Archive of Our Own

I. Keith

The Black Lion is empty. Shiro is gone.

They all stand there, staring at the empty seat for about ten seconds before everyone goes into a frenzy.

“I’ll scan the lion for anomalies!” Pidge says and runs off the lion.

“I’m coming with you!” Hunk shouts and hurries after her. The other’s follow them, tripping over each other and their own feet in their hurry to get off the Black Lion.

Lance doesn’t know what to do.

He is standing there, rooted to the spot right next to the empty chair, staring at the abandoned bayard. He is faintly aware of the voices tumbling over each other over the comms.

“Coran, can you see anything on our readings?”

“No, princess! There is nothing!”

“I can’t pick up anything on the Black Lion, either! Hunk, can you see anything?”

“No, absolutely nothing!”

“Check again!”

“Will do!”

“Coran, get us back, now!”

“But Keith, we...”

“For fucks sake, just do it!”

Lance jolts awake from his stupor when the hangar opens and the Red Lion flies out into the darkness.

Lance stumbles out of the Black Lion and right into Pidge and Hunk, who are hunched over their equipment. Pidge is tapping away on her laptop, checking and calibrating goodness knows what, while Hunk checks numerous other devices. Lance feels a bit dizzy from the speed at which they both work.

He stands behind them, feeling lost. He doesn’t know any of the technical stuff to be of any help, and he doesn’t dare distract them. That is a first for him, no doubt.

Lance thinks back to what had happened not even one varga ago, trying to comprehend everything. They fought Zarkon. They didn’t defeat him, but they had managed to wreck a lot of havoc; that was more than they had managed to do in the past. It had all happened so fast – and then Shiro screamed, and suddenly he was gone, and they were standing in the unresponsive Lion.

While Lance was trying to wrap his head around all of this mess, Pidge and Hunk had apparently been unable to find anything. They leave Lance standing there, saying something about going to the bridge. He doesn’t really catch it.

Lance knows he won’t be of any help on the bridge either, so he decides to search the Lion again. He isn’t deluded enough to hope to find Shiro cowering in some dark corner of the cockpit. He isn’t that stupid after all. But maybe there is something no one had picked up on.

Lance searches the Lion from top to bottom, inside and out. The only thing that strikes him as odd is the fact that Shiro’s bayard is still stuck to the bridge. And the fact that there is, otherwise, no clue to what had happened. To where Shiro might have disappeared to.

With an exhausted sigh, Lance plops down next to Blue, putting his helmet on the floor next to him.

It is only then that it sinks in that Shiro is gone. And they don’t have a clue where he is.

Lance may be boisterous and quick to voice his opinions, but he had never told Shiro that he looks up to him, that he became important to Lance during their time as Voltron.

Lance had known, form the very start, that this whole mission was more dangerous than any of them would like to admit. Death was waiting around the corner any time – heck, Lance already came close to dying at least twice; but he had never fully realized that loss – death – was something they could face any time they faced Zarkon or some of his cronies.

Shiro might never come back.

Lance’s breath hitches. It is very hard to breath all of a sudden.

Lance has the sudden urge to tell all of his teammates that they are important to him – yes, even Keith. Because, even if Keith still annoys him like hell, what would Lance be without his rival? What would Voltron be without each and every one of them?

What will become of Voltron now that Shiro is gone?

Lance scrambles up to his feet and grabs his helmet. But before he can rush to the bridge, the hangar opens again, and Red flies in.

They must have returned to the battlefield without Lance noticing. Before he can think more on it, he runs off to Red, positioning himself right in front of its mouth.

Maybe it was all just a bad dream. Maybe Keith found Shiro.

But when the Lion’s mouth opens and Lance sees Keith descending, all the hope that had dared to creep into him leaves him again. Lance suddenly feels very, very tired.

He looks up at Keith. Keith looks down at him. He looks like he is carrying the whole world on his shoulders, as if the weight is to heavy for him to keep going. And Lance can see the same sadness in Keith’s eyes that he himself feels in his heart.

Their eyes had locked for less than a second, but Lance could see all of this clear as day. Keith quickly looks away and makes his way down the stairs, avoiding Lance’s gaze. He seems to make an effort to appear normal, but he drags his feet, as if his whole body is slowed down by the loss.

He walks past Lance. Lance whirls around, feeling that he has to say something.

“Keith,” Lance says, and Keith stops in his tracks. He doesn’t turn around.

“Nothing,” Keith says. It is all there is to say.

Lance looks at Keith’s back, at the tension between his shoulder blades, and he knows that Keith will suffer more than anyone else on the ship.

Before Lance can think it through, he takes the two steps that separate them and grabs Keith’s arm. Keith starts and turns, ready to throw Lance off. Then Lance envelops him in a tight hug.

Lance can hear Keith’s surprised gasp and feel the tension throughout his whole body. To his own surprise, it doesn’t take long for Keith to relax into the hug. His arms hang uselessly at his sides, and he lets his head drop to Lance’s shoulder.

If this is what Lance can do in this shit situation, it is all that matters.

They stand there for a few ticks, maybe even a few vargas; Lance doesn’t know. Neither says anything. He decides that, for the moment, he would forget that Keith is still an annoying asshat.

II. Hunk

“Do you think this tastes like a cucumber?”

Hunk shoves a strangely shaped, purple something into Lance’s face. Lance grimaces. It smells weird, and he really does not want to taste it. But he also doesn’t want to eat more food goo, so he opens his mouth and bites off the tiniest amount of weird alien plant possible. He chews carefully with Hunk observing his reaction. Lance is surprised when he realizes that this purple something actually does taste like cucumber.

Hunk smiles when he sees Lance’s facial expression shift. “They will be perfect for my canapés!” He turns around again and starts working on his ingredients, hacking away expertly on the purple cucumber and something that looks like a heart shaped tomato.

