Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

It happens a few days after his twenty-sixth birthday, where he’d gone to one of Hunk’s restaurants on the Balmera for the celebration. Not everyone had been able to make it, the only people able to attend being himself, Hunk, Shay, Coran, and Shiro. Curtis had been stuck on Earth taking one of their dogs to the vet, and Pidge was too busy knee-deep in another planet two galaxies over, but they had both sent their well wishes. Pidge had even gotten him a little present in advance, a small holo-projector that was reminiscent of the large projection rooms in the new Castle of Lions.

He’d displayed the beautiful images of Varadero Beach right in his living room, taking down the paintings that Nadia had gifted him and relocating the canvases to the wall above his kitchen table.

Keith hadn’t been able to make it either, but that was something that Lance already knew ahead of time. Way, way ahead of time. Because the last time that Lance had heard from Keith, it had been in April, when he was telling the rest of their old team that he would be going with the Blade to see if they could travel even further out into deep space. They wouldn’t know when they would be able to return.

But it’s fine, because it’s been a quite a while since Lance had had an actual, proper conversation with Keith anyway. Without the rest of their group present. Lance was just always on Earth, and Keith was always elsewhere with his newly formed humanitarian organization. Pidge and Hunk were rarely on Earth too, but at least they would come back more frequently than Keith. So yeah, their friendship, still as present as it was, was dwindling to the point where the only thing tying them together were old memories.

His birthday party was a quiet affair. He would’ve passed up on celebrating it altogether if Hunk and Shay hadn’t insisted, already having celebrated with his parents beforehand. His siblings all had their own lives, and so did he, so they couldn’t all gather over the weekend, but at least they were all present, if many of them over video call. Nadia and Sylvio were growing up well, now entering their sophomore and senior year of high school. Veronica was doing well with her job at the Garrison too. She’d recently been promoted to Commander. Luis, Marco, Rachel, and him had all traveled up to the Garrison to celebrate with her when that happened.

Dinner was fun, and the small talk the small group of them made after that had been fun too. Stimulating. Superficial. Made his heart ache. Unbearably. Because they all sounded so happy, and Lance had told them as much, missing them silently at the bottom of his heart. He had told them that he was happy too, after all the chaos from saving the universe. He lived a peaceful life. Tranquil. Unchanging. Monotonous.

He immediately went back to Earth after that dinner, exchanging heartfelt but mellowed goodbyes. Nostalgic, something they would all miss, but would ultimately recover gently from.

Lance would recover too, but he knew that he would have a harder time recovering than the rest of them. Because while they all had someone else to go back to after they separated, Lance only had the company of his quiet and lonely farm. A few years back, he would’ve had monthly visits from people all over the universe, and he would do public, first-hand retellings of Voltron: Legendary Defender. He’s long since stopped doing them though, in part because people rarely ever scheduled them anymore, and in part because he would always break down crying afterwards.

The entire galaxy already knows of Voltron’s exploits by now, and the entire galaxy already also knows of Allura’s message of peace too, after having Lance rinse and repeat and spit those same words out like a broken record. Unable to be fixed, unable to move on. Stranded on the words he spun together, surrounded by an ocean of the past. He’s still there, whenever he plucks a juniberry flower and admires it with a gentle, lonely smile, squeezing his heart in grief. He’s still there, whenever he passes by Kaltenecker’s pen, idly chewing on the grass. He’s still there, and he can’t leave, no matter how far he travels to meet his friends every year.

The man was tall, standing in the middle of his field of juniberry flowers one evening. He was in semi-formal clothing, the tail of his pea coat fluttering in the air when Lance had called out to him, asking him if he’d needed any help. The man had turned, his chestnut hair fluttering in the wind, his eyes widening slightly behind his cat-eye glasses, before opening his mouth. He was handsome, exhausted, and a little familiar, if not for the scar running down the right side of his face, his right eye murky in its color.

“Not particularly,” the man had said. He slowly slid his hands into his coat pockets. “Do you need any help? I’m trying to find a job.”

Lance parted his mouth, a basket of picked berries propped up against his hip. “Uh, sure?”

The man nodded. “When can I start?”

And that, had been their first interaction.

—

“Do you have a name?” Lance asks, showing the man how to use the metal combed scooper to harvest the berries. They were as sweet as they could ever be at this time of the year. They were a little smaller than last year’s batch, but the flavor hadn’t diminished. They would be less juicy due to the smaller volume though.

The man presses his lips together. “Mr. W.”

Lance nods, before pushing himself up to his feet and passing the scooper over. Mr. W. hadn’t had a place to stay when he ended up on Lance’s farm, so he’s been renting out his guest bedroom in exchange for work. Hardly anyone uses the spare bedroom anyways, the only instance of which when his family comes to visit him. But even then, that’s a rare occurrence these days, because Lance is always the one traveling to meet them.

Not for too long though. His farm wouldn’t be able to sustain itself on its own.

The man peers up at him. “You’re not going to ask for my first name?”

Lance purses his lips at him, before shrugging. “If you don’t wanna tell me, then I don’t need to know.” He smiles at him. Teasing, and it’s going to be the first genuine joke he makes in days. Months. “As long as you don’t kill me in my sleep, I’m fine with you never giving me a name.”

The man huffs, a little amused, before nodding. “Maybe in due time.”

“Mysterious,” Lance quips, chuckling lightly. He leans back on his heels, intertwining his fingers behind his back.

It’s been a while since he’s interacted with someone he’s considered a friend for longer than a few hours every few months. Most of those interactions are conducted through video calls, few and far in between as those calls are, but physically being present with someone is a whole different experience. Mr. W. is usually quiet whenever they’re together, nor does he mince his words and his thoughts about a particular subject, but his presence fills in the void that surrounds Lance around every corner.

Farm animals could only provide so much company.

It’s nice. He hopes, that their friendship can turn into something great.

—

“How long do you plan on working here?” Lance asks, four months into their arrangement.

Mr. W. hums, watering the potted flowers that Lance has grown accustomed to growing on his windowsill. None of them are juniberries, because he already has a small patch of them growing outside. Guiltily, he finds relief in that aspect. Sometimes, he goes outside, and he ignores the patch altogether, not bearing to eye them any longer than necessary. In the beginning, they had symbolized his devotion and longing for a love he would never receive again, but now all they do is serve as a reminder.

That he’s still the same, that he’ll always be rooted in the same spot unless someone else can come and dig him up by the roots. Unchanging, growing and withering in the same place he’d been planted.

“As long as I’m needed,” Mr. W. says after a few moments of deliberation. “I don’t really have anywhere else I need to be. It helps that I’m not staying here free of charge either, assuming you needed the helping hands in the first place, but it makes me feel less guilty. ”

Lance has to fight tooth and nail to keep the elation off his face. “You’re one hundred percent needed.”

Mr. W. pauses in his watering, lifting his head to meet Lance’s eyes with a small crinkle in them. “Alright then.”

—

Sometimes he talks about his family, other times he talks about his friends. Mr. W. listens to every single word that he says, even though most of what Lance says about his friends come from his past, word vomiting about them in order to fill in the void. He hasn’t gotten the opportunity to catch up with his friends in a while, the last video call with Shiro lasting a total of thirty minutes before Curtis had interrupted with dinner. Curtis had apologized and quickly exited the room, but Lance had waved him off. He was just getting tired anyways, even though it was only 7 pm.

That had been a month ago.

His calls and visits from his family are more frequent, with Nadia even coming over to celebrate her high school graduation just yesterday. He’d treated her to a blueberry milkshake, something she’d balked out, but she accepted it because it was her Uncle Lance and she still couldn’t refuse him.

She’s planning to attend a college on the east coast. She wants to be a screenwriter, and Lance couldn’t be any more proud of her.

Mr. W. looks proud too, when he had come home late that night after picking up a new canister of propane for their grill.

It’s not enough. At this point, it feels like it will never be enough. But he makes do with what he can get, and if this is the extent to which he can receive from both his family and friends, then he’ll treasure every moment with them. He loves them, dearly.

He doesn’t miss the way that Mr. W. lowers his eyes when Lance says this, with a bright smile spread across his face.

“You want to see them more than this.” Mr. W. doesn’t mince his words. “You’re lonely.”

Lance breaks down for the first time a year into their friendship.

—

For his twenty-seventh birthday, Pidge, Coran, Hunk, and Shiro surprise him on his farm, bringing him take-out from the city with an 8” red velvet cake from a popular bakery chain. The cake is too sweet, and the cream is too heavy, but he eats every single bite of the slice he’s given.

