Chapter Text
“Jax, pull up!”
“I am! Get the shields up!”
Raynia flicked a few switches on the console, cringing as a blaster shot zinged by inches from the front of the shuttle. “Shields up. We’ve got to get out of here, we can only take one hit before—”
CRASH!
Jax and Raynia lurched forward in their seats as an impact to the rear of the shuttle sent it lurching wildly. Jax hauled on the controls, only barely missing a bit of debris.
“Shields have failed!” Raynia exclaimed. Behind them, Leola started to cry. Jax and Raynia glanced back at her, reassuring themselves she was okay. A roar snapped their attention back to the front; another damaged ship hurtled by, careening towards the planet below. Smoke filled their view, and Jax drove the ship up, hoping desperately to get out of the way.
The smoke cleared, just in time to reveal yet another ship speeding past. Raynia yelped; there was no time: the other ship clipped the top of the shuttle, sending a shudder through the entire frame. Leola cried louder.
“Try to plot us a course out of here!” Jax said, dodging small space rocks jarred loose from the blaster fire. They’d accidentally gotten in the middle of some kind of firefight; neither wanted to say it aloud, but it looked like the Galra versus someone else. Jax hadn’t been able to figure out who that someone else was yet, nor did he care. His ship was battered, the shields were non-functioning, and any more hits and they’d join the other destroyed ships on the desert planet’s surface.
“Haul to starboard twenty degrees,” Raynia said. Jax complied just as Raynia’s flight plan popped up on the screen. She swiped furiously at the controls on the virtual display, compensating every second as more and more ships got in their way. Another shot zinged their port side, and Jax flinched as the engines started to make very loud whub-whub-whub sounds.
“Just get us out of this system,” Raynia said, shoving her hair out of her eyes. “There’s a peaceful system not far from here.” She swallowed. “We’ll land there. Get us out of here.”
“Working on it,” Jax replied through his teeth. Movement to his right startled him, and he looked down near his chair. “Leola! Get back in your seat!”
Leola looked up at him, tears glistening in the emergency lights. Raynia unbuckled her seatbelt and scooped up their almost-two-year-old, swiftly setting her back in the seat behind them. Leola clutched her green lion, and Raynia buckled her back in the seat.
“Don’t touch the buckle. Sit still,” Raynia ordered.
“I’ve got to call for help,” Jax said, noting the failing engine. “We don’t have enough power to leave this system.”
“Code the transmission,” Raynia replied, hurrying back to her seat. She stood for a second longer, flicking switches on the communications console.
“Raynia, sit down—”
Sudden impact sent the ship hurtling to the right, tilting it almost sideways. Raynia cried out as she fell; Jax reached out wildly to catch her, but she fell hard onto the floor and lay still.
“Raynia!” Jax exclaimed, leveling the ship. Raynia didn’t move.
Jax opened a channel. “Attention all peaceful starcraft. This is Deltan shuttle two-niner alpha. We mean no harm, we are a neutral party, and we’ve been hit. Requesting assistance.” Jax had been fervently hoping the “someone else” fighting the Galra were not other Deltans, but at this point, he didn’t care.
No response came.
Jax frowned. The whub-whub-whub suddenly stopped, and the readouts showed total engine failure.
Oh, no.
“Attention all peaceful starcraft, this is Deltan shuttle—”
A blast hit their ship dead on, and all went dark.
“Ada! Ada! Mama!”
Leola’s screaming voice slowly coaxed Jax’s eyes open. The console lights flickered above him; Jax blinked, confused as to why he was looking up at the control panel. He tried to raise his head, tried to move, but pain shot through his skull, and he fell back with a groan onto the floor.
What’s that smell…?
“Ada! Mama!”
Smoke.
Jax jerked up to a sitting position, wincing and hissing through his teeth at the throbbing in his head. He grasped the pilot’s chair he’d fallen out of, shoving himself to his feet. Raynia still lay motionless by him. Leola sat in her seat, crying and craning her neck to look behind her.
The ship is on fire.