After Lance and Hunk came back from their mission and announced that the ambassadors of Puig would like to meet with Allura and the Paladins, everyone had made themselves busy to prepare. It was their very first meeting with another alien race, and Allura had made it very clear that she wanted it to go smoothly. Allura had then vanished to rehearse some lines and dress up (not that she needed to, Lance thinks), while Coran and Pidge did something to the ship. Lance wasn’t quite sure what those two were up to when they vanished into the depths of the engine rooms.

Hunk had offered to provide some food for the meeting – or, as Lance sees it, he had become very excited about the various foods he had picked up on Puig and just wanted to make some real food for a change. Lance had tagged along, as he didn’t really know what to do with himself. He was already looking his best (as always), and he really didn’t want to be bored by Pidge’s and Coran’s tech talk. And food always sounded like a good idea.

So there he was, leaning against the counter of Hunk’s makeshift kitchen, watching him hack away on weird alien vegetables and assembling them in a careful manner that only Hunk seemed to make sense of.

Hunk produces another something from his pocket, and Lance bursts out laughing. “Oh my gosh, Hunk, this looks so much like a –”

“I know, stop it!” Hunk says, going all red in the face, but the corners of his mouth are turned up. “It looks weird, but I think it’s like our carrots.”

“Aw man, I love carrots. My mum used to steam them for me when I was a kid.” Lance smiles at the memory. He had never really liked vegetables as a child, so his mum had tried everything to make them more palatable for him. The only thing he ever really liked to eat were steamed carrots with butter drizzled over them. He hadn’t eaten that in years – he was much to grown up for that now.

“Really? My mum always cut them into little sticks so I could nibble on them while she read to me.” Hunk smiles, then begins to carefully skin the alien carrots.

They both go silent, and Lance notices that Hunk’s expression has become sad.

“I really miss real food, you know?”

Lance huffs. “Well, I’m not surprised, given that we have to eat food goo all day.” He indicates the vegetable in Hunk’s hand and the almost finished canapés right next to him. “But you are making real food right now, aren’t you?”

“Well, yes, but that’s not what I mean.” Hunk finishes his task and places both vegetable and knife on the table in front of him. He doesn’t meet Lance’s eyes. “I mean I miss food that looks like actual food. Not that this doesn’t look like food. But I miss tacos, and pizza, and chicken wings. I even miss my granny’s weird pies and they were all horrible.”

Lance doesn’t really know what to say to that. He misses real food, too. He misses his mum’s famous enchiladas. He misses the surprise pizza Thursdays at the pizza shack. Heck, he even misses the food at the Garrison sometimes, and that canteen food was something else. In a really bad way.

Lance thinks for a moment, then he asks, “If you could eat anything right now, what would it be?”

“Apple pie,” Hunk says, without missing a beat.

“With cream on top?”

“No, with vanilla ice cream melting on top.”

“Ugh, vanilla ice cream is the worst, how can you eat that with apple pie?” Lance says, exaggerating his affronted expression.

Hunk plays along, giving him a look of utter disbelieve. “You have no idea what’s good, do you? There is nothing more delicious than ice cream melting on top of some fresh hot apple pie.”

“I’d take cream over ice cream any day of the week.”

Hunk laughs, and Lance joins him. When they calm down, Hunk’s expression becomes distant again.

“You know, my dad makes the best apple pie in the world. I’m not kidding, that's the actually truth,” Hunk adds with a smile when Lance is about to interject. “He made some before I left for the Garrison, and he promised to make another one when I graduate. He only makes that pie for special occasions.”

Lance sees the expression on Hunk’s face shift, and he suddenly becomes very aware of the fact that his best friend might burst into tears any moment now. And the more disturbing fact is that he feels like joining him.

“I was so looking forward to that, you know. And now I don’t even know –”

Lance doesn’t let him finish that sentence. He doesn’t even want Hunk to finish that thought or even think of it ever again. Instead, he envelopes Hunk in a tight hug. He hears an “Oof!” and feels Hunk exhale in surprise by the sudden motion. However, Hunk’s shared so many bro-hugs with Lance that even in his state of surprise his arms automatically wrap around Lance.

“You will eat your dad’s pie again,” Lance says. Hunk tightens his grip and sniffs.

They separate quickly, and Lance gives Hunk his biggest smile. “You know what, I totally want to try that best pie as well. You definitely have to invite me over for that.”

Hunk smiles back broadly. “Will do.”

“And in the meantime,” Lance says, looking at the abandoned ingredients, “I think we should finish making these.”

“You mean, I have to finish making these. You did nothing.”

“I am giving you emotional support, you know? That is also a very important task.”

Hunk rolls his eyes, but he is smiling again. Lance thinks that that is an improvement.

III. Pidge

Lance finds Pidge furiously hacking away on her computer in some corner of the engine room. She is sitting on the floor, surrounded by stray tech and cables that Lance doesn’t want to know what they are for. He only knows that if anyone can built anything from all that crap, it is Pidge.

She never really leaves this place unless someone – mostly Coran or, before he disappeared, Shiro – makes her to get at least a few hours of sleep. Lance wonders how she manages to survive on less than six hours of sleep a night (or whatever counts as a night here in the middle of space). He doesn’t want to think about how his own unregular sleep pattern will affect his skin. But being a Paladin of Voltron, there really is not a lot of time to think about your beauty sleep.

As Coran was busy doing something productive (Lance has given up asking, because he never understood a word Coran was saying), Lance had been tasked to get Pidge to go to bed. After their more or less successful fight with Lotor, they were all tired and needed to rest. Even Keith, who had been particularly grumpy about their failed mission, had retreated to his room rather than beating up some bot on the training deck.

“Hey Pidge, what’re you up to?” Lance says, sidling up to her.

She doesn’t look up when she answers, “Going through all of my data to find something on Lotor.”

Lance puts his hands in his pockets and bends down to look over her shoulder at the screen. The words, both in Altean and Galra, fly over the screen, the pictures accompanying them only blurry specks of colours. Lance gets dizzy and looks back at her again. “Any luck?”

