Chapter Text
“Haggar,” Zarkon, lord of the known universe strides into the galactic witch’s lair. Several Druids scatter from her side across the sprinkled floor that acts as the map of the known universe. Darting into either corner of the great Druid forest, their long wine and midnight blue velvet robes billowing behind them. “Your reluctance to act is unsettling. The paladins have reconvened from the multifaceted wormhole. Voltron lives.”
“You underestimate me Lord Zarkon.” She speaks beneath her shroud and twists on her great onyx throne. “For I have not been idle.” Slowly she walks to the center of the room and dips her long skeletal arm into the cauldron she keeps there. It made of a deep rose gold colored metal and contains a vermillion substance that wafts between liquid and gas. She gathers some up in her hands and throws it across the floor erasing the map of the universe and turning the room near pitch black. From her robe she procures a handful of objects and throws them across the floor.
The room is re-illuminated in black, red, blue, green, and yellow light which originates from five orbs cast to the floor.
“I have already put into place an operation that is guaranteed to destroy the connection between Allura’s new paladins and prevent the further formation of Voltron. Once this occurs, the recapture of the lions shall be imminent.”
“This news pleases me Haggar.” He lets his own hand rest in the effervescent vermillion substance within the cauldron and let it was over his armored hand. “Tell me more.”
“Each paladin is blighted with an internal fatal flaw.” She spreads each hand wide and twists one on top of the other bringing the black orb forward. “The black one as you know is too caring, too giving and takes pain on behalf of others to his own detriment.” Another twist of the hands, and the blue orb is brought to the front. “The blue paladin is anxious to prove himself while simultaneously unsure of his own ability. It results in reckless behavior. While on the other hand the red paladin,” Haggar’s face is illuminated with a deep crimson light as she gazes intently into the corresponding orb. “Acts as a near opposite. So confident is he in his own abilities, he refuses to reach out for help. It results in a great deal of internal distress.”
She switches orbs again, the yellow paladin. “This one is murky not unlike the bog of Chalbarah.” She fusses turning the orb over and over again. “The yellow paladin is caring for others yes, but this is not his fatal flaw. Perhaps, much like his lion he is so armored he never feels compelled to attack directly.” Finally she switches to the last orb, chartreuse in complexion. “Here is where it gets very interesting. The green paladin is arguably the least connected. There is a personal goal that jeopardizes the collective force which wills Voltron into existence. There is passion, to a point of obsession in reaching this goal. It is easiest to exploit, and thus the root of my plan created solely to honor your name Lord Zarkon.”
“You act not out of petty revenge Haggar?” He responds taking note of the strings that dart out from each orb in a corresponding color and connect to the others. He cannot help but notice that the black orb and the green orb have the thickest connection between them. “In targeting the green paladin you are directly targeting the black as well.”
“No,” she speaks as she manipulates the orb from one palm to the next. “Why overcomplicate such a matter Lord Zarkon? This plan allows us to aim for the path of least resistance and tear them all apart in the process.”
Zarkon looks at her pensively for a moment before speaking. “As a unit they are strong, but individually they are weak.”
“Correct.”
“What exactly do you have in mind?”
Haggar passes the orb from her palm to Zarkons and then crushes it between their joined palms. Blinding chartreuse dust is scattered about recreating the once vanished map of the known universe. “I have already bait a trap for the green paladin. It is only a matter of time.”
Day of loss: 14:55
It takes three days to formulate the plan.
One and a half days for Pidge and Hunk optimize the lions and pour over their machine learning outputs from each one.
One for Shiro and Allura to draft a tactical plan, a back up plan, and alternative actions within each of those plans.
A half day for Lance and Keith to break their training drone due to nerves.
It takes twenty minutes for all plans, backups, and alternatives to be blasted, pulverized into dust, and left in the cold empty void of space.
Shiro knows a trap when he sees one. It’s cloaked in a Galra base stationed on an otherwise neutral planet. An uneasy alliance between people that did not want to be found, and people that did not want to lose everything. From the moment they’re able to orbit the planet with all five lions, he feels it. He doesn’t even need that dark primal part of his mind to tell him otherwise.
