean Alchemists along with the illustrious Olkari Scientists. The Lions were only supposed to be a new form of battlecruisers, fashioned in the image of the Goddess’ Warrior Lions. But along the way, the Lions became more .”

He starts waving his arms about, voice picking up a storyteller’s quality. It captures Lance’s attention wholly, having always been a sucker for a good story.

“We still aren’t completely sure why or how, but the Lions gained sentience and began exhibiting powers unseen and unplanned for. The Lions became more than just machines, they were alive. Those who worked closely with the Lions began describing psychic links attached to them. That they were calling out to them.”

Lance thinks about Blue, calling her from across the desert, how she can still feel her in the back of her mind, the barest hint of amusement as Coran tells them about her creation. She thinks about how real she feels, how Lance never even questioned the Lion speaking to her.

She wonders if the others can hear their Lions, or if they’re too far away.

Allura picks up the story. “When we tried running pilot tests, only those chosen by the Lions were able to get the great beasts to respond, regardless of experience or status. Mystical bonds formed between Paladin and Lion, stronger than that of anything seen before.” Allura’s voice took on a wistful note as she thought back. “The Lions need their Pilots as much as the Pilot needs their Lion, once the bond solidifies, there is nothing that can replace it.”

The group enters what Lance assumes to be the Bridge. It’s a wide-open space with a slightly raised platform in the middle and control panel placed in front of it. Allura steps on the dais and two tower-like things with orbs placed on top raise up before her, stopping a little above her hips. She gently rests her hands on them while Coran walks around her to stand at the control station.

Pidge follows along after the princess curiously. “How do they choose their Paladins though?”

“There are many factors involved in the choosing of new Paladins, but the most important is that their quintessence must be compatible with the Lion’s. Your life force must match and work synergistically with their own. Not necessarily identical, but it is said the more alike the quintessence is, the stronger the bond. One with an ill-suited quintessence will find piloting a Lion impossible unless under extreme duress, and even then, extremely painful for both parties.”

Holograms burst into life in front of the Princess. Miniaturized versions of the Lions that spring to life on their own, racing around the room and seeming to play with each other before falling back to stand in front of Allura.

Lance notices the Lions are varying sizes with the smallest being the Green Lion, closely followed by Red, who stood as tall as her hand, and the largest being the Black Lion, who was actually cat-sized.

“The quintessence of an individual influences their personality greatly. It is why Paladins of the same Lion share so many traits,” Allura smiles at them all. “In fact, I can already see the traits of the Paladins of Old mirrored in you five.”

Keith steps forward abruptly, hands uncrossed and raised in front of him. “Wait, hold up,” he snaps, tone sharp. “What do you mean, ‘mirrored in you’? I just got dragged along for the ride. I haven’t been chosen for anything.”

Allura looks at him as if he’s being exceedingly dim—which, relatable. Keith puffs up so much at the look she gives him that Lance half expects him to start hissing.

“Blue did call Hunk, ‘Yellow’s kit’ back on Earth.” She tilts her head to the side. “And said ‘Red’s cub should show some respect’,” Lance adds pointedly, earning a glare from Keith.

“You’ve spoken to the Blue Lion?” Coran asks, an excited pitch to his voice as he leans in close to her face. “Directly?”

Lance leans back a bit so their noses aren’t touching but stubbornly doesn’t take a step back. “Well, like I told Pidge, it’s not really words per se… But I suppose. Was I not supposed to? I mean, she talked to me first and you said it was normal, right? That they called out to you?”

Allura blinks at her for a moment. “I mean, yes. A Paladin communicates with their Lion, but the bond isn’t normally this strong so early…” Allura then furrows her brows and says something is that musical language of hers before snapping out of her reverie. Lance wants to ask more about it, but she can tell Allura’s moved on from the topic and she gets the feeling that she won’t say any more about it, not at the moment at least.

“But, back to the topic at hand. You were not dragged here,” she says with a pointed look at Keith. “You were destined to be here. The Goddess decided you five were to pilot the Lions. It is not chance that there were five of you in the Blue Lion. It is not a coincidence that you all embody one of the five Lions so perfectly. The Goddess weaves her web of destiny, her tapestry of fate, and she has dictated that your threads were always bound to cross and bring you here.”

“Okay, hold up,” Pidge interjects, waving his hands empathetically. “Goddess? Tapestry? My life isn’t some predestined, unchangeable chain of events. ” His face screws up in distaste, appalled at the very thought. “My choices matter.”

Allura just shrugs, but her face has that somewhat pinched quality that Lance is starting to learn means that she’s not happy with something. When she speaks, her voice is measured. “Your beliefs are your own. But regardless, you five were meant to be here. You five are connected, I can see it already when I look at you. Your quintessences not only match your Lions’ but are also compatible with one another.” Allura places her pointer finger on her cheek, tilting her head delicately. “If I was so romantic, I might even say you five were made for each other.”

Lance blanches. “What? Like some sort of weird, polyamorous soulmate thing?”

Hunk elbows her in the side. Not hard, but with enough force behind it to make her to yelp.

Immediately she starts whining, falling dramatically into his side and clinging to him like a damsel. “Aww, don’t be like that, honeybee! You know I love you, with like, my whole heart,” she pats her chest for emphasis. “but just the thought of that with you makes me want to throw myself into traffic. No offense. Also, Pidge is, like, nine.” Pidge squawks with indignation and Lance wrinkles her nose a bit as she looks up at Hunk—ignoring Pidge completely—and gives him her puppy eyes. “Don’t be mad, Boo Bear. You’ll always be number one where it matters.”

Hunk blushes red enough to put a fire truck to shame but huffs good-naturedly, gently shoving her off of him. “You are a handful and I don’t know why we’re friends.”

“It must be my sparkling personality!” Lance sing-songs at him, grinning wide and playful. “You just can’t resist.”

“If by ‘sparkling’, you mean annoying and self-centered… Yeah. Hit the nail right on the head,” Keith quips and Lance’s mood instantly plummets.

Whipping around with a sneer on her lips, she snarls at him, “Nobody asked you, drop out.”

He looks almost surprised by the force of her anger, like he hadn’t expected insulting her would get such a reaction. But if so, then what had he expected? Her to lie down and take it? The thought made her blood boil.

He’s taken aback for only a second before he opens his mouth to retaliate no doubt. Shiro steps in between them before he can though, giving Keith a disappointed look.

Keith grits his teeth and Lance sticks her tongue out at him behind Shiro’s back, just to be bratty.

Keith actually growls at her. Bared teeth and all.

It sounds like victory.

Shiro turns back to her only to find the picture of innocence, hands clasped behind her back and looking up at the taller man with a sheepish grin. A look practised and perfected by being the youngest sister.

Shiro shakes his head and looks to the ceiling like he’s silently asking a higher power for strength. “You were saying, Princess?”

Allura blinks at them, seemingly confused at the entire exchange. “Yes, as I was saying, the Lions choose their Pilots long before the bond solidifies. I can tell you four will be chosen because the Royal Family was connected to the Lions’ as a safety precaution. Your life force glows around you much like the Paladins of Old, it’s a unique trait I have yet to see mirrored anywhere else.”

“Okay,” Pidge asks, “Operating under the impression that we were ‘chosen,’ what are our Lions? And what does it mean for us if we’re the ones piloting them?”

Allura looks over at Pidge in thought before directing the Green Lion to move.

The Lion’s hologram jumps at the opportunity, bounding over to Pidge much like a kitten. It nuzzles his nose with its own, causing the boy to giggle in surprise as the hologram winds itself around him. Green is much the same as Blue, but with a shorter snout and a sword-like tail, where Blue has a trident. The transparent blade-like things that extend along Blue’s lower back, follow Green’s all the way up to her neck and while they glow brighter they’re slightly smaller and more diamond-shaped.

“The Green Lion is full of energy and curiosity. She wishes for a pilot that mirrors her wonder in the world and joins in on her adventures with enthusiasm. A pilot who values knowledge, no matter what form it comes in. Her Paladin must be adventurous but with a good head on their shoulders so that they may be able to become the brains behind Voltron.”

Lance can already see the similarities between the two and knows with a bone-deep certainty, she’s going to have to make sure those two don’t come up with some hair-brained scheme and get themselves killed. Pidge may be a genius, but that hardly matters when he’s being stupid.

Blue runs up to Lance as if she’d been gnawing at the bit to come closer to her, waiting for Allura’s signal. The hologram slams into Lance’s chest, and she’s surprised to notice that she can feel it trying to burrow into her. The Lion claws its way up her chest and drapes herself around Lance’s shoulders like an expensive scarf, her sharp tail flicking back and forth.

“The Blue Lion-”

“Wait! Let me guess,” Lance says, snapping her fingers and smirking at the Princess, “She’ll only accept the best pilot with the most charming personality?”

Allura’s expression is flat but continues professionally with what she was saying, acting as if Lance hadn’t interrupted.

“The Blue Lion favors the empathetic and the loyal. The pilot that would do anything to save others, to adapt and change to fit the needs of a situation. The most flexible of us all, in skills and personality. The pair are said to be the friendliest of the Voltron Five.”

Lance’s hand that had been absentmindedly scratching Blue’s hologram abruptly stills, suddenly embarrassed. She buries her face in the Blue hologram, whispering so only it can hear. “I hope I can live up to your expectations.”

Blue purrs in the back of her mind like a promise.

The Yellow Lion runs up to Hunk, tripping over its big paws and ramming into his stomach clumsily. His laugh is only a touch more hysterical than usual when he reaches out a hand to touch the hologram.

Yellow is the second biggest Lion, almost exactly like Blue but with a heavier build and an axe tail. Her back spikes are thicker and squarer than Blue’s and Lance can’t help comparing her friend’s Lion to a tank in video games. Made to take damage and dole out heavy blows.

“The Paladin of the Yellow Lion embodies a kind and caring nature. The heart of the Paladin must be mighty in order to hold up that of their team even in times of great turmoil. They are the support system, steady and ridged as they protect those weaker than them. They place the needs of others before their own because they know no other way.”

Lance bumps her shoulder with Hunk, grinning up at him when he glances down at her, doubt clouding his eyes. Her smile turns soft in a way she only allows for Hunk and she sees him relax, if only a little bit.

He embodies his Lion perfectly, she thinks.

Unlike the others, the Red Lion doesn’t move towards Keith at all when Allura begins speaking, it just continues pacing in front of him, almost as if stalking him. It’s built like a cross between the Green and Blue Lions. Small and with a short snout and build, but lithe and fluid as well.

“The Red Lion is the most temperamental of the Lions and it is mirrored in that of her paladin. They are the most emotional of all of them and rely more on instinct than hard-earned skill. The Lion is faster and more agile than the others but also more unstable, it takes a Paladin as adaptable and loyal as her to gain her trust. It is hard-earned but once you have it, it is not easily broken.”

Slowly, Keith uncrosses his arms and reaches out the Lion hologram in front of him. She skitters away from him and Keith gets this look on his face that Lance can’t decipher. A moment later, the hologram presses her snout against his outstretched palm, nuzzling it. She holds it there for a second more before snorting and moving off to pace again. Keith stares after her with that same indecipherable look, hand still raised.

Finally, the Black Lion hologram pads over to Shiro, head held high in pride.

She has red, metal wings that rest at her side regally. She looks almost exactly like Blue but bigger and black, with more colorful accents scattered across her face and shoulders. Her tail is more of a whip, lacking the bladed end the other Lions have but Lance doubts it’s any less deadly.

“The Black Lion is the leader, the head of Voltron. As the leader, she cannot choose her Paladin the same way as the others can. She must keep the thoughts of the team in mind, must choose someone the other Paladin’s will follow. Who will lead the team well. She is the last to choose, a sacrifice she gladly makes for the safety of the team. As thus, she requires a Paladin that understands that. Someone who values the thoughts of the team because without them they wouldn’t be the leader.”

Black stops before Shiro and tilts her head in acknowledgement, Shiro returns the gesture and Lance gets the feeling Black is smiling at him. Gracefully—Lance thinks she might be more graceful than Blue—Black steps forward and nudging his head with her own before walking back into the middle of the room.

Shiro stares after her in awe and admiration.

The other Lions follow her back and sit in a neat row back in front of Allura.

Blue nuzzles Lance’s cheek once more before joining her sisters, and she sees Yellow lightly nip Hunk’s finger before bounding after her. When they’re all settled down, they begin to glow brightly and in between one blink and the next, the five Lions are replaced by the giant Warrior from her vision.

“Together, the five Lions form Voltron, but only if they have all five Paladins who embody their traits. You five, are destined to join together as Voltron and free the universe from Galra control,” Allura finishes dramatically a bright smile on her face and an expectant look in her eyes.

“What?!” Hunk and Keith shout at the same time, the latter more outraged than confused.

Keith steps forward, hands curled into fists at his sides and a snarl on his face. “I didn’t sign up to fight in someone else’s war.”

Allura’s expression falls once more. “What do you think Voltron was created for?” she snaps at him.

Shiro steps forward placing a hand on Keith’s shoulder, something passes between the two and Keith backs down with a huff, arms crossed in anger. “Princess, you’re asking us to fight a war that isn’t even ours.” Shiro looks stressed as he speaks, his voice strained.

Allura’s face turns thunderous. “It is your war. It became your war when Lance bonded with the Blue Lion. It became your war when you all followed her here of your own free will. It became your war before you were even born, when the Goddess chose you to pilot the Lions.”

“Princess, on our planet they aren’t even fully matured yet. They’re children. You can’t ask them to join a war .”

“Do you think there are no children on the countless planets Zarkon has already captured? That they do not suffer?” Allura glares at Shiro, hands curled into fists at her sides as she looms over him. “What of your planet? You say there was a galra warship in your solar system. You were seconds away from being enslaved, or worse, destroyed. Does that mean nothing to you?”

“Of course, it means something! The galra are ruthless dictators and deserve to be taken down a peg, but I will not drag them- ” Shiro gestures to the four teenagers in the room. “-into this.”

“It is not their choice,” Allura hisses through her teeth. “To become a Paladin is to be a Paladin for life. It is a great honor, the greatest in the universe. Voltron is the Defender of Worlds, it is called upon in times of turmoil and it has been gone for thousands of years. What do you think the universe thinks of that? How much has been lost and how much will we still lose if you do not stand and fight?”

Lance watches the two go back and forth like a tennis match, brow furrowed in concern and worry as the pair get more agitated as the argument goes on. She can feel Blue in the back of her mind, oddly silent throughout the exchange. She reaches out to her Lion, a question rippling along the link.

‘Is it true? Do we have to fight?’

It takes a long moment for Blue to respond and when she does her voice is heavy and pauses often, thinking about her words carefully. She sounds her age when she speaks now. Lance doesn’t know how to feel about that.

“You are my Paladin for as long as you live. I cannot choose another until you are gone. The same goes for the others. They are not yet as firmly bound as we are, but they were chosen. There can be no others.”

Lance gets the feeling Blue is sighing in her head, a giant gust of air puffed out even though the Lion can’t breathe. “But us Lions are bound to you as much as you are to us. If you choose not to fight, we will follow you. But we are weapons made to be used and you are warriors born to protect. We choose our Paladins well.

“Look inside yourself and ask if you can walk away from this now that you know what’s at stake.”

Lance rubs at her chest again, at the warmth nestled next to her heart, and knows even before Blue finishes speaking that she can’t leave.

For as long as she can remember she’s stuck up for the little guy. Thrown herself into situations to save another person because her empathy and morality pushed her too, because she can’t stand seeing people hurt. And now that want has turned into a need, not unlike the need to breathe air, like the need to survive.

She’s always been empathetic—sometimes scarily so—and Lance knows that walking away from this would break her more than she could repair. The guilt would eat her away until there was nothing left but an empty shell.

She feels the pull to fight, to save, to protect, so much stronger than it had ever been before she’d met Blue. And maybe this means that it had always come from Blue. Or that the Lion is enhancing it to control her. Maybe she should be angry.

But she isn’t.

Because regardless of where this need to protect came from, she can’t ignore it. She doesn’t think herself a warrior, but she’ll damn well protect everyone she can.

She became a pilot because she wanted to explore the stars, sure, but the Garrison wasn’t just an exploration program. It was a military one too. She became a pilot to protect. To fight for what she believed in. To make her family proud.

Now she could do that on a bigger scale than she had ever dreamed of.

Her chest seizes at the thought of fighting in this war, of never seeing her family again but she knows there was no other choice. Not for her anyway.

Mind made up and heart aching, Lance steps forward and silences both Allura and Shiro.

The room’s eyes are on her again and she stands up straighter. Hands at her side and shoulders squared, Lance raises her chin stubbornly. “I’ll join you. Blue and I will fight to take down the Galra.”

She can feel their curiosity change to surprise, obviously not expecting the declaration. Not expecting that from her of all people.

She gives the group a charming smile because she has expectations to keep. Because she doesn’t like the way they’re looking at her in surprise and sorrow and pride. Because she doesn’t trust them yet with this side of herself.

“Besides, being a hero known by the whole universe? Doesn’t sound half bad,” she jokes as if she doesn’t know what she’s walking into. As if she’s just in it for the glory.

Lance can’t look at Hunk, she knows what she’ll see there. Probably hurt or worry or something else equally horrible. It makes her gut twist to know that she’s probably tearing her best friend in the universe apart from the inside out, but she can’t walk away. She knows that.

She knows he knows that.

It doesn’t make it easier.

But then Hunk steps up next to her, a gentle hand on her arm and she looks up despite her better judgment. Because she can’t say no to him just as much as he can’t say no to her.

He looks stressed and worried and five different kinds of panicked. Lance swallows.

“Are you sure?” he asks, voice low and shaky.

Lance gives him a wane smile, “Yeah, buddy. I’m sure.”

Hunk’s brows furrow and Lance grabs his hand. She tightens her grip to make sure he’s listening, make sure he understands. She forces herself to say the words even as she knows how much it’ll hurt if she’s left here alone. Even if she knows how terrifying it’d be out here without her rock, her other half, her brother.

“It’s okay if you’re not though,” she tells him, her blue eyes boring into his honey-brown ones. “No tienes que hacer esto. You don’t have to follow me in this.”

He studies her for a moment, and it reminds her of how he looks at puzzles. How he takes apart all the pieces in his mind and puts them back together before he even moves. His eyes bore into her and she’s never been able to hide anything from him and she doesn’t think she’ll ever want to, but he needs to know he’s not forced to do this.

This isn’t his responsibility.

Lance almost opens her mouth to say it again when Hunk finally speaks.

“If you think I’m going to leave you in space alone, you are loco. You’re bad enough on Earth,” Lance hiccups a laugh at that. An old joke between them. He leans closer to her so no one else can hear. “You’re my best friend, okay? I’m with you until the end.”

Lance blinks, remembering him saying the exact same words when they both applied to the Garrison and she gets the sudden urge to cry because what did she ever do to deserve such a wonderful person as her best friend?

She can see the fear in his eyes, the worry on his face and still he follows her because he trusts her judgment. Trusts her.

“Okay,” Lance whispers to keep her voice from breaking. “Okay.”

Hunk pulls her into a hug, his huge form engulfing her and hiding her from the others in the room. It makes her feel safe and less like she’ll fall apart from shaking so hard. She doesn’t cry, because her make up, but it’s close.

Later, she’ll be embarrassed and angry that she did all of that in front of everyone else. But for now, she’s content to let Hunk just hold her.

She feels the rumble of his voice more than it when he tells Allura that he’ll fight beside her with the Yellow Lion.

Pidge steps forward next but doesn’t elaborate on why. Nobody asks, but the look on his face is determined. Lance wonders what it is he lost to make him so angry.

Lance composes herself enough to turn away from Hunk, but he still keeps his arms wrapped around her shoulders and Lance leans back into his chest, hands wrapped around his wrists.

The trio looks to the last two potential Paladins, waiting for their choice. Shiro looks like he’s struggling with something, but Keith touches his arm and nods. Shiro looks like he wants to scream and smile at the same time. It’s an odd expression but Lance kinda understands.

Shiro and Keith were close, even back at the Garrison. She assumes whatever is going through his head about Keith is mirrored in her own about Hunk. The worry that the other will be in danger but also the guilt and relief that they won’t be alone out here.

Because Lance never doubted for a second Shiro would stay and fight. She doesn’t know him very well, but she knows enough to figure out he’s too honor-bound to leave and out of all of them? He has the highest stakes in this war. He’s seen the atrocities first hand when he was imprisoned and Lance bets that he wants to get back at them for that.

Not revenge, because he’s too goody-goody for that. But something similar. Kinder.

Shiro closes his eyes in defeat and Keith speaks for them, “We’ll fight too. The universe needs at least one person who knows what they're doing.”

Keith doesn’t look at her, but she knows a jab when she sees one.

“Wonderful!” Coran exclaims from where he was at the console, clicking away, only half-listening to the conversation happening behind him. But now he turns and gives the whole group his attention. “Fantastic, I’m glad you lot worked out your little tiff. I’ve gotten an approximate location of the Lions, but the castle is a bit worse for wear,” he pats the panel gently. “so, it’s not as accurate as I’d like. I can only get within a galaxy of the Green and Yellow Lions and I’m unable to locate the Red Lion at all. There must be something blocking the systems. Cloaking it somehow.”

Allura sighs in frustration. “I’m afraid that might be my fault as well. When father tied my life force to the Lions we were under attack. I had feared the connection would not hold like it should, and it appears my fears were founded.”

“Princess, do not blame yourself.” Coran scolds gently, pulling up the galaxies and displaying them on the hologram, replacing the mini Voltron. Next to two galaxies are a little pictogram of a Lion’s head.

“The Blue Lion and the Black Lion are in the same place,” Pidge informs from where he is standing by a mini Arus, the Blue and Black Lion pictograms hovering above the planet.

“Look at your primitive synapses firing away in your tiny brain cage!” Coran praises. Or, Lance thinks he tries to, at least. Pidge just scowls at him.

“The Lion is hidden away in the Castle, unable to be accessed until the other pairs’ bonds are solidified. The leader is chosen by the team and as such, cannot pilot their Lion until there is a team to lead,” Allura informs, looking at the Green Lion with concentration. “It is unfortunate that we cannot get a more accurate lock on the Lion’s whereabouts, but we will make do with what we have. Coran, keep working on finding the Red Lion and see if you can get a more accurate lock on Yellow.”

She then turns to the whole team, a wide smile on her face. “I’m sending you lot on your first mission. Locate the Green Lion and bring it back here. I’m sure it will be a great team-building exercise!”

The five humans look at each other uncertainly. In Lance’s opinion, such varying personality types can only end in chaos but it’s not like they have much of a choice at this point.

She sighs and leans further against Hunk, already tired.

Here’s to teamwork.

Chapter Text

“I’m just saying, if you pulled back like this your turns would be smoother-”

“And I’m just saying that if you don’t back off, I’ll drop you into the abyss of space and leave you there,” Lance bites out between her teeth, nails digging into the handles.

They were approaching hour three of flying aimlessly in space looking for the Green Lion and Lance was ready to strangle Keith with her bare hands, epic destinies be damned.

He hasn’t stopped trying to backseat-pilot her since they all clamored back into a freshly cleaned Blue Lion. He’d take breaks whenever Shiro told him to knock it off, but then Lance would do something that irked him, and he’d be right back to it a few minutes later.

She’d barely done anything more than fly in a straight line for god's sake! What a joke.

It was driving her more insane than the simulator.

Keith crosses his arms, squinting down at her, “I doubt that. You’re arrogant but you aren’t heartless .”

“I don’t think you know me well enough to say what I am and am not capable of doing.” Lance glares at him through her bangs.

“Keith, would you just knock it off?” Pidge snaps from where he’s curled under the control panel with his computer, tapping away at something. Lance isn’t really sure what he’s doing considering he doesn’t have Wi-Fi, but at this point? She knows better than to ask. “You’re being a helicopter parent.”

Hunk nods vigorously from where he’s sat crossed legged next to Lance’s chair between her and Pidge. He’d been bouncing back and forth between the two in conversations as he fiddles with the improved Geiger Counter Coran helped him build before Keith started on his latest annoyance.

Lance shoots him a smug look that has Keith bristling. “I’m just trying to help.”

“No, you’re trying to pilot,” Lance corrects, tilting her head towards him disdainfully. “A skill, by the way, that I am perfectly capable of doing myself.”

“Forgive me for doubting that when you’ve apparently crashed every simulator you’ve stepped foot in.”

“She’s not that bad,” Hunk defends, and Lance gently presses her shin further into his side as a thank you.

“Yeah, the simulators barely count anyway. They’re completely different from a real plane,” she waves her hand as if to wave away Keith’s opinion.

If only it were that easy.

“Completely different-” Keith starts before scoffing, “Have you ever even been in a real plane?”

“Of course, I have! I grew up flying them, asshole!” Lance shouts and, apparently, swearing is Shiro’s breaking point because he stops rubbing his temples and physically gets in between the two of them.

“Both of you, knock it off!” Lance opens her mouth to protest but Shiro silences her with a glare. She turns away angrily. “Keith, come on. You and I are going to have a talk.” He then all but drags Keith off towards the small storage room in Blue’s chest, presumably.

The second the door closes behind them Lance shoves herself to her feet, letting Blue take control so she can punch the back of her chair with a strangled yell.

Hunk and Pidge jumped at the sudden movement and her apparent anger while Blue chitters anxiously in her mind.

Lance ignores all three of them as she paces the small space in the cockpit, feeling not unlike a caged animal.

“¿Cuál es su problema? It’s not good enough he was better than me at the Garrison so now he has to shove it down my throat here? In my own damn Lion? ¡Qué mierda! ¿Quién se cree que es?”

Lance would punch a wall if it wouldn’t break her hand.

“I’m sure that’s not what he meant,” Hunk tries placating her and it might’ve worked had she not been getting every button she has, pressed since they left the castle.

“It doesn’t matter if he meant it or not! What right does he have to tell me what to do? I’m the one with the Lion! I’m the only one fully bonded yet! And he acts like I’m beneath him and I’m sick of it! God,” Lance stops in the middle of the room, hugging herself, hands gripping tightly at the fake leather of her jacket. “It’d be better if he went back to not knowing who the hell I was.”

Pidge stares at her with unreadable eyes. “Why do you let him get to you so much?”

“I don’t!” Lance snaps. Pidge gives her a blank look and Lance tugs the ends of her hair. “Okay, so maybe I do. Un poco. He just-” Lance waves her hands in a way that could mean anything before making a gesture not unlike strangling someone accompanied by a low growling sound.

Pidge shakes his head at her before returning to his computer. “Just ignore him. He’s not worth it.”

Hunk’s looking between the two of them, a thoughtful expression on his face that makes Lance curious as to what he’s thinking.

Lance lets out a breath, shoulders drooping. She walks over to Hunk and falls into his lap. He moves his counter out of the way just before she lands on it and tuts at her. “I can’t just ignore him. He’s so stupid I have to correct him or it’ll bug me, ya know?” She looks at Pidge upside down, her head resting on Hunk’s thigh.

Pidge gives her a wry look. “Oh, I know the feeling.”

“Hey!” Lance whines, swatting at the small boy. “You’re supposed to be on my side!”

“Oh? Is that so?” he asks disinterested but Lance answers him anyway.

“Of course, you’re supposed to be on my side! I was your friend first.” Pidge pauses in his typing to look at her, something like surprise on his face. It’s gone a second later so Lance continues as if nothing happened. “And the like, third rule of the bro code is that senior bro-ship reigns supreme. You have to take a bro’s side over a hoe’s.”

Hunk peers down at her, a smile fighting its way onto his face. “Does that make Keith the hoe?”

“¿En serio? Of course, it does,” Lance says in a tone that conveys exactly how obvious it was. Which is very.

The smile Hunk was holding breaks out over his face and Pidge starts laughing, Lance joining in a second later. The three are still laughing when Shiro and Keith come back into the cockpit, though Lance has moved on to making fun of his mullet and fashion sense along with Pidge while Hunk makes honestly atrocious puns.

Lance is red in the face and still sprawled across Hunks lap, but now Pidge is leaning against her shoulder in order to stay upright. Shiro looks at them in surprise that quickly shifts to happiness while Keith narrows his eyes. He’s doing the face Pidge had made fun of not two minutes ago and it sends the pair howling again.

She’s still smiling when she sits back in the pilot’s seat, leaning over her armrest to continue talking to Hunk and Pidge, with the occasional comment from Shiro. The rest of the trip is smoother after that, the air more relaxed.

It’s not much, but it’s the first bit of hope that Lance finds to prove they might be able to be an actual team.

***

Katie didn’t really interact with people much. Didn’t really like them, either. There were too many variables for them. People were too unpredictable, too cruel, for her tastes.

When Katie had first met Lance and Hunk, she never expected to actually like them.

And to be perfectly honest, when she first met them, she thought Lance was nothing but a vain, self-obsessed, hotshot pilot who thought herself better than others and that Hunk was too nice for his own good. First impressions told her that the both of them were idiots just like the rest of the population and she hadn’t bothered looking closer.

To be fair, Katie was a prodigy. A genius born into a family of them, everyone was an idiot compared to her. She built an engine by herself at age five, built her first circuit board at six and coded a fully functioning AI by seven. She thinks she can be forgiven for taking most people at face value.

(It's technology that’s interesting anyway.)

But as she sat in the Blue Lion, laughing along with the two of them, joking and fooling around as they flew through space, she was faced with the conclusion that she was very, very wrong about them.

She’d gotten hints about it at the Garrison—how Lance was obnoxiously friendly to everyone and Hunk consistently showed up in all her advanced classes, cheerfully sat at her side. But it only really started to click up on the rooftop, when Lance listened and trusted her and went along with her schemes and theories, HUnk not a step behind.

And then, in the Bridge, they were both the first to pledge themselves to this war. Seemingly for little more reason than they wanted to help and stay together.

Even Katie had a more selfish reason than that.

It’s a strange feeling, being so wrong about something.

When Lance declared them friends like it was common knowledge, like it was obvious, it startled Katie. Unexpected… but not unwelcome.

She didn’t have a lot of friends—or any really. She’s always been too smart for the other kids, too fast for them to keep up with. It’d been like that since she could talk, practically skipping the learning phase of speech and heading straight for complex sentences.

She really only had Matt growing up.

And now he’s missing…

Katie shoves the thought away violently. She’s going to find him. Both of them. She knows they’re out here now. It doesn’t matter how long it will take to find them because she will.

She’s a genius, she’ll find a way.

She always does.

***

“Lance, wait!” Hunk interrupts her retelling of The Bubble Bath Incident involving Sabre, Mace, and a public fountain. The story has Pidge making the funniest faces while Shiro looks on vaguely disapproving.

Hunk’s tone makes her pause, and she lightly pulls Blue to a stop.

“What is it, sugar pop?” Lance asks cheerfully, putting her feet back on the floor from where they had been tucked underneath her. Pidge rolls his eyes at her so Lance sticks her tongue out.

Hunk is staring down at the counter in his hand, “I think we’re getting close.” Pidge sits up straighter in response.

Lance nods at her friend and coaxes Blue into a slow turn, scanning the space around them for anywhere the Lion could be hiding. A little green planet fills the monitor and Lance stops.

Pidge leans over the console as if getting closer to the screen will help him see better. Lance looks at him in amusement. “Think you could pull a zoom and enhance on that one, Blue?” Lance asks as she flies towards the planet. A second later a screen pops up in front of Pidge’s face. The younger paladin eagerly scrolls through the screen but doesn't thank her. Not that Lance expected him to, anyway.

“Thanks, Blue!” Lance calls cheerfully before a thought occurs to her and she’s wide-eyed. “Actually, you know what? I never even asked your name. Like, that is so rude of me, I can’t believe myself.”

Lance waits patiently for her Lion to speak. Introductions are way overdue and god she feels horrible now. What would her mamá say?

“I have no name,” her Lion says confused, “I am simply the Blue Lion.”

The sentence pulls Lance up short.

“What do you mean you don’t have a name?” she demands.

“I have never been formally named. My paladins have given me many over the years, but I never kept them after they passed. For now, I remain Nameless.”

Lance thinks that’s very sad and wonders how many names she’d been given then lost. She wonders how many Paladins she’s chosen then lost.

“You have given me many names so far. Will you choose one eventually?”

“Hmm?” Lance hums in confusion. “Oh, those aren’t names. They’re nicknames! Fun names you give to your friends or people you like. We need to give you a real name.”

Lance taps her chin thoughtfully as they descend through the atmosphere.

Something that makes sense for her Lion. She cycles through a few in her head but none of them feel right.

Ariel isn’t regal enough, Marina’s too human, Siren is just- No. Just no.

“Hunk!” she exclaims and watches him jump. “What do you think we should name, Blue?”

“‘We’?” Hunk asks, expression confused.

“Duh, ‘we.’ We’ll be like her parents!” Lance tells him matter-of-factly. To his credit Hunk only looks mildly concerned at being appointed father of a cat-shaped warship.

Lance ignores Blue when she reminds her that she’s, in fact, thousands of years older than her. Lance is still wrapping her head around that particular tidbit.

“What kind of name are you looking for?”

“Something that relates to water or blue.”

He tilts his head back to look at the ceiling. “Uh, what about… Cleo, like Cleopatra. Queen of the Nile?” Lance thinks about it but shakes her head. “Or, Sapphire, the gem. Cascade, Ophelia, Lana.” More headshakes. None of them sound right. “Um… Azura? That’s French I think.”

That one makes Lance pause.

“Azura,” she tries the name on her tongue.

She likes that one. It reminds her of Francisca. Her Lion reminded her of Francisca actually.

“Yeah. Hey, what do you think about Azura?” she asks.

Lance gets the impression that Blue is tilting her head. “It is one of the nicer names I have received. And it sounds regal. I like it.”

Lance beams. “She loves it. Thanks, Hunk!”

“Oh. You’re welcome, I guess.”

***

The planet reminds Katie of pictures of the Amazon rainforest. Tall trees and giant flowers and everything covered in a thousand shades of green. Giant butterflies fly around them, and she can hear the sound of animals scurrying in the undergrowth.

It’s pretty. In a natural sort of way, she supposes. But too humid. And hot. And bright. And-

“So, Pidgeon,” Lance says when they exit the newly dubbed Azura, hands on the curve of her hips. “Which way to your Lion?

Katie looks up at the Cuban to her right, nose scrunched up in displeasure. The taller is standing right in front of the sun, forcing her to squint. “How am I supposed to know? Hunk has the Giger Counter.”

Lance tilts her head to the side, chestnut hair gleaming in the midday light as it lights up behind her like a halo. Her brows furrow in confusion. “Can’t you feel her? Azura says we should be close enough.”

“Excuse me?” The younger girl responds flatly.

The taller heaves a full-body sigh and mumbles something in Spanish Katie doesn’t really catch. “You should feel a pull. Mine was right here,” Lance taps right over her heart. “Azura says yours will probably be somewhere else because of symbolism or something. But it feels like something tugging you somewhere or calling out to you.”

Katie looks up at her, expression flat. “That is so vague. What the hell am I supposed to do with that?”

‘Feel a pull’? What the hell is that? Give her something concrete to work with, Lance.

Lance looks down at her disapprovingly, lips pursed like her mom does sometimes. “Can you just try first?”

Katie groans and closes her eyes pointedly, trying to find the sensation that Lance had described. She stands there for a moment and is about to open her eyes and tell Lance she’s insane when a tugging at the base of her skull catches her attention.

Her hand flies up to the spot, thinking maybe Lance had tugged at her hair there to tease her, but the only thing under her hand is her skull. Her eyes snap open in surprise and still, the tugging sensation continues, more insistent now.

As if it knows she noticed it.

She looks up at Lance who’s wearing a smug expression.

“Shut up,” Katie snaps, petulantly as she stalks off in a direction she knows will lead to her Lion, but not sure how she knows. It drives her crazy.

“I didn’t even say anything, Pidgeon!” Lance calls, voice too light to be truly offended. She can hear Hunk chuckling, probably at Lance.

***

The team finds itself cramped together in a canoe, merrily floating down a stream with an alien sloth creature slowly paddling them closer towards the Green Lion.

Katie’s squished between Hunk and Lance, the latter leaning so far over the edge of the boat, Hunk’s arm is wrapped behind Katie to hold onto the back of her shirt so she doesn’t fall in. Lance is splashing and playing in the water, occasionally flicking it at Keith’s back and then pretending to be innocent when he whips around to glare at her.

Katie started chewing on her nails five minutes ago and has pulled her knees up to her chest in the last two. She feels nervous and jittery, so she’s been reciting the table of elements in her head to calm down. She must’ve started muttering out loud at some point because Shiro turns around to look at her in concern.

“Are you okay?” he asks.

Lance stops splashing in the water and then everyone’s staring at her. It makes her feel small and she hates it. Katie curls further towards her knees.

“I just-” Katie takes a deep breath before spilling everything she’s worrying about. Well, not everything, but the safe stuff to tell at least. “I know Allura said this was supposed to be my Lion but what if she’s wrong? I mean, she probably isn’t wrong, but what if I’m not actually meant to be the Green Paladin? What if I find her and she doesn’t like me? What if she realizes I’m not what she wanted? Like, I’m not even a pilot! I’m a scientist, a scholar. I’m not supposed to be in the field! And how am I supposed to fly her? The Blue Lion doesn’t even have pedals so Green probably doesn’t either! And-”

“Pidge!” Surprisingly it’s who Keith cuts through her rambling. His eyebrows are drawn together in worry, and his mouth is pulling down at the corners. “You need to breathe.”

Lance places a hand on her back, rubbing in soothing circles. “You’re rambling,” she points out the obvious.

Katie shrugs non committedly and the team lulls into silence, unsure how to comfort her.

“'If you get too worried about what could go wrong, you might miss a chance to do something great,'” Shiro says out of nowhere.

Katie’s head shoots up to look at him but he’s staring off over her shoulder. Those are her father’s words. Is this… Does he… does Shiro recognize her? It’s been years since she’s seen him, and she’s changed a lot.

“A wise man used to say that. A good man.”

The canoe stops, beaching itself on the sand before anyone can say anything else.

Katie’s gaze is pulled towards the Temple standing before her. It’s huge and reminds her of the old Inca ruins, only this one is covered in giant vines, breaking the stone steps and overtaking the structure completely.

She looks back at the four people around her, each one is giving her encouraging grins. Besides Keith, at least. It’s hard to read him, but he’s giving off a supportive vibe. She thinks.

“Go, be great,” Shiro urges, a smile lighting up his face.

“Yeah, knock ‘em dead, Pidgeon,” Lance adds in, knocking their shoulders together lightly.

“You’ll be fine,” Hunk assures.

Keith doesn’t say anything, but he does tilt his head towards the temple in silent encouragement. It’s enough.

Katie feels a small smile spread across her face and stands. “Okay. Yeah.” With one last glance at them, she runs towards the temple’s top, following the pull at the base of her skull. Following the pull of her destiny, of what led her here.

She’s going to be great.

***

Lance watches with bated breath as Pidge climbs the temple steps, jumping over vines nimbly and ducking under others. When he reaches the top Lance feels her breath stop, Pidge stands there, turning in circles as if waiting for something.

Then he looks down and the temple erupts into a brilliant green glow.

Lance feels Azura’s anticipation like her own. The excitement so thick it’s almost tangible in the air around her.

She watches as Pidge jumps down between a few vines, disappearing from sight and giving her and the others a heart attack. Shiro is ready to storm up the steps when Lance grabs his arm. The galra one, she realizes distantly.

A tentative feeling at the edge of her senses catches her attention. It reminds her of the feeling of a word on the tip of your tongue, of a memory tickling at the back of her mind.

Her face is scrunched up in thought as she tries to figure out what it is but then it suddenly bursts outwards in her mind.

She’s stunned by the force of it, bright and green and overflowing with so much curiosity and hunger and something uniquely Pidge, it knocks the breath out of her. It ties itself to her, anchors itself right in her chest next to Azura and pulls taught like a wire. It hums, vibrating so quickly Lance is almost scared it will snap just after it formed.

It’s filled with so much energy and excitement and joy that Lance can’t help the laugh bubbling up her throat. She knows, deep in her bones, that the action was mirrored by Pidge, where the girl had found her Lion.

And isn’t that a twist, Lance thinks, that Pidge has been a girl the whole time.

“Pidge is fine,” Lance tells them when the trio looks at her worriedly, probably concerned at how she’d laughed for no reason. It doesn’t concern Lance, they’ll learn soon enough how it feels to be connected like this. It’s exhilarating.

The four of them watch as the Green Lion explodes from the temple, twirling in the air as if playing. Lance swears she can hear Pidge’s laughter echoing in her ears.

The pair don’t stop smiling until they get to the Castle.

***

“Excellent!” Allura exclaims, sweeping in through the hangar doors, her long silver dress trailing behind her like starlight. “You found her! We are that much closer to forming Voltron.” She folds her hands in front of her, smiling wide. “I’m very proud of you all.”

Lance beams at her, Pidge tucked under her arm.

“Have you had any luck with the Castle or the other Lions?” Shiro asks, ever so practical and prompt.

“Coran and I have narrowed down the planet the Yellow Lion is located on,” Allura confirms but her expression changes into something frustrated and angry and Lance’s expression falls with it. “Unfortunately, the planet is a Galra mining colony. Despite my hope to assemble Voltron as quickly as possible, Coran believes it would be unwise to send you five to the planet’s surface without prior experience in battling in the Lions. We’ll be conducting a training regimen for you as soon as Coran gets more of the Castles secondary systems working again.”

Allura brightens at the last statement and a pit of dread fills Lance’s stomach.

“Why do I get the feeling we aren’t going to like training at all?” Lance asks Pidge quietly.

“Probably because we both understand that Allura’s probably insane,” she responds flatly.

Lance hums in response and opens her mouth to ask Allura something when the lights start flashing red and alarms blare. It startles Lance and she grips Pidge’s shoulders a hair too tight, the younger girl swatting at her in protest even as she burrows further into her side.

“What is that?” Hunk asks over the din.

Allura looks up sharply, “CORINN, what’s happening?”

“Castle sensors indicate a Galra warship nearing the perimeter, Princess. Set to enter the atmosphere in twenty dobashes,” CORINN responds sounding slightly concerned.

“What the hell is a dobash?” Lance hears Pidge mutter next to her and if Lance wasn’t terrified, she’d laugh.

“How did they find us?” Allura asks in her shock.

“I bet it’s Keith’s fault,” Lance blurts into the thickening silence because what else would she say?

The Paladin in question shoots her a glare. “Say whatever you need to make yourself feel better,” he snaps back.

“Okay! Let’s not panic alright?”

Hunk, who was bouncing from foot to foot stills and stares at Shiro incredulously. “Not panic? There’s a warship heading for us and we have three lions!”

“Two working Lions, actually,” Pidge points out, stepping forward.

Hunk pushes her back into Lance by the face much to the Green Paladin’s annoyance. “Yes, thank you, Pidge,” he tells her, voice tight. “Two working Lions and a ten-thousand-year-old Castle. I think, right now, is a perfect time to panic, don’t you Lance?”

Lance looks at him with something akin to pity and she grabs his shaking hand. She keeps her voice purposefully light when she talks, “Sweetheart, you need to calm down.”

“Lance,” he asks, voice slightly strangled. “Why aren’t you more concerned by this? This is bad.” He lowers his voice. “We should go. Now, while we still can.”

“You know I can’t do that, buddy.”

Hunk’s shoulders slump, other hand coming to grasp her hands in his own. “I was afraid you’d say that.”

She turns her head to focus on the others in the room. “Is it possible to book it through a Wormhole? We could just evade them until we’re ready,” she suggests.

“We might never be ready,” Keith argues. “We have to fight now.”

“Says the guy without a Lion,” Lance snarks. “You have nothing to lose.”

“We can’t just leave Arus. They’re people here! Staying is our only option.”

“Here’s an option, ¡cállate la pinche boca!”

“How the hell am I supposed to know what that means?”

“Context clues, pendejo.”

“Maybe if we run, the Galra will leave the planet alone, like with Earth?” Hunk interjects. He’s resumed his foot hopping much to the annoyance of Pidge. “I mean, we’re what they want right?”

Keith glares at Hunk, voice harsh and seething. “Or they could destroy the planet anyway. We can’t just run away like cowards.”

Quick as a flash, Lance is standing between the two of them, face screwed up in a snarl. “You don’t get to talk to him like that.”

“Yeah? Or what?” he taunts, not backing down.

Lance lunges for him, arms outstretched when Pidge grabs her shoulder and Hunk wraps an arm around her waist, stopping her movement. Shiro steps up between them as well, fast enough that he probably would’ve gotten between them before Lance reached Keith anyway.

He looks disappointed and it does nothing to soothe her anger. She just continues to glare over his shoulder at Keith, who returns the look tenfold.

“Princess?” He asks Allura, voice kind. Lance finally turns to look at her and realizes how stricken she looks. As if one wrong move will send her crumbling to the ground. “You know the Lions and Galra better than us. What do you suggest?”

Allura seems conflicted, her eyes darting back and forth. She wrings her hands and deliberates as everyone looks to her for judgment. Eventually, she comes to a conclusion, nodding to herself. “We are here for a reason, in this I must believe. The Goddess wants us to fight to free the universe and so we will. We are the universe’s only hope and we will not let them down again.”

“We’re with you,” Shiro confirms and it has Allura standing taller.

***

Allura leads them into a brightly lit, hexagonal room with high ceilings. Display cases are embedded into the walls, but the lights are dim enough that she can’t see inside them. Weapons of varying styles and makes line every available surface. Lance recognizes a few shapes and designs, but most are foreign to her. Which makes sense. Because, you know. Aliens.

She notices a display of different arrow types and her fingers itch to try an archery range again. She hasn’t been shooting since the school year started and she misses her Papi’s firing range.

She misses her Papi in general.

“This is the armoury,” Allura announces, and with a wave of her hand, the displays light up revealing different types of armour. Ceremonial, stealth, some made for cold climates, others bulky and made for taking beatings.

The Paladins ‘ooh’ and ‘ah’ at all the equipment. Keith takes a particular interest in the far wall which contains an assortment of blades and Pidge is flying around the room mumbling about similarities to Earth battle weapons.

What really caught Lance’s attention though, is that one of the armour displays was empty.

Allura walks straight towards the blank display, ignoring the rest of the equipment in the room, and places her hand on the wall next to it. It lights up where she touches—a previously invisible scanner panel. Pidge zeros in on it with the single-minded train of thought of a scientist who needs to know how it works now.

With a soft swish, the display opens, and the black backing of the display splits open to reveal a new room hidden behind.

“This is so cool!” Lance whispers excitedly, practically prancing inside after Allura.

The hidden room is smaller than the armoury and less lavish, simply designed and with less hanging on the walls. It’s dimmer too, the only light being the small futuristic chandelier above them.

Allura walks over to the far right wall and beckons Lance over. Curious she follows.

“Place your hand here,” she instructs, and Lance does as asked. The wall lights up a soft blue beneath her hand and a pod-like shape emerges from the lightened wall. Lance scrambles back in surprise only to stop and gaze at it in awe when the pod lights up and the glass slides open.

Inside is a sleek suit of armour, done in soft grays and almost blacks and a blue that matches Azura exactly. It didn’t look like it could take many hits, built more for stealth or evasive fighting styles, but it was  breathtaking.

The under armour was built like a skin-tight bodysuit, it’s color a shade off of black made to blend with shadows. Leaning in closer, she can’t tell what material it’s made of, but it’s more heavily padded in all the vulnerable places not covered by the actual armour. Stomach, hips, inside joints, neck, all places that need to stay protected but also need to retain maneuverability.

The armour itself was a soft grey accented with Azura’s blue, and covered the chest, arms and legs in a strange hybrid of modern body armour and knights plating. It was smooth to the touch, but Lance could see an interlocking pattern in the metal, almost like scales or chainmail. She wonders idly how stiff the metal is to wear.

As a whole, it’s brilliantly designed and far above anything the Garrison forces the cadets to wear. It’s futuristic, but holds something almost knight-like. Noble, like the things her parents authenticate for the museum.

Lance traces the blue, stylized ‘V’ on the breastplate in wonder.

“This is your armour,” Allura explains, “The panel recognizes your bond with the Blue Lion so only you can access your armour when it’s in this room.”

Allura gently grabs Lances hand and uses her finger to tap a gem embedded in the suit’s gauntlets.

The suit starts disintegrating before her eyes and Lance jumps back, watching as fabric and metal just… melts away. Her mouth is already open around an ‘I didn’t do it!’ when she realizes a half-bracer is left on the mannequin, dark-colored and innocuous-looking. The gem’s firmly planted on the back of the wrist only now, instead of glowing blue, it’s dim and black.

Allura takes it off and wraps it firmly around Lance’s wrist.  “Tap it again,” she tells her and with a wary look, Lance does.

Fabric materializes from nowhere, crawling up her arm and washing over her body like a wave. She jumps at the sensation, an odd prickling over her skin but before she can freak out about it too much it’s over. 

She stands there, not in her jeans and jacket, but wrapped snugly in the suit of armour.

“Holy shit,” Pidge says, and Lance can’t help but agree with her. “You have a goddamn Black Panther suit of armour! Oh my god.”

Allura looks at the smaller paladin confused.  “I’m unfamiliar with that animal. We had meant to fashion the armour after the Lions.”

“No, it’s like a superhero on our planet,” Pidge explains quickly, staring Lance down in a way that makes her feel like her newest test subject. “He has this vibranium armour that basically does that-” Pidge waves a hand and Lance, “-and it’s super strong.”

“Oh! You’re familiar with the metal then?” Allura claps her hands together excitedly.

The team looks at her with varying levels of incredulity. “You- That isn’t- That cannot actually be vibranium,” Pidge tells her, voice soft and looking like she’s trying very hard not to scream.

Lance looks down at her hands with her eyes wide. Inside her head is just a steady stream of ‘Holy shit. Holy shit. I’m wearing vibranium armour. Holy fuck this is the coolest thing ever.’

Allura furrows her brows. “But it is? Is it a rare element on your planet?” she gasps, “Does it not occur naturally on your world?” She looks at them pityingly.

Lance looks at the other humans in the room, all of them look various levels of freaked out. Hunk has his head in his hands and he’s muttering something about overly advanced aliens and fictional metals and what that means for comic books and does that mean Marvel actually knew about aliens and-

Lance stops listening to him because she really doesn’t need that kind of mindfuck right then, thank you very much. She’s had enough.

“Okay. I’m wearing superhero armour. Cool, cool cool cool cool,” Lance says, her voice only slightly higher than normal. “Does that mean I can gather the kinetic energy and repurpose it later?” she tries joking.

Allura gives her a look that says nothing nice about what she thinks of her intellect. “Don’t be ridiculous. That kind of technology is still years off.”

Pidge emits a high-pitched whine where she’s standing, looking like all her dreams are coming true and that she has no idea how to handle it.

Allura pauses, tapping her chin thoughtfully. “Though, it has been over ten thousand decapheobes. Perhaps the Olkari have had a breakthrough.”

Pidge’s whine gets higher if possible and Lance looks at her with sympathy. The poor dear is going to have an aneurysm at this rate.

“Besides the magic act, what else can this baby do?” Lance redirects the conversation, hopefully preventing Pidge’s death via excitement induced heart attack. “Any cool tricks? Features I should know about? Secret pockets for space-snacks?”

Allura looks at her confused but like she doesn’t want to admit she’s confused. “Of course. Pidge? Your suit’s on the other wall. Perhaps you should-”

Pidge shoots off like a rocket before she can even finish. Allura either expected that or just chose to ignore it because she continues on undeterred.

“You already know of its storage feature. The gems control the function and, depending on what you want them to do, they’ll either activate or deactivate the suit or materialize your Bayard, the traditional Paladin weapon which will take a combative form most suited to you and your skillset.

“If you tap right here-” Allura leans down and touches her hand right underneath Lance’s right ear. It causes her to shiver, not expecting the feather-light touch. “-the helmet will deploy. As a safety measure, it will also do so automatically if an energy blast occurs close enough to your head. There’s public and private channels as well as external speakers you can turn on and off. Your visor has transparent and mirrored modes.

“Eventually you’ll be able to deploy your Bayard and helmet with your mind as your suit becomes more accustomed to your thoughts.”

“Oh my god, is the suit psychic too?” Lance asks.

“I suppose you could call it that,” Allura hums while Lance is having a mini break down. What the fuck has Earth been doing? Aliens were so advanced it made Lance physically pained. She can’t imagine how Pidge or Hunk feels right now.

“There’s a stealth mode, jetpacks on your back and stabilizers in your soles and palms.” She taps her chin in thought. “I believe that is all. Oh! As the suit grows more accustomed to how you fight and move, it will begin to calibrate itself to your needs. It might add more armour here or there or prioritize flexibility over defensive power. It’s quite fascinating! Though Coran explains it much better than I could.”

Lance looks over to Pidge to see how she’s faring with this and sees the other Paladin in a suit much like her own but it’s Green and more… compact? If that’s the word for it.

Pidge was staring down at her wrists in concentration and tapping at the gem on her left wrist. A second later the gem flashes a bright light and in her hand is a small, glowing, triangle-shaped knife. The grip she has on it reminds Lance of a katar, though the blade is too wide to be completely like the traditional weapon.

Pidge looks at it appraisingly. Turning it over in her hand.

Lance leans over her shoulder to get a closer look at the weapon and can’t help herself. “What do you have?”

Pidge doesn’t miss a beat. “A knife!”

“No!” Lance says in fake distress. She can hear Hunk echo it behind her and grins. “It’s kinda small? Though I did figure you as a dagger person I suppose.”

Pidge presses a button on the hilt with her thumb and electricity crackles along the blade. Lance jumps back and Pidge grins evilly. “Oh, yes. I like this very much.”

Lance looks at her warily and summons her own Bayard.

Her wrist flashes with light and in her hands is a rifle. She twists it around, testing the weight of it and finds it’s really light, almost too light in her opinion. It looks like no gun she’s ever held and reminds her of a bit of the Pulse Rifle from Aliens— which, ironic as hell—but smoother. More round and smaller than the movie.

She doesn’t see anywhere to load ammunition which is confusing, but maybe it’s just different in space. She raises the gun and looks down the sights at the far wall. A small screen opens in front of her, light blue and transparent, like a digital scope.

Lance whistles appreciatively. “This is what I call weaponry.”

The lights flash red, and CORINN’s voice sounds from above. “Estimated time of Galra warship is ten dobashes.”

The smile falls from Lance’s face as she looks at Pidge, the reminder of the danger they’re in destroying all humor in the room. The younger Paladin looks scared and Lance wants to hug her but knows it wouldn’t be appreciated.

Allura looks to each of them solemnly, before stepping forward and grasping each by the shoulder. “I believe in you, Paladins,” she tells them seriously, her eyes like steel. “You are meant to be great. Your stories do not end here.”

The two paladins nod and leave for the hangars, the other three humans on their heels.

Lance turns back around to see Allura with her hands clasped and eyes closed. She almost looks like she’s praying.

It doesn’t fill her with confidence.

***

Hunk stops Lance just as she’s about to board Azura after Shiro gives them one last ‘good luck’ pep talk. He grabs her hand, his larger palms dwarfing her own nimble fingers.

She stops and looks back at him, immediately regretting the decision because it looks like Hunk is about to cry. Her own eyes become glassy almost immediately.

She throws her arms around him without him needing to ask. He squeezes her tightly to his chest, almost crushing her but she doesn’t care. She returns it as ferociously, gloved hands balled into the back of his shirt.

“E mālama pono. E 'oluʻolu. Please. Come back safe because I don’t know what I’d do without you okay? And I don’t want to find out,” Hunk babbles into the top of her head where he’s pressed his mouth.

“Hoʻohiki,” she says. “Promise.”

Hunk gives her one more squeeze and then he steps back. She can see in the stiffness of his shoulders it’s the last thing he wants to do.

She remembers him telling her how whenever she went on her adventures or stepped in front of some bully, he’d want to pull her away. Wanted to wrap her in a blanket and never let her leave so she couldn’t be hurt.

Now, when all of her adventures and dangerous decisions pale in the face of what she’s about to do, the desire must be unbearable.

But he doesn’t move. Because he won’t control her and she won’t stay.

Because they aren’t those kind of people.

He understands and if he can’t stop her then he’ll wait and help her pick up the pieces. And in return, she’ll come back. She will always come back.

Lance smiles at him, big and bright and too wide, and blows him a kiss as she disappears inside of Azura. The last thing she sees before the lock closes is him cradling it to his chest.

***

A booming voice echoes across to the two hovering Lions from the warship. “Attention Paladins. This is Commander Sendak of the Galra Empire. I come on behalf of Emperor Zarkon, Lord of the Known Universe. I am here to confiscate the Lions. Turn them over to me, or I will destroy this planet."

The pair share a smile that’s closer to a snarl than any display of happiness.

Then they attack.

***

Katie’s brain spins faster than anyone else she knows. Calculations burn through her mind at the speed of light and sometimes it hurts so much she feels like screaming because she thinks it might make it go away. Might make her too fast mind just slow down if only for a second.

Her head has always been a swirling mass of angles and ideas and analysis and that doesn’t change even as fire rains from the sky or as Green growls in the back of her mind and guides her along the unfamiliar controls.

It’s still too much information and a hundred calculations but it seems to go smooth in the heat of the moment. As Green growls and roars in the back of her mind, her head miraculously stops screaming at her and instead begins working with her.

The scattered bits of her mind all come together and start analyzing the battlefield and how Lance moves in her Lion and counts how many Galra fighters rain down on them and where they come from and a thousand other variables and calculations that spin through her mind. It all files itself in neat little rows for her own perusal as she focuses on staying alive.

The two take to the skies and the fight like they were always meant to be here. Katie’s always been a fast learner and within minutes, she and her Lion are snapping at fighters and avoiding laser beams with the same grace Lance and Azura have.

It’s hard and they take too many hits in the beginning, but they adapt and plan and scheme over the comms.

Katie is all calculations and angles, but Lance knows how battle plans work, can work out strategies as easy as breathing. Katie remembers tactics and war games being one of her best subjects and it shows.

The pair shout encouragement and watch each other backs as they slowly make their way to the warship. Halfway through, the Castle joins the fray. It’s more of a bug to the warship than anything, but it’s a good enough distraction for Lance as she darts in and flings knife after knife from her Lion’s tail. Embedding themselves deep into the hull and causing massive damage.

Katie covers her as she rips the ion cannon straight off of the ship. It causes an explosion so big it rocks her through the cockpit and sends both Lions flying. Her ears are still ringing when she rights herself again and looks over the damage they’ve done.

She can hear the team yelling encouragement through the comms and it makes her feel powerful, makes her risk more than she should. She feels the well of anger at these people who stole her family bubble up, fed by the threat they made towards this planet and the screams of her teammates.

Katie feels almost feral in her rage as she dives in without giving Lance enough warning to cover her and digs her claws into the ship's engines and tears them apart like paper. She does the damage she wanted but galra fighters are hitting her too hard and she’s falling through the sky along with the Galra warship.

Lance swoops down and grabs her Lion by the scruff at the last second, pulling them out of the blast radius as the ship explodes in a ball of flame.

Katie grins, even as she can feel bruises form on her chest from slamming into the console and Lance screams in her ear about warning her when she’s going to be suicidal.

She feels a sick sense of satisfaction at the destruction she’s made, and she doesn’t care enough to be concerned or sorry about it.

***

Lance drops the Green Lion as gently as she can in front of the Castle, but Azura is pretty beat up too and she’s limping at best. The two Lions collapse in the courtyard and Lance stumbles out as quickly as she can, staggering to the Green Lion.

She feels suddenly tired. A bone-deep ache where she can barely keep her eyes open. Azura’s voice is strangely quiet in her mind. Or maybe Azura was just loud during the battle?

Pidge emerges from her Lion and Lance sweeps her into a hug as tight as she dares, spinning the pair in circles.

She needs to feel the smaller girl in her arms, needs to know she’s okay. She won’t say it but seeing Pidge dart towards the ship had caused Lance’s heart to stop. It terrified her in a way normally only reserved for when her family did something particularly reckless and stupid.

“We did it! We did it!” she cheers, causing Pidge to laugh lightly and swat at her shoulder.

The Castle doors open and Lance spins around to see the other’s running out towards them, Hunk leading the charge. He doesn’t slow down until he has Lance in his arms. He just slams into her and picks up both her and Pidge with ease, spinning them both around in a bone-crushing hug.

Lance laughs even as it hurts her ribs and jars where her shoulders had slammed into the seat one too many times. Hunk is babbling about how cool that was and that Pidge should never do that again and how he’s so glad they’re both okay.

It fills Lance with joy. That she can still count on Hunk being Hunk even as she takes down a galra warship. It makes her feel unbearably fond for her best friend.

“You both did wonderfully,” Allura praises, beaming at them.

Hunk stops spinning them enough for her and Pidge to look at the princess and Lance shoots her a devilish grin. “Well, it was just the thought of your beautiful face that kept me going, darling.”

Pidge groans and shoves Lance’s face away but not before she sees Allura roll her eyes and fight to keep a smile off her face. It makes Lance’s chest warm.

Hunk finally sets them down, after one last squeeze that has the pair of them wheezing. Shiro steps up to them, pride shining through every part of his face and every movement he makes. He’s beaming with it as he stares down at the two girls and it feels like she’s done something incredible.

“You did it and I never doubted you for a second. You were amazing out there.”

“Thanks, Shiro,” Pidge says, a smile overtaking her small features.

Lance wants to bask in that moment forever. The thrill of winning, of thinking they can actually do this, that everything will be okay, and they’ll win this war without anything going wrong.

She knows that’s not the case. That it’s dangerous to think that way, to get a big head after one lucky shot. But she can’t help it. She so desperately needs hope that she’ll latch onto anything she can. You use what you can to keep your head above the churning waters of the mind.

Lance’s stomach grumbling interrupts her—admittedly kinda dark—train of thought. The sound startles her and then her expression turns sheepish, her hand coming up to cover her stomach.

“I believe a celebratory feast is in order,” Coran exclaims, raising his hands in the air excitedly. “In honor of our two heroes! Hurrah!”

The other’s echo the cheer around her and Lance beams. “Oh good, I’m starving. Think we can make quesadillas? ”

“What is a… ‘quesadillas’?” Allura asks and Lance looks at her in horror.

“Oh, you poor thing,” she coos, face twisted in pity. She whips around to look at her best friend, visibly distressed. “Hunk, we need to educate them immediately. They’ve been deprived of the most amazing food their whole lives!”

“A travesty,” he deadpans, but Lance can see he looks a little sympathetic underneath it. He’s just teasing her which she takes offense to. He’s supposed to be on her side!

“Hey! Don’t you take that tone with me,” Lance scolds, fighting the smile twitching at the corner of her lips. “I’m a hero,” she sniffs.

“You’re something alright,” Hunk laughs. “Come on, let’s go eat.” He swings an arm over her shoulders all but dragging her to the doors. Lance laughs as her hair falls into her face at the movement.

“What about the Lions?” she hears Pidge ask curiously, and Lance looks back at them, sprawled across the courtyard as they are.

Worry overtakes her mind as she looks back at Azura. Her Lion really was too quiet, almost silent in the back of her mind. It felt wrong, just having herself in her head now. It was a completely insane thought, but it was too quiet in her head and her head has never been too quiet in her life.

It set her teeth on edge and she was about to walk back to her Lion when she reared up in her mind again. Soothing and tired.

She assures Lance she’ll be fine, that she only needs to rest a bit. Lance nods, trusting her thousands year old warship can take care of herself.

Lance hums in acknowledgment as Coran repeats the same thing in so many words and the seven of them all walk back to the Castle. A steady stream of noise and laughter fill her ears right up until she just gets so tired, she falls asleep on Hunk’s shoulder at the kitchen table.

They don’t have quesadillas but it’s nice anyway.

The lull of people speaking around her feels familiar and settles in her chest contentedly.

Her eyelids droop further and further. Eventually, it gets to be too much work to keep them open and so she leans on Hunk and let’s sleep take her, confident that Hunk will either wake her up or put her somewhere she can rest comfortably.

She’s been awake for… at least thirty-six hours straight and as far as she’s concerned, she deserves to sleep for a week.

Chapter Text

Lance comes to herself slowly, the darkness of the room muffling the sounds of her roommate getting ready. She stretches languidly, feeling her spine pop nicely as she slowly wakes up.

It’s not until she opens her eyes to an unfamiliar ceiling that she realizes that she can’t hear her roommate shuffling around because her roommate isn’t even there. Lance doesn’t know where she is, sitting alone in the darkness of a room she doesn’t recognize. She starts to panic.

No, no, no, no, not-!

She shoots up in bed, a scream curled up on the back of her tongue when a clear and calm voice cuts through it all.

“Buenos días, Blue Paladin,” the voice greets her in accented Spanish. Slowly the lights in the room get brighter allowing her eyes to adjust. “You are safe aboard the Castle of Lions. There is no need to panic. Your fellow Paladins are either still sleeping or enjoying breakfast in the dining area.”

CORINN’s voice causes everything to rush back to her. The crash, the Lions, the Galra, everything. Lance sits there for a moment just breathing, trying to realign her world view.

Now that she’s not in the heat of the moment, everything seems so much harder to believe. It’s all ridiculous. To believe that she’s the chosen pilot of a magic robot Lion? That she’s suddenly smack in the middle of an intergalactic war?

She’d think herself crazy if she couldn’t feel Azura purring in the back of her mind at that moment.

She can almost convince herself that if she walks out that door she’ll find herself back at the Garrison. But she knows that that’s a useless way of thinking, and she needs to adapt to her surroundings not ignore them. Otherwise, she won’t help anyone.

Mind made up she pushes herself to her feet and tries to gather her bearings.

The room she’s in has pristine, soft grey walls with glowing blue designs inlaid into them and plush carpet like flooring. The bed she was sleeping on was pushed into an alcove in the wall and across from it was a small desk and chest. The room was decently large if bare.

To her left was a door that she presumed led outside as the one to her right was open and led to a small bathroom area. Lance wondered if there was a closet, or if there was only the chest.

“CORINN? Where am I?” she asks in Spanish because the AI seems to understand her and it’s nice to speak her language to someone other than Hunk.

“You are currently in your new quarters located in the west wing of the castle, Blue Paladin.”

Lance looks around what’s apparently her new room and tilts her head. “Did Hunk bring me here?”

“That is correct. The princess placed you all in the old guest rooms for visiting dignitaries. They are the most centrally located rooms so you may get anywhere in the Castle within a timely manner.”

Lance hums and looks down at herself. She’s still wearing her two-day-old clothes making her wrinkle her nose in disgust. She moves to the chest and opens it hoping to find something to wear inside but comes up empty-handed. “Are there any spare clothes I could use? Something to change into?”

A small whooshing noise sounds off to Lance’s right and a small doorway next to the bathroom opens up. It leads into a small side room that Lance enters curiously. Once she steps inside the lights come on and she finds herself in what looks like a sewing room slash closet.

In the corner, there’s a full-length mirror and a circular floor panel like in the cryopod room. To her right, the wall is covered with clothing racks while the wall to her left is filled with shelves full of fabrics and designs.

Lance stares around the small, colorful room in awe.

“This is the Dressing Room, each of the Paladins’ quarters are equipped with one. While Outfit Design and Creation programs are currently offline, you should be able to find something suitable to wear until systems are running at full capacity once again.”

“Gracias,” Lance tells the AI and means it.

She spends the next five minutes flicking through the clothing rack trying to find something she likes that also fits her. Alteans weren’t exactly her size and most of the styles hit closer to elaborately formal than she normally wears.

Eventually, she finds a blue tank top she’s sure was made for a child and a pair of shorts that have the most elaborate floral embroidery along the seams she’s ever seen. But, it’s the best she can do right now and the shorts do have a frankly insane amount of pocket space so… bright side, she guesses.

Her hair’s still an absolute mess, but she pulls it from it’s ruined up-do and braids it into a crown on her head. Once she finds Allura and demands hygiene products off of her—the good stuff because you don’t use general shampoo on hair like that— she’s taking a shower ASAP.

Then, she moves on to the most important part.

Rummaging around in the bathroom, Lance cries out in victory at finding some altean makeup products. She has to have CORINN read and explain what each one is, but she gets through it with her prefered armour intact.

She may have the paladin suit now, but she’s been wearing this one for years longer. Dark, dark eyes and lips painted red. A mask of her own design.

