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The castleship was silent in the aftermath of Naxzela, a crushing defeat that Voltron felt in its core. Katie watched from the cell doors as Shiro and Allura spoke to Lotor, manacled and unnervingly confident.
Katie waited, making sure the conversation was recorded on the Castleship’s audio management system for later referral and analysis. The battle was a blur in her mind up till now, where the blur was replaced by unease, doubt, and anger.
Only five paladins had returned from the Battle if Naxzela. Once that was a comforting number, but now six was the norm, and even with Lance standing, watching beside her, Katie felt like she was missing her right arm.
“When you approached Haggar’s ship, there was a druid blast from your own; what was its purpose?”
“I was attempting to force a hyper jump,” Lotor said, eyeing the Princess calmly. “However, it failed; I could not control the spell, and it went a little… wild. There were some casualties, I’d imagine.”
Katie watched for a few more moments, the slight curve on Lotor’s lips that suggested to her at least that Zarkon’s son was exactly where he wanted to be. And after his determination to put the Galra prince behind bars, everything he’d given up helping the Blades, to protect Voltron from Haggar’s ship, Keith was gone.
It made her feel sick with rage, anger, worry, something twice as fierce than anything she’d felt before. Red filled her head, her vision and thoughts, as though the lion had picked up her distress and added his own in sympathy.
“Pidge? Katie? Katie, where are you–”
“No offence Matt,” Hunk said gently. “But I think you should let her be. It was hard enough after Keith left, and now... She needs time to herself.”
Katie turned on her heel and headed back to the green lion’s hangar, looking for some peace.
She could almost hear the smugness from the disgraced prince bouncing around in her head, and she had to fight down the urge to kick something.
Climbing up onto Green’s head, she got a good view of the main hangar’s windows. Well they were more like a forcefield. But it didn’t really matter what they were made of - she could see the thousands of ever unfamiliar constellations and distant nebulas stretching across the vastness of space.
Distantly she could hear her brother calling out for her, but for the first time since finding Matt, she didn’t want to see him.
Right now, she felt like she was constantly having to make a trade-off for something, and she hated it.
First, she’d traded her hair for the garrison placement - maybe it was a silly thing, but it had taken forever to grow that long, and she’d been proud of it. One vanity wasn’t a bad thing, and her father had loved it too.
It was an easy choice to make if it meant covering the truth about his disappearance. About Matt’s disappearance. She’d gone to the interview and found herself offered a place at the space school.
She’d traded her own name for the one Matt had given her - she couldn’t even remember where it came from any more - and that had been surprisingly less painful than the sacrilegious snips against her hair had been.
Then she’s traded earth for the next clue, her mother, her dog, her grandparents in Naples, all for Voltron, for the only chance she had. It hadn’t been so bad after that. The exchanges had been smaller, but eventually she had found Matt.
There had been other trade-offs though. For the first time, she found herself amongst friends, people who didn’t think it was strange to know what the upcoming space missions were, or even basic app coding.
The idiots at school had been traded for Voltron - Lance, Hunk, Shiro, and Keith. That had been one trade off she had been happy with.
But for all their victories against the empire, they’d lost Shiro. Allura had stepped up, as had Keith and Lance, and Voltron remained, but even Voltron wasn’t worth Shiro. Finding him had been a new kind of joy, relief and reassurance, but Voltron began to cause the trades.
To get Shiro back, they had to lose Keith to the Blades of Marmora. He’d left, willingly, and without a hint of regret. That hurt almost as much as losing her brother had.
Keith wasn’t Matt though. She’d found Matt, and it wasn’t as though Keith had disappeared. They saw him during Kolivan’s reports and updates, sometimes he even presented his own.
It hadn’t been the same, but time progressed, and she wondered if maybe it was a good thing for Keith to get away from the pressure of the Black Paladin’s Bayard. He hadn’t been himself, and at least they saw him during the updates, he looked more at ease with the blades.
