Work Text:
“You should sleep, you know?”
Pidge startled so badly that they nearly sent their laptop flying off the table. They fumbled for it desperately but their reflexes were ruined by exhaustion and they couldn’t get a hold on it and it was going to shatter on the floor –
A hand caught the computer just before it could hit the ground. Hunk passed it back, a guilty smile on his face. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you.”
“I guess I… just didn’t hear you come in,” the Green Paladin murmured, placing the laptop carefully back on the table.
“I was going to say, ‘you should sleep but you probably won’t,’” Hunk said, sitting himself down on the bench beside them.
“Probably right,” they mumbled, tapping half-heartedly at the keys.
“So what are you forgoing necessary human rest for this time?” Hunk asked conversationally, leaning over to look at Pidge’s screen.
“Family,” they said. There was no need to say any more.
Hunk was quiet, and they went back to work. They were well-used to the Yellow Paladin’s nosiness by now. At least he wasn’t poking or prodding at anything.
They lost track of time again, falling back into the rabbit hole of find them find them find them where are you please be alive find them when Hunk spoke again.
“Hey,” he said, his voice low and quieter than usual. “We’re going to find them. You’re going to find them. The empire doesn’t stand a chance; you’ll tear it apart data byte by data byte.”
They laughed, sort of, and wow that sounded terrible, maybe they should go find some water or something.
“But working until you pass out isn’t going to help them or you. I know you know that, I know I can’t change anything about it. I can’t imagine what you’re feeling – my family is safe back on Earth. They don’t know where I am, but at least I know they’re safe. And I know we keep putting off finding your family because we have to liberate planets or fight Galra or fend off Zarkon or something, and I wish we could do more, I can’t imagine how terrible it must be to be thinking about them plus everything else, I know you’re working yourself to the bone to try to find them between all the other things we have to do, and I – I just wish –”
There weren’t words for this. Sometimes it just hit Pidge like a train – they were in space fighting a seemingly omnipotent evil empire, they were the universe’s only hope, their family was missing, lost somewhere far away. Sometimes they felt like a child facing down the monster under their bed, a monster that maybe couldn’t be defeated, especially by a little kid.
They worked so hard, trying to keep the castle running (a ship this big was not made to be half-managed by a single Altean mechanic and two human teenagers), trying to upgrade the Lions and the castle and track beacons and distress signals and sort the data they raided from Galra bases and make improvements to the Paladin technology and find their goddamn family. They worked so hard, and sometimes they forgot that they had another family, too. They knew Shiro from Earth, had met Keith when the Kerberos mission had gone missing and nobody would give a clear answer, had been stuck with Lance and Hunk on a Garrison team and then, more cohesively, a universe-saving team. Allura was barely older than they were (excluding the ten thousand years spent sleeping) and she had good intentions even if she sometimes got too caught up in Trying To Be A Good Leader. Coran, for all his weirdness, was essentially a space fairy god-uncle and they would all be lost without him.
Pidge was looking for their family, but they had another one right here, just as precious. Sometimes they forgot that. And sometimes they remembered.
Words had never been Pidge’s strength. They were good at code, good at data and logic and sorting and fixing. Not feelings.
Maybe there just weren’t words for this, anyway. Pidge slumped their entire body weight against Hunk’s side, pressing hard against him. “You are,” they whispered, barely able to make a sound. “You’re doing everything.”