Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

At the present moment, Lance needed several things. A half-decent rifle, for instance. A disguise that didn’t consist of the armor of an unconscious guard who smelled like sweaty gym socks. Some better partners.

He did not need Pidge’s sarcasm.

“Lance, I can hear you from here. Walk more quietly, for fuck’s sake.”

“Well, I apologize, Pidge ‘sitting safely back at base while Lance risks his ass for the upteenth time this week’ Gunderson-”

“Guys, can you please not,” Hunk moaned over the intercom. “I’m going to puke.”

Lance grumbled under his breath, but shut his mouth, not in the mood to give his weak-stomached partner more incentive to vomit all over the control board he would be manning with Pidge.

Oh, and while those two sat back at the nice, air-conditioned base while watching the chaos over the montier, what would Lance be doing? Oh, right, just breaking into a Galra supply hub. Alone.

You know. Nothing much.

He could act irked, but he knew as well as his two partners did that he would rather be on the battlefield than playing the guy in the chair. Sitting still while other people risked their lives didn’t sit well with him.

Didn’t mean he couldn’t rub it across Pidge and Hunk’s faces.

He tightened his grip on his gun as he rounded a corner, but he knew no one would be there. Pidge or Hunk would have said something if there was.

In fact, the sentry stationing at this base was particularly odd. Sentries were stationed, unmoving, before rooms whose contents always remained Galra-free. Hunk and Pidge had managed to build a sensor for the high traces of whatever-it-was that was inside the bracelets Galra used as sensors. But whatever was in those rooms was decidedly Galra-free.

Which meant it could be just about anything.

Another left, and Lance knew he was approaching the most heavily guarded area. The area which held the weird standing-still guards. And the intel they needed.

The mission was simple. Lance would get in there, insert a little virus-carrying flash drive into the supercomputer hub (or whatever it was), get out, and boom . Pidge once again breaks every law ever and can now access the system.

Easy, really. It wouldn’t have been the first time they’d done it. Ever since they’d formed their little rebellion, Lance’d been breaking and entering into countless Galra bases, because if there was anything living with siblings taught you, it was how to move silently.

“Alright, Lance. Please catch the plate this time.”

“That was one time! ” Lance intinsticitly tunred to the ventaltion shaft he had paused next to just as the plate came loose and fell forwards, right into his waiting arms, pushed by a small, floating robot. “Wassup, Rover?”

“One time which ended in sixteen Galra guards de-limbed, a food fight, the base’s Commander with her head speared on a flash-frozen piece of asparagus, and your near death.”

“I thought we agreed to forget about the Asparagus Incident?” Lance pulled himself up into the vent silently, waving goodbye to Rover as the robot screwed the vent plate back on behind him.

“Believe me, I tried to erase that from my memory,” Hunk’s voice cut in. “Can we please go one mission without mentioning the Asparagus Incident? The fact that Lance can spear anyone ’s head on a piece of asparagus is not something I need to think about when I’m trusting my life in that hands of this guy.”

“My vegetable capabilities should be comforting, actually,” Lance replied, crawling silently through the cramped vent. He came to an opening in the metal shaft and peered into the room below. “Doesn’t seem like it’ll be much help here, though. I found the mess hall. This place is definitely not transporting food, if their menu options are anything to go by.”

“I figured as such,” Pidge replied. “We’ve been to food supply bases. Their security layouts are completely different.”

Lance nodded, moving on. “Alright. I’m in position,” He muttered as he stopped in front of another vent opening. “Now, let’s see…” His voice trailed off as he peered into the room.

“Lance? Come in!”

“Lance, what’s wrong? What’s going on?”

Pidge and Hunk’s voices seemed far off as Lance stared down into the room below, because Oh, god, they had no idea what they had gotten themselves into.

“Lance! Oh my god, please respond-”

“I know what they’re transporting.” His voice was eerily calm, way calmer than he felt.

There was radio silence for a minute, and Lance knew that Pidge and Hunk knew that something was very wrong.

“...What is it?”

Lance swallowed, hard. He wanted to tear his eyes away so badly, yet he couldn’t, not when he so vividly remembered-

Cold, cold, cold, yet he was so hot, because the room was freezing but there was way too many people in this room for its size. He was trapped between two people he didn’t know, head hung low and eyes dull as he trudged along.

“People,” He said, his voice hollow and broken. “This is a prison. Or- or some kind of prison hub, I don’t know.”

A scream, a bright flash, and then pain was shooting up his back as he dropped to the ground, body so thing that each bone could be seen through the pale, papery-thin skin.

“Lance- oh, god. We’ve got to get him out of there-”

An involuntary whimper left Lance’s mouth as he watched a small girl cry silently in her cell, back pressed as far back to the wall as it could go.

