Chapter Text
Too slowly she remembered where she was. What had happened. It was like wading through water. The shore was close, but not close enough. Waves crashed around her. They buzzed in her ears
No. It wasn't waves. It couldn't be. There was no shore, no water. The image faded.
There was a dull ache behind Pidge's eyes as she regained consciousness. She shivered. The lion was cold. And dark. Too long. It took her too long to realise the buzzing had continued.
She rubbed her face and looked around the lion. The helmet she'd discarded was where she had left it. She could hear the static through the coms clearer now. It felt wrong. More wrong than perhaps it should have. The view from the lion was nearly completely obstructed now. She supposed that was why the coms weren't working.
Carefully, she moved to tug the blanket from the locker by the sleeping area in the lion. Pain lanced down her side as she did, flaring in her knee. As she wrapped the blanket around herself and eased herself back onto the floor where she'd been sitting, it hit her.
Why the buzzing felt wrong.
Whose voice the static had replaced.
"Shiro!"
She grabbed for the helmet, wincing at the protest her side made. She shouted down the line, but all she received in return was the same dull crackling.
He'd been talking. Why was he silent now?
It's the weather, the rational part of the paladin's mind told her. It's just because of the weather.
However, she couldn't bring herself to believe it.
There was something else.
The same tiny shred of self that had been sure to remind her something was wrong, to gnaw at her insides until she'd found what is was. The same gentle voice that occasionally echoed at the back of her mind. That was the other voice that whispered in her mind. Not strictly hers, but that of the green lion. Her green lion.
The quiet purr turned into a steady rumble. From one lion for another. For her sister lion, stranded out there somewhere in the snow. Pidge sat up straighter. Her knee could wait. She dug around in the darkness until her hand clasped around what she was looking for. Quickly she pulled her laptop out onto her lap, the bright light of the screen illuminating the lion as the machine surged to life. All she needed was a signal. Then she could find them; both Shiro and his lion.
But there was nothing.
"Please," she breathed, paying a hand against the freezing metal of her lion, "I know you're spent but please... I need your help..."
A beat of silence.
Then a light.
A small signal on the dashboard of the cockpit. The signal that told her the lion had been listening, that it was searching. She smiled faintly as a map gradually formed on her laptop. It was slower than usual, though the paladin didn't mind. Part of her wished it would go quicker, but the fact it was going at all was enough for her.
Minutes that seemed to drag like hours ticked by. Pidge watched as the map seemed to load like an internet page with crappy connection. It showed each ridge, hill and cavern on the planet. A few swipes of the scanner later, several dots appeared on the map.
One slightly larger than the rest sat nearby. It was a little brighter than the others, it's position not changing. The black lion. It had to be. Just beyond that one, in a cavern to the north, five smaller dots blinked to life. Two seemed to hover by the entrance, while the other three stayed inside. She hoped they weren't galran, but she knew her luck was running out.
Pidge's eyes stayed glued to the screen a little longer before setting the laptop aside. Carefully, she once again tested her knee. The throbbing didn't subside, flaring when she straightened and bent her leg.
Get to the black lion.
She had to get there.
She knew where it was. Had committed its location to memory as she had countless lines of code and formulas and stars and constellations.
She knew where it was.
And that was all she needed to know.
The snow was deep as the green paladin trekked through it. Whether just from numbing cold or her impromptu first aid, the pain in her knee had stopped flaring with every step. Using the light from her laptop, she had managed to find the small first aid kit kept in each lion; a recently new addition, but a welcome one nonetheless. With it she had fashioned a brace for her knee. Though she would have to put up with the pain burning in her ribs.
Painkillers hadn't quite reached deep space yet. Despite every part of her wanting to run, she remembered the winters spent snowball fighting with Matt. She remembered the time he had fallen down a hill hidden by the snow and sprained his ankle. That was the last thing she needed.
One saving grace, however, was that the weather began to calm. Slowly. But without a doubt. She could see more than a foot in front of her, and when she reached it, could see the hunking mound of snow that could only have been made by a lion of Voltron.
A glint of black metal shine at the top of the mound, reaffirming Pidge's thoughts.
"Shiro!" She called, the wind seeming to give way to her voice.
She received no answer.
And so began carefully climbing up to the hatch of the lion. She brushed the snow aside carefully before pulling on the hatch. The metal was like ice. The coldness burnt through her gloves as she opened the hatch. It felt heavier than that of her own lion, though she didn't stop until it was open.
"Shiro?"
The lion was pitch black as Pidge climbed down into it. Her breath clouded in front of her.
She was alone.
The lion was empty.
He wasn’t here.
Why wasn’t he here?
Pidge searched the lion as if its paladin was going to be discovered hiding in one of the lockers. Her search turned up nothing. There was no sign of him. No sign that he had ever even been here. Her coms remained silent. The fear she felt steadily creeping up the back of her neck was an effort to push back, but she could do nothing else.
Think.
She had to calm down and she had to think.
People didn’t just disappear.
Think.
He had been talking to her.
What had he said?
Think.
Think.
Think.
Stay Put.
Coming to find you.
Make my way to you.
Stay put.
He hadn’t listened.
Of course he hadn’t listened.
She needed to find him. Now.
She needed to find him now.
Wasting no time, she climbed back out of the lion, carefully hopping down into the snow.
“I’ll find him,” she promised to the lion as she patted its side, “I’ll bring him back.”
And then she set off.
The map her lion had all but gifted her stuck strong in her mind. The cavern it had showed her was not far off, and the snow was falling softer now.
“Hold on Shiro,” Pidge muttered as she continued on her journey, “Just hold on.”
Voices thrummed in the space around him. Where the space was exactly he didn’t know. But it was cold.
Numbingly cold. Cold that blocked out anything else. It clung to everything like a thick smoke, sitting heavy on his chest.
Or maybe that was something else.
There was a gentle crackling. Though it seemed far away. But he felt like he was on fire. It felt like every inch of him burnt. He was burning.
But he couldn’t move.
Couldn’t bring his eyes to open.
He thought he heard a low rumble in the back of his head, but it faded to nothing as darkness took over once again.
Pidge slowed as she reached the crest of the snowy hill facing the cavern.
She lowered herself to the ground, not exactly feeling the chilly bite of the snow as she all but submerged herself into it.
Thank God for the helmet, the paladin had thought to herself as she'd shuffled through the snow, the helmet preventing her hair from getting completely soaked through. She couldn't help but wander if the blue paladin's armour would have served her better in the snow.
It had been slow going. The snow seemed thicker than what they got on Earth. Heavier almost. More like badly mashed potato than snow. Potato that had been left on the side for too long and was now compacted together.
But she had made it. And now here she was.
The cavern sat ahead of her. Two Galra soldiers stood at the entrance, blasters in their hands and eyes on the horizon. A small ship sat half buried in the snow nearby.
Good.
That meant they must be stranded here too. They wouldn't be able to leave until the ship was clear of the snow.
But the snow wouldn't be here in another hour or two. And the weather was clearing.
They would leave soon. And if they had Shiro...
Pidge took a long, deep breath, closing her eyes and steeling herself. Forcing her heartbeat to calm. The other paladins were still unresponsive. Her lion was silent. Lions both black and green were exhausted.
It was up to her. Her and only her.
She could do this.
She would do this.
Doing anything else was not an option.
Her eyes opened, narrowing in thought as she fixed her gaze on the guards at the cavern.
Her fingers curled, her suit humming quietly in anticipation of what was coming.
And it's weight a steady comfort in her hand, she drew her bayard.