His jokes feel stale, not used to them anymore now that he rarely has anyone to joke with. Mr. W. is a serious person, and even if he understands the jokes that Lance comes up with from time to time, he reciprocates with even cruder and meaner ones. It never fails to make Lance laugh, because Mr. W. is fun to be around. But his friends aren’t people he spends every day with, observing what makes them smile and what makes them frown.

Hunk is planning to expand his restaurant chains into another galaxy. Pidge is thinking about moving to Altea for a year, in order to observe their previous teludav usage so she can finally have enough data to perfect the wormhole technology that her dad has been working on this past decade. Coran welcomes Pidge with open arms, having secured a new trading route to a nearby planet for a new type of plant-based spice. Shiro is looking into adoption with Curtis, after taking in a set of twins from the orphanage a few months ago. A rambunctious pair, but they love them.

Lance…is still Lance. Nothing’s changed for him. He’s just…living. Floating.

He’s there.

Keith still hasn’t returned.

—

He has dreams sometimes. Dreams of his time as the Blue Paladin, dreams of his time as Keith’s right hand, dreams of his time as Kuron’s right hand, even though those days hadn’t been exactly pleasant. He has dreams of coming back to Earth, of reuniting with his family, of teaming up with the Garrison and his old classmates, of taking down Zarkon, Sendak, Lotor, Haggar. He dreams and he dreams and sometimes they turn into nightmares that have him sweating and gasping for breath but he never wants to stop.

Because he loves those memories. Because he was someone in those memories, even if he was a third wheel, a fifth wheel, a seventh wheel, a bystander. He was someone who could make a contribution, even if those contributions almost always amounted to nothing. Because in those memories, Allura was alive, and because she was, so was he.

Because in those memories, even if no one believed in him, there was one person who said that they had, before they inevitably drifted apart. Because that person is someone who never stops climbing, never stops reaching for the stars, while Lance had remained stagnant, lost in the memories of a love long faded. A love he doesn’t know how to let go of, because her beautiful smile and crinkling eyes always haunts his most beautiful nightmares, his most gruesome dreams.

‘And the Lance who knows exactly who he is and what he’s got to offer.’

Shiro had piloted the Red Lion during that stifling year after Allura died. Lance loved—loves—Blue, and he will never, ever stop loving her. But it’s different, when it wasn’t Shiro who had been in Black. When Lance should’ve been in Red, next to the person who had ascended into the leadership role as naturally as a waterfall.

He cries. He cries and cries and cries and sobs and claws at his face and arms until there are pulsing red welts raised all along his body, the salt from his tears stinging the wounds even further. He doesn’t bleed, because Mr. W. always comes in and stops him before he can do any major damage, but he’s thought more times than he can count that he wouldn’t even care if he bled. He just wants to feel, feel something else other than despair and loneliness. He wants to laugh, not just chuckle lightly at the quips that Mr. W. returns to his jokes.

He wants to laugh.

‘And the Lance who knows—’

He wants to live.

‘—exactly who he is—’

He wants to be happy.

‘—and what he’s got to offer.’

Those gray eyes that had edged into a brilliant violet under direct sunlight, eyes that he hasn’t seen in nearly two years, eyes that had once believed in him.

He sobs until his voice grows hoarse. Mr. W. doesn’t let go of him throughout it all.

He can no longer remember what they look like.

—

Keith comes back a day after Lance’s twenty-eighth birthday, and they all meet up at one of Hunk’s master restaurants down on Earth. It’s a tearful reunion, filled with hugs and questions and tales that stretch long into the night. Keith looks even older than the last time Lance remembers him, but he looks incredibly happy, if a little tired.

He gives Lance a present. He gives all of them presents. For the two years he’d missed.

It’s a flower, a bell-shaped one that opens up into eight, pointed petals; encased in a crystal cylindrical case with purple dirt filled up one-third of the way. Lance doesn’t even know how to describe the color of the petals: a mix of lavender and teal and bubblegum pink. There are some minerals embedded into the dirt that reflect the sun better than some of the cleanest cut diamonds found on Earth, and it’s beautiful.

“I found it on Melata,” Keith explains. A new planet that he’d landed on during his two years away. Lance holds the cylinder close to his chest, as if he’ll lose it just by holding onto it too lightly. “It doesn’t need to be watered or fed, but you should keep it in the case. It withers if exposed to any other atmosphere other than Melata’s.”

“Oh.” Lance feels something creaking inside him. “Thank you.”

Keith smiles at him, and it looks good on him. Lance thinks that Keith smiles easier than Lance these days, considering they were the opposite when they first met each other. “Happy birthday, Lance.”

Lance breaks as soon as Keith turns around and re-enters the restaurant, tears cascading down his face as he hugs the flower close to his chest, sobbing in the dark and empty alleyway. He doesn’t even know what he’s crying for.

He doesn’t go back in for a long, long time.

—

Things don’t get any better after that.

He places the crystal case right beside his other flowers, admiring the light that refracts from the minerals into his kitchen whenever sunset comes. Mr. W. doesn’t comment on it, only that it seems like Lance favors that particular flower over all the others.

“Yeah.” Lance doesn’t even try to deny it, because he’s too tired to and the only one who will hear it is Mr. W. anyways. He smiles wearily down at the flower, running a finger over the top of the case. “I do.”

Things don’t get any better, but they get more bearable.

—

“My name is Adam,” Mr. W. says two months before Lance’s twenty-ninth birthday.

Lance had blinked at him, wondering why that name sounded so familiar. It tickles his memory, but it’s not enough to prompt a strong response.

Mr. W. smiles softly at him from the fields, sun hat pulled low over his eyes and gloves pulled high to his elbows. “You can just call me that.”

And it’s, such a small thing. It’s such a small thing that Lance hardly even notices it. But he notices the way the corners of his lips curve up, notices the way that his smile stretches wide enough that he shows teeth. The way his feet are a little lighter, the way that constricting chain shackled around his heart loosens just a bit. “You trust me?”

Mr. W—Adam lets out a breathless laugh. “A little late not to, don’t you think? I’ve been working for you for three years now.”

“With,” Lance immediately corrects. Adam, is his friend. One of the best, who’s been here when Lance had needed a friend most, even though he refused to say it out loud. But even if he had refused, he’s pretty sure that Adam could read between the lines of the words he’d tried to fill every silence with. He’s perceptive like that. “With me.”

Adam nods. “Yes.” He quirks his lip. “Might as well add me to the family will now, right?”

Lance laughs. And it’s the closest it feels to being real.

—

It’s bearable.

“Hey Hunk! How’s that new Goarian dish you’ve been working on lately? It was too sour the last time you prepared it, right? Did you figure out the fruit to root ratio yet?”

—

It’s bearable.

“Hey hey hey Pidgey, you got those lenses I sent you yet? Why couldn't you just travel back here from Dexonia on your own? I had to pay a thousand dollars in shipping fees!”

—

It’s bearable.

“Oh my god Shiro, how could you forget to bring a camera to Haruka’s piano recital?! You’re lucky Curtis remembered!”

—

It’s bearable.

“Coran my man, do you remember when you were telling me about that one fable about the young Altean who got turned into a Juniper? Can you tell me that again? I’m trying to recount that story and life lesson to a friend.”

—

It’s bearable.

“Hey Keith, how are you doing man? How far are you traveling this time? I heard you were planning on distributing more food to the outer colonies, so do you need anything? Fresh fruit while they’re still in season?”

—

It’s…

“Hey Allura. I still miss you, and I hope you’re doing well wherever you are. I just—I….”

…bearable.

No one is available for Lance’s twenty-ninth birthday, but it’s okay, because they all remembered it, sending him various ‘Happy Birthday’ texts throughout the course of 24 hours. He’s grateful, and can’t help but wonder when they’ll all finally forget his birthday altogether, so he can stop looking forward to this day every year. He has no one to spend it with except Adam, his shepherding dog, Kaltenecker, and his other farm animals.

It’s not bad. It’s fun. As fun as all the other times, but maybe just a smidge more. Because it feels personal. Because Adam knows him. The current him, and he still chooses to spend time with Lance in spite of it. In spite of Lance’s corny jokes, an oddly childish sense of humor that he never really knew how to grow out of. In spite of Lance’s late-night breakdowns, which are growing less and less frequent because having a warm body beside him helps. Having a friend helps. Anything helps, as long as he’s not alone.

Adam bakes him a cake, and makes a cup of the most bitter coffee he could’ve wrung from those godforsaken beans to complement the sugary overload. Lance is getting old, so it’s not like he could handle the cake either, but at least he’s not old enough to lose his taste buds yet. He’s still trying to cleanse the bitter taste from his mouth a couple hours later, when they’re both sitting on the steps of Lance’s porch and stargazing.