“Yeah, okay,” He whispered. “I’m coming back.”

Twenty-Three Years Previously:

Lance was very fortunate, he knew that. He always had been. There were a million things that could have gone wrong in his life that didn’t. The first years of his life had been ones of pure bliss, of playing in the sand with his mother and dancing around the living room with his siblings.

He had been born around the end of the Golden Age of superheros. It was about 50 years since superpowers had begun springing up amongst the human race. Well, Lance supposed humans had been mutanting in such a way for much longer, in smaller ways, like increased hearing or psychic connections to nature or foresight, he didn’t know. But it was around 50 years since superpowers had really appeared, noticeably, at least.

The first generation of mutants were sparse, and their powers were not very prevalent- some could make plants grow faster or levitate. However, about three generations later, Lance was in the generation of which mutants had powers ripped straight out of comic books.

And, of course, with this came the profession of a superhero.

There was a lot of legal garbage that came with being an officially registered superhero, working alongside law enforcement, so there were a fair amount of vigilantes as well, mainly idolized by teenagers, but it was generally more socially acceptable to legally register as a superhero.

Schools for mutants appeared, mutant communities popped up over the country, and mutants were praised as saviors sent from God. Everyone wanted to be a mutant. Superheros lived in famed luxury, atop thrones of gold.

That was the Golden Age of superheros.

It was estimated that about 40% of the population had the mutation gene, though it only activated in about 30% of those cases. It was cruel, in a way, not knowing if you were a mutant or not, because unless your gene activated in a grand fashion there was really no way of knowing.

It was generally accepted that the best way to get your gene to activate was to be in a life-threatening situation, a situation in which only your gene could get you out. Suicide and self-harm rates soared upwards as people threw themselves headfirst into danger. And it was this, Lance supposed, which really gave traction to the Galra.

It’d been a relatively small organization at first, operating out of a pretty well-known city called Daibazaal. They’d advertized themselves as being an organization against mutants due to the suicide increase and the fact that crimes rates were not significantly decreasing while property damage ones were. Mutants of course were always controversial, due to their unknown origins and the misfortune they seemed to bring, so the Galra gained members and popularity pretty quickly. They’d never made any big statements aside from organizing peaceful protests.

Then, in a battle against his arch nemesis, Alfor, the “King of Supers,” as he was commonly called, who hailed from Altea, one of the largest cities in the country, let things get a little too out of hand. Lance could remember clutching his mother’s hand as the two incredibly powerful mutants, hero and villain, fought it out over live television. He couldn’t pretend it hadn’t been exhilarating, and his older brother and sister were cheering on Alfor as he flew through the air, graceful even when facing certain death. It had been exciting, crazy, ripped straight from the colorful pages of a comic book.

But in the end, Daibazaal was reduced to nothing more than rubble.

The Galra got more violent after that. No longer were their protests peaceful. Hundreds had died in that battle. It had proved to the public what the Galra had been saying all along: Mutants were bad. People sympathized with the Galra. The mutants had destroyed their home. Their numbers swelled.

Law enforcement was on their side, too. Suddenly, previously celerated superheros were vigilantes, if not outright villains. Kids who had previously dreamed of soaring through the sky as superheros were advised against idolizing them, because they were bad, evil, bringing destruction and death. Within years, it became an outright riot. And hence, the Galra had completely swayed society.

It didn’t take long after that for a Galra official to be voted into office as President, giving the Galra unprecedented political power. Galra filled the Senate, the House, overwhelming those few who were still pro-mutant. And hence, the Galra swayed politics.

After that, the Galra began making drastic movements to control everyday life. They took over branding, marketing, slowing conquering the country in small ways in such that people didn’t even object. Eventually, people hardly had free will anymore. Everything had to be Galra-approved. It was impossible to ship anything from out-of-country anymore, seeing as the Galra controlled imports. And hence, the Galra swayed economics.

As it became clear that the Galra were completely dominating the country, being a mutants became a worse and worse offense. The Galra had access to all the previous records of superheros, and old heros lost their jobs, some even kicked out of their own homes. Heros known to have caused great property damage in the past were sometimes arrested, where the law had previously protected them.

Resistance groups were formed, of course, but none lasted long. The greatest of these was called Voltron, a coalition of previous heros, including Alfor, who worked together as a team to take down the Galra, but they only lasted a few years before the Galra raided their base and took them all prisoner. Their punishment was brutal, and no other major resistance groups formed after that.

Lance’s family, however, had always been on the mutant’s side. Both his parents and his oldest brother and sister worked in the hero industry, all of them having activated their gene when getting caught in a car crash or being born with an active gene, which was less common but did happen. They suffered for their mutation. His mother, who hadn’t been a very big or destructive hero, managed to find work at a little cafe. His father, brother, and sister, however, had all been pretty well known. They never found another job.

