Chapter Text
"This is not real. It's a trick, another Bob game. Now that guy will suddenly appear, and I'll be back in his damn TV studio..."
But it didn't matter how many times Lance repeated it to himself; he remained inside the Red Lion, his arm itching and a face he didn't recognise.
Oh, his face was still his. Nothing so dramatic had happened. But there were differences: there were scars on his lip and neck that weren't there before, and his eyes were now so bright blue that they weren't normal.
And he wasn't. Because apparently his father was a god, and Lance's whole life was a lie.
Shiro knew it, but he hadn't told him anything.
He leaned his forehead against the cold console.
"Hey, girl. If I were stuck in an illusion, you'd tell me, wouldn't you?"
The buzz he felt from his bond with Red made him realise it was a yes. He took a trembling breath. "How can it be that everything I remember isn't real? I... maybe there are gaps, but I've taken a lot of blows to the head, and head trauma can cause amnesia, right? I mean... it shouldn't be that bad... but I don't remember my last name, or even Hunk or Pidge... I don't remember my mother... if nothing I remember is true... then who am I?"
Unfortunately, Red couldn't give him an answer. Maybe she was wondering too. Maybe she was wondering who the hell her paladin was.
Good question; Lance would really like to know how to answer.
"Sorry, Red. I know it must be difficult..."
He never finished the sentence because the Green Lion had just attacked him.
When the Green Lion attacked the Red Lion, Keith cursed. He laid his hands on the console, and Shiro, behind him, said, "Be careful. Pidge is not himself. He is the eidolon."
"I can't let her kill Lance, though!" the paladin snapped, ready to attack. Only to find the Yellow Lion in front of him acting as a shield.
"I can't believe it... even Hunk?!"
"Stay in control," Shiro urged. "Contact Allura."
"Unless she was also possessed by a ghost!"
"Eidolons are not ghosts. They are possessing spirits..."
"I don't care what the hell those things are!" Keith interrupted him abruptly. "How do we get rid of them?"
Shiro hesitated. "We can force them to abandon a body, as Allura did. They are weak to charmspeak, but none of us can use it... “
At that moment, the communicator trilled. Keith replied, "Allura?"
"The eidolon is back. Romelle is possessed... no, Romelle, no. Put that down..."
Keith clenched his fist. "And Coran?"
"He's trying to keep Romelle at bay, but she's so much stronger than he is. He keeps babbling that they're going to rise again."
"Whoever their master is, they must have promised them that they will be able to keep the bodies they are possessing," Shiro realised. He noticed that Keith shuddered. He must have just understood what he had risked.
"So? Can you help?" Keith pressed on, impatiently, as Green and Red struggled a little further on. The Red Lion was holding his own against the other Lion; he could have easily subdued him. If Jason wanted to. But he wouldn't, because it would have meant hurting Pidge. And if there was one thing that would have ruined the son of Jupiter, it was his kindness.
"I think... Coran!"
The conversation stopped, and Keith slammed his hands on the console. When he looked up, Shiro reminded him of his father.
"We are alone. I will have to take care of it."
"Keith, those aren't Hunk and Pidge. They're not going to fight like them."
Keith gave him a dirty look. "Good for me, then. I won't have to go slow."
Keith drove the massive machine forward with a desperation that bordered on reckless, the metal shrieking as he slammed his claws into the Yellow Lion’s flank. The eidolon possessing Hunk responded with a brutality that mirrored Keith's own, swinging the Yellow Lion’s weight with a terrifying precision. There was no hesitation in the Yellow Lion's movements, no flicker of Hunk's usual gentleness. It was a raw, predatory dance of gold and obsidian, each blow landing with a force that shook the cockpit.
A little further on, the struggle between Red and Green was a study in contrast. The Green Lion was a blur of aggressive strikes and tactical lunges, while the Red Lion drifted backward, absorbing hits and parrying with a reluctant grace. Jason was fighting a losing battle of attrition, refusing to engage the Green Lion with the full lethality of the Red Lion's weaponry.