Out in the countryside, the stars appear brighter than if he were to be in the city. It’s one of the many perks of becoming a farmer. One, out of the few.

“Did you know I used to be a professor at the Galaxy Garrison?” Adam asks conversationally, after the silence that’s descended upon them has stretched for longer than an hour now. A comfortable silence, one of the only few that Lance welcomes, because it’s within this silence that Adam usually contemplates, before sharing those thoughts out loud to Lance. Seems as if he’s ready to share.

Lance shakes his head. “Which branch?”

“The west coast one.”

Lance raises his eyebrows in shock, widening his eyes. “No way! You’ve already heard of my experience with the Garrison. I’ve told you multiple times over these past three years, and you’re only telling me now that you were a professor?!”

Adam presses his lips together, curling the corners up into a plaintive smile. “Do you know why I stopped?”

“Why?”

Adam levels his eyes with Lance’s. “Because I died.”

Lance bursts out into a short fit of laughter, before it abruptly stops when he realizes that Adam’s smile has dropped. Lance stills, feeling sweat bead at the back of his neck. “What?” His voice is cracked, thin and quiet, as if it’s been forced through a strainer.

“I died during the Galra’s first invasion of Earth,” Adam says, as if he was repeating a paragraph from a lesson plan. Lance subconsciously backs away from him.

“Y-you really gotta work on your jokes man. I don’t—”

“I was an officer and pilot at the Galaxy Garrison. I taught Aviation Theory and Concepts, and Flight Safety,” Adam continues, even though Lance has all but shrunken into himself on the other edge of the porch steps, burrowing into one of the pillars as if it will help stabilize him. “I also directed some of the flying simulations, but while Iverson was in charge of the fighter class—”

“Stop,” Lance croaks. His chest twists and burns, thinking that this may be the cruelest joke that the universe has ever played on him by far. Haven’t they broken him down enough? Haven’t they taken enough from him yet?

“—I was in charge of the cargo class, because I was the most pragmatic and level-headed instructor in the entire faculty. Even so, I still qualified for the fighter class, even though I enjoyed teaching the cargo classes more. I was your instructor for Flight Safety in your first year of flight school, as well as your last before you disappeared. During your final year, you were in my cargo class for a total of six months. You sat at the very front of the classroom, and even though you made a substantial amount of crude jokes that the entire class took humor in, you took the most notes and had the most hours logged into the simulator. Three months after Keith dropped out, I asked if you disliked being a cargo pilot—”

“Stop,” Lance repeats, this time firmer. He swallows. What more does the universe want? Do they want to break his sanity too?! He has nothing left, why can’t they see that?!

“—and you said that being a pilot has always been your dream. Being a cargo pilot was not necessarily the worst disappointment to you, you just simply enjoyed the rush and dynamism of being a fighter pilot more. Your dream was to see the stars, to live amongst them, and you wanted to become one yourself, so you could bring that glory back to your family in Cuba.”

“Stop.”

“You left that counseling meeting with the most forlorn yet determined expression I’ve ever seen on you, and that solidified my already morphing perception of you. You were a hard worker and a martyr, a great observer and strategist under pressure, naturally friendly and outgoing, but you hid most of that behind an arrogant, obtuse, and flirtatious façade.”

“Stop!”

“I recommended you to Iverson that same week, and despite all his best attempts to keep that fighter class seat open in case Keith ever decided to come back, I pushed against Admiral Sanda in order to have you enrolled. I fought with them for three weeks, before they finally gave in.”

“Stop! Stop stop stop! Shut up!” Lance screams, throwing his hands over his ears and squeezing his eyes shut. The tears that are freely streaming down Lance’s face burn. His chest burns. He can hardly breathe, inhaling against the metaphoric insanity that smokes and clouds his lungs, against the snot that physically clogs his nose.

Distantly, there’s someone calmly instructing him to breathe, their voice firm as they guide him through his inhales and exhales, but he’s too busy sobbing to really consciously register it. He cries, curling and folding into himself until his spine aches, dropping his forehead onto the dirty wooden steps and screaming.

“Breathe, Lance! Breathe. In, and out. Come on, with me. In, and out. You’re doing fine, just keep breathing, in, and out. I’m here for you. I’m right here if you need me. Just breathe.”

Lance whimpers, sniffling and choking on his snot.

The universe is cruel, he decides.

It takes them thirty minutes for Lance to calm down. His chest aches at the end of it, and all he feels is—nothing. (It hurts.)

—

“Are you real?” Lance asks robotically. His eyes are dry, and his voice is hoarse from all his crying. There’s a warm cup of milk in his hands, and he uses it as his anchor when he presses his fingers against the scalding, glazed ceramic. It’s the only place that doesn’t feel numb.

They’re still on the porch, and Adam sits patiently beside him, with a sizable distance between the two of them. Adam’s probably giving Lance his space. The small compartment in his chest that locks away all his sadness is grateful. “I’m as real as you want me to be.”

Lance snorts bitterly. “So that’s it huh? My loneliness has become so isolating that I’ve reverted back to creating imaginary friends now?”

“That’s not what I meant,” Adam says, shaking his head. “You wouldn’t have known that I fought to place you in that fighter class. I doubt you hardly even remembered me, if these past three years have been anything to go by.”

“Maybe I’m making all that up too.”

“You can call Iverson yourself and find out, I’m sure that the old brute has mellowed out by now.”

“Maybe I will.”

“Go right ahead.”

Lance hunches his shoulders up to ears. He won’t call. He doesn’t want his fears to either be confirmed or denied. Ignorance is bliss as they say. He’s been living in it this entire time, when he refuses to believe that all his friends no longer care about him as much as they used to. Ah no, ‘care’ isn’t the right term. They’ll always care. He’s just no longer one of their top priorities. “So then why did you show up?”

Adam takes a little longer to answer this one, but when he does, it brings upon a fresh new wave of tears to Lance’s already shriveled eyes. “Because you needed me to.”

“Because I’m lonely?” Lance asks quietly, sniffling again. Snot trails traitorously out of his nose, dripping down his upper lip and chin. Another tear escapes his right eye, after having pooled enough liquid to coalesce into a teardrop. “Because I’m pathetic and can’t move on?”

Adam sighs. “Because you needed a friend.”

Lance whines, throwing down his cup of milk and splashing it across the grass. He buries his face into his hands, and it stings when he digs the heel of his palms into his eyes. “So I needed a ghost?! I’m not even—I can’t even—I’m so far damaged that I’m not even good enough for human friends anymore?!”

Adam lets him cry, reaching out to rub consoling circles into Lance’s back. Lance doesn’t even have the strength to shake him off, absorbing the warmth that seeps into the back of his thin sleeping shirt. Because he has no one else to supply that comfort. “Lance.”

Lance sniffles, biting down on another sob.

“Lance, do you think you can change?”

Lance stiffens, lifting his face from his palms to meet Adam’s eyes with his own devastated ones. “Change?”

Adam nods. “Do you think you can change? Because I do.”

Lance’s face crumples. This man is wrong. He’s so, so wrong. This man, who had been confident in Lance back then during his Garrison days, clearly didn’t know how strong Lance was now if he still managed to find confidence in him. Lance is weak. He’s been weak, for far longer than he’d thought he’d been. Maybe he’d never even been strong in the first place. “You can’t—”

“You can change,” Adam interrupts firmly, reaching forward until he can place two steadying hands on Lance’s shoulders.

Lance’s breath quivers, feeling his eyes burn as he leans backwards instinctively, away from the touch.

Adam, for all his strength and friendship that he’s given Lance over the years, only smiles. Something warm and fond around the edges, friendly and familiar, overall confident. “This world isn't confined to all the roles that have already been placed in front of you. You discovered the concept of being a pilot before you even knew the proper meaning of the word, but you constrained yourself to being either a cargo or fighter pilot. Being a Paladin of Voltron meant glory and proving your self-worth, it meant helping others and giving others something to believe in, but you could only see yourself in one of three cockpits in order to matter. Your future was boundless, and yet you tied yourself to something that you already knew how to do. Something that was safe. You’ve always limited your sight.”

Lance’s bottom lip trembles.

Adam presses forward, holding Lance upright. “You can change. You can change how you see the world, and once you do, you can change how you fit into it. A place that you’ll carve all on your own, and you’ll be happy once you fall into it.”