Maybe not as happy as he’d been in red, but better. All the preparations paid off and soon the alliance was beginning the attack on Naxzela. That was where they got another trade off, and this time, it was too much.
Katie couldn’t look Lotor in the eye without remembering who had been the one prepared to blow themselves up to stop Zarkon’s Witch, who had been caught up in Lotor’s spell-gone-wrong, and banished to some part of the universe known only to the stars, just like Shiro had been.
The intelligence and information that Lotor held wasn’t worth Keith. Wiping her eyes with the hem of her sleeve, she sat, feeling her lions comforting rumble, and an echo, a different silent voice that felt like red.
Maybe she missed Keith too?
String out of the window, at those hundreds of thousands of stars, her mind went back to earth, when she and Matt were both children, staying up late in blanket forts and noisily sneaking their father’s telescopes into their old shared before in Italy, before the big move to the garrison compound. Back when they would look for the North Star and wish with all their hearts that one day, they’d get to fly in space too, just like their father.
There was not star brighter than that back on earth, but out here they passed gigantic clusters on a regular basis. There was no first star in the sky to wish on - they all burned her eyes as brightly as the supernova Allura once tried to steer them into.
Pulling her knees up to her chest, she searched from one side of the window to the other, wondering which one had been the first to catch her eye. After all, those childish wishes peering through a telescope at the Pleiades and Ursa Major had come true.
‘I want to find him,’ she whispered to herself, staring at the numerous lights glinting through the transparent screen. ‘Keith found Shiro, I found Matt,’ she reasoned. ‘If he can’t find us, then we’ll find him. I’ll find him,’ she promised herself.
Two growls echoed in place of one, and Katie smiled - at least she had the arms of Voltron to back her up.
Green mewled a little, her concern large and honest, and Katie didn’t have the heart to worry her any more. Slipping into the cockpit, she settled into the Bunk at the back, her lion’s reassuring purrs lulling her to sleep, and Red’s determined growls slipping quietly into her dreams.
“No way!” Lance mumbled, watching as a boy - with a weirdly familiar face and mop of dark hair - leapt from the hover bike that had just pulled up beside the wreck with the ease of practice, and began creeping in towards the crash site.
“Oh, he is not going to beat us in there!” Katie raised an eyebrow and Lance growled, pulling his eyes away from the binoculars. “That guy is always trying to one-up me!” He protested, before thrusting the binoculars back to ridge and following.
“Who is it?” Hunk demanded, quickly following suit and chasing after him down the slope.
“Keith!”
“Who?” Pidge blinked, packing the laptop away and hurrying to keep up; that name was familiar, she ought to know it If only due to Lance’s reaction to the stranger - had he got into a fight with him or something?
“Are you sure?” Hunk asked.
“Oh, I’d recognise that mullet anywhere!” Lance assured Hunk, blanking her questions completely.
Pidge let out a strangled tone as the two boys charged on ahead before exploding with frustration. “Guys, who’s Keith?!”
“Your bayards can transform into a weapon suited to the paladin who wields it, as well as shield,” Allura said.
Katie watched as the boy from the Pilot Class gripped his red hand device tightly, and a long red space sword appeared in his hand. Keith tested it like he’d been bod for it, or if it had been moulded for him alone.
Looking to the green tool the alien princes had given her, she knew straight away that simply wouldn’t do for her. Hers was altogether different from every other paladin, but her eyes strayed back to Keith.
He almost looked a little like a knight in all the paladin armour, as ridiculous as that sounded, but he was too reckless. He moved like he’d been given a shot of adrenaline, and didn’t care if he was hacked to pieces before his imaginary enemy was cut down. The slashes cut into the air were intensely vulnerable.
‘A shield,’ she thought absently. ‘He doesn’t have a shield.’
“Do earthlings ever stop complaining?” Allura grumbled waspishly, loud enough for them all to hear; Katie opened her mouth the let her know she likewise didn’t think Alteans weren’t the be all and end all of alien races, but Shiro beat her to it.
“Can’t you just give us a break?” He asked, sounding far more pissed off than he looked. “Everyone’s been working really hard today.”