Life was hard for the McClains. Lance worked part time at a coffee shop whenever he could. He’d never gone to a school for mutants, despite coming from a family known to carry the mutation gene. His parents had wanted him to have a normal education, or something.

It still hurt to see the mutant schools shut down, knowing that the kids who had gone there would face suffering even more extreme than his own. He was thankful that his gene hadn’t activated. He even hoped that he didn’t have the gene. At the very least, his troubles were minimized because he wasn’t a mutant.

He had to drop out of school eventually. It was too much of an expense, despite all the the McClain sibling working full time. The coffeeshop he worked at was drap, unitresting, but at least it was something.

They were desperate, but what was there to do? They were stuck between a rock and a hard place.

It was almost a relief when he finally moved out, to live with his friend Hunk. He was sad to leave his family behind, but it was one less mouth to feed, he supposed.

Hunk had always been a source of comfort, as life spiraled from great to awful. He wasn’t a mutant, as far as either of them could tell. They’d met back in high school, when the Galra had been getting really big and Lance had come to school looking increasingly frazzled and stressed. Hunk had been the only thing standing between him and a mental breakdown.

He only lived with Hunk for a year, but it was by far better than his years before. He still tried to send as much extra money (when there was any) to his family as possible, but he was finally able to relax, if even a little. Hunk worked at a pretty well-known restaurant down the street, so they were never as desperate as they had been. He even talked about helping Lance find a job at the restaurant.

And most of all, Hunk always had hope, hope that seemed inexplicable but was helpful nonetheless. “I’m telling you, buddy,” he would say whenever Lance felt particularly down, “Things’ll get better. You’ll see. And, when I’m right, you owe me a batch of your Abuela’s cookies. Those things are legendary.”

And Lance would laugh, and agree, because yeah, his Abuela made some killer cookies. And then Hunk would make him promise to go get the recipe from her, once things sorted themselves out, and Lance would leave for work feeling just a bit hopeful.

Things were rough, but it seemed like they might get better.

Then, when he turned 20, everything went wrong.

3 Years Previously:

It was two weeks after his twentieth birthday when being a mutant became a criminal offense.

The Galra wanted to cleanse humanity, they said, to return it to the state it had been a century previously. And the public agreed.

The previous mutant schools became “housing” places for mutants, as they were called, but they were prisons.

Lance’s entire family was rounded up, including him. He remembered the horrible car ride, the dragging in the pit of his stomach as his home became further and further out of sight. He remembered being thrown into that room, the room that was too cold and too hot and too crowded.

They were seperated by age. He was with his sisters Rachel and Veronica.

He never learned what happened to the rest of his family.

He was in that prison for two years. Two years of chatter that eventually sizzled down to hopeless silence, which was far worse. Two years of muscle built up by years of swimming reduced to paper-thin skin and bone. Two years of pain, torment, of utter hopelessness that came from knowing that no one out there was on their side, that no one out there was going to help them, of knowing that the cavalry wasn’t coming.

A year of being too, too crowded. Another year of the rooms being too empty. They spent the whole day working until slowly, one by one, mutants dropped and didn’t wake up again.

Everyday was exhausting. It was exhausting to get up, to lay back down again, to live. All the days were the same. All the days were miserable. It was hard to believe that life could get any worse.

And then they started the execution. And, somehow, life did get worse, because now you had to live with the dread that curled in your stomach like a lead weight as you waited for your day to come, and with the dragging guilt of knowing that someone else had died so that you could live another day. Whole families would be executed at once, shot for the criminal offense of being alive. The mutant population slowly trickled out until there was hardly any left, but Lance kept  going. He learned not to look back, to only look down at the ground and stomach his exhaustion in order to live another day, if only for his family.

He tried to have hope. It didn’t do anything.

The day they executed his family came without warning.

14 Months Previously:

It was smooth, virtually silent. The guards came in one day (they always did, and they always took another person with them), and Lance didn’t look up, not until his arms were wrenched behind his back and he was being marched out of the room.

He didn’t look back. He didn’t want to. He’d taught himself to never look back, in those years spent in prison, the years that dragged long and harsh. He knew, from her ragged breathing, that Veronica was being dragged along with him, but he didn’t look back.

He didn’t think about Rachel, who had collapsed four months ago, carried off with the other bodies and he didn’t look back. He couldn’t look back. She hadn’t been strong enough. It didn’t matter. He didn’t look back.

For the first time in months, he saw his family, or what was left of it, at least, bound high up on that horrible bloodstained platform. His mama, his papa, his oldest sister and brother. His nieces and nephews were nowhere in sight, but this didn’t surprise him. He’d already mourned. He wasn’t looking back.