She sighs. “No. Nothing.”

Lance nods, even though she doesn’t see it. “Well, how about you try again tomorrow and go to bed now? Everyone else is already asleep.”

“Yes, yes,” she says, flapping her hand dismissively at him. “In a minute, I’m almost done.”

“You know I hate to be the voice of reason –” Lance begins, at which Pidge actually looks up at him with a raised eyebrow, “but I think you should go to bed.”

They look at each other, and Lance has trouble holding Pidge’s gaze. She can look terrifying when she wants to. Especially when she is pissed off.

To Lance’s surprise, she sighs and looks at him in defeat. “Give me five more doboshes.”

“Okay,” he says, then sits down next to her. “Five more doboshes. I’ll wait just in case you forget the time.”

He gives her his most dashing smile, and she pouts at him before returning her gaze to the computer screen.

Within thirty ticks Lance is bored. He had never been good at sitting still for an extended period of time. Even if that time was only five ticks. He twiddles his thumbs, looking around himself. He is impressed at the piles and piles of space garbage Pidge has managed to accumulate over time. He looks at weirdly angled pipes, and something that looks a lot like a satellite dish. Do aliens have cable as well? He really misses watching TV. He is probably way behind on all of his favourite shows.

His gaze wanders to find a casket. Lance is amazed that Pidge deemed it suitable for her little pile of trash, but when he looks closer, he might imagine why she kept it. It isn’t big, probably only big enough to hold some smaller tools, and it’s made of something shiny that might be metal (or whatever aliens use around in this part of the universe). However, unlike anything else he has seen so far, this casket is decorated with a tiny, intricate pattern of some sort of flowers. Lance has to squeeze his eyes shut and bent forward a bit to see it properly. They’re not flowers he knows, but they are beautiful. His sister would love it.

He thinks about Angelica, and about her little box of trinkets she likes to keep under her pillow. He had found the box in a dollar store – it wasn’t anything too fancy or as intricate as that, but she adored it. She likes to put strangely shaped stones and small seashells she found on the beach in it, but also letters from her friends and her small collection of brightly coloured paper-clips. She always told him that one day, when she was grown up, she would remember all the happy times she had when looking at her box of trinkets. Lance had asked her how paper-clips would remind her of anything, but she had only laughed and ran away to collect more stones. When she said things like that, Lance always thought she was way more mature than any other child her age. He wonders how she is doing. He should probably pick some funny stones when they next land on a planet. She would love that.

With a start Lance realizes that he had been spacing out. He doesn’t know how much time has passed, but he is certain that five doboshes were definitely up. He turns to look at Pidge and opens his mouth to tell her to shut down that damn computer, when he sees what she’s staring at.

Her hands have gone still on the keyboard, her eyes fixed on the picture on the screen. Lance has never met him, but he knows that it is her brother, Matt.

“Pidge?” he says, his voice unsure. She jumps, then hastily closes the file.

“Yes, time’s up, I’m going to bed,” she says, avoiding his gaze. She closes the lid of her laptop with a loud thud, but doesn’t move.

She sits there, staring at the computer in her lap. Lance thinks that she is about to say something, so he stays quiet.

“Before Matt went on the Kerberos mission, he always came into my room to tell me to go to sleep.” Her voice is quiet, and there is the hint of a smile tugging at her lips. “I always forget the time when I'm working on something, and Matt always made sure I got enough sleep. He always says that, with a good nights sleep, you can do anything the next day.”

“And right he is,” Lance says. “And I bet he would say that right now, too.”

Lance notices that Pidge’s eyes are a little watery. She tries to hide it and wipes her face on her sleeve.

Right at that moment, Pidge reminds him so much of his little sister that his heart starts to ache. He doesn’t exactly know what it is; Pidge doesn't even remotely look like Angelica, who has long dark hair and the exact same eyes as Lance. But something about Pidge’s dejected posture and her sad face reminds him of a sad Angelica. He misses her so much. Just as much as Pidge misses Matt.

Before Pidge can say anythiny, Lance reaches out and envelopes her in a tight hug. She squeal in surprise for a moment, her arms flailing to keep her balance. Lance doesn’t let go. Before long, Pidge buries her face in his t-shirt and clings to his jacket. She is shaking, and Lance can feel his shirt soaking with her silent tears.

“If anyone can find him, you will,” he says, rubbing her back. “And we will help you.”

IV. Coran

Today had been an absolute disaster. Or yesterday? Lance wasn’t really sure; maybe time moved differently behind the rift, in this other dimension.

Lotor had the stupid comet. The one thing that might actually enable him to overpower Voltron. He got away with it. Just like that.

It is a disaster. Lance knows that. Everyone in the team knows that, and they all feel guilty and angry and so fucking done. At least Lance is sure that he isn’t the only one feeling this way.

He knows, without a doubt, that Allura blames herself – and only herself – for this. And, if Lance is completely honest, this is what saddens him the most. That Allura is hurt.

She had been so happy, so damn delighted, to have found Alteans on the other side of the rift. Lance had never given it too much thought (for which he really would like to kick himself), but when he saw Allura’s face brighten in light of their discovery, he suddenly realized how lonely she must have felt. How lonely she had been, as one of the only two surviving Alteans.

And seeing that hope crushed by their realization that the Altean’s had their own version of the Empire – something as bad as the Galra Empire in their own reality – the light dropping from her face and her features altogether, had broken something deep inside of him.

When they had all regained consciousness and realized what had happened to the comet, it had already been too late to follow Lotor. The Lions were weak; they just didn’t have a chance.

Back in the hangar, after they had updated a very confused Coran, Allura immediately left, stalking down a corridor, her long hair trailing behind her. Lance didn’t really register anything that Pidge nor Hunk said, who both shuffeled off into another direction. Possibly to distract themselves by working on their latest scientific project.

