Chapter Text
The wormhole crackled with lightning and static, but it spun empty. The castle was alone. The Lions were gone.
Between one racing heartbeat and the next, the roiling violet storm of the corrupted wormhole was gone. It was so sudden that Keith was paralyzed for a moment by the stillness, before realizing that he wasn’t still at all.
The Red Lion was plummeting towards a barren planet. Her lights were dead, her engines silent. Keith caught a glimpse of a dust-gray sky and ashy empty ground, a flash of black metal as the Black Lion fell beside her sister like a dying feline angel, and then the earth was rushing up, filling the viewscreens.
Then there was nothing for a long time.
Keith opened his eyes slowly. He was exhausted, every bone dragging him toward the ground. Then everything came flooding back, and the aches and bruises and headache were all wiped away by electric adrenaline.
“Red?” he murmured, carefully unfastening the belts and standing.
Nothing. The Lion was totally unresponsive. Keith pushed away the twist of guilt. Zarkon had been right in front of him. He’d had to try.
Unimportant for now. What was done was done, there were other priorities now. Like –
Like finding Shiro.
Keith’s breath stuttered in his chest. Shiro. He was sure he’d seen the Black Lion during the fall. Her red wings had stood out like spatters of blood against the smoke color of this planet’s dead sky. The other Lions were who knew where, scattered across the universe in the tatters of the disintegrated wormhole. They could be anywhere, in any condition. Hopefully, they had stayed together like Keith and Shiro had. If anyone could get themselves out of trouble, it was the Garrison Trio. Between the Blue Lion’s ice cannon, the Green Lion’s invisibility, and the Yellow Lion’s sheer size; Lance’s resilience, Pidge’s cleverness, Hunk’s stability – they would be alright. Keith remembered the flashing moments before Red had fallen out of the wormhole and shivered. They would be alright.
But he couldn’t worry about them right now. Shiro was somewhere close by. After a few moments and some rude words, the helmet cooperated and Black’s location finally popped up on the visor. She was grounded, but her beacon was transmitting so she must be alright. Shiro too. Keith just had to get to him.
Breathe. You can’t help anyone if you just sit here shaking. Freak out later, once everyone’s safe back in the castle. Keith tightened his grip on his Bayard. Focus. Get Shiro. Think about everything else later.
Keith didn’t know if this planet had somehow died recently, or if it had ever been alive. There wasn’t a plant in sight, and Keith couldn’t spot a single trace of life as he ran towards where the Black Lion’s beacon was pinging lightly.
As he ran, he talked. Constant, hopefully not too panicked, trying to get a response from Shiro. Anything. For too long, nothing answered him but static. Then –
“Keith. I’m here, Keith.”
Keith’s body suddenly felt lighter. His pace picked up, driven by the sound of his brother’s voice in his ear. “Shiro,” he said, smiling in relief, “you made it.” You’re okay. Just hang on, I’m coming.
Shiro sounded pretty rough, but he was talking and breathing, so Keith would take it. “It takes more than a glowing alien wound, a fall from the upper atmosphere, and crashing into a hard pan surface, at what I'm guessing is about 25 meters per second squared, to get rid of me. How are you?”
Damn Shiros and their morbid senses of humor. “It’s not great. There’s nothing here, and Red is totally out.” Then he processed the rest of the statement. “Wait. You’re injured?” Should have brought the first aid kit from Red. Hopefully Black has one too.
“It’s nothing.” It definitely was, if Shiro was mentioning it at all. “I’m fine.” He didn’t sound like it.
“Just hang on, Shiro. I’m coming.”
There was a sharp intake of breath. When Shiro spoke again, it was much quieter and filled with tension. “You’d better hurry. I’m not alone.”
The Green Lion came flying out of the disintegrating wormhole into –
Nothing. There wasn’t a planet in sight. Pidge had a moment to wonder if that was better or worse than crashing to unfamiliar ground, before she struck something. Then another something, and another, until the Green Lion was pinballing through what was, as best as Pidge could tell through the whirling viewscreens, the universe’s biggest trash pile.