"Keith, your pulse is spiking," Shiro’s voice cut through the roar of the battle, steady but concerned. "The tension is making you predictable. Use the 'Sling-Shot' maneuver; pivot right, distract the Yellow Lion, and drive yourself straight toward Lance. If you can knock the Green Lion away from Red, we might have a window to intervene."
"You think I haven't tried that?" Keith snapped, his fingers dancing across the controls to execute a violent bank to the right. "The thing in Hunk is reading my movements before I even make them! It's blocking every path to Lance! Why do Lions allow themselves to be piloted when they are not Hunk and Pidge?!"
"But they are," Shiro reminded him. "Right now, it's them. That's why I told you that they're not ghosts but..."
"Do me after mythology class. Not now!" Keith yelled at him, attacking the Yellow Lion.
The Yellow Lion roared and slammed its massive paw into the Black Lion’s shoulder. The impact sent a shudder through the entire chassis, throwing Keith forward against his harness. He gritted his teeth, the frustration boiling over into a cold, hard determination.
Shiro opened his mouth to offer a tactical correction, his voice urgent, but the words were swallowed by a sudden, violent ripple in the fabric of space.
An expression of pure horror made its way across Keith's face. "It can't be... that's..."
"A quantum abyss," Shiro finished, feeling the same horror Keith was feeling.
Because the Red and the Green Lion were just about to end up in it.
With a sudden, violent surge of propulsion, the Green Lion slammed its weight into the Red Lion’s flank. The impact wasn't meant to crush, but to catapult. Jason barely had time to register the shift in momentum before the Red Lion was launched backward, hurtling straight into the shimmering, iridescent maw of the quantum abyss.
Then, without a flicker of hesitation, the Green Lion dove in after him.
The Red Lion vanished into the shimmering void like a stone dropped into a mirror, followed a heartbeat later by the Green Lion. There was no explosion, no scream of rending metal; only a sudden, suffocating silence that felt heavier than the vacuum of space.
"No!" Keith yelled and gave maximum power to the thrusters, managing to break away from the Yellow Lion and go straight towards the quantum abyss.
"Keith, stop! You don't know what's going to be there!"
"I know there are Lances and Pidge!" the paladin yelled back, continuing to run toward the abyss.
The Yellow Lion tried to block him; it lunged with a predatory desperation, its massive claws scraping across the Black Lion’s hull in a screech of rending alloy.
Keith had no time for it. In a violent, spiralling maneuver, the Black Lion gripped the Yellow Lion’s shoulder, locking them together in a crushing embrace.
"You're coming with us!" Keith roared. He didn't brake. He didn't hesitate. He drove the Black Lion straight into the shimmering maw, dragging the struggling Yellow Lion along like a reluctant anchor.
The Yellow Lion didn’t surrender easily. As the event horizon of the quantum abyss began to warp the stars into jagged ribbons of light, the machine lunged one last time, a desperate attempt to tear itself free or knock the Black Lion off course. But Keith had already locked them in a death-grip. The metal groaned, a visceral, screeching protest of alloy against alloy, as Keith forced the trajectory.
Beside him, Shiro felt the world dissolve. The cockpit had become a centrifuge of impossible colors, and the laws of physics were peeling away like old wallpaper. Shiro squeezed his eyes shut.
"Please, father. Guide us in this..."
All he had in response was the sound of machine guns in his mind.
Lance moaned, his head throbbing. He was lying on something soft and moist, tickling his skin.
Consciousness gradually returned. He was complaining to Red, then the Green Lion had attacked them. He had tried to contact Pidge, without success.
And then, the abyss...
Noises, as well as footsteps. Lance tried to force his elbows to get up. His head still hurt.
Around him, there seemed to be very tall trees, so tall that they darkened the sky; you couldn't see a palm from his nose, and Lance had to strain his eyes a lot to get at least some idea of where he was.
"Mommy?"
At the sound of that voice, the voice of a child, Lance turned around with difficulty. There was also a child there, perhaps about two years old, a shirt too big for him, who walked around, rubbing his eyes with his little hands.
Looking at him, Lance felt an excruciatingly familiar pain, even if he didn't know why.
"Mommy? Thalia?"
"I'm sorry, little one, it's just me..."
But the child didn't seem to hear him. Ah, right. He was in the quantum abyss. What he was seeing was not real.