Lance drops his head, choking back another cry. He couldn’t. He’s been stuck in the past for so long, he doesn’t know the first thing about crawling out. Everyone’s already moved on, even his family that he loves so dearly. Both by blood, and by bond. He knows that they’ll always be there, but he wouldn’t even know where to begin. He doesn’t even know if he wants to. He’s long since closed up the well he used to stare out of, digging and digging until he’d reached bedrock, until all he could see were enclosed stone walls when he looked back up. “I can’t—”

“I couldn’t change.” Lance snaps his head up in shock, but Adam’s smile broadens, if only in sadness. “I couldn’t change in the past. Even up until the point I died, I kept thinking that I could, only for me to never make any progress towards it. So if for now, you can’t find it in yourself to change because you don’t yet have the resolve, then at least attempt to change for me.”

Lance’s breath catches, feeling his chest squeeze. Why does Adam sound so confident? How could Adam sound so confident, when Lance doesn’t even know how to be confident in himself anymore? The last time he’d been confident in himself had been—

Not quite a smile, just a light tick of the lips. ‘The Lance that’s always got my back.’

The pair of hands on Lance’s shoulders are warm. They don’t burn, like everything else. They’re warm, providing an infinite amount of comfort in such a small point of contact.

“You’re kind, Lance.” Adam leans forward, and from the corners of Lance’s eyes, he can see something faintly glowing under his cheeks. “You’re worth more than what you give yourself credit for. I saw what you were capable of back then, and I still see that same spark in you now, even if it’s dulled. I believe you can change. I believe that you can work towards anything you reach for.”

Lance swallows thickly, feeling himself tear up again. It’s been so long since someone has believed in him, and feeling all of this pressure now—it’s not as crushing as he thought it would be. It’s heavy, but it’s a comforting weight. He’s missed this. He’s wanted this. He’s craved this, the need for someone to need him. For someone to believe in him.

Adam grins at him, and it’s such a juxtaposition to his normally stoic and snarky face that it has Lance dissolving into a fresh new round of sobs. Because Adam—even though he’s been repeating the sentiment over and over again—genuinely looks as if Lance is someone worthy. Worthy of belief, worthy of affection, worthy of change.

“I believe in you,” Adam repeats, quieter this time. Lance lowers his head, grabbing at Adam’s forearms that feel too real despite Adam being a supposed ghost, and holds on for dear life. For support. From a friend. Who believes in him even when Lance can’t believe in himself anymore. “Do you think you can change?”

Lance shakes his head. He can’t. He can’t. He doesn’t know if he has the capacity for change anymore.

“Lance.”

But—but, as long as Adam will continue believing in him, then—then he’ll try. He’ll try, until he can.

Adam huffs. Satisfied. “Yes, that's all I could ask for. More than all I could ask for.” He leans forward, until he can press his forehead against the crown of Lance’s head. “Good luck, Lance McClain. What was it that you bragged about being in your first year of flight school? I thought it was quite tacky at the time. Born for the stars, with water flowing in your veins?”

Lance shuts his eyes, and takes in one last shuddering breath, before the world fades.

“Perhaps you were.”

When Lance opens his eyes, it’s to a harsh jerk of the compartment he’s in. There’s straps constricting his torso in place, and his body suddenly feels heavier, weighed down by his clothing.

“Okay,” Hunk starts, five octaves higher and ten degrees less confident than what Lance remembers. But it’s his voice, because Lance would recognize his self-proclaimed best friend’s voice from anywhere. He whips his head around, leaning over the edge of his seat when the chair’s headrest blocks his view. “Unless you want to wipe beef stroganoff out of all the little nooks and crannies of this thing, you’d better knock it off, man!”

Lance’s breath catches. Because they—Hunk, Pidge, HUNK, PIDGE, HUNK AND PIDGE—look so young. And they’re here. With him. Hunk is hunched over the gearbox, a hand clamped over his mouth and his skin paler than Lance has ever seen it these past few years. Pidge is too busy typing something into her keyboard, fingers flying at mach two speed while her eyes rove over the monitor ten inches away from her face, washing her skin with a bluish glow.

“What are you doing?!” Pidge shouts, whipping her head around to glare at him. “Keep the craft on course! We’ve picked up a distress beacon!”

He nearly starts crying. It’s been so long since he’s last seen them, he doesn’t even know what to say. How does he even interact with them anymore when they’re shouting at him like this? From the very few gatherings that they’ve managed over the years, it was mostly just him listening to their new ventures with a bright smile spread across his lips and a harsh pang in his chest. It was friendly, but nothing familiar. A new recipe that Hunk’s concocted, a microscope that Pidge has improved in order to study subatomic particles in crystals better.

He rarely talks about himself, because there’s nothing to talk about. Yeah, his sheep gave birth to two lambs last week, but the pumpkin he’d planted hadn’t been as big as last year’s, so maybe he needs a new brand of fertilizer. Also, he cries like a little baby every time Adam leaves because he’s lonely and has no other friends but it’s no big deal. He copes.

This, after so many years have passed, feels too familiar. And far away.

“Lance!” Pidge shouts, and the upward lilt of her voice indicates that she’s been shouting his name several times now.

Lance jerks, immediately whipping around in his seat and grabbing onto the controls, steadying them. “R-right!” Even after so long, muscle memory doesn’t fail him, but maybe it’s only because he dwells too much on days that no longer belong to him, that he’s able to fall back on it. Stuck in the past, unable to let go. Unable to do anything more than to chase out old memories by working tirelessly in the fields during the day, and burying himself under his blankets late at night. Sometimes he’d cry himself to sleep. He can’t even remember what he does the other times.

The craft immediately steadies itself, but there’s still some light shaking from time to time. His breathing is heavy, but he forces himself to stay calm as his eyes dart around the cockpit. Where even is he? He recognizes his suit as part of the Garrison’s wardrobe, but he doesn’t remember a time when they’d ever gone to space, and even when they did, he’d been in his paladin armor by then. Where is his paladin armor?

“I’m tracking the coordinates right now and—” Pidge cuts herself off when some kind of alarm starts blaring, a siren descending and drowning the room in a sweeping red. The entire craft starts rumbling.

Lance’s heart rate quickens, clutching at the controls for dear life. He doesn’t dare speak, not when he doesn’t even know what’s happening. At the very least, even if they are having an emergency, he needs to keep the craft as steady as possible. Otherwise they could spiral and lose more than what they already have.

“What’s the emergency Lance?!” Hunk shouts, still sounding a little worse for wear.

Lance huffs out two breaths, feeling fresh tears slip from his eyes. He’d become an easy crier over the years, more than he’d already been. That crushing feeling in his chest never quite seemed to go away, and sometimes, he’d forgotten that he could even breathe, swallowing lungful after lungful of air but never quite respiring. He scans his eyes over the control panel, quickly taking in the buttons and indicators that he could no longer remember the purposes for.

“Lance!” Pidge calls out in irritation.

“I’m trying!” Lance shouts back, his vision blurring from his tears. The sirens are too loud, drowning out the rapid thuds of his heart. Those blaring horns are all he can hear. He sniffles, and his chest squeezes, and he can’t breathe. He lets out a choked sob, flicking his eyes frantically up to the buttons flashing above him. Where is it? What button do they need?! Why can’t he—damn it he should remember this!

A hand suddenly grabs at the back of his chair, a thin but puffy arm from their spacesuit shooting forward and pressing a button above Lance’s head. The sirens immediately stop blaring, and a holo-screen pops up beside him, but the room is still bathed in red. A constant red this time, no longer dancing around Lance’s frame in mockery. Lance flicks his eyes to the side with a gasp, eyeing Pidge’s determined slant of her mouth. She narrows her eyes at him, before pushing herself back to her seat and re-buckling her seatbelt.

“Pidge—,” Lance chokes, but Pidge cuts her narrowed eyes to him once in warning, before shooting them back to her monitor.

“Emergency McClain,” Pidge says, her voice short and clipped. “What is it?”

Lance bites his lip, not knowing whether to feel relieved or even more depressed. He forcibly twists his head back, eyeing the holo-screen that Pidge has pulled up for him. “Hy-hydraulic stabilizer’s out.” He swallows, turning around in his seat to meet Hunk’s eyes.

Hunk widens his eyes when he sees Lance, and he makes an abortive motion in Lance’s direction in concern, but the craft lurches before he can complete the step, throwing him back. His face goes green.

“Hunk!” Lance cries. He can’t even go check if Hunk is okay, because he has to focus on stabilizing the craft for the second time this entire flight.

“Nooooooo,” Hunk moans, his seatbelt the only thing keeping him from falling over.