She couldn’t do anything to stop the violent series of impacts, or even control it. Green was completely out of power, maybe drained somehow by the wormhole. In a longer moment of drifting, Pidge glanced around the cabin and confirmed a fear: Rover was just as dead as Green. The drone was bouncing around the cockpit, and now that Pidge thought about it that was actually really dangerous. Green was currently nonfunctional; if Rover hit Pidge it could compromise her suit, and then she would really be dead. There was no gravity in space, nor was there any air. She grabbed hold of it as they hit another piece of metal that was probably the side of a starship at some point a century or twelve ago, clinging to the little robot as her Lion wheeled and spun in open space.
At long last the momentum slowed, then stopped. Pidge’s little bit of luck finally came through and the Green Lion drifted down to settle on a broad plate of ironsiding, battered but intact. Albeit dark and out of every shred of power.
Pidge sighed. In the new and sudden silence, the sound was as loud as a lion’s roar.
First things first. Pidge wasn’t dead. Her suit was intact and fully functional – whatever EMP had knocked Green and Rover out had missed her. Thank stars for that, she wouldn’t have made it five minutes if the Paladin armor had been damaged.
Okay. Pidge was alright. She was alive and unharmed, and completely alone in a trash nebula.
Pidge sighed again, trying to drown out the sound of her own blood rushing in her ears. “This is fine. We’re fine. It’s like Dad always said, ‘When you get lost in space, the best thing to do is stay put and wait for people to find you.’ The others have four lions and a super-advanced castleship. They can definitely find me, even if I’m not there to tell them how to do it.” She snickered. “Or do it for them. I have to do everything around there, I swear Hunk is the only one who knows what he’s doing at all.
“Fine. This is my vacation. I’ll just hang out here and wait for those losers to come pick me up. It’s nice. Quiet, I can see the stars. It’s a nice nebula. Some relaxing time after all this crazy Voltron stuff. Nobody around to bother me. Nobody… nobody at all.”
Pidge was not a people person. Actually, she kind of hated people. The list of humans she would tolerate for more than a few minutes hardly expanded beyond her own family. She much preferred her own company
But being completely and totally alone was… kind of bad, really. She was the only Human around for lightyears, probably. It was entirely possible that Pidge was the only living thing for millions of miles. There wasn’t even Green, machinery humming softly beneath her hands and presence purring warmly in her mind. Rover was just a chunk of metal at her feet, all of Keith and Hunk and Lance’s hard work at reviving her friend gone, at least until she could figure out how to recharge him.
That was not going to be a priority, no matter how much she wanted the little drone to come back. Pidge was now completely and utterly alone, with no way of contacting anyone. There were going to be a lot more things to worry about than feeling a little lonely.
The trash drifted in the quiet vacuum of space, the Green Lion just another piece of metal lost in the dump, dim and silent but for the breath and heartbeat of its single living inhabitant. The universe was silent, roaring around her.
The nebula’s stars and swirls suddenly looked a lot less inviting.
* * *
There was no time to waste. Literally – Pidge didn’t know how long her suit could recycle the air, but it was certainly going to be the cause of her death long before starvation or dehydration could kill her. Green still had some atmosphere, but there was no recycling running in the power-dead Lion and any exit or entrance Pidge made lost her an airlock’s volume of air. She had to be smart about this, or she would die long before anyone ever found her in this metal graveyard.
Part of her didn’t want to leave Green. Empty space was cool in theory and terrifying in reality, especially when all that separated you from the void was a relatively thin suit. But staying was not an option. Pidge needed to explore, see where she was and what she had to work with. She needed to figure out what to do in order to get herself, Green, and Rover out of here alive.
But the clock didn’t wait for a little girl’s fear, so the Paladin part of her brain told the child part to shut up. Then she left the Green Lion, exiting through the belly airlock and thanking her rapidly draining luck that the airlock doors could still be maneuvered and sealed manually.
In a different situation, this would be amazing. Pidge had always been a bit of a magpie, a technological vulture who scavenged pieces of things to make new things, over and over and over again. The space junkyard was probably filled with incredible things from every corner of the universe. How had they ended up here? What purposes they’d served, where they had traveled before being dropped into this little bit of void. The lights and colors of the nebula swirled like silent dust clouds, beautiful and distant.
Pidge wished Coran was here. He would probably know everything there was to know about these pieces of trash, what they were for, who had made them, how they had come to rest here. And she wouldn’t be alone, too. Coran would know how to fix this. He always knew everything, and with him here, jovial voice bubbling through the radio and space-suit-gloved hands gesturing wildly, Pidge would feel safe and fearless.