Shiro tells himself that he won’t allow Pidge to be blinded by a false sense of hope. He doesn’t expect to be lulled into the same type of fervor. However, Matt and Dr. Holt were his crew. He’s failed them in a way that can never be atoned for.
So he doesn’t pull back the team when he feels unease.
He doesn’t pull back when Lance begs him to do so. Or when Allura tells him to do so.
It’s the kind of impulsive decision he fights every day to abate. Somewhere in between infiltration of the base and storming the prison floor, he loses the yearlong battle and the diseased part of his mind takes complete control.
Somewhere between getting separated from the rest of the team and progressing onto the prison floor with Pidge, he loses everything. The prison floor is empty, save for the swarm of Galra agents shooting at them from all angles. It’s too much handle, even for his arm.
“Pidge!” between the alarm pounding in his ears and the laser fire all around him he can’t hear his own voice and has to go by the burn in the back of his throat to know that he’s saying something. “Pidge!”
Flashes of light from the alarm cloak the sterile off white prison sector in crimson red. He can’t see it but he knows it’s there. On the floor on the wall, on him covering his armor and covering Pidge. He doesn’t have to see it. “Pidge please,” he says through gritted teeth, trying his hardest to fight back the tears that prick at his eyes. Crying won’t do anything and he needs to keep some kind of shred of sense if they have any chance of making it out of here alive.
But Pidge’s face is cold to the touch.
And in between the pulses of the alarm light he can see that his face is pale.
There’s so much blood, and the wound in his chest is so big.
He thinks for a moment that he should hold him a certain way or try to find something to minimize the bleeding, but something twinges up his arm and every semblance of reason drains through his fingers. He grabs the small lifeless body before him and runs toward the black lion.
He’s only fifty meters away when he’s ambushed. Galra drones swarm with blasters and beam sabers. There are at least twenty in front and he can hear the hollow footsteps of more from behind him. The final coherent thought he has is “where the hell are Lance and Keith and Hunk?”
He lights up his arm and takes out the one nearest to them with a touch to the shoulder. Two more with rapid jabs. Pidge lays unconscious over his shoulder all the while. He can do this. He can save Pidge. He neutralizes three more in a similar fashion.
More guards arrive, and more of them are able to get closer. They tear Pidge from his shoulder. No matter how many drones he thrusts his burning hand into, no matter how many hearts he can feel pulsing, slowing, and cauterizing in his grasp, he can’t shake them. Can’t get any closer. Can’t get to Pidge.
He kills for a lifetime. It feels like a lifetime, like all he’s ever known is death and when he’s done killing he’ll die too, because how is he ever going to get to Pidge?
Suddenly the purple pink glow of his arm is joined by flashes of blue, and red, and yellow. They’re yelling at him, and it takes him a moment to realize that Keith is flung over Hunk’s shoulder stabbing at whatever he can. Lance is worse for the wear too and there is blood dripping down his face and onto Hunk’s shoulder. It takes another moment to register that Hunk is carrying him piggyback style. He’s shooting over Hunk’s shoulder in sporadic bursts.
Despite all of his screams, protests, and empty threats that work in Galra arenas but don’t work among those that know him best, it’s Allura that drags him away. She drags him away while he’s screaming at the drones to take him instead. Allura that shoves him into the black lion’s cockpit and orders it to depart, as only she can. It’s Allura that boards the green lion.
One day after loss. 23:06
“I think it may help you Shiro.” Allura says with her hands clasped together. She’s trying to be strong for him, but there are more tears dripping down her swollen eyelids. “Not only in coping…”
Shiro touches the exterior of the pod. He knows that it’s his pod. All of the other paladins have claimed one at this point, and they’re very protective of their pods. Apparently, if you soaked in a pod it smelled strongly of the person that was in it last. From what Coran tells him it’s not a problem among Alteans. However, it has been a problem among Lance and Keith who have decided that the smell of each other is “gross,” never mind the fact that Keith’s room sits empty most nights.
He wouldn’t know for sure. He’s had an intense reluctance to enter the pod. It reminds him too much of forced adjustments and unwanted procedures.