Lance stands in front of Blue, looking after Allura’s retreating figure. He is about to say something, to keep her from leaving, from running into her pain, when he hears Keith clearing his throat. Lance looks up. His and Keith’s eyes meet. Neither says a word, but Lance completely understands. He gives Keith a curt nod, and then Keith is rushing after Allura.

“I, er, should get back to my work,” Coran says, somewhere behind Lance. His voice sounds flat. There is something, like a small hitch in how he says it that catches Lance’s attention. He turns around to say something, but Coran has suddenly disappeared to somewhere, doing something only he can understand.

Now Lance is alone in the hangar. The Lions loom in the semi-darkness, silent but ever-present observers. Lance looks up at Blue. She looks down at him, and Lance can’t help but feel soothed by her presence. Even though Allura is now the one piloting her, he still feels most connected to Blue.

He really wishes Blue would still want to have the same bond with him. Maybe, just maybe, she could then give him the advice he so desperately needs right now.

“How can we fix this mess?” he says, looking up into Blue’s dark eyes. She doesn’t answer. The hum of the ship around him is all that Lance can hear.

Shaking himself, he turns on the spot, and starts walking down to the engine room. He cannot shake the feeling that something is up with Coran. He wouldn’t say that Coran being something other than chipper and overbearing (which, to be honest, is his default mode) was completely out of this universe; everyone had their bad days, and that was also true of Coran. However, Lance is certain that this time, something is up.

It doesn’t take long for Lance to find Coran. He is, as Lance had expected, in the engine room connected to the Teludavs, tinkering away on some console.

Coran has his back to Lance. He watches him for a while, standing in the door frame, uncertain of what to do.

“Hey Coran, whatya doing?” Lance says eventually.

From the way that Coran jumps and drops several of his weirdly shaped tools on the floor, Lance can tell that he really didn’t hear him coming, which is unusual.

“Gosh, where did you come from?” Coran says and turns around to look at Lance, his eyes huge.

“The hangar,” Lance says, matter of factly, waving his helmet around before placing it on one of the consoles next to him. It doesn’t seem to be operating, so Lance hopes he doesn’t accidentally push the self-destruct button (which would just be their luck, honestly).

Coran watches him, but doesn’t reprimand him, which is a good sign.

“Aha,” Coran says. He bends to retrieve his tools, then turns around to keep on doing whatever he was doing. Now that wasn’t a good sign.

“Don’t you want to get changed? Or train? Or something?” Coran says, his back still to Lance.

Lance arches an eyebrow. “I thought I could help you out,” he says, even though both him and Coran know that he is no help at all, ever.

He walks up to stand next to Coran, peering at what he is doing. Coran has removed the cover of the console. The wires on the inside, which are coloured in every colour of the known universe, are pouring out to each side of the opening. Coran is holding something that might be pliers, but the ends look wrong, and Lance has no clue what he is doing.

Lance doesn’t know anything about the ship’s mechanics, but he is absolutely certain that there is nothing on the ship that is so badly malfunctioning that Coran needs to attend to it right this moment.

When he looks up, Coran is not looking at him. He looks down at his work, his eyebrows slightly furrowed in concentration. Or the effort to avoid Lance’s gaze.

“What do you need?”

The question hangs in the air between them. Lance leaves it up to Coran to decide what it means.

For about a dobosh, he doesn’t say anything. Then, without looking up, he extends his free hand, palm up. “Pass me the vrorlos.”

Lance blinks. “The what?”

“The vrorlos. The red thing right next to you.”

Lance turns around and spots something that looks like a screwdriver, but all flat on top. He picks it up and hands it over to Coran, who wordlessly takes it and pokes it into the console.

Lance doesn’t know anything about machines and tools, but he really can’t see how that silly thing can actually do anything. It looked all wrong.

For a while, they just stand there, Coran working away on the console, and Lance watching him. The silence between them is only disrupted by the clinking of metal on metal and Coran’s instructions to get him even more weirdly shaped tools.

Lance watches as Coran pushes the wires from side to side, making them all glow a deep purple, then different shades of blue, before they go back to their multicoloured state.

Lance doesn’t know how long they stand and work like this. It might be a few doboshes, or maybe even many vargas; he only knows that the quiet humming of the ship, the soft blue light in the small room, and their companionable silence is soothing.

Even though no one comes looking for them. Even though they are alone.

Lance doesn’t feel like it is his place to break the silence. They both are really not themselves today, he muses.

Coran had been rummaging through the console with another ridiculous tool for quite some time now, and Lance suspects that there actually is nothing to fix. His suspicions are proven correct when Coran suddenly speaks up.

“The Alteans...the ones you met...what were they like?”

Lance has to think about this for a moment. “Well, they seemed kinda nice at first but….well, they sort of turned out to be like the Galra.” Lance immediately regrets saying this and hastily adds, “I mean, they were different than the Alteans in this reality, obviously. And they definitely weren’t as bad as the Galra.”

“From what the princess said, they sounded even worse.”

“I don’t know,” Lance says, trying to grasp for the right words. “I don’t think it makes sense to compare one reality to another. In the end, every choice ever being made can lead to another reality, and we just have to accept the one we are living in without constantly asking ourself ‘what if’.”

Coran’s eyebrows shoot into his hairline, and he turns his head to stare at Lance. Lance can feel his face go red.

“I didn’t know you were so intelligent!”

“I have my moments,” Lance says, grinning up at Coran. If anyone else had been around – especially Keith – Lance would not have owned up to this. But this was Coran, and Lance knew he didn’t mean it as an insult.

Coran huffs a laugh in response, then goes quiet again. He looks down at the console. His hands have stilled, one resting on the wires, the other clutching a tool (a tagnal, if Lance remembers correctly).

The silence between them stretches, but when Coran speaks up again, his voice unusually quiet, it feels so much louder.

“Before the war started, there was this girl...and no, this is not the way you think it is.” Coran shoots Lance a quick glare, just as Lance was about to say something. Coran really knows him a bit too well.

