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It’s been playing on Lance’s mind for days. Naxzela. So many things could have gone wrong. They’d been moments away from going completely wrong twice. If it hadn’t been for Allura, or dare he say it, Lotor, they would have been dead. The coalition would have been completely destroyed.
Yet no one seemed to want to talk about it. As though it was some sort of landmine and Shiro would be nothing but belligerent towards them. A true leader was capable of taking criticism for mistakes, a soldier like Shiro most of all knew what it was like to disagree with those in senior positions. Gossip spread like wildfire at the garrison and whilst most didn’t know what it was for, everyone knew Shiro had practically gone against the chain of command in going to Kerberos.
If he’d listened to when he’d first voiced his suggestion to leave Naxzela they wouldn’t have run the risk of losing everything.
Lance understood Shiro’s thought to stay, and they learnt vital information because of it, but it had been reckless.
He didn’t want to fight, nor did he chew the other out but he wanted to understand. Find some sort of a reason why Shiro seemed so resistant to listen to his advice.
It was a matter of finding a moment, however, when Shiro wasn’t with Allura trying to figure out what to do with Lotor, or making some sort of speech of encouragement for the coalition. He needed to be smart about this, find a time to corner Shiro, to talk when it wasn’t completely inappropriate.
He couldn’t exactly burst into Shiro’s room as though he owned the place. The Castle of Lions might have been the place they all called home and they might have become their own strange family, but they weren’t actually family, there were boundaries that existed that families didn’t quite have.
At least he and Shiro seemed to.
He didn’t understand it entirely, why Shiro, who he’d thought they were starting to get along, to find some sort of friendship between the two of them. Shiro had disappeared, a new routine had been found without him and when he’d come back there was a divide between the two of them that almost felt greater than when they’d first found the Blue Lion. A divide that had been growing every day.
Surprisingly Shiro came to him. Not deliberately by any means but it had been the right moment.
Lance had been on the training deck, practicing with the guardian. It was a practice that was more effective with a second person involved but there would come a time he was stuck without any of the others, without Red.
“What level are you on?” Shiro asked, following a final shot that managed to finish the fast moving guardian off.
He took a moment to respond, letting the bayard resume it’s normal form in his hand. “It was level 3, working with Keith one day we got up to level 8 once. When he’s not about to bite my head off we work well together.” There were so many shitty underhanded comments he could make, to make Shiro realise his frustrations with him.
To realise he wasn’t comfortable being taken for granted. “It’s taken the two of you quite some time to realise you work well together.”
Some part of him wanted to out and out say what was on his mind, but it would likely cause Shiro to brush him off. “We all work well together, look at Hunk and Pidge, if it involves no combat there isn’t a better team up.”
This felt awkward, stiff, more uncomfortable than either one of them really should have allowed given how long they’d both been apart of Voltron for. “Are you going to keep going or…” He drags out the or, making a gesture towards the powered down guardian, a question that isn’t entirely unreasonable, if Shiro wanted to train and train alone, then he did need to know how long he’d be waiting around for.
“Yeah, your style of combat doesn’t exactly work with ranged support and I don’t want to misfire and accidentally hit you, if you want to start training go for it.” The bayard in his hand dissolved, Lance’s eyes looking towards the ground as he tried to muster the courage to say something. “Are we okay?”
It seemed to catch Shiro off guard, the Black Paladin stopping half way into putting his helmet on, only to take it off and hold it against his hip. “What would make you ask that?”
“I feel like you’re not comfortable with me being the Red Paladin, the ‘right hand’, and you’re the only one that seems to be.” To just come out and say it probably wasn’t the best of ideas but he had the right intentions, wanting to come off as relaxed as possible when Lance could see how Shiro stiffened.
Perhaps he had hit the nail on the head. Shiro wasn’t comfortable, maybe just with his taking of Keith’s place, more than likely he would have been fine with Allura or one of the others in his position. Just not him. “It’s just taking some adjusting, you act like a soldier but you have a certain disrespect for a chain of command.”
Disrespect? He had disrespect for individuals but definitely not the chain of command or Shiro. He’d idolised the man for years, questioning one’s hero didn’t come easily to anyone and was never done out of disrespect. “I… you think I’m disrespectful? Because I didn’t want all of us to die?”
“I think you have moments that are too frequent, because you question plans and make your own.”
Just what did Shiro think of him? He question plans when they were going up in smoke and the two instances he’d made a plan whilst Shiro was the Black Paladin, he and Keith had done exactly what he’d needed to do and the second had been the reason why they’d gotten off Naxzela. It had been all Allura and he’d never openly take the credit for it, however, if he hadn’t hadn’t had the thought for her to use her Altean abilities they wouldn’t have been able to get the communication through that Naxzela was a bomb.
A small part of him believed Lotor would have still destroyed the weapon on Haggars ship.
Keith was another story but his questioning of Keith as a leader hadn’t been out of a lack of respect. It was about the two of them growing as leaders.
“I’m sorry I asked. I’ll try to keep my mouth shut from now on, the problem is the seventh wheel, not you.”
He wasn’t giving Shiro the chance to come back at him, he was getting the final word in regardless of what Shiro might have thought or felt. It was completely immature and Lance wouldn’t deny it if someone told him as much, but he wasn’t going to let Shiro make him feel less than, worthless, he was more important than his own doubts. He wasn’t going to let someone else doubt how valuable he was on this team.