But Coran wasn’t here. Nobody was. Pidge was alone, and she needed to work with what she had. This wasn’t going to be the end of Katie Holt, alone in an empty nebula filled with trash, not even Green’s presence in her head or Rover’s little humming body, all bright and new, at her side. She was going to make it out of this.
Pidge activated her jetpack and took off from the Green Lion to investigate her new surroundings.
Her new surroundings were garbage. This was a space garbage heap, and everything here was ancient or broken or both.
Okay. Okay. All you have to do is fix Green and get her to send a signal to the castle to come pick you up. Fix whatever is wrong with Green, with parts you can scavenge here, from pieces you have never seen before, all without puncturing your suit or running out of air. Easy.
Pidge had been certain that she was alone (deeply, intensely, life-threateningly alone), so when the glowing blue eyes lit up in the darkness of an ancient shattered cannon hull, her heart nearly stopped.
Oh god. I’m going to die by garbage monsters, and nobody will hear me scream because I’m in space. She drew her Bayard, hoping the electrified katar would be enough to deter the monsters. Even a scratch would be fatal. I’m going to die. The eyes drew closer, the creatures approaching from the depths of the cannon. I’m going to fight and I’m going to die and –
The creatures emerged into the nebula’s light, and if gravity had been a thing here Pidge would have fallen to her knees in relief. As it were, she just went limp, the Bayard’s light fading as the Paladin’s heartbeat began to slow down.
“Oh my god thank Kepler.” She smiled, relief taking the place of terror. “Hey, little guys. I’m so glad you’re not monsters.” A thought occurred. “Unless you are actually still monsters, somehow. Please don’t be monsters. I really don’t need any more points against me in this situation.”
The creatures didn’t answer. They floated silently, watching Pidge with big eyes. Beneath the eyes were the marks that had so frightened her, shining not nearly so brightly in the light and almost reminiscent of the Altean’s eyescales, now that Pidge’s adrenaline wasn’t making the descriptions. The beings were fluffy and nearly round, with tiny useless legs wiggling by their sides as they maneuvered through the spaceyard. There were so many, fuzzy bodies a variety of color echoing the nebula they lived in.
“You must be the only things to live here,” Pidge murmured, reaching out with a gloved hand to stroke the nearest one, an enormous green creature that reminded her of a lima bean with googly eyes. She smiled when it vibrated beneath her palm – maybe a hum or purr, if not for the vacuum that stole away all sound. She wasn’t alone.
Pidge worked best when she talked. To her brother, to her friends, to Green or Rover. It helped her work out issues as they came up, a sort of version of rubber-duck engineering except the rubber duck was a giant robot lion or a little formerly-Galra drone or a befuddled Human trapped along for the ride. Little floaty trash nebula critters would do just fine.
Everything was garbage and most of it was useless. But Pidge was determined, finding and dragging back anything that looked remotely useful or interesting to a broad flat piece of junk as the critters drifted along with her, giant eyes watching her every move.
Then she found a big black rectangular chunk with a silvery cracked gasket at the top. It kinda looked like Shiro’s vest. An arc of something orangey-mud-colored fit onto another piece that was kind of cylindrical. One thing led to another, and before Pidge knew it she was even less alone than before.
“I’m Keith, and I’m soooo emo,” she grumbled in an excessively-deep voice. The ragged scrap that had probably been a flag at some point in the last millenia was just way too perfect as a mullet.
“Well I’m Lance, and I love the Princess and hate Keith,” she cried, waving the noodly bent-pipe arms of her Trash Paladin Lance.
She announced a bunch of gobbledygook in the weird space-New Zealander accent that Trash Coran had, curling the ends of the bristly… whatever that had been just perfect for a Trash Moustache. The critters watched the scene with wide eyes and, she expected, thunderous cheers that were swallowed by the silence of space. A little bluish one tried to nibble on her arm and she gently batted it away. Pidge had no idea what their dentition was like or if they even had any, but even the tiniest tear could kill her. This wasn’t exactly a time to take chances, even with fuzzy little space-bug creatures.
Trash Princess Allura was kind of tilted to the right because the pinkish cone that made up her body was severely dented, but the white sheet that represented her hair helped prop her up. Pidge had only been able to make Hunk’s head, but she thought it represented him well anyway. Maybe without a stomach Trash Hunk wouldn’t feel so nauseous all the time.