“It may also help him if he’s recovered,” Allura continues. “We don’t exactly know what state he’ll be in. Your memories may be particularly helpful given your closeness.”
“If it could help, I will give it a try Allura.” But he waits for her to leave the infirmary before he climbs, not into the unused pod in the center, but to the one directly to his left. The one that he knows he’s seen Pidge climb out of.
Six days before loss: 03:02
“Do you believe in the witching hour Shiro?”
Pidge pulls him from an ancient Altean fantasy novel that Pidge has been kind enough to outfit with translation software. He can’t say he minds. The complex sorcerer princess protagonist has become the victim of a very dull and very cliché second arc. Reduced to a love interest…she’s so much more interesting than that. “That time of the morning where we’re more susceptible to magic and witchcraft?”
“Less of that…I don’t believe in sixty minutes where ghosts, demons, and other nasty stuff roams freely.” He pushes his glasses up his face. “This was more of a thing that happened during my time in the Garrison. There was always an hour or two where everything in the desert was so quiet, the sound of my own breath was deafening…Or the network went down for routine maintenance and I was stuck alone with my own thoughts.”
Shiro tries to take a moment to imagine Pidge without a data set to comb through, without a way to test if the code he’d spent hours on works. He’s always working on something. He decides he’s never witnessed it before and doesn’t know if he wants to. He can take Pidge wringing his hands or pulling at his cuticles in anxiety for a few moments, but the idea of seeing him truly idle seems absurd. “Seems like almost any time on the castle could qualify that depending on which definition you favor.” Shiro offers.
“Yeah.” Pidge takes a pause from the screen and rummages around in his bag. He procures two portions of Plambian candy from the dingy maroon vessel and tosses one to Shiro.
Shiro raises his eyebrows and smirks in amusement. “Are you feeding me?” This week alone he’s brought Pidge breakfast three times. He also bought him lunch yesterday when they’d made a quick stop at an interplanetary rest area. He’d ordered the biggest plate of fried eggs and something that looked and tasted very much like bacon, but didn’t have a cent to his name.
Not that Shiro kept a mental note of when Pidge took his meals.
“But there’s some weird stuff going on out there at night lately,” he gestures to the observation deck just past his monitors. “Are you familiar with a Fibonacci sequence?” He takes the bar and tears at the wrapper with the corner of his mouth. Then spits out the corner and shoves it into his oversized pockets.
“Um…..” Shiro gestures in a round and round motion with his index finger. “It’s like a spiral right?”
“Kind of. You’re underselling it a bit.” He takes a bite of his candy and frowns. “Hey, did I give you the red bean flavor one?”
Shiro looks down at his yet to be touched candy. Although he cannot read a single word printed on the wrapper, all of the text is printed in red and that has to count for something. “I think so.”
“Trade me,” Pidge demands. “I thought I’d like the nut ones. Like maybe they’d be like peanut butter. They aren’t.”
“What if I don’t wanna trade?” Shiro responds.
“Oh come on Shiro. I’ve combed my hair today. It’s been,” he pushes up the sleeve on his tunic and checks his watch, “eighteen hours since my last shower, and now I’m trying to take care of you. Give me some credit here. I’m super nailing this self-care thing. So at least like, trade me candies.”
“You don’t get rewards for things you’re already supposed to do,” this is going to trigger a patented Pidge-eye-roll.
Three, two, there it is! But he’s already bridging the distance between them.
He plucks the bitten bar from Pidge’s hand and replaces it with the red bean one he’d been given moments before.
“Thanks!” Pidge bursts into a wide grin. “Anyway, they’re a sequence of numbers beginning with 1 and each subsequent number is the sum of the previous two. Based on that this can be applied to right triangles such that every second number starting with five is the hypotenuse of a right triangle. The hypotenuse is equal to the sum of the three sides in the previous triangle.”
Shiro chews for a moment in thought…”Pidge I have no idea what you’re saying.”