And wasn’t that the half of it - Katie ached all the way up into her muscles and bones; she was exhausted, and it was only lunch time. Now she couldn’t even eat lunch because their alien hostess had chained them all to the chairs.
For supposed diplomats, these aliens were doing themselves no favours in avoiding Katie’s growing ire, and she wasn’t the only one beginning to lose her cool.
“Yeah!” Keith all but snarled, anger bringing him to his feet and tone low. “We’re not prisoners you can toy with like- like-”
“Like a bunch of toy prisoners!” Lance added as Keith’s anger cut off his words.
“Yes! Thank you. Lance,” Keith trailed off.
“You do not yell at the princess!” Coran roared back - his voice wasn’t quite intimidating, but it was far beyond his usual volume.
For Katie, it was the last straw on a very trying day. “Oh, the princess of what?!” she finally snapped. “We’re the only ones out here, and she’s no princess of ours!”
Honestly, she paid little attention to media, but she had a feeling the British royals would be appalled by this princess’s expectations and attitude. And he’ll if she understood any of that monarchy crap.
Pidge never got to follow up He comment though, because in complete support of the doubt about Allura’s royal attitude problem, the alien Princess threw a pile of food goo smack straight into her jaw.
Even Coran seemed to be shocked by Allura’s sudden movements with her spork, but Keith was faster; eyes flicking to her goo covered face, it was like recognising an ally in their internal warfare - Keith had her back.
His hand slid quickly to his own plate, and she could already see him aiming as he called out.
“Go loose Pidge!”
‘Please tell me there not another monster in there, please tell me that’s empty! Or full of space candy. Either one is fine.’
‘I don’t think it’s a piñata Hunk,’ lance said through the volition com system as they watched to metal coffin open.
As if the situation on the Balmera couldn’t get any worse.
‘If it’s the same monster as the one we fought on Arus, we already know how to beat it,’ Keith said, tone hopefully confident, which at this point was better than anything else.
With once click of his Bayard, Katie flicked her own controls into gear, steadying the green arm of Voltron after Keith had formed its sword to grip the wings that merged across her lion.
The metallic beast let out a blast of green light, and Katie flipped all her switched on the control panel to steady the lion’s strength behind the shield.
‘Hold your ground!’ Shiro called out.
The wormhole was jumpy as ever, but seeing the red and black lions below as she approached the dusty planet surface was a relief beyond words.
Touching down, Katie rushed from her seat down the hatchway to meet Keith and Shiro as the slowly made their way towards her lion.
“What happened?” She asked, seeing the blood on Shiro’s armour. Keith made a face as she leaped loop Shiro’s other arm around her shoulders and half-lift him up into the cockpit.
“Local wildlife,” he grumbled. “I’m using green’s med kit.”
“Fire on,” Katie nodded, rushing back to the pilot seat after they had settled Shiro down on the bunk. “I’ll send the linking signal to Black and Red, they’ll follow us back through the wormhole.” She said as Keith rummaged around one of the compartments for disinfectant spray and a pain reliever aerosol.
Setting green on an auto course back to the castle through the wormhole, Katie got to her feet again, and helped Keith dress and apply the disinfectant to Shiro’s wounds. In the few minutes that passed, Shiro completely zoned out.
Had they not passed through the wormhole, and headed almost immediately to the lion hangar, that would have worried. Once Shiro was settled, they were sent back out to find hunk and lance.
“Are you okay?” he asked as they headed towards the new wormhole Allura had made for them in green. “You were all by yourself.”
“I was fine, it was a tech dump, so I managed to make a signal beacon,” Katie smiled. “What about you?
“Just bruised I thin- Woah! What the hell are those?!” He yelped, jerking back, and holding up his Bayard. “How the hell did they get in Green?!”
Pidge jerked her head around again, then snorted, laughing at the two sets of eyes peeking out from the top of one console.
“Pidge, this isn’t funny, they could be hostile!” Keith growled.