(It had been, or will be. Keith hadn't been very clear about what had happened and what he had seen while he was there with his mother, and Lance just wanted to insist more, shake him until he was forced to listen to him, damn it, for a fucking time...)
"Mhm... this would be the champion Juno talks about so much?"
Lance felt a lump in his throat when a huge she-wolf emerged from the darkness, half the size of the Red Lion; behind her, other wolves, smaller.
However, despite the anxiety of such a young child surrounded by predators, a part of Lance knew that they would not hurt him.
The child was safe with the wolves. They were his.
The she-wolf ducked to sniff the child, who sobbed softly, but did not move. It was a moment that seemed to Lance to last an eternity.
But in the end, the she-wolf ruled, "You're not going to join humans, pup. You're going to be with us for a while. “
"Thalia?" the boy asked again, staring at the she-wolf as if she had all the answers in the world.
"No Greek is allowed here, pup. Now we are your family. No wolf survives alone; the pack survives. Do you know what that means?"
The child was too young to understand the concept, and he shook his head. The she-wolf explained, "Now you're part of a pack. The pack is always there for the pack..."
“… we all work together to be stronger; we support and care for each other," Lance said at the same time as the she-wolf.
He somehow knew what he was going to say. This made him suspicious of who the child in front of the she-wolf might be.
The she-wolf looked satisfied. "Come with us. It's not good for pups to be alone."
The child didn’t hesitate. He followed her. At that point, faced with such idiocy, Lance no longer had any doubts about who he was.
"Holy quiznack..."
He didn't even have time to realise what he had just seen when he felt a tremendous twinge in his head that made him bend in two in pain.
He heard a male voice laughing inside his mind, "Oh, poor, lonely son of Jupiter. Abandoned by the gods, mocked by mortals... happiness is always out of your reach. Let me show you a couple of things, boy..."
It was as if a hundred pins were being thrust into his eyeballs and temples at the same time; the pain was worse than when Lotor's generals tried to torture him.
He opened his mouth, but no scream came out, and the pain made him lose consciousness again.
It was becoming a really bad habit.
When he woke up, there was no sign of either the Black Lion or the others, and Shiro was in a place he knew well: the temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus at the Temple Hill in New Rome.
"Dear Mars, this must be a joke," he muttered as he leaned against one of the columns to get up. The statue of the king of the gods stared at him sternly, as if to reproach him for having failed so much with his son. Yeah, Lord Jupiter, he already knew. He is trying, okay?
"Shiro?" Keith mumbled, waking up. "Where are we?"
"This is the temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus in New Rome," he replied, holding out his hand to help him get up. Keith didn't take it, looking to the side and doing it with his own strength, which, to tell the truth, at that moment was not that much. The paladin looked around, looking for something. Not finding it, he turned to Shiro. "Where's Lance?"
"I don't know."
"Where are the Lions?"
"I don't know, Keith."
"Why are we here?"
"I don't know," he repeated, for the umpteenth time. He hated him, but never as much as Keith hated it. Whoever was responsible for opening the quantum abyss had a plan, and he didn't like them getting in the way.
"Is there anything you know?!" Keith blurted out, giving him poisonous glances that might have been effective, if Shiro hadn't received disapproving looks from the literal god of war. At that moment, Keith looked like a very bald wolf cub.
"Picking on me won't do any good, nor will it get us wherever Lance and the others are," he said, as Mars screamed so many insults at Keith that Shiro was quite impressed. "Whoever is behind it has a certain sense of humour, making us wake up here."
"Is this Bob's doing?"
"I..."
"No, you know there is. Don't answer," the paladin cut short, "I don't want to hear from you again that you don't know."
The boy looked around with a critical look. He lingered on the statue of the god, with looks of equal disapproval between the two.
Keith crossed his arms over his chest. "So, this is supposed to be Lance's father? I don't see the resemblance."
"Gods can change their appearance, Keith," the demigod sighed, knowing that he would have to deal with a very slippery subject. "This is just one of the forms by which the Romans know Jupiter best."
"And Lance? What form does he know him by?" he asked him, and Shiro knew, even before he said it, that Keith would not like to hear the answer, "Jason has never met Jupiter."