Jax scrambled back to Leola, unbuckling her seatbelt. “Hang on to me,” he ordered. Leola clung to his neck, and he held her with one arm as he hurried back to Raynia. He dropped to his knees next to her. “Raynia. Raynia!”
He managed to roll her onto her back, and her eyes flickered open. She winced, putting a hand to her head.
“Raynia, get up. The ship is on fire. We’ve got to get the suits on and get out of here,” Jax said. He leaned over her and opened a cupboard, pulling out three space suits. He glanced at the console; oddly enough, despite the readouts showing a massive hole in the upper half of the cockpit, the ship wasn’t losing oxygen.
“Attention Deltan shuttle two-niner alpha!” A voice crackled over the speakers. Jax ignored it, focusing on getting the suits untangled
“Get out of that shuttle! Now!”
Jax tore his gaze from the suits to the main viewscreen. Raynia sat up and squinted through the smoke. A grey wall and the seam of an airlock door replaced the stars;they were inside another ship, though whether it was friend or foe, they knew not.
Raynia looked at Jax. “We don’t have a choice,” she whispered.
“Hurry!” came the voice. “That shuttle is going to explode! We can’t get the door open from the outside! Open the door and get out of there!”
Somehow the voice seemed oddly familiar. Jax pushed himself to his feet, Leola still balanced on his hip. He grabbed Raynias arm, helping her to stand as well. An alarm started to blare on the console, and Jax hurried his little family toward the back of the ship. He slapped the button for the door, and it slid open with a painful creak.
“Hurry!” came the same voice, clearer now that it wasn’t being filtered through static. Jax and Raynia stepped out of the shuttle and immediately felt the wash of heat on their face. The engines were on fire, and he saw the flames licking dangerously close to the fuel tanks.
“Run!” Jax exclaimed, grabbing Raynia’s hand and holding Leola tight. He forced his trembling legs to move, to lead his family away from the imminent explosion.
“Over here!”
Jax looked ahead to see a figure standing in a doorway, beckoning them on. They stumbled through the door and the person slammed it shut. Jax swayed on his feet, turning just in time to see his shuttle explode, sending shrapnel slamming against the door.
“Are you guys okay?” the person asked. Jax’s legs trembled, and he turned to the person. He blinked, startled.
“Please take her,” he whispered, pushing Leola into the arms of the Red Paladin before he collapsed.
Pidge watched as Raynia scrubbed at the dirt on her face, using some of the special soap Allura had stashed away for the occasional “girls’ day” that Pidge and the Princess sometimes had. Leola cooed, and Pidge glanced down at the baby she held in her lap. Leola smooshed her stuffed green lion against Pidge’s face, and Pidge laughed and tried to angle her face away. Leola giggled.
“Thank you, your highness,” Raynia said, drying her face off. Her eyes still had those tired lines underneath them, Pidge noted, but her face, though still pale, glowed a little more. Pidge’s mum used to call it “pregnancy glow.” She felt a smile twitch on her face. She couldn’t help being excited for Raynia; the deltan woman had another baby girl on the way. Pidge had elbowed Keith pretty hard when they’d seen that fact on Raynia’s biodata from the healing pod, and Raynia had informed them with a tired laugh that yes, this time she and Jax had already known.
The three women sat in Allura’s room, relaxing on all the pillows. Raynia reached over to one of the bowls of water on the nightstand, wet her fingers, and started to finger-comb her hair.
“Oh, may I do your hair?” Allura asked. Raynia froze, then nodded. Allura hopped up and stood behind Raynia, combing her long brown hair gently. Raynia remained stiff for a moment, then her shoulders slumped a little and she seemed to relax. A soft smile spread across her face as she looked at Leola in Pidge’s lap. The baby had curled up with her lion held against her chest and had started to doze off.
“Are you feeling better?” Pidge asked. Raynia had been pale and shaky after getting out of the healing pod, but had attributed it to morning sickness.
“Yes, thank you,” Raynia replied, her native language translated through Pidge’s earpiece. Raynia looked down at her pants, picking at the stitching.