There was a crowd, quite a large one. He supposed there was a lot of publicity in his family’s execution- they were fairly well known, and he supposed they had to be one of the only remaining of the old hero families. The crowd was bloodthirsty.

He didn’t listen to the well-dressed Galra official who read off a list of his families crimes. He didn’t listen to the crowd.

But he listened to the gunshots.

It was his papa first. And memories came flooding back, crashing into Lance’s memories faster than he could contain them. Of bright smiles, encouraging words, of soaring through the air on shoulders, of toes submerged in the sand of a beach, of eyes which turned worn and tired, of desperate tears.

His mother next, memories of comfort, of warm embraces, of kind eyes, of weariness and hopelessness, of the embraces turning less warm and more desperate.

And, one by one, memories flooded back into his mind, and he realized that tears were streaming down his face as he remembered how things were, how they had changed, as third, a fourth, a fifth bang, until Lance stood alone on the platform, the corpses of his family beside him.

And, for the first time in over a year, Lance looked back.

He remembered opening his mouth in a kind of twisted scream, as his scream was echoed by the crowd, and water, water, cold, it hurts, it hurts, and suddenly he was running, running, far away from where his family lay, cold, cold, and still.

He didn’t look back again.

Twelve Months Previously:

It was a miracle, really, that he had found Hunk and Pidge. The two months after the execution were the hardest in his life. He’d been in bad shape, sleeping in an alleyway on a pile of thrown-out clothes and a few blankets, stealing food from trash bins and living on the brink of death.

He’d seen the posters that flashed across screens, the ones that called for his arrest, with his name and picture.

Lance McClain. 22 years old. Wanted on basis of mass murder and illegal mutation. Mutation: Hydrokinesis.

He didn’t remember killing those Galra guards, or the people in that crowd. He was in a kind of daze during those months, not really living as much as just being alive.

He didn’t use his mutation to help him. He didn’t know how . As far as he knew, no one had ever had control over water. The previous mutations had merely been advancements to the human body, like fight and super strength. No one had even been able to control something outside of themselves.

He didn’t want to use his mutation, either. Apparently, last time, he had killed over fifty people. He still woke up screaming, his memory flooded with the memory of the execution.

He probably would have stayed like that forever, drifting, if Hunk and Pidge hadn’t found him. It’d been an accident, really. As far as he could tell, Hunk and Pidge had been running from Galra guards when they’d taken refuge in his alleyway. It’d nearly given all of them a heart attack, when he’d leapt at them like a cat, hissing madly without realizing who they were.

“ Lance?” Hunk’s voice seemed equal measures confused and exhilarated.

“Hunk?” He’d been breathless. It had been two years since he’d last seen his best friend.

Hunk was bigger then, more muscular. He was messy, hair tangled with sticks and face smeared with dirt and wearing some sort of ridiculous camo outfit he supposed was supposed to be a disguise, but he was still Hunk , still a grounding source of comfort.

“Wait, Lance? McClain?” There was another person with Hunk. They was very small, dressed in the same camo outfit, clearly having been working with Hunk. “You mean, the guy who killed, like, seventy people?”

Lance winced. Yep. That was him, the mass murderer. “That… was an accident.”

“An accident.” Their tone was skeptic.

“Pidge, back off for two seconds, okay? I know Lance. Or I did. It’s been a while, buddy,” said Hunk, peering at his face. Lance imagined he couldn’t be looking great, seeing as it had been over two years since he had last eaten a real meal.

“Yeah. It has,” was the only reply he could think of.

“Pidge, this is my friend Lance. Lance, this is my friend Pidge.” He nodded at the small person, who had taken out a little collection of wires and begun threading them together absentmindedly.

Hunk turned back to Lance. “We’ve got a little base set up in our old apartment, if you wanna come?”

And Lance agreed, because what did he have to lose? And that was the scary thought, the knowledge that he had nothing left to lose but his own life.

Hunk and Pidge’s hideout wasn’t fancy, but it was better than anything Lance had seen in two years. It was still the apartment, sort of, but the building itself was a wreck.

“They burnt it down, a little over a year ago,” Hunk explained, pushing a large table covered in bits of metal in front of the door. “But this side of the building is still relatively intact. There’s a few other people that live here, mostly people like us, just trying to survive, but we don’t talk, really.”

The apartment itself was about the same, layout wise, but the bedroom was now filled with machines, computers and monitors and screens that blinked in the dim light. “We traded the mattress for this baby a while back,” Pidge said, patting a large monitor screen which was spouting wires like some strange, many-legged spider. “Best trade I ever made.”