Keith turned his head towards him at such speed that Shiro feared he would end up breaking something. The paladin was completely livid. "What do you mean you never met him? He's his father."
"Everyone who lives at Camp Jupiter knows that meeting a god is very rare, and they hope that their godly parents will look up to them and be proud of them..."
"It's bullshit."
"Keith..."
"The gods have no problem associating with mortals," he continued, giving him an eloquent glance. "They could also, I don't know, use two minutes to meet their children. It's not that there are many, since they are immortal."
"Keith, it's not that simple. Even the gods have to submit to the rules..."
The other snorted, "To me it just seems like a way of not taking their responsibilities. Jupiter had children with a mortal woman..."
"Son," Shiro corrected him, "Jason has no other siblings. There are no others."
Keith frowned. "Lance has siblings. He talks about it all the time."
"They never existed. All the life Jason thought he had was a..."
"Lance."
Shiro was going to have a headache. "Keith, we've already talked about it."
"Yes, and you didn't listen. Jason is not his name. It's Lance."
"It's not. It's another fake thing, like his memories, like his family, like everything else," Shiro pointed around them. "This is real. This was his life before. He's a demigod, and nothing, not even fake memories, will change who he is."
Keith followed Shiro's gesture with his eyes, his lips tightened into a thin line. He emanated disappointment from every pore. But when he opened his mouth, instead of saying what exactly he thought about what Shiro had said, he yelled, "Shiro, down!"
Shiro threw himself to the side, moving Keith with him, before a cannon shot hit them.
From behind one of the columns, the eidolon in Hunk's body emerged, the bayard still smoking.
"Oh, look at you," the eidolon sneered, the voice coming out of Hunk’s throat as a distorted, oily rasp. It didn't step out from behind the column so much as it slinked, the heavy armour of the Paladin moving with a fluid, predatory grace that defied physics. "The great son of Mars! What a shame that you can't do even a quest so simple."
Shiro stiffened. " Let go of his body."
"Why should I? My mistress promised me a new life. She promised it to me and to others. We are the strongest, the ones who could get here to bring the son of Jupiter where he was supposed to be."
"Your mistress?" Keith asked, squinting at him, his hand close to the bayard.
The eidolon laughed, "Don't worry about her, mortal. She wouldn't waste her time with someone like you."
This served to make Keith angrier. "Don't you think I'm a problem? I'll show you."
Keith didn’t wait for a reply. He whipped the bayard, the device shimmering and expanding into a jagged blade in a heartbeat. He lunged forward, a blur of concentrated aggression, swinging the blade in a lethal arc toward the eidolon’s neck. But the creature in Hunk’s armour didn't block or retreat; it flowed. With a sickening, fluid snap of its torso, the eidolon leaned back—nearly touching the marble floor—and let the blade whistle mere millimetres above its visor.
As Keith overextended, the eidolon sprang upward with an agility that mocked the yellow armour's bulk. It landed softly, laughing that distorted, oily rasp. "So much fire, so little focus," the creature sneered, dancing backward. "You don't know anything about this man at all. You didn't even know about Jason. Not that it's a surprise. Why would Shiro tell you about the child he had abandoned?"
Keith lost his balance, which the eidolon took advantage of to hit him in the face. The paladin took a few steps back, his ears ringing. He spat blood on the ground. "What?"
The eidolon's golden eyes lit up with glee. "What, didn't you hear me? Shiro didn't do his duty well. He was supposed to stay with Jason until the end of his time in the legion. But he didn't. He abandoned him. Not that it's a surprise; you know him after all. What will surprise you most is why he did it..."
"Enough!" Shiro’s voice cracked like a whip across the temple. He didn’t use a weapon; he didn't need one for this. He lunged, his prosthetic arm whistling through the air, and connected with a sickening metallic crunch right against the eidolon’s jaw. The force of the blow sent the creature skidding across the marble, its golden eyes flickering with a distorted mirth.