“Its ok! They’re from the dump! Coran said they live off decomposing metal,” she laughed, scooping the two green and blue balls of fuzz into her hands. “Did you guys want to come with me? How long have you been hiding there?” She cooed. “It’s okay, you just scared Keith, he won’t hurt you,” she looked to Keith. “Let’s just say I made some friends with the local wildlife before finding Allura and Coran.”
“You’re sure - what if they have venomous teeth or something?”
“Keith, they’re basically real-life space Tribbles, its fine, but I promise if they try to eat me, you can chuck them out,” she laughed again. “If it makes you more comfortable I had my Bayard out too.”
Keith remained stony faced as ever, but he put his Bayard away and leaned over the shoulder of the pilot seat, reaching down a hand and scratching one on the head.
“I guess they’re okay.”
‘Coming your way number 5!’ Coran called out over the castle loudspeaker.
Katie steadied her footing, eyes flickering around the hallway, watching and waiting until a large, dark, and fast figure in a glowing purple uniform appeared around the corner, rolling around and sprinting towards her so quickly that only a quick dive between his legs saved her from a kick in the face as he flipped directly over her head.
Steadying herself as the intruder raced down the hallway, she shot her Bayard through the air towards him, and for a moment, it looked like victory was hers.
“I’ve got him!”
Then she saw the hold on the green tip of her Bayard, and watched as it was wanted, pulled deliberately as she felt her feet slip over the floor in the effort to hold him back.
In seconds, the intruder was racing ahead, and dragging her along behind him.
“I don’t got him!” She corrected.
What filled was a certifying series of events for the three youngest paladins as hunk accidentally shot as his own teammates, lance found himself running along behind, and Katie got dragged halfway around the castle until she and Keith were matched for speed side by side.
A quick glance, and a semblance of a plan was formed. In a n attempt to slow the large alien so Keith could catch up and engage directly, Katie dug her heels into to floor so hard the armour of her paladin suit scratched the floors and popped a few sparks.
It worked, slowing him long enough for Keith to catch up, strike his bald down onto the intruders. Then something froze Keith - He was staring at the blade on his back, like he’d seen a ghost or something.
Was there something strange about it? Katie couldn’t make out what, but the alien reacted, slamming Keith’s Bayard from his hands to the floor.
Then, just as suddenly she was yanked, and hurtles through the air, slamming into a tangle of red paladin suit and black hair. Keith tightened his arms around her back and shoulders, rolling as they crashed to the floor.
The feeling lingered in the back of her head as Ulaz revealed himself, and continued to stay there long after he was gone.
“Katie? What are you doing down here again?”
Katie turned to her brother, scratching the fuzzle in her lap absently and turning back to gaze up at the red lion.
“I couldn’t sleep,” she shrugged. “I feel better down here, and Max keeps me company,” she said, scratching her fuzzy alien pet again.
Matt settled down beside here, worry scratched into the lines of his face. “You’ve been sleeping down here every night this week. Were worried about you,” he said softly.
“I’m fine,” she grunted.
“Pidge,” Matt sighed. “It’s okay if you miss him. I barely know Keith and I miss him. He was going to fly right into that ship before rotor…” he paused. “Well I guess he intervened, but he also sent everything to hell too, anyway, point is, no-one who does something like that is anything less that brave, or selfless. I don’t think I could have done it. Hunk said you guys- I mean, my original point here is that if you miss Keith its oka-”
“I know it’s okay Matt, but what good will it do? Being okay with short gone didn’t bring him back, and it won’t bring Keith back either!” She snapped without thinking, before slapping her hands over her mouth. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said that.”
“Jesus, Mama’s right, you really do have dad’s temper,” Matt chuckled. “Don’t worry about it. Your stressed, and I was a bit pushy.”
“That’s not a reason to take it out on you!” Katie protested. “I really am sorry. And, I’m fine I just…” Katie sighed and closed her eyes. “I just have a strange feeling that… Red is trying to tell me something.” God, it sounded so stupid out loud.