It seemed that they had traded a lot of furniture, actually. “We had to trade the couch a few months ago, for this keyboard. It was sad, but worth it,” Hunk lamented.

Living with Hunk and Pidge was the best thing that had happened to him in years. He wasn’t really sure how to interact with people anymore, and he worried that would bother them, but it didn’t. Pidge didn’t particularly want to talk much anyway, preferring to work on their machines, which was nice. Hunk was easy to talk to. He seemed to instinctively know which topics to avoid. They never talked about Lance’s years in prison, nor any of their families, aside from Pidge, who briefly explained that they wanted to find their brother and father, who had been taken prisoner by the Galra. They explained that they had been hacking into Galra databases for about a year, since they had come to live together. It was nice, having people to talk to who didn’t look at him with sad, hollow eyes or like he was vermin.

It took quite a while for him to rebuild himself. The years spent in prison had taken a toll on his body and mind, leaving scars that could probably never be undone. It took him some time to warm up to Pidge, but he liked them, eventually.

Eventually, the three of them started breaking into Galra bases. Hunk and Pidge had been sort of doing it for a while, but neither of them were really made for stealth. Lance, however, was. And the three of them managed to form their own sort of rebellion.

It didn’t make seeing the prisoners any easier.

Chapter Text

“I’ve got news,” Lance’s voice carried over from where he had just walked in the door. “And you won’t like it.”

Hunk looked up from where he and Pidge had been tinkering with a computer. “Yeah?”

Lance’s face was grim, a bad sign. Despite their conditions, Hunk knew that Lance was doing his best to stay positive. They all were, even Pidge. It was better than the alternative of losing hope.

“Yeah.” Lance pulled a crumpled up page of a newspaper out of the front pocket of his sweatshirt. He smoothed it out, them threw it onto the table Pidge and Hunk were working on.

Well-known mutant Takashi Shirogane execution date set!

Hunk felt Pidge inhale sharply next to him. “Oh, that’s bad,” they said.

“Yeah,” Lance agreed, sitting down on the edge of their table. “He’s one of the last old heros still around, right?”

Hunk nodded. “There can’t be more than maybe five of them left, just the ones they couldn’t catch. They caught him about a year ago, I think. Not sure why they waited so long-”

“Experimentation.” Hunk hadn’t been sure he’d heard Lance, because the word was whispered in a way that Lance never spoke, tentative and raw and scared. “When I was… in prison,” Lance visibly swallowed, “They talked, sometimes, about experimenting on some of the mutants. A lot of them- didn’t make it, I guess. But I think they did that to him. He was in the same… place, prison, whatever, where I was. I saw them carry him in. He looked-” His face blanched.

Hunk decided to take over. “Yeah. Well, whatever the case, why bring him up, Lance? Aside from the tragedy of it, obviously.”

Lance nodded, seeming to regain his composure. “Right, yeah. Anyway, Pidge, Shiro was on a mission with your family, right?”

Pidge tensed, as they tended to do whenever their family was brought up, but they nodded. “Yes, to a city called Kerberos. They were supposed to be addressing signs of a possible terrorist attack.”

“Yeah. So, say, hypothetically, if we could rescue Shiro… maybe…”

“He might know how to find my family!” Pidge visibly brightened, grinning at Lance from where they were sitting on the table. “You know, Lance, that actually isn’t a bad idea!”

“Well, of course it isn’t. Why do you sound so surprised?”

Pidge ignored him. “Okay. So, if we’re going to do this, we’ll need to plan.”

“Oh, no,” Hunk muttered, yelping when Pidge slapped shoulder.

“We’ll need a distraction, for one thing. Lance, can you…?”

“Yep!” Lance grinned, fist bumping with Pidge. “I’ve got it covered for you, buddy.”

“Great, we just need to draw attention away from Shiro. Don’t you dare get caught,” Pidge hissed at him. “Hunk?”

Hunk snapped into a salute. “Siryessir!” He barked. “Or… theyyesthey? Nonbianaryyesnonbianary?”

Pidge slapped his shoulder again, prompting another yelp from Hunk. “You big, lovable idiot. You’ll need to help me support Shiro, once we get him out. If-” her eyes shifted to Lance. “If the conditions of other prisoners are anything to go by, he’ll be very weak.

“Oh, and if anyone’s powers happen to kick in at some time… maybe try to not use them? I’d like to avoid a huge… debacle.” Lance shifted uncomfortably, looking away from Pidge as they spoke.

The McClain execution wasn’t something they really talked about.

Twenty-Three Years Previously:

Hunk’s life before the Galra could only be described as normal.

He and his young cousins would cheer on the heros as they watched them on the TV during dinner. He cooked foods with his mother. He succeeded, he failed, he tried again.