Pidge hoped Hunk was on a planet instead of drifting in space. He always got airsick, and this drifty no-right-side-up emptiness would have been just the worst for him. He should be on a planet, with solid ground beneath his feet and maybe a beach, nice warm weather and a bright sun and a breathable atmosphere. Maybe Shiro would be with him. He could rest and Hunk could cook them both delicious food from the sea and the plentiful edible plants that would surround them.
She hoped Lance had someone with him. The boy was impossibly extroverted and might just wither up and blow away if he was stuck on his own. On that thought, she hoped Keith had someone too. He acted like such a loner, but he needed people, needed to be reassured that he wasn’t alone. Pidge was finding out that she was a little more like that than she’d thought. Maybe Lance and Keith were stuck together, bickering while they kicked butt and freed some planet from tyranny and finally learned how to work together. Pidge knew they would be a badass team, if they could just get out of their own heads and work together. They might be even better than Pidge and Keith, if they tried.
Despite the critterbugs following her every jetpack-leap and the trash paladins that sat arranged on the gathering spot, the nebula roared with silence and emptiness. Pidge hoped the others were together somehow, because being alone really, really sucked. She hoped they would all be back together again soon. She wondered how long her air recyclers would last. Then she made herself stop wondering and start working again.
Time wasn’t really a thing when all the light came from stars and nebula clouds that didn’t change except in the scale of years. So Pidge had no idea how long she’d been poking and prodding at junk, with breaks to argue with herself as the entirety of Team Voltron, when suddenly all the spacebugs perked up and their cheeklights lit up, shining like tiny headlights.
A heartbeat later, Green’s barrier turned on.
Pidge let out a whoop and did a backflip (sometimes zero-gravity was kind of awesome). She jumped up and activated her jetpack, flying for her Lion with her heart racing with excitement.
But the excitement made her careless, and halfway there she hit an edge of a broad piece of metal hard enough to bounce backwards. Her blood froze, hands frantically tracing the armor and suiting along her chest and belly, seeking breaks or cracks or rips.
The suit was whole.
Pidge breathed out a sigh of relief that echoed faintly in her helmet and intact suit atmosphere. Then she looked at what she had run into.
It was big. A broad flat disc, lower in the center with raised edges. Huge, but she could still recognize it for what it was.
The satellite was old and rusted, but she could use this. She would find her friends before they had to find her. This would work. It would be good enough. It had to be, or she wouldn’t survive this and that was not an option.
Patience yields focus.
Keith couldn’t afford to make a mistake now. If he fell, if he got hurt or knocked out or lost his weapon or damaged his jetpack, Shiro wouldn’t be able to help him. Nobody would be. He needed to be fast, but he needed to think. Pidge wasn’t here to do the planning for him, and the stakes were too high to just rush on.
“That really stayed with you, huh?”
Oh. Keith must have said the mantra out loud, and Shiro picked it up between all the digging and snarling of the creatures trying to get into his cave.
“You’ve given me some good advice,” he said, backing up from the canyon edge and scanning his surroundings. If Shiro was talking, he must be okay. Of course, he was backed into a tiny cave with aggressive monsters right outside, and if Keith had heard right earlier he’d been pretty badly hurt. “If it wasn’t for you, my life would have been a lot different.” I wouldn’t have made it, without you. You saved my life. Too heavy, too strong for right now. Keith hoped Shiro knew anyway.
Shiro huffed a little laugh. “Yeah. You wouldn't have crashed a flying Lion on an alien planet and be stuck with little hope of rescue. You're welcome."
Goddamn Shiros and their damn morbid senses of humor. He was getting worse, Keith needed to reach him. But how the hell was he going to make it across this canyon?
Another geyser erupted behind him, sending hot steam and rock fragments high into the air. Keith watched the pieces soar up and fall in a wild scatter, and an idea came to him. Shiro wouldn’t approve. Pidge definitely would.
Keith had always loved to fly, after all.
Canyon dealt with, Keith kept running, following the point on his helmet visor that indicated the Black Lion’s location. Shiro had to be near her.
A scraping noise dragged through the comms. Shiro sucked in a breath, hissing out a curse as more noises sounded. “Keith, they’re–” A sharp cry, then crashes and crunches and then there was nothing but distant roars and the sound of fighting.