She may be in space, may be far, far away from the rumours and gossip and funny little ideas people always have about her, but old habits die hard. Fransisca taught her this. Helped her learn that a reputation is a weapon, that you can’t control the words people craft but you can grab them and make them your own.

Taught her how to melt their steel-tipped words down and forge her armour from the ashes.

Fransisca used to say that for people like them, getting dressed is the same as girding yourself up for battle, as preparing yourself for a war.

Lance has been in battle now. Has felt it’s heat and terror and euphoria. Lived through the moment right before you leap into it and the moment just before it ends.

She knows now that Fransisca wasn’t wrong. Not in the least.

Different breeds of the same ugly species.

Lance knows, logically, that she can trust the people waiting out there. Knows that she must. But for now, only Hunk has earned unconditional rights to her heart. Nothing personal. 

So ten minutes later, she shrugs on her jacket she got from Mace, tucks the tube of lipstick she got from Francisca in her pocket, and grins into the mirror with all the personality she shares with Sabre.

She finally feels ready to face her team of almost strangers and Hunk.

***

Back on Earth, the Garrison has three missing kids that aren’t really missing on their hands.

The heads of the program need a cover story and send out the generals to inform the families of Lance Martinez, Hunk Garrett, and the newly realized Katie Holt that there had been an accident. That Lance, piloting an unauthorized in atmosphere ship, lost control of the vessel and crashed into the desert.

None of the students survived the crash, they lie.

There are no remains to bury or identify, they lie.

We are sorry for your loss, they lie.

The parents grieve. They cry and they make arrangements. They begin mourning their lost children.

But the sisters, the three eldest of the Martínez brood, they cry and then they question. They poke holes. They hold out hope because Lance—their beautiful younger sister, their wonderful pilot who grew up in the belly of a plane—would never have lost control that badly.

The sisters are suspicious.

The sisters are angry.

The sisters will stop at nothing until they learn the truth. Until their baby sister is back in their arms, safe and sound.

The sisters do not care who they have to go through to do it.

***

Halfway through breakfast, Coran sweeps into the room to find all five humans eating at the table.

Whatever he’s been up to in his own time, it’s messy. His pants, fancier than anything Lance has owned, along with his plain tee and half his face, are smeared with what she thinks is oil and grease. His hair, rather than smoothed back and perfectly coiffed, is sticking up in no less than five directions and clumped together with yet more grease. He looks like he fought an engine and lost.

His mustache, oddly enough, is still as pristine as ever.

“Ah! You’re all awake,” he says happily. “Excellent.” He gives them all a beaming smile only she and Hunk return, on account of the others being Morning Gremlins not yet awake enough to function.

“Morning Coran,” Lance greets, swallowing the breakfast Hunk made from food goo and random spices that survived 10,000 years in altean cupboards. Somehow, it still tastes decent. Not good, but still loads better than base-level food goo. She’s half-convinced Hunk’s magic, honestly. “What’s up?”

“You’re all needed in the Bridge immediately. The princess seems to have an announcement for you,” he informs brightly before bouncing off on his way.

Lance looks after him curiously. Her and Hunk shrug at each other and move to get up from the table. It takes some coaxing to get the others to even stand up, but eventually, all five of them are making their merry way to the Bridge.

Shiro leads them through the doors but it’s Lance who speaks first, bursting through the door with what her elder sisters described as ‘too much damn energy for this early in the morning’. “Allura, light of my life, you are as radiant as the morning sun. How did you sleep? I can’t imagine very well, what with you featuring so prominently in my dreams.”

Her only response is a deadpan stare—which, rude. But she understands. Hunk is normally the only person who can handle her in the mornings. It’s not her fault Allura is just over there being all effortlessly beautiful at whatever-the-hell-time-it-is o’clock, what else is there for a girl to do when presented with someone so goddamn gorgeous?

Shiro gives her a blank stare before addressing Allura like the straightlaced commander he was—is? Does he get his rank back now that he’s not actually dead?

“You wanted to see us, princess?”

“Yes. While Coran has been working nonstop at trying to get the main power grid back up and running so we can access our secondary systems, I’ve been creating a training regimen for you five. The Yellow Lion is on a Galra occupied planet and we need to retrieve it as soon as possible. So!” Allura claps excitedly, “I’ve decided that today will be dedicated to training!”

Lance tries to be hopeful. She really does. But it’s kind of hard when Allura grins at them looking every bit the sadistic predator Lance suspects she is.

***

Lance regrets everything.

Every choice she ever made in her life that led her to being tortured by this devil in angels’ skin was an obvious mistake. She can barely breathe and everything hurts.

Allura’s been running them ragged for the last two hours. She pushed them farther than even the Garrison did for their stupid PFTs. They ran, did burpees, pull-ups, squats, this weird altean yoga that was somehow worse than the three-mile run and anything else you could think of; all in their paladin armour. She didn’t even let them wear proper work out clothes!

And throughout the whole thing, the princess hadn’t once stopped shouting at them. Lance didn’t know if it was supposed to be encouraging or not, but it was easily the most terrifying thing she’s ever heard in her life.

Hunk threw up halfway through and she just told him to ‘walk it off.’

Lance was ready to cry, like actual break down sobbing tears, when Allura finally allowed them a break.

The whole team fell over immediately.

Well, except for Shiro who sat down like a civilized person because there’s no way he’s actually human. He only looked a little sweaty.

It wasn’t fair in the slightest.

Either the Galra did more than just give him a new arm or Shiro was actually Superman.

Lance is betting on the latter. Mostly because it would be fucking awesome.

“Okay, Paladins,” Allura calls cheerfully. Hunk whimpers and Keith swears colorfully. Lance doesn’t have the energy to do anything but blink. “Now that our warm-up is over-” Hunk’s whimper turns into a high pitched and mildly offended whine that Allura completely ignores. Pidge joins Keith in swearing-in increasingly creative ways. “We can move onto our team bonding exercises! Coran will be leading this portion while I run diagnostic checks on the Castle defences and secondary systems with CORRIN.”

“Oh thank god,” Lance mutters breathlessly. Bonding sounds fun, it might even give her muscles a chance to stop spasming in pain.

***

It turns out what Coran’s training lacks in physical exertion, it makes up for with its overwhelming aggravation.

“The Paladin Code’s most important rule is to protect your Lion and your fellow Paladins at all costs. At the moment we will be focusing on protecting your team. A flurry of drones will attack you in t-minus five ticks, keep your teammates safe for as long as possible!”

“I’m sorry, what?” Pidge snaps as the drones rise out of the floor and take aim.

Lance’s eyes widen to the size of saucers and she raises her hands in front of her face as it fires a shot right at her. A flash of light explodes from her wrist and then there’s a glowing blue shield blocking the attacks.

The first two seconds are chaos and they lose Pidge in the resulting shuffle. The green Paladin lays on the floor, a light blue glow covering her chest as she glares at the ceiling.

“Circle formation!” Shiro shouts. “Backs to each other!”

The remaining four back up at his order. Lance is shoulder to shoulder with Keith on her left and Hunk on her right.

She may or may not prioritize her right side more than her left.

A shot whizzes by Keith’s shoulder, one that would’ve hit him if he hadn’t dodged it in time. It’s also something Lance could’ve blocked if she cared enough to try.

He throws a scalding look in her direction.

“Are you even trying?” he snaps at her which she returns with a vicious grin as she covers Hunk without thinking about it.

“‘Course I am!” she shoots back, voice a little too sharp for the bright tone she’s going for. “I just thought the hotshot pilot could look after himself.”

“Maybe if you put your pride away for five seconds and concentrated on keeping me safe-” he’s cut off by Hunk yelping. He was too slow at lowering his shield and Lance was too busy being angry at Keith to help.

He goes down and then it’s only the three of them. Lance and Shiro close ranks to fill the gap. She concentrates for all of five seconds before she’s goading Keith again.

She lets another shot whizz by, this time closer to his face.

“Oops,” she says sugary sweet.

Keith growls and none too gently shoves her in the side. She shoves him back and it’s not long before all three of them are out too.

***

“Forming Voltron requires immense trust in your fellow Paladins. A building block for that trust will be the invisible maze. Your partner can see the walls but you cannot. Listen carefully or else you’ll be in for a shock. ” Coran laughs lightly.

Lance makes a face. She’d been voluntold to go first in the maze and she didn’t appreciate it one bit.

“Please tell me my partner is Hunk,” she begs Coran. Instead of answering, Keith’s quiet timber of a voice speaks through her comms.

“Tienes que estar bromeando.” She scowls. “You’re pairing me up with Keith?”

“I’ve noticed a bit of friction between the two of you,” Coran informs brightly. “Nothing like a good old invisible maze to build a foundation of trust and friendship!”

Lance blows a strand of hair out of her face angrily but doesn’t argue further than an unhappy growl. “Fine. Guide me, oh, wise being,” she drawls sarcastically, cocking her hip out and waving her hand in invitation.

“Take two steps forward then turn right.”

Warily, she follows his orders, hand held out in front of her and shoulders tensed in expectation of an electrical shock.

She takes one step and runs straight into a wall.

“You did that on purpose!” she screeches, cradling her tingling hand to her chest.

“Oops,” he deadpans.

Lance feels a snarl catch in her throat.

“Remember the task,” Coran reminds, voice slightly strained.

“Move half a step to your right.”

Lance glares at the observation deck where she knows Keith is standing. She stares him right in the eye and slowly, theatrically, she sits down on the ground.

“Lance,” his voice is sharp as he tries to order her to move. “Come on, stop being childish. Move half a step to your right.”

Lance stays still.

She stays still long after Keith starts yelling at her. It’s almost cute how he thinks screaming will get her to move. He has nothing on a pissed off Francisca and she could’ve sat there all day if Coran hadn’t eventually switched Keith out with Pidge.

***

“Okay. This should be a fun exercise! You’ll all be placed on a raised platform. You must all stay on it for as long as possible, use each other and your own creativity. Get up close and personal with your teammates. Don’t be shy now!”

The five of them are standing on a floating platform about five feet above the training floor. There’s plenty of room atop it for all of them to stand comfortably.

Lance scoffs, “This’ll be a breeze!”

Right as she says that the platform shrinks around them, the outer five inches disappearing. Lance yelps and moves closer to the center.

“You had to say something didn’t you?”

Lance glares at Keith.

Another five inches fall away.

The group gets closer together.

“What if we sat on each other’s shoulders?” Pidge suggests.

Another five inches fall away.

Lance pushes herself into Hunk’s side.

“We’d never be able to balance!”

Five inches.

Pidge grabs her arm.

“Well, I don’t see you providing any ideas.”

Five inches.

Shiro presses into her back.

“We need to work together.”

Four inches.

Keith tries desperately to keep the scant inch between their bodies from disappearing.

“If you touch me, Kogane, so help me god.”

Three inches.

Keith makes a face at her and totters dangerously, his heels over the edge.

“What do you want me to do? Fly?”

Two inches.

Hunk grabs Keith’s arm, shuffling him closer.

“I’d prefer you fall actually.”

One inch.

The distance closes as Keith lurches forward, the platform falling out from beneath his heels. He grabs Lance’s upper arms to regain his balance but she tries pushing him off in surprise and disgust.

He falls backward and tugs Lance with him.

Hunk and Pidge reach for her.

They miss.

Lance squeals and slams into Keith’s front.

His arms instinctively curl around her while her own are crushed between their chests.

They slam into the ground.

Hard.

Keith hisses in pain beneath her and Lance groans from where she’d hit her head on her shoulder. Raising her head she meets his dazed gaze. He blinks slowly, his unnatural purple eyes catching the light just so.

They stare at each other for a moment, neither of them moving.

“Are you guys okay?” Hunk calls anxiously.

Lance shoots up as if she’d been burned. Pushing against his chest she places as much distance between their faces as possible. His hands are still on her hips and she wrenches herself away from their grip, sprawling across the floor.

“Get away from me!” she says, tone acerbic.

Keith stares after her confused and opens his mouth to say something. It’s cut off by Hunk falling off the platform with a heavy thump, Shiro not far behind him.

Lance raises her head to see Pidge balancing on the last bit of platform left, her hands raised triumphantly in the air.

“I win!”

***

Coran decides they would benefit from a lunch break and gives them ten minutes to eat and relax. Lance theorizes that he just wants a break from their bickering.

The five of them are clumped together in a loose circle on the training room floor, but it’s clear where the division in them lies. Shiro and Keith are turned half towards each other, a full step away from where Lance is all but sitting in Hunk’s lap and has her feet tangled up with Pidge’s.

They’re meant to be one team, but it feels more like a truce between two separate groups than anything else.

Pidge and her weren’t overly close back at the Garrison. They didn’t braid each other's hair or have sleepovers. Hell, she’s not even sure Pidge entirely likes her. Which hurts, but she supposes she can understand. She’s a bit much at times. Loud and in your face in a way people so rarely care for.

But regardless, Lance was beginning to consider Pidge hers in the same way she considered Hunk and her family hers.

It doesn’t matter if Pidge likes her or not—well, it kinda matters, but not in any way that will change this. Because the people that are hers are taken care of, are cared for and treasured and loved. Lance hoards them like a dragon hoards gold. Her precious people.

She just… doesn't have that same kind of possessiveness for Shiro and Keith.

She likes Shiro well enough. He’s her hero, after all. She wants to help him and keep him and trusts him to make the hard decisions she can’t, but that doesn’t make him hers.

Not yet, at least.

Kieth, on the other hand, she can’t imagine ever wanting to keep. Not with his arrogance, or dismissive personality, or the way he crawls under her skin but she can’t ever seem to get under his in any way that matters. He’s too much of everything she dislikes, everything she fears.

It seemed there was little other than this war and some ‘grand destiny’ tying them together. Lance didn’t know how to close the gap that yawned between them like a chasm. Didn’t know if she really wanted to in the first place.

“CORRIN informed me you’re all sitting around doing nothing!” Allura shouts, charging into the room and breaking Lance’s train of thought. She doesn’t look happy. “Why aren’t you training?”

“It's a lunch break,” Lance tells Allura, her mouth full of jelly pouch.

“Yes, you know,” Coran says matter-of-factly, “breaks are good for the overall health of a group. You can’t push too hard in these things.”

“You’ll get a break when we have the Yellow Lion. Get up you lazy lumps! We’re running drills.”

The response she receives is not terribly enthusiastic.

***

They spend another two and a half hours doing individual drills, which is almost a relief after the fiasco their teamwork was.

Allura forces them onto an obstacle course from hell. “Specifically designed,” she says, “to challenge the individual and test their strengths and highlight weaknesses.”

Specifically designed to try their patience, more like.

Pidge screams her frustration at being unable to grab the monkey bars and it’s not until twenty minutes later she calms down. Keith ends up tangled in the hanging ropes—something that makes Lance laugh for the first time that day and actually cheers her up a bit. That is, until she almost twists her ankle on the apex ladder.

Shiro, unsurprisingly, does amazing and makes almost no mistakes.

(Fucking Superman.)

After that, Allura spars with each of them individually while the ones not fighting do suicide runs. Well. Sparring’s a kind term for what she did. What she really did was neatly and efficiently lay each of them flat on their backs over and over again.

It takes her a few rounds before she actually starts showing counter moves to what she’s doing. Blocks and dodges and things. She isn’t kind about it and she teaches them mostly by knocking them over with the same move until they learn how to counter the hit properly.

Woman of her dreams or no, it makes Lance want to throttle her.

The only problem is she can’t get close enough.

By the time Coran pulls Allura away from beating them up to continue recalibrating the Castle systems, all five of them are in sour moods. Some worse then others.

Before she leaves, Lance begs her hair products off of her to take a shower, the warm water soothing her aching muscles. She’s got bruises on her bruises for goodness sake!

She stays in there for an hour, standing underneath the pounding water. She isn’t sure how, but alteans have perfect pressure and water that never gets cold. The experience is downright therapeutic.

She contemplates just crashing into bed and skipping dinner entirely for a whole second before her stomach protests angrily. Sighing, she carefully piles her hair back atop her head and lets her armour crawl back up over her skin. She doesn't have the energy to put together a proper outfit for this.

Her makeup is still going strong at least, and Lance praises every altean that existed for their god-like setting spray.

She makes her way back to the dining room. Everyone’s already sitting at the table when she enters. At the sight of her, they all brighten.

“Oh, Lance, thank god,” Hunk exclaims. “Coran said we should eat as a team so we’ve been waiting for you to show up. Now we can eat!”

“Sorry I held up the party,” she apologizes, taking the only seat left which was between Hunk and Keith. She not-so-subtly turns her chair in Hunk’s direction.

Allura sits at the head of the table, Coran to her right. The older engineer pushes a button and plates of food float down in front of them. The humans eagerly reach out for the plates, ready to start loading food into their mouths so they can go to bed. But when Coran pushes another button, Lance’s arms are yanked off course.

Her wrists slam into something and turning to look at her hands, she finds a glowing blue cuff connecting her to Hunk’s right arm and Keith’s left.

“What is happening,” Lance asks flatly, tugging on the wrist connected to Keith. All it does is drag his arm with it. He yanks his arm back which causes a mini tug of war between the two of them.

Hunk pulls on her other wrist, dragging her across the table and sticking her hand in food goo.

“Hunk!”

“I’m sorry!”

“I saw a lot of solid individual performances today,” Coran explains. “but you're all still struggling to work as a team. So, welcome to the final bonding exercise of the day!”

Lance glares. She just wants to eat her food and sleep. She didn’t sign up for another bullshit bonding exercise.

“Coran,” Hunk says calmly, “I want you to think about what you're doing here.”

“Yeah, you don’t get between a girl and her food,” Pidge agrees from where she’s tugging viciously at the wrist connected to her chair’s armrest.

“Do you humans ever stop complaining?” Allura snaps annoyed.

Lance turns to glower at her, the move mirrored by both Keith and Pidge. “Do you alteans ever stop being killjoys?” she snaps right back.

“Do not yell at the princess!” Coran stands abruptly, aghast at the supposed offense.

Pidge scoffs. “Oh, the princess of what? We’re the only ones here and she’s no princess of ours.” Her voice is scathing when she speaks, words sharp with the intent to cut. Pidge enjoyed the training day even less than Lance and the younger girl was a lot worse at hiding her anger.

Lance opens her mouth to back up Pidge when something whizzes by her nose, hitting Pidge square in the face.

For a moment, no one breathes.

Allura stands at the head of the table, arm still outstretched.

The food goo slides slowly off of Pidge’s face to reveal her scowl. The kind of scowl that would give a weaker person nightmares.

She lets out a sound not unlike a growl before both she and Keith reach forward and fling a plate back at the princess, twin snarls on their faces.

Coran deflects the plate with a towel at the last moment and throws it back at them, sweeping it in an arc that covers all the humans in dripping goo.

From there, it devolves into chaos.

Anything within reach is grabbed and thrown. Hunk spits mouthfuls of food at the alteans. Keith and Lance throw entire plates and Pidge commandeers a spoon to fling it at them. Lance tries ducking behind Hunk and Keith but is only successful at evading the food for so long. At some point, their chairs must have been pushed back because all of them are standing by the end.

Lance turns to look at her fellow Paladins and finds them all covered in food, the green muck splattered on their clothes and across faces. She can’t be much better off but it doesn’t stop the laughter bubbling in her chest. They all look ridiculous.

Soon, the others are joining her with their own half-delirious laughter. Loud, full-bodied guffaws fill the air as they all release their pent up tension.

“Don’t you see what you're doing?” Allura’s voice cuts through their laughter like a knife. They’re silent as they stare at her in shock, wondering if they’d really offended her that badly. Then she lifts her face and her eyes are practically sparkling. “You were finally working together! As a team.”

Lance blinks. They had been, haven’t they?

She looks to her right where Keith still stands, almost pressed against her side. She still doesn’t understand him and doesn’t like him, but after seeing him laugh and smile and get brained by a plate of alien food, it’s harder to reconcile him with the boy she hates so much. Not impossible… but harder.

The chasm seems a little smaller than before, less wide and gaping between them. Lance isn’t sure how she feels about it.

It’s a good ending to a horrible day, she thinks.

They even keep laughing when Hunk slips on some goo and goes tumbling down, dragging the rest of them with him.

***

The next few days repeat in roughly the same pattern.

Wake up. Allura beats them into the dirt. Coran makes them do weird bonding exercises that have a 50-50 chance of blowing up in their faces. Lunch break. Allura beats them up again. Weirdly tailored individual training provided by the all-seeing CORINN. Dinner that slowly gets less awkward.

Wash. Rinse. Repeat.

Her and Pidge have the added bonus of Lion training to go along with their newly packed schedule. Which was cool cause she got to hang out with Azura, but less cool because Allura thinks training in the Lions requires the Castle shooting at them.

But, when that isn’t happening, they basically get a free hour of just goofing off to ‘further their bonds with their Lions.’

Lance liked to play games with Azura and teach her earth songs during that time. To her unending delight, she learns that her Lion has a shameless preference for songs with the color blue in it.

***

“And what did you learn from that?” Allura asks, from where she stands above Lance who’s sprawled on her back for the thousandth time.

“That you fight dirty and can mop the floor with me?”

Allura narrows her eyes. “Do you think the Galra will go easy on you? You need to learn how to use anything to your advantage. There is no ‘fighting dirty’ in war.”

“Okay, but, how does you beating me into the ground teach me anything?”

“You need to learn to predict my movements and mimic them. If I’m fighting dirty then you should too.”

Lance purses her lips. She knows how to fight, but it’s all honorable stuff; Garrison hand to hand. Her mamá wouldn’t let her learn all the street fighting her cousins favored, and since she already allowed so much, no one fought her on it.

It leaves an almost sour taste in her mouth but Lance understands. Any advantage she can grab she will.

She’s in a war now. She doesn’t have the luxury to be soft.

She needs to adapt.

“Okay,” she stands back up. Arms aching and chest bruised but she gets back up. She rolls onto the balls of her feet and before Allura can mirror her, she strikes out, quick and fluid.

She still ends up on the floor but when Lance looks up at Allura after the round, she can swear there’s an approving smile on her face. It’s a start, at least.

***

“You know,” Lance says into the quiet settled between them. “I never did get to ask what you named the Green Lion.”

Her and Pidge are in the hangar, Lance spread out on her back and Pidge fiddling with something in front of her. A device taken apart and put back together before her eyes while Pidge’s laptop spits code at her. Lance idly wonders how she even found an outlet for the thing. Then Lance wonders if she’d be willing to let her use it for her phone. She has a high score on Piano Tiles she needs to beat.

Pidge doesn’t even look up from what she’s doing. “Digit.”

For a second Lance just stares at her.

Then she starts laughing.

She doesn’t stop until Digit’s growls become too loud to ignore.

***

It’s the end of their seventh Training Day From Hell when Allura tells them they’re ready. She informs them they have until midday tomorrow to rest and recuperate, then hands each of them a tub of some sort of Altean medicine cream that works wonders on her sore muscles and bruised skin.

Lance tries relaxing but she can’t help worrying.

She sits in a bath and can’t seem to turn off her mind, a problem she’s had since she was a child. The way her mind raced from topic to topic, always stopping on the worst-case scenarios, always over-analyzing a situation. Can’t stop going over anything that could go wrong. Planning and replanning.

Her and Pidge are comfortable in their Lions but not in each other. They move together well enough and she knows time will make them smoother but it still picks at Lance. There’s nothing she can do about it but still, she worries.

She goes to bed with it still turning over and over in her mind.

***

Lance white-knuckles the controls as she weaves between enemy fighters.

She spins and shoots and slams herself into them, Pidge keeping an eye out at her six. They work in tandem as they down fighter after fighter, not quite in sync, but not in each other’s way either.

Lance thinks their Lions have more to do with that then them, but there’s other things to focus on right then. Like not getting knocked from the sky.

Shiro’s yelling behind her, barking orders and trying to guide her turns. He’s trying to help, but, well… Lance can see where Keith gets his backseat piloting from, let’s just say. 

She has a second to spare a thought of sympathy for Pidge who must have it ten times harder with Keith as her back-seat pilot. Then Lance actually thinks about it and pities Keith instead. Pidge would chew him up and spit him out if he pushed her far enough. If one of them doesn’t come out of that experience alive it certainly won’t be Pidge.

Galra fighter drones swarm Pidge and Lance flies over to help. Slashing and crushing them into the dirt. But it’s like when one goes down and two more take its place. It’s insane.

A resounding boom comes from behind her, the tumbling of rocks and aftershocks startling her into inaction. A galra fighter had gotten past her.

The strange calmness that had invaded her once the battle had started—a gift from Azura, no doubt—is suddenly gone. Lance panics.

She whirls around just in time to see the cave collapse in on itself.

The cave she dropped Hunk into only a minute ago.

Her panic explodes into full-blown terror at the sight of the collapsing rock. A scream tears itself from her throat before she can stop it.

“NO!”

Shiro is yelling behind her to stay focused but Lance is already rushing forward. She leaves Pidge alone on the battlefield.

Dangerous. Idiotic. What are you doing?

Lance isn’t thinking right. She doesn’t run through the consequences of her actions because her mind has screeched to a halt, spinning around and around one thought only.

Hunk was down there.

Hunk was down there and the cave collapsed and no-

No. Nononononono- NO!

Galra forgotten, the hellfire sounds of the battlefield nothing more than cotton in her ears, she screams. Sobs crawl up her throat like bile as the image of her best friend crushed to death on an alien planet flashes in front of her eyes.

She can’t lose him. Not when he’s her rock, her best friend, her only link home. Not when she’s the reason he’s even here.

Not him.

Azura forces her snout into a part of the collapsed opening and roars.

It’s filled with Lance’s desperation and fear and everything else clamoring for attention in her too-full chest. She doesn’t even care that Shiro is watching her shake apart at the seams because it won’t matter. If Hunk isn’t alive, she won’t be long after him.

For a second there is silence.

For a second the universe holds its breath and Lance suffocates.

For a second all she can hear is Keith swearing into the comms and Pidge screaming.

It’s the longest second of her life.

Then, then, there’s an answering roar. Deep and rumbling like an earthquake and as powerful as Azura is fluid.

The bond snaps into place, knocking the remaining air from Lance’s lungs and exploding inside of her.

It’s not like with Pidge. There’s no anchor point in her chest because it’s so deeply intertwined she can feel it everywhere. It’s in her bones, her bedrock. The foundation upon which she builds her moorings and the earth that holds her solid.

At that moment, she is golden in every broken crevice and chipped edge. Warm and whole and happier than she’s ever been because Hunk is alive and even more she can feel the proof in her own chest.

She is warm ovens and roots buried deep into the earth and summer days spent laying along the neverending shoreline.

Lance lets out a shuddering breath that sounds like a cross between a sob and a laugh. An insane sound Shiro is too much of a gentleman to comment on.

At the edge of her awareness, she can hear Pidge swearing colorfully. Her bond no doubt slotting into place as well. Not as deeply saturated in her being, but no less significant.

The Yellow Lion explodes from the earth in front of her in a blaze of glory. Giant and shining like spun gold in sunlight. All thick armour and protective ferocity as she lands upon the shaking ground. Her steps thunder around her as if the planet itself reacts to her very presence.

It’s as terrifying as it is awe-inspiring.

Despite her size and ferocity, or maybe because of it, Hunk moves clumsily in his Lion. Tripping and stumbling across the battlefield while still managing to trample anything in his path.

Lance can only imagine the damage they’ll cause when they work can work in sync. All that brute strength would be devastating in experienced hands.

The three make their way hurriedly back to the Castle. The galra fighters don’t stand a chance against all three of them, but every second they’re there is another chance for a warship to show up.

So they run.

Lance doesn’t have a problem with this. Keith on the other hand…

Lance turns off her comms to block him out.

The Lions split up to dock in their respective hangars and it doesn’t matter that she can feel Hunk’s heartbeat nestled next to her own in her chest, her mind panics the second she loses sight of him again.

She knows logically he’s fine. Of course, she does.

But her heart is not logical.

The second Azura touches down, Lance is sprinting from the cockpit, her Lion already lowering the platform for her. Shiro calls after her.

She’s halfway across the hangar before she even realized he was yelling.

The doors open with a slam as she storms into Yellow’s hangar. She doesn’t slow down when she sees Hunk staring up at his Lion. Doesn’t stop. If anything, she goes faster.

There’s not a doubt in her mind that he’ll catch her.

He doesn’t hesitate and he doesn’t disappoint. Just turns around when he hears her coming and opens his arms like she knew he would.

Her feet are off the ground in the next moment, his arms around her as she clutches onto him like a man drowning.

They spin in circles to alleviate her inertia but even when they stop he doesn’t set her down. He’s wrapped around her so tightly and she can feel his heart hammering through his breastplate, or maybe that’s his echo in her chest.

She babbles at him in Spanish, the words tumbling from her waves. “I was so fucking worried. The explosion went off and I was so terrified you-” Lance can’t even say it. The word catches in her throat, choking her. “You’re not allowed to leave me. Not like that. Please, not like that. I can’t- I won’t. I swear to god I won’t.”

His hands never stop their soothing circles up and down her back. It’s comforting even through the armour.

“I’m sorry,” he tells her softly. And he is. She knows he is because she can feel his guilt in her chest alongside her own fear. The terror wrapped vise-like around her heart.

War is dangerous. War has casualties. She knows this.

But knowing it and seeing it almost happen to her best friend-

Those are two very different things.

“Lance I’m so sorry. I’m not- I’ll never leave you okay? I promise.”

He can’t promise that. They both know it.

She giggles hysterically into his neck and thanks every deity she knows that no one else is in the hangar with them. She hates when people see her cry. Hates when other people see her so vulnerable. It’s bad enough Shiro saw her earlier.

Instead of calling him out on his lie, she burrows further into his arms, willing herself to believe it. They don’t move for an eternity. Hunk doesn’t let her feet touch the ground and she’s long since wrapped her legs around his waist. At some point, he’d started swaying back and forth. It reminds her of the sea, no doubt his intention.

It made her ache for home, but it’s comforting. Familiar where so many things aren’t.

Eventually, they’ve calmed down enough to separate.

She takes a deep, steadying breath before giving Hunk a wide smile. It’s wooden and stiff but not fake. Hunk frowns at it anyway.

“So…” she starts, not-so-subtly changing the subject. “What’s this golden beauty going to be called?”

Hunk sighs at her poor excuse for a misdirection but says nothing. His head cocks to the side in a way that tells her that his Lion is talking to him and she waits patiently for him to speak.

“Why don’t you name her?”

Lance focuses back on him, surprised. “Me?”

“Yeah,” he says like it’s obvious. “You had me name Azura. I want you to name mine.”

The pair look up at the giant Lion before them, her liquid gold eyes staring back steadily. Her gaze leaves Lance feeling warm and protected, surrounded on all sides. It’s comforting. She’s comforting, even if Lance isn’t her paladin.

“I like Keone.”

The sands. Hawaii. Home.

“Keone it is.”

Lance’s grins just a little easier as she leans into Hunk’s side. Keone’s heavy, axe tail flicks back and forth slowly, the only outwards reaction Lance can see to her new name.

She steps forward to place a hand on her large paw, the entire thing taller than her full height. “You better keep him safe okay? You seem like you’ll be the toughest of us so I’m counting on you. Hunk was mine first and I…” she pauses to look back at him. “I care about him a lot. So you better make sure he comes back. Mau. ” she says. Always.

Keone nods her giant head, the massive chunk of living metal dipping towards her in a sign of acceptance. Lance smiles up at her, patting the claw her hand was on.

“Mahalo, hoaloha.”

When she looks back at Hunk, he has a glassy look in his eye. “Yeah, she is,” he whispers so quietly she almost doesn’t hear.

Lance shoves him gently in embarrassment, nodding her head to the door. “Come on. Better go see what the rest of the team is up to. I’m surprised they haven’t stormed in here yet,” Lance jokes. “I kinda ran off like hell was nipping at my heels and Coran seems the nosey type.”

Hunk shakes his head at her, grabbing her hand and leading them through the doors. He doesn't let go for hours and Lance doesn’t ask him to.

When they go to sleep, she can feel his heart both under her ear and in her chest. It makes falling asleep easier than it had ever been, even with the shadows of almost losing him clinging to the edges of her mind.

Chapter Text

Unable to sleep after the Yellow Lion mission, her mind whirling and too loud, Katie forces herself from her bed and finds things to do. Projects to start, stuff to build, altean mechanisms to learn.

Anything to quiet her thoughts and give her hands something to work with.

It’s not until Lance finds her in the green hangar surrounded by half a dozen bits of machinery she realizes how late—or early—it really was.

Lance spent five minutes lecturing her on taking care of herself before realizing Katie wasn’t listening and giving up. After huffing dramatically, the older girl collapses down next to her, far enough away to not be a nuisance.

Katie mostly ignores her presence, focusing on her work instead, but she can’t deny it’s… nice, to have someone there. Lance’s low humming is almost soothing. Reminding her she wasn’t alone in this too big Castle far from everything she knows.

It’s then, in the quiet and the calm, in the rampaging, screaming mess of her mind, that the thought comes to her. Katie shoots up from her hunched position like she’d been electrocuted.

Lance yelps at the sudden movement.

“What? What is it?” she asks toeing the line between worried and confused, like she isn’t sure which one the situation requires yet.

Katie takes a second too long to answer and Lance goes soft with worry, leaning toward Katie like she’s some sort of spooked animal. “Pidge?”

“What if there were prisoners on the ship?” she whispers.

The words tumble from her breathless lungs and she watches as Lance makes the same connection she did. Watches her follow the same line of thought and she sees the blood drain from her face. It leaves her looking more like brittle wood than her normal rich earthy tones.

Lance stands as fast as she can, her hands clenching and unclenching at her sides. “We need to talk to Shiro.”

Katie doesn’t argue for once, just sprints after Lance as fast as she can, the device in her hands dropping to the hangar floor below, utterly forgotten.

***

After running to Shiro’s room only to find it empty, panicking, asking CORRIN where he was and running all the way back across the Castle, the pair find him sitting in front of the giant doors leading to Black’s hangar.

It looks like he’s talking to the Black Lion through the heavy metal. Or trying to, at least.

If Katie was in her right mind, she might’ve noticed the longing, pained expression on his face as he pressed his hand to the door. Or seen the way he waited for an answer that didn’t come, perhaps couldn’t  come.

She might’ve felt bad.

Digit is… more important than Katie expected her to be. Essential in ways Katie hadn’t known even existed, a piece of her she never knew she was missing until it was right in front of her, until she clicked it into place and she found she was finally running correctly.

If that piece of her was behind a closed door, just beyond her reach when she knew it was there- Well… Katie thinks she’d go mad.

A terrifying thought to have about an alien warship she knows next to nothing about—but true, nonetheless.

Shiro jumps when Lance calls out to him. There’s a flush on his cheeks when he whips around and his mouth’s already open to say… something. Katie doesn’t know what because the second he sees them it snaps shut and a worried frown takes its place.

His eyes flick over them, scanning for injuries, and Katie notices his arms make some sort of aborted movement once she and Lance stop in front of him. They hang awkwardly at his sides, as if unsure what to do.

He crosses his arms.

“What’s wrong?”

Katie tells him and watches the blood drain from his face.

***

The ship yawns above them. A twisted mound of slag half-buried in a crater two football fields wide.

From what Katie can gather, the bones of the ship were structurally sound enough to support itself, even with the hull scorched and torn apart like wet paper. Somewhere on the far side of the ship, smoke rises in a dark cloud to the sky.

For a brief moment, Katie can’ help but think of roaring flames and screams and breathing through tar filled air. She violently shoves the thought aside.

When neither Lance nor Shiro make a move to enter the metal prison, Katie gets impatient. With a huff she pushes off the ground, her jetpack and stabilisers jettisoning her through a random hole in the hull.

She staggers when she lands, the tilt of the ship throwing her off balance for a moment.

Outside, she can hear Lance and Shiro call after her, followed by the sound of two jetpacks firing up.

“Pidge!” Lance squawks at her when she lands.

Katie just grins at her, flicking on her wrist light. “You took guys too long. Now, let’s go.”

She picks a random direction and marches off into the darkness. The other two follow her for lack of any better ideas.

They walk around aimlessly, passing room after room. Katie keeps track as best she can, a rudimentary map drawn out in her head.

Lance keeps up a steady chatter that should be annoying as all hell but is instead oddly comforting in the menacing hallways. Katie’s starting to wonder how she does that, be comforting rather than annoying. There must be a trick in it somewhere.

It’s not until they pass through what might be an arena—what with the large clearing and high stadium seats—that something happens.

Shiro goes still the second they step inside. The kind of still where his eyes are wide and scared and Katie’s not even sure he’s breathing.

Katie startles at the look on his face, at the overwhelming terror written there. It scares her that someone like Shiro, someone her father praised endlessly for his courage and bravery, could be taken down by the sight of a room. The very idea strikes dissonance in her mind.

“Shiro,” Lance says slowly. Soothingly.

Katie turns to her so quickly she thinks her neck might’ve cracked.

Rather than finding the other girl as upset or scared as she feels, Lance looks calm. Concerned and sad, almost like she… expected this, but still calm. Her hands are raised placatingly in front of her and her body is loose and relaxed.

“Shiro,” she repeats again. Shiro twitches but otherwise doesn’t acknowledge her. She approaches him slowly and starts talking to him. Still in that soothing tone of voice. “It’s not real. Whatever you’re seeing or hearing is not real, okay? I’m real. Pidge is real. Shiro, you can touch us, feel us.” She slowly drags her hand up and down her arm as if to prove her point. “Listen to my voice, you can hear it, it’s real. You’re safe, Shiro.”

Slowly, achingly slow, Lance reaches out to touch him. Her hand hovers above his skin, waiting for any sign that she shouldn’t touch. Shouldn’t move closer.

He stays still, almost frighteningly so, as Lance hesitantly moves her hand to his bicep—the galra one, Katie notes distantly.

It’s the wrong thing to do.

The second Lance touches him he freaks. The arm she’d barely grazed glows an ominous purple and sizzles with heat—did Shiro even know it could do that because if so, he’s been holding out what the fuck —and he swings his hand at Lance wildly.

The blue paladin back-pedals fast enough to avoid being cut in half, but only barely. Katie slaps a hand over her mouth to keep herself from shouting out and making it worse.

Shiro doesn’t chase after Lance, but he’s in a defensive position, glowing hand held out threateningly and breath coming in short bursts. His eyes are a little too wild for Katie’s taste.

“Okay!” Lance’s voice raises, slightly panicked before she wrangles it back under control. “Okay, no touching. No touching. That’s okay, we’ll try again. Take two, no touching this time. We can do that.”

She’s standing back now, not making a move to get closer. “Shiro, it’s me. Lance. You’re with friends. Friends. Remember, Keith?” Shiro pauses at that, blinking hard and Lance grabs onto the reaction with both hands. “Keith is back on the ship, Shiro. You know Keith. Keith is great, he’s fine, he’s real. And so is Pidge. She’s right here! Shiro, look at her. Safe and sound just like you, okay?”

Shiro swivels to look at her and Katie tries to mimic Lance, all loose limbs and calm words. She doesn’t think she succeeds very well, but she tries.

He blinks hard once more and sucks in a deep breath. The last bit of tension seems to drain out of him and his eyes clear for a second before confusion takes over, and after that, horror and guilt.

“Shiro?” Lance asks, voice still soothing.

His voice is thick and raspy when he speaks. “Did I-? Are you okay?”

Lance makes a sound almost like a scoff but fonder and more incredulous. “I should be asking you that.” She pauses, biting her lip as if debating on whether to say something or not. “Dude, I… That’s one of the worst episodes I’ve seen, not that I’m an expert or anything, but… Shiro? Are you- do you want to talk about it?”

Shiro stares at her with something Katie can’t quite decipher. Lance must see something that Katie doesn’t and starts babbling again.

“Later! Not now, but just… later? It’s supposed to help. To talk about it. It doesn’t even have to be me! But maybe it’d be easier with someone you don’t know as well? I’m not sure. I never looked into that, but I just want you to know that if you want to talk it’s okay for you too. Just because you’re our leader doesn’t mean you’re invincible, okay? Okay. That’s just… yeah. Options.”

She fades off into mumbling, obviously embarrassed. She’s shuffling her feet and her hands are twitching around her, but she stares at him earnest. Katie would find it funny if the situation wasn’t so serious. If they weren’t talking about the apparent PTSD of their leader.

Katie actually feels idiotic for not thinking about that possibility before now. He was imprisoned for a year by genocidal aliens. He has amnesia and none of them even know what the bastards did to him. Of  course he has PTSD. She’s so stupid.

Shiro on the other hand just nods at her, a small frown on his face. “I’ll think about it.”

Katie highly fucking doubts that Shiro will do any of that without being forced to. Even after only knowing him personally for only a few days, she can tell he’s not the type to ask for help.

 Lance purses her lips, apparently on the same page as Katie, but decides not to call him out on it either. It’s a conversation for another time. When he’s not so pale and they aren’t in the belly of a warship that set him off in the first place.

***

A floating drone the size of Katie’s head lays discarded and damaged on the ground in the middle of one of the hallways. It tries flickering to life as they come around the corner. Ominous buzzing noises coming from the mangled pyramid of metal.

Katie falls in love with it the second she sees it, picking it up and cradling it to her chest like others would a baby or a particularly cute stray puppy.

Within seconds of opening the panel on its side, she has the thing sputtering back to life, glowing a welcoming green and beeping happily.

“I’m gonna call you, Rover,” she tells him.

Lance rolls her eyes as she holds back a snort and Shiro smiles fondly at her, ruffling her hair as he continues off down the hallway.

Rover beeps obediently as she tells him to follow along and their group of three becomes four.

***

They find the prisoners somewhere deep within the warship, far from the hull or exits. Which is good because it means she or Pidge didn’t slash through their room, but bad because they could've easily suffocated from smoke or been crushed from the impact with the surface.

Neither of which are good options.

So, when they find the prisoners all mostly conscious and bearing no major injuries, Lance thanks any gods listening because she wouldn’t be able to bear the weight of those deaths. She’s still reeling from the fact that she put these people in danger. It doesn’t matter that they’re all okay now.

Well. For a definition of ‘okay’.

They’ll all need a stay in the healing pods whether for malnourishment of infection. Lance takes out the water pouches she’d been carrying and hands them out before they work on moving them all back to the Castle.

A few of them are gonna need to be carried.

The guilt gnaws at her insides like a parasite.

The first people they saved from the galra and they already messed up so badly that they almost failed. They were incredibly lucky no one was more hurt by their thoughtlessness.

Lance can’t help but think they won’t be so fortunate next time.

***

“Well. I’m glad at least we’re on the same page about this,” a pretty woman says to her two sisters. “I was worried I was the only one who saw it.”

They’re sitting at a booth in a tiny diner, tucked away on a backstreet. Despite being sisters, the only thing similar about the three of them are their ocean blue eyes and grim expressions.

The first one to have spoken, the eldest, is dressed to the nines. Elegant and perfectly manicured, a socialite in every way. In contrast, the second eldest dresses casually in flannels and jeans covered in dirt and dust. Her hair’s a riot of charcoal curls cropped at her chin and she’s the only one completely without makeup. The last looks straight out of a punk rock album cover. Dark clothes, piercings dotted up her ears and the edges of brightly coloured tattoos peeking out of her long sleeves.

The second eldest scoffs, a sour expression on her face. “Of course, we noticed. Though it’s not like it matters. No one believes us. Not even Mamá and Papi.”

“They just don’t want to hope for something that might not exist,” the rocker points out, running a hand through vibrant purple hair. The newest colour in a long line of them.

 The second eldest, dressed “So, they choose to be blind?” she hisses.

“That’s not what she said, Sabre,” the eldest scolds.

Sabre runs a hand through her hair in frustration, before leaning forward on the table. “Why aren’t you two angrier about this?”

The eldest’s eyes flash as the mug she was holding slams onto the table.

“Do you think I’m not angry? Dear sister, I am furious,” she hisses, voice sharp. “Lance is gone, and the Garrison has the audacity to try and lie to us about it. We have no idea where she is or even what really happened to her. So forgive me for believing that my energy would be better spent finding the imbécil that did this instead of wasting it on useless displays of aggression.”

Sabre growls at her sister.

“We’ll get nowhere snapping at each other.”

“We’ll get nowhere either way,” Sabre shoots back. “The Garrison is a military organization, Mace. They’re not gonna give a damn what we say about them.”

“I never said anything about calling in a formal complaint.”

“What?” Sabre snarks, “Are we going to infiltrate their ranks? We aren’t spies.”

Mace tilts her head in easy acknowledgement. “But we do have connections.”

The other two stare at their younger sister in surprise. “You aren’t seriously suggesting we ask-?”

Mace blinks, “If it comes to that, of course—this is Lance, we’re talking about—but not what I was referring to. I meant Francisca’s connections at the agency and the friends I have inside the Garrison.”

Francisca raises a perfectly manicured eyebrow. “And if those don’t work?”

Mace shrugs, unconcerned and unflappable as always. “Then I suppose being a military nurse could be fun.” she knows her sisters will understand exactly what she means without her needing to explain.

“Mace, you can’t.”

Mace’s sharp eyes pin her older sister down with the force of her stare. “I’d do anything to find out what happened to Lance, Francisca. This barely ranks on the sacrifices I’ll make.”

Francisca sighs, flicking a chestnut lock of hair away from her face. “I suppose I can contact some friends, call in some favours.” Her nails drum along the table in delicate clicks as she thinks.

Sabre voices the thought before she gets the chance. “What about the cousins? I know we just said it’d be a horrible idea but…”

“But if they find out later that we’d been doing this without them, they’ll be worse than normal. I know,” Mace says, exasperated. “But, for now, I’d rather they not muddy waters that don’t need muddying. We need subtlety, not hitmen.”

Fransisca half-laughs. “Familia por encima de todo,” she recites. “Involving them could only end in tears and blood. I’d rather not have to clean up whatever mess they create.”

Sabre elbows her in the ribs. “Oh, like you handle their messes anyway.”

Francisca sticks out her tongue. 

From there, the conversation turned to discussing possible unknowing allies and clues, contingency plans and ideas. In the end, the three part ways comforted by the fact that they weren’t alone and actually had a plan.

Now, it was merely up to waiting to see if anything would come of their searching.

***

With three working Lions, Allura seems to relax the slightest amount. She’s still eager to find the Red Lion and when she’s not helping Coran fix the Castle, she’s meditating in the Bridge, hoping to catch even an inkling of its energy source.

She even turns training over to Coran and CORINN for the time being so she can focus on it. Which means that while they still have the workout from hell, most of their day is now devoted to battle tactics taught by Coran. Something Lance actually enjoys.

On their first day he explains that while the Alteans were diplomats, they were also careful strategists. The royal family kept very detailed accounts of other civilizations fighting styles, techniques, common war strategies and anything else that might come in handy.

Even those they considered allies would have files upon files of information on them.

(Talk about paranoid.)

They used all this information to come up with counter-strategies. The galra must have evolved their fighting styles in ten thousand years, but it’s a good basis for what they’re doing now at least.

Coran goes on and on about planning and tactics and it’s Lance’s favourite time of day, honestly. She’d loved this class back at the Garrison and Coran is much more animated about the different types of striking units than her previous professors had been.

Other than battle tactics, they also learn about the strict galra hierarchy and how their society functioned ten thousand years ago. Seeing as Zarkon is still in charge, Coran and Allura believe it probably had minimal changes in that area.

During their workouts, CORINN has them run team drills and scenarios with the gladiator. They do it so much, she almost feels like they’re a functioning unit, communicating and working together solidly, if not effortlessly. At least when she and Keith aren’t screaming at each other or when Pidge throws a hissy fit.

Speaking of Pidge, she’s finally worn down Coran into letting her help fix the Castle when she’s not camped out in front of the healing pods. After he agrees, the estimated repair time drops to a third of what it once was. Coran even seems impressed at how easily she adapts to such advanced technology.

Lance isn’t impressed because being impressed means there had to be a level of surprise involved. Lance isn’t surprised.

It’s Pidge.

She’s not sure what they were expecting.

While their third functioning paladin is off programming the alien equivalent of a Roomba, she’s teaching Hunk how to actually fly a plane. Considering he had no formal training in most mid-level aerial maneuvers and hasn’t actually flown anything since freshman year at the Garrison, Lance thought it was better for everyone involved if she gave him a refresher course.

Allura agreed after she explained the whole thing to her. She also looked mildly horrified at the situation, but that’s neither here nor there.

Lance is reminding him of the differences between a barrel roll and an aileron roll—complete with fun examples and participation because Hunk’s always been a hands-on learner—when she notices the commotion at the Castle’s courtyard.

She stops mid-sentence, confusing Hunk even more than he already was. Bless his soul, her best friend is a genius rivalled only by Pidge, but if she starts rambling about flying maneuvers then he is lost.

Flying down towards the small crowd without warning, Lance can hear Hunk grumbling about ‘impulsivity’ and ‘the need for communication’. He lands only a second behind her despite his LIon being much slower, which undermines his whole argument, in her opinion.

Exiting her Lion, Lance isn’t quite sure what she was expecting. But, she knows, whatever it was wasn’t a flock of tiny alien warriors bowing to her, Hunk, and Allura. The whole group of them are on their knees, foreheads pressed to the ground and arms reverently offering up weapons like gifts.

“Great Lion Goddess and her mighty warriors!” The one in front greets, voice awed and head still bowed. “We are our bravest of warriors. I am known as Klaizap, these are Unliz, Sunspike, Karith, and Tigot.”

Lance blinks.

Beside her, Hunk places his face in his hands, either out of embarrassment or an attempt to magically get out of this situation she doesn’t know.

“Hunk. Hunk did you hear that?” She nudges him excitedly. “We’re mighty warriors. Hunk, they’re worshipping us.”

Hunk just groans at her.

She mimes flipping her hair over her shoulder—because hers is safely tied up in a bun, as always—and stands taller, trying to mimic Allura’s regal aura. “It’s about time someone around here appreciates me. Rise, oh, brave warriors. The honor is all mine, I assure you.”

All five of their heads snap up, but they stay kneeling.

Now that she can see their faces, Lance has to suppress the immense desire to coo at them. They all look so round and soft, with their ram-like horns and thick, little tails. None of them even come up as high as her hip.

Lance beams at them which sets the two in the back off in little chirping squeals.

“You are beautiful,” the one she thinks is Tigot breaths. “The legends do not do you justice, Warrior of Sea. Nor you, O Goddess.”

Allura blushes but Lance just smiles wider. “And you’re quite the handsome devil yourself.” She winks and she thinks the aliens blush? It’s hard to tell.

Alien anatomy is already giving her a headache.

Keith snorts from where he’s stood behind Allura. “Of course you’d enjoy this. Always got to be the center of attention, don’t you?”

Lance’s expression sours but she refuses to turn around and give him the satisfaction. Only, she’s never been good at ignoring him and her mouth’s already open to snap back at him when the pinker one next to Klaizap jumps to her feet.

Sunspike, she thinks their name was.

“How dare you speak to a faithful warrior so disrespectfully! She guards our precious Goddess, a most sacred duty! You should be ashamed.” The little warrior ends her rant by baring her, surprisingly sharp, teeth at Keith, the rest of the warriors following suit.

She turns around to see Keith’s reaction and laughs.

He looks a mix of flabbergasted, scolded and annoyed. His face twitching like he doesn’t know how to deal with what just happened.

Serves him right.

Lance kneels before Sunspike and grabs her little paw gently. “Thank you, Sunspike. You’re too kind.” She raises the appendage to her lips and places a gentle kiss there.

Sunspike squeals loud enough to jolt Lance upright.

“I have been blessed!” she cries, hopping up and down frantically, tail thumping the ground over and over again. The other warriors are staring at her in a mix of respect and longing, chittering at her excitedly.

In an instant, she’s surrounded by the other four arusian warriors. They all ask—beg, really—for her blessing as well. Big, puppy dog-like eyes and wide, hopeful smiles leaving her defenseless to their demands.

She presses kisses onto the tops of their heads and watches as they each have miniature breakdowns.

“Honey cake!” she calls, half turning to look at her best friend who’s an interesting combination of amused and horrified. “Come bless them with me!”

For a second, she thinks he’ll say no on principle. But then she gives him her own puppy dog eyes and in the next moment, he’s crouched at her right.

Lance grabs his hand and squeezes gratefully, letting her gratitude curl along the bond between them. It’s so new, and both of them are just a bit clumsy with it, but they're figuring it out fast.

Hunk kisses the little warriors’ heads and Lance looks on amused as each of them vibrates so hard she’s half worried they’ll combust.

She leans in to whisper in his ear, quiet enough that they can’t hear. “I think we broke them.”

Hunk sputters out a surprised laugh.

Eventually, Allura clears her throat, signaling that the fun is over. Lance sends a wink her way when she sees the vaguely disapproving look on her face.

“Please, bravest warriors, take us to your village so we may thank you properly.”

“Of course, Goddess. We have prepared festivities in your honor. We hope you will be most pleased,” Klaizap says excitedly. With a bow, all five of them bounce their way off in the direction of their village.

“Come on, Hunk! There’s gonna be a party!” She takes off after the aliens who are deceptively fast. “Race ya!”

“Oh, come on! We both know you’re faster than me. Do I have to?” Hunk calls after her and Lance twists around to run backwards. Hunk is lightly jogging after her while Keith and Allura follow at a more sedate pace.

She pouts back at him for not playing along, when an absolutely brilliant idea strikes her.

With a wicked grin, she raises her hands to her mouth and shouts, “Keith! Bet you I can make it to the village faster than you can!”

Without looking back to see if he took the bait—he did, if there’s one thing she knows about Keith it’s that he can’t back down from a challenge—Lance shoots off for the far hill, feet pounding on the ground.

She hears the swearing as he shoots off after her, his footsteps eating up the distance between them. He’s fast, she’ll give him that.

But not fast enough.

She makes it to the village center, two seconds before he does, lightly panting and with her arms raised in taunting victory.

Keith glares at her. “You cheated.”

Lance pats his cheek with faked sympathy and coos at him mockingly.

He swats her hand away and she laughs.

She’s learned since coming to space, that he hates when she’s smug more than when she’s angry. It’s information she plans to endlessly exploit. That fact that she prefers gloating is just a bonus.

***

Lance wasn’t sure what this whole ‘Dance of Apology’ thing was about, but she wasn’t going to stop them from doing it. Not when it seemed to be such a big deal to them all. Lance was willing to wait for them to do their thing before she set the record straight.

Allura, unfortunately, either doesn’t share her opinion on this or lacks any patience at all.

“Moontow, halt!” the King calls and dancing arusian stills immediately, one leg still raised behind them. They're straining to keep their balance and Lance feels for them. Her ballet teacher would do the same thing all the goddamn time. “The Goddess has refused the apology. Start the sacrificial fire.”

Lance’s attention snaps back to the King as a bonfire blazes into existence behind him. “We must throw ourselves in.”

“I’m sorry, what?” Hunk panics.

Allura waves her hands frantically. “No! No sacrifices!”

“So…” The arusians stop their lining up before the fire to turn back to them. The King’s face brightens. “We may commence with the dance?”

Lance and Hunk nod vigorously as Allura says, “That would be… a better alternative.”

After the music starts up again and Moontow continues dancing, Lance subtly elbows the princess. It doesn’t do more than earn her a glare and a smarting elbow. “You had to say something?” she hisses.

Allura raises her chin in the air, “I didn’t think they’d try to throw themselves in a fire.”

Lance hums unhappily at the princess but says nothing in response to that. She adds ‘how to leave well enough alone’ to her mental list of Things to Teach the Weird-Ass Alteans.

***

Allura ruins her fun by explaining to the arusians that they aren’t actually, you know, divine beings or anything. Lame.

They’re still invited to the party though, so Lance isn’t too put out.

She spends most of it having a crowd of arusians teaching her how to dance. It’s… interesting, to say that least. She can only do half of the moves because she has neither tail nor the ability to crawl on her toes. She still has fun, and the arusians are good sports about her handicaps.

It’s been over half an hour and they’ve moved onto Lance teaching them salsa moves in between her bouts of laughter—the way they wag their tails in sync with their over-exaggerated hip movements is both adorable and hilarious, okay?

She’s just starting to think about how the other three are really missing out on the fun when Shiro’s commanding voice crackles to life on the comm.

“Team,” he warns, “we’ve got incoming!”

“Shiro?” Allura asks, looking out over the village as if she can spot the threat. “Shiro, what’s happening?”

A ground-shaking boom sounds through the village, causing multiple arusians and Hunk to hit the dirt. Lance whips her head around to look up at the sky.

Something’s crashed through the atmosphere. It’s big, it’s on fire, and Lance would bet Hunk’s famous fruit tarts that it’s galra.

“We need the Lions!” Keith calls at the same time Lance whistles high and sharp, separating from the group of arusians and sprinting back outside the village.

She’s not sure how she knows it’ll work—there’s no reason to believe Azura can hear her this far away—but her Lion lands lightly before her just like she knew she would.

In her mind, Azura is growling. Ready for battle and furious. Lance hasn’t even fully sat down in the pilot’s chair before Azura’s racing off after the spacecraft, metal paws thundering on the earth below her.

The thing lands with another BOOM that almost sends Azura sprawling head over paws. Luckily, Hunk and Keone, who are far steadier than her and Azura, catch them at the last second.

Azura’s still leaning on Keone when the metal casing suddenly cracks open like an egg, revealing the… the monstrosity inside. Both Lions hiss the moment it’s revealed and Lance’s skin crawls at the sight of it.

The… thing is bipedal with two arms and a head but there’s nothing humanoid about it. There’s something so fundamentally wrong with it but Lance doesn’t know what. It feels… twisted. Mangled. Like an animal with a broken neck just standing back up and walking off like nothing’s wrong.

The behemoth stands three times as tall as her Lion, all metal and malice and an empty kind of intelligence in its single eye.

Lance isn’t sure how she knows this, or why, but the thing before her should not exist.

It steps from its casing and Lance feels fear grab her heart and squeeze. Icy claws reach in her chest and tear her composure to ribbons.

Panic wells up in her as she stares at the monster that shouldn’t exist. As she gazes into the broken tattered thing that defies nature.

Her heart pounds loud enough she can hear it in her ears and she feels like there’s so much terror in her chest she’ll burst. The echo of Hunk’s heartbeat isn’t much better.

“My paladin,” Azura stops growling long enough to rub against her mind soothingly. Circuitry and magic and the ever-present sound of the ocean. “You need not fear.”

She curls around where their bond is anchored in her chest and blooms. Spreads out through her veins and sinks into her skin. Her voice seeps into her marrow and calms her down, forces her to focus and relax. Her panic ebbs and flows until it is smaller, more manageable. A tide pool inside of the tempest sea.

Lance can still feel it, but it’s buried beneath the weight of Azura’s comforting purrs. Swept out with the tide, drowned out by the need to protect.

“We will survive. We will win. This abomination will be only the first to fall beneath our might.”

Lance is no warrior.

She’s a girl, a pilot, a beloved daughter and sister. She wasn’t made for fighting. But she’ll be damned if she lets someone get hurt because she didn’t step up when she was needed.

The Monster twists its neck unnaturally to look at them.

Lance grabs onto her fear and adapts.

The Monster raises its not-hand.

Azura’s calming purrs turn to fierce growls, the sound humming through Lance’s chest.

The Monster glows a sickening purple and winds its arm back to strike.

Lance snarls.

It echoes through the throats of three Lions when, together, they leap.

***

Hunk never imagined battle would be so loud. Not that he ever really imagined battle. He tended to avoid confrontation, that was Lance’s area.

The harsh scrape of metal on metal assaults his ears, the ringing clash of blades sets his teeth on edge. It’s all so overwhelming and makes him want to curl in a ball and never move.

But he can’t.

He’d let down too many people—put too many of them at risk —if he did.

He’d let down Lance —put her at risk—if he did.

She and Pidge and Keone and the universe were counting on him to move. To fight. To protect.

He’s terrified and not good and he’s all they have so he throws himself at the Monster over and over again.

He’s armoured. The tank, as Lance would say, so he’ll take the hits while Pidge and Lance plan and scheme in the air above him.

The fear and inexperience makes him slower than he should be, makes him hesitate and freeze up even with Keone’s steady mountain song crooning in his ears. The warmth fills his stomach, right behind his navel, but it does little to stop the chill crawling up his spine.

“Hunk! On your left!” Lance screams and he turns just in time to see the weaponized orb fly right at him.

It sends him careening into a cliff face, the hit leaving him winded and dazed. Keone whimpers in the back of his mind.

He gets up even though his vision is still fuzzy because he may have never been in a fight before now, but even he knows standing still is a death sentence. Groaning, he pushes himself up, the sound of Lance yelling in his ear keeping him grounded even if he’s not paying attention to the words.

“Goddammit!” Pidge screeches through the comms when the monster bats her away again. “I can’t even get close to it! Our blasters do nothing.”

Pidge’s Lion curls its claws into the dirt, growling at the beast as if she can take it down through intimidation alone. It’s a strategy that would work on Hunk at least. He’s not too hopeful about the Monster though.

Lance dances through the air, trying to keep its attention on her while also keeping her distance and dodging the orb that follows her relentlessly.

“Blasting doesn’t work. Have we tried slashing?” Her lion waves her tail for emphasis, the blades glinting in the sunlight.

Hunk knocks her out of the way a second before she would’ve taken a hit to the face. It hits his flank instead and unbalances him enough to send them into a helpless tangle of limbs. Lance swears colourfully as they try extracting themselves.

Pidge launches herself at the beast in order to give them time, but it sends her away with a particularly vicious sweep of its hand. It advances on them and Hunk struggles faster.

They don’t untangle in time.

The Monster grabs Hunk by the scruff and throws him clean across the field. He hears Lance scream when the monster axe-stomps her into the dirt. Hunk screams with her, a phantom pain blossoming along his side.

Pidge comes from nowhere, bowling into the Monster and snapping her jaws around its throat. He can hear the crunch of metal from where he is, and Lance takes the opportunity to limp off to safety. He sees the twitch that goes through the Monster before it throws Pidge off.

Its throat is horribly mangled and its head lolls at an odd angle that makes Hunk sick, but it still advances on them relentlessly.

Hunk feels fear crawl up his throat, choking him from the inside.

“Guys!” Shiro’s strong voice breaks through the panic and he can’t help but listen. “Pidge damaged it. It’s not impossible to beat! Its weak point is the orb. It needs to charge every three hits! That’s when you strike!”

Hunk doesn’t question how Shiro knows that. He’s their leader, right? Of course, he knows how to beat the Big Bad.

Him and Lance tag team until Pidge gets back up. She’s not looking good, one more hit will probably send her to the ground and keep her there.

The three of them count the shots.

The first one Lance barely dodges, the electricity singeing her tail.

The second blast hits Hunk in the chest. He curls his claws into the dirt and stands firm. It pushes him back, but he doesn’t go down.

The third knocks Pidge from the sky and as he feared, she doesn’t get back up.

He debates on whether he should go after her or not until Lance launches herself at the beast and Hunk has to run in and make sure she doesn’t get herself killed.

Lance attacks its head, all flailing claws and teeth and tail tearing through metal like butter.

Hunk uses his Lion’s powerful tail and slams it into the thing’s chest, lodging it deep where the heart should be while he tears into the torso with his claws.

Glowing ichor drips from its wounds and the whole thing starts twitching and humming.

Warning bells sound in his head and he rips himself away to throw himself at Lance. He curls his Lion around her own, some deep knowledge or instinct telling him her Lion can’t handle the extreme heat this is going to put off.

The thing explodes and it leaves his ears ringing. The shockwave nearly knocks him over, but he holds his place, heart pounding even though he knows they’ve won.

Lance gently pushes her head into his chest to get him off and the pair look at the remains of the beast. The two of them are leaning heavily on each other, tired and sore and bloody but alive.

Hunk sighs in shaky relief while Lance cackles and taunts through the comms. He leans further into the phantom feeling of Lance pressed against his side.

They’ve won.

***

It takes the combined strength of both Azura and Keone to carry Digit back to the Castle with how beat up all of their Lions are.

The second they’re safe in a hangar—Green’s, Lance thinks—the Lions power down. Azura doesn’t even retain her graceful air, just slumps into a pile with the other Lions as the lights in the cockpit dim to its backlights. Her Lion goes quiet in the back of her mind just like before, some sort of sleep mode, Lance hopes.

Climbing out of her Lion was harder than it should’ve been, but Lance makes do. The second she leaves the safety of Azura’s jaws, exhaustion hits her like a wave.

Stumbling across scorched metal and tangled limbs, Lance makes it to the floor. Her knees are wobbly from the adrenaline and it feels like she’s shaking all over. When she reaches the ground, she doesn’t have the strength to keep herself upright, and falls to her knees.

She doesn’t even feel the sting that should accompany it.

Hunk is the next one out. He comes stumbling out of Keone’s mouth like a sunrise and Lance can’t help but smile as he races towards her. He trips more times than he would’ve if he was paying attention to his feet rather than her on the ground. He almost falls on his face twice in his haste to get to her.

It’s heartwarming in that way only Hunk can be. Endearing in his clumsiness.

He skids into her arms, dropping to his knees and sliding the last few feet to her. He almost knocks her over and it’s enough to make her laugh even as she feels like she’s about to pass out.

Pidge wobbles out of Digit, arm wrapped around her stomach while the other supports her. By some divine force, Hunk is able to pick up Lance so they can meet Pidge halfway in a group hug. Despite how tired he must be, it’s still back-breaking and Pidge even yelps.

He drops all three of them to the floor, Pidge in Lance’s lap and her in Hunk’s, his arms wrapped around them both. Shiro and Keith stand a bit to the side, Shiro looking on in pride and Keith in grudging respect.

It makes Lance smile just a bit wider.

She can’t help but think this is starting to become some sort of ridiculous ritual of theirs. Near-death missions followed by tearful reunions in the hangar.

It makes her equal parts happy and terrified.

***

Two days after the attack at the arusian village, Katie stands in front of the healing pods feeling oddly nervous. Lance and Shiro flank her on either side, both of them have shown up with blankets, soup and ‘buckets of moral support’, according to Lance.

While appreciated, their presence does little to stop her stomach from turning itself in knots. Not even Digit’s comforting meows help her.

Her mind spins in circles, going over worst-case scenarios with terrifying speed. Each one makes her feel that much closer to either throwing up or crying.

These aliens are her only lead to finding her family. The fear of what they’ll say makes her feel sick. The thought of them confirming her worst fears, the sorrow of them telling her they’re out of her reach, the possibility they may not even know anything…

Every possibility flies around her mind, tearing down whatever modicum of calm she’s cobbled together until she’s left frayed and exposed.

When the first prisoner falls from the pods, Lance pounces.

There’s a blanket around their shoulders and a cup of soup shoved into their hands before Shiro or her can even move. Lance’s voice is soft and soothing as she explains where they are and how they’re safe here.

It’s the strangest thing Katie has ever seen. The normally too loud and in your face girl dawning such a quiet sort of kindness so easily. It’s so far from her normal, so far from even the calm she’d adopted in the ship with Shiro. Then, Lance had been loose but her presence was still felt, still large and attention-grabbing because that’s what Shiro needed, something to grab onto.

It confuses her.

Katie knows there’s more than meets the eye to her sort-of friend, but she hadn’t expected this. Lance seemed almost… vulnerable where she was crouched next to the shocked alien. Small and muted. Gentle.

It was absurd. Lance never showed vulnerability, it was the one thing about the older girl Katie was certain about these days.

A second prisoner falls from another pod and Lance orders them to do the same as she did. The way she expects them to listen is more familiar territory and Katie follows her orders with only minimal grumbling.

She and Shiro quickly learn they are not as good at this comforting thing as Lance is and turn over the reins to her the first chance they get. Lance picks up their slack and eventually, all nine aliens are calmed and adjusting to their new freedom nicely.

Katie settles down in front of the clustered aliens, legs folded in front of her and hands clasped in an effort to look as harmless as possible. The last thing she wants to do is scare them. Shiro stands a little way behind her while Lance sits off to the side, a small bird-like alien sitting in her lap who was seemingly fascinated with her hair.

Taking a deep breath, she steels her nerves.

Regardless of what the answers are, she needs to know them. Ignorance leads nowhere useful.

“So, how long were you held captive by Zarkon?” she asks as an ice breaker.

She doesn’t have her paladin suit on, but Allura said the bracer should still translate even in their dormant mode. Katie hasn’t gotten a chance to look at the communicator herself but she’s planning on doing it sometime soon. She might even rope Hunk into the experiment.