“Fix it Hunk!” Pidge commands. She points at Hunk, who immediately unbuckles his seat belt to grab his toolbox, heading towards the back and opening up a panel. He’s slightly hunched over and heaving, but he manages. She turns towards Lance next, nodding tightly. “The sensors are keeping a solid track on the signal from your steady piloting.”

And she has no idea, no idea, how much that lifts the pressure off Lance’s chest, threatening to crush him from the inside out. He swallows again, his saliva scraping down the sides of his parched and twisted throat. Pidge doesn’t look away, her eyes burning even in the sea of encroaching red. His breathing doesn’t calm down, not by a long shot, but at least he can finally feel some air pouring into his lungs.

“Keep going, keep the sensors stable enough to receive signals,” she presses, before turning away. “Transmissions should start up any moment now.”

“There’s a leak in the system,” Hunk supplies. He heaves again, gulping loudly, followed by some sounds of metal clinking. “All the pressure that’s been building up in the system is slowly waning. The check valves are doing their job, but we’ve already lost too much fluid. The ship is going to start tipping from here on out!”

Lance widens his eyes, his breath hitching when the blue surface of a nearby planet comes into view. It looks familiar, like he’s seen it once a lifetime ago. Almost a decade and a half ago, when he was still too young to understand anything that had been happening in their universe. It brings up buried memories. Buried, but never forgotten, because he could never afford to let them go or risk losing his mind.

“Keep it steady Lance!” Pidge directs. He just does as he’s told, exhaling in shallow breaths. He has to constantly remind himself that he needs to inhale too. “Attention lunar vessel, this is Galaxy Garrison Rescue Craft One Victor Six Three Tango, coming in for landing and personnel extraction. Over.”

It’s Kerberos. One of Pluto's natural orbiting satellites. In scientific terms anyway. Lance had always just called it another moon like Charon.

But they’ve never been to Kerberos. The only time that Lance had even seen it in person was when the Blue Lion had shot them out of their solar system, and that had only been a brief glimpse. There’d only been one instance in which the Galaxy Garrison—the cadets, specifically—had been interested in traveling to Kerberos, and that had been in—

Lance tightens his hands around the controls. Their craft is quickly being drawn in by Kerberos’ gravitational field, but they won’t be able to pull themselves back into the air even if they tried to, not with their stabilizers cut. “P-prepare,” he swallows again, clearing his throat and forcing himself to speak. “Prepare for landing on visual!”

“Affirmative!” Both Hunk and Pidge shout, but Hunk’s is considerably less enthusiastic.

Lance flicks his eyes over to Pidge briefly, finding her four feet above her seat and floating in midair with the microphone pulled to her lips. He yanks on the controls to try to realign their aircraft as much as possible, momentarily loosening one of them to flick on some safety switches above him, but the moon’s ice arches are approaching too fast for him to dodge them all completely, especially not when he’s multi-tasking along with it. There’s a loud scrape outside, and the alarm’s blaring renews with a vigor.

“We’ve clipped a wing!” Hunk shouts in alarm, yelping when Lance jerks the craft to the side to avoid losing their other wing. Pidge manages to escape a concussion on the roof through sheer force of will. Hunk doubles over the gearbox. “I’m gonna hurl!”

“Guys get back in your seats!” Lance yells. His hands are shaking, but old instincts are easy enough to fall upon. “We’ll fix the ship once we land! Pidge, pinpoint the coordinates of the stranded personnel. Let me know if I’m steering in the right direction. Hunk, how much longer can this ship stay afloat?!”

“Northeast!” Pidge shouts after a few seconds of clicking.

“A minute at most!” Hunk adds.

“Fair enough,” Lance mutters, piloting their descending ship in the direction of Pidge’s coordinates, all while avoiding the planet’s rocky and icy-blue terrain. They’ll be crashing, no doubt about it, but as long as he can land this ship well enough to sustain minimal damage, then they can get this craft back in the air after some maintenance.

“The overhang!” Pidge shouts.

“I see it!” Lance dives the ship, scraping the roof of the aircraft against the ice formed overpass and chipping off some chunks. The chunks fall over the HUD and nose of their craft, and Lance can hear the loud clunks they bang against their ship, but they’re still airborne. Airborne, but descending at a faster pace than before, with the entire cockpit shaking and the control sticks vibrating in his palms. The sirens still won’t shut up. “We’re losing altitude!”

“One of the cylinders is dislodged!” Hunk cries, his voice absolutely wrecked. “We won’t make it!”

“We will!” Lance grits his teeth, tensing his muscles and bracing his feet against the floor and pulling. “I swear it.”

“The stabilizers are completely out now, you won’t be able to steer properly anymore!” Pidge flies over to Lance’s seat, pointing outside the HUD at the two tall rock pillars that they’re blazing towards. “That gap is too small to squeeze through, we’ll lose our wings!”

“Then we’ll minimize our losses!” Lance tilts the craft. They can’t afford to lose their good wing, so they’ll have to sacrifice the wing that’s already clipped. If they’re going to have to replace one of their wings anyway, then it’s best to only have to repair one of them.

“You’re crazy!” Pidge shouts, and Lance’s heart skips a beat in his chest, the corner of his lip twitching.

Maybe he is.

They lose a wing, shorn straight off as they hurtle through the gap. The entire craft rumbles, and they all scream as the craft goes hurtling straight to the ground, now fully dysfunctional without the balance of the wings or the stabilization from the hydraulic systems.

“Lance!” Hunk shouts in alarm.

Lance tugs one last time on the controls, and they manage to not go diving nose first into the solid ice. They do, however, bounce a few times along the ground, before they slide as far as the residual momentum takes them. Lance is jostled in his seat, grunting at the impact, but at least he’s not Pidge, who goes flying backwards with a loud yelp. Hunk, beyond all his crying, doesn’t sound like he’s flying around the cockpit at least, so that means he’d managed to seatbelt himself in at the last minute.

The simulation shuts down when they stop. Big, blocky letters are displayed across their HUD, where Kerberos’ icy landscape had been shining just a few seconds before, mocking their failure.

[SIMULATION FAILED]

And as if that wasn’t a low enough blow, the computer repeats the statement back to them in a monotonous tone.

Lance throws his head back onto the headrest, squeezing his eyes shut and breathing heavily out of his nose. Pidge groans from somewhere behind him, and Hunk whimpers.

“Smooth,” Pidge slurs.

“Insult?” Lance huffs, pressing a hand against his racing heart. “Or compliment.”

“Observation.”

The door to their simulator is thrown open, flooding light into the darkened cockpit. “Roll out donkeys!”

Lance mentally clicks his tongue. Just as he remembers.

—

They’re all but dragged out of the simulator. Iverson doesn’t even give Hunk enough time to gather his bearings, something that Lance glares pointedly at the back of Iverson’s bald head for. He grabs onto Hunk’s arm, slinging it over his shoulder and making his way out of the cockpit to the small bridge, where the rest of their class is waiting outside.

“Thanks man,” Hunk rasps, slumping against Lance’s side and rubbing his upset stomach. “I’m never having beef stroganoff for dinner again.”

“I didn’t see them losing a hydraulic cylinder,” Pidge mutters darkly as she trails after them, narrowing her eyes at their classmates. Lance eyes her warily, frowning lightly. He would’ve thought that she would blame the hydraulic cylinder loss on him, since his piloting is the reason why the cylinder had been dislodged in the first place. She’s done it a lot in the past; rightfully too, if he might add. This wouldn’t be any different.

But no, she stands dutifully by Hunk’s side once Iverson stops to whirl around, bearing down on them with a single-eyed glare.

"Well,” Iverson starts, narrowing his eye at them, before sweeping his gaze over the rest of their class. Out of the corner of his eye, Lance can catch faces that he hasn’t seen in so long, most of which he can’t even remember. Except James, he saw him on the news last week as one of the head pilots on another voyage into deep space, and then he’d promptly shut off the television. “Let's see if we can use this complete failure as a lesson for the rest of you students. Can anyone point out the mistakes these three so-called cadets made in the simulator?"

“The engineer puked in the glove box!” A student quickly answers. Snidely too.

Hunk sighs, leaning further into Lance’s side. Lance pats his back. “Don’t worry about it bud. Sorry about the piloting,” Lance whispers as Iverson says something about vomit and lubricants.

Hunk eyes him warily, as if Lance has grown a second head. Lance furrows his eyebrows, wondering why Hunk is suddenly staring at him like an alien. “What are you apologizing for? You always pilot like this.”

Lance’s mouth parts. Oh. “Still—”

"The Comm Spec removed his safety harness.”

“The pilot crashed!”