“Shiro!” Nothing. He must have lost his helmet. “Shiro!”
He ran faster.
Keith finally reached the top of a ridge, and on the other side was everything. Shiro, running and fighting against four enormous boar-lizard-dog monster creatures. And closer, the Black Lion. She lay still and silent, empty of a Paladin.
Shiro was still too far away to reach, even with the jetpack. This was a wild impossible idea, but Keith didn’t have a choice. He turned away from his brother and ran to Black.
She towered over him, heavy and silent. She was so much bigger than Red. So different. But they had something in commo – they both wanted to protect Shiro.
Please let this work. Keith remembered his failed first attempts to access his own Lion, and roughly pushed them away. This had to be different.
He pressed his hand against the Lion’s jaw, trying to feel for something – an energy, a connection, he didn’t know. Maybe he was just looking for Shiro somewhere deep in this metal, an echo of his brother that he could connect with even if this was not Keith’s Lion. “I know I’m not Shiro,” he murmured to the cold surface, “but he’s in trouble. We need to help him.
“Let me in. I want to save him, and I know you do too. He’s your Paladin, but he’s my brother. If we work together, we can do this. If we don’t–” he took a shuddering breath, “he’ll die. I’m not gonna let that happen, and I think after everything you don’t want this to be the end.
“Please. Help me save him.”
There was a long moment of silence. Keith stood stone-still, hand pressed against the Lion as if he could push his way in. Then –
The Black Lion’s eyes lit up gold. She didn’t roar, made no sound at all. Instead, she opened her jaws.
“Thank you,” Keith whispered. Then he ran, up into the Lion’s mouth as she closed her teeth behind him.
It was nothing like flying Red. The Black Lion knew what she wanted to do, knew where her true Paladin was and how to protect him, and Keith was mostly just a passenger. He didn’t care. If it worked and they saved Shiro, it didn’t matter how directly he’d been controlling the Lion.
Together, they drove off the beasts, leaving Shiro lying on the sand, motionless either through amazement or injury or a mixture of the two. Keith hoped it was purely the first, but with their luck prepared for a good helping of the second as well.
That Galra witch had gotten him good. The second the creatures were gone Keith had flung himself from Black so fast he couldn’t actually remember leaving the Lion, his only focus reaching Shiro. His brother looked exhausted and was generally pretty battered, both from the rough landing on the planet and from being made the plaything of giant boar-dog-lizards. Worst was the wound on his side. It glowed a sickly purple, and Keith was certain that nothing in the measly first aid kit Black carried would do anything to fix it.
That didn’t mean he wasn’t going to try. Keith was probably half Shiro’s size, but he was determined. Shiro helped as best he could.
They didn’t speak until they were back in Black’s cabin, sitting on the floor with the contents of the first aid kit scattered around them as Keith did his best to treat his brother’s injuries. Shiro had remained quiet, almost silent except for a few harder inhales when Keith touched something that hurt more. Keith didn’t remember him being this stoic about injuries before Kerberos, but in the arena showing weakness was probably asking to die. He didn’t let himself think about that much more.
Shiro spoke suddenly, providing a thankful distraction. “We need to go to the Red Lion.”
“She’s out,” Keith said. It hurt a little to remember how motionless she’d been beneath his hands. “The fight and the wormhole drained all her power, she can’t even turn on.”
“Black can give her some,” Shiro said confidently. Maybe his Lion had provided that idea, or he was just putting on a show. “We need both Lions up and running, and we need to find somewhere safe to wait for pickup.”
Because we definitely can’t save ourselves, was the unspoken end to that sentence. This planet was barren. The steam from the geysers might be potable if they boiled it long enough, or it might just be hot air or acid or stars knew what else. Keith really didn’t want to eat the creatures they’d fought, although killing them wouldn’t be a problem if he could use a Lion to do it.
More pressing was Shiro. The purple slashes were hidden now beneath a layer of white bandages, but he needed real medical treatment. It didn’t matter whether they could find fresh water or food, or how long they could survive off the rations in the two Lions. Shiro would die if he didn’t get real help soon. Keith hoped the healing pods in the castle could treat purple witch-wounds.
“Okay,” he said. “We’ll go get Red, find somewhere safe, wait for the castle to track our signals and pick us up. Now we have a plan.”