An older looking alien—though she’s not actually sure how old they are because, well, aliens— pauses in drinking their cup of soup to look down at her. The severe expression on their gaunt face makes Katie curl in on herself, suddenly embarrassed at what she now realized might be an insensitive question.

This was why she didn’t try talking to people normally.

“An interesting way to begin a conversation, Paladin.” The older alien sighs but answers her question, their mouth oddly out of sync with their words, “Decaphoebes. Longer, maybe. It’s hard to tell in the arena. Time blurs when all you do is try to survive.”

A sharp breath draws her attention to Lance, a look of horror and sorrow on her face as she looks at the group in front of her. She turns her eyes down to the small alien in her lap who had suddenly stilled. “They made you fight other prisoners?” she sounds disgusted at the very idea and Katie can’t help but agree.

The bird alien snorts, face twisted into what might be a scowl. “It was sport for them. A game with us as the pieces.”

Katie’s mind conjures an image of her brother in the arena on the ship, bleeding as he fights for his life. Broken and alone and out of her reach. She grits her teeth at the surge of emotions in her chest.

She sees Lance give her a concerned look, but Katie ignores it. These emotions and thoughts are going to stay in her chest and never be talked about. Talking about them makes them too real.

“I’m sorry,” Shiro tells them. “I can’t imagine.”

The bird alien tilts head quizzically. “But, Champion, you were their favourite piece to play with. You were King of the arena. You fought more than all of us combined. Your thirst for blood was known throughout the entire empire.”

Shiro looks horrified at the very thought. “What? I- no. I’m not bloodthirsty.”

An alien towards the edge of the group with hair similar to dreadlocks laughs. Katie can’t tell if he’s being mean spirited or not.

“‘Not bloodthirsty’, he says! Champion, you were like a Koga in the ring! You even injured your fellow earthling so you alone could have the glory of defeating Myzax!”

Katie’s blood runs cold.

Injured your fellow earthling.

Injured your fellow earthling.

Injured your fellow earthling.

The image of her brother bleeding in the arena rears its head again. Only this time, it’s not some faceless entity hurting Matt but Shiro, covered in his blood and grinning.

“You attacked my brother?” she hisses, angry and hurt and wishing she didn’t sound like she was about to cry at that moment.

Katie rises from where she was sitting, her hands shaking at her sides and she wants to hit something. She had trusted him.

Shiro backpedals away from her. His shaking arms raised placatingly in front of him as if to stop her advance.

If Katie had been thinking straight, she would’ve recognized that he was wearing the same face he had after his episode three days prior. She would’ve been concerned.

But she wasn’t thinking properly. She didn’t recognize his expression. She was far from concerned.

“No, I- Matt was my best friend. I wouldn’t have- There must be a mistake.”

“We all do terrible things to survive,” the severe alien speaks up again, resting one of their thin hands on his wrist. “There’s no shame in that, Champion.”

Shiro flinches backwards, pulling his wrist to his chest as if burned. “No. No, I wouldn’t- “

“The empire may have known of your battle prowess, but it was us who knew of your kindness,” the severe alien continued, voice firm but quiet. “Myzax’s was thought to be unbeatable. The injury was a blessing compared to the bloody death that awaited your friend.” They send a pointed look in Katie’s direction.

The words bring her to a staggering halt.

“What do you mean?”

Their eyes are intense as they look at her. Katie feels as if she’s being weighed for something. “Not everything is as it seems, Paladin.”

Katie’s mind spins over what that might mean. Her eyes flicking back and forth as she tries to understand how she lost control of this conversation so quickly.

“If my brother was injured, do you know where he went? Where do they send the prisoners injured in the arena?”

They shake their head, “I don’t have the answers you seek. Only those at the galra outposts would know where prisoners are reassigned. Your Matt could be anywhere in the empire.” Their expression softens just a hair. “I am truly sorry.”

Katie’s hands clench at her sides and she sucks in a shuddering breath.

Dead end.

Failure.

Useless.

Lance tries placing a comforting hand on her shoulder that only causes her to flinch violently.

She doesn’t want comfort.

She wants her family back.

Her lip wobbles embarrassingly so she bites down on it, just shy of drawing blood. Her eyes feel hot behind her eyelids and she tells herself not to cry. Not here. Not now.

But her body doesn’t obey her and a traitorous tear escapes down her cheek anyway. Katie scrubs at her face viciously to get rid of the evidence, keeping herself carefully turned away from everyone in a vain attempt to hide her vulnerability.

“I think that’s enough questions for now,” Lance tells the aliens as she herds Katie out of the room.

Katie isn’t a fool.

She’s a genius actually.

She knows that once the door closes behind them, Lance is going to try and console her or some other mushy-feelings-shit she doesn’t want to deal with right now.

She’s not spilling her guts now and never will. She just wants to be left alone.

Katie bolts down the hallway before they can stop her. She can hear both Lance and Shiro calling after her, but she doesn’t stop. Doesn’t turn around.

She doesn’t see how Lance’s arm was outstretched after her, a look of anguish on her face.

She doesn’t see the tightness in Shiro’s jaw as he holds himself still to keep from running after her.

She doesn’t see anything through the tears blurring her vision. Doesn’t hear anything over her ragged breaths and heaving sobs.

She finds a room and stays there until long past dinner. No one finds her curled up in a ball in the darkened corner.

She’s not sure anyone tried too.

Chapter Text

Pidge reappears at breakfast the next morning, acting like yesterday never happened. She just… sits down at the table and asks Hunk for a serving of whatever doctored food goo he made this time. Like Lance didn’t spend an hour yesterday pacing in Hunk’s room worrying and ranting to him.

She wants to say something, anything, about what happened yesterday, but figures she’s perhaps the least qualified for it. Avoidance is her preferred coping thing and getting on Pidge’s case about it would be, as Hunk says, ‘insanely hypocritical and you need to stop that Lance’.

So there she sits, frustrated beyond reason.

This is what she’s supposed to be good at, dammit! Talking to people, cheering them up. It’s her whole thing. Her superpower, as her Abuelita used to say.

Only she’s failing at her thing. Badly.

She’s so frustrated by her ineptitude, that during team training that day, she decks Keith in the face.

***

They’d been playing some convoluted, altean game that was basically The Floor is Lava but with more rules and a higher chance of injury.  Lance wasn’t sure how this was supposed to be a team exercise, but it  was fun. It was even starting to take her mind off the Pidge situation and lift her mood.

That is until she and Keith had tried to jump on the same space at the same time and instead knocked each other to the ground, eliminating them both from the round.

Unsurprisingly, neither of them took it well.

Also unsurprisingly, they started screaming at each other.

Her mouth was halfway around some insult or another about Keith’s stupid hair when he cuts her off. It didn’t really matter what he said because Lance wasn’t listening. He didn’t get the chance to finish what he was saying either because she draws her fist back and sends him staggering backwards, hands clutched at his nose.

For a second, she stared after him, a sneering, victorious grin on her lips and her arm still extended.

Then he turned back to her, hand over his mouth and entire posture denoting the surprise at her lashing out. In the back of her mind, she wonders when he’ll stop being surprised at her anger.

He pulls his hand away to find blood on his glove. Lance’s eyes widen and her smile drops as what she just did finally clicks. Her arm falls to her side and Keith’s eyes meet hers only to darken in anger.

“What the hell, Lance?” he yells.

She opens, closes, then opens her mouth again but no words come out. They’re trapped in her throat as she stares at the damage she caused.

The pounding footfalls of Shiro and Hunk running towards them echo in her brain.

Regret boils in her stomach, making her sick with it. If she thought Keith and her didn’t get along before…

“Oh my God. Oh my- Keith, I-” her voice hitches as she makes an aborted movement toward him to… She doesn’t know. Help him? Like he’d want her help anyway. “Holy shit, I’m so sorry. I don’t-”

“You’re sorry?” he spits at her, blood dripping from his split lip. “You just punched me in the face for calling you impulsive and now you’re apologizing?”

“Yes,” she stresses, hands raised in front of her like some sort of offering. “Look, I messed up okay? I shouldn’t have done that.”

He just scoffs, wiping away more blood and staining his suit with rust. “The least you could do is own up to your actions. We already know you hate me.”

Lance balks at him. “What? I- No! That’s- that’s not what I- I didn’t punch you because I hate you! I don’t-”

Shiro cuts in between them, grabbing Keith by the jaw and tilting him every which way to check for damage. Hunk does the same for her, his hands fluttering around her person even though they both know she’s not the victim here.

Worry hums around Hunk like a frenzy while the echo in her chest flutters with concern. Lance wonders how she must feel to him at the moment, if he can feel the shame pooling at the back of her throat.

Shiro turns to look at her, disappointed and barely concealing the anger in his eyes. “What happened here?”

It’s a useless question.

He knows what happened—they all do.

She and Keith weren’t quiet. And she knows the others had been watching the whole thing. She knows Shiro saw her punch his pseudo little brother seemingly unprompted. She knows he must be furious.

Heavens knows she would be. If she saw someone lay a hand on her sisters there isn’t a force in the universe that could stop her from breaking it.

The ground beneath her shoes becomes utterly fascinating.

“I’m sorry,” she says again with feeling, hoping this time it might stick.

It’s silent for a moment, no one daring to speak. Then, Shiro releases a rough breath, running his hand through his hair.

“I think now is a good time for a break. We’re all obviously stressed from… recent life-changing events.” Understatement of the century. “All of us need to relax, I think. Get some time away from each other for a little while before something… worse happens.”

Lance flees the room before he finishes speaking, her head an ongoing loop of idiot, idiot, idiot.

***

“Aren’t you going to go after her?” Pidge asks, head tilted.

He wants to say yes. Wants to run after her and shake her until she stops beating herself up and tells him what’s wrong.

“No,” he says through his teeth. “She needs time.”

He’s known her since third grade. He knows when she needs someone to knock her back on track and when she needs to be left alone for a while. He spent years learning how to read her.

Being able to feel how upset she is now doesn’t change that.

He hates it. Hates standing back and letting her hurt, but this isn’t about him. He won’t smother her.

There’ll always be time for friendly smothering later. When Lance will actually laugh at him for it instead of pushing him away.

***

Lured by the comforting hum of her Lion, Lance finds herself in the hangar ten minutes later, tucked safely between Azura’s massive paws. Her Lion’s curled around her, surprisingly gentle for a being so large and dangerous.

It makes Lance feel small, but also loved and cared for.

Azura doesn’t try to make her talk, or whatever passes for talking with them. She just keeps singing to her. Earth songs and the sound of ocean waves and melodies Lance thinks might be older than Rome.

It’s… nice. Her thoughts still clamour loudly in her mind but they’re… quieter, she thinks. Less overwhelming. She thinks back to punching Keith in the face about a hundred times but it’s better than her normal ritual of a thousand.

She feels bad about that.

She feels worse about Pidge.

Here Lance is, throwing hissy fits and pity parties over nothing when Pidge is off dealing with her family being out in space with no idea where they might be. It’s her, not Lance, that really needs the comfort.

Lance ‘Showboat’ Martínez stealing someone's thunder once again.

She laughs darkly at the thought.

“Your mind is loud, dearest one,” Azura says, curling tighter around her, if that’s possible. “Like a thunderstorm on the ocean. What troubles you?” Her voice is like balm on Lance’s nerves, an ocean wave smoothing the sands of her mind.

She takes too long to answer and Azura snuffles at her, the hot breath of her Lion ruffling the air around Lance and messing up her hair. She sends her a half-hearted glare before deflating.

“I’m such a bad friend.”

Azura, despite not having the proper facial features to raise an eyebrow at Lance, gives off the exact air of one raising their eyebrow. “I beg your pardon?”

“I punched Keith,” she says, pulling her hair from it’s already destroyed bun.

The other eyebrow Azura does not have, joins the first one she does not have, in judging Lance.

Her Lion, fully aware of her opinions on the hothead, was obviously failing to see the problem with her actions and also how they related to her opening statement.

Lance blows a piece of hair from her face. “I shouldn’t have punched him,” she admits. “He spoke over me, which is, like, pretty minor in retrospect but I was angry. Only, I wasn’t actually mad at him. So it was wrong.” She pauses. “Not that it would have been right if I was angry at him. He just might’ve actually deserved it then.”

Azura makes a sound like she’s both curious and laughing at her. Lance frowns up at her.

“Yeah, okay. Not really the point,” Lance concedes. She pulls her legs to her chest, resting her chin in the divot between her knees. “I was… mad at myself. Frustrated. I want to help Pidge but don’t know how. What do you even say in this situation? Her family are prisoners of war. I can’t even imagine what she’s going through.”

“I… fail to see how that makes you a bad friend.”

“Because!” she yells, flailing her hands around her like that will get her point across better. “I made the whole situation about me. It’s Pidge who needs support! I caused a scene by punching Keith and let my emotions get the better of me and it’s Pidge who should be going around punching people! Not that I think she should- oh! You know what I mean! I’m sitting here instead of helping her. Except I don’t know how to help her and I just- Ugh!”

Lance groans, burying her face in her knees. “I’m a bad friend.”

It’s quiet for a long moment, and when Lance raises her eyes she sees Azura staring down at her, exasperation in every line of her body. “What is it with my paladins believing they must carry the world on their shoulders?”

Lance stills at the mention of her predecessors.

“You silly little mortals.” Azura huffs at her again, soft and gentle like. “The worlds will continue to spin if you take a moment for yourself. Your friend is far from alone. My sister will hardly let her sit in her melancholy.”

“I still punched Keith,” she points out, mostly for arguments’ sake.

“In my experience, you lot have short memories. This will soon be forgotten.” She shrugs her great shoulders, metal and whirring gears filling the air.  “But, if it truly makes you upset, then I suppose you could apologize to my sister’s arrogant cub.”

“I tried. He won’t listen!” She pouts down at her feet. “He thinks I hate him.”

“Do you?”

“No! I don’t-” she stops, gathers her words and tries again. “I thought I did, at first. He’s annoying as hell and arrogant and there are so many things I hate about him, but I don’t… I don’t think he’s the person I thought he was. And if I don’t know who he is… can I still hate him? I just-” she stops, looking for the right words, “-don’t understand him.”

“Perhaps you should tell him that,” Azura hums.

Lance snorts humorlessly. “Yeah, right. Like he’d believe me anyway.”

Azura doesn’t seem to have anything to say to that, or if she does, she doesn’t say it. The pair are quiet for a long time again, this time without Azura’s singing.

“How many came before me?” Lance blurts into the quiet air between them. She can feel how the question surprises Azura before her presence in her mind turns sad, realizing what she’s asking. And well, it’s not like Lance can take the words back now. “How many Blue Paladins came before me?”

Azura is silent as she stares at her, her endless blue gaze piercing through her. It stretches between them for so long that Lance thinks she won’t answer the question.

“One hundred and seven paladins have come before you,” her voice is somber and serious as she says the number. So different from her normal brightness and regal tone.

The sheer number of predecessors astounds her, it makes the breath in Lance’s throat stutter. “So many?”

Azura nods, her massive head lower than it was a moment ago.

Lance wants to ask what happened to them, but she already knows. There can only be one paladin at a time. Azura told her that the first day they met.

They’re all gone.

Is she just the newest model in a long line of paladins? Another replacement meant to die?

“NO!” Azura growls so loudly it startles Lance, the sound not just in her head but reverberating through the room around her. The tail that had been previously curled around her tenderly is pulled away to thrash wildly, the harsh scrape of metal on metal assaulting her ears.

The sudden anger causes Lance to flinch, curling in on herself protectively.

Azura senses her fear and immediately the anger drains out of her, replaced by an empty kind of tiredness. The giant Lioness sets her head on her paws, eyes going dim.

“No,” she repeats, quieter but with far more emotion.

Sorrow, longing, the deep ache of loving someone long since passed—it all floods Lance’s chest through the bond.

“No one can replace them. And no one will be able to replace you when you leave me too. There may have been many who have piloted me, but I have loved each just as fiercely as the last. Mourned them just as harshly each time they were taken from me.” Azura pulls in tighter around Lance, tense and pained. “You are all so precious. I would destroy worlds for you if you wished.”

Lance’s breath shudders out of her as, once again, the weight of the power she holds settles around her shoulders. It was so hard to believe that this ancient being was loyal to her. What could she possibly offer in return?

“But I’m just… me. Why me?” Lance asked, so quiet she could barely hear herself. “There are billions of people on earth to choose from, and so many more across the galaxy. There has to be someone more qualified! A better pilot or someone who has a reason to fight in this war or- or-”

“My beloved paladin, you were not chosen for what you can do. You’re chosen for who you are. You are my compliment, just as I am yours.”

“But why? What’s so special about me? I’m just a girl from Cuba. A clumsy, homesick child who’s in over her head. What can I possibly give you?”

Azura tilts her head to look at her, something about the movement soft. “You are far more than you even realize. You will never be just anything. Soon enough, you will learn why you are here, what your purpose is in this great web of fate.” Something happy bubbles along the bond and Lance gets the impression Azura would be grinning if she could. “But for now, you just get to be my paladin. And that is all I will ever want from you.”

Lance stares up at this great being, this creature more powerful than she can comprehend who speaks of millennia like days and Lance knows she has no right to stake her claim on such an entity. And yet the bond in her chest burns with love and a vicious sort of protectiveness.

This is her Lion.

Just as she is her paladin.

The thought brings a delighted sort of smile to her face.

Azura shifts, adopting a more arrogant air around herself. “Now, I better not hear of you doubting your place here again. It’s a horrid insult to my character. I’ve never made a mistake in my life and I’m certainly not going to start now.”

Lance laughs despite herself.

She still has questions about this. The relationship between them and what it means and how and why it exists in the first place… But one earth-shattering revelation a day is enough for her. She’s had so many recently.

Azura goes back to singing softly and this time it lulls Lance into sleep, her voice like siren song.

Seconds before she dozes off, she swears she can feel fur rubbing against her cheek, softer than anything she’s ever felt before.

***

“Knock that off!” Keith hisses, twisting away from the alcohol wipe.

Takashi shoots him the no-nonsense look Adam always used on him when in the med bay. “Stop squirming and maybe it will hurt less.”

Keith huffs but obediently stops moving without further argument.

It throws Takashi off for a moment, the same way it’s been doing so for however long he’s been back. 

Keith didn’t even argue or snap at him. Keith never passed up the chance to do that. He’s no Lance, but his little brother wasn’t one to keep his opinions or objections quiet.

Takashi wasn’t sure what happened in the year he’d been gone, but whatever it was made his little brother… different. It’s like something fundamental in their relationship has shifted and Takashi wasn’t sure he liked it.

In all the eight years he’d known him, Keith had never made anything easy.

Takashi wanted to ask, wanted his little brother to open up to him, but he knew how well Keith handled that kind of stuff. That is to say: not at all. Pushing the topic now would only result in Takashi getting punched in the face, not any kind of healthy communication.

Keith was charming like that.

Sidestepping that minefield of a conversation, Takashi chooses the more pressing and less likely to get him punched problem, instead.

“So… Lance,” Takashi starts off none too subtly. Mostly because Keith never responded well to subtle but also because Takashi was about as subtle as a car alarm. It made communication easy in the beginning. Now Keith knows his thinly veiled not-tricks.

“Oh my god,” Keith mutters, eyes rolling towards the ceiling. “Kill me now.”

Oh, that’s good. He’s not threatening to maim Takashi, which for Keith, is basically a green light for him to keep going.

“It seems like you two have a history,” he asks, false casual as if they both don’t know exactly what he’s trying to do.

Keith makes a face. “Uh? Not really.” Takashi tilts his head for Keith to continue while he spreads the altean healing salve on the bridge of Keith’s nose. “She was a cargo pilot from what I know, and she showed up the night you crashed on Earth. I didn’t talk to her at all before then.”

Takashi furrows his eyebrows.

That doesn’t make any sense. Lance doesn't seem the type to dislike someone for no reason. In fact, she seemed the type to befriend everyone she meets if her bubbly personality was anything to go by.

And, well. Takashi loves Keith very dearly, but he’s also well aware how much of a dick he can be without trying.

The obvious dissonance between his team was making him nervous. He’s going to get even more gray hairs worrying about this teenage drama.

Takashi runs a hand through his hair roughly, feeling tired. God, does he need sleep.

“She’s confusing,” Keith admits quietly. Takashi looks up to find him engrossed in thought, not even looking at him. “I don’t… I don’t know how to act with her. She changes and I don’t-” He looks up at Takashi helplessly because he’s never been good at words. Never really mastered the skill of finding the right words and putting them in the right order.

Luckily, Takashi has long since learned how to understand his brother. He quirks a smile.

“Maybe she doesn’t understand you either.” Keith looks at him doubtfully. “Historically speaking, people don’t really like what they don’t understand. Maybe you just need to understand each other.”

Keith makes a face at that and Takashi sighs, knowing what was going to come out of his mouth before he says it.

He stands up from the bed and makes for the door, “Like it’d be that easy.”

Takashi stares after him for a moment, weighing the pros and cons of running after him or not before deciding that that was all he was going to get out of him right then and letting him sit in his own head for a while was probably best.

Slowly, Takashi packs up the first aid kit Coran had given him, tucking it neatly into his chest and setting off to find the other teenage problem child he’s so fond of.

***

Hunk finds her eventually.

Well, not so much ‘find’ as ‘probably knew where she was the whole time’. He’s protective like that.

Lance watches him struggle to climb over Azura’s paw for a moment, laughing at his fumbling, before her Lion takes pity on him and dumps him on the floor in front of her, cocooning them both.

“Hey,” he greets dryly. Lance smiles and tugs the end of his faithful headband in hello. “You okay, then?”

“I am now.”

“I checked on Pidge for you,” God bless her best friend, knowing what she’s going to ask before she does. “It looked like her and Shiro were having some sort of feelings jam in Green’s hangar.”

Lance smiles, glad it’s not just her and Digit looking out for Pidge. “Mahalo, honeybee.”

She pauses, fiddling with the ends of her hair still out of her bun, but she’s safe here so that’s okay. Hunk waits patiently for her to continue, shuffling into a sitting position on her right.

“What about Keith? Is… is he okay?”

If Hunk’s surprised by her question, he doesn’t show it. “I haven’t seen him since the training deck, but he seemed fine when he left with Shiro. Physically at least.” He tilts his head, regarding her. “Are you gonna tell me why you punched him out of nowhere?”

Lance made a sound like a cross between a groan and a whine, falling sideways to sprawl across his lap. She buries her face in her hands.

Hunk nods sagely at her as if her unintelligible noises had been a poignant answer. “I figured. What’re you going to do about it?”

“I don’t know. Azura said I should tell him I don’t hate him and try apologizing again but…”

“You don’t think it will do anything?”

She lets out a whoosh of air. “No. No, I don’t.”

They’re silent for a long moment.

“I think you’re wrong.” Lance snaps her gaze to Hunk’s face. He’s looking at her in that puzzle-solving way again. Taking her apart and putting her back together. “I think… that you don’t want to make him believe you. You want to hate him, want him to hate you.”

“I-” She stares at him, speechless, before admitting quietly. “It would be easier.”

Hunk shakes his head. “You of all people should know it’s never easy.”

“Yeah… I know.”

“Hmm. Well, come on. Dinner’s going to be ready soon.” He stands up and offers his hand to her. After a moment she takes it, letting him pull her to her feet and into a hug. “It’ll work out. One way or another. We’ll be fine. We always are.”

The sound that comes from her mouth is almost a laugh. A breathless rush of air that could sound happy but mostly just sounds tired. Resigned, maybe.

Hunk narrows his eyes at her and before she can do anything about it, he’s digging his fingers into her sides without mercy. She shrieks at the sensation, laughter pulled from her throat as she tries to fight him off.

“Ahaha! Hunk, no! Stop it! I give! I give! Ohmygod I can’t breathe! Stop it!”

She shakes herself from his hold and it starts a chase through the hallways that somehow ropes Pidge, Shiro, and Coran into the ridiculous game of cat and mouse. The tension in her muscles fades with every breathless laugh as they run their way through the Castle.

***

“And it was as such, that the mighty Lion Warriors defeated the great beast! Saving us and proving themselves worthy of our noblest of honors…” The arusian king paused, probably to gesture grandly at the audience that Lance couldn’t see from where she was knelt on the stairs. “The Medallions of Valor!”

“Guardian of Sea,” the king addresses her, and she raises her head to look at him. “We thank you and celebrate your victory.”

Behind her, the crowd of arusians echo the words.

The king slips the medallion around her neck with all the drama he can muster. The small golden shield, barely bigger than a quarter, gently came to rest in the middle of her chest. A small pictogram of waves was carved into the metal, causing Lance to smile.

He moves to her right and repeats the sequence for Hunk and Pidge until all three of them have a shiny new piece of jewellery.

The King steps back up a stair so he stands just a bit taller than them again and raises his hands high in the air. “May the Goddess bless you on your journey and guide you safely through future battles.”

The arusians broke out into applause and cheering as the three stood to their full height. The group of warriors at the front were especially loud and Lance laughed when she caught sight of Coran hooting and hollering in the back.

“Thank you for this honor, Your Majesty.” Lance bowed to the King once more, Hunk and Pidge following suit.

“Thank you, for protecting my people,” he replied, bowing back to her with a smile on his face.

Allura ascended the steps until she was even with the arusian king. She was dressed regally, a floor-length dress done in carefully beaded reds and golds. A long, shimmering golden sash crossed over her chest and hid her left arm from view but cinched tightly at her waist, keeping her figure visible.

She gave a deep bow to the King which he returned happily.

“Thank you for your kind words, Your Majesty. It saddens me that we will be departing tomorrow but my heart is light with the knowledge that we will be leaving as friends and comrades.”

The King beckons Sunspike from the throng of warriors to ascend the steps to his side. “It brings me great joy and sorrows as well, Lion Princess. In honor of our new friendship, we gift you with the finest blade made by our most skilled blacksmith.” The warrior kneels before Allura, a feat in of itself on the thin stairs, and raises the blade above their head as an offering. “May it honor you well in battle.”

The blade offered isn’t much longer than a dagger, though for aliens as small as the arusians it’s more akin to a long sword. It’s well-crafted from what Lance can see, only slightly decorated at the hilt and practically gleaming all along the blade.

Allura gracefully takes the offered blade, smiling demurely at Sunspike and the King. “Many thanks, Your Highness. I also have a gift for you.” The princess reaches into a hidden pocket at her waist—and Lance really wants to know how she has one of those, there’s no space for it!—and pulls out a long-distance communicator.

Pidge twitches at her side, staring at the communicator in hungry fascination.

Coran had shown them a model in one of their lessons to highlight functions and compare them to the comms in their suits, but it looks like Pidge has yet to carve out some time for her to actually steal and take apart one for herself.

Honestly, her and Hunk were menaces to new technology. Always wanting to break it open to look at the insides. Lance is just glad that their passions are technological in nature rather than biological.

God, that would be a mess.

She shakes the horrifying thought from her head and focuses back on Allura, who handed the communicator to the King.

“The planet Arus shall be the first to join us in the Voltron Alliance. Contact us whenever you are in need of assistance.”

“We shall treasure it, Lion Princess.” He turns back to his people and raises his hands, the communicator flashing in the light. “Now, without further ado, let the festivities begin in tribute to our new friends and humble warriors!”

“Hurrah!” the arusian crowd agrees enthusiastically. The band that was camped out in the corner of the vestibule started an upbeat folk tune that almost all the arusians began hopping too.

Lance excitedly drags Hunk to the dance floor with her to join in while he grumbles about his two left feet. She ignores him in favor of pulling him around to the beat, long since used to dodging Hunk’s clumsy feet. Besides, the pair do more jumping and spinning than actual dancing anyway.

Lance doesn’t realize she’s smiling so much until her cheeks start to hurt. She’s enjoying herself for the first time since coming to space, losing herself to the music and laughter.

She didn’t know how tense she was until she let herself relax again.

But Hunk, who’s nothing if not a whiner, manages to pull her off the dance floor eventually. Not until after she bullies him into twirling her in the air like the scene in dirty dancing, but she always does that so she’s sure he expected it.

They’re red-faced and grinning like loons when Hunk suggests grabbing drinks. Lance agrees and follows him with minimum complaints. That is, until she sees he’s leading her to the edge of the room where Keith is leaning up against the wall like some reject anime protagonist.

She shoots Hunk a look because she knows exactly what this is about and she hates it when he meddles.

Well, she hates it when he meddles with her in particular. She thinks it’s hilarious when he meddles with other people.

When Keith catches sight of them approaching he glares at them which Lance thinks is a great sign to turn back now. But Hunk keeps trucking along, the arm wrapped around her shoulders keeping her from making a break for it.

Resigned to her fate at this point she rolls her eyes and grabs three drinks from a tray flying by. She passes one to Hunk before practically shoving the other into Keith’s hands.

“Hi, Keith! This is some party, huh?” Hunk greets warmly because he’s a devious mastermind who ropes people in with sweet smiles and cake and then by the time they see the cunning mastermind underneath, it’s too late. You’re addicted to his sugar cookies.

Wait, that sounds like a euphemism. Gross.

Keith narrows his eyes at them, doing his best to look all sullen and emo.

She props herself against the wall next to him, just close enough to annoy him. “You know,” she feels the need to point out, “You’re meant to have fun at a party. Not…” she gestures at him with her cup, “whatever this is.”

“I’m fine,” he replies shortly.

“Mhmm. Yeah, sure.” She rolls her eyes. “And have you left your little corner of solitude since the party started, Batman?”

His face does something that makes Lance want to tease him about wrinkles but she refrains. Because she is a person of kindness and virtue and great self-control. Also, Hunk is standing right there.

“What does it matter?”

“Well, you see,” she says slowly, like she’s explaining math to kindergarteners. “We go back to that whole, ‘meant to have fun at parties’ thing. Which you aren’t doing.”

“What do you care?”

Lance rolls his eyes once more at his defensiveness. He really hasn’t changed at all. Why is she doing this again?

“I don’t. Hunk does. He’s the one who dragged me off the dance floor to participate in this fun little playdate,” she drawls, swirling her glass as she stares dubiously at the purple liquid inside.

Keith turns to Hunk, eyebrow raised challengingly while Hunk returns the look with a shy smile, the one that made Lance want to coo at him like some duckling. Except not right then, obviously. She’s annoyed at him dammit.

“Ah- well, you know. You- you looked kinda… lonely? You weren’t talking to anyone and who knows the next time we’ll have one of these?”

Keith’s still tense and looking at her like she’s going to bite his face off. Which, okay, she hasn’t really given him any reason to believe otherwise, but she’s trying to say sorry and improve their relationship and whatever. Hunk may have dragged her here against her will but that doesn’t make him any less right. They’re supposed to be a team and she’s willing to be the bigger person. For now, at least.

Next time though, he’s going down.

It’d be easier if he stopped looking at her like some wild animal though. Does he really think she’ll attack him with Hunk standing right there? He’d be all disappointed and upset if she did. She can’t handle disappointed Hunk.

Disappointed Hunk is her kryptonite.

Sighing heavily, her body going loose as she exaggerates the movement, Lance tries again. “Come on, Pinocchio. Be a real boy for once. It won’t kill you, okay? Go. Dance. Shake what your momma gave ya.”

She shimmies her hips to punctuate her point as she gives him an encouraging grin.

He follows the movement with a confused frown on his face. “My mom left me as a baby. She never gave me anything.”

Lance stops moving. It’s like a record scratch in a movie. Everything just stops.

What the fuck.

He doesn’t even seem to realize the level of heartbreaking orphan he’s outputting here. It kinda makes it all worse.

“What?” Keith asks, genuinely confused.

Lance audibly facepalms because it’s the only thing she can do that emotes her level of done with this boy.

“You are a disaster human being.”

“I don’t understand.”

Lance looks back up at him and he’s just staring at her, utterly befuddled and more than a little uncomfortable with where this has gone.

For a second, she likes to think the two halves of her brain are battling it out over what option to choose. Whether she should abandon him in favor of keeping him at the comfortable distance of faint loathing or save him from the pit of despair that is himself.

In her mind, it’s an epic battle between her desires and her morality. There are monologues, dramatic rainfall, and fancy swords. It’s all suitably theatrical.

In reality, she always knew which option she was going to pick.

Withholding another full-body groan at the cruelness of the world, Lance slings an arm over Keith’s shoulder—she’s taller than him so she can do that, not that it’s important or anything.

(It is.)

Keith tenses at the contact but Lance ignores it and barrels onwards. “So, I’ve decided right now that you are hopeless—but that’s okay because you now get to hang out with me and Hunk for the night. You are going to have fun if it kills me. Starting with: dancing.”

She starts dragging him to the dance floor to Keith’s apparent displeasure. “What? No! I don’t want to-”

“If it kills me, Keith,” she repeats with more force. “Now, come on partner, show me how you do-si-do.”

Keith looks back helplessly at Hunk who just shrugs and waves him off. Lance blows him a kiss while leading Keith to the dance floor.

Just before they step on to it, Lance downs the contents of the cup in her hand.

It takes her a whole .5 seconds to regret that decision. The liquid burns in a way that is entirely unnatural and tastes like the foulest thing Lance can imagine. She spits it out immediately and throws the offending cup at the nearest wall for its crimes.

She does the same to Keith’s cup. The throwing, not the drinking.

“You’re welcome. I just saved your life.”

The look he gives her makes unimpressed look excited.

***

It’s with no small amount of satisfaction that Hunk watches Keith take his place as Lance’s dancing partner. She’s already snapping at him about proper foot placements and rhythm.

As much as he loves his best friend, it really is better Keith than him.

The reprieve won’t last long, because Lance only has so much patience and Keith’s a bomb halfway to exploding at any moment, but for now they’re okay. Watching the two sweep around the room—only a little clumsily—Hunk might’ve even said the pair were having fun.

Interesting.

He’ll need to keep an eye out to make sure no one draws any blood, but he feels like he has a while before they’re in danger of that happening.

He turns to see if he can find any of the others. In the meantime, Pidge should still be around here somewhere, or maybe he could talk to Shiro? Lance has it in her head that she’s going to help the older pilot if it’s the last thing she does. Hunk might as well try to ease the man into whatever it is Lance plans to do.

Adopt him, probably.

He finds Shiro in the crowd a second before he turns on his heel and marches out of the Castle. Coran stares after him with his head tilted.

Wonder what that’s about?

***

“Okay. I do have something to tell you.” Katie forces the words from her mouth, before she can think better of it.

Allura gazes at her in anticipation, the arusian mice on her shoulder mimicking the movement. “I had a feeling! What is it?”

“I…” Digit whines in the back of her mind and it’s like a punch to the stomach. The sound clawing at her chest, leaving her ragged and hollow. “I’m leaving Voltron.”

Katie forces herself to watch as Allura’s expression falls, her face crumbling at the words.

“What?” her voice is so quiet, especially for someone so large. It sounds fragile, like glass about to break.

Or maybe Katie’s just projecting.

“I have to. Xi said a galra outpost was the only way to find information on my family. I’ve used the data of all the distress signals sent over the last ten thousand years to determine the most likely locations of galra bases.” She takes a deep breath, steeling herself against the disappointment from both Allura and Digit. “I’m leaving tonight.”

Digit howls in her mind, begging her not to go. Not to leave her.

The pain and sorrow flooding their bond causes her to flinch from the force of it. Her mouth is dry as she watches Allura flounder in front of her.

“Pidge, you can’t-” her voice breaks.

“I thought you of all people would understand!” She doesn’t shout, but it’s a near thing. She can’t handle all of these emotions. She’s built for facts, not feelings.

Shiro had tried helping her a week ago. Talking to her about Matt and her father and sharing stories and confirming he didn’t want to hurt Matt in the arena.

She knows he was trying to reassure her but all he did was make her more determined to save them. She just wants to find her family. Can’t they see that?

“I have to. I’m sorry.” Katie finally lets herself look away. “I’ll go tell the others,” she says, even though the thought of doing that again is painful. Even though Digit is still yowling in the back of her mind, screaming and clawing at any chink in her armour.

It hurts, but in this, she can’t waver.

“My family,” she tells Digit.

“My paladin,” Digit cries back.

Katie apologizes but it’s not enough. It’ll never be enough.

She grits her teeth and moves to find Shiro.

***

After a while, Lance dances away from Keith, leaving him to fend for himself on the dance floor after a particularly stinging quip. Nothing too personal, and she’s pretty sure Keith hadn’t even meant it like that, but it reminded her of her family too much so she bailed before she could undo all the work she just did.

Her spirits are still high even if her nerves are tense, so she runs off to find Hunk and tell him all about how horrible of a dancer Keith is. As she passes a flying tray, she grabs a cup unthinkingly, her throat dry. She spits it out almost immediately but as she reaches Hunk’s side a thought occurs to her.

“I suppose we’ll have to get used to this space juice, huh?” she contemplates, only half caring. “Who knows how long it’ll be before we have Earth food again?”

Hunk hums absently, paying more attention to some folk dance a group of arusians are doing a couple paces away. “If we ever do.”

Lance furrows her brows, lips quirked in anticipation for some joke. “What do you mean?”

“Zarkon’s been ruling for 10,000 years. How long do you think it’ll take us to fix it?” He shrugs. “Assuming we survive that is.”

Lance feels like all the air in the room is gone. Sucked out into the vacuum of space that she now lives in.

(That she will die in. Hunk said so. Hunk said so and he’s never wrong-)

She must make some sort of noise or maybe her panic manifested itself in the bond somehow, because between one blink and the next, Hunk is staring at her wide-eyed and horrified. Her breath shudders through her, all the thoughts she’d been trying to ignore suddenly clamouring for her attention.

Her sisters. Her parents. All her family.

What must they think happened? What were they told? What will they think when she never comes back?

They’ll never know if— when —she dies.

They won’t mourn her when she passes because she’ll be gone, gone, gone.

“Lance,” Hunk tries, hand reaching out to her but not touching. Waiting for her.

And for perhaps the first time since she’s known him, she steps back. Denying his touch.

The look of hurt that flashes across his expression makes the feeling in her chest become a stabbing pain.

Azura croons in the back of her mind, so worried, so distant, so foreign. So unlike her mother’s soft tenor as she sang to her when she was sick and now she’ll never hear it again-

“I- I have to go,” she chokes out. “I think the space juice is getting to me, ya know?” she jokes weakly.

Hunk makes a sound too close to a whimper and she flees before either of them can start crying in the middle of the vestibule.

***

The Bridge is quiet and alien with no one else inside.

It’s everything Lance can’t stand and sure as hell doesn't want, but she collapses onto the center dias anyway. What other choice does she have?

She doesn’t know how long she’d been running through the halls and she’s not sure she cares. There’s a burning in her lungs and behind her eyes and her hands shake so badly she curls into a ball right there on the floor.

Her world is crashing down around her ears and she can’t stop it.

She’s homesick and she’s scared and she’d been a fool; hoping to survive this endless war she knows nothing about. She was going to die millions of lightyears from home and she never even got the chance to even say goodbye.

Her breath hitches. She can’t breathe.

She’d lied to herself. Made empty promises that everything would be okay when she got back home—convinced herself she’d even make it back home. 

She just wants her family.

Wants to see Francisca's smirk as she sweeps her pencil across drafting paper. And the way Mace taps her fingers on the back of her clipboard as she studies childhood disease symptoms. Wants to walk into the living room and find Sabre hogging the whole couch again.

Wants to hear Mamá mutter as she appraises a priceless suit of armour. And the way Papi chuckles as she hits another bullseye on the range. Wants to hear little Marco’s cries of joy as he toddles around the living room. 

Wants to be there for all her cousins' fantastical stories as she and her sisters crowd around the laptop camera in the kitchen. She wants to hold Pipo's old, weathered hands in her own and count the callouses on her Abuelita’s. Wants to hear them tell her stories so profoundly different and yet so similar; battles and guns and family bonds forged in loyalty, not blood.

She wants, wants, wants, wants-

Wants to be able to breathe.

How many things will she never see? How many achievements will she miss?

Mace graduating. Francisca's conquering of the fashion industry. Tio Mateo finally getting married. Marco’s third birthday. Elena’s first science fair project. Christmases. Birthdays. Everything.

Lance wants to scream. 

Azura begs her to come to the hangar, to come let her wrap her up and make the world disappear but Lance refuses. She doesn’t want the world to disappear. She wants to break and fall apart and wallow  because there’s a hollow carved out of her chest and she’s only just realized she can’t fill it back up.

Lance curls further into a ball, tears hot as they run down her cheeks.

It’s not until the sound of footsteps reach her does she stop. Her head snaps up and her heart jack-knifes in her chest.

“Coran!” hurriedly, she wipes the tears from her cheeks even as she knows the puffy eyes and smeared makeup will give her away. (Or the fact that he had to have heard her crying in the first place.)

“May I join you?” he asks, offering a smile. It’s little more than a small upturn of the lips, his eyes soft with age and sadness, but it’s so different from his usual grin that she’s thrown off balance for a moment.

Lance swallows. “Sure.”

He’s on the step below her but still sits a whole head taller than her anyway. It makes her feel small but in a… comforting way. Like she’s not so alone.

They’re silent for a long moment as Lance regains control of her breathing. It’s not until her ragged breaths fade to a smooth rhythm does Coran break the silence.

“I had a daughter once,” he says, so soft and quiet in the dim light of the crystal overhead she almost misses it. “She was the light of my life. My everything. It seemed there could never be sadness when she was around. No misfortune greater than her kindness.” He smiles again; the small, sad one. “The Castle was brighter with her in it.”

He turns to look at her and the words tumble from Lance’s mouth before she can stop them.

“What happened to her?”

The way his eyes go unfocused makes Lance want to snatch the words back, shove them down her throat, and lock them up in her chest where they can’t do stupid things.

“I just mean… I don’t- You don’t have to-” she scrambles.

“No, no. It’s… It’s alright,” he reassures. Then, slowly, he tells her, “It wasn’t the galra. I… lost her long before that. She had a habit of giving too much of herself to others. She was too much like my grandmother that way.”

“I’m sorry,” she says because what else is there to say?

He places a gentle hand on her knee. “I’m not telling you this for your sorrow, my dear. I want you to know I understand your heartache. The loss of one’s family is a horror I wish on no one.”

“I didn’t lose them though,” she bites out, glaring down at her armoured toes. “I abandoned them.”

“That’s not true-”

“Isn’t it?” she snaps. “They have no idea where I am or if I’m even alive! I ran off and joined a war, Coran! And I can’t leave or see them because I’m bound here by duty and Azura and all those people out there who are terrified. I’m being torn in two different directions and I don’t know what to do. Coran, I-” her voice breaks. “I just wish I could see them, but I can’t.”

She buries her face back into her arms, the feeling of shame and sorrow pulling her down like lead weight in her chest.

“I miss them so much,” she whimpers into her sleeve.

Suddenly, there are arms wrapping around her, pulling her into a warm chest. She shifts without thinking, burying her face into the fabric of his shirt as her sobs and Coran’s gentle coos and hums mingle in the air.

It reminds her so much of her Tíos—of her Papi, even—that she aches.

But she would give anything to never let this moment end. She’s warm and safe and Hunk’s hugs are familiar but this is… paternal. Comforting in a completely different way. A way she needs right now.

Eventually, her sobs turn to shuddering gasps which turn into sniffles which turn into uneven breaths. The entire time, Coran doesn’t stop his gentle noises or the comforting sweep of his hands up and down her back.

“My dear girl, how do you stand all the heartache in your chest? Doesn’t it get crowded with all the love tucked away in there?” Lance huffs weakly into his chest. “If your family loves you half as much as you do them,” he tells her, resting his head atop her own, “Then I have not a doubt in my mind that they’ll be anything but overjoyed to see you when you return to Earth. Safe and sound.”

“When?”

“When,” he repeats firmly. “I promise you, I will do everything in my power to make sure you return to your home. On my Goddess and the love of my daughter, I swear you will see your family again, my dear.”

Lance stares up at him for a moment, unsure what to do in the face of that. Acting on instinct, she squeezes the altean so hard he wheezes.

“Thank you,” she whispers into his chest.

She doesn’t see the way his eyes soften, but she feels his arms tighten around her just a hair. To Lance, it feels like gulping down air after drowning.

They stay like that for who knows how long, just basking in each other’s comfort. Neither of them wants to be the first to move away. But, eventually, Coran gives her one final squeeze before loosening his arms from around her.

“Come on, number three. We best get back to the party. I’m sure they’re missing us.”

Lance hums non-committedly. She wipes her hands under her eyes once more and stands, Coran towering over her.

She stares up at him.

“What?”

“You are so tall. I now know how Pidge feels whenever she stands next to Hunk.”

That startles a laugh out of Coran who shakes his head down at her before handing her a handkerchief. She takes it gladly.

Walking towards the door, she feels lighter. She hopes that, eventually, space will mellow out. That every other day will stop throwing this kind of shit at her. She’s always been optimistic like that.

She’s lost in thought, still trying to reorganize her thoughts and think about what she’ll say to Hunk when she gets back down to the party. She needs to apologize for running off like that, for one, then maybe they should have a sleepover. Lance will see if she can scrounge up some altean nail polish.

Hunk likes it when she paints his nails. Says it’s calming.

Lance thinks calming things are pretty important right about now. Maybe she should see if the rest of the team would go for some sort of relaxation day? They all need it.

Rover whizzes past them into the room and Lance raises a hand in greeting even though she’s sure the bot doesn’t notice. Too long hanging around Pidge, she supposes. “Hey, Rover.”

She makes it two more steps before she wonders where Pidge is if Rover’s here. Something makes her turn back around, the question on her tongue as she follows the drone’s path to the crystal hanging from the ceiling.

She watches as the drone changes from friendly green to menacing red, the lights blinking ominously. Then the sound of beeping reaches her ears.

Her body moves before her mind even registers what she’s seeing.

She sprints for Coran who didn’t see the drone. Coran who’s still in the blast zone. Coran who just helped her when he didn’t have to. Coran who is now comfort and warmth and hers.

His name tears itself from her throat a second before she tackles his large frame to the ground, trying in vain to cover his body with her own.

The bomb goes off before they hit the ground.

Heat sears itself across her back and her helmet snaps into place a second too late.

Her world goes dark.

Chapter Text

“You can’t value the lives of two people over the entire universe! What about the Paladin Code?” Keith insists angrily as Pidge glares at him, defiant and pissed. Keith takes a step forward and for a full second, Hunk expects Pidge to actually start hissing and spitting like a cornered animal.

Shiro cuts in, grabbing Keiths’ shoulder and stopping the Red Paladin in his tracks. “Stop it.”

“Why? If Pidge leaves there is no Voltron!” he turns back to Pidge, a sneer marring his face. “You’d abandon your Lion? Your duty to the universe?”

Pidge flinches, then looks angry for doing so. “I’m not abandoning Digit!”

Keith scoffs. “Sure looks like it from where I’m standing.”

Pidge goes red with fury and Hunk steps forward to stop her from lunging at Keith when an explosion knocks him off balance. The Castle walls shake and he only manages to catch himself a second before he crashes into Pidge, the two of them grabbing onto each other in order to stay upright. With a silent pop, the lights around them brighten before shutting off, bathing the panicking crowd in darkness.

“What’s happening?” he shouts over the din. The arusians are all rushing past them, a sea of small bodies flooding through the entryway. Hunk grips Pidge tighter, lest she get swept up in the crowd.

“There must be something wrong with the Bridge!” Allura shouts back, already running for the stairs, her skirt bunched around her hips. “The entire Castle’s lost power!”

“Fucking hell!” Pidge exclaims, running after her. “You’re a super-advanced alien species and you don’t have a backup power generator? What the fuck even are you people?”

Allura doesn’t deign that with a response and the group of them sprint to the Bridge at breakneck speed.

As they round the hallway leading to it, Hunk feels his stomach drop.

The doors have been blown outwards and thick grey smoke billows out into the hallway. Hunk sees Pidge tap on her helmet to keep the smoke out and follows her lead with the others while Allura rips the hem of her dress to tie around her mouth.

The Bridge is a mess. Glass lies all along the floor and the dais is cracked with bits of the ceiling scattered about. In the middle of the mess lies a mound of something.

The smoke clears a little further and Hunk can see that the mound on the ground are people.

Coran and Lance.

The pair are in a tangled heap on the floor, Lance on top of the taller alien with the back of her armour scorched black.

Hunk’s world stops at the sight.

For a moment he’s frozen in place, unable to move or force himself to understand the scene in front of him.

Then, all at once, he’s rushing forward, a strangled cry of “Lance!” forcing its way past his lips.

His hands are shaking as they run along her back and sides checking for injuries or signs she may have spinal damage. He presses his head to the back of her suit in the hopes of finding a heartbeat or breathing or something.

He is only vaguely aware that he’s begging her to wake up between his panicked breaths. Pleading with her to tell him she’s okay, that it’s all going to be fine. To smile and tell him not to worry.

She doesn’t.

He pulls her into his lap, cradling her to his chest. Her head lolls to the side and a sob wracks through him. He shakes with the force of it even as he tries to keep himself steady so not to cause more damage than he already did by moving her into his lap.

His medical training screams at him to lay her back flat, to apply first aid but it’s drowned out by the voice screaming at him that she’s dying, she’s broken, she’s in front of you, hold her in her last moments, she’s dying-

Lance groans.

His hand shoots to the side of her helmet as if she’ll be able to feel his hand through the metal. “Lance? Lance, please, wake up.”

Coran’s hand crosses into his line of sight and Hunk flinches away instinctively, causing Lance to whimper at the sudden movement. Hunk’s chest tightens painfully.

Coran grabs Lance’s shoulder, a strangled whine coming from his throat that has Hunk turning to look at him. The older alien looks brokenly down at her, his long ears pulled back like a mournful cat and soot covering his face and hair. He looks mostly unharmed; Lance having taken the brunt of the explosion. “No, no, no, no, no- I promised! I promised her-”

“Coran!” Allura appears out of nowhere, hands on either side of his face and forcing him to look at her. “Coran, what happened?”

It takes a second for his eyes to focus on her. “I… I don’t know.”

“We need to get her to the Infirmary,” Pidge says joining the conversation, shoving her hand under Lance’s neck to check for a pulse. Her voice is forceful, but Hunk can hear the way it shakes.

“We can’t.”

His head whips toward Allura so fast, he thinks he hears his neck crack. “What do you mean we can’t?” Hunk asks hysterically.

“The crystal’s broken. Which means there’s no power. Even if we get her there, there isn’t anything we can do for her. The pods are powerless.”

“Seriously. Why don’t you guys have backup power?” Pidge hisses, tapping away at her suit's internal computer.

At that exact moment, there was a beeping sound coming from Allura. She pulls out the universal communicator, the device blinking rapidly. She taps the screen and the room is filled with the sound of chaos. Screaming and crashing is heard in the background and Allura looks concerned by whatever she sees on the screen.

“Lion Princess! Our village is under attack. Please, you and your Warriors must help us!”

Keith comes up behind her shoulder to look at the screen and winces. “We’ll be there as soon as we can.” he turns to Pidge. “You need to get to your Lion.”

“I don’t take orders from you, ” Pidge snaps without looking up.

The Arusian King makes a sound like a whine. “You will not help us?”

“No!” Keith says. “Yes! Just- We’ll be there!” he turns more forcefully the second time, as Allura reassures the King. “Pidge.”

“We all need to calm down,” Shiro speaks over them all, voice confident and smooth. A strong pillar in the storm of their fraying emotions. “Panicking won’t help Lance. Princess, how do we get the Castle back online?”

Allura looks up at the ceiling, towards the shattered remains of the power source. But it’s Coran who answers. “We need a new Crystal. We need to get to a Balmera.” He stands up shakily and Allura is by his side in a second.

“Got it!” Pidge exclaims. “There’s one not far from here, we shouldn’t need a wormhole,” she swears under her breath. “But it’s galra occupied.”

Coran says something in another language that is probably unflattering. His eyes turn back to Lance and something in his gaze turns to steal. “Fine. Hunk, come with me.”

“What? No! I’m not leaving her!” he tightens his grip around her as if scared someone might try to take her away.

“Hunk,” Coran pleads. “I need someone strong to help carry back the crystal.”

“No, I can’t- I can’t just leave her.” The panic is rising back up again. This is why he had wanted to leave, to run away and not look back. But Lance and her too-big heart, Lance and her need to save everyone. Hunk’s breath hitches and he thinks he would’ve had a panic attack right then and there if Shiro hadn’t knelt down and grounded him with a hand on his shoulder.

“I’ll make sure she’s safe.” Hunk looks at him, still hesitant. Still terrified. “She needs that crystal, Hunk. Or else…” Shiro doesn’t finish the sentence. No one dares.

Hunk feels sick at just the thought.

He takes one more look at Lance before carefully leaning down and pressing their foreheads together. “I’ll be back okay? Hang in there.”

Slowly, gently, Hunk places Lance in Shiro’s arms. His hands lingering around her as if she’ll suddenly jump up and beg for him to stay.

She doesn’t.

“Come on. I’ll plug the coordinates into Keone.” Pidge tells him, before turning back to Keith her voice sharp when she speaks to him. “I’ll meet you down at the Arusian village with Digit as soon as I’m finished.”

“I’ll come with you,” Allura tells Keith before the two go racing off.

Hunk spares one last look at Lance’s broken form.

“I’ll protect her,” Shiro promises.

Hunk nods because his voice won’t work. Then he’s running after Pidge and Coran before he can change his mind.

***

Takashi cradles Lance to his chest as best he can, trying to support her head and avoid aggravating any hidden injuries. Even still, she whimpers whenever he moves too quickly, the sound tearing itself from her throat seemingly on its own.

He steps as carefully as he can, but he can only do so much without sacrificing too much speed. He needs to get to the vestibule. The crystal bombed and the village attacked at the same time? Something’s happened. Someone wants them weak and split up.

Takashi needs to get somewhere he can easily defend the Castle and Lance. And with the Vestibule being the only ground entrance to the Castle and with enough alcoves to easily hide Lance for a period of time, it’s the best place with short notice and not enough resources.

He gets there just in time to see a group of Galra marching up the courtyard.

Hoping they haven’t noticed him yet, Takashi places Lance down carefully in a nook at the end of the hallway. She’s tucked into the corner which should help hide her but leaves her defenseless if someone walks over here.

Takashi grits his teeth. It will have to do.

He sprints forward to meet the approaching enemy force, a snarl on his lips. As he gets closer, he realizes who it is standing at the head of the infiltration group and Takashi goes cold.

“Sendak.”

He’s still as giant as Takashi remembers. A nightmare pretending to be a person.

The dim light makes him more monstrous than normal. His hulking, mismatched shoulders and glittering red robotic eye pulled straight from Takashi’s darkest nightmares. His uniform gleams like tar in the moonlight and his teeth flash as he speaks.

For a second, the arena threatens to overwhelm him. The image of Sendak sitting in the royal box, laughing and cheering with the rest of the ship as his fellow prisoners slaughter each other.  The smell of blood and being beaten into the dirt feel so real at that moment.

The fear feels so real at that moment.

He shoves it down before it can be too much. He can’t afford to fail right now. He thinks about Lance and Keith and Adam and everyone else who needs him right now and he pushes the memories back into a little box to deal with later.

“Stand aside.” Sendak’s voice is deep and commanding. A demand in itself to be obeyed.

Once upon a time, Takashi followed his orders.

Now, he grits his teeth and settles into a fighting stance that has become as ingrained into his bones as the way to fly a plane or the deep aching warmth he gets whenever he thinks about Adam's smile.

“No,” Takashi says and takes great pleasure in watching Sendak's face morph into a scowl. His arm flares with bright purple heat and on his other, his bayard materializes; a shield shaped into a circle of feathers. “You’re not getting inside.”

Slowly, Sendak’s lips spread into a smile that looks more like he's baring his teeth than anything else. His large purple ears lie flat against his skull and for a moment, Takashi feels like prey.

“Oh, but I am.”

He moves faster than Takashi can react. With a crackle of purple lightning and metal, he’s sprawled across the ground at Sendak’s feet, dragged forward by the hulking prosthetic of an arm that’s as big as Takashi is tall.

He’s rolling back to his feet before he’s stopped moving and the ground next to him explodes with the force of Sendak’s fist.

Takashi dances out of his range before lunging back at him, swinging his Bayard at the metal of Sendak’s left arm.

The fight lasts seconds, but to Takashi, it feels like hours. The way Sendak pushes at him relentlessly quickly tires him out.

Blow. Dodge. Swing. Dodge. Hit. Roll. Swipe.

Takashi goes in for a punch to Sendak's stupid furry face, but he blocks it with ease. His eyes narrow and, if it were anyone else, Takashi might’ve said they looked impressed.

Sendak’s robotic eye sweeps across Shiro’s prosthetic as he strains against him.

“I see you’ve spent time with the Druids,” he observes. Takashi keeps his face carefully neutral, refusing to give anything away. “Lady Haggar and her brood do love their experiments.” Sendak’s face turns wolfish and it becomes harder for Takashi to keep Sendak’s arm at bay. “Too bad you didn’t get the latest model.”

With that, Sendak suddenly draws his arm back, causing Takashi to stumble forward before his fist lands solidly against his sternum and pushes him back through the hallway.

Pain explodes in his chest and Takashi can’t breathe for a moment. He spins end over end as he tumbles back down the hallway.

He lands with a wheeze and black dots dancing in his vision.

It takes everything in him just to push himself back to his feet.

He doesn’t dare look to where Lance is hidden, doesn’t dare check on her in case they find her. He keeps his back to her and eyes ahead, falling into a protective stance.

He promised Hunk he’d keep her safe—he promised himself he'd keep her safe—and damn if he's going to lose his team again.

Sendak’s running at him and Takashi only has a second to duck before there’s the gauntlet soaring above his head. He swipes at Sendak’s chest but misses.

For someone so large, Sendak is unnervingly quick on his feet.

He tries pushing Sendak back towards the entrance. He also tries keeping himself between Sendak and Lance which makes it harder than it already was and provides a weakness Sendak doesn’t hesitate to exploit.

The galra Commander doesn’t take long to notice how Takashi keeps himself firmly planted between him and a seemingly random piece of wall, even at the cost of losing ground.

Sendak’s toying with him. Feigning left and right around him until his breath is coming out in harsh pants and his movements are slow. Eventually, the Commander tires of it, and swats him away like a pesky fly. Takashi crashes against a wall, his head slamming back against the unyielding metal and making him yelp.

He pushes himself back up, desperate to get back to Sendak. But the second he’s on his feet, he freezes.

Sendak holds Lance in front of him like a broken doll. His gauntlet wrapped around her upper body as he lets her hang.

Takashi takes a step forward without thinking and the hand around Lance’s chest squeezes. A broken cry tears itself from Lance’s throat and Takashi stops dead in his tracks.

“Ah, ah! Stand down or your friend here is as good as dead.”

Takashi grits his teeth. Every muscle in his body tense and angry as he raises his arms in surrender. He hears a whoosh behind him and then pain explodes from the back of his head.

His world goes black.

***

Not a second after Katie steps out of Keone, does the Lion spring upwards and leap into the air, heedless of the small girl who’d yet to get out of the way.

Katie covers her face from the wind, nearly getting bowled over by the force of it. Rover’s sent flying several feet before he can right himself again.

She’d be upset at Hunk’s reckless flying in different circumstances, but she can hardly blame him right then.

She moves towards the swinging hangar doors, ready to book it to her own hangar when she catches a flash of purple out of the corner of her eye. A feeling of dread pools in her stomach as she raises her head to where Keone just left.

A particle barrier stands against the night sky. Purple and glitching wildly before falling into some semblance of stability.

It takes only a second for Katie’s brain to realize the implications of this and what it means for her and the ship. It takes another second for her to cram her panic into a bottle so she can think clearly and deal with the problem in front of her.

“Well. At least now you can’t leave me,” Digit tells her, only half-jokingly.

Katie drags a hand down her face, unwilling to deal with that in the midst of her current crisis.

“Come on, Rover. I guess we have a Castle to save.”

***

Keith pounds on the particle barrier, his forearms stinging from where he keeps slamming them against the unyielding energy shield. Anger and frustration bubble in his chest and he has to bite back a snarling growl that threatens to explode from his chest.

He shoves the urge deep down and locks it in a chest where he keeps every other weird thing he wants to but knows he shouldn’t do.

Allura’s not much better. Her face is twisted in disbelief and fury as she punches and claws at the barrier.

“No! No, no, no, no!” she roars.

Keith steps back with a snarl and summons his bayard, the weight of the sword heavy in his palm as he draws back his arm to strike.

“Wait!” Allura grabs his wrist. Her grip isn’t painful but he’s suddenly reminded that she’s seven feet of pure strength and she is also very angry right now. “It won’t work.”

Keith glares at her. “Won’t know until we try.”

“Keith, no. You’ll only injure yourself.”

“What other choice do we have?” he shouts, stabbing his sword into the ground in frustration when she lets him go.

Allura looks up, her long ears pulled back like a cat’s and twitching in irritation. “We need to find a way inside. Whoever has taken over the Castle has a crystal, which means they can take off. We can’t let that happen.”

“And how exactly are we supposed to stop them?” Keith asks, throwing his arms out at his sides. “If you hadn’t noticed, we’re kind of on the wrong side of an indestructible barrier.”

Allura grits her teeth, purple irises flashing in the moonlight. “I know.”

Keith opens his mouth to say something else when Pidge’s voice crackles to life through the comms, cutting him off. Relief floods through his chest at the sound of her.

“Keith? Can you hear me?” Her voice is a whisper but she comes through loud and clear.

“Pidge?” he calls, “Yeah we can hear you. Where are you?”

“I’m inside. Sendak’s invaded the Castle, he’s got some sentries with him and another galra.” Pidge pauses, her voice hesitant. “They’re holding Lance and Shiro hostage.”

Panic and fear explode inside his chest. He can’t lose Shiro again. He just got him back.

Allura taps her communicators slash diamond earrings, voice filled with the authority she commanded back on her home planet. Keith straightens in response automatically before realizing he’s being ridiculous.

“Have they started the launch sequence?”

It’s quiet for a moment on Pidge’s end which Keith assumes to mean that she’s checking. “No. Not yet. But they’re not far off.”

Allura’s shoulders loosen a fraction, a sliver of relief breaking through the tenseness of her spine. “Okay. We’re working with a bit more time than I expected. You’re going to need you to go to the main engine control panel and disconnect the primary turbine from the Central Energy Chamber. If you do that, Sendak will have to reset the whole system. It’ll buy us enough time to get inside."

“You got it. Central Energy Chamber, done. I’ll call you back when I get there.”

“Be careful.” “Don’t get caught.” Allura and Keith say at the same time.

Pidge scoffs and he gets the feeling that she just rolled her eyes at them. “Will do. Pidge out.”

***

Coran screams as Keone goes crashing down a mineshaft, succeeding in giving Hunk ear damage as well as scaring the hell out of him.

It’s completely unfair. Hunk would also very much like to scream right now but he’s too busy making sure they don’t die in a fiery explosion.

He doesn't even know what happened. Keone had only just crossed into the atmosphere and suddenly they were falling from the sky without explanation or reason. It’s terrifying, the way she just went quiet in his mind and then suddenly the brunt of the in-flight controls were his to manage. His co-pilot just went silent and Hunk panics.

He tries to keep her from crashing into the rocks at the bottom of the quarry and damaging her more, but there’s only so much he can do to stop a ten-ton robot cat from slamming into the ground. Coran goes flying off his feet at the impact, flailing wildly as he lands in a heap.

For a second everything is silent. The in-cabin lights are dim and the controls aren’t responding at all anymore.

“Keone? Keone, are you there?” he asks nervously.

He gets a little more than a weak purr in the back of his mind. Which, well, just proves that she is most definitely not okay because if there is one thing his Lion is, it’s a chatterbox. But he nods, his hands wringing nervously in front of him as he turns to Coran who’s still face down on the floor.

“Uh… Coran? You good, man?”

“I’m about as good as I’ll ever be, Number One!” he says, voice muffled but oddly still as chipper as it always is.

“Do you… want to get up? Maybe?”

He moves so quickly it nearly sends Hunk flying out of his seat in surprise. One moment the alien is motionless on the floor and the next he’s standing back up and pushing his face into Hunk’s at an uncomfortable degree. “Of course! A wonderful suggestion, my boy!”

Hunk looks at him worriedly. Maybe he hit his head? Or is this how Coran always acts? He hasn’t spent much time with the older alien in the past weeks. He’d mostly been sticking close to Lance and sometimes Pidge. Following them around half out of comfort and half in terror either might suddenly disappear and leave him in space alone.

Hunk very carefully doesn’t think about how the latter is currently far more likely than he’s comfortable with it ever being.

He also carefully doesn’t think about how he’ll have to get used to this kind of thing because they’re in the middle of a war now and this is his new normal.

Hunk is trying very hard to not start hyperventilating.

The yellow glowing eyes staring at him from the darkness of the tunnel are not helping him at all. Panic jack-knifes in his chest as he starts thinking about all the horrors that could be lurking down here in the depths of an alien planet, his imagination going haywire.

“Calm down… my dear,” Keone says, her tired voice cutting off his scream before it leaves his mouth. “The people of this… planet are friends. They are of the earth.”

“Keone?”

She takes a shuddering breath in his mind, echoed by her settling more firmly into the earth. Her voice is raspy and slurred like she’s on the brink of passing out. “Trust them. You will… be safe.”

And with that, the cabin lights fall back on emergency power and Keone goes completely silent. Only the vaguely warm thrumming in his navel assuring him she’s still there, that she hasn’t left him.

Hunk’s still scared out of his wits but… Keone wouldn’t put him in danger. Steeling himself, he pushes out of the chair and, along with Coran, exits the Lion.

They emerge from her maw at the same time the creatures step into the dim light of the mineshaft.

For a second Hunk thinks he’s looking at living, bipedal rocks. Wide flat faces, short horns sprouting from both their foreheads and jaw with grey, ridged looking skin. The pair stand taller than Hunk and are far broader than he is, looking as if either could easily crush Hunk between their long, bulky hands.

But they don’t seem particularly threatening. The way they hold themselves seems almost docile.

The smaller of the two, the one with bone or ivory earrings hanging from two cone-like—Hunk is gonna guess they’re ears?—gasps at the sight of them. Their large glowing eyes widen, seeming to glow in the dimness.

“Skylings, Rax!” Their voice is raspy and feminine sounding. The translation makes them sound almost old fashioned. Like those old Victorian movies Nalani likes so much. “The Lion! Do you think?”

“The Lions are just shadow show, Shay,” the taller one—Rax—says even as they stare at Keone.

The sound of engines above them draws the group of four’s attention. When Hunk sees the galra patrol following them down, the panic from before comes back full force. His eyes go wild as he looks around in vain for a place to hide. Keone’s out in the open and they have no way to move her.

The galra are going to get her and it will be his fault that they lost Voltron.

Desperately, he steps towards the aliens. “Please! You have to help us.”

Rax narrows their eyes. “We don’t have to do anything, stranger.”

“Rax!”

Hunk grows more desperate; the panic makes it hard to breathe and his voice breaks as he begs. There’s too much that he cares about on the line to give a damn about some pride he never had anyway.

“Please! The galra can’t have her! They’ll- They’ll abuse her!”

“And kill us!” Coran pipes up.

Shay looks alarmed at the very thought before something determined settles across their features. They pull Rax down with them, pressing both their hands into the rock below them. Rax looks at them angrily but seems to do whatever it was Shay wanted because in the next moment a soft blue light begins to spread outwards from the contact.

Magic, something deep inside his chest instantly recognizes.

The more rational part of his brain quickly starts calling him an utter lunatic for even thinking of the idea. The cognitive dissonance of the whole thing bangs like a gong in his mind.

The feeling only gets worse when he follows the light and sees Keone sinking beneath the hard rock under his feet as easily as if it were nothing more than water.

Hunk briefly wonders if maybe he’s just gone insane and this is all an elaborate hallucination. It’s a comforting thought.

Just before Hunk can really start panicking, Keone’s eyes flash gold and she starts purring reassuringly in his head. A clear message of it’ll be okay.

Hunk doesn’t start moving again until Shay shoves him down a connecting tunnel, pushing him and Coran inside seconds before the patrol passes behind them.

His heart doesn’t stop beating like a rabbit in his chest even after the worst of the danger has passed. An itch at the base of his spine keeps him on edge and he places his hand on the wall to steady himself.

“Thank you,” he says as sincerely as possible as he tries to stop himself from throwing up. His Mama drilled manners into his brain and a few weeks away from Earth is hardly enough to knock them out of him.