“Red, you’re sure?” Matt blinked.
“I’m sure, she nodded. “It’s like I’m dreaming something, only I’m not sure what, then I wake up, and I can feel a different lion besides green inside my head. Like when Keith was searching for blue in the desert, or when he found Shiro,” she explained. Badly.
Matt didn’t criticise though, instead he looked up at the red lion curiously. “Do you think she-
“He,” Katie corrected gently. “Keith always calls Red a guy.”
“-he knows where Keith is?”
“I think so, he knew when he was in trouble at the Marmora base, and when he and Allura were stranded out in space,” she said, gazing up at Reds eyes. They’d been glowing since she sat down. “I just don’t understand what he wants.”
“I could help you figure it out?”
“I think… I think I’d like that Matt.”
“Come on, want to stay with me tonight? We can build a fort, like when we were kids,” her brother grinned softly, standing up and holding out a hand.
She took it.
“Okay, cloaking device is ready to go,” Katie said confidently ash she put the last finishing touches to Keith’s pod.
There was no way she would have let him leave without them. Approaching Galra High Command in a single lion was one thing, but a pod? It was a suicide mission, and she didn’t like it.
But, shed had a few of her own rough patches on this space adventure, and Keith just seemed to attract them to himself like honey drew bees.
Ever since the blades had shown up, it had got worse too. All because-
“Pidge, may I have a moment with Keith please?”
-Keith was desperately trying to prove himself to one person. Someone who ought to know better.
For a moment, Katie hesitated, her eyes flicking nervously between Keith and Allura. Frankly, she didn’t want to leave them. Right now, they had better things to worry about than Allura’s petty prejudices that Keith had done nothing to earn.
Allura’s attitude was unfair, and almost cruel in its own way. Yes, she had lost the people she cared about, her home, her race to Zarkon. But Keith wasn’t Zarkon. She’s lost her own family to the monster of a dictator, but that wasn’t Keith’s fault, and neither was the destruction of Altea.
Most of all, it was hurting Keith, just when he’d finally opened up to the whole team. Pidge couldn’t think of two people she’d want to leave alone together even less that Allura and Keith.
Then Keith gave her a faint, almost imperceptible nod - ‘it’s okay, I’ll be fine,’ - and that resolve dropped away without a word exchanged between them
“Sure thing, uh,” she avoided looking Allura in the eye as she headed for the exit. “Have all the moments you’d like,” she added, As the doors slid closed behind her, Katie hoped those words sounded at least a little bit as venomous as they were.
Sometimes it felt like Keith was so focused on doing the right thing that he didn’t even know what it was.
That was the feeling she got from Keith when he started working more and more with the Blade of Marmora. With Voltron, it wasn’t hard to see that he struggled now.
Between trying to lead Voltron in his own way, and at the same time listen to Shiro and Allura, who he was frequently at odds with, it was no wonder he felt blindsided.
Or maybe a bit like he didn’t have a use anymore; when Shiro and Allura both disagreed with him and overruled even the good decisions, how could Keith even believe himself a capable leader? Why would he want to?
If he wasn’t doing the job right, then he needed to do something, he could do. Keith was just that kind of person. Katie was similar. Helping Kolivan gave Keith a function again. It might not be what he wanted, but at least he was doing something, at least he was useful.
He’d been an arm and the head of Voltron, both highly functional units that needed to be utilised. When Keith stood on the bride and told them all he was stepping down from Voltron, Katie could almost see the logic behind his decision.
And that was why the tears welled up. Somewhere along the line, something had happed to their team, enough to make Keith feel useless, like he wasn’t needed, but how could any of them call him out?
Doubting this decision might be the worst anyone could do for Keith now. So instead, along with the others, Katie threw her arms around him.
“We’re really going to miss you!” She sniffed.
‘We’re not going to make it!’
‘We’ll never get through those shields!’
Getting off of Naxzela was not the hardest thing Katie experienced during the battle, though the pressure and heavy gravitational forces had more than done their job.