“We had our hydraulic cylinder dislodged!” Pidge argues, whipping her head around to glare at their classmates. “You try piloing like that!”

“Silence Gunderson!” Iverson shouts. “They were perfectly correct in their observations!”

Pidge doesn’t even flinch, stepping forward with her fists clenched, but Lance latches onto Pidge’s shoulder at the last minute, yanking her back into his chest. Hunk drops his head onto Lance’s shoulder, securing himself around Lance’s bicep now that Lance is no longer holding him up.

“And worst of all,” Iverson continues, “the whole beginning of the jump went terribly, what with all your arguing! It looks as if you only pulled through in the end, after the pilot went through a mini-breakdown, which in and of itself could cost the entire mission from a single second lapse in judgement!” Lance flinches. “Galaxy Garrison exists to turn young cadets like you into the next generation of elite astro-explorers, but these kinds of mental mistakes are exactly what cost the lives of the men on the Kerberos Mission."

Pidge growls. “How about you go and check your facts first, sir.”

Iverson squares his shoulders, glowering down at them. “I beg your pardon?”

“Then be—”

Lance claps his hand over Pidge’s mouth before she can continue, but she still continues barking behind his glove. “Sorry sir. I think Pidge might’ve hit he—his,” right, Pidge was masquerading as a guy at this point in time, “head when we crashed. I-it won’t—we’ll do better next time.”

Iverson scoffs. "I hope I don't need to remind you that the only reason you’re still here is because the best pilot in your class had a disciplinary issue and flunked out. Don't follow in his footsteps.” He snaps his head up, sweeping his gaze over the crowd. “Next!"

Lance presses his lips together, knowing exactly what would happen after this.

They all step back as the next trio files into the simulator room. Iverson doesn’t even spare them a second glance as he goes to pull the simulator door shut, rounding the device to the control panel on the other side. Lance sighs, slumping with his entire body before he finally lets go of Pidge.

“Come on guys, let’s go sit down.” Lance jerks his shoulder lightly, nudging at Hunk to stand up properly. When Hunk doesn’t attempt to stand up by himself, Lance resumes his previous position of supporting Hunk. Pidge bristles, but she follows after them as they step off the bridge towards the edge of the room, where there are several benches placed.

A student snickers at them when they pass, and Pidge snaps her teeth at them as if mimicking a rabid dog bite. The student scrambles backwards, crashing into another girl standing beside them. Lance rolls his eyes skyward. Of course they would be snickering. Their trio is the only one who’s managed to fail almost all of the sims, barely managing to pass once or twice through sheer luck.

He remembers, but it’s not something that he’s particularly thought back to a lot. Most of his reminiscing usually involves Voltron, and their time on Earth after they were finally allowed back. The Galaxy Garrison was just another military base that also happened to be their flight school. Living in this present again though, brings another unpleasant swoop to his stomach, feeling his chest squeeze.

He could’ve been better. The Blue Lion and Voltron were a testament to that, weren’t they? They had to be. They…had to be. Blue had come back to him one last time after all, so she still recognized him as her primary paladin. But maybe…if Allura had been there—

“You doing okay there man?” Hunk asks.

Lance snaps out of his thoughts, widening his eyes down at Hunk. He’s sitting down on the bench with Lance standing over him, so Lance must’ve let him down at some point. “Huh?”

“You’ve been out of it since the sim,” Hunk frowns.

“Yeah,” Pidge concurs, dropping down beside Hunk. The notch between her brows hasn’t lessened, but at least she doesn’t look angry anymore. Maybe a little annoyed. “You were crying.”

“Pidge!” Hunk protests, elbowing Pidge in the side.

“What?” Pidge elbows Hunk back, gesturing to Lance. “I’m just saying it as it is. And, you were being more agreeable today. For five minutes at least. Who are you and what have you done with Lance?”

Lance hikes his shoulders up to his ears. Was he really such a nuisance in the beginning? His friendship with Pidge could be considered tenuous after Voltron, having no reason to visit each other outside of the fact that they had piloted an intergalactic, magical robot together. Most of the time, it’s him making trips to her laboratory, something he really only does once a year because fear has worn him down to the point of isolation. She’s only visited his farm three times.

“Oh no no no buddy, don’t cry,” Hunk placates, reaching out to clutch at Lance’s hands. Lance hadn’t even realized he was tearing up until he felt something hot sliding down his cheek. His throat closes up, and he frantically wipes his flight suit sleeve across his cheeks. “Look at what you’ve done Pidge!”

“I didn’t even do anything!”

“Pidge!”

“Uh, but you—you did great today!” Pidge tugs at his free arm, and when Lance sniffles, she smiles awkwardly up at him. She’s never been one for comforting, or for displaying a lot of emotion that didn’t fall within the spectrum of sarcasm and glee. The last time he had seen her cry was during Allura’s departure. After that, he’d never been close enough to her to witness any shortcomings she might’ve had. “Smooth landing. Really smooth. Like, like—”

“Tailor smooth,” Hunk adds enthusiastically. “You know, because of how you thread the needle?”

Pidge snaps her fingers and frantically nods her head.

Lance huffs, but the smile he shoots them is tired. God he’s—he’s tired. Was this another one of his realistic dreams? Where he would dream about the old adventures they’d had, where they were all still a close-knit group of friends, where they would all still joke with each other in familiarity. A type of familiarity that came from a tried-and-true bond, not from reminiscence of days that have long since passed. Those dreams had been a momentary escape, and then he’d wake up feeling lonelier than ever.

Those were the days that he’d have difficulty getting up in the morning.

Lance extracts himself from their hold. “I’m gonna go back to my dorm,” he croaks, hiccupping on the last word.

Hunk and Pidge exchange worried glances with each other. “But class isn’t over yet,” Pidge frowns.

Lance shakes his head. “It’s the last class anyway.” Flying was always the last class of the day, even after he’d been promoted to fighter class. “I bet Iverson won’t even notice.”

“I don’t know man,” Hunk shakes his head. “He seems to pay quite a bit of attention to you.”

Lance snorts. “Yeah.” Because Iverson’s star student had up and punched him in the eye, further damaging it. He might’ve had trouble seeing out of it before, but after Keith, he’d lost use of it altogether. Lance almost threw Keith a space party when he’d found out. Almost, because they were still barely friends at that point. “Another thing he can lord over my head I guess. I’m not really feeling up to it today though.”

“Oh.” Hunk pouts. “Need me to cover for you?”

Lance blinks, feeling something sharp twist in his chest. Piercing thin and deep, seeping warmth into a crevice that’s long gone cold. He almost starts crying again right then and there. He’d missed Hunk. God, he’d missed Hunk so much, more than he could ever admit to himself on a daily basis, because that would mean sinking back into old memories where the two of them had been inseparable. And now, now—they could hardly get together.

This dream hurts, but he’s long since recognized these for what they are. An escape. An indulgence.

He flies forward, throwing his arms around Hunk’s neck and inhaling sharply. Hunk doesn’t hesitate to wrap his own arms around Lance, and it feels so warm and real that a few more tears manage to escape his eyes. “Thanks buddy,” he rasps. “I missed you so much.”

“Uh,” Hunk drawls, sounding unsure. He pats Lance’s back twice, before settling his hand. “Yeah man, I uh, missed you too. Did the beef stroganoff mess with you too?”

Lance laughs wetly, and the lightness of it is only contrasted with the heavy notion of none of this being meant to last. “Nah, I love that stroganoff.”

Hunk scoffs. “Sauce is too thin.”

“You’re telling me you don’t love that oil?” Lance asks, pulling back and wiping away the residual tears.

“Disgusting.” Pidge sticks her tongue out.

“I could do way better,” Hunk says, crossing his arms and turning his nose up into the air.

Lance smiles, clapping a hand on Hunk’s shoulder. He ponders for a minute, before doing the same to Pidge, who blinks up at him. “I’m gonna go.”

“Go rest up then buddy,” Hunk nods with a smile. “We’ll cover for you.”

“The attendance records are only one click away,” Pidge adds, leaning back on her hands and shrugging lightly. She jerks her head in the direction of the classroom door. “Get out of here, before Iverson’s shiny head reflects too much light and blinds all of us.”

Lance’s smile broadens. He hugs Pidge too, something she squawks in protest at, before he leaves the room. His entire body feels heavy, but he shakes his head and makes his way through the semi-packed corridors leading out of the flight simulation rooms. Only the aviation division is still enrolled in classes right now, every other division has already been dismissed unless the students have specifically chosen to take extra courses.