Shay smiles, their sharp teeth glinting in the low light as they tilt their head in an odd sort of half bow. “Of course. Anything for the Guardian of Balmera!”

Hunk blinks at them.

Shay tilts their head, looking oddly disappointed. Rax scowls over their shoulder. “Are you not of Voltron?”

“Uh. No, I am. I just… I’m not a Guardian? I think you have me confused with someone else. I’ve never even been to this planet before.”

Shay laughs at him. “You are the Gold Paladin, Guardian of Planets and Rock. You are most revered as a friend to our Balmera. It is why she so quickly answered your call for help.” They point to his hand on the wall. “You are of the Balmera as much as we.”

Hunk turns to see what they’re pointing at and quickly snatches his arm back from the wall as if it had burned him. He looks frantically between his hand and the wall as if just staring at it for long enough will explain to him why the fuck his hand was glowing like Shay and Rax’s had been.

Does this mean he’s magic?

The thought makes Hunk short circuit.

He whirls to Coran, a helpless string of incomprehensible sounds spilling from his mouth as he gestures wildly at his hand. He hopes Coran understands the level of panic Hunk is reaching here. It’s a miracle he hasn’t passed out from high blood pressure or had a stress heart attack or something.

Not to self: space is not good for your mental health.

Coran looks at him, waffling for a moment before giving him a sheepish little grin that reminds him of Lance. “Ah, yes well. The young lady isn’t wrong exactly. There are many names for what you are, my boy, but… Guardian of Earth, or whatever planet we’re on, is the most common I suppose.”

Hunk makes another frustrated noise that doesn’t strictly mean anything, but Coran understands anyway.

“Well, I wasn’t meant to tell you! It’s your Lion’s duty to explain the intricacies of the bond and its… effects. Anyone who isn’t a paladin doesn't know much about it I’m afraid. It’s a closely guarded secret, you know. Wouldn’t want the enemy to be able to take advantage of a Lion’s bond, now would we?”

Something flashes across Coran’s face before it’s replaced by his trademark dazzling smile. Hunk thinks it might’ve been worry or fear. The idea sits like lead in his stomach.

Hunk babbles a little more before stumbling through a coherent sentence. “Wait, are you telling me I’m connected to the dirt through my Lion? Wha- Why? How?”

 Coran gives him a look. “Ignoring that fact that I just told you non-Paladins know very little about how the bond functions; I believe it’s that your Lions have special connections to the universe, and through your bond with them, so do you. It’s a very ancient magic. Not many people still understand or believe in it. Fewer still can wield it as Paladins can.”

Coran rubs his chin thoughtfully. “Though, normally young paladins don’t show such signs of the bond until much later…” he grins brightly, slapping Hunk hard on the back and almost toppling him. “You should be proud of yourself, my boy! This means your connection to the Yellow Lion is even more powerful than we believed!”

“Joy,” Hunk says dazedly. Then stands up straight realizing something. “Wait! Is that why the arusians worshipped us? Because we’re magic? ” Hunk doesn’t shriek, but it’s a near thing. The balmerans might flinch from the noise, Hunk isn’t sure. He’s too busy trying to corral his racing thoughts.

“Well, you didn’t think the arusians just gave you those fancy titles for laughs, did you?” Coran chuckles like he isn’t single-handedly shattering Hunk’s entire worldview with only a few words.

“I just thought it was symbolic or hero worship or something!”

“That isn’t untrue. But yes, some planets believe Voltron to be… well,” Coran shrugs, weighing his hands. “gods and the such.”

Hunk grasps at his hair, fingers digging into his scalp and grounding him. “Oh my god. How can you talk for hours on end about the great battles and achievements of the Paladins of Old, but you don’t even think to mention the magic?”

Coran huffs. “I told you, it is not I who is meant to tell you. And besides, learning of the bond’s intricacies before you’re ready can be… overwhelming. I had hoped it would be some time before you had to know.”

“Oh my god.” Hunk drags a hand down his face, grabbing at the threads of his fraying composure. “When we fix this crisis, we are so having a conversation about this.”

Coran shrugs, unconcerned and Hunk feels like exploding in frustration. No, that is not an overreaction. Hunk is perfectly valid, thank you very much.

***

She screams.

Whimpers and sobs tear themselves from her throat as she thrashes in the darkness of this not-place. The void hisses and spits vitriol at her like bitter poison. Agony claws at her skin and digs into her bones, tearing her from the inside out and leaving her as shredded flesh and charred muscle.

Her voice has long since gone hoarse.

And still, she screams.

She fights to rise to the surface. Break free from the drowning prison and for a moment it seems to work. She fights through the pain and the world turns grey. She thinks someone picks her up.

She doesn’t know what happens after that but suddenly she’s falling and she can’t breathe and the world is agony and falling and flames that eat away at her mind.

She screams.

The Nothing is dark. The Nothing is cold. The Nothing is… peaceful.

The flames are dulled. Burning but numb, as if there is no more of her to burn.

Nothing more to take.

She floats for minutes-hours-days. She doesn’t know.

Time is meaningless.

There is only the Nothing and herself.

Even the whale song and waves and thunder are gone. That… makes her… sad? Why is she sad?

Why? Why? Why?

Why… not?

Why not… keep falling?

The further she goes, the less pain there is. The void smothers the flames that bite and lick at her, leaving her with balmy blisters and red scratches.

Her mind feels sluggish down here. Thoughts scattered around her like stardust. It’s very pretty here in the Nothing.

Her heartbeat slows and her eyelids droop.

Would it be bad? To rest… just for a little bit. For… a while.

The pain dulls and the void feels like a hug from an old friend.

She sinks into it.

Then, she screams.

Something yanks her back up into the watery grey and the flames are an inferno once more.

She thrashes more than she thought she could with melted skin and charred bones. She screams and fights and falls apart, drunk on the agony coursing through her veins.

She almost misses the gray figure standing before her, feminine and curvy and barely there at the edges.

She thinks the figure might touch her cheek but it’s hard to feel anything other than the flames as she burns.

“There are still so many things for you to do, little one. You must fight. Your story cannot end before it has even begun.” The figure leans in and through her deliriousness, she thinks she sees kaleidoscope eyes before something soft and cool presses against her forehead. A kiss. “You will be mighty. Until we meet again, my childe.”

Lance doesn’t sink back down into the black, but her pain lessens anyway. Her fiery agony dulling into a sharp throbbing.

The figure is gone when she opens her eyes.

***

Katie makes it to the Central Energy Chamber without any problems, her luck holding true.

Coran had taken her here last week when they were running the tests to make sure it was working properly. A good thing, because that means she’s already geeked out over the suspended, miniaturized star core they use as a turbine and can get down to business without distractions.

It also means she has a basic understanding of how it even works, which means she shouldn’t blow it up which is nice.

It’d be anticlimactic if she got blown up by a mini star going supernova. Well, no. That’d actually be cool as fuck, but not exactly helpful at the moment.

Katie walks along the catwalk to the main control panel, Rover tagging along happily. There’s a point where he twirls out over the edge of the railing and Katie has to stop herself from trying to grab him. The thought of him crashing into the abyss below them making her heart pound nervously.

“Okay, I’m by the turbine, Allura,” she updates, popping open the hatch and poking around the inside.

“Fantastic!” Allura praises, her voice sounding relieved. “Now, open the hatch and find the central computer control hub and enter the following sequence…”

“Hold up! All the labels are in Altean!”

“The- blank- blue turtle- Pidge?” crackling overtakes the comms and Katie whips her head up to look at the turbine, finding it arcing with energy and making angry crackling noises.

She does not panic.

She does, however, frantically try contacting Allura for a little longer than is probably wise for the situation.

“Allura? I can’t tell which one it is! Allura!” Katie growls her frustration to the ceiling. She starts poking at things in the hub, thinking she might be lucky enough to happen upon how to shut it down.

The crackling gets louder and Katie is hyper-aware of how much time she has.

She does not panic.

“How the fuck am I supposed to deactivate it if I can’t even read any of it?” she shouts.

“There is more than one way to stop something from starting,” Digit purrs in her mind, mischief and humor coating her voice. Katie gets the feeling her Lion is flicking her tail in amusement.

Katie’s eyebrows furrow. “What are you-”

She bolts upright, a slow grin sliding across her face as understanding hits her. “Well, I suppose that’s one way to do things,” she says pulling out her bayard and considering it. Finally, she shrugs, eyes sparkling with mischief. “Here goes nothing.”

She slams her hand into the hub system, her bayard crackling with electricity.

A second after she does it, she realizes she could’ve maybe thought this through better.

Katie’s blown backwards by the electricity, her entire arm sparking and tingling with the numbed sensation of pins and needles. Her shoulder feels like it’s on fire. She gasps at the pain and goes tumbling back down the catwalk.

It’s pure dumb luck she doesn’t go over the edge and fall to her death.

Rover beeps worriedly, rapid chirps that overlap with Digit’s own fearful chirp-whines. Groaning, she pushes herself to her elbows, her right arm protesting angrily.

“Holy shit,” she says quietly but with feeling.

Digit huffs. “For a genius, you are an idiot.”

“Hey!” she protests, her chest aching as she snaps. “You told me to do it!”

“I never said that,” her Lion says haughtily. “And if I did, I didn’t tell you to stick your hand in it!”

Katie grunts, pushing herself unsteadily to her feet. She needs to move. Someone will eventually come down here to see why the turbine isn’t working and Katie would rather be literally anywhere else when that happens. “Maybe you should be more clear next time.”

Digit growls good-naturedly. “And they say my paladins are supposed to be the smart ones.”

Katie makes the obligatory offended noises before going quiet to stave off the pain in her chest. After this is all over she’s going to force Allura to give her more of that miracle cream because like hell she’s doing training with a bruise the size of Texas on her side.

***

“He enslaved your entire planet?” Hunk asks breathlessly. His eyes travel around the fire, meeting the glowing yellow of the Balmerans in disbelief.

Colril, Shay and Rax’s father, shrugs sadly and stares down at their soup bowl. “Zarkon may rule, but he allows us our family. That is what truly matters in the end.”

“I guess…” Hunk responds hesitantly, thinking of his Mama and Tina and his sister and all his little brothers. His heart feels heavy in his chest when he thinks about how worried they must be. The soup bowl tilts dangerously as his hands tighten around it unconsciously.

“You are without your family.” It’s not a question. Not the way Mal, their elder, says it.

“Ah, well. Saving the universe means sacrifices, right?” Hunk tries smiling but it feels hollow even to him. “I have Lance…” Don’t think about it. “But, yes. The rest of them are far away. Safe.” 

Shay, who was kneeling on the ground next to him, places a comforting hand on Hunk’s knee. “To be without one’s kin is a terrible fate. I am sorry you live in such sorrow, Guardian.”

“ We will live in such sorrow if they are discovered!” Rax snaps, putting their cave bug soup down harshly.

Amel, the mother, grabs one of their tusks, giving a gentle but sharp yank. “Rax! Show the Guardian respect! We are most honored to house him.”

Rax bares their teeth at Amel who growls right back. “Respect? This Guardian has left us to suffer for years and returns only to cause trouble and take. Everyone comes here to take, Mother, but they never give! Our Balmera is dying!”

Hunk sits up. “What?”

The balmerans turn sorrowful, their eyes downcast to the rock below their feet. Shay rests their palm into it lovingly, like a gentle caress.

“Long ago, those who took the Balmera's crystals would replenish her with energy. It was an equal exchange as is the way of the universe.” Their hand tightens into a fist a look of pain and sorrow overtaking their face. Hunk is scared they might start crying. “But the Galra do not believe in equality. They take more than she can give and now we must watch as she perishes before our eyes.”

A sad moaning fills the cave, echoed by a similar cry in Hunk’s mind. Keone wails along with her dear friend and a sorrow so painful settles into his chest.

“I’m so sorry.” His mouth is dry and it feels like too little. The words are too small to encompass all he wants to say, all that they deserve to hear. But it’s all he has to offer; all he can understand.

Rax stands up, apparently fed up with the conversation. It also gets them far enough away from Amel that they can’t grab them again. Rax’s face is twisted into a scowl and their chest rumbles with the thunderous timber of their voice. “If you were sorry, you would leave. Every second you stay, we are in more danger!”

“And I am sorry for that.” Hunk’s hands tighten around the bowl and he grits his teeth to keep from lashing out. “But I can’t. Lance, my best friend, is injured. Seriously injured. That crystal, it’s the only way we can save her. If we don’t get it she’ll-” Don’t think about it! “We have to get it.”

He turns pleading eyes to all of them, letting the fear and worry and pain threatening to suffocate him rise to the surface. “I can’t lose her. She’s all I have left of home. Please.”

The balmerans look at him with a mixture of pity and grief in their eyes so thick it takes all of his will power not to look away.

When Hunk looks to Rax, the balmeran falters for a moment, staring at Hunk with something unreadable in their expression. Their eyes flick to Shay before they grit their teeth, speaking as if it physically pains them. “What kind of crystal is it that you need, Guardian?”

“A battleship class,” Coran answers because Hunk has no idea.

Colril looks surprised and then worried. “That is most rare. The galra hoard them jealously. I am… not sure you would be able to obtain one.”

Hunk’s heart clenches in his chest painfully tight. It feels hard to breathe.

The panic must show on his face because Shay places their hand back on his knee, giving him a gentle squeeze. “There is one almost excavated. You could take that.” Their voice is soft and hopeful when they speak to him. Calm and sure like the mountains and Hunk finds himself relaxing despite himself.

“And what of the galra that guard it?” Rax asks not unkindly. More realistic. Which is fair honestly, Hunk just wishes Rax would let him enjoy his hope before crushing it with reality. “Or the ones that wait in the skies for their Lion ship? Their quest is in vain, sister.”

Coran places a hand on his shoulder. “We’ll figure something out, Hunk. Lance will be fine. Come on, you should go check on your Lion.”

Hunk nods. Sitting next to Keone is something he desperately needs right now. Her steady presence and calming aura will make it easier to push Lance’s mangled form from his mind and focus on the here and now.

***

Katie shimmies through the vents, trying to make it to the generator room but it’s slow going. Her arm keeps acting up, not enough for her to be worried—probably—but it’s twinging in a way that’s starting to get annoying.

She decides she’s stealing the miracle cream from Allura when she gets the chance.

Rover floats in front of her and beeps encouragingly, zipping along and keeping track of where they are in the vent system. It doesn’t leave her with much to do and after she gets bored of humming the Mission Impossible theme song, her mind starts to wander.

After a while, she turns to thoughts of her family.

“Rover, have I ever told you about my Dad?”

The bot in question tilts to the side curiously, almost like a dog’s head. It makes her smile, bolstering her into speaking.

“He’s amazing. He’s got three PhDs and was working on his fourth when he and Matt were recruited for the Kerberos Mission. You should’ve seen him! He couldn’t sit still for a whole week and would talk about it to anyone who would listen.” Katie huffs a laugh. “And Matt— oh, Matt —he was so much worse. When they finally told him he was going too I think he screamed for five straight minutes. He almost passed out.”

Rover beeps musically, almost like a laugh.

“Yeah. They’re insane. They were so excited to prove alien life existed… and I guess they did in the end.” Katie pauses for a moment, faltering.

Rover nudges her forehead gently and Digit starts purring warmly. “Mom was worried about them going. So was I,” she says in a small voice. “It’s dangerous, of course it is, but it was such a big opportunity and they were so excited and proud and… we supported them. Of course we supported them.

“And with Shiro piloting the ship, we thought nothing could go wrong. Sure, Shiro was young but he was the best pilot of his time. People heralded him like a Messiah.”

Katie shakes her head.

“Matt and him clicked almost immediately. At first, I couldn’t understand why. Shiro was just so different from Matt! But I’ll tell you a secret.” Katie's voice drops to a whisper, a conspiratorial grin on her face. “Shiro’s actually a closet nerd.”

Rover chirps disbelievingly and Digit snorts in her mind.

“I’m serious! You would not believe the stupid things that can come out of his mouth. He was like a second Matt. It was horrible. ”

Rover beep-chirps a little tune.

“Actually, yeah, he’s a lot like Lance too. Lance is just more open about her dumbassery than Shiro.”

Katie stills in the vent, a thought making itself known.

“Oh no.”

She looks up at Rover with a deadly serious expression mixed with fear.

“We cannot let Matt and Lance anywhere near each other. The universe would implode with that amount of fucking stupid in the same room.” She looks down at her hands, vaguely horrified.

“God. There would be so many stupid pick-up lines and bad jokes and they’d think they were hilarious.” She puts her head in her hands, making a pitiful whine in the back of her throat.

Rover chirp-laughs at her because he is programmed with betrayal and apathy. She glared icily at the bot who remained unaffected.

Slowly, her glare droops and a frown settles back on her lips.

“They’d get along great…” she looks back up at Rover, contemplative.

“You know… My dad always told me his team was like a family. I didn’t understand what he was trying to say when he first told me that but… Now? I think I’m starting to.”

Katie’s eyes harden, steeled determination replacing the soft nostalgia that was once there.

“I’m not losing any more family. Not to the galra. They’ve taken enough from me. They won’t take this too.”

***

The rumbling purr of Keone does indeed soothe his mind, even when it’s only half as loud as usual. The Balmera resurfaced her head in one of the abandoned tunnels where Hunk has spent the last half hour sitting at her cheek and petting whatever metal he can reach, calming himself with mountain song and answers.

She’s hesitant to say anything on the subject of ‘magic’, believing it to not be ‘the right time’ and that they ‘should wait for her sisters.’

But, well… Hunk’s stubborn as a rock and Keone is soft when it comes to her paladins. He soon finds himself with halting explanations. There are things she dances around, things she very carefully doesn’t tell him, and Hunk burns with curiosity, the questions dancing on the tip of his tongue.

But he swallows them. He’s been Lance’s friend for years and he knows a losing battle when he sees one.

She’s a millennia-year-old warship, born of science and magic, apparently. He’s hardly going to outsmart her just because she has a soft spot for him.

He learns that there is ancient magic that binds them to the planets and the rocks and earth. The connection bolsters them, makes them stronger and steadfast like the rocks they guard.

Hunk wants to ask what she means by ‘guard’ but knows he won’t get an answer. Not one he likes anyway.

The reason Keone went down earlier is that the connection goes both ways. Normally, the planets have enough energy on their own, but this Balmera is sick and dying. When Keone got close enough, the Balmera borrowed her energy and strength, on reflex. It left Keone drained, but she was slowly regaining her power.

She would be alright.

When he asks further about the bond and the magic—god, he’s going insane—tying him to the earth and what it means for him, she pauses for such a long time Hunk thinks she won’t answer him. That she’s tired of his prying questions she so obviously doesn’t want to answer.

“The bond that ties us together has many effects. Some are more… jarring than others. But believe me, love, that I will never hurt you or put you in harm's way with any part of the bond. I need you as much as you need me. There are intricacies of the connections that cannot be explained. They must be shown or experienced. And even if I could tell you… you are not ready. Merely a cub.”

Hunk opens his mouth to protest.

“No,” Keone growls softly. A warning. “You are not ready. You will learn in due time, my paladin. Until then, you must trust me.”

Hunk stares into her liquid gold eyes, ancient and knowledgeable in ways he can never understand. This great being that is so much more. He wishes he could say he was sceptical. Wishes he could say he thought twice, that he doubted.

“Of course.”

Maybe it’s the magic. Or maybe what she says is true. Maybe it’s both.

But Hunk trusts her. For better or for worse.

A gasp from behind him sends Hunk whirling around to find Shay standing a few steps down the tunnel. Their hand is raised to their lips as they gaze at Keone in awe.

Keone tilts her head toward Shay, who jumps in place when their gazes lock.

“Oh, hello,” Hunk greets. Shay doesn’t take their eyes off of Keone. “It’s alright. She’s not going to hurt you, right?”

His Lion sounds almost offended that he even asked. “Of course not! The child is of my realm, my earth. They are safer here with me than anywhere else.”

Hunk blinks at her. “I’m not going to translate that because it’s weird and I don’t understand what you mean other than it’s safe.” He turns back to Shay. “Would you like to touch her?”

It’s the first time Shay looks at him since entering the cave. “Could I truly?”

“Yeah.” Hunk nods encouragingly, jerking his head toward Keone. “Come on.”

Hesitantly, Shay steps forward. When they get close enough, Hunk gently takes their hand, smiling encouragingly. Slowly, he places it on Keone’s snout and watches as a smile spreads across Shay’s face. They look at their hand in awe, teeth glinting in the low light.

“You feel like our Balmera,” they whisper, awed by the situation.

Keone chuckles in Hunk’s mind, the rumbling echoing up their arms through the metal. “I am your Balmera, sweet one.”

Hunk decides to leave unpacking that statement for later.

“You are very lucky, Guardian,” Shay tells him after a long moment of silence.

“What?” He looks at them confused about where their mind wandered. “Why?”

Shay chuckles and Hunk is captivated by the way it makes them light up, even in the dark of the tunnel. It lifts the worry and weight from their shoulders and makes them seem young.

“To fly in such a powerful machine to worlds unknown. To be chosen by the earth itself and fly through the sky… Tell me, what does it look like?” They look up at the cave ceiling as if they can see past it. “Do colors really dance in the sky? Are there diamonds truly hidden in the clouds?”

“You’ve… never seen the sky?”

Shay looks at him like he’s an idiot before catching themself and looking away embarrassed.

“Of course not. There is another, Angar, who helps bring the crystals above ground. He tells me sometimes, but… I wish to see it myself.” Their voice drops to a whisper and they lean down so they’re on his level, like they’re sharing a secret. “Sometimes, I’ll sneak up as high as I dare, and imagine what it’s like.”

Hunk stares at them, his heart sinking in his chest. He wants to understand, wants to comfort them but doesn't know how. Doesn’t even know where to begin. “It doesn’t have to be like this.”

They look at him confused. “Like what?”

“You could be free. No, you will be free.” He grabs their other hand. “I promise you.”

Shay huffs a disbelieving breath, shaking their head like he’s making some joke. “You speak nonsense.”

“It’s not nonsense,” he insists. “After I save my friend, I’ll come back. I’ll bring the others. Voltron. We’ll come back, and we’ll save you.”

“But… how?” Shay looks at him sadly, as if his hope makes them tired. “Zarkon controls all. He is all-powerful.”

“No! You’re wrong. Back where I’m from, my planet had never even heard of Zarkon. There are thousands of planets out there that have never heard of the galra.”

Shay’s eyes widen. “A place without galra?”

Hunk nods.

Shay blinks, a slow smile spreading across their face just imagining it. Hunk can’t help but grin too.

“Stop filling this one’s head with shadow show, Guardian!”

The pair jump, Hunk dropping Shay’s hands on instinct. Rax stalks forward and grabs Shay’s wrist, moving to drag them away. They keep their feet firmly planted, refusing to budge.

“Rax, please!”

“No, Shay,” they say forcefully, giving another tug on their wrist. “He fills your head with useless fairy dreams. Our homes are the caverns, this will not change.” Rax glares at Hunk. “No matter the sweet lies he tells you. Now, come.”

Shay opens their mouth to say something, anything, but Rax turns their glare on them and their mouth snaps shut before plodding along behind their brother sadly. They send one last look to Hunk before disappearing around the bend.

Hunk stands there, staring after them for a long time. Something heavy sits in his stomach and he wonders.

***

Katie has to admit, watching the galra idiot blow himself with the turbine because he was too cocky to check for sabotage is cathartic. They know she’s on the ship. They have to with the Castle’s cameras and how she messed with this room once already.

Idiots.

They believe themselves so powerful they are unbeatable.

“The bigger the foe, the harder they fall,” Matt used to tell her.

Katie finds that she can’t wait to see them fall.

Rover drops her to the ground gently a few feet away from the galra’s sprawled form. She tilts her head as she looks at him, crispy and burned as he is.

“You’re the one causing all the trouble?” he coughs, a grimace on his face as he pushes himself up. “A child?”

Katie’s face hardens. “I’m not a child,” she spits, raising her chin challengingly. “I’m a Paladin of Voltron.”

The galra laughs wetly, a sound that seems to hurt him more than anything. “Is the Resistance so desperate that they send child warriors to fight their battles?”

Digit yowls in the back of her mind and it’s only at the last second that Katie stops herself from echoing her.

“Well, let me tell you something, child.” He raises himself to his feet, unsteady and snarling. Katie scowls at him. “I am a soldier of the Galra Empire. Nothing stops me but triumph…” He pulls a dagger from his belt, “or death.”

He lunges at her faster than should be possible for the injuries he seemed to have. She barely raises her hand in time to block the blow he aimed at her head.

He doesn’t stop pushing at her. She moves farther and farther backward. He’s slow and injured but he’s strong. Stronger than her anyway. And more experienced.

She’s quick and smart and her mind whirls for options but it’s more preoccupied with keeping her alive at that moment than outsmarting the galra. Katie is so focused on avoiding blows that it’s not until she nearly steps onto empty air that she realizes how close to the edge she’d gotten.

The galra knocks her down, raising his blade above her menacingly and Katie stares up in fear.

“Nowhere left to run. Nowhere left to hide,” he mocks pityingly and Katie’s fear and panic are burned away by her anger.

Rover rams into the galra’s shoulder, distracting him and Katie grabs at the chance. She disconnects the knife’s head from her bayard’s base and slides under the galra’s legs, wrapping the rope around his leg and knocking him off balance.

For a moment, she thinks it’s worked. He teeters over the edge and she has a moment to breathe.

But then he regains his footing, a curl to his lips.

Before she can do anything else, Rover slams into him once more. Sending the galra falling once more. He overbalances but his reflexes are still fast. Faster than they should be.

He grabs Rover before he plummets, one foot still on the ledge but the rest of him hanging over the pit.

Katie’s heart stops in her chest because she’s running the numbers and Rover doesn’t have the energy capacity to keep a being the galra’s size afloat like that. Not after he just gave her a ride to the ground.

She moves before she’s finished the thought. She knows what will happen to Rover. He’ll overheat, his circuitry will fry from overexertion and both of them will fall.

Her bayard flies out of her hands faster than lightning, cutting into the galra’s wrist deeply and forcing him to let go of Rover. She’s running even before it hits him.

Rover starts falling a second before she gets to the edge.

Her hand shoots out over the abyss, reaching for her bot. Digit screams in her head and for a second, Katie thinks she’s overbalanced too. Too much momentum behind her run and now she’ll fall and let everyone down.

Then the second passes and she catches Rover by her fingertips, scooping him up and throwing herself away from the ledge.

The metal burns at her hand, her precious bot overheated but not beyond repair. He’s clocked out for the rest of the mission, but he’s not gone. And for that, Katie breathes a sigh of relief.

Setting him on the ground so not to further injure herself, she pets the air around him to avoid cooking her fingertips. “Don’t worry, little guy. I’ll get you fixed up soon. Promise.”

“Haxus! Report in.”

Katie whips around at the voice, terrified she’s been discovered by Sendak before realizing it’s just the screen. She gets up to stand in front of it, coming face to face with the cocky sonofabitch himself. Sendak looks almost surprised before it melts into fury.

“Haxus is dead,” she snarls, refusing to think of the moral repercussions of her hand in that event. This is war. She doesn’t have time for feelings. “And you’re next.”

“You've slowed me down, but this ship is mine! You will turn yourself over to me immediately!”

“Not a chance, you two-bit villain.”

Sendak growls before getting himself under control. A predatory smile overtakes his features, making him look wolfish. Katie doesn’t like that look at all. “Well, then, maybe your leader can convince you.”

The camera swings around, showing Shiro, beaten and tied up, crouched protectively over a prone Lance who looks even worse than the last time Katie saw her.

She gasps involuntarily, her hand raising to the screen when she sees them. Her heart twists painfully in her chest at the sight and very suddenly, Katie is furious.

Shiro raises his head to glare behind the camera. “What do you want?”

“Your friend wanted to hear from you,” Sendak tells him in a voice that implies you should be thanking him for his generosity.

Katie keeps her mouth shut, refusing to play his game as her blood boils.

It doesn’t seem to matter, because Shiro plays into his hands instead. “Pidge?” he says, panicked. “Pidge don't listen to-” his voice is cut off by a scream that makes her flinch.

The camera swings back to Sendak, a cruel smile on his face. “You can make it stop,” he tells her patiently. “Just turn yourself in. His suffering is in your hands.”

Katie glares at him, a snarl on her lips and a venom in her veins. “You can take your dumbass ultimatums and shove them up your ass!”

She walks away from the control panel, the screen sparking from where she’d destroyed it with her bayard.

***

The screen dissolves into static and Takashi has to bite back a smile at the way Pidge slammed Sendak. Even the electric shock still fizzling through his veins isn’t enough to smother the grin on his face. He bows his head to hide it. He, of course, will have to disprove of it in person because that was insanely dangerous and ill-advised, but he’s also so proud.

There’s no need to worry about Pidge. She can handle herself, it seems.

Sendak hums from where he stands at the helm. He sounds almost intrigued and the mirth in Takashi’s chest turns cold.

“Are all your kind so fiery? Perhaps it would be worth the trip back to your backwater planet to find out.” He turns back to Takashi, wolfish grin firmly in place and eyes smoldering with anger. “Of course, we’ll break them the same way we broke you.”

Takashi stiffens at the words, mind rebelling against the idea. He wants to fight. To scream and claw and prove he isn’t a broken soldier, a broken man. Prove he’s still worth something.

But he is not like Pidge or Keith. He has Lance next to him, a team to think about. If he fights, if he moves, they’ll kill her and everyone else. He has to put them before his pride. He can’t be impulsive.

Sendak walks closer to him, lifting his chin and forcing him to meet his eyes. “With Prorok in possession of the Red Lion and my gaining of the four other Lions, the empire has gained Voltron. Soon, the rest of the universe will fall to its knees before the might of Emperor Zarkon. You and your,” He shoots a disdainful look at Lance. “ pitiful Voltron will be the first to fall. Our Emperor will see to it personally. A… personal revenge, if you will.”

Takashi keeps his face neutral. Refuses to give Sendak the fucking satisfaction. He couldn’t break him in his prison when he was alone and he certainly won’t be able to break him now that he has people to fight for. To protect.

Sendak raises a single brow but walks away, apparently bored with Takashi’s non-reaction.

Now he just needs to wait. Pidge is smart, resourceful. She’ll figure something out.

He only hopes it won’t be too dangerous.

***

The wall cracks under his punch. Which is cathartic, but now his knuckles sting like hell.

Hunk curses his cowardice.

They were so close to getting the crystal! Hunk had it in his hands! But then he blew it all at the last moment and now they’ve failed and Lance is going to-

Hunk punches the wall again.

His eyes burn behind his eyelids and he can hear Coran pacing behind him. His head thunks against the unyielding rock and he tries swallowing the frustrated sobs and helplessness that threaten to choke him.

He can’t even feel Lance, the soothing waves that run through his veins and fill him up are scarily absent. Have been absent since they landed on this planet, but he can feel the emptiness so clearly now.

It’s terrifying.

He’s failed her and Keone’s trapped on this planet. It’s only a matter of time before the galra find her.

He’s ruined everything.

The sound of footsteps bounding down the hallway makes Hunk jump. His heart jackknifes in his chest as he watches a figure emerge from the shadows.

His heart starts pounding with a new type of fear when he sees that it’s Shay, holding a severed sentry hand. “Shay? What are you doing here? You could get-”

“There isn’t time,” they interrupt, pressing the galra hand against the panel. “Come, we must make haste to your Lion ship. It will not be long before they discover our ruse.”

The shimmering purple force field that had been acting as their prison dissipates and Shay grabs his wrist, tugging him off into the darkness without further preamble. Hunk stumbles after them, his feet following without conscious thought. Coran scrambles after them.

“What? Shay, what are you talking about? We?”

“My family. We’ve secured the crystal in your Lion. Now, come.”

Coran jogs to keep up with the fast pace Shay sets down the tunnel, their keen eyes helping to see in the dim light while Hunk has to use his helmet’s night vision. “How did you get the crystal?”

Shay grumbles something he doesn’t quite catch but sounds like, “You Skylings and your questions.”

They turn back to look at Hunk, eyes boring into him. “My family helped me spirit away the crystal. Now hurry. It will not be long before they discover it was stolen.”

“What!” Hunk panics. “If you were caught the galra would’ve-”

“But the galra did not catch me.” Shay grins at him as they enter the main cavern once more, Keone fully above the ground and only just barely fitting in the cave despite how curled up she is.

“I must go. Good luck, Guardian.” Shay moves to leave, releasing his wrist and moving to run off down another of the tunnels. Hunk’s mind spins around itself, checking and rechecking pieces and ideas and actions.

He grabs onto Shay before they can completely disappear. “Come with us.”

Shay turns back to him, confused. “What?”

“Come with us. You’ll be safe. We can take you to faraway worlds. You could travel, see the universe.”

Shay is speechless before him. Their mouth opening and closing like a fish. “I cannot leave my family here to suffer alone.”

“We’ll come back. I promised I’d free your people and I will. But for now, you could be safe,” he pleads. “Come with us, please.”

Shay shakes their head even though it looks painful for them. “I am sorry, Guardian. I am needed here. My family is here, and so here is where I will stay.”

Hunk grits his teeth in worry but nods stiffly. He understands. Family comes first.

“Okay. Just… be safe? Please. I’ll be back. Hold out until I come back.”

“I know.” Their smile is small and sad. “Until then, take this.” They pull something out of a pocket and press it into the palm of his hand. Curiously, he finds a smooth lifesaver shaped stone with spiralling blue lines scattered across it in intricate patterns. It sits in the dip of his palm perfectly and feels warm even through the suit.

“What is it?”

Shay smiles softly. “A Touchstone. It will keep you safe on your travels.” They place their hand over Hunk’s heart. “Until we meet again, my Guardian.”

Hunk flushes but nods determinedly. “Until we meet again.”

He then turns and climbs into Keone after Coran. Shay is gone back to the shadows by the time he makes it to the pilot seat. They’d probably stayed too long as it was.

He hopes they’ll be okay. He’ll come back.

He‘ll save Lance, and then he’ll save them. All of them.

Chapter Text

She floats aimlessly in the gray, the screams echoing around her.

It takes her too long to realize that the screams aren’t coming from her. That her throat had destroyed itself days-months-years ago.

The sound breaks through the haze like an arrow, scattering the cotton that clouded her mind and stuffed up her ears.

The string in her chest pulls at her and she breaks free from the Drowning Place, gasping for air desperately. The pain hits her again, more real this time. A heavy ache in her muscles and bones.

She almost sinks back down but the string yanks. Desperately calling for help.

Lance pushes through the pain, forcing her burning body to move.

Vague blurs dance in between the black dots of her failing eyes. A large purple bruise holds a writhing green smudge above the ground. Her mind tries to understand what’s happening in front of her.

Her mind is too slow.

Her hands and the feeling in her chest know what’s going on before she does, and her vision clears enough for her to raise her bayard to her face.

She takes aim.

The green smudge screams and Lance’s chest tightens.

She can’t miss.

The shot is a blast of white in her vision.

She doesn't.

The bruise screams and drops the green smudge. A red splatter comes from nowhere and shoves the bruise away. Lance relaxes once more and falls backwards, no longer able to support herself.

She doesn’t fall back into the Drowning Place. Even if it would be less painful. Her mind stays aware. The sounds of fighting continue as she lays there, struggling to breathe.

It’s an eternity before someone runs to her side and helps her sit up. She hisses through her teeth at the movement, her ribs protesting angrily. She falls with a gasp against someone’s chest, their arms surrounding her.

“Lance, are you okay?” The words float to her lazily. She blinks hard to focus. Her head tilts up to meet unnatural purple eyes, somehow even brighter in the dim light. Her addled brain thinks they might even be glowing.

“Keef?” she slurs, tongue heavy in her mouth.

“Yeah, I’m here.”

“Mhmm,” she hums, leaning further into him. “Y’ur a ‘rrible d’ncer.”

The pillow she’s laid on chuckles softly. Almost like it’s surprised it’s laughing. Lance smiles in response, fading back into unconsciousness before she can hear whatever it says in response.

***

It’s only the fourth day of freshman year, but Lance could already tell that this boy, Keith Kogane, was going to be the best pilot in their class. He had a confident—if quiet—air about him and the skills to back it up. His simulator scores were beyond phenomenal, and whispers of the word ‘prodigy’ were starting to be thrown around in the halls.

Lance wanted him as a friend.

And now, it was the perfect opportunity! It was lunch, and Keith never seemed to sit with anyone. She can invite him over to her and Hunk’s table, before some other student tries snatching him up.

She’s even sitting at the table alone right then because Hunk was talking to Dr Holt about advanced something or others and had to stay after class. She’ll just have to make sure that whenever he comes to the cafeteria, he doesn't make a fool of himself.

Hunk’s oddly nervous around Keith for whatever reason. Too much of the ‘bad boy’ vibe, she supposes.

So, hair up and uniform straightened to perfection, Lance bounces her way up to Keith, smile already in place.

One must look their best when making proposals of partnerships. Or that’s what Francisca says, at least.

“Hey,” she greets, sticking her hand out for him to shake, “My name’s Lance. You’re Keith, right?”

He stares down at her hand only to look back at her face. His expression doesn't change and he doesn't take her hand.

Lance stops bouncing lightly on the balls of her feet, lowering her hand with a confused frown. Maybe he doesn't like touching? Or is a germaphobe?

Either way, she can work with it.

“Ah, well. I saw your simulator scores. You’re a really good pilot!”

Silence, once again. But at least this time he narrows his eyes.

Lance tilts her head curiously. “You don’t talk much, do ya?”

A pause. Then, Keith shakes his head slightly, his suspicious expression unchanging.

Lance smiles wider. Progress!

“That’s okay. Mace, my older sister, she doesn’t like talking too much either, so I get it.” She waves her hands about, getting excited again. “Anyway! I was wondering if you could help me with the simulator? It’s kind of hard for me and I’d appreciate some tips if you have any! That isn’t to say I won’t give you something in return, of course. I’m super good at History and Strategic Theory, and Hunk—he’s my best friend—is fantastic at anything involving Science or mechanics. We could trade!” She gasps. “Or do study groups! You ever been in a study group? Hunk always makes the best snacks for those. I-”

“What are you talking about?” he interrupts.

Lance’s mouth snaps shut, embarrassed she started rambling. She taps a rhythm on her thighs, a nervous habit she’s had for years.

“Oh, uh. Sorry, I got carried away.” She gives him a sheepish smile. “I’m always doing that. But, uh, I was hoping we could hang out sometime? You know, for the simulator thing? I’m honestly terrible at it.”

Hopefully, he could tell her his trick. Or why the simulators were so different from the actual ships and stuff. Oh! She bets he knows all the secrets. He seems like the type.

Keith looks her up and down, almost as if he’s sizing her up as an opponent. It’s unnerving and Lance’s smile falls a little bit, realizing this interaction might not be going the way she expected. His unnaturally sharp eyes zero in on the movement.

“Are you trying to ask me out on a date?”

He stares at her flatly. The delivery so deadpan Lance almost thinks he’s joking for a moment. Then she realizes he’s not.

Her eyes widen, bewilderment obvious in every movement she makes. “What? No!” she denies. “I just wanted to-”

Keith’s expression grows suddenly thunderous and he interrupts her again. “Then you’re making fun of me.”

How the hell did he come to that conclusion? Lance wonders, completely lost now.

“Why would I-? Wha? Wait.” She throws her arms out in front of her. “I’m not making fun of you.”

“Then why else would you be doing this?” he asks aggressively.

Lance’s mind is a string of ‘?????’ at this point and she’s so confused as to how the conversation ended like this. What is wrong with this boy?

“Uh? Because I wanted to be your friend?”

“I don’t have friends.” Keith’s expression doesn’t change as he neatly steps around her hands. “And I don’t want any. Certainly none as talkative as you.”

Lance watches him walk away, words of anger and frustration burning at the back of her throat like bile. It’s the first time she feels genuine dislike rise up in her.

It tastes bitter in her mouth, the same way losing does.

***

Katie watches Hunk as he hovers nervously around the cryopod, all shifting weight and fluttering hands. He’s so keyed up, he hadn’t even bothered to take off his armour or clean up since they all got back. He’s covered in dirt and dust. It can’t be sanitary.

“You’re sure she’ll be okay in there? Absolutely?”

“Of course, my boy! After a day in there she’ll be in tip-top shape!” Coran crows, clapping him on the back happily. “Even better I’d hope. Try not to worry so much, number one.”

“Speaking of hope…” Shiro turns to her and she knows what he’s about to do before he even opens his mouth. The mix of understanding and sadness in his eyes kinda give him away a lot. “We’ll support whatever choice you make, Pidge. But, I don’t think I’m alone when I say that I hope you choose to stay. Not just for the fight, but because you’re a part of this team and we care about you.”

Katie stares up at him. She knows a guilt trip when she sees one, even if this is a very bad one. But, she also knows Shiro wouldn’t force her to stay.

She should probably be more upset that he even tried, but… well. She’d been planning on staying anyway.

Admittedly her plan had been hairbrained anyway and poorly thought out. She can see that now, even if she’ll never admit to it. She’ll find her father and Matt. She doesn’t plan to stop looking, but that doesn’t mean she has to sacrifice what she has right in front of her to chase after maybes and what-ifs.

Besides, she doesn’t think she could leave Digit behind if she wanted to. Which she doesn’t, at all.

Katie takes a deep breath, blowing it out harshly. “Actually… I’m staying. Here.” Pause. She scratches the back of her neck, just below where she can feel Digit’s energy humming. “With you and the Lions and all the crazy sure to come. For better or for worse.”

Shiro smiles proudly like Katie did something amazing. But before she can return it, Hunk’s sweeping her off her feet and twirling her around.

“Oh, thank god! I would’ve been so worried if you left all alone in space,” he yells. “And so would Lance. Except her worry would be really sad too. Not that I wouldn't be sad, but she would be doubly sad because she’s Lance and then she’d start crying so I’d start crying and we wouldn’t be able to fight the galra because we’d be crying so much and-”

“Okay! Okay!” she yells, struggling in his hold. “I said I wasn’t leaving, let me go!”

Hunk gives her one last squeeze before setting her gently back on the ground. Katie makes a big show about brushing herself off because she has a reputation, dammit. But secretly she really liked being twirled around. Reminded her of her dad doing it whenever he picked her up as a kid.

“Good to have you back,” Keith tells her and it’s not an apology. Not really. But the way he says it feels like an olive branch.

And, well. As a fellow emotionally constipated individual, she can hardly hold it against him for not actually saying the words. She wouldn’t have either.

“Yeah. It is, isn’t it?”

***

Perhaps, Lance tries reasoning with herself, Keith had merely been having a bad day. Or maybe her rambling weirded him out or he’s just really bad at making friends. Whatever it was, it doesn’t matter. Lance doesn’t like giving up, so she tries again but better this time.

Two days after The Incident, as she dubbed it, she pulls him aside after Mr Wu’s class with high hopes of reconciliation.

Her hopes are inevitably crushed beneath his apathy and cruel words. He pushes past her, shoulder knocking into her own hard enough to make her stumble.

When she calls after him angrily, he doesn’t even bother to turn around.

“I don’t have time for this,” he spits over his shoulder and Lance wants to punch him until he drops that flat voice of his. I’d be very easy to do. Her cousins taught her how when she was seven and Keith didn’t even have his guard up. “Just stay out of my way.”

Instead of resorting to violence, Lance grits her teeth and very carefully makes her way back to her room so she can destroy a pillow instead of some unassuming trashcan or student.

At that moment, she makes it her personal mission to destroy Keith in everything. If he thinks that he’s so much better than her, that he can just ignore her, throw her away and forget her-

Well.

Lance has never been above putting someone in their place.

***

Hunk is confused when she tells him that Keith is now their mortal enemy. Especially since only yesterday she was hell-bent on making him their third Musketeer. But, as in everything important to her, he supports her entirely.

After asking how having a mortal enemy is supposed to affect their lives of course.

Lance assures him she won’t start fistfights in the hallways with him and watches as Hunk’s stress levels go back down. This isn’t grade school anymore. She can’t just punch all the people that make fun of her and Hunk, anymore.

***

Hunk sleeps next to Lance's cryopod that night.

It’s that first day in space again. When Lance went out and fought against a warship with only herself, Pidge and a Lion she only half knew how to fly.

Only this time, he can’t hold her to reassure himself she’s okay.

The echo in his chest is the only reason he doesn’t go crazy. The steady ba-dum keeping him sane and assuring him that Lance is okay. Lance is fine.

He’s going to be fine.

They’re both going to be fine.

***

It turns out that pettiness and spite are excellent motivators. Even better than food, apparently.

That isn’t to say Hunk’s strawberry tarts and mini quiches aren’t good motivators—because honestly, anything Hunk makes is to die for—but that’s not the point she’s making here.

The point she is making is that since she decided she was going to crush Keith in everything she can get her hands on, her grades have gone up drastically. They were plenty good before, the Garrison is a high-class school after all, but now she’s even giving Hunk a run for his money.

(Not really. Hunk has had a solid 4.0 GPA since 6th grade but she likes to dream.)

She chases after Keith in every subject, every event, every project.

And despite all of that. It still isn’t enough.

It doesn’t matter that she aces all her tests and is as involved with extracurriculars and clubs as physically possible.

All anyone ever wants to talk about is Keith.

She feels like she’s living in his shadow and she hates it. She claws and thrashes and rages in the privacy of her room with Hunk watching her sadly.

Lance has never really cared what people said about her, didn’t worry about the words and rumours people flung about her because to her it never mattered. She just held her head higher, smiled wider, spoke louder, faster, more.

She has no time for shame because she has plans. Her and Hunk, they’re going to be great.

But this? This made her burn.

When Keith’s praised for his talent, Lance is told she needs to work harder. When Keith gets into a fistfight with another cadet, he’s given a slap on the wrist because of who his big brother is. Lance yells at someone for being inappropriate and is almost suspended. Rumours start up about how Keith’s actually a ‘bad boy with a heart of gold’ while people twist Lance into lying braggart at best and a two-dimensional whore at worst.

(People have never understood her and Hunk’s friendship or Lance’s habit of playfully flirting with everyone.)

Lance is from a large family. She’s no stranger to taking a backseat attention wise.

But this is not that. This is being pushed aside and made less.

Keith is the star of their grade, the name on everyone’s lips, and it seems that anyone who tries to challenge him is taken down. Something that, as far as Lance knows, he’s not behind and doesn't even care about. 

She thinks that might be the biggest insult. That all this is happening and the damn prick doesn’t even know . That he couldn’t care less .

Junior year, a couple weeks after new of the Kerberos Mission, when he’s miraculously thrown out, Lance almost feels bad for being relieved. 

Sure, Keith was a prick and an ass but his brother just died. Of course he’d go off the rails! He was barely on them in the first place.

But he leaves, and Lance thinks—hopes—that’ll be the end of it. She’s promoted to fighterclass, Hunk’s been placed on her team, they’ll get to learn and grow together and she’ll never have to think of him again.

Ha. How wrong she was. Even after he’s gone, he still haunts her.

You’re only here because Keith dropped out.

She works harder, faster, better than he ever did.

Keith’s simulator scores were better than yours.

It’s not enough. It will never be enough.

You’re just not as good as Keith.

The shadow gets bigger and colder and she screams until she can’t speak.

Replacement. Second best.

The bitterness sits at the back of her throat and chokes her.

***

The next time she’s aware and conscious, she’s falling out of the cryopod. She’s starving and her legs feel like jello.

Azura’s in her head in an instant, all concerned rumbles and happy chirps. Lance mentally pokes back at her to say she’s okay. Her thoughts are clumsy enough on their own, she doesn’t need the mental equivalent of a kitten going about knocking things around to make it worse.

Everyone is clustered in a group near the pod but faced away. They’re talking about something, quiet cheering coming from Hunk and Pidge.

“We’re winning!”

“Winning what? The intergalactic time-measuring competition?”

“Yes.”

Lance staggers over curiously, unceremoniously draping herself over Hunk's back to help her stand upright but mostly because she just likes doing it. Hooking her chin over his shoulder to get a better look, she hums inquiringly.

“You guys having a clock party?” she asks around a yawn.

God, she was tired. And hungry. And confused. Really confused. Like, ‘she missed the first forty minutes of a lecture on astrophysics’ confused.

“Aww, come on, Lance, you- Lance!” Hunk spins around, lightning quick, and hoists her up in the bear hug to end all bear hugs. Her breath escapes her in a huge rush as he spins them around babbling happily about how ‘he’s so glad she’s okay’ and ‘never do that again’ and other such things.

He must’ve been really worried about her. Normally he’s more careful with his strength.

“Whoa, baby doll.” She pats his shoulder, catching his attention as her head spins. “That is a lot of circles,” she tells him dazedly. He puts her down, thankfully, but keeps an arm wrapped around her waist for support and probably comfort.

To her surprise, the second Hunk puts her down, Pidge darts in with a brief hug before leaving just as quickly. Like she thinks if she does it fast enough, no one will notice her being soft. 

Lance smothers a fond smile. She doesn’t think Pidge would appreciate it.

Coran steps up next but doesn’t hug her. Instead, he squeezes her shoulders lightly, a relieved look on his face. Almost like he’s reassuring himself she’s still there.

Lance grabs one of his arms and pulls him down for a hug anyway.

She must take him by surprise or he’s indulging her because there is no way she would be able to tug him over otherwise. Not with how weak she was in that moment.

“It’s good to have you back, Lance,” Shiro tells her.

“Good to be back I s’pose,” she tells him with a tired grin. “What happened?”

Allura steps forward, dressed about as casually as she gets which is still a step above ‘afternoon tea’. “I think it would be best if we told you after you ate something. Can you walk?”

The thought of food has Lance’s mouth salivating. “Walking? Pssh, I’ve been walking for years. Practically an expert,” she pauses. “Wait, is this a date? Eating and talking sound like a date. Are you making a move on me, Princess?”

Lance grins flirtatiously and tries leaning forward but overbalances and almost falls on her face. Hunk catches her at the last moment, saving her the embarrassment.

The others laugh and she grins sheepishly. “Ah, so… Walking might be more of a problem than I originally believed.”

Allura shakes her head, her mane of white hair falling over her shoulders as she tries to hide her exasperated smile. Hunk gives her his best ‘I’m trying to look disapproving while also trying not to laugh’ look.

It’s one of her favourite faces.

***

Once she gets some spiced food goo into her stomach and changes out of the skin-tight bodysuit she’d been wearing in the pod—what was with that by the way?—the team started explaining what happened while she was out.

To put it lightly? It was insane.

After she saved Coran from being blown up, she basically fell into a coma and became the designated Damsel in Distress for this particular adventure.

Then, Sendak—the fucking cockroach —fakes an attack on the arusian village so he can break in and steal the Castle. Shiro and her got captured so Pidge has to basically Mission Impossible her way around the Castle in order to save them and everyone else.

Pidge regales her with the dramatic tale of sabotage and quickly skips over the part where she sees someone fall to their death.

Sure, he was an asshole, but it’s still traumatizing.

Lance is so proud of Pidge for keeping her head on straight throughout the whole thing. She is one tough lil’ bean.

Elsewhere, Hunk and Coran had been trying to find a replacement crystal and were completely unaware of the situation going on back at the Castle.

Lance is glad she’s not the only one super confused.

And finally, they finish off the tale with the final battle in the bridge where Lance apparently deus-ex machina-ed herself and shot Sendak’s arm off to save Pidge from being strangled.

What the fuck.

She does not remember that.

Also, they have Sendak trapped in the basement now.

Lance’s head spins with all the information as she tries to wrap her mind around how all of that went down while she was asleep. How long was she out?

“Sorry I missed the party guys,” she jokes once they finish. “Next time I’ll make sure to bring the cake to make up for it.”

The team around her chuckles lightly which makes her feel a little better. She feeds a bit of her second plate to the arusian mice who had apparently become full-time crew-mates while she was out.

She feels like she should be concerned that arusian mice are mildly telepathic. But they got the particle barrier open so what can she say? At least they’re handy in a pinch.

She turns to Keith who was sitting on the table in front of her. He’d been silent for most of the story, just sitting there staring at her, a strange look on his face.

His gaze made her skin itch.

What was he looking at? What was he thinking?

Lance waves a spoon at him, catching his attention. “You though. It sounds like you did even less than the mice.”

Keith's metaphorical hackles raise almost instantly and the thoughtful look on his face vanishes. “Wha-? I- I punched Sendak!”

“After I apparently awoke from a coma and shot off his arm! Which, might I add, is fucking badass? Like, go me.” She does an air punch to celebrate.

Keith continues to sputter. “We had a bonding moment!” Lance raises a single eyebrow at him. “I cradled you in my arms!”

“Okay! Now you’re just making stuff up.”

“I’m not- Why would I-?”

“How am I supposed to know?” Lance tells him incredulously. “You’re the one spreading rumors.”

Keith’s shoulders are up to his ears now, his face red and embarrassed. “It’s not a-” whatever else he had been about to say is lost to a rumbling growling noise.

It’s a sound that’s slowly becoming Lance’s favourite noise because it means she’s getting under his skin, making him notice. She grins at the vaguely inhuman sound—seriously how does he do that—and pointedly takes another bite of food.

Serves him right for spreading lies.

She can only vaguely recall purple eyes and something grabbing her but she’s sure even as out of it as she was, she wouldn’t have been anywhere near Keith. One night dancing doesn’t change years of him just ignoring her, of not being worth his time.

Lance pushes the rest of her plate towards the mice before leaning back in her chair and throwing her feet over Hunk’s lap, startling him out of his reverie.

“So, what’s the game plan? We’re heading off to that space market you promised me, right, Allura?” She tilts her head back, looking at the princess upside down. “Because let me tell you, I’ve made a list of the stuff we need and it’s really quite long. I’m wondering if we have enough money for this. Actually, do we have money at all? Does Altean currency still work?”

Before Allura or Coran can decipher—much less answer—her string of questions, Hunk speaks instead.

“No.” His voice is hard and brooked no arguments against him. “We can’t go yet. We have to go back to the Balmera and free Shay and her people first.”

Lance’s tongue is already halfway around a joke when she turns back to see the look in his eyes. The words die on her tongue.

He looks so determined. So worried about this Shay he met for only a few hours.

Since she’s known him, he’s always been empathetic. Wanting to help others, make them happy, be kind. He was a caregiver to the core.

But he was always passive in his empathy. Shy and quiet.

He gave advice but never pushed. He cleaned you up after fights but tried not to get involved. He calmly spoke and never got physical despite the fact he could easily beat anyone around him to a pulp. He gave you cookies when you were sad and offered an ear to listen and a shoulder to cry on.

Lance had always been the more courageous of the two. Where he faltered, she pushed forward and vice versa. They were a good team, making up for the other’s faults.

But now, she could see Hunk pushing forward.

She always wondered what it would take for Hunk to get involved.

It seems she has her answer.

“Okay,” she tells him easily.

A month ago, Hunk had stood in front of her and joined a war he has no stake in just because it meant staying at her side. Years before that, he’d followed her to the school of her dreams so she wouldn’t be alone and scared.

Now, in space and so far away from anything they know it’s laughable, Lance is following him for a change. She’s going to join a battle she knows nothing about Hunk’s saying they must and she trusts him more than herself some days.

She can’t tell if they’re ridiculously co-dependent or just stupid.

“We can’t go to either yet,” Allura interrupts.

Hunk turns on her quicker than Lance has ever seen, his eyes narrowed and mouth open to snap in a way she rarely sees.

Before he can though, Allura speaks over him. “We must find the Red Lion first.”

Lance doesn’t miss the way Keith jolts upwards at the mention of his Lion. Shiro subtly shifts as well, standing taller and gaze sharp.

“The Balmerans don’t have time for us to find the Red Lion!” Hunk insists. “We need to go now!”

“Rushing in unprepared will only cause more damage-”

“People are dying!”

“And they’ll continue to die if we can’t form Voltron!” Allura snaps, silencing the entire room with the force of her anger. Her aura fills the space, commanding and filled with power.

Lance sometimes forgets she was royalty before. True royalty. The kind that demands respect with a look and commands armies into their places.

It’s easy to forget when she acts so much like a curious child or overzealous drill sergeant.

Lance, because she has a death wish and never knows when to stop pushing, is the first to break the deafening silence. “Okay, but… do we even know where the Red Lion is?”

Allura straightens up at the question. “Actually, we do.”

Keith’s hands slam on the table, leaning forward into Lance’s space in order to get closer to Allura who’s standing behind her. “Since when?” he demands, eyes wide, “You didn’t think to tell us?”

Allura stares at him coolly. “Shiro learned it was a galra commander who was in possession of the Red Lion during the break-in. He pulled me aside after Lance was secured and informed me. We only got a lock on her location minutes before Lance was set to awaken.”

Keith hunches in on himself and Lance remembers that out of all of them, Keith is the only one who hasn’t even spoken to his Lion. They’ve been in space an entire month, fighting and training and learning and he hasn’t even formed his bond yet. Hasn’t yet bound himself to this impossible war.

Something in Lance softens at the thought.

Then she gets upset at it. At him. This boy who, time and time again since arriving here, proved her wrong in how she thought of him. Showed her he was not who she thought he was.

Lance didn’t know what to do with this information. Didn’t know how to react to this new Keith she was starting to know.

Lance didn’t like not knowing things.

Keith stands abruptly. “Well, let’s go get her.”

“Keith, we can’t just-” Shiro starts, but Keith speaks over him.

“No! I’m going to get her with or without you,” his eyes roam across Pidge and Hunk before coming to a stop on her, his eyes fixed and blazing. “What if it were your Lion? Would you sit out?”

Lance’s heart seized in her chest. If her Lion was taken from her… kept out of her reach…

Lance doesn’t like thinking of herself as a bad person, but she thinks there are very few things that would stop her from getting her Lion back. The thought scares her a little bit. The overwhelming possessiveness over her Lion.

When she looks over at Pidge and Hunk, she can tell they’re thinking the same thing.

Luckily, Shiro speaks up because Lance had no response to that.

None she liked anyway.

“Keith, just- Calm down. Of course, we’re coming with you. We just need a plan.”

***

There isn’t much they can do without a solid understanding of what the ship looks like, but they decide roles for everyone to follow and teams to go in with. Allura is manning the Castle and Coran is playing eye in the sky, keeping an eye on the galra activity and radio transmissions.

They’re about as confident in the course of action as they can be and break to go get ready for their second official mission.

Before they can leave though, Katie stands up, hands twisting the bottom of her shirt nervously.

“Wait, I- I need to tell you all something… With me staying here and all of us being a team, I’ve decided I should come clean. No secrets, as someone once told me.” Her eyes flick to Lance who’s grinning encouragingly. Katie takes in a deep breath, steadying her frantic heartbeat. “I’m… a girl.”

Silence.

Then…

“OH, THANK GOD!” Lance yells from her seat at the table. “I found out the day we got into space and I have been trying so hard not to out you.” She drags Katie into a rough side hug, messing up her hair in a way that causes the younger to squawk, eyes springing open from where she’d screwed them shut.

“I’ve known for a while as well. But I’m glad you decided to share it with us.”

“Oh, yeah. I figured back at the Garrison.”

“Third day in training.”

“We were supposed to think you were a boy?”

Katie looks around the group, a small smile spreading across her features. “You aren’t mad I lied?”

“‘Course not, Pidgeon.” Lance jostles her in her hold, beaming down at her. “It was your secret to tell. Besides, it doesn’t matter what gender you are. You’re still a part of this team, no matter what.”

“We’re glad you decided to trust us though,” Shiro says with that proud smile on his face.

Katie tries to not let her smile become an ear-splitting grin but by the looks everyone else is giving her, she’s not doing a very good job. Strangely, she doesn’t really care.

***

After finally disentangling herself from Hunk and pushing him towards his own hangar with promises that the second they have free time he can hold her and not let go for however long he deems necessary, Lance makes her way to her own Lion to gear up.

When she pushes the door to her hangar open, she’s not expecting Azura’s snout to be inches from the doorway, her Lion anxiously awaiting her presence. Besides the initial purring and chirps when she’d first woken up, Azura had been silent in her mind. Just a steady thrumming of waves at the bottom of her ribs, calming and definitely present but distant.

Now, the second Azura saw her, it was like lightning in Lance’s mind. Thunder crackled and the waves crashed around her. All she could feel was the relief and worry Azura had felt for her, the terrible aching she had kept trapped away was flooding through the bond and Azura was whimpering in front of her.

Lance’s eyes widened and she raced forward immediately after she got her bearings, throwing herself across as much of her Lion’s snout as she could. She clambered up until she could starfish across her nose, attempting to comfort her with the biggest hug she could manage.

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.” Lance repeats over and over again, hoping to soothe her Lion’s frayed nerves. She hadn’t been expecting this much emotion, this much fear, from her Lion. She feels stupid for not realizing sooner how her Lion must have been feeling.

Azura had said that she grieved for every Paladin as harshly as the last so Lance suddenly being… gone would, of course, be upsetting. But she was fine! Azura knows she’s fine!

It didn’t make any sense. She was hurt, but ultimately, she was okay. And Azura knows that there’s danger in being a Paladin, it was one of the first things they talked about! How Paladins are born warriors, protectors. Azura was always so sure that the two of them would come out okay.

What was different now?

What changed?

Lance had a feeling that she didn’t want to know.

***

Unknown to Lance, her Lion was desperately trying to regain the shattered pieces of her composure. She wanted to appear strong for her Paladin. To live up to the golden image of the great magical being she was that lived in Lance’s mind.

But all she could think about was the way their connection began fraying at the edges when Lance was injured. The way she slowly started wavering in and out of Azura’s perception of her and how there wasn’t anything she could do. No way for her to reach her Paladin.

Her consciousness was consumed by the heart-stopping feeling of the bond disappearing for a moment—no longer than a second!—but it was unmistakable.

Azura had lost her Paladin so soon after getting her. She failed once again.

She had expected injuries, danger, heartbreak. That all came with the territory and title.

But Azura is never prepared for the moment the danger becomes too much. Can never shield herself from the pain of the bond snapping in two, of her being alone once again.

All she could do was thank her Goddess for bringing Lance back to her. For letting her keep her just a little bit longer. For letting her have this second chance.

She would not fail her again.

***

Infiltrating the Galra Base was child’s play thanks to the Green Lion’s newly minted cloaking ability. The galra were too distracted by Lance and Hunk on the other side that they didn’t even bother guarding their backside.

Arrogant bastards.

Made it easier for them, he supposed.

The real problem here was that now that he’s in the base he was acutely aware of the distance he was from his Lion. It was a solid aching in his chest, putting him on edge and making him jumpy.

His hand kept straying to the knife strapped to the small of his back and he felt he was only seconds away from saying ‘fuck it’ and tearing his way through the ship to finally unite with his Lion.

He can almost hear her. Calling out to him.

Waiting.

Impatient.

It was driving him crazy.

“We’re in, Lance,” Pidge informs, tapping the side of her helmet twice.

Lance’s voice crackles to life on the comms, sounding almost gleeful. “Roger that, Beansprout. Team Leg Day is moving in.”

Pidge pulls a face. “I thought I told you not to use your stupid codenames.”

“And I thought I told you that they weren’t stupid, you’re just mean.” Lance quips back, signing off before Pidge can respond.

The Green Paladin huffs in irritation, mumbling under her breath as she makes her way through the ship’s halls. Keith looks to Shiro who just shrugs in response.

They make it a few hallways over before the alarm starts sounding off and they can hear shots firing off from the ship.

Out of nowhere, Pidge stops dead in her tracks. For a second, Keith thinks she can hear guards coming, that they’ve been caught and will need to fight their way out. His hand inches toward his wrist, readying himself to activate his Bayard.

“Pidge?” Shiro asks. “What’s wrong?”

Keith leans over her shoulder to see what she’s looking at, but it just looks like any other wall in this place. There’s some weird galra symbol on it, but other than that, there’s nothing interesting about it.

“That’s the Communications room. It holds all the information on the ship.”

Keith’s brow furrows. “How do you know that?”

The smaller girl whips her head around to look at him. “Do you even pay attention to the Galra Military lessons from Coran?”

Keith thinks back to his notebook from those lessons. The pages filled with drawings of superheroes and cryptids instead of the notes he should have been taking.

The truthful answer is no.

“Of course, I do,” he retorts.

Pidge rolls her eyes, not buying it for a second. “What am I saying? Of course, you don’t. You’re worse than Lance.”

Keith bristles at that, opening his mouth to deny any similarities between him and the Blue Paladin when he feels a particularly vicious tug in his chest. It makes him stumble forward a bit.

Shiro reaches out to him worriedly as his chest starts to burn. He presses a hand to his breastplate as if he can feel the warm blossoming in his chest.

Red is getting impatient.

“My Lion,” Keith rasps. “Does not like waiting.”

“Like a certain kid I know,” Shiro jokes. Keith glares at him for that comment.

“Yes, well,” Pidge interrupts. “As touching as that is, we’re currently in enemy territory and I need to hack into that communications hub like yesterday, so…”

“What? Why do you need to get in there? We’re here for the Lion.”

“Ignoring how narrow-minded that is, I need information on my parents. Just because I’m not flying the coop doesn’t mean I’m giving up. Besides, imagine all the information we could gain. We’d have an advantage over the Galra already.”

Shiro looks down at her for a moment, weighing his options in his head and looking at the door. Keith is hyper-aware they’re still just standing in a hallway completely exposed and have been there for a while. Guards could show up any second.

“Shiro,” he hisses.

“New plan,” Shiro says, fake optimistically in that way Keith hates because it always means horrible things for him. “Keith, you go off to find the Red Lion, I’m going to help Pidge hack into the galra mainframe.”

The hairs on the back of his neck raise a second before he hears the sound of footsteps.

“What are you-!”

But Shiro’s already slashing through the doorway, dragging Pidge after him. “You’ll do fine! Remember, Patience yields focus!”

He’s gone a second before the sentries round the corner, leaving Keith to deal with the problem himself. He lets out a not-so-quiet string of ‘fuckfuckfuck fuck’ as he ducks down a hallway, the sound of laser shots right behind him.

Fucking Shiro and fucking leaving him to fend for himself.

Worst goddam brother in the universe.

Keith side-steps quickly to avoid a shot aimed at his head, and watches the wall in front of him get destroyed by the blast.

If he survives this, he swears to god, Shiro is going to find snakes in his socks again. He’s not sure how he’ll get them but goddammit he will find a way.

He comes down to a fork in the road and, without thinking about it, bolts down the right one. He manages to shake the sentries in the winding hallways after cathartically cutting one in half.

He thinks he’s doing pretty good at finding his way around until he stumbles onto the same fork in the road from before. Or, it just looks like the same fork in the road as before which isn’t better.

Keith has to tamp down the urge to scream in frustration.

Instead, he takes a deep breath and forces the anger and frustration down into manageable slots. “Patience yields focus. Patience yields focus. ” He remembers both Lance and Pidge talking about feeling a connection and how it led them to their Lions.

Okay. He can work with that.

Something —his Lion—had tugged at his chest earlier. There’s something there. It feels like the sun beating down on his neck and rising steam. Flickering and intangible.

It dances just out of reach, almost like it’s teasing him. Laughing.

There’s a pool of fire in his chest and he needs to look deeper. Needs to dig his hands into the feeling and find where it’s solid.

It burns him. Not maliciously, he thinks. It’s just its nature.

He pushes through the pain, determined and stubborn. His hands turn blistered and fire crawls up his arms, but he just pushes further.

His blackened fingers grab onto a thread and Keith pulls.

His eyes fly back open. “Gotcha.” He doesn’t hesitate. Just sprints off in the direction she knows she’s in, hand grasping at the burning thread, heartbeat pounding in time with the fire flickering in his chest.

***

Incapacitating the two guards in charge of the communications base is child’s play for Shiro, not that Katie had really expected it to be very hard. The man looks like a Captain America knock-off. Of course he can take out some low-level goons.

No, the real problem comes around in the fact that Katie doesn’t have technology that meshes well with the galra and that she can’t read anything in front of her.

She lets out a string of curses that earn her a scolding look from Shiro she pretends to not notice.

Rover was still conked out, Katie not having finished her repairs or upgrades yet. She wanted to add more insulation to his wiring to make it harder for that kind of thing to happen again. Which means it was taking longer than it would have for him to get back in working condition.

Which also means she doesn’t have a translator or cohesive power source handy which sucks.

She stares hard at the controls, willing them with her mind to just make sense.

“Pidge,” he calls anxiously. “If we could pick up the pace?”