Lance closes his mouth, but he cannot keep from smirking a bit. “What was her name?”

“Nafori,” Coran says, and looks down at his hands again. “She was one of the maids. About your age, and orphaned. I knew that Allura’s mother, the queen, had insisted on employing her. She wasn’t good or bad at what she did. She was just one of the maids, nothing more.

“At least that’s what I thought until I found out that she had a knack for engines. She was good at repairing them – so good, I still wonder where she got it from. She never wanted to talk about her family, but I always assumed that she must have learned something from them. Or maybe she was just a particularly gifted young woman.”

“Or both,” Lance interjects. Coran’s answering smile is weak.

“I had left one of my latest projects unattended...actually, I cannot really remember what it was anymore...but when I returned, I found her pottering about it. At first, I was shocked, but when I found that she had fixed the problem I had been struggling with for weeks, I immediately took her under my wing.”

Coran has removed his hands from the console. He is still looking down at his hands, toying with the tagnal, turning it this way and that way. There is something unbelievably sad in Coran’s face, it actually scares Lance. He has never seen Coran so vulnerable.

“I trained her. She was a very intelligent, very bright and enthusiastic student. It didn’t take long for her to learn everything she needed, and more. Soon, she accompanied and assisted me in almost every project. We grew close.”

At the last sentence, Coran’s voice almost breaks. Lance feels his own heart breaking. And he feels shame and guilt creeping up the back of his neck.

Lance had never stopped to think whether Coran had lost someone to the Galra empire. Allura had lost her father. Heck, they had both lost their entire race. They were the last Alteans alive. That was bad enough. But he had never thought to ask Coran if he had lost someone important to him. Lance had never thought twice, as Coran had always seemed so chipper and ditzy. It just proved that Lance should never judge a book by its cover, and that he should never, ever, take Coran for granted.

“I’m sorry,” Lance says. It’s dumb, and it is not enough, but is the only thing he can think of.

“When I heard that you found Alteans, I thought that, maybe...” Coran doesn’t finish his sentence, but he doesn’t have to. Hope can be such a cruel thing sometimes.

Lance looks at Coran’s profile, his sad eyes, his slumped shoulders, and his arms that hang uselessly to his sides. He looks completely beaten. So lost and lonely.

With a sharp twinge in his heart Lance is painfully reminded of his own family. He misses them so terribly. What if something had happened to one of them while he was gone? Would he meet all of them when they (hopefully) went back to earth? Would they have changed? How much would the twins have grown? Would Angelica still keep her box under her pillow? Would they still live in their house by the beach, with the sea in their back garden?

With a sudden jolt of panic, Lance has another thought; do they know that he is still alive? What did the Garrison tell them after his disappearance?

Suddenly, there are tears in Lance’s eyes, and he has trouble from keeping them welling over. Within just a few ticks, Lance feels like all his homesickness, all his anxieties, and all his sadness surfaces and threatens to burst out of him, cracking the shell of his all too human body, flooding the engine room, drowning him in it’s tidal madness.

He looks up at Coran, expecting him to recoil from him, from the sheer amount of emotion that Lance feels he is emanating now, but Coran is still standing next to him, looking so lost. And it is that image of him that, oddly, calms Lance instantly.

He is not alone.

Lance needs Coran to know that. That they both feel alone. But also, and it hits Lance hard, and with a force that almost knocks him off his feet, that they have each other, that they have the Lions, and Allura, and Pidge and Hunk and Keith. They all have each other. And nothing will change that.

Lance grabs Coran by the arm and pulls him into a tight hug. Coran gives a tiny huff of surprise, but then his arms come up to reciprocate.

Lance cannot even pretend to imagine how it must feel to loose ones entire race, or how it feels to loose a loved one; but he hopes that Coran understands, can comprehend all the tangled emotions and thoughts and feelings Lance has towards him, Allura, the Paladins, heck, even the mice, when he says,

“You are not alone, Coran. Never.”

Coran’s grip tightens. He doesn’t say anything. He just holds unto Lance for a few more doboshes.

V. Allura

It is still way too early when he hears a knock on his door.

Lance buries his face in his pillow and pulls the blanket over his face. Just five more doboshes.

It knocks again. And again. Lance groans.

“Lance?” Her voice is muffled, but it is without a doubt Allura.

Suddenly Lance is throwing off his blankets and jumps out of his bed. He almost trips over his lion-slippers on his way to the door.

“Good morning princess,” he says, flashing Allura his most dashing smile. “How can I help you so early in the morning?”

Allura’s eyes flit down his body for a second. She raises her hand, and coughs. “Good morning Lance. I’m sorry for waking you up.”

“Oh no, you didn’t...” Lance begins, but then he realizes that he literally just jumped out of bed and is still wearing his pyjamas. His very, very unmanly, unflattering pyjamas.

He looks up at Allura, and sure enough she is trying to hide a smile behind her hand. Her eyes are betraying her, though, which are twinkling up at him from under her long lashes.

Lance immediately goes completely red.”Give me a tick,” he says and rushes back inside his quarters and throws on his clothes.

When he comes back Allura is still standing where he left her, playing with one of the mice sitting on her shoulder. He didn’t notice the mice were with her before.

“So, Allura, how can I help you?” he says, smiling again. Not as radiant, but he hopes he can cover up the utter shame he is still feeling from having Allura see him in his pyjamas.

“I know it’s still early, but I thought you could help me out,” she says, meeting his gaze. Even though she is smiling at him, Lance can immediately see that it doesn’t reach her eyes.

“What with?” He steps out of his quarters and lets the door slide shut behind him. He would love to invite Allura inside to discuss whatever she wants to talk about – he really wouldn’t mind that at all – but something tells him that now is not the time to flirt with her. Plus, his room is an absolute mess.

“Well, you know that I haven’t been flying the Blue Lion for that long,” she begins, averting her gaze. “And I thought you, as the former blue paladin, could give me some advice? Some secrets I should know?”