The eidolon didn't recoil in pain. Instead, it began to laugh, a wet, rattling sound that echoed off the high ceilings. "Ah, there he is! The protector!" the creature sneered, wiping a smudge of oil and ichor from its visor. "You really are a true hero, Shiro. One like the old ones. You are the same as Theseus, or Heracles. They left behind the things and the people who are no longer useful to them. The first Jason was also like this...do you remember Medea?"
The mention of the first Jason snapped something in Shiro. He launched himself, his movements blurring into a streak of silver and white. He rained blows upon the creature, each strike intended to silence that rattling laugh, to erase the smirk from the face of a dead friend. For a few breathless seconds, the eidolon was nothing more than a punching bag of golden armour, pinned against the marble by the sheer weight of Shiro’s desperation.
As Shiro wound up for a final, crushing blow, the eidolon didn't dodge; it pivoted. With a sudden, cruel flick of the wrist, it activated the bayard’s discharge mechanism. A concussive blast of kinetic energy erupted directly into Shiro’s chest. The impact sounded like a thunderclap, sending Shiro hurtling backward. He hit a massive Corinthian column with a bone-jarring crack, the marble spider-webbing behind his shoulder as he slumped to the floor, gasping for air.
The eidolon didn’t rush to finish the fight. Instead, it slowly turned its visor toward Keith, who was scrambling to his feet, teeth gritted and eyes blazing. The creature’s posture was mocking, its arms hanging loose as it looked upon the red paladin with a clinical, predatory curiosity.
"Oh, you don't know", the eidolon rasped, the voice echoing hollowly within Hunk’s helmet. "You are his biggest mistake, mortal. One that could cost New Rome everything..."
It didn't end the sentence.
One moment, the eidolon was mocking him. The next, a pair of slender, luminous hands clamped firmly onto the sides of the yellow helmet. The grip was absolute, and as the fingers tightened, a surge of iridescent white light erupted from the touch points, blinding and absolute.
The creature inside Hunk’s armour let out a strangled, guttural shriek. Allura’s eyes were twin stars, glowing with an ancient, lunar intensity that burned through the metaphysical haze of the temple. With a sound like a shattering mirror, the eidolon left Hunk's body, which fell on Allura, almost crushing her.
"Princess, are you okay?"
"I'm fine, Keith," she gasped, trying not to be crushed by Hunk's near-senseless body. "Could you help me with him?"
Keith was immediately at her side. He asked, "Coran and Romelle?"
"I don't know. But before I followed you into the quantum abyss, I had managed to chase away the eidolon that possessed Romelle."
"Did you follow us?" he asked, incredulous.
She smiled. "My whole team was leaving without me. I wouldn't have been left behind."
With difficulty, Shiro stood up, limping towards them. Keith looked at him, a grim expression. "Is it true what the eidolon said? That you abandoned Lance."
Shiro didn't answer, his complexion too pale. Keith growled, "So? Is that true?"
Another pause, then, "It wasn't my choice."
Keith mocked him, "Oh, but you made choices, didn't you? One so big that you got everyone in trouble, and I had something to do with it too. What was it about? What did you have..."
"As much as I have questions, too," Allura said, interjecting in the argument, "We have to find the others and get out of here. Keith, you've already been in a quantum abyss. What are we to do?"
The paladin clenched his jaw. "I'm not sure. When I was in the abyss, time was fluid. I was passing by at any moment without being able to do much."
"But we were stuck here for a long time. As if we couldn't leave."
As if they were prisoners.
It was something Shiro had also thought. They had been split up on purpose. They were kept away from Jason for a specific reason.
They had to find him, and quickly.
Keith looked back at the statue of Jupiter. "Maybe there's a way to go somewhere else..."
"Keith, you're not really thinking of what I think, are you?"
Keith rolled his eyes. "It's just a statue; what's the worst thing that could happen to me?"
"To be electrocuted on the spot, turned to stone, condemned to end up in the Underworld, the liver eaten by an eagle..."
He could have gone on for a while before Keith cut it short, "Maybe if we were on Earth. But we have bigger problems here than worrying about Lance's father's ego. If we destroy the statue and the wall that supports it, we could end up at some other time in the past and maybe find the others."
"It's worth a try," Allura agreed, and she certainly didn't mind irritating the king of the gods.