“Hey, yeah, Shiro? Do you know how to read galra?” she snaps. “No? Then maybe you should let me work.”

“Okay!” he raises his hands in surrender, turning back to guard the door.

Katie huffs and turns back to the control panel. After a moment of careful deliberation where she weighs the pros and cons against each other with a level head, she decides ‘fuck it’ and slams her hand down on a random button. It was big and red and demanded to be pushed anyway so could you really blame her?

Nothing happens to her immense disappointment.

***

Lance stops her Lion for a second, her face the picture of utter confusion.

“Hunk, are you-”

“That’s… not me.”

She listens for a second longer. Then she asks “…Are you sure?” because she really hopes that it’s him that’s doing that. She won’t even ask how.

“I’m not sure of anything anymore.”

Through her comm comes the sounds of a distant crackling tune that sounds way too close to Elvis’ ‘Burning Love’ for Lance to be comfortable in her world view anymore.

“…Does this mean that Elvis-”

“ Don’t say it.”

***

  She fiddles with a few more buttons and controls she thinks might be doing something until she finds what looks like a port. She studies the module that’s supposed to fit in it then starts rifling around the guards' fallen bodies.

“Aha!” she cheers triumphantly, running back to the control panel and jamming it into the port. A few more buttons are pressed, and she thinks it starts downloading. She’s pretty sure.

There’s a loading bar on the screen so she’s either downloading all the galran secrets or it’s counting down a bomb.

One or the other.

50/50.

Probably…

Maybe she should stand back from the panel.

***

Hallways blur as he races past, doorway after doorway falling behind him as he eats up the distance between him and his Lion. The pull in his chest gets stronger with every step, the fire inside growing and growing and greedily stealing the air from his lungs.

The door slides open and before him, stands the Red Lion.

She is power incarnate; untempered and fierce. The air crackles with the electricity of her very presence.

He runs forward, her forcefield bathing the room in flaming red light. When he touches it, he expects the shield to drop like it had for Lance.

It does.

But that’s the only thing the two situations have in common.

He hasn’t even taken a step forward before the pool of fire in his chests explodes.

Keith crashes to his knees and screams.

“The burden of fire is not an easy one to bear, little cub.” The voice in his head is a fierce, crackling thing. The sound of bubbling lava and the roar of a forest fire given form.

The heat consumes and burns him from the inside out.

“We are different from my sisters and their chosens. Our path is not of healing or clarity or growth.”

Magma flows through his veins and he is exploding. Ripping apart at the seams and breaking himself down to ash.

“We are destruction. We are unending heat. We are battle. We are the weapon that Voltron wields.”

Keith is a supernova given human form and he hurts.

“We are the Guardian of Guardians, little cub. And soon, you will learn we are not red with flames but with blood.”

Keith bites back screams and pain and questions of why why why and looks up and up and up. The eyes of his Lion are endless pools of crimson blood, shimmering with heat and something that’s older than time itself.

“But do not be scared of us, my paladin. Our burden is heavy, but it does not make us wicked. We are Loyalty and Strength just as much as we are weapons.”

Something in Keith snaps. Like something deep in his core is suddenly awake.

As quick as the pain had come, it’s gone. In its place, there is only Keith. Risen from it like a phoenix. Reborn as a warrior, a Paladin.

He gasps for air, drinking it into his lungs as he presses his forehead into the cool metal floor. There’s a pleasant sort of humming heat in his chest, warm and comforting but still dangerous. Still wild.

When he touches Red—a hand placed on her snout, her metal warm warm warm—three more bonds slot themselves right beside the pool of fire.

Golden sunlight. The sand shifting in the desert. Bedrock. Warm laughter. A shimmering thread, winding itself around his spine, protective and strong.

Towering redwood trees. Vibrant forests. Curiosity and mischief. Roots digging themselves into his lungs. The distant hum of machinery.

They come one after another. A second after the first one steadies itself, the next crashes into him, knocking him back off balance.

He only has a moment to ground himself before the last one crashes into him. Heavier and harder and faster than the other two.

An entire ocean knocks into him, sweeping him under with the pull of the waves and forcing its way into his lungs. He chokes on saltwater and drowns in the sound of thunder and whale song. Where the sea touches the fire in his chest, the water burns away to steam and mist and his breath fogs in front of him. Static dances across his skin, prickling along water droplets like hopscotch.

The final bond settles like an anchor in his chest. A sea, nestled and sleeping, in his veins.

He coughs up the salt in his lungs and breathes.

“What the hell was that?”

His Lion looks at him, her quiet chuckle flickering in his mind like candle flame. “That, my paladin, would be our pride.”

Keith thinks through the haze of his brain realigning itself with the four new sensations swirling through his head. “…Pride? You mean, that was the others?” his hand rubs absently at the thrumming power in his chest.

Gold. Forest green. Iridescent blue-purple-black.

Hunk. Pidge. Lance.

What the fuck.

He doesn’t have more time to think about it—probably best considering the thought is already giving him a headache. The doors behind him open, five sentries standing with their guns pointed right at him.

His arm moves before he thinks about it, the shield glowing in front of him as shots ring across it.

He doesn’t have a chance to move forward or activate his Bayard because in the next moment Red scoops him up and they’re tearing their way out through the bay doors, sentries pulled out in the vacuum they leave in their wake.

Keith laughs as he grabs the controls, the feeling of warmth flickering up his arms and mingling with the fire in his chest.

This is where he is meant to be.

For better, or for worse.

***

“This is so much fun!” Lance shouts to Hunk on their private comm, twisting and spinning away from laser blasts.

He and Azura are like water, dancing through the fighter jets and leading them on a merry chase that has Hunk utterly crushing them at the end of it.

She’s pulled the same move five times in ten minutes and they’re still falling for it.

The incompetence of the galra drones is sad really. How did this race take over the entire known universe?

“How is this fun?” Hunk asks, almost panicking over the comms as Lance watches him and Keone slash through a drone with their powerful axe tail.

Lance laughs as she tricks one drone into shooting down another. “Come on! How is this not fun?” She flicks their tail and a glowing blue knife embeds it itself in a galra drone heading for Hunk’s blind spot. “Watch your tail, jelly bean!” she calls cheerfully as she dashes past him.

Then it hits her.

One moment, there is a spark in her chest, small but bright, and in the next—Lance is the center of an explosion.

Heat and pain and fire. Her skin, blistered and burning beneath her suit. Smoke filling her lungs, choking, choking, choking.

The bond carves itself into her ribs, glowing embers that char her bones to ash and burn, burn, burn until her muscle and skin are no more. The flames steal her air and leave her gasping and all the while it settles itself around her heart, bloody and grinning and wild.

Possibilities.

Choices.

What ifs.

“So, Keith found the Red Lion,” Hunk says slowly, sounding more winded than like he’d just been burned alive.

Lance gasps, coughing around the smoke and ash in her throat. The bond in her chest is still too warm and she wonders if she put her hand over her heart, would her fingers come away burned?

“No kidding.”

It probably means something that Keith’s bond to her is so painful and different from Hunk and Pidge. That the burning in her chest is some strange symbolism she hasn’t grasped yet.

Like everything having to do with the Red Paladin, she’d rather not think about it. Luckily, there are more important things to think about like galra drones and not dying, so she can happily shove those thoughts to the back of her mind and think about them again sometime around never.

***

Katie shakes off the vestiges of the warmth in her veins, her newly minted bond settling like unlit coals at the base of her skull, right next to the singing seashells and geodes.

Right as she’s about to grab the flash drive, Shiro makes a noise of pain at the doorway. She whirls around to find him struggling with a sentry, a few others behind the first, guns raised.

Quickly she pockets the drive and materializes her Bayard. A quick jab to the sentries leg has the thing falling with lightning sparking across its body. A shot goes past Katie’s nose and her heart thunders in her ears, limbs locking up in fear for a split second.

It’s not until there are more shots pinging off Shiro’s shield does she realize what she did.

Shiro shouts at her to snap out of it, eyes flicking to her in concern as his arm is battered over and over again.

“Sorry. Sorry. I’m fine,” she grits out between her teeth, flinging her arm out and wrapping the weighted rope around a sentry’s leg. Activating the electrocution, she yanks hard, sending the sentry toppling into the one behind it and causing a domino chain. The line of them fall, twitching on the ground with purple sparks flying off their bodies.

Her Bayard retracts and Shiro lowers his shield, breathing heavily.

Katie holds back a snort when she catches sight of Shiro’s bayard once again.

Captain. America. Knock-off.

***

The atmosphere of the room feels like a crushing weight on Takashi’s shoulders. The eyes trained on him, the expectations he must uphold, the responsibility of a war on his shoulders. It’s all he can do to keep his back straight under it all.

Through that door, is his Lion. And for the first time since arriving at the Castle, he can feel her. Like wind before a rainstorm and thin mountain air and the feeling of flying for the first time. Like a cool breeze in the stale Arizona heat and a tornado on the cusp of forming.

It tugs at the base of his spine and Shiro can’t stifle the grin at the feeling.

The door opens and suddenly Takashi is breathless.

Staring up at the great, powerful being before him, all Takashi can think of is that this is Adam all over again. The same inevitability of falling settles solidly in his chest and Takashi knows—just as he did last time, just as he still does—that she will mean everything.

His Lion is power. Is drenched in it and when he looks into her eyes, he can see entire nebulae scattered in their depths. His Lion is the space between stars and the universe is in her eyes and Takashi adores her.

The last piece slides into place with a whisper. A fluttering of feathers at his back. A new, more welcome, weight settling across his shoulders.

The others—his paladins, his pride—surround him like the wind. Whispers against his back, gentle and caring and real. Campfires and ash. Sea salt and whale song. Mountains and precious gems. Ivy vines and maple saplings.

He is painted in the shades of those he protects, of the colors they claimed as their own.

His bond unfurls and he is complete.

***

Thunder still rings in her ears as the purple thread settles contentedly right below her heart and Lance laughs. Whole and hale and joyous.

It spread to the others, joy and laughter and contentment all bleeding together and Lance can’t tell where one of them ends and the next begins. She’s never felt so connected, so whole.

The space in her chest, so perfectly carved out to hold five other souls, is finally filled and humming. Lance will never be alone again because she’ll never be just herself again. The feeling is warm and brilliant and so right.

When the Black Lion raises her head and roars, loud enough that it shakes the marrow in her bones, the compulsion to echo her, this extension of Shiro, her leader, is too much to fight.

So, she doesn’t.

The sound tears itself from her chest, inhuman and powerful and so, so right.

The room echoes with the booming cries of everyone, all ten of them, roaring in unison like a proper pride. Thunder rumbles through the Castle, echoing off walls and shaking the foundations. It fills Lance with an unnamable joy, and she doesn’t think she’ll ever stop smiling.

When the roar in her chest dies down into boisterous laughing, she throws herself at Hunk who faithfully spins her in circles before the pair drag everyone else into the hug, laughing and giddy and happy.

Above them, their Lions nuzzle and greet their eldest sister with joyful abandon after so many centuries apart. Deafening purrs fill the room, shaking the Paladins and rattling their teeth but no one cares. They’re all too drunk on joy to notice.

It’s been too long since this bond has been complete. Too long since Voltron has been together again.

For a second, Lance thinks she can see an outline of large powerful wings flared out behind Shiro, encircling them all in their expansive width and she feels, for the first time since being in space, like she’s  home.

Chapter Text

Lazily, Lance watches her best friend run a groove into the Bridge’s flooring from where she’s artfully sprawled across the dias stairs. Hunk’s been pacing since they all stepped into the Bridge.

That was thirty minutes ago.

“-but like—what are we going to do once we get there? What do you think?” He turns to Lance as if to ask her but then keeps speaking before she can even try to respond.

Not that she had tried to. You can never get a word in edgewise when Hunk’s in a fit.

“Should we go in there guns blazing? Or, I don’t know, make a public announcement? Law enforcement does that don’t they? Are we the space equivalent of law enforcement now? I don’t have any training for that! Are there actual space cops out there? What would they say? What should we say? ‘Galra, this is Voltron! Please turn yourselves in immediately and face galactic justice!’” He looks around at them. “But… uh. They probably wouldn’t listen to us, right? Right. What if-”

She finally steps in when he starts biting at his fingernails. Waiting for him to step close enough, she swats his hands away from his face and grabs them in her own.

“Relájate, sugar pop,” she soothes, rubbing the back of his hand with her thumb. “You’re going to give yourself wrinkles—and atrocious cuticles.” She hums disappointedly at his fingernails.

“How am I supposed to relax? Are we blasting or no? I need answers, Lance!”

“Yes, we’re blasting,” Keith uncrosses his arms and steps forward to stand at Lance’s left, arms raised placatingly before Hunk. “Now can you please sit down? You’re making me nervous.”

“He’s just excited,” Shiro comments from where he was standing at parade rest off to the side. Sometimes, Lance wonders if he ever relaxes. “It’s our first real mission.”

“Excited to see his new girlfriend,” Pidge singsongs and Lance grins like the Cheshire Cat.

Hunk sputters out denials that would be believable if she hadn’t known him since they were in third grade and he wasn’t blushing enough to put a tomato to shame.

She’s just about to comment on his apparent crush and newfound courageous heroism when the alarm blares.

She’s standing in an instant, heart pounding in her chest and hands like an iron band around Hunk’s. Azura chirps confusedly in the back of her mind, nosing about Lance’s immediate thoughts as she tries to figure out why she’s suddenly so afraid.

She turns to Coran, “What’s that? Are we under attack?”

“No-” he assures her and her shoulders relax just a bit, “-it appears to be a distress beacon. There’s a stranded ship on a nearby moon.”

Pidge is at Coran’s side in an instant, hovering about the console. Lance isn’t sure why she keeps doing it, all the controls are in Altean and it only serves to make her frustrated.

“I wonder who it is?”

“Whoever they are, they’ll have to wait. Shay and their people come first.”

Lance shoots Hunk a look out of the corner of her eye. It’s not like him to leave people in need.

He must be really worried about this Shay person.

Lance can’t wait to meet them. They must be really something if they’ve given her honeybee such a lasting impression.

“The Paladin Code states we must help all in need,” Allura scolds, already twisting her wild hair into a bun at the top of her head. “We don’t get to pick and choose. Coran, take us in.”

“Of course, Princess.”

Lance hops in place, more relaxed now that the threat of danger is gone. “Oh, this is so cool! We’re like Rescue Rangers!” 

Pidge looks over her shoulder to stare at Lance. “Like Chip and Dale?” she asks, sounding baffled. “That’s your go-to?”

“Yes and shut up,” Lance says. Then, her eyes brighten as she gets an absolutely brilliant idea. “Coran! Do we have a siren?”

He cocks his head to the side in a way that reminds Lance of a bird. “Ah, no. But I could record you making a siren noise and broadcast it to them if you wished?”

“Perfect!” She jumps the stairs to the bottom to get closer to the older alien. Halfway there she starts making the most obnoxious siren sound she can, her grin stretching wide across her face.

It makes Pidge and Keith cringe at the volume but if anything that just makes her louder.

A hand snaps over her mouth, cutting off the sound, surprising Lance and everyone else.

“Nope.” Shiro stares at her, looking exasperated and tired. “We’re not doing that.”

Lance has half a mind to lick his hand in revenge. The only reason she doesn’t is because he’s in armour and she doesn’t think it would actually do anything.

She settles for squinting at him angrily instead.

It doesn’t have the desired effect either.

***

Lance walks off the Castle ramp with a swagger in her steps.

It makes Hunk roll his eyes but he doesn’t get an opinion because he’s immune to her charms. She wants to make a good impression so she will goddammit. There are only so many options in space, she’s not going to pass up her limited chances.

Hunk can disapprove all he likes, it didn’t stop her on Earth and it won’t stop her now.

The first thing she sees is what looks like some sort of cargo ship. It’s orange and white accents remind her of the Garrison’s training ships and she has to tamp down on the urge to wrinkle her nose. The colour scheme didn’t look good then and it’s not much better now.

Her gaze is soon drawn to the pair of aliens and a small robot directly in front of the ship. The taller one has purple skin and arms that could make a girl swoon. He—Lance thinks they’re a he?—gives off a lazy-bad-boy vibe with his aviator's cap, gold earrings and pretty, half-lidded eyes that Lance immediately likes very much.

The other is a creamy yellow toned alien with feminine curves. Instead of skin, she looks to be lightly furred—mammal-esqe. Her hair’s longer and tied up in an odd-looking ponytail with four tails. Her features are elf-like with large, purple eyes and pointed ears. She looks at Lance like she wants to eat her—in the good way.

Both of them are dressed sparingly, miles of chest and stomach on full display between the two. It’s enough to make a girl drool.

They’ve won the stranded alien lottery.

The tall, purple one laughs—really more of a self-deprecating scoff—at something Keith said and Lance starts paying attention again.

“I don’t think Zarkon’s exactly quaking in his boots at the thought of us… but we do what we can. I’m Rolo, by the way. This is Nyma,” he gestures to his feminine companion. “And our cyber-unit, Beezer.” He waves at the waist-high robot that reminds Lance of R2-D2 except slimmer and gray and fully upright. Also, it has cat ears.

Lance struts over to Nyma and gives the beauty a flourishing bow as she takes her hand, kissing the back of it with her Cheshire grin. “Why, hello,” she says with as much honeyed syrup her voice can muster. “The name’s Lance.”

Nyma giggles prettily, obviously used to reactions like this but flattered anyway.

Without missing a beat Lance turns to Rolo, winking at him shamelessly. “Though you can call me the girl of your dreams.”

Rolo’s eyes widen almost imperceptibly, his lazy grin freezing for a fraction of a second before it fades into something equally flirtatious.

Lance doesn’t miss the way his eyes flick to Nyma almost involuntarily. She files that reaction away for later.

Before he or she gets the chance to respond further, Shiro cuts in. “Was your ship damaged in a fight?”

Rolo refocuses his attention on their leader, still charming but less leering than he was with Lance. “Yeah. We’ve been really put through it by the Galra. Parts are hard to come by and I don’t know what would’ve happened if you hadn’t picked up our distress beacon.”

“We’re happy to help,” Allura tells him, using her ‘regal princess’ voice. “I’m Princess Allura Raunne of the planet Altea. From now on you won’t have to fight the Galra alone, you’ll have the Paladins of Voltron on your side.” She gestured grandly to the team around her.

Rolo looks around at them unimpressed, “…Okay.”

Lance can’t say she blames him. With Pidge nerding out over their bot and Keith being all emo in the corner, they don’t cut a particularly terrifying figure.

“I don’t think he’s heard of us,” Hunk stage whispers to her.

“You haven’t heard of Voltron? Ya’ know, five magical robot Lions that combine into one giant robotic warrior? Not that size matters or anything, but we are pretty big.” Lance smirks. The innuendo gets a startled laugh from both Rolo and Nyma. She does a victory dance in her head

“Lance.”

“What?” she asks, feigning innocence. “I’m not lying! I think it’s important for new partners to know the best qualities of each other. First impressions and all that.” She wiggles her eyebrows half suggestively half-jokingly at Rolo and Nyma. Rolo looks amused, his eyes crinkling at the corners while Nyma giggles into her hand.

“Well, aren’t you a fun little thing?” Nyma tells her, leaning forward almost imperceptibly.

Lance leans forward far more obviously, fluttering her lashes. “Darling,” she drawls, “you have no idea.”

“Can we get started on fixing your ship?” Hunk interrupts impatiently. Lance turns to him, finally noticing the unease and frustration moving along the bond in agitated little spins. She places a hand on her hip and raises her eyebrow, silently asking what his deal is.

The scowl that was on his face—so alien considering his normal hundred-watt smile—softens a hair as he looks at her but he just shakes his head.

‘Not now.’

Lance rolls her eyes at his theatrics but leaves him be. She figures he’s just anxious to get back to the Balmerans. And if it’s something else? She’ll just badger him about it later.

Turning back to the two aliens she sees Rolo dragging his gaze away from where her hand had been on her hip. When she catches his eyes she smirks triumphantly before flicking her bangs out of her face and turning completely to Nyma, leaving him to run off and play engines with Hunk.

“So, what’s a pretty girl like you doing out here fighting a war?” Lance asks as Nyma leads them off away from the group towards a group of crates.

“I could ask you the same thing,” Nyma quips as she fluidly jumps onto a supply crate, crossing her legs in a way that’s completely unfair. Lance follows the movement before shaking her head and raising her eyes back to Nyma’s. She finds the other girl smirking at her and Lance’s eyes narrow playfully.

So it’s going to be like that, is it?

Well, two can play at that game.

“Say,” Lance leans forward exaggeratedly, her eyelashes fluttering. “Do you happen to be the sun? Because I’m feeling a pull towards you I just can’t fight.”

Nyma laughs—not giggles, and it sounds more real almost—like she’s surprised she’s doing it and Lance decides right there that she’s going to hear that laugh as many times as she can.

That’s how Lance finds herself doing ridiculous poses and over exaggeratedly declaring her love for Nyma through pick up lines and finger guns for the next twenty minutes. Nyma isn’t one to be outdone though and joins in on the fun turning it into some strange version of gay chicken.

Lance is dramatically moaning Shakespeare while sprawled across a crate, her leg raised to the sky as high as it can go—which is pretty high actually, thank you, six years of gymnastics—when Nyma starts laughing loudly and unrestrained, cutting off what Lance had been saying. She tries looking offended for a total of two seconds before Nyma snort-laughs at her expression and Lance can’t help joining her.

That’s how Hunk finds them, the two hanging off each other in order to keep themselves upright. When she sees him, her smile widens. “Boo Bear! How lovely for you to join us! We were just talking about-”

“Can I speak to you?” His eyes flick to Nyma who’s still giggling but there’s something more reserved about it now, maybe she’s embarrassed? Lance didn’t take her for the type. “Alone?”

Lance blinks, head tilted in confusion. “Uh, sure.” She turns back to Nyma with a wide smile. “Be but a moment, love,” she says before bouncing after Hunk.

He doesn’t stop walking until they’re well out of earshot. Lance can feel the worry and uneasiness around him like a cloud. It makes her stomach churn.

“What’s wrong, honeybee? Is everything okay?”

He shifts from foot to foot in front of her, a nervous habit that is at odds with the look on his face which is more focused and grumpy than worried.

He brings his eyes up to her own and very seriously tells her, “I don’t trust them.”

Lance tilts her head, still bouncy and loose but dampening with worry for Hunk. “Why do you say that?”

“Something’s… off with them.”

“Okay,” she says slowly and Hunk’s shoulders lose some of their tension. Lance stops herself from turning and glaring at the group of her fellow Paladins clustered around the fire. She will have words if she finds out that one of them decided to ridicule Hunk for anything he had said.

She grabs his arm, squeezing lightly. “You’ve never steered me wrong before, ducky. What tipped you off?” because while Hunk will act on his own in relation to his gut feelings, he rarely brings her into it until he has concrete evidence.

Mostly because he doesn't want Lance to get into more trouble than she already does on her own.

“There’s nothing wrong with their rig,” he says frowning. “Rolo had me replace a thermal pipe but the old one wasn’t even cracked. I should’ve had to replace the whole undercarriage if there was actually anything wrong with the pipe because it all would’ve been burnt to-”

“Okay,” Lance cuts him off before he can go into a rant about engineering. She’s heard him talk about it enough and according to him, they have more important things to worry about anyway. “If their ship is fine, then what’s their game?”

Hunk’s mouth twists in thought. “They could be bounty hunters? Or information brokers?”

Lance shakes her head. “This sounds more like a con. Broken ship, playing damsels, it’s meant to get us off our guard. Besides, if they were bounty hunters or brokers, they would’ve had to know we were passing through.”

“They could’ve. It’s not like we’ve been quiet. We haven’t done much, but word has to be getting around through the galra at least.”

“You think they’re galra spies?”

Hunk shrugs and runs a hand through his hair in frustration. “No, I- maybe? They seem neutral. Not exactly zealots.

“Mercs, guns for hire?” Lance bites her lip. “You think they’re after us specifically?”

“It’s a pretty big coincidence if we just happened to stumble upon some con men the first time we answer a distress signal, don’t you think?”

Lance does think, and she has to admit, it does seem a bit too… planned. Lance cycles back through her interactions with Nyma, and even the few she’s had with Rolo.

“Nyma hasn’t been digging for any information,” she offers. “Or, at least, nothing I’ve noticed. But, I could just be an easy distraction or separation tactic.”

“Yeah,” Hunk grumbles, “You’ve been a bit preoccupied from what I’ve seen.”

“Hey!” she whacks him on the shoulder, indignation filling her tone. “Forgive me, for having a little fun. Not like I’ve just been through a traumatic experience or anything!”

Hunk’s face twitches, his eyebrows furrowing with hurt and Lance instantly feels bad. Before she can apologize for putting her foot in her mouth though, Hunk starts speaking.

“Rolo was talking to Shiro and Allura before when I was getting the parts. Camaraderie and such. He’s also been asking about the Lions and Voltron a little too much, he keeps steering the conversation back to it. If I wasn’t friends with you, I’m not sure I’d even notice.”

She smirks up at him. “You’re very welcome for the practice then,” she says cheekily. “Divide and conquer then?”

Hunk frowns at her, “Or, we could just tell Shiro and Allura and leave right now before something bad happens.”

“Do you think they’d actually listen?” Lance asks seriously. “Because I think you already tried talking to Shiro, yeah? And he said you were being paranoid?”

His lips twist and Lance knows that’s exactly what happened.

“You’re more persuasive,” he tries but she’s already shaking her head.

“I take your side too much. Shiro won’t take it seriously if it’s just me backing you up because I always back you up.” She grins, “Besides, don’t you want to have a bit of fun?”

He looks down at her warily. “I hate when you say that.”

“I think you mean you love when I say that.”

“Just be careful? Please?” he grabs her hand, face serious. “You just- You almost-” he takes a deep breath and gathers himself. “I can’t lose you.”

Lance softens. “I’m with you until the end of the line, sweet puff. Couldn’t get rid of me if you tried.” She pops up on her tiptoes to peck him on the cheek, patting him lightly where her lips had just been. “I’ll be fine okay? I know what I’m doing.”

“Listening to stories of your cousins doing these type of things does not qualify as actual experience,” Hunk deadpans.

Lance rolls her eyes at him. “You know it’s more than just stories. Just because I’ve never had practical experience-”

“I am so not having this argument again.”

She sticks her tongue out at him childishly. “You’re just upset you’re not cool enough to be in our street gang,” Lance jokes.

“Please, stop calling it that.”

“Never!” she crows before bouncing back towards Nyma, seemingly just as happy as when she left. But if one would look closely at her, they’d be able to see a certain sharpness in her gaze. A dangerous edge to her smile where previously there had only been mischief and humor.

She looks ready to eat someone alive—and this time not in the fun way.

“What was that all about?”

“Hmm? Oh, Hunk’s just worried.”

“About?” Nyma prompts a little too casually.

“There are people he wants to save on a nearby planet, owes them a debt you know?” Lance looks at her out of the corner of her eye, leaning on the crate Nyma was back to perching on.

The other girl’s expression tightened a fraction and Lance acts like she doesn’t notice. Now that she’s looking for the signs though, carefully measuring action and reaction, it takes more effort for Lance not to notice.

“We took a detour to help you guys, but he’s still worried about them. We don’t really know how much time they have or if they’re okay so… he’s anxious.”

“Oh. Uh, sorry then.”

“Not your fault.” Lance shrugs. “Your ship broke down. Not much you can do about that. And we’re meant to help, anyways.”

Something flickers across Nyma’s face and Lance knows Hunk was right. Not that she thought Hunk was wrong, but she hoped. Just a bit.

Lance pretends like she doesn’t notice the disappointment in her chest.

“So… I’m curious, do you mind if I ask a question?” Nyma tilts her head, all innocence and honest curiosity.

Not seeing the harm, Lance says, “Go ahead.”

“Your Lions-” Lance’s shoulders tense for a fraction of a second before she forcibly smooths them out.

The way Nyma says ‘your Lions’ rubs her the wrong way. As if she thought they were just possessions. Things to be used and nothing else.

“-they are ships, yes?”

“Yeah, I guess you could say that,” she says slowly. “But that’s a very simplified term for what the Lions are.”

“Oh?” Nyma prompts.

Lance waffles for a moment. Hunk said Rolo was asking questions too. Is it smarter to give her some information and see what she does with it or keep her mouth shut and possibly alert Nyma to her suspicions?

“Well,” she starts slowly, careful about her words. “The Lions are actually ancient magic. Only Paladins can really interact with them. Azura, she’s my Lion, she tells me that they were brought to life to protect the universe, but they need us, mortal pilots, to help them. I’m not too sure why- ”

“Wait,” Nyma interrupts, hand raised in front of her. “Your Lion is… alive?”

“Well, yeah. There’s no way I would be able to fly Azura all by myself. She’s my co-pilot. But even more than that she’s… she’s a part of me.” Lance places a hand over the bond in her chest, feeling the warmth thrumming against her palm.

Azura purrs in her mind, nuzzling against her softly with happy trills.

Lance is so focused on the feeling, she doesn’t notice the almost regretful look Nyma shoots her.

“She sounds amazing.” Lance jolts, half-forgetting Nyma was sitting there. She looks up at the Castle longingly. “I would love to meet her.”

Lance shifts uncomfortably. “Oh, I don’t think that’s a good idea…”

“Oh, but please?” Nyma pleads, eyes wide and childlike. “Meeting a Voltron Lion is a once in a lifetime opportunity.”

Lance knows a ploy when she sees one, she knows what Nyma’s trying to do—or well, she can guess at the vague shape of it.

But what can Nyma possibly do to Azura? A ten-ton, magical, robot cat who’s told Lance to her face she would destroy worlds for her. Something Lance knows for certain is an entirely serious offer.

She wavers, casting a glance over at Hunk before sighing roughly. “Okay… but-”

And before Lance can finish speaking, Nyma’s a sudden blur of movement, jumping off the crate and smiling wider than she had even when they were joking and laughing before. All exaggerated excitement and anticipation, almost like she’s not giving Lance time to go back on it.

She hooks her arm through Lance’s and tugs her over to the makeshift camp, meaning to walk past it to the Castle. Lance takes the opportunity to look over the scene.

Pidge still seems enamored with Beezer who looks less than thrilled with the attention and Keith, Shiro and Allura are all being bumps on a log around the fire. They look like they’re talking about something, but Lance isn’t curious enough to find out.

They pass by Rolo who’s elbow deep in an engine Hunk claims is perfectly fine. Lance appreciates the view for a moment and, because she can’t resist, wolf whistles at him.

It makes all the aliens in the vicinity jump, which wasn’t exactly her intention, but a funny reaction nonetheless. He knocks his head on the hood as he turns to her with equal parts curiosity and bewilderment and Lance has to bite her cheek to keep from laughing.

“Yes?” he asks, rubbing the back of his head.

“Just appreciating the view,” she tells him, giving him a thorough once over because she can and it’s not like Rolo minds. Then, because she’s a little shit who notices more than people give her credit for, she tacks on, “Oh, and I’m also stealing your girlfriend for a sec. Hope you don’t mind?”

Surprise flickers across Rolo’s face for a second before she sees the corner of his mouth twitch, his lazy smirk threatening to widen into a grin. “I don’t know what you're talking about, doll” he says, something like approval in his voice.

She hums in agreement if only to humor him. Because honestly, only a blind person would miss the way Nyma keeps herself tilted towards him or how Rolo steals glances at her if he thinks he can get away with it.

This situation has too many parallels to her dearest Ryan and James for her to miss the signs.

Lance must have a thing for couples head over heels for one another.

“Of course,” she says dryly and shares a look with Hunk who’s peeking out from underneath the rig. He looks vaguely disapproving, probably because he’s guessed at the bad idea she’s decided to follow involving Nyma and her Lion.

She turns back to Rolo. “You’re invited too, if you’d like,” she tells him because she knows he won’t accept but she still likes flirting. “I’m always willing to make room for one more…” she pauses, looking at him pointedly, “personality.”

Behind her, she can hear Allura choke-cough in surprise and Pidge is gagging somewhere to her left. She ignores both of them in favor of wiggling her eyebrows at Rolo.

“I’m flattered, really,” he chuckles, that honey-smooth voice warm with humor. At her side, Nyma leans further into her, her smile all teeth as she looks between Lance and Rolo. “But I should focus on getting this fixed.”

Lance pouts at him. “If you’re so sure…”

Nyma bumps her hip against hers, grinning. Lance returns it and they both turn to blow kisses at Rolo before walking off, hips swinging dramatically.

She doesn’t look back, but Lance can feel the eyes on her.

Her smirk grows wider.

***

“What a woman.”

“You’ll keep your hands off her if you know what best for you.” Hunk calls from where he’s buried under the engine, pretending to clank around and fix things when really, he’s committing the rig to memory so he can rebuild it later. It’s really a work of art.

Too bad he has to destroy it.

“Jealous?” Rolo calls as Hunk pops off a bolt he’s pretty sure was important but not important enough to like, make the rig explode or anything. Probably.

Hunk laughs at the absurdity of that statement. “As if!” he rolls out so he can look Rolo in the eye. “Just a warning. Lance is like nothing you’ve ever seen before.”

Rolo raises an eyebrow at him, clearly unimpressed.

Hunk rolls his eyes, crawling back under the engine with a huff. “Suit yourself. But don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

For as long as Hunk’s known her, there isn’t a single person who’s fallen into Lance’s orbit that was able to get out of it. She pulls people to her without even trying, collecting them like celestial bodies of her own personal solar system.

She could break you into tiny pieces then scatter you across the universe and you’d still be too caught up in her to notice.

Lucky them, Hunk thinks, that she chooses to fix people instead of breaking them.

***

Lance leads Nyma to Azura’s hangar, doing her level best to figure out exactly what the plan here is. Nyma makes it very difficult. Mostly, because the longer Lance spoke and bantered with her, the more her guard dropped.

Against her best efforts, she might add. It’s not like she did it on purpose.

Lance knows Hunk is right, even passed just trusting him for these kind of things. Nyma and Rolo are both trouble and danger and carefully crafted masks built around a con. But, well, it’s not like Lance hadn’t grown up around the same kind of people her entire childhood.

(Her extended family aren’t exactly the ‘picket fence and weekend barbeque’ types.)

That type of thing tends to… skew one’s perception of a situation.

But these people aren’t her family. They’re not even her species. They have no reason not to hurt her. No reason not to take what they please and leave her behind without a care in their minds.

They don’t hold any loyalty to her.

It’s just that… Lance can’t help but like Nyma and Rolo. And not just in a ‘they’re so hot’ kind of way, but in a ‘you remind me of home and people I love, and I think we’d get along great if you would only let me try’ kind of way.

So, Lance is trying. She’s trying for these people who are probably lying through their teeth and she doesn’t care because she’s always trusted too easily and liked people too much and she’s not going to stop now.

And yeah, maybe it’s not smart or clever or anything that makes even a lick of sense, but Lance has never claimed to be any of those things. She’s a thousand and one contradictions rolled into the vague shape of a human mess and that’s all she plans on being. 

Besides, it’s Hunk’s job to be the suspicious one.

He’s much better at it than she is anyway. Where he is smart and slow to trust, Lance is bubbly and too friendly and painfully naive.

She likes people. Likes seeing the best in them and talking with them and just being around them.

Sometimes that leads her to trusting too quickly and winding up hurt, but she never stops.

Call her stupid or innocent or a thousand different things, but she knows what she’s doing. Knows that for every time she opens up, there’s a chance she’ll get hurt. Knows that if she chances the fall, she may end up bruised and on the ground.

Lance likes people.

But she also needs them.

Needs them like water to survive.

Needs them like rain or ocean waves.

And, well, when it comes to drowning or dehydration? She’ll choose to drown every time.

***

“Do not confuse kindness with weakness, mi cielo,” her Abuelita had told her so many years ago. 

Her small cheeks, still round with youth, were cupped between her Abuelita's old, weathered hands. Hands that were warm and comforting and covered with old scars and rough calluses.

“You are a lionhearted lamb, nieta, and there is strength in that. Do not forget. Do not let those weaker than you make you forget.”

She hadn’t quite understood then, but nodded seriously anyway. Abuelita spoke like that when things were important. Cryptic words that mean everything and nothing at once, words she wouldn’t understand until she was older.

So she nodded and she listened and she stood there, too small and with too many things set on her thin shoulders and she remembered.

Carefully folded the words and tucked them safely away in a box next to her heart. All the lessons her Abuelita trusts her with, all the ones Lance doesn't understand but will. Someday.

***

“Azura,” Lance says with more confidence than she feels. Something in her stomach is uneasy but she hides it under her bravado. Fake it ‘til you make it, as Francisca loved to say, “I want you to meet Nyma. Nyma, this is Azura, the Blue Lion. Also known as the best kitty in the whole universe .”

Nyma’s trailing behind her, equal parts nervous and awed.

Azura makes a rumbling sound that Nyma can hear too, the vibration humming along the floor and tickling their feet. She’s obviously enjoying Lance stroking her ego and Nyma’s careful wonder as she looks up at her. Warmth bubbles along the bond and Lance’s smile widens.

“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Blue Lion,” Nyma says, dipping her head respectfully towards Azura.

Azura hums appreciatively. “Tell her the pleasure is most definitely mine.”

Lance does and Nyma smiles, blinking up at the hulking figure of the Lion.

“She’s beautiful,” she breathes, voice little more than a whisper. In a flash, Nyma spins to Lance grabbing her hands in her own and bringing them up to their chests. “Take me on a ride around the moon?” she asks hopefully.

When Lance doesn’t say anything for too long of a moment, she continues.

“Oh, please? You said she’s practically one of a kind! When am I ever going to get the chance to fly in a ship this advanced again?” She pulls Lance just a bit closer, voice lowering to a husky whisper. “Show her off for me?”

Nyma can’t, shouldn’t, be trusted. Lance should say no.

She feels like she’s miscalculated, that she made some horrible mistake somewhere.

Lance should say no. Should go back and regroup with Hunk, or wait until Rolo and Nyma get bored instead of playing this dangerous game of hers.

Lance hesitates too long and the smile fades from Nyma’s lips. “Okay. That’s fine. I understand if you’re not comfortable with that. Maybe I could ask Keith to show me around his Lion instead?”

“No!” Lance blurts before she even realizes what she’s saying or what Nyma was implying.

Her first thought is that Keith doesn’t know the plan. He doesn’t know Nyma and Rolo are dangerous. He’ll ruin everything.

Her second thought is why would Nyma even want to talk to Keith anyway?

Nyma immediately brightens, tugging Lance by her hands and pulling her into Azura’s waiting maw. Lance doesn’t immediately regret her words, but it’s a near thing.

***

Infiltrating certain high-class social circles took far less time than Francisca expected.

She’d expected that with her well off family and growing presence in the fashion industry it wouldn’t have been impossible, but it also would’ve been far from easy.

The rich types are gatekeepers and are hardly ones to allow entry to a ‘commoner’ such as herself just because she asked.

So, yes. She had been prepared to start frequenting the more expensive boutiques and tailors more often than she normally would have, making nice with certain designers and hunting down military socialites by herself.

She had not been prepared for one such socialite to fall into her lap.

She’d only been visiting her dear friend Gavin to drag him out of his sewing room and out to get coffee—she swore he was getting paler every time she saw him—and wasn’t anticipating any progress in her endeavor except possibly getting Gavin to agree to keep an eye out for her.

But then Antonia Santos had swept in the shop with a flourish of shimmering gold and crimson. She was a whirlwind of demands and sharp smiles and a certain steel in her spine Francisca admits she hadn’t expected to find in the trophy wife of the Brigadier General.

But, Francisca thinks, perhaps she was wrong about the ‘trophy’ part. Antonia carried herself with an air of power that was carefully cultivated and grown—not handed over with a wedding ring.

Francisca recognizes a fellow predator when she sees one.

When Antonia begins yelling at some young tailor for a mistake they made, Francisca sees her chance. Stepping in with charming smiles and deft hands, she saves the poor idiot Gavin hired and fixes the problem.

He was offering up ball gowns in the completely wrong shape and style for the woman, much to Francisca’s chagrin. Quickly correcting the problem, she even offers to do the fitting right then and there for her to make up for the mistake.

When she finished, Antonia had taken one look at herself in the mirror and turned back to Francisca to demand her name.

“Francisca Martinez, ma’am.”

Antonia hummed at the name, her blood-red lips curling at the edges. “You have much talent,” she says, a light Italian accent coloring her words. “Are you any good at designing?”

Francisca straightened to her full height, which was a lot even without her three-inch Jimmy Choos, “I’m one of the best.”

Antonia laughs then, bright and full of amusement. “You have fire. It is a good thing for powerful women to have, no?”

Francisca grins, all teeth and scarlet lips, and isn’t the least bit surprised when Antonia returns it.

Antonia snaps her fingers and the PA who had been standing at the side silently quickly moves into action, dropping a small purse into her waiting hand. Antonia slips perfectly manicured nails into the stylish bag and pulls out a crisp, golden card.

“My personal contact information,” she hands Francisca the gleaming card which she tucks away without looking at. “Call me if you want a job.”

Francisca raises a perfectly shaped eyebrow. “I already have a job, but-” she picks a card out of her own purse, silvery blue and ivory, “call me if you ever need a great designer.”

Antonia’s lips twitch upwards, amused by the gall of her. “You young children these days. So disrespectful.”

Francisca only grins because she can see the approval in Antonia’s eyes and knows she’s won something very important.

She decides to get herself some gelato to celebrate her victory, golden card tucked safely away and shimmering with new possibilities.

***

“So, where do you want to go?” Lance asks, rubbing at the grips nervously in an attempt to soothe her slowly fraying nerves. Having Nyma in Azura’s cockpit is making Lance feel vulnerable—exposed—despite her trying her best not to show it.

“Oh, down there!” Nyma says excitedly, pointing to a purple lake. Lance doesn’t miss how the move brings Nyma’s face purposefully closer to her own. “Near the water. It’s a kinetic spring. There are minerals inside that turn the reflections into a rainbow.”

Lance hums, intrigued. “Sounds like nerd stuff Pidge would like.”

She pushes Azura down into a steep dive causing Nyma to yelp at the sudden change. Then, right before they hit the water, Lance pulls her up in a smooth arc, dragging Azura’s paws across the surface of the water and making the air around them explode in color.

Her Lion trills happily in her head and it makes Lance relax just a bit. Azura is fine. Azura will be fine.

On a whim, or maybe a silent suggestion from Azura, Lance pushes them beneath the waves.

It’s like a flipped switch.

Her blood thrums. She’s become a live wire, electricity and power humming just below her skin like it’s alive.

A laugh tears itself from her throat, no longer able to contain the joy bubbling in her chest. This feels better than flying.

Whalesong and the gentle crashing of waves fill her head and Lance wants. Wants for the open sea and the rain and the water.

She pulls Azura out of the water. If she doesn't do it then, she doesn’t think she ever will.

“Whoa,” Lance says breathlessly before blinking the stars from her eyes and refocusing on where she is. “You must be pretty smart to know about that.”

It takes Nyma a moment to understand what she’s saying but when she does, she tilts herself away, twirling one of her ponytails to hide her face. “Oh, I wouldn’t call myself that smart.”

Lance snorts derisively. “Please. Don’t sell yourself short, I’ve been surrounded by geniuses my entire life. I can recognize a smart person when I see them.”

Nyma hums absent-mindedly, but when Lanee steals a glance at her from the corner of her eye, there’s pride there and a genuine sort of flattered. Lance can relate. She’s not normally complimented on her smarts either.

Then, in the next second, Nyma almost seems to shake herself out of it. The honey-sweet expression that she keeps defaulting to slides back into place and Lance feels the line of her spine go tense.

“I am curious.”

Lance gives her a wary sidelong glance. “About?”

“You said the Lions need a mortal pilot but… can that be anybody?”

Something in Lance violently rejects even the idea of someone else piloting Azura. A jolt, so sudden and powerful, she jerks forward in her chair, a snarl on her lips.

“No!”

Nyma jumps backwards, something like fear in her eyes and it’s then that Lance realizes she’s growling. The sound vibrating from her chest and echoing through the walls of the cockpit.

A thunderstorm of her own creation.

She stops, but it takes much longer for her to calm herself down. Her thumb rubs circles into the handgrips, for both her and Azura’s benefit.

Lance clears her throat awkwardly, refusing to meet Nyma’s eyes. “Ah, no. There is no one else who can pilot the Lions.”

No one who would dare, a familiar darkness hisses in her mind.

“There’s not- there’s only us. Anyone else who tries would just… crash and burn.”

Nyma coughs awkwardly, Lance doesn’t turn to look at her, but out of the corner of her eye, she can see how uncomfortable she is. “Do you mind if we- we could land down there.”

She gestures vaguely to the shoreline and Lance hurriedly obliges, wanting to get out of the stifling air of the cockpit. Nyma hurries out the second they touch down and Lance lets her run ahead, wanting to get herself back under control.

She hadn’t felt anything that viscerally since…

Lance shakes her head, dislodging the thought. It’s been years. She’s over it, moved passed it and everything.

Her assertion doesn’t stop the involuntary shiver that runs down her spine.

She’s going to need to spend the night with Hunk but, ugh, they painted their nails only a few days ago. She’s going to have to figure out something else for them to do now.

Lance exhales loudly before pushing up off the seat, following off after Nyma. Before she walks out of Azura completely, she gives her Lion a comforting pat that Azura returns with a reassuring purr. Telling her she’s still there, that it will be okay.

She finds Nyma standing on the shoreline, looking over the water. Her arms are crossed, and it looks like she’s hugging herself. She looks… small.

Trapped.

Lance realizes then, why she reminds her so much of her family. It’s not just the bounty hunter thing or the gooey insides hidden behind hard masks or how she’s always looking over her shoulder.

She’s running from something. Something terrifying.

Her and Rolo and their bot, they’re all scared.

Lance steps out next to her on the strange, purple not-sand.

“You know, I’ve known a few grifters in my time,” she starts and doesn’t turn when Nyma stiffens. “No offence, but you aren’t exactly a great one.”

“What?”

“You break character too much,” Lance continues. “And the ‘flirty girl next door’ act isn’t really you.”

Nyma stares at her, the steel underneath cracking through just the smallest amounts, and Lance forcibly keeps her posture relaxed. Just like she did with Shiro.

Such different situations and yet still so similar.

“But hey, maybe that’s just the strange childhood upbringing talking. Bounty hunters, mercs, con men—a lot of strange types could be found around our dinner table. Some of them were good guys, some of them weren’t.” She shrugs. “It hardly mattered. The family didn’t care. We were the only place for them to go, the only place they felt safe, you know?”

“Why,” Nyma starts, flattens her mouth and tries again. “Why are you telling me this?”

Lance gives her an unimpressed look. “You’re smart, Nyma. And contrary to popular belief, so am I most times. I know what scared people look like. I know how people act when they’re running from something.” she pauses, lets Nyma chew on those words. Then, “I want to help you, if you let me.”

For a long moment, it’s silent. Nothing but the sound of the waves crashing on the not-sand to fill the space between them as the pair stare at each other. Neither willing to look away first.

There’s a lot passing through Nyma’s eyes, the most prominent being suspicion. But, she must come to some sort of conclusion because she’s holding out her hand to Lance in the next moment.

“Can I show you something?”

Lance smiles, still loose and trying to show she isn’t a threat, and puts her hand in Nyma’s.

It is, perhaps, not the smartest move Lance could have made.

Before she knows it, she’s tied to a tree, her wrists bound in front of her and cuffs humming against her skin. The tentative hope sours in her stomach as she tugs desperately at the glowing rope.

Nyma slowly backs away and in her mind, all Lance can hear is Azura yowling in alarm.

In front of her, the young and seductive Nyma melts away before her eyes, leaving behind a battle-hardened and sad facsimile of the girl. Lance tugs at her cuffs harder, the humming louder in her ears now. A voice in the back of her mind, dark and creeping and nothing like the great roaring of Azura whispers to her.

One day that will be you. Broken and abused.

This war will eat you alive.

She starts panicking.

“No.”

It starts a quiet whisper and claws its way up her throat into desperate scream. Bile and anger and fear choke her just as much as the words.

“No, no, no! Nyma, please! Don’t do this! It doesn’t have to be this way! I can help!”

Nyma shakes her head at her, and in that moment, Lance hates her. Hates Nyma and Rolo and their stupid bot with every fiber of her being because they dared.

 “No, Lance. You can’t.”

Harsh winds spin around Lance, pulling her hair from its bun and sending it thrashing around her shoulders. Their ship, the one they claimed was broken, lowers rigging to begin pulling her Lion, pulling Azura into their ship.

Lance can feel Azura snarl and scream in her head. Her roar threatens to deafen her and she can feel the jagged gouges Azura’s thrashing leaves on her mind.

I would destroy worlds for you if you wished.

Not just pretty words.

But Azura doesn’t thrash or claw at her ropes. She doesn’t move because in her mind Lance is begging her not to.

Lance won’t let Azura spill blood in her name. 

They don’t hurt people.

They don’t hurt desperate people.

Her chest burns as they raise Azura, limp behind her forcefield, into the ship. The anchor in her chest pulls at her as they take off and Lance screams into the uncaring sky.

She doesn’t hear the way Nyma mutters how sorry she is, or see how her face seems to sag with guilt.

Lance wouldn’t care anyway.

She’s too busy being ripped apart from the inside out, every inch farther Azura moves leaves her bloody and aching deep in her chest, like someone was trying to grab her insides and tug them out.

Her knees hit the ground so hard it jars her body but she barely notices.

A desert is creeping into her mind, into her lungs. The gentle ocean, deep and unending and calm in the is disappearing and Lance can’t stop it.

She’s drying up, roasting in the heat of a burning star, coughing up all the sand in her lungs, wailing and wanting for the rainstorm they stole.

Her vision fades in and out and she can feel the echo in her chest pounding right along with her heart. She’s dizzy with pain, with terror, with panic but Hunk’s voice breaks through it all. Grounding her in this ever-shifting sand storm.

“Lance! Lance, what’s wrong? Rolo’s gone. The Lions are freaking out. What happened?”

It takes three tries for her to get any sound out of her burning throat. But when she does, it feels more like vomiting sand than speaking. “They have Azura. They took her, oh god, they have her, Hunk, please, I- pain. I need her back.”

Distantly, she’s aware she wasn’t speaking English, but it’s quickly forgotten in her haze of pain.

The cord connecting her to Azura is so tight it feels like it will rip itself out of her chest and take everything important with it.

“We’ll get her back, okay?” Hunk soothes, “Just sit tight. Allura will be there soon.”

She barely registers the words, the pain dragging her back into confusion. Not even her echo is enough to keep her grounded, to keep her sane.

All she knows is pain and the desert, her antithesis and worst nightmare she never knew she had.

Lance doesn’t notice Allura’s at her side until she’s already falling into her chest, the cuffs there one moment and gone the next.

She doesn’t know how long she sits there, cowering in the shadow of the tree, whimpering as a part of her is taken farther and farther away. It could’ve been seconds or years—the pain makes everything blurry.

Then, like liquid relief and nicotine and every other relaxing drug she can name, she feels Azura running back to her. The visceral tugging stops, and Lance almost chokes at its absence.

Her comm crackles to life again and everyone’s screaming in her ear; Keith the loudest of them all.

Azura ran off! She’s gone! We can’t catch her!

They all sound so worried.

As if her Lion would run anywhere but back to her.

Azura crashes into the ground before her not a second later, giant metal paws skidding over sand and stopping just inches from her crumbled form. She falls into the familiar metal like she was pulled, the desert washed away by cool rain and rivers and Azura.

Suddenly Lance can breathe again, her aching sand-filled lungs soothed by the ocean in her chest. She presses her hand into the cool metal of her Lion like she’s reaching for the clouds and the clouds reach back.

Her mind is a litany of purring and whining and ‘Paladin, Paladin. I am so sorry. Why wouldn’t you let me fight. Never again. I won’t lose you again! My Paladin, Paladin, Paladin.’

It’s the sweetest music Lance has ever heard.

***

Eventually, she gets herself pulled together enough that she can fly both her and Allura back to the Castle. They land a bit harder than strictly necessary, the ground shaking from the force of it.

Rolo and Nyma and their bot sit in front of their—now actually broken down—spaceship. The other paladins all surround them in a semi-circle, glaring at the failed thieves.

Lance stumbles from Azura and storms up to the group, face set in stormy anger. The closer she gets to them, the harder Nyma clutches onto Rolo’s hand, the pair curled towards each other as if waiting for some killing blow.

She reaches the circle and Hunk tries to stop her with a hand on her shoulder.

Lance whirls to face him, teeth bared and in no mood for soft-hearted words. She wants answers.

Hunk stares at her for a moment, his face sad, but lets her go all the same. He’s seen this song and dance before. Perhaps not from her specifically, but that hardly matters. It’s all the same when it comes to the Martinez family.

“Look at me.”

Neither of them moves. Lance bristles.

“Look at me,” she snaps and Nyma raises her gaze, flinching away at the tear marks no doubt on Lance’s cheeks.

Altean setting spray will only hold so much.

Lance draws herself up to her full height, looming over the pair for all she’s worth. She must look crazed with her hair a wild mane around her shoulders and all her makeup smeared, her careful appearance shattered at her feet.

She must look insane. And while it’s not her normal battle armour, Lance can adapt easily enough.

There’s something vaguely terrifying about a person who looks insane, acting cold and rational. You never know when they’re gonna snap.

“How dare you?” she demands, cold as ice and just as deceptively fragile.

Shiro steps towards her in her peripherals, moving before Hunk can stop him. “Lance, maybe you should-”

Lance spins towards him, a snarl on her lips and fury in her eyes. “Back. Off.”

Shiro looks taken aback by her animosity.

Later, Lance will feel bad about that. For snapping at him and not keeping the darker parts of herself carefully hidden away. Just because Hunk understands them, understands their origin and their use, doesn’t mean they will.

But right now, she’s frazzled and angry and she wants answers. She’ll deal with the fallout with her team later.

“Lance,” he tries again, hands raised like she’s a wild animal. “I just don’t think you’re in the right-”

“No,” Lance cuts in flatly, turning back to Nyma and Rolo who are still curled towards each other. “They were lying to us from the beginning—poorly might I add. But I can overlook that. But I offered help only to have it thrown back in my face. So, what, pray tell,” she hisses with all the venom she can muster, “was so important you thought it was worth it to get on my bad side?”

Nyma and Rolo stay silent.

“Answer me!” she shouts. “Why not tell me what you were running from when I asked? Why burn the only people in the galaxy who could help you?”

“Because!” Nyma snaps. “We can’t trust anyone. The galra slaughter all in their path and Rolo and I have caused too much trouble for them. We’re as good as dead without a Lion.”

“You’re as good as dead with a Lion! Do you understand how close you came to being torn apart?” Lance leans down, pushing herself into their space. “I told you, I warned you, about the power you were messing with. But did you listen? Did you even think-”

“Look, we’re sorry, okay?” Rolo interrupts, voice frustrated and scared. “We didn’t know what else to do. ”

“So that makes it okay? That makes everything better?” Lance snaps, pacing in front of them, waving her hands in the air agitatedly. “‘Oh, I’m sorry, we didn’t mean to.’ Just because you didn’t mean to doesn’t mean people weren’t hurt!”

Her voice echoes around in the still air and Lance resolutely does not look at Keith. This is not about them. That doesn’t matter right now.

What matters right now are the two people in front of her who put what was hers in danger.

Nyma looks up at her, a fire in her battle-hardened eyes. “Can we just stop with this charade?”

“What?”

“If you’re going to kill us, get it over with. We crossed you, stop dragging it out.”

Lance stares at her, eyes a raging storm, only this time, Nyma doesn’t look away.

“You haven’t already insulted me enough so now you call me a murderer?” Lance asks coldly. Nyma opens her mouth, angry and frustrated but Lance talks over her, silencing her with her next words. “Haven’t you been listening to a damn thing I’ve said? Azura would have killed you to get back to me, but she didn’t, did she? Wonder why? Because I told her not to. ”

Nyma and Rolo both look like they don’t understand what’s happening. That the conversation has taken a turn they hadn’t expected.

She always did like to keep people guessing.

“Hunk told me you were dangerous, that we couldn’t trust you.” She shakes her head, a hysterical laugh escaping her lips. “But just look at you too. Anyone with eyes can see that you two were desperate. Were scared clawing animals backed into a corner, and that made me soft. Made me complacent and easy to manipulate and I hate that.”

She takes a deep breath, before slowly letting it back out. She stands tall, back straight and chin raised.

“But we’re supposed to be heroes. And heroes don’t kill desperate, clawing things.”

The two stare up at her, a thousand emotions flashing in their eyes. Lance doesn’t bother trying to make sense of them.

Pidge, who she guesses finally had enough of standing back, stomps up to Lance and grabs her arm, glaring at Rolo and Nyma with all she has. “Come on, Lance. Let’s just go. We have more important things to do than comfort assholes.”

Nyma tenses at the words and Rolo looks crazed, a harsh change from his laid-back demeanor when they first met.

“Wait! You can’t just leave us here.”

Pidge sneers at them. “Of course we can. Lance, come on!” She gives another tug that has Lance taking a step back.

“We’ll be killed!” he shouts and doesn’t that give them all pause.

Shiro turns back to look at him. “What do you mean?”

Rolo looks like he’s struggling with himself but as he looks down at Nyma who’s still wearing her broken warrior expression, he seems to relax. Or maybe he’s just got a better hold on his persona again.

“We called Galra Command and said we had the Blue Lion. If they find us without it, they’ll think we lied, and we’ll be killed.” His voice doesn’t shake but Lance has a sneaking suspicion that if his hands weren’t so tightly grasped in Nyma’s, they would be.

The fear in his eyes is a visceral thing and Lance is harshly reminded that most people out here haven’t fought the galra and come out on top multiple times. That they don’t view them as an almost abstract thing to be dealt with, but as a force of nature.

Lance looks to Shiro and finds conflict there.

“We don’t kill people,” she whispers and hates herself for it.

Pidge looks up at her indignant. “We wouldn’t be killing them,” she says all fire and bravado and righteous anger.

“We’d be leaving them to die, Pidge. It’d be just as bad.”

“You weren’t afraid of being killed a second ago,” Keith points out, turning to face Nyma. It’s not cruel, the way he says it. More like he’s stating a fact.

Lance isn’t sure if that’s better or not.

Nyma scoffs at him. “To be killed at the hands of Voltron would be a mercy. The galra will make it sport. A spectacle for its Empire and a message for its enemies as they slowly let the life bleed out of us.” Nyma lets out a sound that is a laugh only in name. Derision and fear and a thousand other emotions poured into a single, shattering sound. “The galra would not make our deaths quick.”

And with that, there really wasn’t any other choice they could go with.

Or, at least, none that Lance would let them choose. Lance may not be a warrior, but she’s damn well going to protect as many people as she can.

Even bloodied hunters who are all broken edges and sharpened teeth with no loyalty.

Chapter Text

“We’re nearing the Balmera soon. But, liberating an entire planet from Zarkon’s grasp…” Allura says, from atop the dais, “it won’t be easy.”

Lance rolls her eyes at her somber tone. Like they didn’t already have enough doom and gloom lately, she has to make it worse by bringing down morale? Does Lance have to do everything around here?

“Well, duh,” Lance exaggerates, drawing the attention of the others. “If it was easy, we wouldn’t be here.”

“Great pep talk, Lance,” Pidge snarks.

She shoots a look at the tiny scientist. “What I’m saying, is that if we’re here —by the grace of a Goddess no less, if Allura’s to be believed-”

“Which I am,” Allura interjects.

“If we’re here,” she continues pointedly, “then we’re here for a reason. That reason is—most probably—fighting the Galra and we wouldn’t be here if we were just meant to fail. That’d be pointless. So, yeah, it’ll be hard, but we’ll win in the end. Otherwise?” she asks, shrugging and stuffing her hands in her pockets. “What was even the point?”

She was mostly looking at Hunk as she spoke, him being the most nervous of them, but when she caught everyone else's expressions she had to stop her shoulders from hunching in on themselves. They’re looking at her the same way they did back when she first stepped up to fight. Utterly surprised, like they never expected it of her.

Lance tries not to feel bitter about it. She’s the one who hides behind all her bravado. She can’t fault them for not seeing past it.

“Wow. That was actually… kind of inspiring,” Pidge blinks disbelievingly, the others not much better. “I don’t-”

“So!” Lance claps her hands together with a too wide grin, cutting off whatever it was Pidge was going to say. “How are we going to do this? Go in there and just—pow, pow, pow!” Lance bounces around pretending to shoot invisible enemies before finishing with a dramatic pose. “-and then free the prisoners?”

She looks up at the others, arms still outstretched. The other’s roll their eyes and the looks fade from their faces.

Change the subject and make a joke, the Lance Martínez Special.

She can feel Hunk looking at her, probably with that expression he always wears when someone underestimates her. She doesn’t turn to check.

“What-” Keith starts, hands raised at his side is a ‘why’ gesture. “What was that noise?”

Lance smirks, “Laser guns.”

To her left, Hunk is shaking his head. “No, no, it sounds more like-” She thinks he mimes turning himself into a cannon? And then he does something with his mouth that Lance doesn’t know how to describe except it is certainly not laser guns.

After he pantomimes what she thinks is supposed to be an explosion Lance gives him a look too filled with affection to truly be the disgust she was going for.

“You sound like a dying firework,” she tells him but really it means I love you.

Hunk plays at being offended, but the grin on his face is enough to tell her he got the message.

“Technically,” Pidge pipes up, straightening her glasses and drawing her hands close to her body in an imitation of—incorrectly, dios mio who taught you that?—holding a small handgun. “It’s more of a ‘ba-choo, ba-choo’.”

“Oh my god, you were even worse!” Lance complains.

“Okay! Enough with the bad sound effects…” Shiro interrupts looking annoyed. He makes sure to give them each a stern look. “Besides, it's more like—” He drops to his knee, taking a sturdy shooting stance that is so much better than Pidge’s. Lance has the urge to challenge him to a shooting contest. “-blam, blam, blam!"

The rest of them rise up to vehemently deny him and Lance is ready to tell him how wrong he is when Allura loses her patience and whistles. Loudly. Lance is very quickly starting to regret teaching her how to do that. Altean lungs were powerful and she’s pretty sure she has tinnitus now.

“Paladins!” all five of them turn to look at Allura, sheepish and still refocusing after the screech from hell. “Focus, please.”

“Right. Sorry, Princess.” Hunk rubs his arm self-consciously. “We can’t just shoot at the Galra anyway. The Balmera’s a living thing, and from what Keone’s been telling me, she’s not in good shape. We could do more harm than good.”

Coran jumps in, “Number One is right! The Galra have been stealing Crystals from the Balmera without giving anything back to the Great Creature.” His nose wrinkles, mustache twitching like he smelled something foul. “It’s barbaric.”

“And the way they treat the Balmerans…” Hunk’s eyes go far away and Lance places her hand on his arm. “Shay and their people were enslaved and- and we can’t just ignore that. We’re the only ones that can do anything.”

“‘With great power, comes great responsibility’,” Lance quotes dramatically.

Pidge elbows her for the reference, but she can shove it because Spiderman is great and always relevant.

Also, it made Hunk smile.

It takes a while to come up with a proper plan besides ‘guns blazing,’ ideas and thoughts thrown out for consideration before they land on the best they’re likely to get.

Drawing the galra out of their hidey holes by attacking mining equipment so they have the advantage. And also getting Pidge to drop the BLIP Tech—Biothermal Life Indicator Point—so they can track both the galra and any hostage Balmerans. That way, when they go inside the Balmera, there’s less chance of them being overrun.

“And, for those of you on the surface!” Coran adds, popping up behind Lance and making her jump. She’d been so focused on the Balmeran map she hadn’t noticed him sneaking up behind her. “ That,” he points to a darker spot on the Balmera hologram, “is their main power generator. Taking that down will severely weaken their defences. Then you can skedaddle on in and poof! Victory!”

Lance gives him a look while Keith says, “I doubt it will be that easy.”

“It won’t be.” Allura looks exasperated at her fellow Altean. “Which is why Coran and I will be hidden in the cloud cover providing as much tactical support and Intelligence as we can. Coran will be guiding you through the Balmeran tunnels and I will be heading any defensive measures.”

“Oh, man! You guys will be like our Guy in the Chair!” Lance says excitedly.

Pidge elbows her harder for that one and Lance yelps that time. Everyone else pretends they don’t notice, the traitors.

“Be aware though, that the Galra seem to have affected the main system somehow. CORINN is isolating the data as we speak and deleting any suspicious code but that means she can’t help with defensive maneuvers or we risk overloading the whole system. I can only run so many defences alone which means you won’t have the Castle at full capacity behind you. So, be cautious.”

“Of course, Princess,” Shiro says nodding his head seriously as he still stands at parade rest, the perfect soldier he is. “I’ll take out the power generator. Keith, Lance, and Hunk, you three will handle the mining rigs. Take out as many as you can without damaging the Balmera or yourselves.”

The three of them chorus out their affirmations and Lance is excited that she finally just gets to wreak havoc on something with Azura. Well, something that won’t fight back, that is.

“It will be about another varga before we reach the Balmeran atmosphere,” Allura informs them, clicking away at her hologram and pulling up charts and screens for things Lance couldn’t even begin to understand. “I suggest you all prepare yourselves for the mission in the meantime.”

Lance nods and moves to head down to Azura’s hangar. The pair of them were still a bit sore from the whole attempted kidnapping thing, and Lance was calmer in her presence than out of it.

Only, Hunk jogging up to walk with her makes her rethink that plan.

“Hey, Honeybee,” she chirps happily, wrapping her arm around his waist and tucking her hand into his back pocket when he automatically wraps his arm around her shoulders.

When he doesn’t return the greeting Lance looks up at him worriedly. “Baby doll?” she waves a hand in front of his face to catch his attention, he startles and the frown hovering at the corner of her lips more firmly sets itself on her face. “¿Estás bien?”

“What? Oh, uh- sí. Just… lost in thought I guess.”

“Something I should know about?”

His eyes flick to her face, seeing the worry there. His fingers tap at her shoulder. It’s rhythmic enough to be some code or pattern, but Lance isn’t sure what it is. It’s not morse. Probably binary, also likely the opening sequence to some matrix of his. He does that to calm down.

“It’s just… Coran said something on the Balmera about the Paladins wielding magic.”

Lance blinks up at him.

“Like… the Old Paladins?”

Magic wasn’t that hard for Lance to believe in when a few weeks ago she had her soul tied to a sentient robot Lion that also ties her soul to other people. It was pretty obvious there was some sort of magic in that whole deal.

It made sense that there were past Paladins that could wield magic. Maybe it’s more common in space than on earth? She should ask Coran about that.

Hunk shakes his head, gnawing at his lip.

“No. Well, I mean yes, them too, but I think he meant us. That’d we’d get magic.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Because I think I may have already used some.”

Lance’s heart stops before kicking into double time. She throws herself in front of Hunk, stopping him in his tracks. “Are you serious?” she demands, eyes wide.

“As a heart attack,” he jokes weakly.

A wide grin breaks across her face. “Dude! ¡Eso es superchévere!” she grabs his hands, shaking them excitedly in her own.

Why isn’t Hunk more excited about this? They could be magic. Oh man, this is her childhood dreams come true!

“¿Qué hiciste? Did you cast a spell? Did sparks fly out of your hands? Did you-”

Hunk pulls his hands from his own to press down on her shoulders, halting her bouncing motions. “You are way less freaked out by this than I was.”

“Freaked out?” Lance exclaims. “How can you not be pumped? Bro! We’re living a real-life fantasy novel in space. I would’ve killed to be here as a kid!”

“But what about… magic actually being… real?”

Lance stares up at him, sees the nerves on his face and realizes this must be very jarring for him and his scientific ‘everything can be explained’ brain. Lance has always been the more open-minded of the two.

“Baby doll, my heartbeat pounds in your chest. You can feel my emotions. We’re bound on a level so intrinsic to our cores that we’ll never untangle.” She softens, pressing her hand to his chest. “Only one of those has nothing to do with magic.”

Hunk opens his mouth then closes it. He stares down at where Lance can feel two heartbeats pounding away in time with the ones in her chest.

When he looks back up at her he seems almost sheepish.

Lance laughs at him. “Forgot that did you?”

“A little…” he admits. “It’s just- it feels natural. The bonds and stuff. I didn’t even think about it.”

“Well, I can’t blame you. I hadn’t either until you confirmed magic existed. Though, I did have a sneaking suspicion when a robotic Lion started talking in my head.”