“What is the world coming to?” Shiro asked with a teasing smile that made the pain on his face recede. “Keith Kogane with a plan. The universe must be ending.”
“Shut up and pilot your Lion.”
Apparently Black had decided now that her Paladin was back, she wouldn’t accept any other. So Keith stood behind and slightly to the right of Shiro’s chair as the rightful Black Paladin guided his Lion to the point Keith directed on the map, where the Red Lion lay lifeless on the sand.
They were robot ships made of metal. “Lifeless” was not supposed to be a negative description. But there was just something innately unnatural about how the machine that made up the Right Arm of Voltron was sprawled in its crater of impact.
Shiro whistled lowly. “You really weren’t joking,” he murmured, looking over the scene.
Keith bit the inside of his cheek. This was his fault. Black had gone through the collapsing wormhole too, and she was fine, if a little battered. But Red was… dead, or as close as these robots seemed to get. Unconscious, maybe. Hopefully. All because Keith had tried to fight Zarkon on his own. Shiro had either missed that part of the battle or was focusing on their immediate survival, but Keith knew he was going to get the scolding of his life at some point, likely from Allura or possibly (more frighteningly) Pidge.
As Black pressed her nose to Red’s side, giving… something that would hopefully revive the other Lion, Keith’s thoughts drifted. He wondered where the rest of the Paladins were, and in what condition. Hopefully Red was the fluke and everyone else’s Lions were working just fine. Allura was probably hopping around in the castle and picking them up one by one, Operation Lion Retrieval.
He didn’t want to think about any alternatives to that scenario.
“Keith, look!” Shiro’s voice startled him out of his thoughts, and Keith looked out of Black’s viewscreens to see the Red Lion slowly shifting to stand upright, eyes glowing dimmer than usual but still lit.
A grumble echoed in Keith’s head, and he closed his eyes, relaxing in ways he hadn’t even realized he was tense. Hey, Red.
She wasn’t especially pleased about the current situation, but everyone was alive and mostly intact so she would take it. Keith agreed.
Red moved slower than she ever had, often falling behind her sister when ordinarily Black might have struggled to keep up. Keith knew it was in part because of him, because of how he’d flung himself at Zarkon the first chance he had, with no plan besides get him. Red had agreed. That didn’t mean it had been a good idea.
It was slow going, but eventually they found somewhere that didn’t seem to have any creatures. Black would keep an eye out for any movement – Red was still too low-power to expend her energy on scans.
This would have to be good enough. Keith helped Shiro out of his Lion, because the other Paladin was now struggling to walk. Clearly his ability to fight the creatures earlier had been sheer adrenaline and survival instinct, and now that that had faded he was doing much worse.
“I think we’ll just have to wait here,” Keith said as he got Shiro settled on the ground. The Black Paladin was pale and shaky, bad off enough that he couldn’t even try to hide it anymore. “They’ll come find us soon.” I hope.
Shiro hummed a vague assent, eyes closed and hand pressed against his side. “Soon,” he agreed.
Pidge won’t leave us out here too long. She was worried about Shiro before we even got to the castle, and she was pissed at me. She’ll come, and Allura and Coran will be with her. Pidge will fix Red and yell at me, and Allura and Coran will fix Shiro so he can do the Disapproving Big Brother Stare at me. Lance won’t ever let me live it down that I tried to 1v1 Zarkon himself. Hopefully Hunk will forgive me and make us edible food because I am never letting Coran in the kitchen again and these rations taste awful.
This place felt like being back in the desert. If he could hear a coyote, Keith might be able to close his eyes and imagine that he was back on Earth, hoverbikes behind them instead of Lions, Shiro asleep because he was tired and not because he was dying.
The planet’s distant sun began to set. Strangely, the air temperature didn’t change at all, which was probably a good thing right now. Keith got a little fire going and settled beside his brother, Bayard out and in sword form at his side.
Shiro fell into a shallow restless sleep as the last of the sunset faded. The sky was dark and nearly purple, the stars glittering yellower than they did on Earth. Nothing stirred. The Lions remained silent, and all Keith could hear was Shiro’s uneven breathing beside him.
They were just going to have to stay here and rest and wait until someone found them. Eventually. Somehow. Keith didn’t know how or when, but he hoped it was soon. He was worried about Shiro, and worried about the others. Hopefully they would all be together and healed again soon.