“I’m sorry about your ship,” Pidge said. They’d had to expel all of the wreckage out of the airlock, then shoot it to bits so there weren’t huge chunks of space debris floating around. The radioactive fuel had leaked everywhere, making it impossible to save anything from the ship. Jax and Raynia had watched the destruction, flinching whenever their ship had been hit. They’d stood stiffly afterwards, as if in shock. Raynia had then wiped her eyes and taken Leola from Jax. Pidge wondered at that; they hadn’t bothered to try and comfort each other at all.
Allura had suggested Raynia get some rest, and Jax had kissed Raynia once on the forehead before they parted ways—Jax with Shiro, Lance, Hunk, and Keith, and Raynia with Allura and Pidge—but he hadn’t said much.
“We’ll find something else,” Raynia replied. She frowned, then shook her head.
“Raynia…” Allura began. She tied off Raynia’s hair—she’d braided the front bit, and the braid swept into a ponytail tied at the nape of Raynia’s neck. Two tendrils of hair framed her delicately pointed ears. Allura sat back with Raynia and Pidge, nodded once in approval at her work, then reached out and took Raynia’s hand. “Raynia, besides the shuttle, and I’m very sorry about that…is everything okay?”
To everyone’s surprise, the Deltan’s breath hitched and she pressed a fist to her mouth. “No,” she whispered. She wiped her eyes and took a breath. Leola’s eyes opened, and she crawled out of Pidge’s lap towards her mother. Raynia held her close, kissing her hair.
“Mama cry?” Leola asked.
“No, baby,” Raynia soothed. She swept Leola’s hair out of her face, and the baby snuggled against her and shut her eyes. Raynia took a breath and looked up at Allura and Pidge. “My apologies,” she said.
“It’s all right,” Allura said, and Pidge nodded.
“I’m…I’m not sure how to explain it, or if it would be appropriate to do so,” Raynia said.
“Well, whatever it is you’re upset about, we want to help you out with it,” Pidge said. Raynia looked at her, a tiny, grateful smile on her face.
“Jax and I…I don’t know what’s happening, but…I’m afraid he’s going to leave,” Raynia said.
Pidge frowned. “Raynia, he wouldn’t do that.”
“I…I know. And he’s said as much.” Raynia shook her head. “But…he’s been so tense lately. And I told him about our second youngling, and he was happy, but also sad.”
“Why?” Allura asked.
“Because he wants to go home,” Raynia said. “We both do. We had a happy life, for about six months, before Leola was born. We had a little apartment, and he had a good job, and…” Raynia swallowed. “And then Leola was stolen from us, and we lost everything.”
“But you got your daughter back. That’s the important thing, isn’t it?” Pidge asked.
“Yes, of course. We were holding out hope that maybe the case would close, that we would be pardoned somehow and get to come home. At any rate, we were hoping to wait, at the latest, until I’m technically old enough before we went back. But…now we have another youngling on the way, which only hurts our case.”
“Why would Jax leave you, though?” Allura asked. “You mean the world to him. Even if he doesn’t say it, it’s written in his eyes.”
“I know,” Raynia whispered. “It’s an irrational fear, nothing more.”
“Do you get that a lot? The irrational fears, I mean,” Pidge asked softly, remembering how Raynia had gotten a psychiatric discharge from the Deltan military.
“Yes,” Raynia said, so quietly Pidge almost didn’t hear her. “And I fear it’s driving a wedge between myself and Jax.” She swallowed. “I just want to go home,” she whispered. “Leola was an infant when we left, and our new daughter will never even see Delta. There are white trees that bloom with blue flowers, and rivers and forests…it’s so beautiful there…” She shut her eyes tight.
Allura rested a hand on Raynia’s arm. “I understand,” she said softly.
“Raynia, Keith and I have been together for almost two years, and sometimes we fight,” Pidge said. Raynia opened her eyes and looked at her. Allura, too, looked at Pidge.
“Sometimes we say really hurtful things to each other,” Pidge continued, “and sometimes I’m so focused on finding my dad that Keith and I, well, we kinda grow distant.” Pidge shrugged. “When that happens, one of us notices and makes the other sit down and talk about whatever’s bugging us. And…we apologize and move on. We both want to go home to Earth, too. But…we’ve sort of made this a second home.”