And then the Galra showed up.

He hadn’t known much about them, not before he heard some kids talking about them at school and did a few google searches. They hadn’t seemed like much of a threat at first. No one seemed too bothered by them. So he elected to ignore them.

Yeah, that was a mistake.

He’d watched the Diabazaal attack, of course he had. Everyone had. He couldn’t deny the fear that flowed through his gut as the two incredibly powerful supers battled it out.

And he couldn’t deny that the Galra maybe had a point. He’d supported Alfor in the battle by default because he was used to supporting the heros, but the destruction that he’d wrought- was that really the work of a hero?

He didn’t agree with the Galra. They got violent after the Daibazaal attack, and he didn't like that. It was gruesome, gut-wrenching, awful. He didn’t like it. But he wasn’t sure how much to like the heros either.

But in the end, he’d still choose the heros over the Galra. They weren’t villains, that much Hunk was sure of. And Lance wasn’t a villain either.

He’d met Lance in high school. He had never paid him much mind, not until he saw the gangly boy notorious for flirting with everything that moved sitting alone at a lunch table, head bowed low and writing furiously.

So he’d sat down with him, obviously. And he’d never be sure what exactly what it had been which formed a bond between them, whether it was the dirt coating his face, the tear tracks which carved little trenches in the grime, or the inaccuracies in his English essay.

“Hey, man, you okay?” Hunk had said. Lance hadn’t verbally replied, only mutely nodding without looking up from his essay.

Hunk glanced around awkwardly before his eyes landed on Lance’s essay again. “Uh… in Of Mice and Men , Lenny fantasies about bunnies, not kittens.”

And then Lance had slumped forwards and burst into exhausted tears, right on top of his essay.

Hunk had helped him fix his essay, and then his math homework, until eventually Lance looked a lot happier. Meeting in the library during lunch became the norm after that. Turned out Lance was very helpful when it came to Hunk’s Spanish homework, while Hunk helped him with his English, which he seemed to struggle most with. Their relationship was codependent.

Hunk didn’t bother prying into why Lance had been crying on the day that they’d met. He didn’t need to. It didn’t take a genius to link Lance McClain, the cuban, brown-haired, tan-skinned high schooler who had been crying shortly after the Galra got rid of superheros with the McClain family, the cuban, brown-haired, tan-skinned family of supers who had been pretty big back before the Galra.

Lance confided in Hunk anyway, about his family’s troubles, about the long hours he spent working, about how Lance would probably have to drop out of school soon. About how Lance wasn’t going to be at school anymore, because his family needed him and it was just too much time sacrificed.

School was a lot lonelier without Lance around. Hunk was constantly looking over his shoulder, wondering why Lance’s loud laugh wasn’t following him through the hallway, why his Spanish grades were falling without the native speaker’s help, why he was so alone .

Finishing high school was a relief. At that point, only the wealthy (which Hunk wasn’t) or the children of Galra officials (which Hunk definitely wasn’t) could go to college, so he was officially done with school. He still managed to get employed at a pretty nearby restaurant, which was always nice.

He visited Lance’s coffeeshop often, where it seemed like Lance was always on duty. Despite how tired Lance looked, how tired he supposed they both looked, it was a relief to have his best friend back. Lance kept him sane, and he liked to think he had done the same for Lance.

And then Lance had moved in with him. They’d been planning it since high school, more as a fantasy than anything else, but he supposed they really had been considering it. Their apartment had been small, modest, nothing extravagant or fancy (they could barely afford a microwave).

Hunk sometimes considered trying to get Lance a job at his restaurant. He knew Lance hated the coffeeshop, and Lance did seem to perk up a bit when he talked about it.

But whatever their condition, Hunk was determined to not lose hope. Whenever Lance looked particularly sulky, Hunk would sit down with him, talking and reassuring him just as he had done those years ago in high school.

And then they took Lance.

Three Years Previously:

Watching Lance scream soundlessly as the car pulled away from the apartment had been one of the worst experiences of Hunk’s life. He’d been sitting there on that couch, right where he had spoken to his best friend so many years ago, shaking uncontrollably as tears streamed down his cheeks.

Did he know, even then, that neither he nor Lance would ever meet again as the same people they had been? He supposed so, but he never acknowledged it.

For the first few months, he kept Lance’s bed made. He made two plates of food instead of one, out of pure reflex, then dumped one down the trash as tears threatened to spill.

The first day he remembered to only make one plate, he burst into tears.

He’d quit his job. It was too painful, too much of a reminder of how everything that had been, back when he still had his best friend. He didn’t need to work, anyway. Prices were so high that stealing food was more efficient anyway.