No one bats an eye at him as he sluggishly trudges through the crowds, palming a rough glove down his face because he still has his flight suit on. He’s sure that he’s sticking out like a sore thumb right now. Surprisingly, he still remembers where his dorm is, because of all the times that he’s had to sneak in and out of the room undetected during his stay here. Realistically though, it doesn’t really matter which room he’s in, because his dream is taking him there on autopilot anyways.

“Cadet McClain? What are you doing out of class so early?”

The autopilot stops, and Lance’s entire body stills, whipping around frantically in trying to pinpoint the voice. A voice so familiar, a voice so nostalgic, a voice that hurts in all the best ways. His turning stops when he spots someone approaching him, clad in the standard gray Galaxy Garrison uniform for faculty members.

He looks younger, but his face still holds the same exhaustion that Lance remembers seeing when he first met him again. He doesn’t have the large scar marring his face either, both eyes still in working order as they squint at him.

“Adam,” Lance breathes.

Adam’s face immediately twists, before he rolls his eyes. “Yes Cadet, you know my name, and I recall forbidding you from using it again the first ten times you’ve done it in order to get a laugh out of your classmates. There’s no one here to impress though, so please just address me with the proper title so I don’t have to write a citation for you.”

He’s bluffing. He always is, because this would make it the eleventh time that Lance has called Adam by his first name, when he should’ve gotten a citation the second time.

Lance cries.

Adam looks alarmed. “Cadet are you—?”

Lance throws himself forward, wrapping his arms around Adam’s upper torso and burying his face into his collarbone, before he promptly wails. Adam flinches. Hard. Lifting his arms up to either side in order to not spill the coffee in his right hand, and to not drop the stack of papers he has in his left.

“Professor W.!” Lance blubbers, drawing the attention of the entire hallway. He falters, sinking to his knees. “Th-thank you f-for saying you b-believe in m-me. I’m so glad you’re h-here. Y-you have no idea how much you m-mean to me!”

“Erm.” Adam shifts slightly in Lance’s hold, but Lance refuses to budge, and only tightens his arms. Sobbing at the top of his lungs. “Yes well, it’s only been a day Cadet. You have Aviation Theory and Concepts tomorrow with me anyways so why—Cadet McClain! I just washed this jacket!”

Chapter Text

Adam sighs, draping his soiled jacket over the back of his office chair. Lance smiles at him, nursing a cold can of milk latte in his hands from where he sits on the small couch in the corner of Adam’s office. Adam isn’t one for sweets—something that Lance has learned after living with him for three years—especially not sweetened coffee, but he would always buy some for Lance whenever he’d go to the store. It’s the same brand, just as Lance remembers.

“Feeling better now?” Adam asks.

Lance huffs, shrugging. “A little bit. That pep talk you gave me still feels like a faraway dream to me—,” which is odd, considering this is also a dream, “—but thank you anyway. It felt nice, having someone believe in me again.”

Adam raises an eyebrow at him. He crosses his arms, leaning against the front of his desk as he peers down at Lance. “I don’t recall giving you a pep talk recently.”

“Oh.” Hm. Well, dreams weren’t always accurate.

Sometimes, he would dream of Allura sitting closer to him than she actually did at the conference tables, brushing her elbow against his arm in closeted affection, just a secret between the two of them. Sometimes, he would dream of Hunk visiting his room during the night in the Castle of Lions more frequently than he actually did, taking turns speaking about their families and futures.

Pidge, asking him to help with her projects more, if only to hold a wire in a particular position. Shiro, sending more meaningful looks towards his way. Coran, telling him more fables usually reserved for young Altean children. Keith, who Lance could’ve comforted more, rather than the other way around.

“Still,” Lance continues, flapping his hand to wave it off. He’ll just go thank Adam in person again when he wakes up. He hopes that Adam is actually still there, and that he won’t suddenly disappear after having Lance find out that he wasn’t actually alive this entire time, like some old-time Ghibli movie. “I didn’t know that you did all those things for me, but I’m really glad that you did. Because of you, I got the chance to follow my dreams, even if I did bomb it completely.”

“You do have a knack for failing the sims, from what I’ve been hearing from Iverson,” Adam intones. Lance smiles sheepishly, laughing under his breath. It’s not as demoralizing as when Hunk and Pidge say it, because he knows how Adam really feels about him, even if he doesn’t know why. “But it’s not something you won’t grow out of. You are new to the fighter class program after all, whereas your peers have already been enrolled for several years. Progress can be made with time.”

Hah, Lance snorts derisively. How does Lance tell him that not a lot of progress had actually been made, if everything that happened after this has a say.

Adam frowns at the gesture. “Did something happen recently? Normally I would’ve been met with some boasting by now.”

Lance shakes his head. “No. Nothing that hasn’t been happening for a long time.” His self-isolation, his self-esteem plummeting into something nonexistent, his friends moving on one-by-one, his mask for when he feigns happiness thickening layer by layer. None of those had been recent. Ever since the first time Adam had pointed out that Lance was lonely, he’d realized that all those things had been festering for years.

“My office is always open if you ever need to talk,” Adam offers, lifting a hand from his bicep. “I’m not exactly a counselor, but I do care about my students’ well being.”

Lance smiles appreciatively. Frankly, Adam would make a terrible counselor. In all his time at the farm, he would always be the reason for Lance’s tears, because he would always state the obvious root of Lance’s sadness with just the tiniest smidge of remorse. Things that Lance knew subconsciously but didn’t want to hear, because then they would become all too real.

But he’d always be there with Lance too, never once leaving, so in that sense, Adam had been—is—a great friend to him. “Thanks professor.”

Adam smiles lightly, pushing himself upright and rounding his desk. “Well, if you’re feeling better, I have to get back to finalizing next week’s lesson plans.”

“Actually,” Lance says, pressing his two pointer fingers together hopefully around his coffee can, “mind if I just stayed in here?”

Adam pauses, raising an eyebrow. “You mean in my office?”

Lance nods with a smile. This may be a dream, but it’s the first dream to feature Adam. The familiarity Adam brings makes him feel at ease, and there’s no underlying sense of dread for when he wakes up. Not that he’s ever aware of that dread whenever he dreams, but this dream in particular has been pretty lucid for him.

Adam inhales deeply, before dropping down onto his chair. He picks up his pen, spinning it once between his fingers while leveling Lance with a searching gaze. “This is the first time you’ve ever bothered to come into my office after school hours Cadet. What happened?”

“Nothing.” Lance straightens up. “I just, wanna be here, you know. With you.”

Adam narrows his eyes.

“Because we’re friends,” Lance adds helpfully.

Adam squints. “Cadet McClain, while I am an authoritative figure in your life, and while I do wish to support you in your endeavors, I’m asking you to refrain from referring to me with such familiarity until after the dining hall is open for dinner.”

“So you’re fine if I call you that after 6 pm.”

Adam lets out a long suffering sigh, pinching the bridge of his nose. Lance grins. “Whatever.”

Lance practically bounces in his seat in giddiness. “So what’re you working on, prof?” Lance would like to see what kind of horrendous trauma from flight school his subconscious has managed to dig up. It’s not like he’s forgotten everything though. Sometimes, when the two of them had managed to finish up work early on the farm, Adam would teach and quiz him on different subjects.

‘In order to distract you, because you tend to think of too many things when you’re not doing anything.’

Physics, math (of the calculus kind, much to Lance’s chagrin), self-defense (Lance is still a pretty great marksman, if he does say so himself), aerodynamics, aircraft systems, aviation weather, aviation safety, and—oh.

Okay well, now Lance just feels like an idiot. Don’t get him wrong, he’d asked Adam about how he knew all these things off the top of his head once, but Adam had just shrugged and said he’d fought in a war as a pilot before.

And Lance had bought it.

He should’ve known something was suspicious, should’ve been able to smell it in the air. Adam wouldn’t know all these fundamental concepts off the top of his head unless he had them all memorized, like a highly respected and well-versed instructor for a militarized flight school is supposed to.

“Chapter 26’s outline for Aviation Theory,” Adam answers, picking up a stack of papers. “I might as well assign you Chapter 38 early as well, seeing as you’re already here.”

Lance facepalms, the slap echoing around the office. Adam looks over at him, unimpressed. Lance narrows his eyes in return. “You sly little liar.”

“Excuse me?” Adam looks affronted.

Lance points an accusing finger at Adam. “I can’t believe I didn’t catch on. I should’ve known no sane veteran from war would willingly quiz their only friend on relative velocity.”

“None of what you just said made sense.”

“Fine.” Lance hmphs, crossing his arms and sinking further into the couch, aggravated. “Please continue feigning ignorance, Dream Adam, but just know that when I wake up, you’re totally gonna get it. Belief in me or not, I’m going to make you clean Kaltenecker’s pen.”