That gets Hunk to laugh along with her, his posture relaxing.

“Now, tell me more about this magic you used.”

Hunk lets out a heavy breath. “Man, that is not a sentence I thought I would hear said to me in total seriousness before.”

***

“Do you think they’ll throw a parade after we save them?” Lance asks to her silent audience on the comms. She’s mostly just trying to keep out of her head, not expecting an answer. “Oh! Or maybe a feast! It’d be nice to have a good feast, I’m getting sick of food goo. No offence to your cooking, Ducky. I know you’re trying your best.”

Hunk hums absently.

Lance doesn’t call him out on it. He’s still probably overthinking the magic thing. And also the saving the balmerans thing. And whatever other things that might stress him out.

Lance is kinda surprised her best friend hasn’t just combusted already.

“It’s not about the glory, Lance,” Keith snaps across the comms.

She rolls her eyes even though he can’t see them. “I’m just saying, if they wanted to show a little appreciation, I wouldn’t be averse to it. It’s nice to be thanked, Mullet-brain.”

“But that’s not the reason we’re here.”

“Oh, get your panties out of that twist you’ve got them in, Bubbles, I’m well aware how saving people works. I was the one to join our little, rag-tag army first, you know.”

“Probably just so you could brag about how you saved the universe,” Keith snarks and Lance bites her tongue before she can spit venom at him.

This boy who knows nothing about her—who never even bothered to try after she gave him the chance—has the gall to believe he understands how she thinks or acts at all?

Lance’s blood boils and the tentative thread binding them together shudders painfully in her chest, burning at the walls of the cavern it carved out behind her sternum like a warning. Lance wishes she could rip it from her still beating heart and be done with it. Done with him.

“You better watch yourself, Red,” Lance says as lightly as she can with Azura’s low growl at the back of her throat. “A girl might think you don’t like her with an attitude like that.”

“That’s enough you two,” Shiro mediates before Keith can snap back at her. “We have more important things to focus on.”

Lance doesn’t so much snap to attention at his words as she slinks towards it obediently, shoving her annoyance for Keith and his assumptions to the back of her mind as she settles into her battle mode.

Shiro’s right. They have work to do.

***

Taking out the mining rigs and generators is even easier than Keith had expected. With Red, flying is easy and loose and exhilarating. She knows every turn he’s going to make before he makes them and spins with a certain flare that reminds him of dancing flames.

Flying with her is up there with memories of meeting Shiro and Adam, of him and his dad camped out on the roof and looking up at the stars, of riding a hoverbike for the first time, going as fast as the wind would take him.

Keith can count on one hand the amount of people in his life who’ve understood him so easily. 

It should terrify him, letting someone get so close. Keith doesn't do people. Isn’t good with them. Letting someone know him so intimately as to be inside his head, should have him clawing at the walls.

But it… doesn’t.

In that same place that houses his instincts and split-second reactions, something tells him that there is nothing in this universe that would make Red hurt him—nothing that Red wouldn’t protect him from. Including herself.

So when she starts whispering of flames and molten heat and lava that are his to control, his to hold in his hands and use to protect and destroy and flourish … he doesn’t even hesitate.

He reaches into the bond, grabs onto the thread that links them, the flaming rod that holds them together and he pulls. Red opens her mouth and roars at the tower that had been doing its level best to shoot them out of the sky. A blindingly bright light scores across his vision and in the next moment, the tower is barely more than molten slag.

Red chirps in triumph, dancing and hopping in the back of his mind like a kitten and Keith can’t help the wide grin that overtakes his face as he looks at what they accomplished, together.

“We’ve got firepower!” he crows into the comms, high of the thrumming warmth of Red’s joy and his own excitement for flying again and being useful. “Top that, Lance!”

He’s shifting to move to the next tower, the next target, when the power generator starts to fall.

It tilts, slowly at first, but quickly gains speed. Falling towards the ground fast and promising immense devastation if it hits the surface.

It’s heavy and hot. What it doesn’t break, it would burn.

Keith hisses through his teeth as he watches it slice through the air.

“Don’t let it fall!” Hunk shouts, coming from nowhere and trying to hold up the tilting tower. Him and his Lion struggle against gravity, the thrusters sputtering and flaring outwards in an attempt to hold their ground. Keith darts in to help with the weight the second he gets his bearings.

In the next moment, Azura is twirling around them, her tail flicking around her like a snake as she takes in the tower with keen eyes. Then, she opens her mouth and roars, just like Red had.

Only, it’s not fire and heat that explodes from her mouth.

When Keith looks up, he finds the broken thing is encased in a skin of glittering blue ice, twinkling brightly in the sun.

Through the comms, he can hear Lance’s delighted laughter.

“Try to top that, Mullet. Functional and pretty,” she taunts before flouncing away with Hunk at her heels as they continue their path of destruction.

The sparkling ice sculptures she leaves behind glitter like a personal challenge.

Keith swallows the growl trying to rise up his throat.

***

Lance is gleefully tearing apart Galra mining rigs and the odd drone ship when Pidge finally pops back up on the comms. “All sensors delivered,” she announces, flying back to where the rest of them are on the other side of the planet.

“Good job, Sprocket!” she cheers, dancing and twirling around lasers while Hunk slips around the back to ram through it. Her encouragement is enthusiastically echoed by the rest of the team and Lance smiles as she flings her tail knives at the laser’s head.

“Power Generator destroyed,” Shiro calls out a second later and Lance hollers her excitement.

She watches as the tower in front of her shorts out, lighting crawling across the metal like skittering insects. She makes sure it’s in no danger of falling over before turning around to jump into the fight. Only, when she spins around, she finds nothing.

The surface is quiet.

The hairs on the back of her neck stand on end and Azura’s at attention in the back of her mind. The pair sweep the horizon line for enemies or a sign of, well, anything.

They find nothing but Digit’s approaching form.

“Uh, guys?” Lance calls out, voice nervous and confused. “Where are all the galra?”

Hunk slows to a stop, landing next to her on the tower to do his own sweep of the area. “That’s a good question,” he says slowly. “I remember there being a lot down in the tunnels. We couldn’t have made our way through all of them already.”

In her ear, Coran’s voice rises over the comms. He sounds worried and Lance’s shoulders tense. “Paladins, we might have a problem.”

“What else is new?” Lance mutters under her breath.

“What is it?” Shiro commands.

“The galran equipment has sustained substantial damage but the biothermal scans indicate that instead of moving towards the surface, the Galra are all moving inwards.”

“What?” Hunk asks, slightly panicked. “No, no, that’s not right. That’s not the plan!”

“No plan survives contact with the enemy, sugar crunch,” Lance tells him, voice gentle but with a hint of frustration. What are they supposed to do now?

“They’re trying to draw us below the surface,” Shiro says, sounding like he’s talking out loud more than anything. “It’s an ambush.”

“We can’t just go down there,” Pidge insists. “There’s too many galra still in those tunnels!”

“Well, we can’t just stay up here either!” Hunk argues.

“We need to know what they’re thinking,” Lance insists. “They can’t believe we’re stupid enough to just run after them, right? Maybe they called back up?”

Shiro hums, “Maybe. Coran, are there any radio towers or communication bases?”

Radio towers. Of course! If they can hack a radio tower, they can hear what the galra are saying to each other. Assuming they aren’t speaking in code.

“Yup-a-roo! I’m sending the coordinates to your HUDs.”

There’s a chime and then a string of numbers and letters appear under a map on one of Azura’s holo-screens. A second after, another one joins the first and Allura pipes up, voice commanding in a way that you knew she was expecting to be followed.

“There’s also a cluster of ships in a hangar near the surface. Someone should take them out before they get the chance to launch.”

“Of course, Princess. Pidge, you go check out that radio tower. Take Hunk with you. Keith and Lance, I want both of you below the surface and dealing with that hangar. Take it out as quickly as possible.”

“Aye, aye, Captain,” Lance chirps, her affirmations echoed by the others.

She’s not happy with being paired with Keith, but she’ll play civil for now. Shiro knows how Keith and her are when they’re together, so he must have a reason for pairing them up. He knows what he’s doing, and she trusts him enough to not question his judgment.

“What about you?” Keith asks and sounds almost worried.

“I’m going to cause some noise on the surface. Try and keep their eyes off you four. Good luck, you guys. Stay safe.”

***

Allura’s father was a great and talented man knowledgeable in many fields—but he was no War General.

The drums of war did not hum in his blood and he did not conduct their steady rhythm in others. Her father always told her there were lyre strings in his spine, taut and perfectly tuned (she never quite understood what that was supposed to mean).

Red Paladins are protectors, are weapons made from people, her Father said. But not all weapons are so simply used as a sword.

Her Father’s chosen weapon was knowledge. He was a scientist at heart, ill-suited for battles and bloodshed. Too impulsive and easily overwhelmed by the heat of battle.

Too soft, the council members would say.

But her father wasn’t soft. He was a smart man. A man who searched for knowledge and knew how to use it.

Soft men do not last long with great knowledge. Soft men are crushed under the weight of what they know and her father had always stood tall in her memories.

But, his lack of battle experience was a weakness their enemies could exploit. It was one of many reasons why her mother was such a highly recommended candidate for Queen.

Her mother, while not of High Noble blood, was still a prominent member of the Court and praised as the best General of her time. A true warrior of heart and mind in a way her father could never be. All Allura knows about battle and strategy comes from her.

She remembers the war games her mother taught her and the long days spent in the training room learning to fight. The days spent in the war room learning how to run an army and build a kingdom.

It was something she always knew she would have to do as Queen, but it seems so much harder without her mother by her side. She can’t help but wish her mother was there. Helping her to choose the correct path, the right action. To whisper in her ear and guide her hand.

Allura watches her soldiers—only five of them, so small and underprepared and she was never taught what to do with only five, Mother, help her—march to battle and she’s afraid, for the first time in her life, that there might be too much of her father in her. That she’ll have no knack for battle and she’s doomed everyone around her to follow a Commander who flounders in a sea of her own inadequacy.

She can’t lose any more of her people.

Especially not to her own follies.

So, she watches with sharp eyes as the Paladins move out, listening to their chatter over the comms. She takes note of every movement the Galra make. She keeps track of every piece on the board, carefully planning out the battle and every move in her mind and she hopes—she hopes, it will be enough.

***

The ride down to the hangar is silent. An unspoken truce between them that lasts right up until the point where Keith tells her there’s only ‘a few’ sentries guarding the hangar which is apparently code for ‘I’m about to run in there half-cocked because I’m arrogant as all hell.’

Lance’s eyes widen when she realizes what he’s about to do and grabs the back of his collar, tugging him backward before he can blow their cover.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa!” she hisses between her teeth. “¡Para, idiota! What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

Keith turns to glare at her, mouth opening to no doubt whine about something she said but she barrels on over him because they don’t have time for this.

“Did you just forget that the Balmera is a sensitive creature who’s, like, seconds away from dying and that starting a firefight in the equivalent of its stomach is what us Latinos call ‘no bueno’?”

Keith’s mouth snaps shut as he looks up at the ceiling almost as if he’s expecting the Balmera itself to scold him. “Oh… Right.”

Lance resists the urge to facepalm. “Yeah, so let’s not go blowing things up like a psycho.”

“Oh, you got a better idea?” he snaps but, thankfully, keeps his voice down.

Lance takes a second to look out over the hangar, scanning for security and where the sentries are before turning back to Keith.

“Yes, actually,” she gloats before hunkering down into business mode, pointing up at the ceiling. “You see those bay doors? If we can get to the control room-” she swings her hand down toward said room, “-we could shut them, trapping the ships in without injuries or danger. Well, no more danger than standing in the middle of enemy territory already is.”

“That’s-” Keith stops, mouth clicking shut as he actually thinks about what she said. “Actually a good idea,” he admits grudgingly.

Lance preens causing Keith to huff and start off forward toward the control room. Lance just trots along behind him, a wide grin on her face and the taste of victory on her tongue.

She does so enjoy being right.

***

Breaking into the radio tower, Hunk thinks, is way too easy. But when he voices his fears to Pidge, she just calls him paranoid.

When she gets the communications synched though and they find out that all the Balmerans are being held hostage underground, well, Hunk doesn’t feel very paranoid anymore.

In fact, he feels very validated in his feelings and makes sure he tells Pidge, ‘I told you so’.

She’s not very enthusiastic about it if the way she punches him in the arm is anything to go by.

***

Good things Lance has learned today: dropping from the ceiling like in an action movie is exactly as fun as she always believed it would be.

Bad things Lance has learned today: Having the thing you’re standing on suddenly start to fall through the air and then crash into a person beneath you is going to send you sprawling across the floor in an ungraceful heap.

She wouldn’t have even been mad because again, awesome action hero, but then Keith had to start laughing at her and that just ruined the experience. 7/10 stars.

She makes sure to give Keith a glare for laughing. Then she gives him a second one for the way he fluidly drops to the floor right beside her. Like, she’s pretty sure he’s either deliberately showing off or part cat.

She wouldn’t even be surprised if he just sprouted ears and a tail at this point. It would explain the growling, at least.

“Keep an eye out for those guards,” Lance instructs, only half expecting him to do as she says. “I'll see if I can find a way to shut the hangar doors.”

He does, surprisingly, move to the window. She decides not to look a gift horse in the mouth and doesn’t comment on his sudden obedience. It’s a bad idea to discourage good behavior.

She turns back to the console to discover she can’t read anything.

Lance spends an entire frustrating minute pressing random buttons before giving up with a groan. “Okay, so I have no idea what I’m doing over here,” she finally admits. “It’s just a bunch of Galra gibberish!”

She makes a mental note to ask Pidge, Coran, and Hunk if they can make universal translators for written words. That is, if Pidge hasn’t already started working on it. She remembers her being very upset after they found the Red Lion for one reason or another that involved, ‘stupid fucking galra’ and their ‘stupid fucking alphabet.’

Keith sends her a look over his shoulder before slowly walking back over to her, keeping low to avoid being seen through the large windows. “Let me see,” he says, gently pushing her out of the way for a better look.

Lance lets him push her far enough that he can see the panel but refuses to move farther than his right shoulder, wanting to see what he does to the controls. Besides giving her a weird look, he doesn’t say anything about her stubborn proximity to him.

He spends a long moment just looking over the buttons, not making any move to do anything with them. He waits so long Lance is thinking about making a comment about being short on time and maybe  picking up the pace?

Before she can, he reaches out and puts his hand on the large pad in the middle of the panel. 

There’s a moment where nothing happens, but then the hangar doors are closing. The pair jump at the sudden noise and stare up in equal parts surprise and confusion.

“What did- How did you even do that?” she demands incredulously.

“I don’t know.” He’s not even looking at her, just staring down at his palm like he’s never seen it before. “I just… put my hand on the handprint.”

Maybe there was a glitch in the system? Or an accident? Or… something?

Lance gives him a look before shaking her head. “Whatever, Boy Wonder. Let’s just get out of here before they gather the cavalry.”

Keith nods and moves to follow her out distractedly.

He slashes the lock as they pass the door, his bayard cutting through metal like butter. She doesn’t even want to know if that’s because his sword is wicked sharp or if he’s just that strong.

Instead of dwelling on that, she taps the side of her helmet and radios the others.

“The hangar’s been taken care of, Shiro. What are our next orders?”

“About that,” Hunk’s voice pipes up before Shiro’s can. Lance slows down, her gut twisted in worry. Her sugar plum doesn’t sound happy at all. “Pidge hacked the communications tower and we have a problem. We found out why the galra are drawing in on the planet.”

“Well don’t leave us hanging, baby boy,” Lance says apprehensively. The last time Hunk sounded that righteously angry, she’d just been propositioned at a mall.

There’s a harsh sigh over the comms and Lance’s lips purse. “The Balmerans are hostages. They’re planning to draw us into the ambush by putting innocent lives in danger.”

It takes a second for that to sink in and when it does, Lance feels anger bubble in her chest. Swears spill from her mouth from any language she can think of and she has to stop herself from- from hunting down every scum filled galra on this planet and wringing their necks.

Keith feels much the same if the way he’s practically vibrating in place to keep from moving is any indication. It’s more self-control than she expected him to have. She kind of wants to give him a treat for positive reinforcement.

“Let’s not panic,” Shiro says calmly, trying to regain order. “We all need to keep our heads. Coran, can you confirm?”

A second later, a tired sounding Coran says, “I’m afraid Number One is correct, my boy. I’m noticing quite a few factions of Balmerans with galran sentries moving towards the center where there appears to be a large group of prisoners.”

“Okay,” Shiro says through a loud gust of air. “Okay. Everyone, head down to the center. Move carefully and quietly. Stay hidden. We need every advantage we can get, including surprise. Assume they can’t track us until proven otherwise.”

Lance shares a look with Keith before she lets the sharp grin pull at the corners of her mouth. The pair of them are moving before Lance can even say, “Roger that, Chief.”

***

Anger burns through Hunk. He’d known the galra were horrible warmongers but it’s one thing to be told it and another entirely to see it happen. Keone murmurs reassurances at the back of his mind that he mostly ignores.

He wants to get to Shay and their family, wants to do something, wants to save these people.

(Hunk wonders if this is what Lance feels like. No wonder she can’t ever sit back.)

The second Shiro gives the go-ahead, he’s racing off towards the nearest mineshaft, Pidge yelling after him. He’s already jumped out of Keone and starting down a tunnel when she finally catches up to him.

“Hey!” she hisses, lightly swatting his arm and doing an awkward half-jog in order to keep up with his long strides. “I know you’re upset but you need your head on straight here.”

He doesn’t stop moving forward and doesn’t slow down.

Pidge makes a little huffing noise and speeds up so she can plant herself in his path, hands raised in front of her to keep him back.

For a second, Hunk thinks about picking her up and just moving her out of the way. Then he feels bad for thinking that and stops, though he’s not happy about it.

“Hunk,” she stresses. “You need to calm down. We don't have time for emotions. Use that big brain Lance is always praising you for and think. Rushing into danger isn’t going to solve anything.”

Hunk gives her a look. “Are you seriously talking to me about rushing into danger Miss Impulsive-is-my-middle-name?”

Pidge narrows her eyes. “First of all? I take offense to that nickname and all that it implies. Second? My hypocrisy is not the focus of the conversation.” Hunk raises his eyebrow, prompting her to get to the point. “But, if I’m telling you to calm down, then you probably should.”

He hates that he knows she’s right. And by the triumphant look on her face, she knows it too.

“We need a plan,” she insists.

“The plan is we get to the center of the Balmera and free everyone.”

“That’s your plan?” she says incredulously.

Hunk pauses, then makes a ‘so-so’ gesture. “Plans are more Lance’s area of expertise.”

Pidge looks at him incredulously. Then, he can see her actually thinking about it because in the next moment she’s frowning angrily, like she can’t believe she’s missed something like that.

“I never said her plans were always good,” Hunk offers because Pidge looks like she’s struggling to recalibrate her mental picture of Lance.

He should probably take offence to the fact that Pidge believes Lance to be anything less than she is. And he will, later, when he has more time to be mad about it. But right now he’s busy and also, it’s not like Lance doesn't purposefully mislead people even at the best of times.

The entire first year he knew her—back before she had her arsenal of tricks and battle armour—she still threw him for a loop on the regular. Finally, he came to the conclusion she was just like that and adjusted to roll with the metaphorical punches.

Lance was a thousand different things rolled up in the messiest bow ever, an ever-expanding puzzle with pieces that changed colors and shape. She never stayed the same for long. Never stayed stagnant.

It was, in his opinion, why they just fit.

Hunk was concrete and bedrock, firm in his convictions and grounded in logic and science. It was easy for him to ground her and keep her from being swept up in her own head. And in turn, she pushed and shaped him, helped him branch out and not be so still.

Immovable object and unstoppable force dancing around one another until they were both and neither at the same time.

“If I may? There’s something I’d appreciate your assistance with, Noble Guardians.”

Hunk jumps two feet in the air when the deep voice echoes around the cave walls. He whips around, trying to locate the origin of the words but only finds a confused looking Pidge.

“Uh… you okay?” she asks. “I know you’re jumpy, but this is a lot even for you.”

Hunk looks at her. “You didn’t hear that?”

“Hear what?”

“Guardian, there is no reason to be frightened. I need only to speak with you.”

“Who’s there?” he calls out quietly, ignoring Pidge’s growing worry and muttering of how ‘he’s finally lost it.’ “Where are you?”

The voice chuckles deeply as if what he said was amusing. “I am all around you, child.”

Hunk blinks once, twice.

“You’re the planet?”

“Wonderfully guessed, Guardian! She had said you were a smart one.”

“Who said?”

“Your Lion, of course. She’s a close friend of mine, which makes you a close friend of mine.”

Hunk rubs his temples. “Should I start getting used to planets talking to me? Because if so, my head is going to become far too crowded very quickly. I already have too many voices in it as it is.”

The Balmera—and holy hell, how is this his life—laughs again. “No, Guardian, I don’t believe you’ll have to worry about that. There are few planets with the sentience needed to communicate, even to one with such an affinity for it, like yourself.”

“Are you having a breakdown?” Pidge interrupts. “Because if you are, I’m not telling Lance.”

Hunk sputters. “I’m not having a breakdown.”

She looks him over dubiously. “Well sane people don’t normally start having one-sided conversations with planets, so…”

“It’s not one-sided!”

“You aren’t doing a good job of convincing me you aren’t nuts, right now.”

Hunk groans, running a hand down his face. “I’m not crazy.”

Pidge squints. “That’s exactly what a crazy person would say.”

“Pidge!”

The Balmera makes a sound like clearing its throat which, how does it do that because it doesn’t have a throat, what the- “If we could get back on task, please?”

Hunk groans, already feeling a headache coming on.

“Yeah. Yes, of course.” Then, he turns back to Pidge. “It’s just- It’s magic, okay?”

“It’s what?” she screeches but Hunk’s not paying attention anymore.

“What do you need?” he asks because he has no self-control or preservation instincts.

Whatever happened to ‘stranger danger’? He blames Lance.

“Help my children. There are many I have hidden away, but so many have already been captured, and more still hunted like prey. Save them, Guardian. Please.”

“Oh,” Hunk blinks. “That was kind of the plan anyway.” Turning to Pidge, he relays the Balmera’s request.

She throws her hands up in the air. “Sure. Why the hell not? Never ran an errand for a planet before.”

Then, before Hunk can ask about directions, Pidge is already running off down a random tunnel. He shakes his head.

So much for not being impulsive.

***

Lance doesn’t expect Keith to talk to her on their way down through the tunnels. He’s angry, and has a nasty habit of being eerily silent when he’s angry—at anyone who’s not her, at least.

But, it turns out, Keith is developing a new nasty habit of not doing what Lance expects him to.

There’s a sentry in the middle of the tunnel they’re walking down. Pausing in it’s rounds, she guesses.

Before it can catch sight of the two of them, Lance shoves Keith behind a rock and duck down not a second after him. Bringing out her Bayard, she lines up the shot, takes a breath, and fires, nailing the thing right between where it’s eyes should be.

After waiting to see if the thing has any backup—which it doesn’t appear to—Lance finally stands up to keep moving forward. Keith climbs up after her, kicking the sentry as they pass it.

“Who taught you to shoot like that?”

Lance looks over her shoulder, pausing before she answers. “My Abuelita. She was the best sharpshooter in Cuba, I’m reliably informed.”

Keith tilts his head at her. “Not the Garrison?”

Lance snorts. “The Garrison’s firearm course is a joke. And I learned years before I set foot in the place.”

When she was nine, actually. But she doesn’t tell him that. People tend to frown upon kids that young handling deadly weapons. Especially with the efficiency she did.

“My family has a thing about fighting, a sort of… tradition, I guess. My sisters picked up hand to hand or knives. I had a knack for guns.” Lance shrugs. “Abuelita taught me everything she knew, which was a damn lot. Papi taught how to handle a bow and Tia Maria insisted I learn to throw knives with my sisters even though I was never that good. But I always came back to these.” Lance wiggles the Bayard still in her hand.

Keith blinks. “Huh. That’s a lot of weapons to learn.”

She shrugs, unable and unwilling to explain the need she had- has for it. She learned because she burned for it, because her hands itched to with the want of a weapon in them, just the same way it does for everyone on her mamá’s side.

Fighting runs in her blood.

(Lance may not be a warrior, but she thinks she could’ve been, with the childhood she had.)

“What about you, Hotshot?” she asks, starting off down the tunnel again but keeping her voice low. “How’d you learn to swing around those fancy butter knives of yours?” She nods towards the Bayard still in his hand and the second knife strapped to his hip.

There’s a confused furrow to his brows and Lance thinks she might actually see him mouth the words ‘butter knives’ in mild offense.

“…Lessons.”

Lance gives him a look that’s simultaneously unimpressed and expectant. If he thinks he’s getting away with that non-answer he clearly hasn’t been paying attention.

His lips twist with displeasure. “I thought it was cool,” he tells her quickly. Almost like ripping off a bandaid. “Sword fighting. Shiro signed me up for classes in seventh grade.”

She raises her eyebrows before she lets a slow grin slide across her face. “Wanted to be a cool anime protagonist?”

Keith sputters denials and excuses for a few seconds and Lance has to put her hand over her mouth to hide her giggling. When he finally catches her laughing behind her hand, his face morphs back into his usual scowl.

“I knew you’d make fun of me,” he snaps.

Lance stops laughing.

Then you’re making fun of me.

She grabs at his arm, halting them both. “I’m not making fun of you,” she tells him seriously. When it looks like he’s about to protest, she pushes into his space, almost willing him to understand. “I’m laughing  with you, joking with you, bantering. We all have cringy stuff we did as kids—even me—you have to learn to laugh about it.”

Keith stares at her. “Why?”

“Why do we have to laugh at it?”

“No,” he shakes his head, a sharp jerking motion. “Why are you… joking around with me? You hate me.”

She frowns, stepping back and releasing her hold on his wrist. “I don’t hate you.”

There’s a certain type of skepticism in Keith’s eyes that makes Lance roll hers.

“ Anymore. I don’t hate you anymore.” She pauses, thinks about it. Continues in a more sincere voice. “I’m not sure I even really did. I didn’t- don’t really like you, that’s true. But I’m not sure I ever hated you.” She shrugs. “And besides, Hunk says we’d get along if I just tried and I’m not in the business of disappointing him.”

Keith takes a long time to respond to that, probably unsure of what to say to it. Lance can’t really blame him. She starts walking back down the tunnel as she waits. It’s not smart to stay there.

“It’s the same with Shiro,” he says abruptly and Lance chances a look at him out of the corner of her eye. When she says nothing, he continues, nose scrunched in displeasure. “He thinks we just don’t understand each other.”

Lance barks a laugh, unable to keep it in her throat.

“No offense to our Fearless Leader,” she tells him wryly, “but my problems with you stem a bit farther than ‘simple misunderstanding’.”

Keith’s shoulders tense just the barest amount and Lance wonder, perhaps, if she shouldn’t have said that. Not when it seemed like they were doing so well about holding a conversation without screaming at each other.

“What is your problem with me?” he asks and sounds like he’s trying not to sound so offended or angry. He only does so well because it’s, well, Keith, but she gives him points for trying.

Her eyes flick along his face, searching for something not even she really knows. Analyzing every twitch and movement and breath.

She stares so long, Keith starts getting annoyed at her.

“That’s my problem with you,” she finally says, seconds before he opens his mouth to snap at her. “That you have to ask. That you don’t even remember. That you never noticed the people you hurt and shoved aside and made less because all that mattered to you was you. ”

She tries keeping the bitterness out of her words, tries reburying the anger she unearthed and tries stopping herself from shooting her own goddamn foot.

She tries.

“My problem,” she all but spits, her voice shaking and angry and filled with all the long-buried things she never wanted Keith to see. “Is that you never cared and never had to try and then you stole what I wanted and threw it away just because you could.”

Because that’s just it wasn’t it?

He had what she wanted—what she worked her ass off for—and he soured it. Ruined it before Lance even got close.

She stares him, dead in the eye as she speaks and she gets to watch, agonizingly, as his face slowly shuts down. She watches, as his eyes shutter close when she hadn’t been aware they were open. Watches, as the almost easy lines of his face crease and tighten into his familiar scowl.

Lance watches, and deep in her chest, she burns.

She should feel bad, perhaps. Should feel sorry.

But he had asked. He asked and she wasn’t going to lie to spare his feelings, not when everyone apparently thought they just ‘didn’t understand’ each other. If Keith didn’t want to know he should’ve kept his mouth shut.

Don’t go opening Pandora’s Box if you aren’t ready for the consequences.

“I see,” he says sharply, words clipped at the ends. “Let’s just get this over with then so you don’t have to spend more time than necessary in such poor company.”

Abruptly, he turns on his heel and stalks off down the hall without looking back at her.

Lance sighs, and can’t help feeling she’s messed up something important.

***

A patrol rounds the corner only seconds after he and Pidge hid. When Hunk sees the Balmerans chained up like animals and looking utterly hopeless, his heart plummets in his chest.

They did this.

By coming here, they’ve put all these people in danger. Families and children who were innocent in all this are being dragged into danger. His stomach rolls.

“Three sentries,” Pidge interrupts his thoughts, a thread of steel in her voice even as she whispers. “You take the two in the back, I’ll take the one in the front?”

Hunk eyes the sentries trailing behind the Balmerans—eyes their guns—and nods uncertainly.

They wait for the group to get closer and Hunk stops breathing, utterly terrified the sentries will notice how loud it is and give both him and Pidge away. Pidge holds up a hand, makes sure she has his attention, and slowly puts each finger down.

Hunk readies his bayard and grits his teeth grit so hard he’s half-convinced they’ll break.

His anxiety skyrockets.

Pidge lowers the last finger and they both leap out from opposite sides of their rock.

Hunk can’t keep track of Pidge—he’s busy with his own two sentries—but he can hear her battle cry as she presumably launches herself at her opponent.

Hunk slams into one of his own, sending it to the ground. His bayard comes up and swings out before the second can raise its gun.

It catches the second in the hip, sending it flying into a wall.

The sentry shoots.

Hunk jerks back to avoid the wild laser beam and his foot catches on something. In the next moment, he’s falling backwards, his head jolting against the rocky ground.

Screwing up his eyes against the pain, he doesn’t notice the thing he tripped on until it moves underneath him. Yelping, he slams his foot down on whatever it was with a powerful axe kick. Opening his eyes, he sees the caved-in face of the sentry beneath his yellow boot—little more than exposed circuitry and flying sparks now.

He quickly pulls his foot away.

“The savior of the universe, everyone,” Pidge intones dully as she stares down at him, her hip cocked and the bodies of the other two sentries sparking behind her.

Hunk chuckles sheepishly and she rolls her eyes, extending her hand to help him up. She doesn’t comment on the fact that she took care of two sentries while he mostly tripped over his.

He’d be thankful if he wasn’t so sure she was going to tell Lance all about it later.

Chapter Text

Hunk and Pidge run into five more groups of captives before they make it to one of the hidden caves. They’ve picked up more balmerans with each encounter and now have a rather sizable group. A group that—much to Hunk’s embarrassment—keeps whispering and giving him odd looks whenever he speaks to the Balmera or steps just close enough to a cave wall for it to start glowing.

It’s starting to make him more than a bit nervous. Their awe-filled stares chafe at him. He’s not the hero they seem to think he is. 

He wishes Lance were here. She’s better at handling attention than he is. She’d probably be thriving under the air of stardom that’s slowly choking him.

“Halt! Right here.”

Hunk stops and finds himself standing before a blank wall. He stands, and waits, for something to change, but only finds the same rock and dust that make up every tunnel he’s seen so far. He looks to the opposite wall and finds much the same.

Huffing, he glares down at the dirt below his feet. “Okay, you got me,” he admits, “What am I looking at here?”

The soft blue of Balmeran magic glows brightly beneath his feet and the whispering behind him begins in earnest once more. The Balmera is definitely doing this on purpose.

“Just a moment, dearest Guardian,” the Balmera sounds almost tired and a shade off weary, “Terraforming takes energy I fear I’m in rather short supply of.”

“Should you be exerting yourself this much then?” he asks, worry worming its way into Hunk’s chest and making him jittery. “Are you okay to be doing this?”

The smooth, humming laugh of the Balmera mixes with the deeper chuckle of Keone in his mind.

“Such compassion! Thank you for your concern, youngling, but I can hardly be idle and watch my Children suffer. And worry not, I am not working alone. Your Lion is helping.”

“Keone? What’s she doing?”

“There is a deep connection shared between us. She is using it to bolster my energy as much as she is able.”

Before he can respond to that, the wall in front of him shudders and breaks open with a muffled crack. Blue light engulfs the air around him, bathing him and the walls in the unearthly light.

If Hunk was insane, he’d say the air around him tingled with power—a low humming thing that reminds him of Keone and her mountain song.

But Hunk is not insane. He’s not and saying those types of things, even in his head, are a big no-no. He’s still trying to wrap his head around actual, real-life magic.

The balmerans behind him gasp and start crowding around him. A few of the younger ones squeeze around his legs and disappear into the cave beyond, ignoring the low hisses of disapproval from their parents.

Pidge follows the young balmerans quickly, a similar kind of curiosity pushing her forward.

Stepping into the room himself, Hunk is stunned to find more than two hundred balmerans squeezed into a space that is both far bigger than it should be and still too small. Pidge, in front of him, has frozen in shock. 

He can understand why. The room is practically suffocating with all the magical energy.

Every balmeran inside is pressing their hand to any available space of wall or floor. The whole space seems to come alive with pure energy. (It seems, it is not only Keone who is helping.)

If he focuses, Hunk thinks he can feel the shifting of it beneath his feet.

It’s like the energy of an entire earthquake compressed to a single point and squeezed into this room. The pull and push of tectonic plates, the roiling feeling of movement beneath your feet, the shifting of sands. Hunk stands in the middle of a giant feedback loop, energy he can’t quite grasp yet humming and bouncing around him. A never-ending song the walls are singing to him and him alone.

It fills him up from the inside and for a moment Hunk is scared to even breathe.

“Guardian?” A voice calls from the edges of the crowd and Hunk blinks away the fog clouding his mind. 

He turns, and finds himself face to face with Amel. Their rich and dark colouring makes them seem ethereal in the soft light. Poetic in its contrast.

They’re already on their feet, quickly making their way over when Colril catches sight of him too. Colril helps Mal hobble over to him while Amel clasps their large hands around his face.

Hunk blinks away homesick afterimages of his Mother’s face at the familiar gesture and smiles as best he can.

“Oh, blessings upon the Balmera!” Amel cries happily, “You are back to us! We had wished for your safety and I am glad our hopes were answered.”

“I promised, didn’t I?” Hunk says, smiling as Amel squeezes his face in joy, squishing his cheeks together before releasing him.

“Guardian!” Colril greets, grasping his forearm when Amel steps back. “I am glad we meet again. Did you accomplish your quest?”

“Yeah,” Hunk says, “Yeah I did, thanks to you guys. Shay told me you all helped retrieve the crystal after Coran and I were captured.”

“T’was nothing. Anything for a friend of the Balmera,” Colril waves of the praise heartily.

“Speaking of Shay,” Hunk says, looking around at the crowd none too subtly, “where are they?”

The three balmerans in front of him droop.

“We know not,” Amel says sadly and Hunk’s breath catches in his throat. “They were in another tunnel when the galra came. We haven’t seen them or Rax since the attacks started.”

“I’ll find them,” Hunk finds himself saying before he even realizes he’s opened his mouth. Unlike most of his impulsive promises though, he doesn’t feel the immediate need to snatch the words back out of the air. Not with the way the Touchstone is burning against his chest with a phantom heat. “I’ll bring them back to you.”

Amel smiles softly. “Of that we have no doubt, Guardian.”

Hunk tries very hard—and likely fails—to not blush. It’s nice that Colril’s eyes catch on Pidge because it gives Hunk a chance to throw attention off of himself.

“Is this the famed Lance? The one who holds such an esteemed place as Guardian’s kin?” Colril pauses for a long moment before leaning into Hunk’s space and lowering their voice to a level that might seem like a whisper to them but is still clearly audible to everyone in a three-foot radius. “She is rather small, no? Are you sure she is fully healed?”

Hunk has to cover his snort with a timely cough when he sees the way her face screws up at the slight against her height.

Colril looks even more concerned.

“No, no. This is Pidge,” Hunk says before she can get too angry, his voice thick with poorly concealed amusement. “She’s a friend of mine and fellow Paladin. Lance is somewhere else helping other balmerans.”

The family turns their eyes upon Pidge and take in the armour she wears, similar to Hunk’s but already shifting into something more suited to Pidge. Something sleeker and more… eccentric.

Amel’s eyes widen.

“The Jade Paladin! It is an honor to meet you, Guardian of Flora. Your wisdom is told of in many of our stories.” Pidge puffs up like the peacock she is and Amel excitedly turns to him. “Are all your allies here?”

Hunk nods and around him, the balmerans close enough to overhear their conversation devolve into hushed whispers. He hears the words ‘onyx’, ‘guardians’, and ‘ruby’ thrown around more than once.

“We are all truly saved then,” Mal says simply, with all the surety of stating a fact.

Hunk wishes he had as much faith in them as the balmerans did. He thinks if they all knew this was their first planet liberation experience, they would all be far more worried.

Not that Hunk is ever going to tell them that. He’s anxious enough for them all, in his opinion. No need to overdo it.

“What are you all doing?” Pidge asks staring off at a cluster of balmerans who are bathed in a particularly intense focus of light.

“Sharing our energy,” Mal answers, voice raspy and deep. “Our Balmera is weakening too much trying to keep us hidden.”

Mal looks out over the sea of balmerans, something sad and hopeless in their expression.

Dread pools in Hunk’s stomach.

“But not even our efforts will be enough. She is still dying, and I fear our greatest supports will not save Her.”

***

Keith stalks on down the tunnel.

He knows Lance is only a few steps behind him, just beyond his shoulder. He’s almost hyper-aware of her presence, anger still churning in his stomach.

He doesn’t know why he even tried. He knew it’d be useless. He told Shiro as much.

An impossible girl with too many faces to keep track of, an ever-shifting personality built of infuriating contradictions. Keith and her were doomed from the start.

She was just… too much.

He doesn’t know how to handle her. He can’t act or react the way he thinks he should because she’s always different.

One moment she’s fine—they’re fine—and the next she’s jumped at his throat, an anger in her eyes he can’t help but match. Thunderstorms and forest fires and words dripping acid from his lips.

Keith stops in the middle of the tunnel. Lance runs into him from behind.

“Hey!” she hisses over his shoulder, “What gives, Charmander?”

Keith ignores her and her odd nickname—he’s half convinced she’s just making fun of him with it anyway.

He stares curiously at the ground. It feels like there’s something beneath his feet. Something moving but also not.

Which is insane. His boots are made to withstand the vacuum of space, there’s no way he can just feel the ground beneath him.

He crouches down.

Pressing his palm into the dirt, he’s startled to find that, almost immediately, something tingly rises against it. It arches into him, shifting to press up against his hand.

He snatches it back and stares at his hand. Flipping it back and forth as if he’ll find something there that will explain the feeling.

“Did you feel that?” he asks because he can at least trust Lance enough to tell him straight if he’s crazy or not.

She leans over his shoulder, bent almost completely over him at such an odd angle Keith would almost wonder at her balance. “Feel what? What are you talking about?”

Just then, the wall to their left splits open for seemingly no reason. They both jump, but lance loses her balance too and catches herself on his shoulders. Keith grunts at the sudden weight change but easily shifts his balance to keep the two of them from toppling over.

The pair of them stare at the opening in the wall for a long moment, neither of them moving.

After a pointed silence, a soft blue light seems to flare almost exasperatedly into existence. It leads from Keith’s hand, pressed against the ground again for stability, to the suddenly appearing tunnel.

“So… that’s not creepy at all,” Lance says conversationally. “Was that what you were feeling?”

Keith narrows his eyes and hums uneasily. He doesn’t like this.

“Yeah, Coran?” Lance asks, tapping her comm back on, “We have a tunnel that just appeared from nowhere. Can you enlighten me as to what the hell that means?”

“I’m sorry?” Coran asks after a long moment. He sounds just as confused as they do. It doesn’t really reassure him. “A tunnel appeared from nowhere?”

“Yeah. There’s also this blue light? I’m pretty sure it wants us to follow it, but I’d rather not walk into another trap. I haven’t even walked into the first one yet.”

Keith sniffs at her joking tone, shifting on the balls of his feet and knocking his knuckles against the ground curiously. The flow of whatever under the ground has stilled but he can still feel it if he tries. Like a vibration without the movement.

It almost reminds him of Hunk and the fledgeling connection they share.

It makes Keith feel wrongfooted. He doesn’t know how to deal with weird things beneath the ground that remind him of his teammates.

Can someone please just give him an enemy to swing a sword at? He at least knows how to deal with those. Doesn’t the universe think he gets enough of not knowing how to deal with things from the girl still using him as an armrest?

He tries not to analyze why he hasn’t just shrugged her off yet or how quickly and easily she adjusted to his new position when he’d shifted earlier.

He ignores it because he has no idea what to do with it even if he wanted to.

She’s already made it abundantly clear she doesn’t like him so he’s not sure what she’s doing right now. He’s half-convinced that she’s doing it just to confuse him. He wouldn’t put it past her.

“It looks like it leads above the cavern they’re holding all the hostages in,” Coran informs them with no small amount of surprise.

Keith looks up at Lance and the two blink at each other.

“That’s weird,” Keith says, stating the obvious but Lance doesn’t tease him for it.

“That it is, Mullet Brain,” she agrees. Then, to Coran, “Are you sure it’s safe?”

He hums. “As safe as it can be, my dear.”

A breath escapes her in a large whoosh. “Okay, well. Normally I’d say that, as the only person of colour in the area, walking into a horror movie-esque tunnel of unknown origins is a bad idea but you know what? I’m feeling reckless today. Let’s go I guess.”

Despite Keith not liking the whatever under the ground and feeling kind of like he’s going insane because Lance can’t feel it too, he follows after her automatically when she struts into the tunnel in front of them. He falls into step at her right shoulder and keeps an ear out for anything trying to sneak up behind them.

He draws his sword so he has something to do with his hands and Lance only sends him a curious look over her shoulder before pulling out her own weapon and holding at the ready. Carefully, the two of them navigate the tunnel, flashlights embedded in their helmets powering on automatically due to the low light of the space.

For a long while, the only thing Keith can hear is themselves. Their footsteps, their breathing, Lance’s heartbeat—the earth around them seems to absorb all other sounds.

He’s straining his ears as far as he can, so he hears the opening in the cave up ahead long before he sees it. More footsteps, voices, the sounds of lots of people shuffling around.

They reach the end of the tunnel and find a cove of sorts. There’s a whole in the floor of it, looking straight out over a cavern below. The center of the Balmera, if Coran’s right—which Keith is pretty inclined to believe. Coran’s reliable like that.

Lance reaches the edge first, poking her head over the side like she has no fear of falling. It’s only a second of her scanning the floor below them before she’s pulling back and swearing.

Keith is pretty sure whatever language she’s speaking, it’s not Spanish.

He leans over too.

The first thing he sees in the cavern is a large mushroom-shaped pillar coloured with various shades of blue and orange. It looks like it’s pulsing with light and if Keith touched it, he thinks he’d get that same feeling that reminds him of Hunk.

Then, he sees the dozens of balmerans clustered at the base of the pillar. They’re all huddled together in fear and even more are being escorted to them by galra sentries.

And there were a lot of galra sentries. The place was practically crawling with them.

Keith swears too. Quieter than Lance and in English.

Tactically, their only advantage was— maybe— the element of surprise. That, and the cavern's walls were irregular enough that the low light made them heavily shadowed. Plenty of hiding places for a well-placed ambush or cover in a fight.

But even that was a double-edged sword. They can’t be seen, but neither would their enemies.

Lance crouches down at his right with a frustrated sigh. “Keith and I have made it to the core. We have a visual but it’s… well, it’s not pretty.”

“What do you mean?” Shiro asks, voice hard with how he tries to hide the worry in his voice.

“We’ve got a lot of firepower down here. I’m not sure how much but- ah, gimme a sec.” She turns to Keith, canting her head towards the opening. “Make sure I don’t fall in?”

She only gives him enough time to nod before she’s all but thrown her entire upper body over the edge to hang upside down.

Keith scrambles to grab onto the back of her knees and press them into the floor so she doesn’t go toppling over onto the unforgiving rock below.

He hisses at her angrily for that move. She ignores him, twisting and turning and making his job that much harder. After she presumably accomplishes whatever she was trying to do, she taps her foot on the floor three times to get his attention.

“Hoist me up, Sinbad!”

Keith weighs the pros and cons of just dropping her. He could even say it was an accident. 

He pulls her up. Shiro would be disappointed if he dropped Lance in the middle of what’s basically an anthill of galra soldiers.

“Thanks,” she flashes a bright grin. He can see her cheeks are flushed when the helmet pulls back into a visor. “Okay, so- I’ve sent photos to all of your HUDs-” as she says that something pops up in the right-hand corner of his vision with a small beep. Keith ignores it. He knows what the cave looks like. “-I am now open to suggestions.”

“Why are all the pictures upside down?” Pidge asks incredulously.

“Don’t ask stupid questions,” Lance snaps, tapping away at something on her gauntlet. “Ungrateful brat.” She says it quietly, but their mics are made to pick up the smallest sounds. Everyone hears her.

Pidge sputters indignantly and Keith can’t help the way his lips twitch with amusement.

“That is… a lot of galra sentries. What are we going to do about them?” Hunk asks. “We can’t just go in there, right? We’ll be killed!”

“Well, we’re certainly going to need all hands on deck,” Shiro says tiredly over the comm. “And possibly several tons of explosives.”

Pidge and Hunk start babbling excitedly and yelling in outrage, respectively. Before Shiro can properly calm them down and explain it was just his horrible sense of humor—really Shiro, now is not the time for your nihilism—Allura silences them all with one of her new favourite sounds: an ear-splitting whistle.

All five of them groan in pain and he has to quickly look through the opening to make sure Allura hadn’t just given them away.

“I’m coming down there.”

In front of him, Lance stiffens, straightening up to a kneeling position instead of sitting on her heels. “Okay, hold on a second right now-”

“I have to agree with the young miss, Princess,” Coran interrupts, sounding panicked, “You need to stay here to pilot the ship and man the defenses.”

“You are more than capable of doing so in my place.”

“But, Princess-”

“That is an order, Coran.” Allura snaps. Her voice could be made of stone for all the warmth it held. Keith doesn't think they’ve ever heard her use that tone of voice. “One that, as your Princess Regent, you are required to obey.”

There’s a long silence where it seems like they’re all holding their breath.

“Of course, Princess,” Coran finally says, through gritted teeth.

It’s the closest to anger Keith has ever heard Coran get. It’s actually kind of terrifying.

“Does anyone else have a problem with my decisions?” Allura asks, still with that voice of stone and ice.

It’s like crickets, no one dares to speak.

Then, Shiro sighs. “Welcome aboard, Princess. We’re glad to have you.”

He can just imagine the way his brother is rubbing his eyes, trying to relieve the headache he no doubt has. The situation is fast falling out of his control and while Shiro has never been much of a control freak, he is a leader. They’re all very lucky he’s so flexible and has such a history dealing with bullshit—mostly Keith’s if he’s honest.

Anyone else would be tearing out their hair, he thinks.

“I’ll be down in a couple of ticks. Don’t start without me.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it.”

Lance leans in next to him conspiratorially, careful not to speak into the comm. “You know, if I didn’t know Shiro was gay as hell, I’d say they were flirting.”

Keith wrinkles his nose. “That’s gross. He’s my brother!”

Lance rolls her eyes. “ Relax. I made a comment about him flirting, not him jumping in the sack.”

“Lance!” he hisses, heat rising on his cheeks. That’s his brother.

She raises her hands in a surrender that’s belied by the crooked smirk on her painted lips. “Sorry! I didn’t take you for such a prude .”

“I’m not a prude. I just don’t like thinking- that, about my brother.”

“Oh my god, are you five?”

“You’re five!” Keith shouts.

“I don’t know what you’re fighting about but both of you knock it off,” Shiro’s voice commands over the comms, startling both Keith and Lance.

“He-”

“She-”

“-started it!” they protest at the same time. “What? No, I didn’t! Knock that off! Stop it!”

“Hey!” Shiro shouts, a distinctly frustrated note in his voice tinged with disappointment.

Both he and Lance immediately look at the ground like kicked puppies despite the fact that Shiro can’t even see them.

“Now, as I was saying, neither of you are to engage the galra under any circumstances. You remain hidden until the rest of us get there, am I clear?”

“Yes, Shiro,” they both intone, wincing.

“Good,” And with that, he clicks off the line.

For a moment no one speaks, then Pidge, because she has as much tact as Lance does, singsongs, “You two got in trouble~” over the comms.

Next to him, Lance buries her face in her hands to the sound of his sputtering half-growls and Pidge’s cackling.

***

The bookstore is dustier than she remembers it being, but it’s no less comforting.

“One moment, please!” a familiar, thick Scottish accent calls out from the back room.

“Oh, no! Please, take your time!” Sabre calls back, mischievous as ever.

She’s not disappointed when, only a second later, there’s a loud bang from the back. The sounds of chaotic movement and loud swearing follows after, and Sabre can’t stop herself from laughing.

Finally, the curtain to the back room is thrown aside. “Sabre! Ye’re back!”

Grinning, she throws her hands out at her sides. “So it appears.”

Alex, an unruly collection of too many freckles and wild red hair, launches themself at Sabre. She picks up her friend easily, spinning them around the small space at the shop counter.

When she sets them back down, Alex takes a half step back before solidly punching her in the arm.

“Ow!” she not-yelps. Sabre definitely doesn’t yelp. “What the hell was that for?”

“How come ye didnae tell me ye wur in toun?”

Sabre rubs at her shoulder and pouts. “Didn’t I just?”

Alex crosses their arms and their frowning disapprovingly. It’s a very strange expression on their face. Normally it’s Alex on this side of a disapproving look. This feels very backwards.

“Ye cannae call?” They ask pointedly. “Ah know th' museum gives ye one o' them fancy new phones every year. Maybe ye should use it? They make calls too ye know.”

She waves off Alex’s complaints. “Yeah, yeah. You sound like Mamá.”

“At least she gets calls!”

Sabre acts like they never spoke. “I still maintain that punching me was unnecessary.”

“And ah maintain that ye’re a piece o’ shite.”

“Rude!” Sabre gasps with as much drama she can muster. It does the job of getting Alex to crack a smile.

They shake their head at her and hop up to sit on the counter. The soft flannel they're wearing splays open at the movement, revealing the graphic tee beneath it. Sabre grins at the words on the fabric—bold words for someone within stabbing range.

“So, what brings ye tae mah neck o’ the woods, eh? ‘Sides my lovely company, tha’ is.”

Sabre sobers a fraction at that question. 

She knew Alex would ask. They’re curious and too clever for their own good.

But she can’t rightly tell them she’s in town because her sisters are compiling whatever they can on the Garrison and its officers. Or that she’s here because she might need to pick a lock or bypass some security and, short of getting their cousin involved, Sabre was best at that.

And she certainly can’t tell them she’s looking for Lance.

She doesn’t like lying to her friend, but she’d rather keep them out of it. She and her sisters still don’t know why the Garrison is doing this, what exactly it is they’re trying to hide. It could be more dangerous than they thought.

Lance has a habit of getting into things she shouldn’t and sticking her nose where it doesn’t belong. It’s likely she, dragging Hunk behind her, got them into more trouble than they could handle.

Which is why she and her sisters need to find them.

“Sabre?” Alex asks tentatively—or as tentatively as they’re capable. It’s really only a quieter sort of gruff.

“I… did you hear? About Lance?” she asks quietly. Not quite answering the question and not quite lying just… letting Alex come to their own conclusions.

The conclusions they come to are both right and wrong, it seems. “Yeah. Ah did.”

Alex doesn’t say anything else, but Sabre can see the way their knuckles have turned white from how hard they’re gripping the counter’s edge. They weren’t particularly close, Lance and Alex, but that hardly matters. Everyone loved Lance and even if she’s not dead, she’s still missing. There’s not a person who knew her that doesn’t feel her loss.

No one Sabre knows of, at least.

After a long moment, Alex hops down from the counter, something like determination on their face. “Tha’s it! We’re goin’ shoppin’!”

“Excuse me?”

“Shoppin’! Tae git yer mind off things!”

Sabre glares at them. “I hate shopping.”

Alex rolls their eyes. “Nae ye don’. We’re goin’ tae th’ farmers market! Ye love tha’ place.”

They’re smiling at her, but it’s all teeth and barely concealed sadness. Sabre thinks, perhaps, the farmers market is not just a tactic to cheer her up.

Groaning, Sabre agrees. 

“Great!” Alex claps excitedly. “Let me git all this closed up and we’ll head out.”

“Yay,” Sabre says, only half sarcastically. Spending time with Alex was the point of coming here after all.

***

The problem with saying he’ll find Shay is that he’s basically looking for a needle in a haystack. Except that there are other needles to save as well. And also the haystack is trying to kill him.

Fun times.

It doesn’t help that Hunk is also in the middle of another task he still has to do. Shiro told them to get to the Balmera’s heart. And, logically, Hunk knows that’s the more pressing issue.

Save the Balmera, and he saves the balmerans. It’s certainly more straightforward of a task than wandering around tunnels hoping to run into Shay.

Knowing that logically doesn't make him any happier about it.

But, as luck would have it, the choice is taken from his hands.

Something stumbles into their path. Pidge and him have their weapons drawn before they even realize what they’re pointing them at. 

Well, Pidge has hers pointed. Hunk fumbled his own and it’s now laying at his feet utterly useless. He really hopes Pidge doesn't tell Allura because she’ll make practice with it until he’s sick of seeing the colour yellow.

“Wait!” the figure shouts. “We are friends!”

Hunk starts, blinking into the darkness and- yeah, those are pretty familiar glowing eyes. “Shay?” he asks, barely restrained joy in his voice.

The yellow eyes thin and Hunk hopes that means they’re smiling. “Guardian!”

In the next second, something rams into him and squeezes until he thinks he’ll pop. Is this what people feel like when he hugs them?

“Oh! I had heard whispers that you Guardians had come but it is so good to see you with my own eyes!” They set him down and now that they’re closer, Hunk can see they’re definitely smiling. “I am glad you are back.”

Hunk tries very hard not to blush. He’s pretty sure he fails.

“I’m, uh, glad to be back,” he says awkwardly.

Pidge stops whatever she was doing just to laugh at him. Which, rude. He kinda wants to kick her.

He won’t, of course. She’s too far away, for one, but mostly it’s because he’s scared he’d break her.

Pidge is very small. It worries him.

“The rest of your family is hidden somewhere safe. We just left them.” There’s another pair of eyes in the darkness behind Shay. Hunk rightly assumes it’s Rax.

Shay goes almost boneless with relief. “Thank the Balmera.” Shay shares a glance with their brother as he emerges from the darker shadows. Then, they turn back to him, smiling brightly. “I am glad you, too, are safe.”

“Well, I do have your Touchstone,” he says pragmatically, pulling the chain out of his collar. “‘Course I’d be safe. You said so didn’t you?”

Rax makes some sort of strangled sound at the sight of the lightly glowing stone and Shay reaches out to hit them in the shoulder. Hunk is suddenly very confused.

“Uh…”

“Mind him not, Guardian,” Shay says just a bit too quickly.

Rax glares at her and then at Touchstone still held in Hunk’s hand. It makes Hunk want to put it away just so Rax will stop staring at it. 

But that’s an irrational impulse and Rax is just being confrontational so Hunk’s not going to do that.

He releases the chain and lets the Touchstone fall against the outside of his armour. Lance would probably say it’s a statement, then raise her chin challengingly. Hunk just smiles and pointedly ignores the looks Rax shoots him.

The blue light of the Touchstone looks greener in the soft yellow glow of his armour. When he looks at Shay, they’re staring at the light on his chest, a small smile playing at their lips.

Rax makes another grumbled noise off to the side but, again, Hunk ignores him.

Hunk isn’t dumb. The Touchstone means something to their people that Hunk isn’t really grasping, but Shay seems happy about it and, for now, that’s enough to reassure him.

***

The others are taking longer to get to the center than expected.

Lance knows they’re all fine of course. They all check in periodically and Coran’s been feeding her updates because he’s too perceptive and picked up the fact that she was worrying.

It seems the galra sentries she and Keith destroyed have been found. The galra are even more on edge than before. It’s making it difficult for the others to make it through to the more heavily guarded center.

Lance blows out a long sigh, stirring the bangs on her forehead.

Keith has taken to pacing around the meager space in their little hideout. She can see the way his eyes keep flicking towards the opening and how his hand keeps reaching for the knife at his back.

If the others didn’t get here soon, she worried that the idiot would charge in himself. Orders be damned.

And with her as his self-appointed babysitter and only back-up for the foreseeable future, she’d be obligated to jump in after to save his ass. Then they’d both end up dead.

“Can you sit down for a second?” Lance asks, trying not to let the annoyance and stress bleed into her voice. Keith looks at her sharply, and she knows she didn’t quite succeed.

“How can you just sit there and just… wait?”

“Well,” she tells him slowly, like she’s teaching a child. “you see, I have this thing called patience. It’s quite useful.”

Keith glares at her.

She rolls her eyes. Below them, another group of hostages are being dragged towards the rest. There’s been a steady stream of them since they arrived. Each group Lance watches come in seems treated worse than the last.

The galra are getting impatient. Their impatience, it seems, goes hand in hand with their cruelty.

Watching them be mistreated isn’t helping either of them sit still. Neither of them will look away either.

What a pair of masochists they were.

Lance hasn’t stopped watching the scene below. Which means, when a galra sentry suddenly slams the muzzle of their gun into the back of a balmerans head, she sees it. She sees the balmera fall to the ground and hears the quick inhale Keith makes.

She throws herself between him and the opening before he can jump down—nevermind that it’s too far a fall to do anything but break his legs.

“Lance!” he shouts, just shy of too loud and she slaps a hand over his mouth.

“You’re going to get us both killed!” she hisses at him.

He reaches up and rips her hand away from his mouth to glower. “We need to get down there!”

“We need to follow orders! Nevermind that your plan is suicide! We can’t take out that many guards on our own! The others will be here soon.”

“Not soon enough.”

“Yeah, well-” she stops because there’s nothing to say to that. It is taking them too long even if she hates to admit he’s right.

Lance needs to think of something. She can’t keep Keith here, he won’t listen to her for long enough. But she also can’t just let him run off and get himself killed.

She needs to give him something to do. Something productive that will keep him out of as much trouble as possible.

“I bet you I can rescue more balmerans than you can,” she blurts out.

Keith glare shifts into something more incredulous but just as angry. “What?”

“I bet you I can rescue more balmerans than you can,” she repeats. Then, as an afterthought. “Without getting caught.”

“This isn’t a game, Lance. ”

Thanks. Like she didn’t already know that. But if she needs to play cocky and arrogant jokester to keep Keith alive and focused then whatever. What’s she got to lose?

“What?” Lance taunts, a smirk playing across her lips. “Scared you’ll lose?”

She may as well have uttered a spell for how quick Keith changes his tune.

“Of course I’m not!” he sputters, determined and mad. “You’re on.”

Lance grins and it’s a hair too sharp. “Good.”

***

It isn’t that Sabre forgot how much alike Alex and Lance were, it’s just that, with her looking for her sister everywhere, seeing her in everything and everyone, it’s never been more obvious. Alex bounces from stall to stall like a pinball in an arcade machine, just as much a being of endless energy as Lance was- is.

Alex switches rapidly from bullying stall owners into better deals and excitedly gushing over various knick-knacks. It reminds Sabre of their college days. When Alex would drag her out to some renaissance fair or market or really anywhere colourful and lively between all the papers and exams and classloads.

Alex was practically the only reason Sabre didn’t become a shut-in at college.

But it’s been years since the last time they did this. It’s nostalgic, in a way. Nice.

Sabre’s content and relaxed all the way up to the moment she runs over a stranger and ends up knocked to the ground. The crowd walks around the mess, spilt bags and all, but offer no help. Alex is nowhere to be seen either, probably run off ahead and hadn’t looked back. Typical.

The man groans and Sabre shuffles so she’s no longer half suffocating him with her weight.

“Sorry! I didn’t see you there. Are you okay?”

The man's glasses are askew and his hair is messed from the fall. “I’m fine, thank you. I hadn’t been paying attention to where I was going either.” He sits up slowly, a hand on the back of his head, rubbing slightly as he winces.

He’s probably going to bruise. Sabre grimaces in sympathy. Then, he pulls his hand away and his fingers come away red.

Panic spikes in her chest.

“Shit!”

She grabs his head in her hands—firm but gentle, the way Mace taught them all to be—and pulls him forward so she can see the back of his head. There’s a cut at the base of his skull, close to his neck. When Sabre looks where he fell, she sees one of the figurines Alex had bought earlier lying there with a freshly broken arm. The jagged edge of the break is smeared with blood and Sabre winces at the sight of it.

“Shit, I am so sorry!” she says again because she thinks the situation deserves it. She releases his head to start rummaging through her bag for the mini first aid kit Mace forces her to keep on her at all times. Everyone seems to think she’s ‘accident prone.’

Sabre likes to think of it as a higher opportunity for good stories.

“Ah,” he says placidly as she pulls out the tan bag with a red cross on it. “I’m okay. Nothing more than a scratch.”

“‘Scratch’ my ass! You’re bleeding all down your neck!”

Sabre then realizes that they’re still sitting in the middle of the street with all of Alex’s purchases and the man’s belongings scattered around them. It gives her the sort of feeling of needing to be in two places at once.

Then, like the godsend they are, Alex finally comes back, bouncy and then worried when they see the scene.

“What happened ‘ere?”

Sabre waves the question off, already dragging the man to his feet. “Later. Can you pick this up? I need to get him to him somewhere less crowded.”

“You really are very kind, but I assure you, I am fine, ” the man insists again and Sabre snorts.

“You’re almost as bad as Lance,” she snaps without thinking and the stinging pain that follows the statement is both expected and surprising. “Head injuries aren't to be taken lightly. Besides, if my sister found out I left someone who was injured without helping them, she’d wring my neck.”

They find a bench off to the side and Sabre pulls a water bottle out of her backpack, dousing a bandana she had in there and turning the man’s head so she can get at the wound.

In all honesty, it’s not that deep but head wounds bleed far more than Sabre’s comfortable with. She gives him a warning before she starts dabbing at the blood, trying her best to clean it.

He hisses out in pain and Sabre apologizes again.

“Stop doing that,” he tells her in a monotone that still somehow manages to convey a sharpness.

She snatches her hand back, scared she might’ve really hurt him now. “What? Did I hurt you again?”

“No,” he says, voice even and neutral. “Just stop apologizing.”

Her eyebrows furrow, “But I-”

“My god, you’re almost as bad as Taka-” the man cuts himself off abruptly, mouth snapping shut with a sharp click. There aren’t many emotions to see on his face, but Sabre catches the way his hands are clenched tight on his lap.

She’s curious.

“I’m Sabre by the way,” she says instead of asking insensitive questions.

“Adam,” he hums. “Pleasure to meet you. Excepting the fact that you used me as a human bowling pin.”

It takes her a second to realize he’s joking. His voice is so flat and his expressions neutral that it’s hard to read him. But, when she realizes, she snorts with laughter.

Adam’s lucky the cut is on the edge of his hairline and that he’s cut his hair short. It means she can at least try to put a bandage on it so it stays clean.

“Yeah, well. This is a bit unusual. Normally I’m the one with the injury.”

“Is that so?”

Sabre huffs a laugh. “Yeah. It gave my little sister a lot of practice at least. She’s training to be a doctor right now actually,” she boasts. Mace is always so humble, someone needs to brag on her and it may as well be Sabre.

“A medical career is a very illustrious position. You must be proud.”

“Oh, believe me, we are.” Sabre smooths a bandage over the cut and prays that it will stay on him until he can get it properly checked out. “All done!”

Adam reaches up to lightly prod at the bandaging she did. It’s not as good as Mace’s but, well, Sabre thinks she did okay for someone who hasn’t had four and a half years of medical schooling.

“Thank you for your kindness. It’s most appreciated.”

“No problem,” she says, waving off his thanks. “Say, do you always talk like that?”

Adam pauses in cleaning his glasses. He’d pulled out a special handkerchief from his blazer pocket and Sabre realizes this man may be much posher than she thought.

“I beg your pardon?”

Not that it will stop her.

“That!” she says, pointing right at him, “That right there. You sound like an old, rich cartoon character.”

Adam blinks at her. “Which old rich cartoon character?”

Sabre thinks about it.

"Bruce Wayne. But like, if he was mixed with Alfred too." Adam raises an eyebrow and Sabre has to bite her lip to keep from smiling. Oh, she likes him. “You also remind me of Captain Holt. You know, from Brooklyn Nine-Nine? He isn’t quite a cartoon though…”

“Hmm. I shall take that as a compliment.”

Sabre thinks she sees his mouth quirk upwards just the tiniest bit but she’s probably wrong.

Alex takes that moment to make their grand entrance, stumbling up to them slightly dusty and hair even more of a mess than it was earlier. Sabre stares at them incredulously.

“What the hell happened to you?”

Alex huffs. “People are rotten liars who lie. Ah just had tae chase down a two-year-old who tried tae tak' th' dragon figurine ah bought for th' shop.”

Sabre nods sagely.

“Welp!” she claps her hands and gets up to her feet. “It’s been lovely meeting you Adam, but I’m sure you have some sort of posh boy convention to get to, so I’ll get out of your hair.”

Adam stares up at her without a single change in expression. That’s okay though. She smiles enough for them both.

“Well, I do have a water aerobics class I need to get to.”

“I can’t tell if your joking or not.”

Adam blinks.

“Doesn’t matter,” Sabre assures, shaking her head and reaching into her backpack again for a piece of paper and a pen. She scribbles a series of numbers on it and presses it into his hand.

He raises an eyebrow. “And what would this be?”

“My number,” she says simply and Alex rolls their eyes.

Adam’s expression doesn’t really change but he blinks quicker and clears his throat. Sabre thinks it means he’s embarrassed.

“My sincerest apologies but I’m not… interested in, well-” he cuts himself off to clear his throat again.

It’s Sabre’s turn to blink up at him now. Then, she opens her mouth and laughs in his face. “My guy,” she says in between chuckles, “I am a raging lesbian. I’m not ‘interested’ either.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah, ‘oh’,” she smirks. “But I like you. Call me,” she mimes shaking a phone near her ear with her hand before stuffing both of them in her pockets as she starts to walk backward. “See you around, Pennyworth.”

Alex trots after and shoves a bag into her hands as they hook their arm through her own.

“How forward of ye,” Alex teases. “He must be a special lad.”

Sabre shrugs. “I suppose we’ll see. But he made me laugh.”

“Ah,” Alex says as if it is the secret to the universe. “Th’ fastest wey tae a woman’s heart. A joke.”

Sabre shoves them until they stumble and continues on with Alex shouting about revenge and betrayal behind her.

The smile on her face, surprisingly, doesn’t move for a long while after that.

Chapter Text

The seventh sentry falls with less than a whisper from her gun. Which Lance, as an old hand at guns and their accessories, finds positively maddening for a whole slew of reasons. The most being, that despite what action movies will tell you, suppressors do not silence guns. It’s practically impossible with the gas and barrel and just how guns work in general.

Unless you’re aliens, she guesses.

But, she rationalizes, perhaps whatever laser ammo she has loaded into the thing just has a less noisy discharge.

Breaking her mind over the wacky laws of physics and engineering they’re encountering in space seems to be more up Hunk and Pidge’s alley. They seem to be having fun with the new hobby of theirs and Lance wouldn’t want to step on any toes or anything. She’ll leave the freakouts to them.

“That’s twenty-six for me!” she whispers gleefully, jumping down from her alcove perch and giving the newly rescued trio of balmerans off to the hidden tunnel path.

She figures that's the least likely place for the galra to look, seeing as they probably don’t know it exists.

“You’re lying!” Keith groans back at her. She isn’t sure where he is, only that he’s covering another exit on the other side of the cavern.

Lance gasps, offended. “Oi! Am not!”

“Then you’re cheating!”

“Am not!” she hisses. “Just because you’re bad at the game-.”

“I’m not bad at any game!”