“You don’t need to get the math behind it. That’s not important.” He cards a few fingers through his hair and looks back at the series of formulae on his screens. “What is important is that someone is broadcasting a series of such triangles at regular intervals. Matt and I were obsessed with Fibonacci triangles when we were younger. “
Shiro’s face lights up in an instant and then scowls “So this kind of transmission is a pattern that is rare, probably not a coincidence?” He says with a tinge of hesitation in his voice. He not only shares Pidge’s optimism that his family is out there, but he must consider the alternatives.
Pidge deflates slightly and tilts back in his office chair. The candy is forgotten on the left end of the console. “I don’t know. These sequences do occur naturally. Queen bees give birth to drones and workers in such a sequence. But….And this is where it gets weird. We were obsessed with this one constellation. It wasn’t a real constellation, but one we made up. Based on distance estimates from our dad’s lit we figured out that,” takes a moment to pull up a holographic map of the known universe and scrolls until he’s hit the local group. “these three stars the hypotenuse here is five….million lightyears give or take. And then these three adjacent stars,” he gestures to his left “ act as the next right triangle following the sequence, and so on and so forth. We spent so much time looking for others, but this was the only one we found.”
“That’s the sequence being submitted.” It’s not a question. Pidge wouldn’t bring it up if he hadn’t already buried himself in all the information available, and weeded out possible alternatives.
“Yes,” Pidge concludes.
“Did you ever think about how weird it is for two kids to be obsessed with triangles?”
“Nerd dad plus nerd mom equals two nerd kids Shiro. Its basic biology” Pidge laughs into the back of his tunic covered hand.”
“So if Matt were trying to reach you in a way that were innocuous, this may be it?”
“I don’t want to get my hopes up. But I do need to investigate this further.”
“How can you know for sure?”
“The sequence will hold the answer. I’ve sent out another one of my favorites in response. If one of Matt’s comes back in response, I think it would be worth a closer look.”
“I think so too.”
Four days before loss 07:45
By the time Pidge rises from his lair and joins him for breakfast, he’s been up for several hours. He’s had time to get dressed, complete his morning workout, and have a shower. It’s almost strange that Pidge is up this early. He usually doesn’t wander into the galley until lunch time, or Shiro will bring him a bowl of the green stuff after he finishes pouring through status reports and compiled statistical analysis from Pidge and Hunk from their last battle.
Pidge plops down next to him with a mug of something that is both hot and brown and therefore according to all heuristic clues, must count as his morning dose of caffeine. He lets his head drop onto Shiro’s shoulder before finally asking, “This okay?” Because somewhere within their nebulous commitment to one another, one thing was made very, very clear. Everything, especially physical contact, had to take a pause.
“It’s fine,” Shiro responds in a disinterested tone before going back to his screens. “Thank you for streamlining the tactical data from the lions. It makes running simulation analysis much easier for me to understand.”
“It only took me-“ Pidge yawned in the middle “A few minutes. So, if you need anything else like that-“ his voice trails off.
“I have something for you.” He shuffles around his tactical log and computer until he found a black usb stick. It had a small lion insignia on it. “Here. It came across the main receptor immediately after I took you to bed.”
A small blush crept over Pidge’s face as it was confirmed that Shiro had tucked him in last night.
“It’s encrypted. I don’t understand it. But given what you were working on last night it’s probably of interest.”
Pidge’s sleepy demeanor shifts from near comatose to wide awake. He pulls a small tablet from his tunic pocket and plugs in the usb drive. Nearly immediately he began tapping frantically at the screen. “Oh, wow…” Pidge taps on. “This is really good Shiro.” Pidge rises without further warning and turns. The screen still buried near his face the whole time, he abandoned his coffee in order to type with his free hand. “I have to go…I need more power to decrypt this.”
“Morning Pidge,” Keith says as they cross each other’s paths in the threshold to the galley.
“Huh.” Pidge blankly looks up. “Oh, Keith. Hi.” He blinks a few times. Suddenly his eyebrows shoot into his forehead. “Come find me later. I have a new training module for you. I keep forgetting to send it to you.”
“Sure thing. Thanks Pidge.”
Keith seats himself at the table and places his palm flat on the counter. “So we should send someone in later with a toothbrush and a damp washrag before bed tonight?”