That came in the heavy silence between her brother’s desperate words, and Keith’s silence. Keith utilised the most frightening logic to solve the problems in front of them, and this time, Katie could see it unfold with absolutely no way to stop it.
‘Maybe not with our weapons,’ Keith said over the comms, voice calm and even as his shouts coalesced, as he worked it out. Then she heard the shift of gears and engines, before the Galra cruiser up a head flared into life.
‘Wait Keith, what are you doing?!’ Matt protested in dismay as before their eyes, Keith’s ship presented itself as the most logical solution to blowing a hole in the shields of Haggar’s ship. ’Keith, no!’
Matt found his tongue where Katie couldn’t, his voice echoing as Keith’s ship drew closer and closer to the Galra battlecruiser. It was seconds away from the barrier when the reality of what he was doing finally hit her, and hit her hard.
Tears welling up, Katie willed herself to say something, but no words came; no one could. Voltron was silent.
Then a purple beam of magic shot from above the cruiser, striking it with force, swallowing it and Keith’s ship in a blast of purple light. The bang as it disappeared made her ears shudder and shake, but Katie gripped the controls, searching for the cruiser, for Keith.
“What just happened?” She called out. “What was that?”
‘Is that Lotor?!’ Lance choked. ‘What’s he doing here?!’
‘We’ve just received a transmission from him. He wants to talk to command,’ Coran said, equally confused as Lance.
“Never mind him, where’s Keith?!” Katie asked, anxious as panic began to build. “Coran, can you trace his signatures on the ship? He should be here! He hadn’t hit the shields yet!”
‘Katie’s right, he was still a bit away - he might have dodged!’ Matt added.
‘Coran?’ Allura asked quickly. There was a tense moment as they all waited.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said finally. ‘I can’t trace him, or pick up his location. He’s gone.’
With sleep getting harder and harder to find, Katie found herself opening more and more time in the lion bay as Lotor’s interrogations continued.
Several times Shiro had asked her if she wanted to ask anything, but she always handed him the list of questions she wanted answered. She didn’t want to think about Lotor.
Looking up at Red, she put a hand on his armour. ‘I’m sorry, we didn’t really help him,’ she said, or hoped she did. Katie still didn’t have an exact grasp on how the lions communicated with their pilots. ‘I didn’t help him. You and Green… He’s my… He’s our other half, and we didn’t help him.’
It was the bluntest truth, and Katie still didn’t know how to do it right. She was angry at herself for not seeing it before, for not understanding enough, for not knowing. But she felt the anger in her wash away a little, and heard Red’s deep rumble echo inside her somewhere.
‘You always find him,’ she pleaded. ‘Please, if you know where he is, take us,’ she begged, all those unspilled tears swimming and falling free beneath her glasses. ‘Please, help me find him.’
For the longest time she stood there, crying into the red trans-dimensional metal of the lion’s shell. Then, she felt it, the biggest rush she had felt in her life and the largest roar in her mind as the Red lion stood to attention, eyes glowing with yellow fire.
A thousand stars crossed infant of her eyes, and all of a sudden, she could see. She could see the galaxies and nebulas and planetoids, and she could see a Galra cruiser, floating silently amongst them.
Jerking back, Katie glanced at the lion’s open maw, and climbed the steps; this was its. This was the last time she lost someone she needed.
‘I’ll find him,’ she told Red, hand gripping the lever controls that were a bit too big for her hands.
The lion roared to life and leapt for the hangar bay, much to Lance and Hunks dismay and shock below before he launched them into space. Like blue had once before, wormhole after wormhole appeared to pull them through the millions of miles.
‘I promise on every star I can see, I won’t let you down,’ she promised, doing her best to manoeuvre the feather light and sensitive controls. ‘I’ll bring him back.’
Katie had lost the people she needed too many times before; she wasn’t going to let go of Keith.
‘Like a bolt out of the blue, fate steps in and sees you through; if your heart is in your dreams, no request is too extreme, when you wish upon a star as dreamers do. When you wish upon a star, your dream comes true.’