“That’s arrogant of you, isn’t it?” She snipes, only half paying attention to him and what’s coming out of her own mouth. Down the tunnel, she can hear the sound of footsteps if she listens for it and that's an arguably more important use of her focus. “You can’t be great at every game. I bet you suck at Monopoly. Too impatient and impulsive for it.”

“What are you-”

“Probably Twister too. But Hunk says my opinion of ‘good at Twister’ is skewed because no one’s been able to beat me at it since I was twelve and won’t be able to again.”

“That’s arrogant of you, isn’t it?” Keith parrots back at her in a greatly offensive impression of her own voice.“Ha! Twenty-eight!”

Lance scoffs at him and hits the sentry between the eyes the second it rounds the corner. She swings down from her perch and does a quick headcount before grinning.

“Thirty-one,” she says smugly to the sound of Keith’s frustrated grumbling. “Also, was that supposed to be my voice?”

“How are you getting so many?” Keith says frustratedly.

Instead of answering, she cuts her mic to tell the balmerans who she is—the Sapphire Paladin, Guardian of Ichor, apparently. It raises so many questions, but it sounds suitably badass, so Lance is willing to leave the questions for later.

After pointing the balmerans in the right direction, she tugs the broken sentry to her growing collection of scrap metal hidden further down her tunnel.

With each sentry she downs, she becomes warier of new ones. The galra were already on guard before, downing even more of their sentries must be pinging something on their radar. Only, if it is, they aren’t doing anything about it.

It puts Lance’s hair on end.

The balmerans see her off with hearty thanks and pledges of some sort while she climbs back up to her perch. Lance waves them away with a smile and thinks maybe she should pay more attention to what  exactly they’re pledging to, but she’s busy right now, so she doesn’t.

“I’m just good at what I do,” she finally answers, flicking the comm back on.

Keith makes some sort of disbelieving noise and then goes silent.

Lance doesn’t really question it. As long as she doesn’t hear screaming and gunshots, she’s assuming he’s okay. Likely, he’s just actively focusing on rescuing hostages rather than annoying her half to death like he had been doing.

Unfortunately, Keith’s nasty habit of not doing what she expects decides to rear its ugly head again. Like she hasn’t had enough.

There’s a quiet, but very empathetic “Shit!” that filter through her comms immediately followed by the thundering sound of gunfire.

It startles so badly she nearly falls from the rocky outcropping and only saves herself by the grace of God and a lucky handhold. Her heart jackknives in her chest—or is it her throat?—because dios mio, that was gunfire. Guns. What the fuck did Keith do?

“Keith?” she asks, voice strangled and eyes wild as she almost breaks her ankle landing and takes off toward the noise. Her feet pound towards the cavern, her panic flaring higher and higher.

In the back of her mind, Hunk is growing worried and panicked—no doubt feeling the way her heart is trying to escape her rib cage right then. Because, fuck, what if Keith is- What if he-?

Lance rounds the last corner and finds herself faced with utter chaos.

“Keith!”

***

Later, Keith will have to deal with the fallout from Shiro and Allura and probably Lance’s anger at him for doing something so stupid. Not that he’s thinking about that in the moment. Not that there’s anything he can do about it now.

He hears the cry. He catches sight of the hidden pocket about the cavern. He sees something teeter over the edge. He watches it fall.

The weight of a child slams into his arms before he even realizes he moved to catch them.

They go sprawling and Keith does his best to keep them both from breaking their necks in the tumble. He tucks in close, wrapping himself around the kid and letting the armour take the brunt of the damage as they roll end over end.

They land with Keith crouched over the kid. His eyes snap up. The crowd of sentries stand around him.

For a second, nobody moves.

“Shit.”

Then, the firing starts.

He curls down over the child and raises his shield arm to protect the two of them as much as possible.

Gunshots echo and clamour against the cave walls loud enough to deafen him. His shoulder aches with every hit it deflects with the shield and he knows, later—if there is one—it will be sore and bruised.

He’s pinned down. He can’t move further against the wall because he’d expose the child. He can’t draw his bayard because he’d expose the child. He can’t do anything or else he’ll expose the child.

He’s stuck—cornered like an animal.

The sentries are closing in and Keith is trying very hard not to panic.

Beneath him, the balmeran child whimpers and Keith curls closer over them. “We’ll be okay. It’ll be fine. It’ll be okay,” he whispers over and over again. A mantra, for him and the kid.

There’s nothing he can do. His brain runs through option after option, his muscles tensed to do something.

He doesn't think he’s ever been so terrified in his life.

Then, he catches sight of the blue and gray blur darting between sentries as easy as breathing and something in his chest loosens.

He’s not dying today.

***

She can’t stay still. It’s harder to hit a moving target so Lance keeps moving.

Spin. Jump. Shoot.

She twirls and spins and ducks so much she isn’t sure which way is up anymore.

Duck. Vault. Shoot.

The only thing she’s sure of is the sound of gunshots and the exhilarating feeling of hitting her target before she moves on. At one point she thinks she uses one sentry to vault over another one and takes out three at a time with one shot.

Sidestep. Spin. Shoot.

She’d be prouder about it if she had the chance to breathe and actually process the level of badassery she just accomplished. But as it is, she’s just trying not to die.

Jump. Duck. Shoot.

She’s also trying to draw fire away from Keith—the idiot— so he can gather his bearings and help her, dammit.

Shoot. Shoot. Shoot.

She’s really starting to wish she had a gun better suited for the acrobatics she’s performing right now. Don’t get her wrong, the bastardized pulse rifle in her hands is a thing of beauty—but the amount of effort it takes to swing around is really slowing her down.

Pistols would be nice, she thinks as she guns down a row of sentries who were stupid enough to stand in a vague semblance of a line.

Then she realizes that they were close together because the sentries are surrounding her. Cornering her like they had Keith.

She starts to panic.

There’s too many around her. She can’t turn fast enough to shoot all of them. She’s going to die here and it will all be over-

A lot of things happen at once.

There’s the sound of a laser blast. Pain erupting across her shoulder. A flash of blue light. A shield raised in front of her. The color red. Weight leaving her hands. Lance stumbling backwards into something hard. Spinning and spinning and spinning.

In the space of one blink and the next, Lance raises the shiny new pistols in her hands and cuts a swathe of everything in front of her.

“So happy you could join me, Kitty Rose,” she taunts breathlessly as she feels Keith do some sort of fancy footwork behind her that she tries to follow in order to keep them back to back.

Keith scoffs through the comms, the only way she can hear him over the din of the cavern. “Join you? You’re the one who took forever!”

Lance ducks and spins when Keith suddenly swings around, his sword going over her head to impale a sentry that was getting too close for comfort. While she’s down there, she grabs the chance to take potshots at some sentries hanging around the back of the group.

“Oh? Well, if I recall, our orders were to not engage. You’re lucky I showed up at all,” Keith crouches down to sweep the legs out from under a sentry and Lance shoots the one behind it. “Shiro’s going to be very cross with you, Mister.”

Keith does something that might be a laugh when he turns to face her. She can’t see his face, but she can imagine it.

“You’re one to talk! Hunk’s gonna be pissed!”

Lance’s face drains of color at the very thought.

“Oh! That’s dirty.” She swings around him, putting their backs together once more and trusting him to watch her six. She downs sentries more than three yards away and leaves the closer ones for Keith.

“And it’s not like I tried to!” he argues. “There was a kid in danger!”

“Playing Hero, are we?” Lance taunts cheekily, flipping out of the way as Keith twirls so they can switch sides. “Where’d you drop off the little tyke?

“Behind the barrier,” he says gruffly, slicing off a sentry’s head with extreme prejudice. Lance spares a glance over to the shimmering purple barrier currently protecting any balmerans from stray shots.

She briefly wonders how he even got the kid past it before her attention is quickly stolen by a rude sentry trying to cut into her dance with Keith. She kicks it in the chest before shooting it in the face to remind it of its manners.

They fall into a steady rhythm. Keith swinging his sword at anything stupid enough to get in range while Lance shoots anything beyond it, thinning the herd. Keith’s a blur of movement, and Lance matches his footwork with only slight difficulty to keep them back to back.

Wash. Rinse. Repeat.

It’s actually surprising how well they work together.

Training never goes this well. But now, the thread between them, normally too hot to touch and painfully fragile, is humming in the air between them. A symphony of pounding drumbeats and strumming guitar strings.

The melody curls around them and makes it so they’re step for step, hit for hit, blood for blood. Lance’s heart sings with the harmony, with the feeling of someone so completely on the same page with her it’s like they’re one solid being acting out in two bodies.

It’s like how she feels with Azura when they’re flying, how she feels with Hunk most days.

It’s… thrilling.

Lance laughs even as the sentries get closer and closer, pouring in through the connecting tunnels like a never-ending ant hill. She’s not sure how, but she knows the others aren’t far behind. They’ll show up long before she and Keith are in any real danger.

Distantly, she can hear Keith laughing too. The echo of it thrums along down the bond like warm honey. 

***

Surprisingly or not, it’s Allura who makes it to the tunnel first, trailed by Shiro then Pidge and Hunk.

Keith doesn’t have much time to look at them, but he sees them poking through the crowd of sentries every once and awhile, assuring him they’re all still alive.

A glimpse of Allura where she’s waving around something akin to a bo-staff, taking out sentries without breaking a sweat.

Shiro, in the middle swinging his glowing hand in wide arcs and using his shield in something scarily similar to Captain America.

Pidge, perched on top of Hunk’s shoulders and fiddling with something in her hands that Keith really hopes isn’t the bomb that he thinks it is, while Hunk himself swings his gun around like a club.

Keith sticks with his back against Lance’s.

All six of them are efficient, clearing out entire sections of sentries in seconds but they just seem to keep on coming. The battle starts to drag on.

Keith gets tired and slow and starts making mistakes. He almost takes a laser blast to the face for the fourth time in as many minutes. It’s only by virtue of Lance’s apparent sixth sense that he doesn’t.

The moment he registers the muzzle in his face, Lance is already pushing against him so he leans forward—him compensating for the weight and position automatically—while she arches over him to shoot upside down, saving him again.

It’s starting to get embarrassing, really.

She must get tired of saving his ass because the next moment Keith is facing one of the outer walls of the cave, no sentries in front of him, and he can finally take a breath without fear of dying. Lance is guarding his six and he trusts her—has to really, even if that’s not why he does—but she must be tired too.

He stabs his shield into the dirt at her feet so she has cover. She drops to a knee behind it immediately.

They’re both looking worse for wear. Ragged breathing and singed armour that’s slowly trying to repair itself. Lance wills away her helmet from her face and gulps in deep lungfuls of air that isn’t recycled, and Keith does the same when he realizes how great an idea it is.

The air is still stale as all hell because they’re in the middle of a planet surrounded by miles of dirt, but even that’s better than the air inside the suit you’ve been sweating in for the least twenty-ish minutes.

“We can’t keep doing this,” Lance says, leaning around to take a shot at a sentry who was getting too close. It makes the others hesitant to continue approaching.

Keith licks blood from where his lip is split and nods. “But what else are we supposed to do?”

“Pidge has a plan,” Lance says confidently.

“How could you possibly know that?”

“Guys, I have a plan!” Pidge yells cheerfully over the comms and Lance shoots him an ‘I told you so’ look. He’s too tired to even roll his eyes at her and sticks his tongue out instead. “Get to the edges of the cave but keep the sentries around the middle.”

“What exactly are you planning on doing?” Shiro asks, using his ‘no-nonsense’ voice that Keith knows is really just hiding how resigned he is to everything. While Pidge is more creative with her recklessness, she has nothing on the sheer volume of stupid things Keith's done while in Shiro’s presence.

There are few things in the universe that could flap the unflappable Shiro.

Keith thinks his composure comes from all that time spent with Adam—which is honestly just cheating. Adam could deadpan the looney tunes if he wanted to. It was kind of scary sometimes.

“Would you listen if I just told you to trust me?” Pidge replies innocently.

Shiro makes some vaguely disapproving noise that conveys both his disappointment and also his resignation at dying young from all the stress.

Or at least, it conveys that to Keith.

“Don’t kill anyone,” is all Shiro says.

“Your lack of confidence in me is insulting. Also, Hunk, tell the Balmera I’m very sorry because this will probably hurt,” Pidge pauses, “a lot.”

“What? Why?” Hunk shouts frantically, “Pidge, what are you-”

Something soars over the cavern to land in the middle of the space. Keith watches in amazement as all the sentries start moving towards it like moths to flame. They cluster and gather and suddenly there’s a shimmering purple barrier falling around all but a handful of sentries.

A few really unlucky ones get cut in half, and Keith winces.

He watches—in both fascination and horror—as whatever device Pidge made starts blinking ominously. The sentries, despite not being sentient as far as any of them can tell, start to look panicked.

Pidge count downs gleefully and Keith watches the inside of the shield erupts in a fiery display of dismembered sentry bits. “Yeah! It worked!”

The Balmera around them gives a low groan, the floor beneath them shaking slightly.

He and Lance turn to each other at the exact same time, eyes wide.

“ Remind me to never get on Pidge’s bad side.”

Lance nods wordlessly.

The two of them shakily get to their feet. Lance presses into his side more than she stands but he doesn’t push her off. A lucky shot hit her in the ribs and while it didn’t go through the suit, Keith knows that there has to be a damn big bruise there.

He has more than a few of his own.

They take barely a step when Hunk is stumbling up to them, Pidge still on his shoulders. He skids to stop right in front of them and cups Lance’s face with a tenderness that makes Keith uncomfortable to witness.

Easy displays of affection have always made Keith feel awkward, moreso when other people we’re being affectionate around him. He always felt like an intruder, an unwanted outsider to a private moment.

(It also made him want, but he’d never admit that.)

Lance leans into his hand and Hunk’s expression, so relieved and soft, goes suddenly pinched and hard. It is, he thinks, the closest Keith has ever seen him to being angry.

It’s unsettling—like his face wasn’t made to be angry.

“You idiot!” Hunk yells, startling them all. “Ulōpō ʻoe?! Are you crazy? You could have been killed, Lance! You could have died and then I would- I was so- Why do you-” Hunk stops, the words bitten off and harsh.

He sighs like the fight suddenly left him. His shoulders droop, and his face falls and his forehead knocks against Lance’s like he can’t even hold it up anymore.

“I’m going to die worrying about you.” Lance goes pale at that and Keith is feeling really uncomfortable right now. He wishes he could step away from this whole situation, but Lance is still leaning on him, so… “I’m going to die of a heart attack at twenty-seven and it will be all your fault. Is that what you want?”

“Of course not!” Lance exclaims, horrified.

“Then stop doing this! Please! For once in your life, can’t you just not ” Hunk cuts himself off abruptly, an almost stricken look on his face. Lance stares up at him and then both of them just look sad.

Keith really hopes neither of them cry. He hates it when people cry.

He takes comfort in the fact that Pidge is still perched on Hunk’s shoulders and looks just as uncomfortable as he feels. So at least he’s not alone in his suffering.

Before anyone else can say anything, Shiro comes stalking up to their group. Keith is already turning his head, a smile tugging at the corners of his mouth when he realizes how terrible an idea that is, why did he do that?

Shiro looks furious and any hope Keith had of getting out of this with minimal embarrassment dies a fiery and painful death.

“I know what you’re going to say and so you really don’t have-”

“What in the blazes were you thinking?” Shiro cuts him off, sounding definitely frustrated. “No wait, don’t answer that because you obviously weren’t.”

“Or you can say it anyway,” Keith mutters under his breath. “That’s cool too.”

Lance shifts against his side in a way where he just knows she’s trying to hide her amusement. He’d glare at her if he didn’t think looking away from Shiro would result in his immediate and very painful death.

“I gave you specific orders, Keith. You could have jeopardized the whole mission by disobeying them, or worse, you could have gotten yourself killed.”

Keith wants to be angry. Because Shiro’s treating him like a little kid again, acting like he doesn’t understand that their lives are on the line or that they’re fighting in a war with billions of lives in the balance.

If it was anyone else—someone besides one of the two people he cares about more than anything else in the universe—he’d be downright furious.

But it’s Shiro, so he isn’t.

It’s Shiro and he’s only had him back a month and Keith can’t be mad. It’s always been so hard to be mad at Shiro, his brother in all but blood. The only family he still has to call his own. (Keith’s always been bad at being angry at the people he loves.)

He hangs his head and opens his mouth to say something when Lance speaks over him.

“It was my fault!”

His head snaps around to her so quickly he’s sure he pulled something in his neck. He’s not the only one looking at her in surprise either.

“I was the one who suggested a stupid competition that lead to us getting involved. It was my fault, Shiro.” Her eyes flick to his for a fraction of a second. “I’m sorry.”

Now Keith’s confused. Lance had nothing to do with him running into the cave. Why would she lie? What does she hope to gain from taking the blame?

He’s already opened his mouth, the words ‘no, that isn’t what happened at all’ already on his tongue when the cavern around them shakes enough to throw the five of them off balance. Lance clutches at him for stability and Hunk winces even as Shiro grabs at him so he doesn’t fall.

“We have bigger problems,” Allura calls as she jogs up to them. She sends a significant look to him and Lance. “We can deal with you two later. Right now we need to get out of here. Coran, we-”

She’s cut off by the mess of panicked noises and explosions blasting through their comms. It makes Keith jump, shifting to fight automatically, and has Lance tightening her hand around his arm hard enough to bruise.

“Coran?” both her and Allura shout.

Lance doesn't give the man a chance to respond before she demands, “Coran, are you alright? Talk to us! What’s going on?”

There’s a ringing boom and then a grunt. When he speaks, his voice is tight and panicky. “Sorry, my dears. I’m a bit preoccupied at the moment. It seems the Galra managed to call in the cavalry.”

“How bad is it?” When Coran doesn’t answer, Allura repeats herself, a wild edge creeping into her tone.

“I’m fighting off a fleet, Princess.” He chuckles, high pitched and strained. Keith can hear laser fire in the background, and tenses with every shot. “I can’t help you reach your Lions and run the Castle’s defences at the same time. I’m doing all I can but-”

“Hello, Voltron!” A different voice, feminine and brash, suddenly overtakes Coran’s. “Your regularly scheduled idiot is busy at the moment, so I’ll be taking over saving your asses for now.”

“Nyma?” Lance asks before Allura or Pidge can start yelling. Keith sees Hunk scowl, and still the expression seems alien on his face. “How the hell did you get in the Bridge?”

Good question.

Nyma, Rolo, and Beezer shouldn’t even be able to leave their designated area. CORINN has them under constant surveillance. It was the only way Allura would even let them in the Castle.

That, or throw them in the dungeons until she found a planet she could dump them on.

“Well,” Nyma says conversationally, “explosions aren’t exactly a sign of things being all okay. Rolo figured we should see what was going on. And good thing too, you guys would’ve been quiznacked. These tunnels are a mess. No way you’d have gotten out without directions.”

Keith blinks. “You’re helping us?”

“Duh,” Nyma says like he’s slow. Keith bristles. “We’re currently trapped in a Castle with galra enemy number one and being shot at. I think it’s in our best interests to help. And, again, you need it.”

Shiro looks thoughtful, Hunk and Allura, surprisingly, look equal amounts of pissed off at the situation, and Pidge is staring at Lance.

After a second, Lance simply shrugs and says, “Do we really have any other choice?”

The Balmera shakes again, punctuating her point.

“Okay,” Shiro stands tall and addresses them, “Paladins, get to your Lions. Follow Nyma’s directions and take to the sky, we need to help Coran. Allura-”

“I’m staying here,” she interrupts. “There’s no way I’d make it to the Castle to help out, not with a fleet firing at them. I’ll help the balmerans here and get them somewhere safe.”

Keith looks back at the cave’s center where balmerans still cower behind the barrier, more still in the ceiling.

Nobody argues with her.

“I found Shay and her brother on my way here. They’re down that side tunnel.” Hunk points at a random opening as far as Keith can tell. They all look the same. “They’ll help you navigate. Keep them safe.” He pauses. “Please.”

There’s an amused twist to Allura’s lips when she agrees. Hunk slumps back in relief and takes off down a tunnel with a wave, Pidge still perched on his shoulders.

Shiro steps closer to Allura and grabs her shoulder. It’s a bit awkward because the princess is about a foot taller than Shiro, but whatever.

“Stay safe, Princess.”

Allura nods. “You as well, Paladin.”

“How sweet,” Nyma coos mockingly. “Now if we could get moving?”

“I don’t trust you,” Allura says sourly, like it’s news. Lance rolls her eyes and starts tugging Keith away.

“You don’t need to trust me,” Nyma says in a way that somehow gives the impression she’s rolling her eyes too. “You just need to survive.”

***

Lance explodes from the earth and finds the sky on fire.

Hundreds of ships dart around the Castle, vulnerable now without the safety of cloud cover. Laser blasts score through the air, slamming against the particle barrier and lighting up the air with brilliantly colored explosions.

The sight makes the blood in her veins freeze.

“Did everyone make it to their Lions?” Shiro calls through the comms.

Lance laughs, loud and wild to hide her fear. “Come on, Superman! Who do you think you’re dealing with? A bunch of amateurs?”

To prove her point, she executes a complicated flip maneuver. She’s grinning and not paying attention, too busy showboating to ease her nerves.

She runs Azura into a mining rig, tumbling out of her seat with an undignified yelp at the sudden jolt.

Azura harrumphs in the back of her mind and Lance groans from the floor. She can hear the others laughing at her. She thunks her head against the floor in embarrassment.

“Do you really want me to answer that?”  Shiro asks, amused.

Lance pouts, face burning pink. “No…”

“Alright everybody, fan out. Clear the sky of as many drones as you can.”

Right, Lance thinks, time to get to work.

***

There’s something strangely easy about the way Lance zips between galra drones. It’s still terrifying—she doesn’t think it will ever stop being terrifying—but there’s something different about it now.

Azura’s presence hums in the back of her mind, ever-present and warm, but now there are the barest hints of her fellow paladins. If she focuses, she can get a vague sense of them, a sixth sense piggybacking off their bonds.

She knows when Hunk is farther away and if Pidge needs help and can predict Shiro’s orders before he even says them. They’re all more… connected, she thinks, after fighting together in the cave.

It makes them terrifyingly efficient, dispatching the galran forces with ease. Things are going well.

Which means, of course, it goes to shit not long after.

A battlecruiser shows up, large and intimidating and packing more firepower than they can deal with. Shiro calls for Voltron to form.

“Uh,” Hunk asks hesitantly. “How do we do that exactly? I don’t see a ‘combine into giant robot warrior’ button anywhere on my dashboard.”

“Allura says it’s about intent, right?” Pidge says, recalling their earlier lessons at the Castle. “We need to be of focused mind.”

“Easy for you to say!” Lance quips. “You aren’t the one with ADHD!”

“Everyone! In formation!” Shiro commands and the four of them line up obediently. “Think about Voltron. Think about each other. Grab on to your bonds and focus.”

Lance closes her eyes, trusting Azura to take over.

She concentrates, reaching within herself for that place she melts into Azura, into her fellow paladins.

Her mind’s eye flashes to the image of Voltron from the cave on earth, of the powerful warrior sent to protect the universe. She lets the image take over everything, lets it consume her mind and become all she thinks about, all that she is. It rises in her chest, a vague feeling that threatens to burst from her and causes her bonds to flair higher than they ever had before.

She grabs onto Hunk first, his bond bright and loud and so familiar. As much a part of herself as her heart or laugh or hair.

Pidge comes next, slinking up to her like a smug cat. She’s green—with life, with curiosity, with sass. A brilliant growing thing buried deep in her sternum slowly winding its way through her until it can’t ever be taken out.

Shiro, who’s soft and wispy and unshakably reliable. Shiro, who tears through her like the wind before a storm, heavy and sweet. A promise of more, of things yet to come.

When she reaches for Keith, she doesn’t hesitate.

When she reaches for Keith, she screams.

He burns through her, latches on and fills her with flame. She is consumed, is the center of an inferno, is punished for reaching towards the fire and thinking she could ever control the flames. She melts in the heat she wasn’t made for, her blood boiling to steam and bones snapping with heat.

Charred and blackened and burned, she screams.

Distantly, she can hear Keith scream too.

The thread between them rattles, jolts and claws and rejects itself. It fights and burns and screams just as loud as they do.

It’s unhappy. It’s furious. It’s two halves of a whole that don’t match.

Chaotic. Broken. Feral.

The spell shatters.

Lance falls forward, smoke pouring from her aching lungs. Her eyes sting with heat and ash coats her tongue.

Azura’s there the next moment, soothing and cool on her burned skin. Worry strums along their bond, low whines and rumbling purrs lulling Lance away from her agony.

“What the hell was that?” Pidge demands, voice shaking. “Was that Lance and Keith?”

Lance gulps in lungfuls of air around her hacking coughs. “I- I don’t know. Whatever it was, don't make me do it again,” she begs. “Fuck.”

She hears Keith echo her weakly, sounding just as bad off.

Hunk’s face pops up on her dashboard. The second he sees her, his expression turns even more distraught and Lance feels horrible. She really is going to give him a heart attack worrying about her.

She’s such a bad friend.

“Are you even okay?”

She nods and gives him a weak smile that really doesn't reassure him like she hoped.

“What was that?” he repeats.

Shiro speaks, and Lance can’t read the tone of his voice, can’t see his expression, but knows it can’t mean anything good. “I don’t think Keith and Lance can form Voltron.”

Shame burns through her. She’s had her Lion the longest, has the most malleable personality, is the one that is supposed to so easily bring them all together—and she can’t do it. 

The sour taste of her failure sits on her tongue.

She wants to vomit.

“For Goddess’ sake!” Nyma snaps, shattering the air with her panicked rage. “Twenty thrusters are better than two! You don’t need quiznacking Voltron! Just get that damn cruiser away from us!”

It’s quiet for all of a second before Shiro clears his throat self-consciously.

“Ah," he coughs, "well you heard the lady. All power to knocking that canon off course.”

They answer, obedient and meek in the face of such recent failure. She can feel it—through the haze of dulling pain—how unsettled they are, harshly reminded they’re not undefeatable. Lance knows it’s not a true loss—they haven’t lost a battle in this war yet—but the feeling of defeat lingers at the edges of her mind.

But now is not the time to feel pitiful and sorry for herself.

She charges the cruiser, her fellow paladins at her side. The five of them ram into the underside of the ship, hard enough to make Lance’s teeth rattle.

Their initial hit knocks the cruiser upward, but not by enough.

Azura strains against the weight of it and Lance grits her teeth, lending as much of her strength to her Lion as she can. It’s something she didn’t know she could do until she was already doing it.

She pours herself into Azura, gives her everything she can spare, and her Lion’s answering roar shoots lightning down her spine. Power curls in the air and slowly, so slowly, the cruiser tilts. They struggle and push and eventually, the cruiser is pushed far enough to expose its vulnerable underbelly—beached on its back like a helpless turtle.

Coran shouts a warning Lance barely hears and Azura shoots off to the side. Not a second after they move, a laser blast scores through the air, blinding her as the light fills the cockpit.

She watches, safely tucked within her Lion, as the cruiser explodes in a shower of debris and vengeful flames. The fire consumes all the drones around it, expanding hungrily. Nothing escapes its reach.

Lance cheers—whoops and hollers to the sound of the others doing the same. Blowing up galran ships, she’s learning, is very cathartic.

A large breath of air escapes her as she slumps back into her seat. With nothing to distract her, she can feel her cuts and bruises now with aching intensity. She’s hurt and tired and happy which is odd.

Normally, the exhaustion doesn’t catch up with her until she’s outside her Lion.

Pidge and Keith and Nyma are all yelling and insulting the broken remnants of the cruiser while Shiro and Coran congratulate them all. Lance huffs a laugh at the chaos of it all.

Gold glints in the corner of her vision and Lance spins with a celebration on her tongue.

Her heart stutters in her chest.

As if in slow motion, she watches Keone fall from the sky.

Chapter Text

Lance panics. What else would she have done?

Her best friend is falling from the sky and he’s not saying anything—hasn’t said anything for too long, when did he stop talking?—and Lance is terrified.

Hunk was right. They’re both going to die of heart attacks at twenty-seven and they have no one to blame but themselves and-

She’s shooting off towards Hunk before he can crash. He’s too heavy to keep in the air by herself, and he’s spinning and tumbling through the air and she can’t steady him.

Yelling and questions pour through the comms. She ignores them all, too focused on trying to keep Hunk in the sky.

Azura’s underneath Keone now, straining and slowing them down but not enough. It’s not enough.

Lance watches the ground rush up towards them. Braces herself for impact, to take the brunt of the damage even when she isn’t sure they can. Her eyes close and she waits for the jarring crash into the planet’s surface.

But it never comes.

Her eyes pop open and all she can see gleaming red metal. Keith, the only one of them fast enough to catch up.

Lance bolts from her seat the second the trio touches down, not quite gentle, but safely, at least. Azura’s trying to nudge at Keone, but the Yellow Lion’s eyes stay dimmed.

Azura’s head is nowhere near the ground when she launches herself from the catwalk. Her jetpack fires up to slow her descent, but she still hits the ground hard and almost stumbles to her knees.

She’s about to start pounding on Keone’s muzzle when it flies open, Hunk dashing out and practically falling on top of her. She grunts under his weight, the enhancements within the paladin suit the only thing keeping them both upright.

“Hunk! ¿¡Pero qué coño!? ¿Por qué no respondiste?” she shouts.

“The Balmera!” Hunk gasps as Lance lowers them to the ground as softly as she can. “It’s dying.”

The ground beneath them has been shuddering since Lance stepped on it, but now it jerks. If the two had still been standing, they would’ve fallen.

Hunk curls over in pain and her worry skyrockets.

“What do you mean dying? What’s wrong with you? Babe, talk to me.”

“Energy. Used too much-” he forces out between his teeth, “-terraforming. Keone trying to help.” He hisses in pain and the hands Lance has curled around his face tighten. “Not working.”

Hunk told her about the crash landing the first time he was here. Told her the who, what, and why of how it happened.

It’s the same thing now, only this time Hunk’s in pain.

“It’s taking energy from you too,” she says, pieces clicking together.

Lance feels sick. Hunk can’t support a whole planet.

It’s going to kill him.

“How do I help? How do I get it to stop?”

Hunk doesn’t answer her.

The others have landed their Lions and are already running over. Lance raises a hand to her helmet, “Coran! Get down here now, we need to get Hunk and Keone off this planet.”

“What?” he asks, “What do you mean? What’s happening?”

“The Balmera it’s- it’s hurting him or something. I don’t know. But we have to get him away!”

“No!” Hunk says lurching forward with far too little control for her peace of mind. “The balmerans need help. Have to get them off.”

“Hunk you’re hurt,” she says just in case he doesn’t know—which he might not. Their relationship is built on self-sacrificial bullshit after all.

God, they're going to give each other gray hair at twenty-five and it will be ridiculous because the only person who can pull that off with any level of success is Shiro. Well, Shiro and Allura. But Allura is a magical space princess so she doesn’t count because she’s obviously cheating.

“Not hurt. Tired.”

Well, that’s a lie. What kind of exhaustion causes that? Exactly zero kinds, that's what.

God, she’s going to hit him.

“Lance that’s rude,” he says into her shoulder and she might’ve said that out loud. Whatever. She’s right anyway and he’d deserve it.

“Is it still pulling from you?” she asks because if it is, it doesn’t matter what he wants. She’s getting him off of this planet immediately.

“No. She stopped as soon as she knew what was happening. Didn’t mean to take-” Hunk yawns jaw-crackingly large, “so much.”

“Yeah, well…” Lance grumbles, brushing hair from his face, “We still need the ship.”

She turns to look at Shiro who’s staring at them with something strange in his eyes. She doesn’t bother trying to decipher it. What she wants, if for him to start moving. There’s still stuff to do and they need a leader for it

“Where’s Allura? If the Balmera’s dying, we need to get the balmerans out of here now.”

Shiro straightens—if that’s even possible, he has the best posture of anyone she’s ever met. Including Francisca—and turns to start giving everyone orders. Distantly, she can hear him having a conversation with Allura about something, but she’s more focused on Hunk.

He’s practically falling asleep in her arms.

“What I wouldn’t give for a five-hour energy right now,” he mumbles into her shoulder and Lance laughs despite herself.

Pidge plops herself down to Lance’s right and grabs Hunk’s gauntlet with a single-minded focus. Hunk grumbles at the manhandling but doesn’t resist.

Lance doesn’t think he would have been able to even if he wanted.

“It looks like your blood sugar is low but not dangerously,” Pidge informs them. “Which, I suppose makes sense considering you said it took your energy?” Pidge nods without looking at Hunk, already so sure she was right.

Pidge reaches into a pouch at her hip and pulls out a granola bar of all things, shoving into Hunk’s face. “Eat.”

Lance blinks at the food while Hunk just reaches for it and does as she says.

“Where the hell did you get a granola bar?”

Pidge shrugs. “It was in my backpack when we left. I always carry snacks.”

“And you didn’t think to share when we were going through the whole food goo debacle?”

Pidge snorts. “Of course not. Would you have shared?” Lance opens her mouth to say ‘yes, I’m not an asshat’ but then realizes that hoarding food is exactly what she would’ve done and closes it. Pidge grins like she knows what Lance is thinking.

She probably does. The little gremlin’s creepy like that.

“Besides, it’s not like I’ve been eating them all. They’re for emergencies. Like now .” She waves a hand at Hunk who’s polishing off his granola bar and actually looking a bit better now that he’s eaten.

He notices them staring and grins. “Do you have any more of those?”

Lance shakes her head in amusement as Pidge explains why she will not be giving him anymore because as far as she’s concerned his stomach is a black hole. Which, she isn’t wrong.

Her attention is pulled away when Shiro walks up to them, lips pursed and unhappy. The Castle lands behind him, causing all their hair to whip around wildly.

“What’s wrong?” she asks before he even gets the chance to speak.

“The good news is that Allura found Shay’s family and they are all heading over this way right now.”

Hunk’s hand flies to the necklace hanging around his neck.

He still hasn’t explained to her what it is besides, ‘Shay gave it to me’. The lack of information makes her suspicious. Hunk only hides things from her when he’s embarrassed by them.

“Bad news is, none of them want to leave.” Hunk goes unnaturally still in her arms. “Allura’s trying to talk sense into them, but Shay’s spoken to the other balmerans. They all want to stay until the end.”

“But they’ll die,” Hunk cries and it’s like the sound was torn from his throat. Something flashes across his face and then he’s pulling away from her arms and standing up, unsteady on his feet but stubborn. Lance scrambles up after him. “I need to talk to them myself.”

“What? No!” she protests, grabbing his arm. “Hunk you could barely stay awake a minute ago.”

“And now I’m fine.”

Lance scowls up at him, irritation bubbling in her gut. “Stop being cute. That’s my job.”

“I wouldn’t dream of stealing your thunder, songbird.” That! That right there makes Lance all the more anxious.

Lance speaks more in nicknames and jokes than she does actual titles. But Hunk? Not exactly.

He does, of course, have nicknames for her, but he rarely uses them where other people can hear. Despite his inability to stay out of everyone’s privacy, he keeps a lot of things close to his chest. His pet names for her have always been a carefully guarded secret.

He’s more exhausted than he’s letting on.

“At least let me come with you,” she says because he’s as stubborn as her when it’s most inconvenient and she can recognize that.

But Hunk shakes his head.

“I need to do this myself. I just… I have to.” His eyes search hers and she knows he finds what he’s looking for in them.

She hates that she understands. Hates that she knows what’s racing through his mind even without the flickering echoes of the bond.

Because it means she’s already lost.

“You realize you can’t yell at me for being reckless and stupid anymore because you’re about to go do the exact same thing, right?”

“This is hardly the same situation,” he argues. “But I have faith in you. I’m sure you’ll do something dumber for me to be upset by and all will be right with the world again.”

Lance puffs up her cheeks in protest but deflates quickly. The ground under them jerks again and she’s reminded about how little time they have. She doesn’t have the luxury to be mad at him.

She stands on her tip-toes and kisses his cheek. “E mālama pono,” she demands. Be careful.

Hunk nods, kissing her forehead before jogging to the closest open mineshaft. Lance watches him go for a second before turning to find Pidge, Shiro, and Keith staring at her.

“You two are disgustingly domestic,” Pidge tells her, apropos of nothing.

Lance blinks.

Is that meant to be a bad thing? Lance can’t see why.

She ruffles the younger girl’s hair for lack of anything else to do. Maybe Pidge will find her own Hunk someday. For now, Lance grins and guides the group of them to Coran.

***

Hunk finds Allura and Shay’s family quickly.

They, luckily, did not surface on the other side of the Balmera. It doesn't matter how small the planet is, it’s still a planet, and Hunk isn’t sure he could’ve made it over there.

The second Allura catches sight of him, her shoulders droop. “By the Grace of the Divine! Maybe you can get them to listen!”

He sees Shay second, the balmeran breaking away from their family to run up to him. Their hands land hard on his shoulders, their palms warm even through the suit. Huh, weird.

“You are okay!” Shay says, smiling wide and bright, “This is wonderful news!”

“Course I’m okay,” he assures even though the world around him is worryingly blurry and he wants nothing more than to nap for a week. But that was also him the entire week before finals last year, so he’s not too concerned about it. “I still had to make good on my promise of saving you guys, didn’t I?”

He watches as Shay’s face falls, his smile slipping too. They cast a look back to their family before settling on him with something like grim determination.

“I am sorry, Guardian,” they say, low and quiet. “But your efforts will go to waste, it seems. There will be no heroics on this day.”

Hunk thinks there have already been plenty of heroics on this day, but he digresses. There are more important things.

“What are you talking about?” He grabs them, half frantic, “Just because the Balmera is dying doesn’t mean you have to die with it.”

Shay closes their eyes. “We balmerans thank you for your kindness but we cannot accept it. Our Balmera’s life cycle is ending because of us. It is our wish to stay with Her until the end.”

“Wha-? It wasn’t your fault!” he insists, looking imploringly at their family behind them. None of them will meet his eyes. “The galra are gone. You guys are free now.”

“Then we shall die knowing freedom,” Rax says, standing tall and strong and still so achingly fragile.

Maybe Hunk is too tired or maybe he’s done with the people around him being in danger or maybe it’s the green light of the Touchstone over his heart, but Hunk is done. He is not doing this.

“No!” he shouts loud enough that it echoes around him, reverberating off the walls like there are multiple of him speaking. He doesn’t notice, but the ground beneath him starts glowing a faint blue, the way it had when it followed him around the tunnels. When he spoke to the Balmera and it spoke back.

“No, I refuse to give up on you! I refuse to let anyone else around me get hurt when I could do something. Your home may be dying but you have a chance to live. To carry on the stories and the hope of your planet and you’re just going to, what? Throw that away? I’ve spoken to the Balmera and you are Her children. No parent wants their child to die for them. They want them to live for them. To grow and be happy and move on. Honor Her death and survive. Honor Her death and remember. You can’t do that if you die here too.”

Everyone's staring at him now, his words spilt from him like waterfall. He’d be embarrassed by the attention if he had the energy for it.

He’s upset and tired and he’s not sorry he said it, but he is surprised he got all those words past his tongue without stumbling over himself. Words are Lance’s thing, but it seems like she’s rubbed off on him more than they both realized.

Suddenly, Mal breaks away from the stricken group of balmerans and reaches for his hands. It’s then that he notices they’re glowing. He should probably be more concerned about that but again: energy.

“The Balmera has carried your words, Guardian. We balmerans hear them and know they come from the heart. With them, you have touched ours.”

“Oh, uh… good. Right.” Fantastic, he’s back to being awkward again. “Does this mean you’ll come with us?” His eyes sweep over the group of balmerans in front of him, but they catch and stay on Shay. They’re staring at him with something close to awe and it’s really not doing any favors for his awkwardness right now.

Mal grins in front of him, something sharp and knowing in the glow of their old eyes. “It is as you said, Guardian. We shall honor Her death and survive.”

“Good. Uh,” his gaze flicks to Allura who’s staring at him, something contemplative in her eyes. He must start looking panicked because she points to the ceiling with emphasis. “Oh! All balmerans, quickly head to the surface.”

The glowing stops when he finishes talking—which is good. He was scared he was going to have to make a fool of himself and ask how to turn it off—which would have been bad. Especially since they had all just seen him be really cool apparently.

Mal’s eyes fall to the Touchstone around his neck. Its glow is more pronounced now that he’s not lit up like a Christmas Tree.

The knowing look in Mal’s eyes makes him want to squirm. Over their shoulder, he catches Amel stoop to whisper something in their daughter’s ear, their eyes firmly placed on the Touchstone. Whatever they say, it makes Shay jump and send their mother a dirty look.

Amel laughs and Hunk gets the feeling he’s a part of some inside joke he doesn't understand.

***

They make it up to the surface without any problems.

They are among the few who do.

Their run up to the surface is made harder by the increasing number of tremors the Balmera has. The group of them are just stepping away from the tunnel mouth when She gives a violent jerk. It throws them all to their knees. 

Hunk turns, watches as the rocks crumble and destroy entire pathways within the mineshafts. Hundreds of pounds of rock fall and tumble down into the dark below, trapping the remaining balmerans just below the surface.

This mineshaft is useless, and even if the balmerans could come up through another one, there isn’t enough time for them to get there.

Hunk panics. The Balmera was stable enough before, what had happened? What went wrong?

Then he remembers the cave and quintessence so thick in the air he could barely breathe. He told all balmerans to move. No one is supporting the Balmera anymore. The Balmera is dying and he just took Her off Her life support.

God! He feels so stupid.

Next to him, Shay cries out in despair, “No! We are lost!”

No. No. He’s not giving up that easily. Just think. Think! What can he do?

Getting all the balmerans plugged back into the Balmera would only help for so long. They don’t have enough to support the Balmera fully and it would ground them. The balmerans couldn’t move, which means it’d be useless anyway.

He searches around for anything that might help, grasping at straws when he sees the Castle and his fellow paladins clustered around the base. They seem to be talking about something in hushed whispers but that isn’t what really catches his attention.

Underneath the Castle, there is a brilliant patch of glowing earth. He’s seen that before.

“Guys!” he grabs the attention of the others, already stepping towards the Castle and the thriving patch of earth. The others turn and their attentions are caught as well. “Look!”

“The Balmera!” Amel gasps, rushing forward along with the other balmerans to place their hands on the ground there. “It- it is healed! But how?”

Coran hums off to the side, examining a piece of rock held between his thumb and forefinger through a magnifying glass. “Well, the running theory is that the Castle’s balmeran crystal is using the Castle as an uncontrolled alchemic circle of sorts to heal this patch of ground.” Coran lowers the rock and glass to stare at the ground itself, something sad in his eyes. “The altean life force soaked into the bones of the Castle is helping the reaction along, but it won’t keep it up for much longer.”

The balmerans stare at the ground, completely captivated with running their hands over the glowing dirt and rocks of their home planet.

Hunk looks at Allura. She’s altean and an alien and super-advanced and also the one who is most in charge by default of being a princess. Maybe she has an idea or something.

But when he looks at her, all he can see is her sadness and frustration.

He looks back down, clenching his teeth. He can sympathize.

Then, he notices that where the balmerans are sitting, the glow has been pulled out farther, as if reaching for the balmerans themselves. He suddenly remembers his idea from earlier about the whole planet being behind one of those revitalization ceremonies.

He’s not entirely sure how altean alchemy works, but if he’s understanding Coran—which is a big if sometimes. Coran is a very confusing guy—the altean energy in the Castle and the Castle’s size is making the reaction bigger. Like an amplifier.

“What if we saved the whole planet?” Hunk blurts out before he can think of any coherent way to explain the thoughts swimming and flying around his mind.

Keith looks at him like he’s grown a second head. “Uh… that was kind of the whole point of coming here? And it’s currently failing so…”

Hunk shakes his head. “No. No, I mean, like, the whole planet.” He waves his arms wildly in circles as if to convey his point. “Like what the Castle is doing right here but on a bigger scale. Is that possible with the… alchemy?”

Coran looks dubious and mildly worried but Allura looks excited and like Keith does when he’s about to do something reckless against the Training Gladiator. It is not a look that fills Hunk with confidence.

“Hunk, that’s a fantastic idea!” Allura hops up and down on the balls of her feet and wow, Hunk thinks this is the first time he’s ever seen her this animated. It’s kind of weird. “We can perform the ceremony and heal the whole planet using the Castle as an amplifier!”

“Ceremony?” Colril asks. “What ceremony do you speak of?”

“In the days of old, when alteans were given the gift of Crystals from a Balmera, we would repay its sacrifice by performing a ceremony. A Sacred Altean would re-infuse the Balmera with quintessence in thanks for its gift.”

“You mean the Sharing of Breath?” Shay asks, eyes wide.

Coran blinks. “Uh, yes. I do believe that is what it was called.” He turns back to Allura, something like pleading in his eyes. “Even if it could work-”

“It will, Coran. Have faith,” Allura tries reassuring.

“If it did, ” he continues like he hadn’t been interrupted. “To revitalize an entire planet could take more energy than you possess! Even with the Castle helping you, Allura you could…” Coran swallows thickly and Hunk doesn’t like where this is going. He knows that look. “not make it through this.”

Allura softens at the fear written in every line of Coran’s body. She steps forward to take his hand in her own, squeezing lightly as if the touch alone can reassure him she’ll be fine.

“I must try anyway. I cannot value my life over that of a hundred thousand others.”

Coran breathes deeply like he wants to argue that but knows he’ll lose.

“I know,” he finally says, defeated and less than pleased.

Hunk waffles for half a second before stepping towards the pair, back straight and shoulders back like Lance is always telling him how to stand. “I’ll help.”

“What!?” comes the screeching cry of his best friend. She marches up to him and jabs him in the chest. Hard. “I think the fuck not! You’ve already given enough energy or quintessence or whatever. No. No! Absolutely not.”

“Lance,” he tries.

“No! You can’t yell at me for being dumb and then immediately go and do a worse thing! This is hypocrisy. You’re always yelling about me being a hypocrite! You can’t do this.” She crosses her arms and glares up at him. “I forbid it.”

“Well that’s not really your choice to make now is it?” he says sharper than he meant it to be.

But Lance is used to sharp words, even if not from him. Her skin is thick because it has to be and she doesn’t bat an eye.

“Did you not hear Coran? You could die!”

“If I can help, I have a responsibility to,” Hunk says and she stops in her tracks just like he knew she would.

Perhaps it was an underhanded tactic but he doesn’t regret using it. He knows that if it was her in his place, she wouldn’t even hesitate to step up.

How strange are they to so readily sacrifice themselves but not each other?

He puts a hand on her shoulder and squeezes. The only thing holding him back is her fear and they don’t have the luxury for that right now. The Balmera is still shaking apart beneath them and if they don’t do something soon it will be too late.

He steps around her and faces Allura and Coran again. “I’ll help,” he repeats and this time no one argues even if Lance scowls enough to give Keith a run for his money. “I know how the energy moves from me to the Balmera. I can help guide it.”

Hunk isn’t really sure how he’s going to do that, but he wasn’t lying. He knows how the transfer of quintessence feels. He’ll figure it out along the way.

Allura smiles at him appreciatively while Coran’s lips thin into an unhappy line.

Oops. He’d been hoping to make both of them feel better.

Well, one out of two isn’t bad.

Allura leads them into the circle of healed dirt, directing them all to their places at the edges. The Balmerans press their hands firmly into the ground, determination set on their faces. Hunk kneels with them, and presses his hands into the dirt, digging his fingers as far beneath he can reach.

He looks to Allura, waits for her cue, waits for whatever it is she’s planning to do.

She raises her hands at her sides, and something in the air shifts. The swelling of energy just below the surface, just beginning to build.

The thunderous sound of roaring shatters whatever was building.

Hunk rips his hands from the dirt as everyone around him jumps.

He whips around to stare at Keone who’s no longer passed out or in stasis or whatever it is she does and is instead glaring at them like they personally offended her.

“What do you think you cubs are doing?” she hisses between her teeth, tail flicking behind her in agitation.

“Keone?” he questions. The ground beneath him shakes and they don’t have time for this. “Keone we have to do this. We need to save Her.”

“You will save no one with this foolishness,” she scolds and if it were any other time Hunk might’ve caved right then and there but they don’t have another choice. He’s about to tell her that when she steamrolls over him. “There isn’t even a Circle drawn! What does the altean kit think she is doing?”

Hunk blinks and turns to Allura. She looks pale and confused and perhaps a little angry.

“What is she saying?”

“She’s asking why there isn’t a Circle drawn?”

Allura’s mouth twists into a frown as she stares at the Lions before them. “I don’t need one.”

The growl Keone lets out is enough to shake the ground beneath them. Or maybe that was the Balmera again. They really are running out of time.

“You may be content to allow your arrogance to swallow you whole, little kit, but I will not let you drag my Paladin with you.”

Hunk really does not want to translate that and get punched in the face by a seven-foot-tall alien princess. Luckily for him, Allura seems to get the message without his interference.

“My father had not needed a physical Circle. I can do it too,” she says stubbornly. “I’ll be just as good as he was.”

Keone makes some sort of harrumphing sound. “Your father was an Alchemical Master with a century of experience under his belt. Even he had needed a physical Circle in the beginning.”

He translates that because it seems safe enough and Allura stops looking deeply offended but the stubborn twist to her mouth has yet to go away when he finishes speaking.

This is very weird for Hunk, hearing Keone talk about people who lived thousands of years ago like she was there. Well. He supposes she was, which is just as weird in a profoundly different way.

Keone sighs, and the tightly coiled tension in her spine releases. Her head lowers, so it’s closer to their level instead of having her stare down at them all intimidatingly.

“It is okay to not be the best when you start out,” she says softly, something warm and familiar in her words, like it isn’t the first time she’s had to say them. “You have room to grow and learn, little kit. Do not be so frustrated by the distance you have yet to cross. I know you will grow into an Alchemist to be proud of. But that is later. Now, you still need help and there is no shame in that. It is the truest of strengths to rely on your loved ones.”

Allura’s shoulders slump further and further as Hunk relays the message. For a long moment, she’s silent. Then, she takes a deep breath and releases it in one long gust.

“I understand, Your Divinity.” She dips her head towards Keone, oddly formal. “Your wisdom is appreciated and I am thankful for your counsel.”

His Lion hums in approval, head dipping in acknowledgement. “Do not be so formal, little one. I am merely glad you’ve chosen to see reason. Only the foolish refuse help when it is needed, and you, little queen, are far from foolish.”

Because Hunk still doesn’t want to suffer bodily harm, he leaves out the part where Keone almost calls the princess foolish, but passes on the rest.

After that, they make quick work of building the circle, even through the frequent tremors. Keone walks them through the technical bits of alchemical circles as they draw—which is… concerning. Allura had been about to try and do all of this in her head and she barely knows the basics? What was she thinking?

But as Keone leads him through the motions, Hunk finds question after question piling up on his tongue.

This alchemy is more grounded than the balmerans free-flowing energy wasn’t. It’s built on equations and logic instead of arbitrary rules he doesn't quite understand.

Whenever he gets the chance, he’s picking Coran and Keone’s brains for more about this strange science-magic.

For now, he contents himself with what little is spread before him.

They’ve drawn a large array that’s almost as big as the base of the castle. A five-pointed star within a pentagon within a circle make up their base, lines and angles and symbols he only half understands drawn in precise places in the open spaces.

He, Lance, Pidge, Shiro and Keith are all standing at different points of the star with the balmerans filling out the rest of the circle’s perimeter. The five of them are supposed to be ‘grounding points’ if he understood correctly. 

Keone hadn’t explained what that means or why they’re there or how they matter—only that they do—and Hunk knows they’re on a time crunch, but he’s so curious. The questions burn on his tongue, itching to learn, learn, learn.

After a minute or so, when everyone is in their place and knows what they’re supposed to be doing, more or less, Allura steps into her place at the center—careful not to disturb any of the lines drawn into the dirt—and begins again.

She may have been insistent that she could do this all on her own, solving and creating the necessary equations on the fly, but Hunk can tell she seems more at ease now that she won’t have to. Trying to control a reaction this large by sheer force of will seems ridiculous no matter how talented you are.

Her arms raise and this time, when the energy begins to build, it keeps going. It fills the air until it’s stifling, choking Hunk with its pressure and deafening with it’s buzzing in the air. There’s a moment, suffocating and long where Hunk thinks he’ll crumble under the sheer amount of it all, then with a violent, silent pop the array comes to life.

The lines spark and glow with all the energy crackling through them. It’s all brilliantly vibrant, balmeran blue, until the lines of the star, the ones connecting him directly to his fellow paladins, grows brighter and shimmering silver.

For a heart-stopping second, the line between Keith and Lance fills with too much heat and pressure and Hunk worries it will shatter apart just like Voltron.

Lance notices it before Keith does, mouth thinning into a determined line as she takes a deep breath and settles whatever that was back into place. It flickers with poorly disguised defiance, but holds. And then Keith notices too and copies her, settling it further somehow.

The energy continues to build and flow through the array. So much that it feels the whole thing is threatening to burst. He and the others hold and corral the wispy edges of it all, but they can only do so much, new and untrained as they are.

Then, like the snapping of a rubber band, the dam holding it all together opens and rushes towards Allura. Hunk reaches out for it and guides it through her and the carefully drawn lines into the buried heart of the Balmera.

Familiar in a way he never quite wanted to be, Hunk knows how the transfer of energy works, how it feels. Now, all he has to do is guide it back through familiar channels already paved for him, no forging his own necessary.

When it’s all said and done, it’s probably only been a minute or so from the start of the reaction to now. But from Hunk’s point of view, it may as well have been an hour.

None of his quintessence was given—even if he had any to spare, Lance would skin him alive for trying—but he feels rung out and woozy. Exhausted In a whole new way.

(Later, Coran will explain Alchemical Energy, and the side effects one suffers the first time they use it.)

It’s a good thing he’s already on his hands and knees, because he’s not sure he’d beagle to stand up straight anymore. He has to blink the spots away from his vision before he can actually see what’s in front of his eyes. And when he does, he wants to laugh with joy.

Blue light spreads across the ground like a wave, lighting up the Balmera from within and causing crystals to pop up from the ground like daisies. Hundreds of thousands of shimmering blue daisies that prove they did it. It worked.

Allura crumples in the middle of the circle, unable to hold herself up. Hunk has maybe a second to be worried for her before he, inevitably, follows right behind her.

Chapter Text

The aftermath of rejuvenating the Balmera is, in a word, messy.

Lance is exhausted and sore and half-crazed by the time Hunk collapses after the ceremony. He is—thankfully—still alive. Because if he wasn’t, she’d have to then break the laws of nature to resurrect him just so she could kill him again.

She’s not in a proper mental place to deal with this kind of worry and panic.

Allura is fine too, if a little greyer than is perhaps healthy. Coran, with the help of Shay and their family, take them both back up into the Castle.

Lance wants to go up too and keep an eye on Hunk, but Shiro drags her off to help sweep the planet of any remaining Galra drones or soldiers. If the light show and fast-growing crystals swallowing anything even vaguely galran mean anything, Lance is sure this is a lesson in futility.

But he's the boss, she guesses, so she follows him anyway.

(There’s a pull in her sternum, tugging her to obey him. Not quite forcing her, but pushing her faster down the path she would have followed anyway. She isn’t quite sure how she feels about it.)

She still complains the entire time, of course, even as she dutifully looks for any stragglers. She’s pissy and tired and worried about her best friend but that’s no reason to endanger the balmerans.

By the time they finish with it all—having found exactly nothing like she’d helpfully predicted at the start—it’s been hours and she’s ready to fall over. And she has plans to do that exactly. She won’t even change. She’ll just collapse on the floor of Hunk’s room and stay there until he wakes up so she can yell at him.

That is, until she notices the great crowd of balmerans gathered at the base of the Castle.

The whole planet was healed, but the area around the Castle is still the healthiest by far. It’s no surprise they’re checking it out.

She’s not quite sure why, or how, but Lance ends up surrounded by balmerans instead of safely within Azura’s hangar. The trio follow her down, likely because they think she needs a babysitter and won’t allow her to talk to the public unsupervised.

It’s enough to make her snort.

What do they think she’s going to do anyway? They just saved this planet, mostly because Hunk likes them. If her teammates have learned anything by this point, it should be that Lance goes out of her way to make Hunk happy.

If Lance caused unnecessary trouble here, Hunk would not be happy.

Most of the locals make a beeline for her, thanking her profusely and asking after the Guardian; because Hunk is, understandably, more popular here than the rest of them. But it isn’t long before she finds herself swept away in a current of babbling children.

They’re all so curious and excited and bright-eyed that Lance has no defence against them. Besides, as she soon realizes, her teammates are absolutely terrible with kids. And if they can’t interact with the smaller ones, Lance will gladly pick up the slack she supposes.

They kids goad her into teaching them games of chase and stop-go and anything else that comes to her mind. The older ones ask her questions and questions about earth and the galaxy and anything that comes to their imaginative little minds.

The more adventurous ones even climb over her back like she’s some sort of jungle gym.

It’s good fun. Lance likes kids and likes talking with them even more. It’s a nice moment, and she smiles and laughs even as her eyes droop with exhaustion.

Eventually, the parents all begin tugging and calling their kids away and Lance has to pry herself from their vice-like grips. It’s getting late, she guesses. The sun is still high in the sky, but when you live underground, Lance supposes that means very little.

It’s also been a rough day for them all.

Perhaps Lance should follow their example and go to sleep herself. Why had she not done that again?

She staggers her way over to Shiro instead of leaving without saying anything, because she figures that would be rude. 

He’s talking to what she thinks are the family leaders, Matriarchs and Patriarchs and other such respected members of the civilization. She stands there for a long time, letting the conversation lull and wash over her.

Then, one of the balmerans says something to pique her curiosity.

“What are you going to do now that the galra are gone?”

She expects them to say something hopeful or exciting. Expects them to jump on this new world of opportunity, now open for them to explore with all their dreams and hopes and futures. She waits to hear their plans to chase after them, waits to hear them tell her how they cannot wait.

Instead, Lance watches the group before her turn sad and confused.

“We do not know,” she thinks the one named Datyl says. Their lips are pursed and they sound almost… lost. The bone-deep kind that chills your core and numbs you.

Lance shivers, even through the layers of thermal in her suit.

“The galra have ruled us for so long. We do not remember a time they did not hover over our lives.”

Her heart breaks—cracks and buckles under the grief and sorrow she holds for these people. Sure, Voltron had given them hope, but it’s still so new to them. Achingly new and foreign.

She turns, and Shiro is standing tall in the face of the revelation, but there’s a certain hesitancy to his face. Something just as sad as Lance feels, something just as hopeless.

They’d forgotten—in the midst of throwing themselves into this war—that the towns and cities and planets destroyed in the battles still need to be rebuilt when all is said and done. Broken things need to be fixed, and wounds need to be healed.

They'd forgotten, that if there is nothing left waiting for you at the end of war, what is it that you won?

***

Ten minutes later, all conscious residents of the Castle, sans Rolo and Nyma, stood in the Bridge.

Thirty minutes after that, they were all still standing there. Because they were all incapable of agreeing on this, apparently.

Lance was starting to get jealous of Hunk. He got to be unconscious while the rest of them argued about stupid shit and talked each other in circles.

To help or not to help? That was the fucking question.

Divided, the lot of them bickered and hissed like feral cats. None of them in their right minds or with enough gas in the tank to make a decision like this, but here they were.

Should they meddle in the affairs of planets they don’t understand? As outsiders, do they have the right? And what if the balmerans don’t even need their help? They seem perfectly self-sustaining. Why should Voltron involve themselves? They have other planets to save and battles to win after all.

They can’t stay here and hold the hand of one civilization at the cost of all others.

But on the other hand, the balmeran had been enslaved for generations. Do they even know how to live on their own? How are they going to develop or rebuild? What were they even like before the galra came? Can they get back to that? Do the balmerans even want to?

Can Voltron really just abandon these people if they need their help? Is that who they want to be?

Around and around the conversation turns.

Arguing one point to death before bringing up another in a never-ending, circular cycle of pain and annoyance. She’s well on her way to a headache and is seriously considering telling them all to stuff it.

Is it so much to ask that she be allowed to sleep for a week? That she not get yelled at for having compassion and basic human decency?

The answer seems to be yes.

If Keith yells at her for even suggesting they stay and help the balmerans one more fucking time, they’re going to need a new red paladin.

Pidge is on her shit list too. The munchkin is pissed and while not quite yelling at her, she’s needlessly harsh with her logic and facts.

Coran, at least, is mostly on her side. He’s practical, and an advisor. He sees the merits of leaving, but is too soft-hearted to properly suggest or fight for that option. Instead, he stands at Lance’s right shoulder and just looks conflicted.

Shiro’s being frustratingly neutral about it all.

He’s at least keeping the conversation from devolving too much, but he’s playing for both teams, deflecting and bringing up arguments and problems for each side.

Too empathetic to leave a civilization to flounder, and too practical to stay for as long as they need.

Lance isn’t quite mad at him though, even if he is supposed to be the divisive one. He has bruises the size of Mexico under his eyes and looks as tired as Lance feels.

She wonders exactly how much sleep he’s been getting to look that wrung out.

When Keith turns and snaps at Pidge out of nowhere—the person who is, for all intents and purposes, on his side— Lance decides enough is enough.

“Okay!” she yells, hands clapping together loudly and drawing everyone’s attention to her. “We’re obviously not going to get anywhere like this. We’re all tired and angry so I think we should all step back and take a breath, yeah?”

“Who died and made you leader?” Keith spits.

Lance graciously ignores him. She’s too tired for his bitching anyway.

“We aren’t going to decide anything by screaming, and we have to wait for Hunk and Allura’s opinions anyway. So it’s not like we don’t have time, right? Right. I’m always right.”

She tilts her head at Shiro, waiting for him to say his piece. He’s rubbing at his eyes but nods his head firmly even as he looks like a strong breeze could knock him over.

“Lance is right,” he says, “we’re going in circles. Everyone, go to bed. We’ll continue in the morning.”

Lance almost blurts out that it’s morning now, but figures splitting those kinds of hairs will only be counterproductive to what she just did. Also, Shiro just agreed with her, so she really shouldn’t piss him off.

Positive reinforcement and all that.

Keith nor Pidge look excited at being told it was the equivalent of bedtime but Coran does a little hop before walking out of the room with his usual brand of cheer. He’s even humming a jaunty little tune under his breath.

Lance jogs to catch up with him instead of getting stuck walking with the Cranky Christmas Duo behind her.

He slows down when he notices her walking beside him and Lance smiles up at him, willing away the paladin suit and leaving her in a plain baseball tee and skinny jeans. She sighs exaggeratedly in relief which earns her a grin from Coran.

He offers his arm to her almost absently and Lance settles her hand in the crook of his elbow, letting him ‘escort’ her to her room.

“Quite the day, eh?” he says with more energy than he should have.

She huffs, a wry twist to her lips. “I suppose you could say that. I started the day not knowing for sure that magic existed and I ended it by doing some myself.”

Coran hums. “I suppose I’ll have to start adding Magic Theory to the lessons now.”

“Not more homework,” she groans. “I ran away from school so I wouldn’t have to study.”

He laughs, warm and bright and Lance settles further into his side.

“I’m afraid so, my dear girl. It’s traditional for your Lions to take over teaching you magic, but I see no reason to not teach you alchemy. Number One, at least, seems terribly interested in the subject.”

Lance can’t help but agree. She saw Hunk when they were constructing the array. He’ll no doubt have a million questions as soon as he wakes up.

“Is alchemy very different than what the Lions teach?” she asks through a yawn.

“Oh yes. It’s different from most every strain of magic in the known universe. Every civilized culture practices it differently, but there’s something about the way the Lions do it that sets it apart from everything.”

Lance lets that thought roll around her mind. Considers the implications and connotations of such a thing. She isn’t sure how she feels about it.

One more thing in a long line of them that makes her different.

“We can still learn alchemy though? Even when our magic is so… different?”

“Well, of course!” Coran affirms. “It is not the natural path your magic will wish to flow, but it is not impossible. Only perhaps difficult. But King Alfor was a paladin and still one of the best Alchemists in our known history, only the ancients and Queen Melanor were-”

Lance blinks, lets that catch up with her sleep-addled mind and then stops in her tracks, cutting off what Coran was about to say.

“Allura’s father was a paladin?”

Coran looks back at her, eyebrows furrowed deeply and wrinkling his forehead, “I’d already told you that, haven’t I?”

Wordlessly, Lance shakes her head ‘no’.

“Oh.” Coran blinks, mulling that over. “Hmm. Well, yes. Allura's father was indeed a paladin. It had been many generations since the last Altean was chosen, and so it was a great honor. Allura had a great connection to the Lions because of it. Many believed she would be the one to succeed her father…” he trails off, staring into the middle distance like he’s seeing something else. A scene long passed.

He shakes himself from it before Lance can. “But!” he chirps, “The Goddess weaves her tapestry in mysterious ways, and she chose you five to pilot the Lions instead.”

Lance goes quiet in the wake of that revelation.

She hadn’t known that. Hadn’t known any of it.

She wonders which Lion King Alfor piloted, wonders which one of them replaced Allura’s father. Then Lance wonders how Allura can stand to look at whoever it is and not be furious because it should be her father standing there and it isn’t.

Her respect for Allura might grow in that moment. Her ability to bear that kind of grief with her head held high surpasses Lance’s

It’s quiet for a moment.

But the atmosphere is heavy and awkward and Lance has never liked that kind of thing so she does what she does best and starts talking.

It’s all nonsense things. Whatever pops into her mind and lands on her tongue.

It isn’t long before Coran is smiling again, loose and content the way he should be. Just in time to arrive at her door.

Her eyes, that were already so heavy, are now almost impossible to keep open. Another jaw-cracking yawn forces its way up her throat.

“I think it’s time you went off to bed,” Coran says softly.

Lance hums noncommittally. She stands on her tiptoes and tugs Coran down—why is he so tall, this should be illegal—and places a quick kiss on his cheek the same way she does with Hunk.

“Night, Coran.”

He looks surprised for a split second before a bright grin overtakes his face. She doesn't see it, already stumbling through the door.

She’s asleep before her head even hits the pillow.

“Goodnight, my dear.”

***

Hunk wakes up in his quarters.

Which is strange, in the sense that he doesn’t remember falling asleep in them. But before he has the chance to be confused, he catches sight of Lance who is curled up in the desk chair, head bent over a stack of papers and scribbling across it furiously.

Whatever she’s doing, she’s completely focused on it—lips twisted in concentration and eyebrows furrowed kind of focused. It takes her a while to notice he’s awake.

He takes the blessing for what it is.

Lance is a morning person.

Hunk isn’t. But Lance does not care that he’s not. It takes him a while to blink the sleep from his eyes and after so many years of friendship with Lance, he’s learned to jealously hoard every second he’s allowed to lie in bed quietly while she’s around.

Eventually, she looks up at him almost absentmindedly, like she’d been doing it periodically since she sat down. She does a double-take when she realizes his eyes are open.

The grin spreading across her face is wide and relieved and Hunk sleepily returns it with one of his own.

“Aloha kakahiaka, kaipo.”

“Buenos dias, estrella,” he returns, still gruff with sleep and only vaguely understandable.

Lance, well versed in understanding his morning voice, just tilts her head at the term of endearment. She always had liked his nicknames for her. Said they were special in a way the ones she gave him just weren’t.

He didn’t really agree with her, but he used the few he had for her as much as he could. They didn’t come as easy to him as they did her.

“You’ve been out since yesterday and missed breakfast,” Lance says apropos of nothing, already speaking a mile a minute. “Can’t say you would’ve wanted to be there though. All we did was yell at each other. I bailed before Pidge could start throwing fists though.”

Hunk should probably be worried about that. Maybe. But it’ll be a few more minutes before his emotions become functional.

“Allura was still asleep last time I checked. So, you win I guess.”

Hunk hums, raising his hand in victory before letting it flop over the side of his bed.

Lance laughs at him because she’s horribly unsympathetic to anyone who lacks her early morning energy. Or, afternoon energy he supposes.

“What are you working on?” he asks as Lance gathers all the papers together in a neat pile to place at the corner of the desk. She plucks the topmost sheet to wave it in front of him.

“Sheet music. There no recognizable instruments on this stupid ship so I have to write down all my thoughts like a neanderthal.” She drops her chin into her waiting hand petulantly. “I’m itching to get my hands on a guitar or ukelele or, hell, I’ll even be fine with a violin!”