“Wouldn’t be the worst idea.”
“We’ll do it on three,” Shiro tells the team.
“One two three shoe,” Lance insists.
“Shoe, what are you even talking about?” Keith replies.
“Shoe is when you just need that extra…That extra minute to decide,” Hunk adds.
“That’s for rock paper scissors,”
“We’re going on three,” Shiro decides.
“One. Two. Three.” The four present paladins touch their noses to their index fingers as quickly as possible. This time, Hunk comes up the loser.
“Aw man.” Hunk mumbles under his breath. There is a big big difference between sitting next to Pidge for hours on end working on your own projects and occasionally asking questions (although not too many) and forcing him to engage in self-care. The latter may result in thrown project components, swearing, or even worse, being recruited to “hold something” further distracting from the task at hand. “Fine.” He grabs the carry case of supplies and shuffles towards the lab.
Abruptly, the doors to the lab are thrown open and Pidge races out, knocking into Hunk’s chest and nearly send him toppling backwards. Although he manages to steady himself the supplies are not so lucky.
“Team meeting! Team meeting!” Pidge calls urgently his helmet already in his hands. His determined affect shifts to one of surprise as he sees the rest of the team closer than he anticipated. “Good you’re all already here. Inside. Now.” He gestures back into the lab.
They all shuffle in without protest.
He calls Allura and Coran into the room via intercom and soon the lab is packed full. Lance and Hunk are seated on the floor. Keith’s occupying Shiro’s usual spot at the main console so he’s stuck in the back corner.
Pidge quickly brings them up to speed on the transmissions he’s been receiving for the past few nights. Then reveals the new information that Shiro shared with him that morning. “In addition to the triangular coordinates I keep receiving, an additional transmission was received last night at 04:37. It’s encryption is very unique. Written in a code in a language that is all but archaic on Earth. It was essentially designed to communicate ultra violet maintenance waves to and from satellites.”
He can feel six faces drop in fear of a tangent without even looking up for his monitors.
“My father developed it as a part of his dissertation.” After he speaks the rancor drains from the room. He lets it build into a deafening crescendo as he displays the decoded transmission on the screen.
“K, Follow the sequence. –M
“As you can see,” He slouches forward and leans into the words. The screens filling his lenses with their fluorescent glow. “The circumstantial evidence has suddenly become very concrete. I brought you all here to ask for your help.”
“Were you able to pinpoint the coordinates?”
Pidge’s mouth pulls into a half smile. He probably already knows that he’s got a skeletal outline of a plan in his head. “Yes, further analysis of the sequence has revealed a concise set of coordinates.”
“It could be a trap Pidge,” Keith supplies from her left.
“Didn’t you listen to anything he just said? We have to do something,” replied Lance.
“It could very easily be a trap,” Shiro interjected. “But if these signals are legitimate, then the only way a rescue is feasible is as a team. I’d wager almost anything that Pidge has already decided to go alone if we are unable to do so together. Something amazing happens when we all work together, so let’s take the time to make an airtight plan.”
Three days before loss: various hours
It takes three days to formulate the plan.
One and a half days for Pidge and Hunk optimize the lions and pour over their machine learning outputs from each one.
One for Shiro and Allura to draft a tactical plan. And a back up plan, and alternative actions within each of those plans.
A half day for Lance and Keith to go over the plans so many times they work themselves into a perpetual state of restlessness, and break their training drone due to nerves.
It takes four hours to get Pidge to go to bed for a few hours before they depart.
“What if they’re different when we get them back?” Pidge asks clutching a pillow against his chest. “I mean they’re going to be different. No one stays the same. They’re not going to be the same after….” Pidge taps against the frames of his glasses, adjusting his ocular display. “One year, nine months, two weeks, and three days,” his voice trails off a bit at the end.
“You’re scared.” Shiro pauses sit ups on the floor in between Pidge’s primary work bench and Hunk’s frequently empty drafting table. It’s such a painfully obvious thing to say, but among a group of people that have all but last everything, sometimes dealing with your own emotions is hard.
