Chapter Text
Lance sat cross legged in front of the Blue Lion, smoothing his hands up and down his thighs as he thought about where to begin. Blue’s eyes weren’t glowing, but he got the sense that she was patiently waiting for him to speak first. Considering, you know, she couldn’t speak at all.
He shivered as the reality hit him. He was sitting in front of a sentient robot, a war machine, in the middle of space. For the millionth time he asked himself, how did I get here?
A smaller part of him asked, how long has it been?
Keeping track of time once they had launched into space was a tricky thing considering they no longer had the clear boundaries of day and night to guide them, but Lance suspected it had been two weeks, if the number of times he’d fallen asleep since arriving on the castleship told him anything. So much that had happened in that time, from finding the other lions to a freaking alien named Sendak attacking the team and Lance almost dying and Pidge ready to leave and-
He forced a breath.
Point of the story: a lot had happened.
And somehow, one of the strangest, was Shiro’s request for them to ... bond? With their lions?
He thought he and Blue were already pretty tight; there was something about her that clicked with who he was. He couldn’t really explain it other than feeling like Blue ... made sense .
He could feel the shifts in her energy, could tell when she was happy or sad. But all of that was reactionary on his part; he changed himself according to how she felt. He had no idea how to communicate with her. And apparently those were different things.
Which is how he ended up here, bobbing his leg anxiously in front of the metal feline.
Well, conversations didn’t start themselves, so he threw on a charming smile and leaned forward on his knees. “Hey there, beautiful, come here often?”
Blue stared down at him, unmoving, but her aura changed into something more amused.
He was trying to flirt with a robot. How embarrassing.
Lance sighed and dropped his chin into his palm. “You know, Shiro asked us to bond with you guys. I’m gonna be honest and say I don’t really know what I’m doing,” he confessed. “With any of this really. It’s all a bit too much for my brain to handle.”
He readjusted his position so that he was lying on his side, the weight of his head braced in his arm. “Two weeks ago I was the biggest flunk at the Garrison,” he explained, voice distant. “Now I’m a ‘Defender of the Universe’. It’s all...” He let out a heavy sigh. “It gives me whiplash, Blue.”
The strands above his brows shifted as Blue’s joints creaked, the sound of metal sliding over metal just a surprising whisper in the hangar as she too shifted her position so she was laying down, head cushioned on her paws. Her eyes glowed a soft blue, and Lance had the strangest sensation that she was watching him.
Now, he had her attention.
This is crazy, he thought weakly. No way, no way , this was real.
Even as he thought it, he was scrambling to sit up, heart pounding in his chest.
Hesitantly, he scooted closer until he could reach out with one of his hands and settle his palm against her paw. He felt a deep purr vibrate through her, and it was more than enough to motivate him to continue.
“You never saw me on Earth, Blue,” he whispered. “There are so many things I’m not good at. Piloting included.”
Blue purred again, currents of discontent running through the noise. An image flashed through his mind. There were clouds all around him, and he was dipping in between them like a dolphin doing tricks in the water.
“That’s different,” Lance voiced his thoughts as soon as he realized what she was showing. “That was you flying, not me.”
The discontent deepened.
His voice got smaller as he continued, revealing a thought that had kept him awake on more than one occasion. “Truth is I’m still trying to figure out why you chose me in the first place.”
Silence stretched between them, his voice echoing against the walls.
A sour taste filled his mouth. There were many things about himself that he wasn’t fond of, the tiny voice in his head that tried to convince himself that he wasn’t meant to be there most of all. A needier side, the one who craved attention and praise. The one who never really knew his place unless it was given to him by others.
Blue whined, nudging against his hand.
He felt something open between them, a metaphorical door that allowed, just for a moment, Lance to feel emotions that weren’t his own.
Lance startled and asked, “Is that you?” But he already knew the answer to that.
He felt the warmth, first. Like sunlight streaming through the windows on a sunny day, warming his skin. Like the sun pounding against the streets of Manzanillo. He could smell the sea, could hear the call of gulls on the beach. It reminded him of home.