He knew the high market prices were intentional, not the result of inflation or lower importation or whatever other reason the Galra attributed them too. It was a way to get rid of the lower class, the friends and families of mutants, because knowing a mutant made it hard to get good pay, and honestly what was it to anyone if a few criminals starved?

Hunk was never good at being stealthy, but he managed. He didn’t steal anything big, nothing more than a case of water or a few loaves of bread, just enough to stay alive. He was wracked with guilt whenever he stole anything bigger.

It was on one of these little thieving expeditions where he met Pidge.

2 Years Previously

He’d woken up that day to only a single slice of bread left in the cabinet and knew that a trip to the grocery store was in order. So, when night fell, he’d pulled on his ragged old black sweatshirt and walked out the door as surreptitiously as he could.

It’d been cold, probably December or so, Hunk had long ago lost track. It’d been about a year after Lance was taken, a month or so before they bombed the apartment. He shivered a few times as he walked down the street, navigating through back alleyways and cutting across corners as he had done so many times before.

He turned left in an alleyway which was so dark and dank it gave the impression of some sort of medieval dungeon. He even sometimes pretended that it was- that he merely had to escape from the network of alleys and emerge into the sunlight.

There were a few alleys that were connected here. It was a labyrinth of sorts, and it happened to emerge right in the parking lot behind the local grocery store. Hunk had been navigating through those tunnels for months, so it was with confident steps that he walked down through the back streets towards the store.

Stealing from the store was particularly easy. That part of town had never been the cleanest, what with the alleyway maze and minimal security, it’d been a sort of hub for gang activity and drug dealing back in the day, before the whole Galra mess. The Galra’s takeover did nothing to fix that- in fact, it’d done nothing but make it worse.

Hunk was friendly with most of the gangs around. Or, at least, they weren't enemies. He was likeable enough, and it quickly became apparent to them that he had no real value, and was just trying to survive. Like most of them.

But there wasn’t anyone around tonight. Hunk made his way to the end of the labyrinth, stopping just in front of where the alley ended and spilled out into the moonlit parking lot. The place was closed for the night, and no cars were parked in the lot.

The place seemed unnerving the first few times Hunk had visited at night. But security was minimum, so it was really the perfect place to get food. He hung out in the shadow of the alley for a minute before stepping forwards.

And almost stepping right on top of the person sitting below him.

Despite his better judgement, he’d yelped, leaping backwards in alarm and falling directly on top of a trash can. The loud crash made him wince, as he laid there on the frigid ground. So much for an inconspicuous grocery trip.

“ Shush!” The person said, appearing in his range of vision. They glanced sideways, once, twice, and then let out a breath. They extended a hand to where Hunk lay.

He accepted the hand, surprised by the firm grip the stranger had. They pulled him to his feet.

Finally having an opportunity to look at the person, Hunk noted their short, brown hair and large glasses. Huh. That was surprising. Most people didn’t wear glasses, not anymore. Prescriptions were too expensive to afford, not unless they were rich. But if that was it, than what was a rich person doing in a dark back alley?

“Hey, I know you,” He realised suddenly. “You went to high school with me!” He snapped his fingers in excitement. “Katie Holt, right?”

“ Shh!” Katie slapped her hand across his mouth, effectively blocking out any noise he could have made. “It’s Pidge now. Had to change my name.”

Hunk nodded. He knew the Holts. They were some serious tech-genius supers back in the day. They’d gone missing just after the Galra came into the limelight.

“So, Pidge,” He began, “What are you doing in the alley behind Harris Teeter?”

Pidge shrugged. “Don’t know where else to set up. I’ve been moving around for about a year or so. Don’t stay anywhere too long.”

Hunk didn’t know what compelled him to say it. Maybe he felt a connection to Pidge. Maybe he somehow knew that they would make a good partner. Maybe he was just desperate and lonely. But, either way, the offer slipped from his lips before he could stop it.

“Would you like to come back to my place?”

He could see Pidge’s surprise, in the slight quirk of her eyebrow and the twitch of her lip.

“I mean, it’s nothing fancy,” He continued, his words rushed with nerves. “But I’ve got a computer and some room to set up your stuff, and I mean you just said that you don’t have any space anyway, so-”

Pidge slapped his arm, a grin on their face for the first time in what must have been months. “Alright, big guy. Lead me there.”

Hunk didn’t get groceries that night, but it didn’t matter.

Twenty Months Previously:

“HUNK!”

Hunk was sprinting through the apartment before his mind had even registered Pidge’s scream. He vaulted over the sagging, faded gray couch and landed right next to where Pidge was standing.

“What? What is it? Is it the Galra? Did they find us-”

Pidge shook her head frantically, pointing wordlessly at the screen. Hunk didn’t understand why, not until he saw the blood, and the gun, and the woman with the punctured skull.