“I think you and Jax are still hanging on to what was, rather than coming to grips with what is,” Allura said. “It might be time to let go of going back to Delta. You’re going to have to build a new home, together.”
“I understand,” Raynia said. She wiped her eyes. “Thank you, both of you.”
Keith lunged with his sword, almost getting in a hit. But Jax dodged and struck with his staff, forcing Keith to duck before he got hit in the face. The timer buzzed and both warriors stood panting in the middle of the training deck.
“Two victories for you, two for me, and one tie,” Keith said.
“You fight well, Keith,” Jax replied. “Raynia is better than I am with the swords; she would be able to give you better advice than I could.”
“You do well indeed, Keith,” Raynia’s voice from the doorway startled Keith and Jax. She strode into the room, her hands in her jacket pockets. She looked a lot calmer than she’d looked earlier, and Keith glanced back to the doorway and exchanged a smile with Pidge, who’d followed behind.
“Might I show you some tips, though?” Raynia asked.
“Raynia,” Jax said, a warning tone in his voice.
“We’re not going to spar,” Raynia replied, and Keith noted the edge to her words. Jax sighed and lowered his staff, stepping back.
“There’s training swords over here,” Keith said, leading Raynia over to the far wall. He opened the cabinet, and Raynia grabbed two samurai swords. She tested their balance in her hands, smiling a little. Pidge entered the room, standing several arm lengths away.
Raynia regarded Keith’s sword, then shrugged and put one of the samurai swords away. “I usually fight with two, but that’s just a personal preference,” she explained. She stepped back to the middle of the room. “Attack. But slow,” she instructed Keith. Keith did so, and Raynia blocked. “You want to watch the angle of your sword…”
They went through several moves like that, Keith attacking and parrying in slow-motion, while Raynia explained the techniques. Jax stood nearby with Pidge, watching silently.
Suddenly Jax stirred, as if remembering something. He looked at Pidge. “Where’s Leola?”
“She’s napping in our quarters,” Raynia replied, not breaking step.
Jax frowned. “Did you lock the door?”
Raynia finished the strike and looked at him. “Yes, of course I—” Her eyes widened, and she looked at Pidge. “Did I?”
Pidge shrank in on herself a little, and Keith felt a little sorry for her, what with Jax and Raynia staring intently at her. “I think you did, yes,” Pidge said.
“I’ll go check,” Jax said. He left the training room, putting away the staff before he did.
“I think that’s enough for now,” Keith said. He offered Raynia a smile, which she returned, briefly. She twirled the sword a few times, looking lost in thought.
I’ll go check, too,” she said, sheathing the sword and looking at the door.
“I’m sure she’s fine,” Pidge said. Keith nodded and deactivated his bayard and stepped closer to Pidge.
“I suppose,” Raynia said, fiddling with the sheath.
Running footsteps interrupted them, and Jax stuck his head in the door, out of breath.
“What?” Raynia asked, tensing.
“She’s gone.”
Raynia ran behind Jax towards the Lions’ hangars. Pidge had said the security cameras had recorded Leola toddling down that way. Raynia’s heart thudded in her throat at the thought of her daughter amongst those giant metal robots.
They tore through the hangar doors, and Jax skidded to a stop. Raynia crashed into him, and Jax reached out and caught her. He stood still, gazing with wide eyes at the five Lions parked there, the low hum of machinery almost sounding like purring.
“Jax, come on,” Raynia said, stepping past him. The Yellow Lion shifted ever so slightly, and Raynia flinched. She swallowed. “Leola!” she called, though her voice was no more than a squeak.
“LEOLA!” Jax called, his voice booming through the hangars.
Nothing.
Raynia check behind each Lion, then sighed. “I don’t think she’s in here,” she said, her shoulders slumping.
“She could be anywhere in this castle,” Jax said, his voice hard. “It could take us hours to find her.” He looked at Raynia, his eyes narrowed in a glare.
“I said I was sorry,” Raynia snapped.