She looks up again, her eyes searching his. He isn’t exactly sure what she expects him to do. If he was completely honest, he never really found out anything significant that the others didn’t know of. He and Blue did have a bond, he would never claim anything less – but secrets? He never found out anything, despite the thing with the bayard; but that was hardly anything that he had to tell Allura about.

He is also somewhat confused because Allura is no doubts the fastest learner of all of the Voltron paladins. If anyone needed some pointers on being a better paladin, it is definitely not her.

So, what should he tell her? That he couldn’t help her? That she already knew more than he ever did? That she was the most kick-ass woman he ever met and definitely didn’t need help from a former fighter pilot cadet who barely made it through the Garrison program?

But looking at her huge eyes, which expectantly look up at him, he just can’t say no.

“Absolutely!” Lance exclaims, maybe a bit too loud.

“Brilliant!” Allura claps her hands and smiles at him. The mice sitting on her shoulder are momentarily dislocated from their seat, squeaking angrily while trying to cling to her suit.

“Sorry,” she says, helping them get back on her shoulder. “So, should we go down to the hangar?”

Lance nods. They start walking down the hallway, side by side. Lance hasn’t been alone with Allura often. He can feel his palms getting sweaty. He tries to wipe them on his trousers without her noticing.

“Have you slept well?” she asks.

“Er, yeah. You?”

“Yes, I did.”

She coughs. The silence between them is awkward. Especially because he knows they are both lying.

The rest of their walk down to the Lions is quiet, neither meeting the others eyes. Lance can hear the mice squeaking something he cannot understand, but he likes to imagine that they have a very heated conversation about which kind of cheese is the best one out there. Lance would support the one pleading for cheddar. Cheddar’s the best.

When they reach the Blue Lion, they step inside and climb up to the cockpit. As soon as they enter it, Lance starts talking. Just talking. He points out everything that he can see, telling Allura what he knows. He points out the screens, the handles, the chair; he shows her the place where the bayard goes; he tells her that she probably should put on her seatbelt when piloting Blue.

Allura, of course, knows all of this. Lance knows that. But she doesn’t say anything; she just smiles, inspects everything he points out, and nods along. She doesn’t say a word.

Her smile, however, is tense, and her eyes are unsmiling. Lance sees this, and he doesn’t know what to do, so he does what he knows best; talk and make jokes.

“You know, Blue is a tender one,” he says at some point, patting the console in front of the chair fondly. “She likes it if you talk sweetly to her. Don’t you, girl?” He pats the console again and smiles. Blue doesn’t answer, but he is sure she hears him.

Allura chuckles. “She?”

Lance looks up, bewildered. “Yes, she. Blue is an ass-kicking lady.” He grins at Allura, wagging his eyebrows. “Just like her pilot.”

Allura roles her eyes at him, but she smiles. “Well, thank you for that, Lance.”

Allura has set the mice on the armrest of the chair. They are running around the arms and the back, chasing each other and squealing in delight. She smiles down at them, but her smile is quickly wiped from her face. She walks around the chair and sits heavily on it. She sighs.

“So, er, I think that’s everything I know,” Lance says. He rubs at the back of his head. He feels so very inadequate. He just doesn’t know what to say anymore.

They are silent for a moment. The mice are making the only noise in the tiny cockpit.

“I don’t think I can do this,” Allura blurts out.

Lance blinks. “What?”

“I don’t think I can be a paladin.”

Allura’s eyes are fixed on her lap, where she is wringing her hands. Her shoulders are tense. He can see the fabric of her suit ruffle up between her shoulder blades.

Lance blinks again. And again. Then he walks around the chair to confront her. She doesn’t look up at him.

“What do you mean you can’t be a paladin?”

Allura doesn’t look up, and her voice is small and quiet when she answers. “You all have been piloting the Lions for so long, and I just...happened to become a paladin out of luck. Because we needed a fifth pilot. I may be able to pilot Blue, but I don’t know...” She stops, swallows. Her voice is thick when she continues, “I don’t know if I am the right choice for this.”

Lance’s jaw drops. He just cannot comprehend how Allura, Princess Allura, pilot of the freaking Castle of Lions, overall bad-ass superwoman, can actually doubt herself.

When he looks down at her, she looks so fragile. So small, and helpless. He is having a deja vu. She reminds him a lot of someone. And that someone is himself.

He can remember it so clearly. It was shortly after he started his training at the Garrison. His first piloting test had been an absolute disaster. The lessons were hard, and somehow everyone knew so much more than he did. He only got by with his usual exuberant swagger. But on the inside, he was feeling so lost.

He had been so desperate that he had actually gone and visited Veronica.

He sat in her office chair, slumped over, just like Allura in front of him right now. He hadn’t dared to show any weakness in front of anyone – most notably Keith (and Shiro, gosh, he really misses Shiro) – but it was different with Veronica. With Veronica, he could be vulnerable. With Veronica, he could be the child that he still felt that he was.

She had been standing in front of him, arms folded in front of her chest, lips pressed into a thin line.

“What’s the matter, Lance?” she had said, her voice all soft. She never spoke soft to anyone. It was her special big sister voice. And Lance had really needed it. But at that point, it also reminded him of how small he was.

“I don’t think I can do this,” he had said, avoiding her gaze. “I don’t think I can be a pilot.”

She huffed. “Nonsense!”

He looked up at her, his eyebrows furrowed in question. She had put her hands on her hips and regarded him with a stern glare.

“Lance, are you trying to tell me you are giving up? The term hasn’t really started yet!”

“I know, I know! But I barely made it through our first test! And then there are so many others who are so much better than me, and...”

“Lance! That is all rubbish!”

Lance blinked up at her. “What?”

Veronica’s eyes were serious when she said, “When did you become someone who gave up at the very start?”