Hunk hums sympathetically, the ‘pretentious guitar’ as she calls it is always her last option. She must be going crazy not having anything to do with her hands or a way to express her less coherent thoughts. Lance liked to talk, it helped her order all the things in her head, but sometimes it was better for her to fiddle with something instead.

Judging by the way she hasn’t stopped kicking and shaking her legs since he woke up, whatever problem’s swimming around her head must be a doozy. She’s only this erratic when she’s particularly frustrated.

He bets it has something to do with whatever happened at breakfast.

“Have you tried doing any of your old gym routines?” he asks. “The training room is big enough. And I’m pretty sure there has to be a setting to make the floor soft enough to be a mat.”

Lance runs a hand through her hair—sluggishly, Hunk notes that it’s the first time he’s seen it down since they launched into space—and groans frustratedly.

“Keith hogs the training room. And what I really want to do is silks. I want to be up in the air, Hunk,” she whines dramatically, collapsing against the desk and almost knocking all of her neat papers onto the floor.

She doesn’t fix them or even seem to notice she destroyed her pile.

“You could ask Coran if he could set it up for you? There has to be more than one training room in a place this big right? And now that he has the secondary systems up and running, I’m sure if they don’t have the right fabric on hand you could get it made by the Dressing Room.”

She hums noncommitedly which Hunk knows means she won’t do it. At least not right now.

“Coran’s busy. Don’t want to bother him when he’s being all… advisor-y. ” Abruptly, she pushes herself off the chair and flings herself at his bed. She makes the whole mattress bounce and ends up landing half on top of him.

He grumbles at the sudden attack but wiggles around so he can wrap his arms around her waist anyway. She takes longer to get comfortable, squirming all over before she settles down with her arms wrapped around his neck and forehead pressed firmly into the side of his neck.

He leans his cheek against the top of her head and for a long time, it’s just the two of them, legs tangled and hearts synched and arms tight. It’s them, comfortable in the way they only truly are with one another.

After a while, he starts playing with the ends of her hair. Running the strands through his fingers as she sighs contently, breathing deep like a weight had been lifted from her chest.

He’s one of the few people outside of Lance’s immediate family who’s allowed to actually touch her hair. It’s a privilege he cherishes and never takes lightly. He understands the level of trust it took to let him get there, and he’ll die before he abuses it.

He remembers the reason it’s one of her rules, the reason she never lets her hair down in public anymore. The memory burns like acid and bile on the back of his tongue and he pulls Lance closer as if to chase it away. Her nails scrape against the nape of his neck reassuringly and he presses a light kiss to her forehead, soaking in her presence.

He’s been doing that a lot lately. They both have.

Reaching out for each other more than frequently than he can ever remember them doing. They’d been sharing sleeping space more often than not for the past month. Shared homesickness and nightmares pushing them even closer together.

Hunk supposes it’s not the worst way to cope with life-altering situations. They aren’t alcoholics, at least. So there’s that.

“I’m sorry,” is the first thing he says after he truly wakes up. His actions from yesterday return with a bitter sort of clarity.

Lance’s arms go tighter around his neck. She starts to say it’s okay—because of course she already knows what this is about and what he’s about to say—but he cuts her off before she can.

“No. No, it wasn’t. It wasn’t okay for me to say those things. It wasn’t okay to yell at you about something just to turn around and do it myself. And it certainly wasn’t okay for me to try and ask you to- to stop being you. To stop helping people just because I’m worried out of my mind.”

He buries his face in her hair and breathes deeply, composing himself. When he continues, it’s muffled, his lips still pressed to her skin.

“You’ve been like this since I met you. Hell! We met because you’re like this. But I just… ever since we got to space that part of you that I was always exasperatedly fond of, now terrifies me because the stakes are so much higher now and I know you’re not going to stop for anything and I am-” His voice catches but he keeps going because she needs to understand. “I’m sorry that at every turn I try and talk you down or make you give up instead of supporting your decisions like I should be doing. So I’m just- I’m sorry.”

It’s quiet and still for a moment in the dim lighting of his room after his apology. But then Lance shifts and, despite the shadows, he can easily make out the crooked grin stretched across her lips.

“Are you done word vomiting now?”

Hunk frowns, tugging lightly on her hair in retaliation. “I’m being serious.”

“I know that, ya big lug nut.”

In her defense, she does stop laughing in his face. She can’t quite smother her fond grin though.

“And, look, I get it okay?” she continues, “Yeah, maybe you were being a grade A ass, but that’s okay—or, well, not okay but you get what I mean. I can’t be mad at you for worrying about me because I know you’re scared—you’re always scared, that’s just how you are—and right now… so am I.”

She sobers abruptly, eyes unfocused in the dark.

“When you and Allura passed out I thought for sure that you… I’m supposed to be the reckless one. The thought of you… leaving first…” she barks a laugh that sounds closer to a sob and in the next second her face is buried in his neck. His arms wrap around her, as tight as he can without hurting her.

This feels strangely like the night after Lance recovered from the bombing only reversed.

Even as she shakes against him, she tries to keep talking and Hunk would roll his eyes in any other scenario because, of course she tries to keep talking. 

Lance talking is one of the great universal constants.

“So, yeah. I- I forgive you and I’m sorry for putting you through that feeling over and over again. I can’t- I can’t imagine… I know I can be stupid when trying to help others and… and I can’t just stop-”

“And I don’t want you to!” Hunk interjects, because that was kind of the whole point of this conversation. Not to make her cry and feel bad. If she completely missed the point and only heard what she wanted Hunk swears he’ll-

“I know. I know,” she soothes. “I know you don’t. But we can’t keep doing this. Terrifying each other over and over because it’s pushing us together right now but… eventually, it will break us and I don’t want that.” She says it with such vehemence that it would take Hunk by surprise if he didn’t feel the exact same way. “So I’ll… I can’t stop, but, I’ll- I’ll try to slow down. I won’t ‘go looking for trouble’ as you love to say.”

He knows she’s just trying to make a joke to lighten the mood because she hates being sad and with them bound as tightly as they are now, it’s like a positive feedback of emotions.

The skin on skin contact is a double-edged sword. Comforting and warm and familiar, but also amplifying every emotion they share. It almost seems to seep through their skin into one another.

Hunk goes along with it, glaring playfully. “I maintain that sentiment. No twelve year old could feasibly get into that amount of trouble without doing something to cause it.”

“And I maintain that I don’t go looking for trouble!” she says, probably sounding perfectly reasonable to herself. “Trouble just walks past with its door open more often than not when I know I can help.”

Hunk rolls his eyes. They’ve had this argument too many times for him to think they’ll get anywhere with it now.

But, well, they’re both smiling now and the humming in his chest feels like sunlight and mountain streams rather than like saltwater and soggy leaves, so he supposes they’re good.

***

Eventually, she and Hunk have to leave the cocoon of warmth and love that is Hunk’s room. Her Pooh Bear is starving, for one, and they really do need to return to the real world with its many problems and arguments.

It’s lunchtime now, so she isn’t really surprised to find everyone but Allura sat at the table. Or, no, she is kind of surprised to see Rolo, Nyma and their bot there, bunched together and as far away from the paladins plus Coran as they can get.

But, she supposes kinda-sorta-not-really prisoners need to eat too, so…

Hunk bustles about the kitchen, trying to make the food goo as appetizing as possible while Lance stands there and stares at the dining table and its residents.

God, she feels like she’s in an eighties high school cafeteria trying to choose between two opposing cliques. Eventually, she gives up and just plops smack dab in the middle of them both, unwilling to choose.

More room for her, she supposes.

Shiro looks like he’s torn between wanting to scold her for not presenting a united front by sitting with them and relieved that she’s being diplomatic instead of making a scene.

She’s been doing that a lot lately. Be all diplomatic and shit. How did Mace do that so much when they were all younger? It’s so tiring.

Hunk places her food in front of her then plops into the seat across from her, conveniently also in the exact middle of the two groups.

Dios Mio, she loves his stupid face.

She takes a bite of her food goo and watches Hunk carefully. On the walk over she’d given him a rundown of the situation and their options for dealing with the Balmera. He’d had… opinions and now she’s just waiting for the show to start.

Her favorite pastime was winding Hunk up and then just… watching him go.

He’s a very passionate person. Normally his passion is geared towards science and running away from things, but every once in a while, Lance will get to watch him rant and rave about a certain problem he’s frustrated with or cause he’s supporting.

She has no reason to believe this will be any different.

He starts in on them quick enough, calm and logical and so damn methodical that Lance has to hide her smile behind her hand. The looks on all their faces are priceless.

She loves watching Hunk tear into someone that isn’t her. They always get this look on their faces that just lets her know they are both surprised and very uncomfortable. Her honey bear has a real talent for this type of thing.

They try to give arguments against him, but Hunk addresses them all quickly and efficiently, providing compromises neither side can argue with or proving it illogical and moving on.

Coran, surprisingly, sits on the sidelines with her. The others look vaguely scared but he just sits there, looking unbearably proud.

When Hunk finishes, satisfied he made his point, Coran actually stands from his seat and applauds.

Hunk gazes up at him, completely bewildered, while Lance just grins like a loon because there is a reason she likes Coran so much. She stands with him and claps for Hunk too because she’s an asshole and this is the best thing ever.

“Bravo, my boy! Jolly good show! Fantastic!” he praises and with every word, Hunk turns just a bit redder. “You have quite a way with words, dear boy! My! You remind me of the late Queen Melanor. She was feisty one, she was. Never wanted to disagree with her without good reason. She’d rip your throat out with her teeth and laugh!” Coran chuckles fondly while Hunk looks mildly alarmed at the comparison.

Lance laughs at him and decides she would have loved Queen Melanor. A woman after her own heart.

“Well!” Coran claps his hands together one final time, a bright grin on his face. “I believe we have that all sorted out now don’t we? I’ll be making preparations for our aid of the balmerans and docking the ship for our movement long stay if anyone needs me. I’ll leave all the destroying of galra mining rigs and such things in your capable hands Shiro.”

He gives a short bow before turning to walk out, squeezing Hunk’s shoulder as he passes and wiggling his fingers back at Lance when she waves goodbye too.

Lance sits back in her seat and happily munches on barely decent food goo while the others in the room shift uncomfortably. Hunk just digs into his food the second Coran is gone, either not caring or ignoring the stares everyone is giving him.

Probably more the latter than former.

“That was…” Pidge starts, “Mildly terrifying and weirdly awesome? Man, and I thought your scary face when we’re debating string theory was bad.” Hunk raises his brow at her questioning tone. She gives a low whistle before standing up herself. “Well, someone can come and get me whenever we decide to head planet side. I’ll be in my lab.”

Rolo and Nyma beat a hasty retreat after that as well, Beezer beeping urgently at their heels.

Lance idly watches them go. They weren’t even being yelled at, but Lance respects a healthy fear of Hunk. He deserves more credit for these types of things.

Keith and Shiro aren’t far behind the mercs, and then it’s just her and Hunk in the dining room.

Lance takes a thoughtful bite of her goo before pointing her spoon at him accusingly.

“You scared them all away.”

Hunk opens his mouth like he’s about to argue but grimaces instead. “Yeah, that’s fair.”

His plate is empty of goo now despite the fact he had probably twice as much as she did. She slides the last fourth of her plate over to him and watches as he happily scarfs that down too.

***

Lance wonders.

There are so many stories of the great warrior Voltron. There are great epics that tell of battles fought and won and planets saved.

But she wonders. In all that fighting, in all that blood and sweat and destruction, did her predecessors ever stay behind to clean up the messes they made?

(She hopes so.

She hopes they are not the first.)

***

Balmerans are a relatively simple people, thankfully, and don’t need much help from them besides heavy lifting. Which is good. Lance doesn’t think they could’ve helped rebuild a complex society in what roughly approximates to a week.

They all also learn the balmerans don’t really have a leader per se. Instead, have some sort of coexistence mainframe built on the overarching empathy network of the Balmera powered by a continuous flow of magic between the Balmera and the balmerans.

They call it the Sharing of Breath.

Lance calls it a hive mind.

Hunk hits her for that but it’s worth it to see Pidge try and hide her snickering. She’s also pretty sure she catches Shiro’s mouth twitching at the corners and is thus unbearably proud of herself for the next hour.

Either way, the balmerans are confident that they can handle most of the things in a functional society by themselves and only really need Voltron to help take down all the mining rigs and equipment the Balmera dismantled during the circle. It’s all junk metal but the technology is still useful and they figure it will help them rebuild.

With the rotation Shiro puts all the paladins on for Destruction Duty, Lance knows they could easily get everything taken down before the week is up.

But she also thinks no one wants to make Hunk angry and so they don’t point it out. Hunk doesn’t care either way and happily spends his spare time with Shay and their family after finally introducing them properly to Lance.

She immediately decides Shay is the sweetest person she’s ever met and quickly discovers their curiosity can rival Hunk. Looking at them both next to each other, Lance can already feel affection for Shay building in her chest.

The pair are creatures of a similar breed. Lance never stood a chance against them.

And, well. Shay is bigger than Hunk. Taller and wider and probably stronger.

Lance knows that had always been one of Hunk’s things he thought he’d never get in a relationship but wanted endlessly. Someone who could make him feel small and protected like he did for everyone else.

Also, their little stubby tail that just kept wagging back and forth was the cutest thing Lance had ever seen and she desperately wishes she had a video camera.

“Can I ask something?” she turns to Colril, the oldest balmeran closest to her—she’s currently surrounded by children who think she’s a shiny new plaything—and asks, “What’s with the stone around Hunk’s neck?”

Shay’s eyes keep following its movement as if drawn there by some invisible force. Every time Hunk touches it or fiddles with the string, a small smile grows across the balmerans face and it’s driving Lance  crazy.

If she discovers Hunk accidentally got engaged to an alien on the first planet they saved she’ll never let him live it down. Ever.

Colril follows her gaze and something like pride or excitement spreads across their face. “It’s a Touchstone. Shay had given it to the Guardian his first time on our Balmera.”

Lance nods and shifts to help one of the small kids climb up her back. She had already known that. “Okay, but what does it mean? Why did they give it to him?”

Colril takes a moment to think over their answer. “It is hard to explain. The Touchstone is a connection, a spark, between two people. It is like the Sharing of Breath.”

Lance cocks her head to the side in confusion. “It makes them share quintessence?”

“No. It is more like…” they pause, fidgeting in place. “Symbolic. The joining of two families into one. A show of the new bond between them. The Guardian had told us his family was far and out of reach. So Shay offered for him to join ours.”

Lance opens and closes her mouth twice before she wheezes. The kids playing around her stop to look at her in concern.

Hunk didn’t get alien married, he got alien adopted. Oh, dios mio she can’t breathe.

Colril looks down at her, worry in their eyes as she bends over and laughs because this is hilarious. She really hopes this isn’t some alien culture thing she’s misunderstanding because Hunk getting adopted by the first aliens that see him is priceless.

“Sorry, sorry!” she wheezes between her snickers. “I shouldn’t laugh it’s just… ah, it’s a weird thing back on my planet.” She smiles up at them. “…Thank you for caring about him.”

“Of course. You are his kin mate, are you not?”

Lance grin turns soft, “Yeah, something like that. Hunk is family…” her smile falls just a bit as she looks back over at Hunk, laughing at something Shay said. “The only one I have right now.”

Colril’s mouth twists down at the corners before suddenly breaking into a wide grin, sharp teeth flashing in the light as they thump their hand onto her shoulder. Lance is almost knocked to the ground at the force of it.

“Shadow show! Any kin of the Guardian’s is kin of ours!”

Lance decides she likes Colril too. They’re jovial and warm and energetic despite all the hardships they must have had growing up and living beneath the shadow of the galra.

“Thank you,” then a thought occurs to her and her mouth twists like she’s sucking on a lemon. “Wait, if Hunk is a part of your family now, does that mean Hunk and Shay are siblings?”

Colril stares down at her for a long while before they burst out laughing. Loud enough that it catches the attention of both Hunk and Shay. They thankfully do not walk over.

“You are a funny one, Paladin! Siblings! Those two are certainly not bonded as kin mates.”

Okay, now Lance is confused again. Wasn’t Hunk alien adopted a second ago? Or, wait, did Shay adopt Hunk? Is he their son now? Oh man, this is really awkward to think about. She was sure Shay had been as smitten as Hunk was.

Her confusion must show on her face because Colril eventually stops laughing. Now they also look confused and it’s just a lot of confusion in one place. She thinks she may be getting a headache.

Luckily, Mal chooses that moment to make their grand appearance, revealing they had been listening to their whole conversation. “A Touchstone can be a platonic or a romantic exchange. Normally it is the former, but…” the three of them stare out at Hunk and Shay, “I do not believe that is true this time. They do not act as kin mates act.”

She scoffs, going back to playing with whatever kids wandered close enough to her. “You can say that again.”

If Hunk looked at her like he’s looking at Shay, they would have problems.

***

It’s after one of Lance’s long shifts of carefully ripping up galra rigging so it wouldn’t hurt the recovering Balmera that she decides she can’t wait any longer. She’s been trying to corner Rolo and Nyma since the whole ‘liberating a planet’ deal so she can talk to them but she’s pretty sure they’re avoiding her.

Really, they’re more likely avoiding everyone but it’s currently inconveniencing her the most so it’s starting to piss her off.

Lance decides rather than try to unsuccessfully track them down again, she’ll just have CORINN rat them out. Five minutes later, she’s faced with two nervous bounty hunters and is wondering how she ever survived without an all-knowing AI in the walls.

“What do you want?” Nyma snaps at her, tone nothing but vitriol and fear and exhaustion.

Lance remembers that while the pair may be safe from the galra, to them, they’re now living with a whole new kind of enemy roaming the unfamiliar halls around them.

And still, they came out of hiding to help them when it seemed like everything was falling apart. Coran told her that while Nyma took over the comms, Rolo had been helping out with running defenses. He was swearing the whole time about how he’d seen better particle barriers on hundred-year-old cargo bobs, but still.

She doesn’t quite believe their excuse of ‘in their best interests.’

Well, no. She definitely believes it because that’s just the kind of people they are, but she doesn’t think it’s their only reason.

Lance likes them, and she’s good at picking people to like. There has to be something good about them in there somewhere. And even if there wasn’t, her Mamá taught her manners. Getting marooned in space didn’t suddenly knock them out of her.

“I wanted to say thank you.”

Rolo blinks at her dumbly and Nyma’s eyebrows furrow.

“What?”

“Thank you,” Lance repeats, hands clasped behind her as she rocks back and forth on the balls of her feet. Azura croons in the back of her mind, a confusing cocktail of pride and minor resentment in the soft notes. “Specifically for saving our asses.”

Nyma narrows her eyes. “We weren’t trying to save your anything.”

Lance shrugs. Nyma can growl and groan all she wants, but Lance doesn’t really believe her. She’s too defensive for that to be true. “I’m not exactly sure why you’re trying to be all broody or make the others think you’re horrible people-”

“We are horrible people,” Rolo interjects, trying to sound firm but missing the mark and landing somewhere in uncertainty.

Lance gives him a look and continues, “But as far as I’m concerned, you’re alright. Fear makes even the nicest people do shitty things and from where I’m standing? You guys seem sorry you did it, which is enough for me. So… I forgive you,” she says cheerily, sticking her hand out in front of her and hoping that the gesture translates well. “Or, at least, I’m willing to work towards forgiving you,” 

Nyma and Rolo stare down at the appendage incredulously but unconfused.

“We tried to steal your Lion,” Nyma blurts as if Lance just forgot that little detail.

Her mouth hardens into a line. “I remember.”

Rolo and Nyma flinch.

Lance takes a deep breath and releases it through her nose. “But, as I said, fear makes you do shitty things. So I’m forgiving but not forgetting. It’ll be a while before I can trust you, but,” she shrugs again, “it’s not like we don’t have time.”

She wiggles her fingers.

“You’re bat shit insane,” Rolo says bluntly, meeting her eyes. Lance grins at him.

“Obviously. I started fighting in a ten-thousand-year-old war because the cat-shaped warship that lives in my head said to.” She wiggles her eyebrows in time with her fingers and sees Rolo crook a smile. “Besides, I’ve never been good at holding grudges anyway. That’s what Hunk is for.”

“The big yellow guy?”

“That’s the one.”

Rolo snorts, sharing a look with Nyma who only looks marginally less frosty than when the conversation started. He clasps her hand and gives a solid shake. “Well, I can see what he meant about staying away from you.”

Lance cocks her head. What had Hunk said about her this time? Nothing bad, she’s sure, but something that made Rolo look thoughtful.

She shakes her head, deciding it’s not worth it. “Come on, it’s dinner time and you can tell me all about the mission that put you on the galra’s shit list.”

Rolo laughs and follows after her.  Nyma’s slower but still follows which Lance takes as progress. “What makes you think it was only one?”

***

Trying to integrate Rolo and Nyma into the group is harder than she expected. Especially since Hunk is definitely holding a grudge and refuses to do more than the bare minimum for Rolo or Nyma, even after Lance asks him nicely.

She starts spending time with them at meals, hoping if she shows that they’re okay and she’s fine with them, the others will follow suit.

So far, the only person that’s worked on is Coran.

On day five of being on the Balmera, Lance grows impatient and when she sees Pidge, Hunk, and Coran engaging in techno-babble about the Castle’s defenses, she runs off to find Rolo and practically throws him into the conversation while she sprawls across Hunk and Pidge’s lap to keep them from leaving.

Hunk glares at her for two whole minutes but speaks with Rolo anyway. The alien has good insight considering he’s the only one who’s familiar with the newest systems in the galaxy and by the end of the conversation, Lance is proud to say that Rolo is at least on speaking terms with the others.

Now, Lance just needs to convince Nyma to stop being such a bitch for five minutes and make some friends.

***

The Lab, as Katie’s taken to calling it in her head, is a thing of beauty.

When she asked Coran for a workspace, she hadn’t expected to get one so nice. It was way better than the community one the Garrison forced everyone to use and even the personal one her father had at home.

The Lab is wide open and spacious, all hard floors and bright lights. Perfect for experimentation and test runs and building whatever she wanted. Worktables of different sizes were scattered around the edges of the room like tiny islands in a sea of possibilities. Display cases and cabinet like things were embedded in the walls for easy storage and also probably safety measures.

Katie took one look at the room and fell in love.

She squealed so loudly that Coran nearly fell over in surprise when she lunged at him for a hug. She thanked him probably eight times before rushing off to her room and practically moving into The Lab instead. It was made easy by the couch nestled in the far corner, away from all the science that would no doubt happen at all hours of the day.

The moment she discovers the holographic projectors in the worktables is the moment she decides she’s never leaving. The holographs work like the ones in the bridge, which is fine, but ultimately clunky for what Katie wants to use them for.

She spends whatever free time she has that day, tinkering with technology far more advanced than anything seen on earth and by the end of it, she’s made it better.

Equations and blueprints fly around her at her command. She is a conductor in a symphony of technology and genius design. The light green glow of the holographs is a humming sort of comfort painted in the exact shade of Digit’s panel lights.

She’s running a final scan on Rover to make sure he’s all okay to boot up while also looking through the pieces of CORINN’s code Coran had let her take a look at.

The Castle AI is a work of art. Katie remembers programming an AI when she was seven, but it wasn’t nearly as sophisticated as this. What Katie has made and what’s in front of her now is leagues apart, maybe even light-years.

Not that she’ll let it stay that way for long. She hasn’t touched AIs since she made her own, but she has a renewed interest in the project now.

She’s also trying to decipher the galra thumb drive but it’s slow going. Slang and language have changed so much in the last ten thousand years that it’s taking forever for the system to work through it.

Katie is most invested in this project, but it’s frustrating her to the point of screaming.

Hence, her other two pet projects happening at the same time.

It’s during one of Katie’s headfirst dives in trying to decipher galra code and language patterns and getting ultimately nowhere with it, that Lance decides to make her appearance.

A low whistle sounds out across the space, bouncing off the walls with its amazement.

“Damn, this is swanky. It’s like nerd heaven in here.” Katie doesn’t look up at her, focused on the holograph in front of her spitting out nonsense. “You better not let Hunk know you have this. My baby boy will get unbearably jealous.”

“Is there something you need, Lance?” she snaps out, her fingers sharp and agitated where she practically stabs them at the stupid, uncooperative program in front of her.

Lance grabs a rolling chair from another worktable and swivels her way over to the other side of the bench Katie’s at. She can see Lance’s face through the green glow but ignores her.

“I came to drag you out of your hidey-hole.”

Katie blinks. “Is it my shift already?”

“Nope,” Lance says, popping the ‘p’ loud enough to echo around the room. “I came to tell you to get in the flight pod, loser. We’re going shopping.”

“What?” Katie finally looks up to glare at the annoyance that is invading her Lab. “No. Go away, Lance. I’m busy.”

Lance doesn’t move but she also doesn’t talk again. Katie goes back to her program, intent on just waiting Lance out knowing she’ll eventually just get bored and leave. Despite Lance’s closeness with Hunk, the other girl was hardly one for technical jargon or ‘Geek Speak’ as she likes to call it.

It’s a long silence that stretches between them. Katie’s mind turning completely back to her work, her thoughts a massive swirl of equations and diagrams and ideas spinning too fast for any normal person to keep track of.

She blinks rapidly to stop the blurriness in her eyes. This is important. She can’t stop now. She won’t stop now.

“You know,” Lance says thoughtfully, fiddling with a wrench. Katie jumps at her voice—she thought the other girl left a while ago. “if you ever need help with something, I’ll be there in a heartbeat, right?”

“What?”

Lance mouth twists. “I mean, I’m not great with coding or building things or any of that science stuff—you’ll need Hunk for that—but I’m a good listener and handy with a gun and willing to do stupid shit as I watch your six. And it’s not- I’m not conditional okay? The second you ask, I’ll be there. No questions asked.”

Lance all but explodes from her chair, pacing like a caged animal across the space before Katie’s lab station.

“Because- god, Pidge, you don’t- you’re not alone, okay? You act like it but you’re not and if you asked me to, I’d tear apart the entire empire with my bare hands to give you your family back. I want you to be happy and not burn yourself out looking for them—to lean on us. I don’t want to have to find your family just to tell them you killed yourself looking for them!”

Lance stops, seemingly just noticing she’s standing know and her hands are white-knuckled around the wrench in her hands. She slowly puts it down on the workbench.

“I just- you act like you have to do this all alone and you don’t. You don’t need to leave to find them and you don’t need to do it alone.”

Katie only realizes she’s crying when something wet drips onto her still outstretched hand. Her breath stutters back to her like she hadn’t breathed the entire time Lance had been speaking.

Maybe she hadn’t been.

She rips the glasses she doesn’t need off her face and scrubs at her eyes violently. She shouldn’t be crying.

This isn’t that big of a deal—except that it is. It’s the biggest deal and fuck Lance for always blindsiding her with this ‘caring’ bullshit.

She’s tired and probably hasn’t eaten in ten hours and her anxiety’s been ramped up to eleven ever since they set foot in that stupid cave on Earth so her emotions are just out of wack and it’s not that she’s actually really touched by what Lance said or anything.

She’s just a mess of a human being who hasn’t done maintenance on her body in a while. That’s all.

A hand touches her shoulder and she rips her hand away to stare up at Lance.

Lance smiles. It’s watery and small but it still almost sends Katie crying again because it’s filled with warmth and affection and looks just like how Matt’s looked when he said goodbye before stepping onto that spaceship.

“We’re a team, alright? Don’t shut us out.”

All she can do is nod mutely, not trusting her voice to work.

Lance’s smile gets bigger. “And, hey? Maybe one day we can be more than a team. Our little cobbled together space family. Defeating space dictators in between fighting over the remote.”

Katie cracks a grin at that, chuckling. “Yeah.” She wipes at her eyes, making sure no more tears have fallen. Then, with a deep breath she puts her—Matt’s—glasses back on. “Yeah. I- Thanks, Lance.”

A hand ruffles her hair, obscuring her vision now that her bangs are hanging in front of her face. She squawks and bats the offending appendage away as best she can, swinging wildly where she can hear Lance laughing.

“‘Course, Pidgeon. Anything for my favorite pint-sized scientist.”

Katie fixes her hair grumpily, mouth twisted in a shape that’s more grin than frown.

She has less than a second to react before Lance grabs both her wrists and starts dragging her out of the Lab. Katie only half-heartedly tries to stop her.

She’s already ruined whatever concentration she might’ve had.

“Come on, nerd brain. You’re going to get out and see the light of day if it kills me. You can come back to your project with fresh eyes later. Hell, I’ll even let you borrow Hunk.”

“I thought you said I should never let Hunk see the Lab.”

Lance shrugs. “Yeah, but I was only kind of joking. I’ll just ask Coran to give him one of his own.” She gives another pointed tug on Katie’s wrist, pulling her ever closer to the doorway.

“Okay! Okay! At least let me grab Rover first.”

Lance grins like she’s won something.

Katie tries not to think about how she kind of did.

Chapter Text

Lance gestures grandly to the view before her, arms thrown out as if she can hold the scene in her hands. “Welcome, friends—and Keith—to the motherload!”

A curling mass of winding streets and colorful vendor shops stand before them, a thousand new things to hear and see and experience. Everything was so interesting and new and already Lance itched to  explore.

Everyone—sans the alteans, who had stayed back at the Castle—look out across the bright scene as well, their expressions suitably awed.

Lance had been disappointed when Coran insisted on staying behind with Allura but she’d understood. Allura’s newfound narcolepsy problem and stubborn refusal to sit still takes precedent. She’ll bring them both back something from the swap moon anyway.

Coran had grinned when she told him that, happily telling her he’d surely love whatever she gets him.

The words and his bright, fatherly grin made something warm and affectionate bubble up in Lance’s chest. She couldn’t stop herself from throwing her arms around his middle. She hadn’t given him enough time to realize what she did, much less return it, but he was waving wildly as they left the pod bay.

The two-hour flight following that did nothing to dampen her mood, even with all seven people and two robots crammed into the space equivalent of a soccer mom van.

The entire trip was a cacophony made of: complaining about hogging the seat, yelling about cheating at stupid road trip games, (the subsequent official group decision to forever ban the game ‘I-Spy’ after the fifth correct guess of ‘star’,) and Shiro spending a solid twenty minutes scolding her for skipping out on her Destruction Duty shift to go on a shopping trip.

(She had immediately argued that the whole thing was her idea anyway and that there was no way she wasn’t coming with. This was team bonding! You can’t leave part of the team out of team bonding, Shiro.)

The whole thing had reminded her of the cross-country road trips she and her sisters would take the week before the entire family would vacation in Cuba for summers. She loved visiting her cousins at the family estate, but it was always that road trip she looked forward to the most.

All the craziness and playful arguments and lifelong experiences were at the center of so many of her happiest memories. And while this isn’t the exact same, it was close enough to make Lance happy by some crazy pavlovian response.

“Whoa,” Hunk breathes, eyes wide as he stares out at everything.

His hand comes up to rest on her shoulder, almost like he’s stopping her from running off. She’d be offended at the almost absent-minded reaction except that it’s a very real possibility right now.

There’s just so much to look at. Lance can’t wait to dig her hands into it all.

“All right!” Shiro claps loudly, drawing everyone’s attention to him. “I’m going to lay down some ground rules-”

Before he can get very far in what is probably gearing up to be a lecture on ‘responsibility’ and other boring things, Lance groans loudly in complaint.

“This is supposed to be a fun family vacation with the kids, Shiro! Not a school field trip with Mr Kill Joy.”

Shiro gives her a highly unamused look.

“Rule number one,” he says firmly, looking her right in the eye as she pouts, “is that the buddy system is always in effect. I don’t want anybody getting lost, got it? Rule number two: no unnecessary purchases. We’re here for supplies and we only have so much money.”

That’s a lie. Altean currency is kind of wonky for transferring over to the Common Units used by the parts of the galaxy not under galra control, but Rolo and Nyma did something to the silver sticks in their pockets so they have near unlimited cash.

Lance isn’t sure how or where they got it, only that Pidge definitely wants them to teach her how and that Lance would rather not know.

She has enough criminal bleed over into her life, thank you very much.

Not that she won’t still use their stolen or fabricated money to her heart's content though, Shiro’s rules be damned. She’s here to have fun.

“Rule number three: I want everyone back here in three hours. Is that understood?”

Everyone voices various levels of enthusiastic affirmation. And Shiro nods his head, content with having at least tried to wrangle them.

“Okay, everyone. Let’s go!” Lance shouts enthusiastically, snagging Hunk and Pidge’s wrists and flying down the hill.

“Don’t get into trouble!”

Lance pretends not to hear him.

***

Hunk—never one for procrastinating, unlike herself—insists on getting all their foodstuffs first. He drags them to every food stall and tent they pass before he allows them to do anything else.

He’s a verified Man on a Mission and neither Lance nor Pidge are willing to get in his way.

Armed with a device Coran modified to help scan foods safe for human consumption, Hunk is set to gather anything he can get his hands on. He has this dream of building a giant greenhouse somewhere in the Castle and he is damn well going to achieve it.

If that means bleeding the market dry of anything and everything remotely consumable or resembling seeds? That is a small price to pay in his mind.

It takes the trio three trips back to the pod laden with bags of food and coolers before Hunk is finally satisfied with their haul.

Don’t get her wrong, Lance is excited by not having to eat doctored food goo anymore, but she also wants to run around the market to her heart's content and Hunk won’t let her.

It’s been an hour and a half. She’s practically chomping at the bit by this point and they still have other essentials they need to buy that are on their list: must need toiletries for her and Pidge, fabrics and thread for the Dressing Rooms, basic first-aid items because they can’t just pop into the pods every time they get a cut, some sort of guitar-like instrument because Lance will murder someone if she doesn’t get one soon, and any soaps or lotions she can find.

Pidge also insists on raiding any technology-based tents they come across for spare parts, quickly dragging Hunk into her nerdy hoarding rituals while Rover hovers over her shoulder, beeping encouragingly.

Eventually, they move on to the fun stuff—not that quipping with Pidge and hanging out with Hunk isn’t enjoyable. It’s just that Lance wants to discover.

She lights up, flitting from stall to stall. Quickly scanning and touching all their wares before buying everything or leaving as fast as she approached.

Pidge makes a comment about how she's even scarier than Hunk with her fast-paced determination. Rover beeps agreeingly.

Lance blinks and then shrugs, eyes drawn to the interesting looking figurines a short alien with chameleon-like skin is selling.

***

It’s somewhere around hour three that things start going a little… hinky.

Lance expected hijinks to ensue, but she didn’t expect Shiro to be the one to start them.

Shiro—their fearless leader who’s too damn nice for his own good—has been accosted and fleeced by every stall owner he passes. There’s enough random knick-knacks and useless products stuffed into his knapsack that she’s worried the thing might rip open under the weight.

There’s also the hilarious fact that he keeps getting propositioned by passing aliens; whether for the advanced tech in his arm or for other, more interesting, activities.

He’s in the middle of such an exchange when the three of them finally run back into him. Lance is the first to understand what’s happening and Shiro’s face is bright red as he politely refuses the advances of his would-be admirer.

She starts laughing so hard she wheezes.

Then Pidge asks where Keith is and Lance thinks she’s going to die laughing, right there on the street in the middle of an alien market. Because Shiro, Mr Responsible himself, lost the most reckless human in existence in the first ten minutes of them being here.

Lance can’t breathe.

***

They find Nyma ten minutes after that with no Rolo or Beezer trailing after her. Not that she’s surprised.

If anyone wasn’t going to follow Shiro’s rules it was them.

“Hey, Nyma!” Lance greets. “How are- what are you doing?”

The alien in question is currently hiding behind Hunk who does not look happy about being helpful to a person whom he is still very much pissed at. Nyma doesn’t seem to care that she may be incurring the wrath of an angry Hunk and instead looks off down the street.

“Just hide me!” she hisses, ducking back down.

Lance shares a look with Pidge before turning back to the lithe alien. “Aren’t you supposed to be a highly trained bounty hunter?”

“Yes,” Nyma snaps. “What of it?”

“How the hell did you get caught by a swap moon constable?” Pidge finishes the thought for her. “I’ve seen at least five walk right past what was definitely a drug deal going on because they're so unobservant.” Pause. “Or corrupt.”

Nyma opens her mouth but seems to have no response to that and snaps it shut. She glares at Pidge who holds her stare placidly.

After several tense moments, Nyma nods to herself, seemingly deciding something. “You’re annoying.”

Pidge snorts. “And you’re a bitch.”

The pair smirk at each other and before Lance knows it, they’ve turned into a whirlwind of bad decisions and are running off to no doubt cause mass amounts of havoc. Lance doesn’t even get the chance to protest before they’re both running off to places unknown.

She looks back at Hunk who just shakes his head.

Well. Here’s hoping they don’t burn anything down at least.

***

“Oh! You should get something for Shay!” Lance says out of the blue when she catches sight of a six-armed vendor selling an array of glittering necklaces.

“What?” Hunk asks dumbly.

“You know,” she rolls her eyes, “your new totally-not-girlfriend from the planet we just saved? She gave you that shiny new bling?”

Hunk narrows his eyes at her before staring down at the dimly glowing Touchstone. “Is this a trap? I feel like this is a trap.”

“Would I trick you?”

“Yes. Many times, actually. You are a horrible matchmaker.”

“Aha!” Lance crows, dragging him towards the vendor. “So, you admit matchmaking is applicable in this situation!”

“No! No, I am not,” he insists, planting his feet on the ground firmly and yanking her back to his side. “Because you are the worst matchmaker ever and I don’t need your help.”

Lance’s eyes widen, pouting up at him with her ‘hellish, puppy dog eyes’ she knows Hunk hates.

He stands, unaffected, and she drops them with a huff. “That’s mean, Hunk. I just want to help you find that special someone.”

He snorts disbelievingly. “Lance, you’ve scared away anyone who had even a vague interest in me for the last five years.”

“I didn’t try to!” she protests indignantly.

“No,” he agrees, “you didn’t. But everyone who meets us in a vaguely casual setting immediately thinks we’re dating which isn’t conducive to finding that special someone, Lance.”

Which, okay. Sure, after almost a decade of having Hunk in her life, she knows how people look at them and assume. She understands what it looks like when she leaves Hunk’s bedroom wearing one of his shirts and not much else. Or when she drapes herself all over him. Or when she showers him in compliments and pet names and affection.

But that doesn’t mean she’ll stop. It doesn’t matter what other people think. Her and Hunk have a level of intimacy Lance isn’t lucky enough to experience twice in her life. So, there is no way in hell she’ll let him go without a fight.

If a new significant other can’t understand that? Refuses to take their words for it? Well, Lance has no problem sending them packing. And she knows Hunk doesn’t either if that girl from freshman year means anything.

Instead of saying any of that though, she just huffs and crosses her arms, stalking toward the jewellery vendor because her idea is still a good one dammit. “Then they’re weak. If this hypothetical stranger can’t accept that we’re a package deal—no ifs, ands, or buts about it—they didn’t deserve you anyway.”

“I don’t know if that was meant as a compliment to yourself or to me.”

“Both!”

Hunk snorts again, casually looking at the wares over Lance’s shoulder as they switch to other inane and random topics not involving Hunk’s failed love life.

Lance is visibly smug when Hunk leaves with a wonky, heart-shaped stone necklace that he says ‘reminds him of home’ attached to the string with decorative spirals of wire. Hunk pretends to ignore her for the next five minutes as she not so subtly makes fun of him.

***

They do eventually find Keith. (Lance had not been looking, but Hunk promised Shiro he would, the goody-two-shoes.)

Problem is, they find him in the middle of a large crowd of people facing off against another guy twice his size. By the chaotic screams of ‘Fight! Fight! Fight!’ Lance doesn’t think they’re engaged in a dance battle.

Hunk, unsurprisingly, is immediately worried and starts hopping from one foot to another while making concerned sounds. Lance rolls her eyes and honestly isn't surprised. Keith has a special talent for pissing people off. It was only a matter of time before someone decked him.

Unbidden, the memory of Lance doing just that flies to the forefront of her mind.

It reminds her of how sick she felt after she’d done it, how triumphant she’d felt before the guilt and horror had set in. Now, it just makes her stomach roll and she realizes she very much does not want to see Keith get his nose bashed in. No matter how much he might deserve it.

She’s moving forward, the sudden need to get Keith out of the situation pushing her through the crowd.

All it takes is two quick steps before Lance is yanking the back of Keith’s jacket and dragging him back to Hunk.

She ignores the jeering of the crowd and the loud ‘boo’s being thrown at her, waving it all away with a smile and a joke she’s sure the crowd doesn’t actually hear.

Hunk has to pick Keith up over his shoulder to drag him away and even then, he kicks out like a feral cat, angry at being dragged from his deathmatch. Lance has to slap a hand over the idiot’s mouth so he doesn’t keep shouting insults at whoever he was about to be creamed by and end up getting all three of them killed.

Once they’re far enough away, Lance takes her hand away only to push her face up close to his. They’re practically nose to nose when she hisses, “What the hell was that?”

Keith scowls right back at her from where he’s still perched on Hunk’s shoulder.

Hunk had moved to put him down, but Lance had placed a hand on his back to still him. She hadn’t and still doesn’t trust the reckless idiot to stand all by himself like a big boy.

“A kidnapping, apparently.”

“Genial,” Lance drawls. “Ahora, desarrolla un sentido del humor. Do you think you almost dying is funny?”

“I could have taken him!” Keith argues.

“He was twice your goddamn size, tarado!” she bites, slipping into the harsh clipped Spanish her Mamá used when she was pissed at her or her sisters. “¿Estás loco?”

“What? No!”

“¡Dios!” She flicks his forehead. “You’re lucky Shiro didn’t find you first.”

Without waiting for his response, Lance steps around to Hunk’s front, ready to continue doing what it was they were doing before getting sidetracked by Reindeer Games.

***

Rolo greets her by pick-pocketing her like the smug asshole he is.

She’s distracted with bartering over a variety of exotic cloth when she feels the weight of her back pocket lighten and spins around quickly, hand already reaching for the makeshift wallet.

He pulls it just out of reach and she grasps at empty air, but he looks impressed and surprised all the same. Her face morphs from righteous anger to something more like frustration when she sees who it is.

“How did you do that?” he asks before she can get a word in edgewise.

Her lips twist into a frown. “What? How did I know you tried to pickpocket me like some two-bit thief?”

“Uh, yeah? I haven’t had someone notice in years.”

She shrugs, lunging for her wallet again. He pulls it further out of reach.

“Maybe you just suck by Earth standards?” she says unkindly. “Give it back!”

“No, seriously. How?”

She settles back on her heels, glaring up at him with her palm outstretched. He stares back at her calmly for all of three seconds before he reluctantly slaps the wallet into her hand.

“My cousins,” she says, putting it in her front pocket this time. “They used to steal from me as a game of sorts. Pickpocketing was most common, but anything was up for grabs really. They always said it was to keep me sharp and on my toes. I think it’s because they’re all kleptomaniacs.”

Rolo raises an eyebrow at her. “Strange family.”

Lance laughs, thinking about her tios and tias and the myriad of cousins on her mother’s side, about the way she knows they’d get along great with Nyma and Rolo and how they’d have a blast on this swap moon, conning and stealing and living.

“You don’t know the half of it,” is what she says instead. Then, “I bet you I can pickpocket more people than you can.”

He blinks down at her, surprised. “Aren’t you supposed to be one of the goody-goodies of the universe? Heroic saviors and all that? I don’t think you’re supposed to pickpocket people.”

Lance rolls her eyes. “In the time you’ve known me, what has given you the impression I’m a ‘goody-goody’?”

Rolo opens his mouth before promptly closing once more.

“Fair point. You’re on.”

Lance grins, and then they’re off.

***

She nabs two wallets, a probably expensive bracelet and a weird looking pocket watch before things go sideways.

The alien whips around and grabs at her wrist before she can disappear into the crowd. The grip on her wrist is tight enough to leave bruises, but Lance keeps a firm hand on her quarry and doesn’t drop the leather pouch.

She stares up at the, admittedly towering, alien before her in surprise for a solid second before she blurts the first thing to come to mind. Which, unfortunately, is not the obvious and safest choice of, “I’m so sorry, please don’t hurt me,” but rather an awestruck, “Holy shit, you’re pretty.”

Her words take him—him? She’s pretty sure it’s a him. Even if he is terribly feminine with the gorgeous white hair that gives Allura a run for her money—so off guard that his hand slackens.

Not enough for her to wiggle out of, but enough that she’s not in danger of him snapping her wrist in half anymore.

“I beg your pardon?”

“You are very attractive,” she repeats before she can stop herself. And, well. ‘In for a penny, in for a pound. She may as well roll with it at this point. “I’m not sure what’s up with my luck lately for finding hot, purple, aliens but I am killing it, let me tell you.”

Cheekbones—because damn, could you cut diamonds on those babies—just stares down at her, utterly baffled and doesn’t move.

“Do I need to break out my safeword?” She jokes, waggling her eyebrows suggestively. “And so soon in our relationship.”

He drops her hand like it burned him and Lance smirks even as she rubs her aching wrist. “Thanks.”

Cheekbones recovers quickly enough—and oh, the jokes she could make there—and straightens back to his full height with all the pomp and arrogance befitting a prince. He’s perhaps seven feet tall, which makes Lance wonder, exactly, if all aliens are literal giants, or if Earth just churned out a runt of a race.

He holds out his hand. “If you would be kind enough to return my coin pouch to me.”

Her eyebrow raises on its own accord. The way Cheekbones stands and speaks and looks at her just screams rich aristocrat. He even has a similar not-quite-a-British accent Allura and Coran have that makes them sound so posh.

She looks down at the pouch in her hand, hefts it a little.

There’s no way this amount of money can mean anything to him.

“And what if I don’t?” she teases, head cocked as she tosses the pouch from one hand to the other.

Cheekbones narrows his eyes at her, not quite angrily, but more like he’s not sure what to make of her. A familiar look, all things considered. Lance has been on the receiving end of it enough times to recognize it.

“Then I will take it back by force, if necessary.” His tone isn’t threatening, but there’s a certain weight behind it that tells Lance he isn’t joking.

Unfortunately for him, that’s all she does in tense situations.

“Is that a promise, Handsome?” she purrs, smiling wide and crooked and flirty.

He blinks once, twice, three times at her as if she’ll disappear and he won’t have to deal with her anymore. She doesn’t, though, and his mouth twists into something confused looking.

“Are you… are you flirting with me?” he looks around her as if someone is going to jump out at him and yell about how he’s being punked. He eyes her suspiciously. “Is this a trap?”

“Uh…” Lance says because that’s an odd reaction. “No?” Pause. “Should it be?”

“No.”

She gives him a look. The one she gives people when they’re acting weird or crazy.

“You are one paranoid motherfucker. You’re lucky I hang out with at least two on a regular basis. Name’s Lance.”

She sticks her hand out, the coin pouch nestled in her open palm for him to grab. He stares at it for a second before grabbing it.

Before Lance can pull back her hand, Tall, Dark, and Purple takes her—comparatively tiny—hand in his own and presses his lips lightly across the backs of her knuckles in a courtly kiss.

“Well met, Lance. I am Lotor Koltarius, Captain of the Loyal Ó Móráin.”

The action takes her so completely by surprise that she almost misses the way he smirks at her as he lets go of her hand.

She does notice though, and she can’t help the way she smiles wide and sharp and absolutely delighted.

“Oh ho ho! So, he does have a sense of humor after all!”

“Well,” Cheekbones—Lotor says conversationally as he folds his hands behind his back, leaning forward slightly. “In my experience, one has more humor when they aren’t in the middle of being robbed.”

Lance winces, smile turning embarrassed. “Okay, you may have a point there. Sorry, about that by the way.”

Lotor hums non-committedly. “Be careful who you steal from. Not all are as forgiving as I.”

“Nor as easy on the eyes,” Lance adds. She watches as Lotor’s ears twitch oddly, the movement catching her eye. Then, she looks him up and down, eyeing his alien armour dubiously. “So, you a pirate captain then, Jack Sparrow?”

Lotor’s brows furrow at the nickname. “Not exactly.”

Lance raises an eyebrow at his non-answer, ready to ask him more questions when her bracer buzzes against her wrist, making her jump.

Her timer is going off. Shit. She only has thirty minutes before she has to be back at the pod and she still hasn’t found anything for Coran.

Lance turns the buzzing off and sloppily salutes Lotor. “Sorry, gotta blast. Places to be, things to steal, chaos to spread. Girl things, ya know?” she says, already walking away. “It was nice meeting you!”

Lotor stares after her with a bewildered expression on his face as she disappears into the crowd.

She sees Rolo turn into an alleyway, and figuring he might be helpful gift shopping, follows after him to drag him back to the stalls.

What she finds in the alley, is not what she had been expecting.

***

“Where did you- What the hell is that?!”

Lance stares up at Hunk, trying to figure out if it’s worth it to be offended that that is the first thing he says to her instead of something like, “Hi, Lance,” or “Hey! Good to see you didn’t get lost and/or kidnapped on this unfamiliar alien planet. Glad you’re back!”

“Hunk, don’t be mean. You know who Rolo is.”

Rolo protests from where he is standing what he considers ‘a safe distance’ away from her and is largely ignored.

Hunk squawks. “I didn’t mean him.”

“It’s not nicer to say it to Henrietta, either! You’ll hurt her delicate feelings.” Lance leans over to pluck the chicken Rolo was holding out of his hands and coo at her, gently smoothing the feathers on her neck.

“I didn’t mean the chicken, either!” he says, sounding well on his way to distressed.

“Though, where did you even get one?” Keith interjects, staring at Henrietta like if he blinks she’ll suddenly disappear like a hallucination.

“She bought her from a man in an alleyway,” Rolo informs, crossing his arms around the many bags he’s carrying for her. Lance nods in agreement while Hunk makes strangled whining noises.

“What about the three-headed snake around your neck?” he all but shouts at her.

Lance blinks at him, then looks down calmly at the brightly colored snake curled around her entire upper body.

The orange and purple colored head she named Naga, was napping on her shoulder. Scythe, the black and blue striped one, curiously inspects Henrietta who, for her credit, stays still and poised like the queen among chickens she is.

She can’t see Hiss at the moment, but Lance assumes she’s doing something no doubt troublesome. Like biting holes into her shirt.

(She’s learned two things since she’s had her girls. The first being that they’re all unbearably clingy, and the second, that Hiss is an absolute menace whom Lance adores wholeheartedly.)

“I got them from the same guy. You want to pet them?”

“No, Lance! It has three heads.”

“Yeah, you said that already,” she comments wryly.

Hunk groans like she’s being particularly difficult, which she resents. All she did was get a pet! This is not the first time she’s gotten a pet. She doesn’t know why he’s so upset.

“Anyway! I finally found Coran and Allura’s presents!”

“Please tell me the snake is for Coran,” Hunk says, muffled by the way he has his face in his hands.

“Pfft. No. The snake is for me. Henrietta is for Coran. She can keep him company doing… whatever it is he does around the Castle and when I tell him she’s an Earth animal, he’ll love her for sure! It’s like I’m giving him a bit of my home. I got Allura this sweet ass knife.”

Lance gives Henrietta to Keith to hold, who takes her only because he’s surprised to even be handed the animal. He and Henrietta both stare at each other for a long moment. Lance thinks it might be a staring contest to establish who’s the alpha or something.

If it is, Henrietta wins. Lance doesn’t think she’s blinked the whole time she’s had her.

She pulls out the box holding the shimmering iridescent knife to show Hunk, who looks at it but keeps his distance, trying to stay as far away from Scythe’s curious tongue as possible. Keith, who could probably care less about the snake, leans in to more easily admire the knife.

He nods solemnly at it, as if giving his approval. Henrietta mimics him, bobbing her head with the same approving air he had.

Lance huffs at Hunk, raising Scythe closer to him. “Come on, you big baby. It’s just a snake.”

“It’s a very big and alien and possibly venomous snake, Lance! It could be dangerous.”

Rolo snorts, eyeing her girls nervously—the only outward sign he’s scared of them. “Oh, it’s definitely dangerous. Keeping a hydra as a pet is illegal in at least fifteen systems.”

Keith looks over at the hydra with newfound curiosity.

“Oh, whatever,” Lance drawls, flapping her hand like it will wave away the possible illegality of her actions, “Hunk tried to pet a feral cat once.”

“That is nowhere near the same thing.”

“No, it isn’t,” she scolds. “Don’t be reptilist, Hunk.”

“I’m not being-!” he cuts himself off, sighing harshly through his nose. “Did you really need to get a… a hydra ?”

“Yes,” she says immediately. “They looked sad, sitting in the basket all alone.”

Hunk opens his mouth to say something else when Keith points behind them both. “There’s a guy over there who looks angry and he’s coming towards us.”

Lance looks over to see that, yes, there is, in fact, an angry alien coming their way and he looks distinctly like the constable type person who was chasing Nyma earlier. Rolo swears colorfully.

“So it has occurred to me,” Rolo starts sounding calmer than someone who was pickpocketing people earlier and deals in illegal activities on the daily should have any right to be at that moment, “that this system may be one of the previously mentioned ones where owning a hydra may be… a little outside of what is strictly legal.”

Hunk and Keith stare at Rolo and her in horror.

“Are you telling me you illegally bought a dangerous, possibly venomous, alien snake?” Hunk asks, his voice raising an octave or two as he speaks.

Hiss finally makes a reappearance by trying to slither into her shirt while Scythe tries to twine around her wrist.

“Well, we did tell you we bought them in an alleyway from a really shady dude,” Rolo says which causes Hunk to glare at him.

“It could also be the chicken,” Lance offers diplomatically.

Hunk makes a choked noise and the cop-guy-man is steadily making their way toward them. He doesn’t look happy at all.

Keith is still staring at her incredulously and Lance looks down at Henrietta who is taking this entire situation as regally as a chicken could.

Lance can’t help but think Coran is going to love her.

“Okay!” she tells them, all but shoving the knife box into Hunk’s hands so she can readjust the snake on her shoulders. “So, the plan is that Keith and Rolo are deaf and Hunk and I don’t speak English.”

“We’re on an alien planet!” Keith hisses. “No one but us speaks English!”

“What the hell is an English?” Rolo asks. He’s ignored.

“Oh… right.”

Keith scowls and Hunk looks like he’s five seconds away from panicking.

Lance looks back at the angry, alien, market police guy-thing and comes to a new decision.

“Okay, new plan,” she says cheerily, grabbing both their arms and already moving, Rolo only a step behind. “Run.”

***

They make it to the rocket, out of breath and panting, at the same time Pidge and Nyma do. The pair look distinctly dirty and just as out of breath as they are.

The two groups blink at each other before asking, in unison, “What the hell happened to you?”

“Is that a chicken?” Pidge asks before catching sight of Naga at her shoulder. “Is that a snake?”

“Are you wearing a crown?” Hunk asks Pidge incredulously, then turns to Nyma and promptly looks away. “And what happened to your clothes?”

Nyma shrugs, standing there in far skimpier clothing than what she came herewith. And is it made of gold? Where the hell did she get that?

It does do wonders for her curves though.

“Okay, but seriously,” Pidge says, “What’s with the chicken?”

“She’s for Coran!” Lance tells her excitedly. “Her name is Henrietta.”

Shiro pokes his head out from the ship, and they all go quiet at the sight of him. He looks disappointedly at them all—skipping quickly past Nyma, the poor bastard.

“Did anyone even follow one of my rules?”

Lance, considering she barely even remember the rules, is gonna go with no. Probably not.

“We got here on time?” Hunk offers, unsurely.

Shiro blinks at him. “You’re all twenty minutes late.”

“We were busy! And-”

“You get back here!” comes a bellowing voice that immediately puts Lance and the others on edge.

“And that’s our cue to leave!” Lance shouts before clambering into the ship, followed closely by everyone else (but not, like, too close because Rolo and Nyma seem terrified—though they hide it well—by Naga, Scythe, and Hiss and everyone else is being healthily wary).

***

Nobody wants to sit next to her while she has Naga, Scythe, and Hiss draped around her shoulders. Which, as far as she’s concerned, is great. She has as much room in the pod as she wants now.

She happily nuzzles each head individually and is rewarded with cute little trills that have Hunk practically clawing at the wall trying to get away. She does it three more times before she stops because it’s hilarious.

***

“So, what did you get into, Pidgeon?”

“Oh, you know,” she shrugs nonchalantly. “I became a pseudo-god to a secret society of mole people and Nyma hoed around as my not-so-loyal consort.”

Lance opens her mouth then abruptly closes it, stares at her for a long second and then says, “Well, if you didn’t want to tell me you didn’t have to.”

***

Lance is out of the pod before it even stops moving, her girls the size of a garter snake and curled securely around her wrist. Funny thing she’d learned about hydrae on the trip back: they like to change size.

It’d been really funny when they had suddenly decided to be 20 feet long. Lance had never seen Hunk so freaked before.

Well… freaked in a funny way, at least.

The others follow at a more sedate pace but are no less happy to exit the pod seeing as they’re all officially sick of each other. But, in Lance’s expert opinion, they’re all much closer than before the trip so it evens out.

“Coran!” Lance shouts happily, launching herself at the older alien for a hug.

“Lance, my dear girl!” he responds with just as much enthusiasm, picking her up and twirling her around in the way Hunk does that makes her feel small and cherished and happy. “How was the swap moon? Didn’t get into any trouble, did you?”

“Me?” she gasps, affronted as he sets her down. “Get in trouble? Never. ”

Coran laughs, full-bellied and loud. “Of course! What was I thinking?”

Lance grins crookedly. “Oh! I almost forgot!” she grabs his hand, dragging him back towards the pod doors. “I got you something.”

She reaches back inside and easily plucks Henrietta off the bench she was tearing apart. Swiftly, she turns with the chicken held in front of her triumphantly, grin wide and bright on her face.

“Ta-da!” she sing-songs.

Coran’s eyes widen, smile growing wider until Lance can see all his teeth gleam. “Oh, my dear, I love it!” Then, quietly, “What is it?”

Lance stifles her giggles even as she can hear Pidge shamelessly snickering off to the side.

“It’s a chicken,” she says simply.

“A chee-kin?” he asks, eyeing the bird curiously.

That time Lance can’t help laughing at him. “A chicken. It’s a type of animal from Earth. Not sure how she ended up on that swap moon, though. Her name’s Henrietta, and now,” she says, holding the chicken out closer to Coran’s curious hands. “She’s yours.”

He blinks down at Henrietta almost disbelievingly as he gently takes her from Lance’s hands. Then, his eyes shoot up to hers, his eyes bright and happy. “A real Earth creature? Are you sure?”

She nods, rocking on her heels. “Positive.”

He drags her into a second hug with his free hand and presses his lips onto the top of her head. She hugs him back for all he’s worth. “Thank you, Lance. It is a wonderful gift.”

Lance basks in the feeling for a long moment, unwilling to break the comfortable contact. Unfortunately, Pidge is a brat who can’t let Lance have nice things.

“Now that you two are done being disgustingly cute, you wanna give the rest of us a hand?” she shouts from behind a heap of boxes she’s carrying.

Lance rolls her eyes. “Yeah, yeah. Be there in a sec.” She waves her hand dismissively, turning to climb back in the front seat and grab her bag when Coran freezes at her side. She looks up at him questioningly. “Coran?”

“My dear, what’s that on your wrist?” he says, the slightest shake in his voice.

She looks down at her wrist, but all she sees is Scythe, tongue flickering in Coran’s direction as she scents the air. She’s too small right now to do any damage so that can’t be what Coran is scared of.

But when she looks back up at him uncomprehendingly, his eyes haven’t left Scythe’s.

“It’s just Scythe,” she says simply, raising her wrist to his face to say hi. Coran almost flinches back from her which makes Lance freeze. Then, slowly, a grin stretches across her face.

“Are you scared of the little snake, Coran?”

“I’m not sure what this ‘snack’ is, but that is most definitely a hydra. An incredibly dangerous reptile that possesses venom so acidic it can melt through altean skin.”

Lance blinks. She hadn’t known that.

“They wouldn’t do that,” she defends.

Coran looks skeptical but relents. “If you trust it, then I will as well.”

***

After that, Shiro wastes no time in ordering everyone to help Hunk put everything away in the pantry.

Halfway through, Lance slips away to get Naga, Scythe, and Hiss tucked away into the pool. The alleyway guy said they preferred water habitats so that’s what Lance is going to give them. She’s asked CORINN if there was anything in the pool water that would hurt them and was given the all-clear.

Of course, the pool was upside down and Lance still didn’t understand why or even how you would get up there so she had to resort to plan B: soothing her baby girls and explaining what she’s about to do before gathering them up and doing her best to throw them straight up in the air.

Luckily, her girls are the smartest not-snakes in existence because they shrink in order to make it into the pool above and proceed to splash happily in the water.

Lance grins when Hiss pokes her head out to chirp happily, already growing again as they happily swim the length of the large pool.

She waves goodbye and promises to visit with food in the morning.

***

“Hey, baby girl!” Lance greets loudly as the doors to Azura’s hangar swing open.

In an instant, blue swirls around her, cool metal crowding her and vibrating hard enough to chatter her teeth. Lance laughs and leans into her giant kitten masquerading as a war machine, even as the metal chills her skin and shakes her bones.

“Looks like someone missed me as much as I missed them!”

“You were so far away. I did not like it. It would take too long to get to you if you needed me.”

She swipes her arm across the metal of Azura’s snout, trying to reach as much of it as she can. Her eyes stare into the swirling depths of sea storms and starlight.

“I didn’t like it much either, baby blues.”

Being that far away from Azura, it felt… wrong. It didn’t cause her extreme pain—thankfully—but it was like an emptiness in her head. Azura’s voice was distant and Lance could barely feel her, only a faint shimmering of color on the horizon line. It made her uneasy that Azura wasn’t at her fingertips, wasn’t by her side where she belonged.

(Lance should probably be concerned how easily she’s gotten used to another voice in her head.

She isn’t, but she probably should be.)

Coran had explained the specifics of the bond’s distance limits after the whole ‘Azura almost getting kidnapped’ fiasco. Specifically, that it wasn’t the distance that was the problem, but rather a mix of forcing them apart and Lance suppressing Azura’s actions when she tried getting back to her.

The bond is a partnership, an equal one. Any effort to smother the other half will result in extreme pain and other dire consequences Lance asked not to hear about.

She’d already experienced more about it than she ever wanted to.

“But I’m fine right?” Lance continues, forcing her smile to be more genuine. “All okay and accounted for.”

Azura harrumphs like she doesn’t quite agree but isn’t willing to pick a fight about it. Lance swipes her hand across her metal jaw, reaching up towards her nose.

“Don’t be such a worrywart,” she teases.

Azura scoffs, tail flicking behind her. “‘Worrywart’? You and your earth sayings are so strange.”

“Like you have any room to talk!” Lance says, laughing. “You called me a, what was it? A ‘mincing Judoon’ the other day? What does that even mean?”

“I already explained it. I’m not going to repeat myself.”

“Oh, pardon me, princess.”

Azura sniffs haughtily, “You are pardoned.”

***

Eventually, Lance makes it to Allura’s room to check on her and bring her her present. She does a courtesy knock on the door before barging in immediately without waiting for an answer.

It’s a good thing too, because she catches Allura red-handed.

The princess in question whips around to face her, eyes wide at being caught at her desk rather than in the luxuriously large bed where she should be.

Lance crosses her arms and cocks her hip, imitating her Mamá’s ‘just what do you think you’re doing?’ face.

“Lance!” Allura sputters awkwardly, trying to hide all the documents in front of her by leaning on them in the least casual way Lance has ever seen. “What a surprise. You guys are back already?”

Without answering, Lance marches over and rips the paper out of her hands, ignoring Allura’s protests. It’s a diplomatic document. A peace treaty between them and the Balmerans along with a promise to help in combat scenarios depending on the circumstances.

Lance gives Allura a sharp look over the top of the paper.

“You’re supposed to be resting,” she says pointedly.

Allura snatches the treaty back with an unfair amount of dignity given the situation. “I don’t take orders from you.”

Lance rolls her eyes, well used to that phrase being thrown around thanks to her sisters. Instead of deigning that with a response, she grabs Allura’s hands and tugs her away from the desk. Allura protests until she realizes Lance isn’t dragging her to bed, but rather out the door.

“Where are you taking me?” the princess asks, the slightest hint of suspicion in her tone. Like she expects Lance to play some sort of prank on her.

“My room,” she answers simply.

Allura only gets more confused and suspicious at that answer, so Lance elaborates.

“If you won’t sleep, then you might as well hang out with somebody. This way, we can have fun and I can make sure you aren’t overexerting yourself with ridiculous royal decrees.”

“It wasn’t a-”

“Also!” Lance continues, talking over Allura, “I have a gift for you.”

She waves the bag still hanging from her elbow, watching Allura examine it with interest.

Oh yeah, this was one of her better ideas.

***

A half-hour later finds Lance perched on the edge of her bed, knees folded neatly beneath her just so she can reach all of Allura’s hair as said princess rants about altean politics and its portrayal in a random Solisian rom-com from roughly 10,004 years ago.

Lance has her hair in a much less elaborate up-do than she’d normally allow around people and they’re both wearing exfoliating masks. (Bright side to getting blown up: the cryopod helpfully notes down anything dangerous for her chemical makeup to come into contact with, and, with the expertise of CORINN’s infinite knowledge, makes shopping for alien beauty products a goddamn breeze .)

She hums and nods in all the right places as Allura rants, hands waving about wildly. The arusian mice are sprawled across Lance’s lap after Allura almost knocked them off hers one too many times.

They keep squeaking like in the same places Lance hums, like they’re listening too. And, with the way Allura keeps pausing and tilting her head in their direction, Lance thinks they’re giving their own opinions on the topic.

Which is kind of rude, she’s not gonna lie. They aren’t sharing their opinions with her after all. (And she knows they can, too. The telepathic bastards.)

Lance tries not to be bitter about it and fails miserably. The mice are lucky they’re cute or else she would have banished them to the floor by now.

“-and truly! Just how ignorant can you be? As if a trained Altean diplomat would ever mistake Convention 15 of the Shadow Proclamation for anything other than a request to parley! Any self-respecting galactic  citizen knows that! I don’t understand how that even made the final cut-”

Lance nods her head vigorously even though she has no fucking clue what the hell she’s talking about. She’s almost finished with the intricate up-do when Hunk suddenly barges into the room—well, the door opens with a silent ‘whoosh’ a second after a cursory knock which is basically the same thing for him.

He’s halfway in the room, already dressed in his pajamas—a loose but incredible soft t-shirt and baggy sweatpants—before he notices Lance isn’t the only one in there.

He seems to freeze mid-step, eyes blinking rapidly at the scene in front of him. Allura stares back, eyes blinking even faster than Hunk’s.

She probably thinks it’s some sort of earth custom. Coran and her have been very interested in those sorts of things ever since Lance had made a few pop culture references in their presence. She’s pretty sure Allura now believes Rambo is a legendary warrior from Earth and that ‘Earthlings’ worship a giant boulder among other odd things that aren’t actually as far from the truth as humans would like to believe.

Lance has no inclination to explain otherwise so Allura and Coran are going to believe these things until one of the others catches on and tries to stop her. Not that they’ll be successful, but what can you do?

“Greetings, Hunk,” Allura says politely. “What are you doing here?”

“Uh…” He says eloquently, clutching his pillow tighter to his chest.

Lance rolls her eyes. “Get over here. Allura will paint your nails and you can try explaining Ducktales to her. She doesn’t seem to be understanding.”

Allura scoffs then jerks her head like she wants to whip around and glare at Lance but with Lance french braiding her hair still, she doesn’t get far. “That is because you are confusing! You say it is a ‘cartoon’ of this ‘duck’ family who aren’t actual ducks! And they go on adventures which is not a thing you say normal ‘ducks’ are able to do!” she huffs, crossing her arms in frustration. “It makes no sense.”

Lance gives Hunk a look like she can’t believe Allura isn’t getting it. He shakes his head, at her or at Allura she can’t tell. But the next thing he says is “The original cartoon or the 2017 version?” so she counts it as a win.

Lance hums as if she’s thinking about it. “Both.”

Hunk grumbles before walking straight to her bathroom and emerging a second later with the nail polish Lance had before the shopping trip. He plops down on the ground in front of Allura, snagging the new polish and stuff Lance just bought and starts to work.

By the end of the night, Allura is yawning profusely and all three of them have matching gold nails with an altean lily on their thumbs done by Allura who is apparently ambidextrous.

All in all, a successful girls’ night as far as she’s concerned.