“Sorry doesn’t change the fact that our daughter is lost in a massive castle!” Jax retorted, facing her fully. Raynia fell silent, and Jax shook his head. “You’re always doing stuff like this,” he muttered, turning to go.
“Excuse me?” Raynia demanded. She caught up to Jax and stood in front of him. “Who helped you pilot that shuttle for almost two years?”
Jax paused and clamped his jaw shut, looking like he wanted to say something more, but holding himself back.
“What did you mean?” Raynia asked, crossing her arms. Jax remained silent a moment.
“I didn’t mean anything by it,” he said finally.
“Obviously something’s weighing on your mind, or else you wouldn’t have said it,” Raynia shot back.
“You think?” Jax said, his voice sharp again. “We just lost everything, again. That shuttle was our home, and we just watched it blow up in our faces!”
Raynia’s eyes narrowed. “You’re finally calling it a home, only after it exploded.”
“What?”
“You’ve been distant, tense, you barely talk anymore,” Raynia said. She uncrossed her arms. “I’m sorry we’re having another youngling. I didn’t want it. I wanted to go home. And, Jax…” She paused, feeling her throat close up and tears sting her eyes. “We’re not going to go home to Delta, Jax. I don’t think we’ll ever get to go home.” Raynia took a breath. “Is that what you’ve been wanting? To go home? Because I want it, too, and we’re never going to get it, and…”
“Raynia…”
“Guys!” Pidge’s voice crackled over the loudspeakers. “Leola’s in the Red Lion.”
As if on cue, the Red Lion moved, lowering its head and opening its mouth. Jax glanced at Raynia, then carefully stepped inside. Raynia followed him up the ramp to find Leola curled up in the pilot’s chair, fast asleep, clutching her lion.
“Come here, Little One,” Jax said gently, scooping up the baby. Leola stirred a little, then nestled her head on Jax’s shoulder. Jax turned to Raynia.
“Don’t ever be sorry for bearing our children,” he said. Raynia looked down at her boots. Jax stepped forward and tilted her head up towards him.
“I do want to go home,” he said, “and it kills me to know that we might never get to.” He sighed. “This life is not what I wanted, neither for myself, nor you and Leola and the new little one. I want to give you so much more, but I can’t. Please understand that, Raynia. I would never leave you, no matter how much I want to go back. I just…I want what’s best for you, and the little ones. That’s all.”
“I’m sorry,” Raynia whispered.
“I’m sorry, too. I’m sorry we’re in this mess, and I’m sorry I’ve been distant,” Jax replied. “I’d just been thinking…is this it? Is this all we’re going to have? A stolen shuttle, a warrant for our arrest…and we don’t even have the shuttle anymore.”
Raynia looked at him, unable to think of anything to say.
“But it doesn’t matter,” Jax said. “I have you, and I have Leola, and we have the new little one on the way.” Jax shrugged. “I want what’s best for all of us, but at the end of it all, as long as you three are healthy and happy, then I am, too.” He took a breath. “We’ll just have to find a place to build a new home, and let go of going back to Delta, I suppose. Let go of that once and for all.”
Raynia felt her eyes fill with tears, and Jax’s eyes glistened a little, also. Jax wrapped an arm around her shoulder and pulled her close. Raynia’s breath hitched. She shut her eyes, feeling her tears slide down her face and onto Jax’s shirt.
“We’ll be all right,” Jax whispered, his voice broken and wavering. But there was a surety to his grasp, to his posture, that Raynia tried to mimic as she held him close.
Leola fussed and Raynia pulled back. “You hungry?” she said to the baby, taking her from Jax. She looked up at Jax, smiling a little, and he wiped his eyes with the back of his hand. Suddenly he froze.
“We’re inside a Voltron Lion, without the Paladin.”
Raynia gaped at him, then they both turned and ran out of the Lion. Keith and Pidge dashed into the hangars at the same time, and a wide grin spread across Pidge’s face.
“You found her!” she exclaimed.
“Yes, we did.” Jax smiled down at Raynia and Leola, and Raynia reached out and took his hand. A gentle, knowing smile spread across the Paladins’ faces before Keith mentioned something about dinner and Hunk’s cooking.