Lance was still blinking up at her. She sighed, then sat down on the chair right next to his. “What I mean is, you barely started your training and you are already thinking you are not good enough? Lance, you just started your training.”

Lance stared up at her. “But-”

“Uh uh uh, don’t even start,” she said, wagging her finger in front of his face. “I know it’s hard here at the Garrison, but I know you can do it. You’ve always wanted to do this. So you will do this.”

Then she had leaned over and hugged him. “You’re not giving up,” she said into his hair.

He hadn’t given up. He had pushed through, and it had gotten him here.

But, for all his bravado at the Garrison, he had always know that he isn’t the best pilot. He had managed to become an average one, but not a good one. It was only when he had become a paladin that he had somewhat improved.

Seeing Allura sitting in front of him now, her shoulders tense, he feels a strange kind of anger bubble up inside of him. Allura is such a talented pilot – she had managed to learn so much more than he had in double the time. She knows so many things, fights like a warrior, flies like a bird; how can she not see how amazing she is?

Did Veronica have the same thoughts, all those years back?

“Stop it,” Lance says, and his voice is unusually harsh. “You stop right there.”

Allura’s head snaps up. There is hurt written all over her face, but Lance ignores it.

“Allura, Blue chose you not because we were one pilot short, but because you were the right choice. Because you have everything, and more, that a paladin of Voltron needs.”

Hurt yields to surprise, and Lance watches this change in her eyes with a mix of feelings that he cannot pin down.

“But-”

“No,” he says decisively. Before he can think better of it, he grabs Allura’s hands and pulls her up and into his arms.

“Lance, what-” she says in surprise. He hugs her close, but she is completely rigid in his grasp.

“Don’t you dare doubt yourself. Because we will never doubt you.”

She relaxes and tentatively puts her hands on his back. She buries her face in his hoody and says, “Thank you, Lance.”

He smiles into her hair.

He wants to add that, if anything, he is the odd one out. But he doesn’t.

*

I. Lance

When the doors close behind Lance, it takes Keith at least thirty ticks until he realizes that he made a huge mistake.

He slaps his hand against his forehead, hard, and hisses at the pain.

“Shit,” he says, and runs out of his room.

Lance can’t have gone far; however, standing in the hallway in front of his room, Keith can’t see Lance on either end. He runs down the right hand side where he knows Lance’s room is.

It would just be like Lance to go to his room, play video games and wallow in his pain, Keith thinks. Wait, no, that was harsh. Lance doesn’t deserve this.

This time, Keith is highly aware that it isn’t Lance’s fault.

Lance had come to Keith to talk about his position as a paladin in the team. Keith really doesn’t know what he was on about. Why should Lance worry about something like that? And why did Lance come to talk to Keith, out of all people?

Keith doesn’t want to think about what Lance has said...about being the leader now...Keith pushes that thought far away. It’s not the time to think about that.

That wasn’t the point, anyway. Lance was troubled by something. Keith only fully realized this when Lance had already left. And instead of giving him comfort, Keith had made it worse.

He reaches the door to Lance’s quarters and bangs on the door. He waits. But no one answers.

“Lance?” he says, banging on the door again. “Are you in there?” No answer.

Keith curses under his breath. Where could he have gone?

He turns and runs down the way he came from. Maybe Lance went down to the training deck.

Keith is still puzzled that Lance came to talk to him, out of all the people of this ship who would have done a way better job at this than him. Wasn’t he really close with Hunk? Why didn’t he talk to Allura? Or Shiro?

Shiro had always been way better at handling people than Keith had. Keith himself was living proof of that. Shiro had always listened and given advice to each and every one of Team Voltron before he had disappeared. Well, Shiro hasn’t been back for long, and everyone is trying to ease him back into the team (which, Shiro being Shiro, he didn’t really accept and just threw himself back into action head first), but Keith had assumed that, should anyone want to talk, they would go and talk to Shiro.

Keith reaches the training deck, but it is empty. Well, if he thought about it, Lance was about the laziest paladin of them all; of course he wouldn’t be here.

Which isn’t true in the slightest.

Keith turns and runs down to the kitchens. It is almost dinnertime, maybe Lance went down early.

Keith had always been bad at reading people. He had always been bad at talking to people, let alone give advice or comfort. He is sure all of the others know that, but for some reason that was a complete mystery to him, Lance had deemed him the right person to talk to about his problem.

And Keith still doesn’t know what exactly the problem is.

But what he does know is that Lance never looked as crestfallen as he did when he left Keith’s room. He may have smiled at Keith when he turned around at Keith’s last attempt to say something, but it didn’t reach his eyes. And it had taken Keith way too long to actually register that.

Lance isn’t down in the kitchen. He’s also not in the hangar, not with Hunk or Pidge, or on the deck.

“Where the hell are you?” Keith pants, leaning against the wall of the ship to catch his breath.

Keith looked everywhere. Well, the ship is huge, so everywhere doesn’t actually cover each corner; but there is no other place Keith can think of where Lance could have gone to.

He slips down the wall, wreaking his brain. Where the hell could this idiot have gone to?

Why does he even bother looking for Lance? What could he even do to make things better? He doesn’t even know what he should make better, so how could Keith be of any help?

But then he remembers Lance’s face; the sadness in his dark blue eyes. Lance was never like this. He was never sad, not like this, and something about that really bothered Keith. He didn’t like that look on Lance’s face. Something deep inside of Keith tells him that he has to do something about it, even if he doesn’t know what that something is.

He sighs, pushing his fringe out of his face. He looks up at the blank ceiling. And then it hits him.

The observatory!

Keith jumps up and runs down the corridor. He might be wrong altogether, but something tells him that Lance is there.

When the doors to the observatory slide open, Keith can immediately see Lance. He is sitting on the floor, right in the middle of the room. The room is dark, and Keith can only make out Lance’s shape. He would recognize that profile anywhere.