Pidge’s own emotions seem to be so often encrypted similarly to his programs. Taking the time to try to crack that code was of the utmost importance, even if he didn’t feel like he had the skill or emotional competence to do so. After all, Pidge validates so many of his own emotions in his own strange way.
Not to mention that this mission is weighing heavy on his own conscious as well.
Pidge acknowledges this by talking him through the statistical analysis he runs. He’s used multiple linear regressions to pinpoint the location within a 99.5% confidence interval. Much like his and Allura’s tactical plans, he’s accounted for error and controlled for as many factors as possible. To Shiro it means two things. First, Pidge has drafted a very intricate line. Second, there is so much that can go wrong in one half of one percent.
Pidge tells him stories of Matt and Sam, and the whole time he wonders if he should be doing more to comfort Pidge.
“It’s so foolish though Shiro,” he says after a few silent clicks. “I’m not afraid of getting hurt, or falling into a trap. I’d feel bad if anything happened to anyone on the team….” Pidge looks up from the monitor on his left. It’s held his attention for the better part of the last hour, and it bears the simple message, ” K, Follow the sequence. –M”
“But the thing I’m most afraid of is coming back, not just empty handed but no closer than I was before I started getting the messages.”
“Well….” Shiro sits up properly and scratches at the back of his undercut. “That’s almost impossible at this point right?”
Pidge knits his brows together and waits for further explanation.
“What is it you told me? There are..” He touches each finger on his biological hand to his thumb and then touches his forefinger and middle finger to his thumb on his cybernetic arm and counts softly to himself. “Seven ways of knowing?”
“Eight,” Pidge corrects.
“Oh,” he murmurs in slight embarrassment. He really though he was going to impress by remembering this accurately. “Which one am I missing?”
“Probably sense perception,” Pidge supplies. “It seems so obvious compared to the rest.”
“Right.” He offers in response. “Well okay you have emotion and faith telling you its them. You have intuition based on the data…All the ways of knowing are pointing to this being legitimate. So, now you really have to empirically test it.” He’s afraid that he sounds like an entry level Garrison decision making textbook, and not someone who is legitimately concerned. “After this is tested, you will know undoubtedly for sure, and it will shape your future actions.”
“I suppose so,” Pidge offers.
“It’s late,” He pauses and looks up at Pidge at his workbench. Waits for Pidge to feel the tinge of being watched from the corner of his mind and meet his gaze.
After a few moments Pidge does just that.
“You should get some rest.”
Pidge retracts his fingers from the keyboard to his left. He taps gently on the keyboard for his right before retracting himself once more and returns to Shiro’s gaze once again. “I don’t know if I can. I’m too anxious.”
“Don’t allow your mind deprive your body.”
“Am I breaking the rules of our contract if I ask you to sleep next to me? For old time’s sake. It’s the only time I’ve ever felt rested since…since….”
“I never signed a contract Pidge.”
He furrows his brow in frustration. “You know that’s what I mean, Shiro.”
Although the contact has changed, the sleeping arrangements have changed, some things have never changed at all. He still cannot for the life of him say no to Pidge.
Pidge grabs his pillow from underneath the desk and trudges towards a pile of pillows and blankets in the far corner of the room.
“In here?”
“I never sleep in my room. That’s where I keep books I don’t have time to read. When you carried me in there the other night, that’s the first time I’ve slept in there in months.”
“Fine,” He sighs. “I get my own pillow.”
“You’re going to have to go get it from your room then. I require no less than three pillows for a proper nap.”
One Hour After Loss: 17:13
He catches sight of himself in the reflection of the regeneration tank he places Lance in. And again in the regeneration tank that Allura drags Keith into. And a third time when he walks to the tank that Hunk climbs into. It’s a good sign that he’s able to do it himself. His wounds are largely superficial. He’ll be out in a half hours time.
Every porous surface of his armor is covered in blood. Even the plated parts are covered in large smudged blotches. How was he one of the only ones uninjured? How, when it was he that allowed the compromise of his team’s safety?
He leans against the empty tank next to Hunk. The tank that should’ve contained Pidge. He feels a hand on his shoulder.
“We’ll get him back Shiro.”