His chest burst, leaving behind a tingling that rose up and up and up until Lance thought he would fly away.
Lance recognized this feeling as pride.
He stared, slowly connecting that feeling to himself. “You’re... proud of me?”
Yes , Blue’s eyes seemed to say.
“But why?”
More imagery in his mind. Of the moments in his life he hadn’t thought about in a long, long time.
Blue waves of the ocean. Ice under his feet from the time they had visited the Rockies. The pretty brown eyes belonging to the girl who gave him his first kiss, hidden under the bleachers during a middle school dance. The trail of smudged lipstick he left over the lips of a boy from middle school, illuminated by the dim lamplight from his bedside table.
Lance blushed, recalling how his body seemed to prickle at the realization that he’d only ever thought about something like this happening within the boundaries of his imagination.
“You didn’t have to bring that one up,” he mumbled, ears burning. He heard a bell tinkle in his mind. Blue was laughing at him. “Why are you showing me these?”
Her answer came through other memories, all tinged with varying shades of blue. Lance saw himself looking in the mirror, face a mosaic of cornflower, periwinkle, of midnight sky. He saw red rimmed eyes. Felt a familiar struggle under his ribs.
Why? She seemed to ask.
Why what?
Do you feel like this?
His throat tightened as he opened his eyes. He didn’t remember closing them at all. “I don’t know,” he whispered.
She waited patiently.
Lance took the time to gather his thoughts, working through the tangle to find the right words. “Sometimes I think this was all a mistake” he began slowly, voice stuffy with emotion. “I’m not paladin material. I don’t even know how I fit into this team, Blue,”
Blue pulled on his consciousness again, and he obediently closed his eyes. He saw himself sitting before her, blue fragments displayed between them like broken glass. He saw home. Both of his first kisses. He saw his friends. His team.
He saw the sky and reached down for it, fingers crossing through the surface and all of a sudden he was falling.
No, he was flying.
Blue danced around him, a masterpiece of fluid motion.
His memories floated before him, glinting as sunlight passed through them. It morphed and spilled onto the earth below them like an image of a stained glass window on a church floor.
The fragments aligned to depict him in his paladin’s armour, bright eyed and mouth curved into a confident smile.
And then he heard a voice. It sounded like a stream. A river emptying out into a boundless sea. It was a language he understood.
You are the Blue Paladin. You represent the Guardian Spirit of Water. Of change. Of adaptability. I chose you because I see the potential in you. Your experiences give you the power to evolve into the person you desire to be, but you must allow yourself to believe he deserves to exist in the first place.
His stomach swooped and clouds rushed past his ears as he fell towards a sprawling ocean, which swelled up to cushion his descent. It sang lullabies into his ear. Blue floated down so they were eye to eye, tail swishing side to side.
I see him in you.
Lance opened his eyes. His hand was still on Blue’s paw.
His vision was blurry. He felt something drip off his chin and hit the hangar floor. Blue stared back at him, silent as the stars.
“You see potential,” Lance whispered.
Warmth blossomed through his chest like a hug. Blue hummed in his mind, soft and inviting.
Lance collapsed into her embrace, resting his forehead against her paw. He sniffed and gave a watery laugh. “Well, woulda look at that. I think we just bonded, Blue.”
His mind filled with the tinkling bells of her laughter again.
He felt like he had been walking into walls trying to search for answers as to why he was here, why he was allowed to be here, while his answer sat beneath his feet the entire time. He was connected to her before, but now they shared an understanding. Lance felt her emotions, stronger and clearer, but a part of him felt like he had gotten through to her as well.
The insecurities pricked at his mind were still there, but there was a soft shield between them and his consciousness, and it was filled with Blue. Like a safeguard against himself.
Like a friend to fall back on.
It was a thought that made him smile, and somewhere deep inside, Blue let out a soft trill, like she was glad he finally understood.