Lance doesn’t look up when Keith enters the room and the doors noiselessly slide shut behind him. In fact, he seems to be looking at something on the floor right in front of him. Keith hesitates. Does Lance even want him to be here?

Keith swallows his uncertainty and walks over to Lance. In one swift motion, he sits down right next to him.

Lance still doesn’t say anything, or looks up. Keith can now see that Lance is looking down and playing with the mice, who seem to be fighting over a snack.

Keith doesn’t know what to say. He was adamant to find Lance, to do something; but now, sitting right next to him in the dark, his mind is completely wiped blank. He was sure he’d had some kind of plan earlier, but that was now completely gone.

The silence between them stretches. Lance, who is normally filling every quiet second in his life (and everyone else’s, for that matter) with meaningless chit-chat, is so uncharacteristically quiet, Keith is honestly concerned.

Keith is getting more and more nervous. He can feel his hands getting all clammy. Gosh, what the hell is he supposed to do now? He wishes he could just stand up and flee, run back to his room and hide under the blankets. But that would be weird, so he stays, and stares straight ahead of him to the stars.

Keith wonders which ones they have already visited, and which have already been destroyed by the Galra Empire. You never knew; a sun sends it’s light into the universe and it will burn for a thousand deca-phoebs, even though that sun has died a thousand deca-phoebs ago. How would they know which star was still salvageable, and which not? Which died of natural causes, and which has been exterminated by the Galra?

As a child, Keith had often looked to the stars. It calmed him. Knowing that there was so much more out there than the tiny shoe-box minds of people. It gave him a sense of belonging; and a yearning for the stars that shone so brightly during the night. He imagined, back then, that each star held an adventure all of it’s own, and they were just waiting for him to find them. That was, in fact, the reason he went to the Garrison, even though by then he already knew the actual fate of the stars. He still wanted to reach beyond the earth’s horizon, reach for the millions of suns and get lost in the black emptiness of the universe.

He would have never dreamed, after being kicked out of the Garrison, that he would actually achieve this dream. He felt more at home in the Castle of Lions than anywhere on earth.

The thousand suns beyond the window pane softly illuminate the observatory, and Keith’s eyes slowly adjust to the darkness. Keith peers over at Lance. Lance wears a solemn expression, and he looks oddly fragile. Keith doesn’t know what it means, but something about this pulls unpleasantly in the pit of his stomach.

The mice to Lance’s feet squeak in delight over their snack, but then the biggest one gets a hold of it and runs off, the other mice hot on it’s tail. Lance let’s his hand fall into his lap, and he looks up to the stars.

“Why are you here?” Lance suddenly says. His voice is quiet for his standards. Keith jumps a bit. He hadn’t expected for Lance to speak up first. Then again, he hadn’t really planned on saying anything himself soon.

Well, why was he here? That was a really good question. Keith doesn’t know the answer. He just knows what he really needs to say.

“I’m sorry.”

“What for?”

What for indeed? Keith is still unsure. And he doesn’t want to give Lance a half-baked answer. So he shrugs.

Lance sighs. He doesn’t say anything else, but he leans back on his hands and stares out of the window.

“You don’t have to sit here and pity me,” Lance says eventually.

Keith turns his head to properly look at Lance. There was no bite in his words. Just hurt.

Suddenly, Keith has this very strong impulse to tell Lance what he thinks of him. Tell him exactly what he has been thinking for a couple of movements now (or however long they have been on this ship).

He wants to tell him that, since his dad died, he had never had a proper family. No Foster Home he had been subjected to had ever welcomed him. Only when Shiro came along and took him under his wing – almost quite literally – he had someone to call his family.

Then, when Shiro disappeared, and reappeared a year later; when Hunk, Lance and Pidge had almost prevented him from saving Shiro; when they had found the Blue Lion; when they found Allura and Coran; when they became the paladins of Voltron; when they fought for the Galaxy and beat Zarkon; suddenly, when Keith thought of ‘Home,’ it wasn’t just space and Shiro’s face that came to his mind. There were also Hunk, and Pidge, and Allura and Coran.

And Lance.

They all had become his family. They all had sneaked themselves into his life, without him knowing it.

And that is why he will never stop looking for Shiro. He will never stop fighting the Galra, who threaten his home. He will never stop doing what he has to do to fight for his family.

He wants to tell Lance that this weird family would never be complete without him, and that he, and the others, need Lance very much. Voltron will never be Voltron without Lance.

And maybe that is exactly what Lance needs to hear.

But Keith doesn’t know how to handle people, and he doesn’t know how to comfort people. All the emotions he feels are stuck in his throat, bundling up into a ball that almost chokes him. He can’t get it out, but he doesn’t seem to be able to swallow it, either, but he knows that he has to do something. So he does, in a moment of inspiration and sheer madness, the only thing that Lance will understand.

Keith slips closer to Lance; then, pushing all his anxieties to the back of his mind, throws his left arm around Lance’s shoulders and draws him close.

Lance gives a weird sort of squeak, but Keith ignores it and tucks Lance’s head under his chin and brings his other arm up to hold him tight to his chest.

Lance is completely rigid in Keith’s grasp. Keith himself feels a bit stiff and odd doing this, but he won’t back down now. He will hold unto this idiot until he knows that he is wanted, that Keith needs him.

This thought shoots through his brain, and he doesn’t really know where it came from. He can feel his face heat up, but he ignores it. This is not important; not right now.

After what feels like an eternity, Lance scoots a bit closer to Keith, and his arms come up to hold unto his back. He buries his face in Keith’s shirt, and Keith is sure he can hear Lance give a relieved sort of sigh.

Suddenly, their embrace doesn’t feel odd or stiff or weird anymore. Lance melts into Keith, and Keith holds on a little tighter.

Neither says a word. The room is quiet, and completely dark. Only the stars beyond the Castle of Lions cast a soft light on their entwined bodies, and they shimmer and flicker and Keith is sure they sing a song of home to them. Because, right here, right now, they are exactly where they need to be.

Home.