On the other hand, what Jupiter didn’t know would not have hurt him, and they had more important things to take care of.
"You just want an excuse to make a mess in the temple of Jupiter," Shiro accused Keith, and the paladin didn't even have the decency to look mortified.
"Do you have any other brilliant ideas?" he pressed, and Shiro was forced to admit that no, he didn't.
"Good. I'll proceed," Keith said, a twinkle in his eye that gave him a manic air.
Many in New Rome would have been horrified by the sight of the statue of Jupiter desecrated in that way in his own temple.
Those people had never had to deal with a pissed-off Keith, and it was better that way.
"Urgh… what happened?" Hunk groaned when he was lucid enough.
"You've been possessed by an eidolon," Shiro told him.
"Oh..."
"And now we're inside a quantum abyss," the princess added.
Hunk blinked. "What?"
"It's a long story, but we have to find the others before..."
A dull noise: Keith's last slash had destroyed the statue. Behind it, the void.
"Well, it seems like there's only one thing to do," and with that, he lunged inside, ignoring Shiro yelling Keith, stop.
If he didn't already know that Keith was 100% mortal, without a drop of divine blood in his veins, Shiro would have thought he was somehow related to him.
"Should we follow him?" Hunk's voice was small as he asked.
Shiro restrained himself from moaning. "I'm afraid there's no other way out of here."
"So we risk ending up stuck forever in the cosmic void?" the yellow paladin asked again, nervously.
"I guess we'll find out."
"I'd really rather not do that..." As he said this, more cracks began to open on the walls of the temple. It was obvious to everyone that the choice came down to throwing yourself into the gap or waiting for the whole room to crumble and end up who knows where.
"I'll go," he reassured Hunk, and with his father's approval, screamed by booms and gunshots, Shiro jumped.
"Don't you care what happens to him? That woman is not stable."
The man glanced at her, bored and indifferent. "You already know the rules."
"Rules that you have not respected. A Greek and a Roman in the same family is unprecedented. They will kill each other if the mother does not do it first."
"This will determine who is the strongest."
"The girl was already there. There was no need for someone else."
"And leave the possibility that our brother's son will fulfil the prophecy? No, woman. I will not allow him to have the glory."
"It must have been useless anyway, because the boy won't make it to sixteen."
"So, better in this way," the coldness with which she said it made the woman make a complex expression, "The sons are more of a problem than anything else. If he dies before he is a threat to me, I won't have to kill him."
"It's a child."
"It's a son of mine, Juno. I thought you'd be over the moon about his death. You certainly didn't mind trying to kill Hercules when he was still in the cradle."
There was poison in his voice, anger that coincided with the thunder that was heard shortly after.
She didn't react. "This child is the future of Olympus. He has to live."
"If he is the future, the Fates will make sure he survives."
"Or, you could entrust him to me."
He looked at her suspiciously. "So you can grow my replacement? You've already tried once."
"So that he has a chance to live. Give him to me. You don't want the child, and I haven't had any heroes of my own for ages. “
A snort. "You want a hero. Do you want to ruin it as you did with the first Jason?"
"This time, it will be different."
"Different, you say... and be it, the boy is yours. It will be another failure, like the others."
"He will be something that even you can't predict."
"Under your protection? I doubt it."
"Lance, a letter has arrived for you..."
The sprint he made could have guaranteed him an Olympic gold medal. Lance ran to the door – except he's not running into a house; he's running into a forest. Something's chasing him; it's hurting, it hurts – and he knows his life could change at any moment.
He arrives at the door – he stumbles, blood al over him – and his mother – there is no one, he is alone – smiles at him.
He takes the letter with trembling hands and...
"Don't make things more difficult, son of Jupiter. You would have done well to just give up."
He met his best friend while he was vomiting after a flight simulation.
"Hey, do you need help?" he asked the boy who was bent over outside the classroom.
When the latter looked up, his eyes shining, "Um... do you have something for your face? Do I feel like crap?"
"Of course! Here!" he handed him a handkerchief. "What's your name? I am..."
Bzzz….bzzz…bzzz….
The girl looked at him with a gaze too sharp for someone her age. The wounds on her arms were still bleeding, and he knew that she absolutely needed to go to the hospital.