Find us. Please.
Pidge drifted backwards, admiring her work. The Green Lion now bore a strange structure on her back, chunks and pieces awkwardly soldered together by the edge of her Bayard to support the enormous satellite dish that now towered over the whole thing. Good thing there was no gravity, or the balancing would have been much more difficult, and a single tiny Pidge could never have moved any of the components on her own.
The little nebula critters had followed her around the entire time, completely useless for anything but getting in the way, bumping into each other, and being honestly really cute, but they were somehow reassuring. Pidge talked to them and to her Trash Paladin Team, and the purposeful work let her anxious brain finally settle a bit. She had a goal and a plan, and she was going to get out of here.
Around her, the nebula clouds glittered silently, rippling like the ribbons of Earth’s northern lights, if one had been swallowed by them. But Pidge wasn’t here for the scenery. Right now, she would do anything to see the shining white towers of the Castle of Lions, or the sharp flash of the Red Lion as it flew through space, the worn metal of the Black Lion, the sleek form of the Blue Lion, the glow of the Yellow Lion’s eyes.
In the empty drift, the critters watched her every action with wide eyes. “Okay guys,” Pidge said, her pulse thrumming, “watch this!”
She connected the final cables, and the satellite’s channels illuminated, powering up to call out to the castle.
The satellite flared brightly, challenging even the nebula’s lights. Pidge imagined the radio waves pulsing through space, reaching the castle’s receptors, transmitting her location directly to her friends. A beacon, across the universe.
And then it all came crashing down.
The satellite remained standing. There was no real “down” in space. But the lights suddenly flickered and died, and within moments the whole thing was back to being a bunch of space garbage instead of a powerful satellite transmitter. The clock had struck midnight and the carriage had turned into a pumpkin, and Pidge was still alone in dead space.
She stared at her powerless satellite tower for… a long time, probably. She couldn’t process what had just happened. No. “No no no no no.” This couldn’t happen. She needed that tower, needed to get out of here. “Come on. I need to get out of here. I need to find my friends. I need–” She needed too much. “Come on, please, just work!”
She hit the side of the tower with a gloved fist. Nothing happened. Don’t hit it too hard, said a bit of her brain. You might rip your suit on the metal, and then there won’t be anything for the others to find if they ever do come here.
It was getting hard to breathe. The visor readouts said that the recyclers were still working alright, so it was just panic. Just panic. It’s fine. Your air is still okay. You’re just going to die out here, because you couldn’t make a freaking satellite do its freaking job.
She couldn’t cry. If she cried, she wouldn’t be able to wipe the tears off her face, and the helmet would turn humid and sticky and itchy. She couldn’t cry, couldn’t press her face into her hands and curl into a little ball of fear and looming despair. The armor was too bulky and stiff, and at this point Pidge was nervous to even stretch her suit too far. She couldn’t cry, but her eyes burned anyway.
“Help.” She said it so quietly. Not that there was anyone around to hear her. “Someone, please. Matt. Keith. Shiro. Lance. Hunk. Allura. Coran. Dad. Help.”
You couldn’t find your family, and now nobody is ever going to find you.
“Please.”
A deep rumbling roared through her head, filling her mind. Sprouts bursting from the soil, flowers exploding from their buds.
Every light on the Green Lion illuminated, brilliant white and gold and green. The light poured from the Lion up through the scrap-heap tower on her back, flaring out across the ancient satellite dish and filling it with power. The whole thing shone star-bright, find me find me find me calling out across galaxies for ancient Altean receptors, for friends. I’m here, called the beacon. Come find me.
And then, just as quickly as it had lit up, it all died out again. Dish and Lion were both dark and silent, and Pidge had to wonder if she’d imagined the whole thing. “Green?” she whispered. But the Lion remained empty, all her meager energy spent in that single burst.
Maybe it went through. Maybe that was enough power to send out the signal, to call to castle and Lions and tell them where to find the Left Arm of Voltron. Or maybe Green hadn’t had enough strength remaining, and the call had died before it could reach anyone who might be listening. Only time would tell, and that same time was ticking down to when Pidge’s remaining life support systems would drop and fade and die, and then she would die too.
Now all she could do was wait.
“I’m here,” Pidge whispered to the silent stars. Nothing answered but the slow eyeblinks of the nebula critters and the hummingbird flutter of her own heart.