He wasn’t aware of the floor starting to shake, of the cement rubble that littered the floor from the long-ago explosion rolling across the ground towards him. All he could see was the woman, her head destroyed by a gun as she stood, bound, on a stage.

“Hunk, oh my god, stop, you’re going to bring the building down- when- how- Hunk!”

A pain, sharp and stinging, across his face brought him to his senses. He was suddenly aware of the shaking of the room, mostly because it immediately stopped.

Pidge looked at him in disbelief. She’d slapped him, if the way she cradled her hand was anything to go by.

“What…” He murmured, rubbing his cheek. “What was that? What did it mean?”

Pidge blinked slowly, once, twice, a third time. “It means that you’re a mutant.”

Eighteen Months Previously:

“So, Hunk, I’ve been thinking…”

“A bad way to start off a conversation,” Hunk noted, fiddling with a computer.

Pidge batted at his arm. “Shut up. I think we should invade this base.”

Hunk blinked. “Uh… funny joke?”

Pidge slapped his arm again. “Not a joke, dumbass. Look.” They pointed at the screen, where a detailed blue map shone in the dim lighting.

“No way!” Hunk shoved past her, getting his face as close to the screen as possible. “You got the blueprints? That’s awesome!”

“Sure did,” Pidge said smugly. “And yeah, it’s pretty awesome. But here, look at this,” They swiped her finger across the screen, focusing the screen on a single section of the base. “It’s a supply base, probably one with machine parts. If we can get our hands on those…”

Hunk nodded. He knew how much Galra tech could do for them. “But neither of us are exactly… uh… stealthy. How would we get in there?”

Pidge grimaced. “We’ll have to do our best.” They stood up, making themselves eye level with Hunk. “I think our days of hiding up here in our little apartment are over, partner. It’s about time we did something to fight back.”

Hunk nodded. “What’s our timeline?”

Fourteen Months Previously:

Hunk had gotten over the shock of the executions. He wouldn’t go so far as to say he was desensitized- he didn’t know that he’d ever be desensitized- but he wasn’t in danger of accidentally bringing down buildings anymore.

He didn’t like looking at the screens when the executions were on. They played them constantly, over and over again as if they were reruns of some childhood cartoon.

And such, he almost missed the McClain execution until he heard Pidge’s strangled scream.

They had a small window in the apartment that was still intact. It still had mostly uncracked glass, so they’d left it uncovered. It gave them a perfect view of a pretty big street, which had a large working screen hanging over it. The street was in bad shape, so the screen didn’t always work perfectly, but they still played the constant execution reruns on it.

And, currently, a family Hunk knew well was watching him fearfully from the bloodstained podium when he glanced out the window.

He’d never understood the saying “your life flashing before your eyes” until then. Images had flashed through his head as the shots rang out and the members of the McClain family fell one by one.

Lance was next to unrecognisable. His cheeks were horrifyingly prominent, his body unerringly thin, his eyes bulging from their empty-looking sockets. He’d started shaking, Hunk could tell, staring blankly off into the distance.

And then, Hunk had almost looked away as Lance’s sister collapsed to the ground, a bullet hole in her head, when it happened.

Lance exploded .

Water had come rushing from god-knows-where as Lance’s jaw unhinged disturbingly, accompanied by his blood-curdling scream. Tendrils of water had erupted from the ground, the air, the people .

The reporters and crew were a mess, the screams of the crowd could be heard through the video, and Hunk was panicking .

He himself being a mutant was bad enough. Now his best friend for years was a mutant?

When had his life gotten so fucked up?

Twelve Months Previously:

“Come on, Hunk! Hurry up!”

“I’m trying , Pidge!” He wheezed, spriting as quickly as he could down the street as the Galra guards chased after them.

The last mission had been a bust, obviously. Hunk blamed Pidge for dropping a box of spare parts. They blamed him for accidentally knocking over a machine. But, either way, they’d been found. And were now running.

“In here!” He called, turning sharply on his heel and diving into an alleyway. He wasn’t familiar with it, but Hunk was good with alleys. Usually.

And then something lept at him.

The thing collided with him with surprising strength, knocking him down to the ground. All of the air left him lungs in one fell whoop . His eyes fluttered shut for a minute before he reopened them.

The face of the thing on top of him was like a living nightmare. It was nothing more than sagging, paper-thin skin stretched across bones. The eyes bulged outwards, giving the creature a kind of fishy, insane appearance. It had wire-thin hair which may have once been brown but was now nothing more than a bog-gray.

But there was something familiar about it, and Hunk noticed the curve of the jawline, the scars he had seen so vividly on the Wanted posters everyday, and, most strikingly, the brilliantly blue eyes.

“Lance?”