"I won't hurt you," he said, raising his hands, showing her he had no weapons. "Lupa’s trials are over. You've arrived at Camp Jupiter. You don't have to fight anymore."
"And should I trust you? Who are you?"
"I am a centurion of the fifth cohort, son of Jupiter," he introduced himself, but the girl made a mocking cry, "I don't want your CV. I want your name."
"Oh... my name is..."
The wind picked up, the noise drowning out whatever she was saying. But the girl seemed to have heard anyway.
She lowered his improvised sword. "Your name literally means saving grace. Did you know?"
"They might have told me a couple of times," he admitted, still smiling, ignoring that family thick with inadequacy. To be a saving grace, he had not done much good work. Shiro had had to leave because of him.
"You said your father is Jupiter."
"Yes, he is," he replied, with a surge of pride.
She became wary. "My mother is Bellona."
"Oh, there's a temple of Bellona on Temple Hill."
"Have you nothing else to say?"
"Like, if she had already claimed you? But if you know..."
"I know very well what reputation my mother has. Don't you really have any problems?" she yelled at him, eyes that would have incinerated anyone.
He blinked, confused. "Why should I have any? All the demigods have a home here."
"Only if you're strong."
"And you are. If anyone were to make a fuss about your mother, I'll beat them. Or..." he said quickly, seeing her frown, "We'll beat them together."
"You're weird..."
“… uh, sorry?"
"You're kind," she continued, and it wasn't an accusation, but it was clear that it was confusing her a lot. "You're a boy, you're a Roman, and you're kind."
"Why shouldn't I be?" Now it was his turn to be confused.
"Because you are a Roman! And you are the son of Jupiter."
He turned up his nose. "My father is the god of justice. And I don't like bullies."
The girl looked at him for a long time – Hunk, my name is Hunk, I think you are my new roommate – and finally said, "My name is Reyna. You said you're a centurion in the fifth cohort, right?"
He was trying to do his homework when Luiz put the music on full volume.
"Luiz! Turn the volume down!"
But his brother ignored him, and Lance yelled again, "Luiz! If you don't turn the volume down, I'll tell Mom!"
"Oh, come on, little brother, you..."
There was no one with him. He was in front of a boy with wheat-colored hair, in the middle of a grove. The music had just stopped.
"Do you like it?" the boy asked him, his golden hair falling in front of him.
He found himself blushing. He was one of the nicest people he had ever seen. But it would be disrespectful to stare without saying anything.
"Mhm... yes! I liked it a lot, lord Apollo..."
The boy smiled and seemed to mean it. "You can call me Apollo. After all, we're brothers."
"Oh, I don't know if I should..."
Apollo made an amused verse, "Romans. You're always so rigid about certain things. Well, it doesn't help that you haven't seen a god in a long time..."
He paused, looking at him with an intense gaze. "Did you really like the song?"
"Yes, lord... um... Apollo," he corrected himself at last, "I... it would be too much to ask... could you play it again?"
Apollo looked at him, as if looking for signs of deception. He found none, and this surprised him.
"You really like it," he said, his voice full of wonder, and something else he couldn't figure out what it was.
"Why shouldn't I like it? It was so beautiful."
"My audience is usually rather... demanding, if you want to say so," the blond teen nervously bit his lip. "This song is a one-off. I don't play it often. “
"I'll make sure I repay your kindness," he said, seriously, the way Shiro had taught him.
All that solemnity seemed wasted, though, as Apollo laughed, "Oh dear me. You're adorable! How our father produced such a cute son is beyond me. You don't need to repay me for anything... JasonoLanceJasonLanceJason....you're lucky. I'm in a good mood today. You'll hear the whole song! Get ready. Three... two... one..."
Lance woke up to the sweet sound of a string instrument still in his ears. It was a sad, emotional melody that moved something inside him. He knew that song. He was sure he could continue humming it alone. But he didn't remember where he had heard it, like when you realise that a song is playing on the radio and then you get distracted.
When he opened his eyes, the music disappeared, replaced by a croaking male voice: "Wake up, son of Jupiter."
"I have a name," Lance complained as he looked around.
He looked up and realised he wasn't in a room at all, but suspended beneath a ceiling of fractured light. High above, the sky—or what passed for a sky here—was scarred with mirror-like blue gashes that pulsed with a slow, rhythmic luminescence. They looked like wounds in the atmosphere, leaking a cold, electric brilliance that cast long, distorted shadows across the floor.
As Lance shifted his weight, he noticed the space around him wasn't empty. He was standing in a gallery of ghosts. To his left, a shimmering, translucent image played on a loop: he saw himself and the others, breathless and terrified, stumbling upon the colossal, sleeping form of the Blue Lion. To his right, a girl with a determined jaw was steering a rugged jeep through a wasteland of red dust. He blinked, a spark of recognition hitting him; he knew her, or at least he felt the shadow of a memory of her, though the name remained just out of reach. Further still, there were fragments of things that hadn't happened yet, jagged, incomprehensible shapes and sounds that felt like a language he had forgotten how to speak.
"You're awfully confident for someone who's lost his map," the croaking voice teased. The speaker remained hidden, the sound echoing as if it were coming from every blue gash in the ceiling at once. "You don't even know what your name is."
"I know," Lance snapped, though his voice sounded thin. "My name is Lance."
"Oh, no, son of Jupiter. Your father named you Jason to appease Juno's wrath. Everyone needs Jason. Who needs a Lance?"
Lance felt a sudden, cold vacuum open in his chest. The voice was right, in a way that felt like a betrayal. He thought of the other Paladins, and the lingering suspicion that he was the same kind of accessory as a spare tire: necessary only when something else had already failed. He wondered if he had been born too loud, too desperate for a gaze that always seemed to slide past him. If he had been quieter, perhaps he would have been invisible enough to be safe.
If only he were a good son of Rome, quiet, silent, following orders...
He came back to reality like a slap. What was that?
"You are a tragedy," the voice said, the sound now vibrating through the soles of Lance's feet. "The gods played you like a reed pipe, and the mortals followed suit. You were the designed weapon, the shield, the sacrificial lamb. And the second you showed you were broken...they didn't try to mend you. They simply stepped over you to find someone more intact. Like that Keith."
He clenched his fists, stung in pride.
"I'm not broken," he snapped, ignoring the acrid feeling of anger at being compared to Keith again.
"Are you sure, son of Jupiter? Is there anything you know about yourself, of which you are sure?"
Lance opened his mouth to answer, but the words wouldn't form. He tried to reach for a memory—something simple, like the smell of his mother’s kitchen or the way the wind felt on the coast—but the thoughts were like wet soap, sliding through his fingers the moment he tried to grip them. The more he strained, the more the void grew. It wasn't just that he had forgotten; it was as if the very concept of Lance was being erased, replaced by the hollow shell of a Roman soldier he didn't remember being.
A sharp, electric pang shot through his temples, mirroring the pulsing gashes in the ceiling. His heart hammered against his ribs, a frantic bird trapped in a cage, and he could swear he heard his own voice laughing back at him, not from his throat, but from the air around him, mocking the desperation in his eyes. The voice of the entity sounded satisfied, tasting the flavour of his doubt.
Then, a sound erupted from the depths of his subconscious. The vibration was fierce, hot, and uncompromising, smelling of ozone and ancient fire.
Red Lion.
It was true. Lance wasn’t so sure about who he was. He wasn’t sure about a lot of things.
But there was one thing about which, despite everything, he was sure.
"I am the paladin of the Red Lion," he declared, looking up. "I am a paladin of Voltron, protector of the Universe. That's who I am."
For a few seconds, the voice replied with nothing, so much so that Lance believed he had won.
Unfortunately for him, it was not so.
"You're just like Jackson," the voice snapped, full of anger that made everything around Lance tremble. Who the hell was Jackson now? "Looks like I'm going to have to work harder to break you."
Lance felt like something was being dragged by his shoulders. He tried to resist with all his might, but he was the loser. He fell backwards, as if dragged by hundreds of hands.
The last thing he heard was, "This is what awaits you, son of Jupiter. This is what the gods have decided for you... Whatever future you see, whatever time you visit, it will always be the same. You are not destined for happiness."