“Cadet McClain, I have every authority to kick you out.”

“Yeah,” Lance says smugly as he wiggles his eyebrows. Adam believes in him. “But you won’t.”

—

Lance gets kicked out.

Well. Now his dream is just being rude. Just when Lance was starting to feel a little bit better about himself too. Ah well, nothing that his brain hasn’t done to him before. Adam could’ve morphed into Kuron again, yelling at him to stay out of business that didn’t concern him. He could’ve morphed into Keith, giving him soft pep talks only to turn away the next second, never once looking back. He could’ve even morphed into Allura, leaving, forever.

Those nightmares are some of the worst. Some of the most frequent too. He knows how to deal with them best.

Adam kicking him out is pretty mild in comparison. He hopes it’s not a metaphor for Adam leaving him once he wakes up though. If he wakes up and finds Adam gone, he….

Lance slumps his shoulders, feeling his chest squeeze painfully. He wouldn’t even know how to live anymore.

“Lance!” A voice down the hall calls, drawing several eyes. Lance twists his head to see Hunk—already in his casual clothes—trotting down the hall towards him. “There you are! Man, I was wondering where you went. I’ve been looking all over for you.”

“You have?” Lance asks.

Hunk stops before him, raising an eyebrow. “Uh, yeah? Who do you take me for? I’m just gonna leave my best friend alone after he cries like that? Not that I’m calling you a baby or anything, but you know.” Hunk frowns. “I know how you can get with your crying.”

Lance huffs out a breath of laughter. “Yeah.” Ugly.

“Anyways, be totally glad that you didn’t stay behind. I thought Iverson would forget about it, but the group after us started complaining so Pidge and I had to clean up the glove box, which, blurgh, took for-ever.” Hunk throws his hands up into the air, his face twisting in disgust. “There is definitely something fishy about that stroganoff man, I’m telling you. I didn’t know puke could even be that color.”

Lance actually laughs this time, throwing an arm around Hunk’s shoulder before herding them towards their dorms. “Yeah? Tell me about it.”

“I don’t think you wanna know,” Hunk shivers. “Iverson totally would’ve gotten all up in your butt by the way, but Pidge pushed all the blame of your ditching onto Emilio, so you’re lucky in getting away scot-free. You owe Pidge twenty bucks though.”

Lance scoffs.

Hunk raises his hands defensively. “Hey, his words, not mine. Don’t shoot the messenger.”

Lance waves his hand as they turn a corner. “Not that. I’m just saying there’s no way Iverson will let me off scot-free. He’s probably gonna give me ten days worth of detention just for even thinking about leaving class early. And then another twenty for actually doing it.”

“Yeesh. He really has it out for you, huh?”

“Psh, we established that already.” Lance pauses, raising an eyebrow. Now that he thinks about it, since Adam had been the one to put Lance in the fighter class even though Iverson was heavily against it, it would make sense that Iverson would do anything in his power to force Lance out. Hpmh, what kind of Cinderella nonsense is this? Lance is Prince Charming, at least.

Back then, anyway. Or so he’d thought. Some prince he was. Even Lotor acted like a better prince, and that guy was a conniving evil wackjob.

—

When Lance is finally back within the safety of his shared dorm with Hunk, he quickly peels off his flight suit and goes to take a shower in the communal bathrooms. It’s weird, being surrounded by so many people again. Faces that he can actually recognize, when his dreams usually only feature the Paladins and his family in crisp, HD quality.

Who even are these people?

It’s almost 6 pm when he steps out, trailing through the barracks with a towel thrown haphazardly around his neck, catching all the stray water droplets dripping from his hair. His hair is shorter than it normally is. He’d let his hair grow out when he was older until it was all shaggy, but ever since Adam had started living with him, he’d taken to giving Lance a trim every few months.

Lance picks at his short bangs. They’d trail down to his eyebrows before, so having it this short is sorta…disconcerting. His hair had become somewhat of a safety net, something to hide his eyes behind.

“Oh thank god,” Hunk groans when Lance pushes the door to their dorm open. Hunk shoots up from his desk, stomping over to Lance and quickly latching onto his elbow, yanking him back out before Lance could even take a full step inside. Lance yelps as he’s dragged, but Hunk doesn’t slow down—a man on a very, very important mission. “You’re finally back. Come on, they’re serving matcha roll cake in the cafeteria today, and that’s the only dessert that actually tastes good.”

Lance blinks rapidly at Hunk’s broad back. “C-come again?”

Hunk whips his head around, startling Lance. “Matcha roll cake! You know, the thing they only serve once a month?! We have to get a slice. Nothing else in that cafeteria matters.”

“O-oh right.” Lance nods, and readjusts his feet so he can properly power-walk beside Hunk. “Do you want my slice when we get there or…?”

“What?!” Hunk nearly trips over himself, but he doesn’t slow down. “Not this time buddy, you always give it to me. You can’t suffer like that!”

Lance’s heart lurches, sucking in his bottom lip to keep it from trembling. God, if Hunk only knew that Lance would be willing to give up more than just a measly slice of cake for him. “How about a trade?”

“Nope, non-negotiable. That matcha roll cake is heavenly, and you only eat a bite of it every single time.”

Lance laughs, right as Hunk throws the doors to the cafeteria open. Hunk leads the both of them to the end of the line—a fairly long one, but still moving pretty quickly. Lance remembers the cafeteria ladies to be scarily efficient in serving their food. “I also like the vanilla pudding.”

“And I don't know why,” Hunk grouses, crossing his arms. “It tastes like sugary plastic.”

Because Rachel likes it, and they would always fight over which flavor of pudding they could buy when they were younger. It was a stalemate that always resulted in the two of them glaring at each other fiercely in the middle of the aisle, but since Lance was the older brother (older by twenty minutes), he would give it to her. Most of the time.

Lance shrugs. “It grows on you.”

“An insult.”

They grab their trays when they move up the line enough, but they don’t react too kindly when they realize the main dish for the night is parmesan chicken penne.

“Do they ever stop serving pasta?” Hunk asks, wrinkling his nose. He grabs a bowl anyways, and Lance grabs one after him.

“Well, we are in the states,” Lance says, forgoing the salad and silently asking the cafeteria lady to ladle some fruit onto his tray. It’s a small kindness that the fruits are actually cut up and not bathed in sugar water. “What else would they serve?”

“I don’t know, rice?” Hunk gestures to the salad bitterly. “I miss coconut rice so much.”

Lance smiles. “Next time we sneak out to the city, we should go buy some ingredients for it.” Though there won’t be a next time.

“We don’t have a communal kitchen.”

“We can just sneak into this one,” Lance suggests offhandedly.

“Hah! And get beheaded by Meera? Arguably the scariest cafeteria lady here who guards the kitchens like Cerberus in the underworld?” Hunk sniffs. “No thanks.”

“She loves you.”

“Debatable.” Hunk’s face lights up when they finally get to the desert section, snatching at one of the plates of matcha cake rolls. Lance purses his lips, and then makes a split second decision to grab two plates. “Also why are you getting two? You’re going to have to pay an extra five dollars for that.”

Lance shrugs. “I have financial aid.”

“But you already spent it all.”

Man, for real? What could he have possibly—ohhhhhh, yeah.

Late night city escapades. Right. How could he forget?

“Well,” Lance pauses, trailing off, “I’ll just skip tomorrow's dinner then.” How much did dinner cost again? Thirteen dollars on average? He’d forgotten. It’s been a while since his Garrison days.

“Dude, what?” Hunk furrows his eyebrows at him. “But you always make a big deal about eating proper meals. Replenishes your nutrients for skin repair and stuff.”

Lance shrugs. He wouldn’t be here tomorrow anyways, so what was the point of conserving? His dreams usually only lasted for a single scene, or even a single day at most. And then he’d wake up, feeling the edges of it ebb away from his subconscious, leaving behind nothing but a painful longing. A small wound. An open one. “Where’s Pidge?”

Hunk squints suspiciously at him, but he turns away when the lady at the cashier barks at him, quickly swiping his card. “He’s probably in one of the labs.”

Lance panics when he realizes he doesn’t have his card. He panics even harder when he realizes he doesn’t even remember his ID number. “Dude.” Lance swivels his head frantically towards Hunk.

“Hm?”

“You know my ID number?” The cashier glares at him. Lance shoots her a helpless smile back.

Hunk raises an eyebrow at him. “How could you forget your ID number?” But he goes to punch it into the keypad for Lance anyway.

The cashier rolls her eyes, but waves him off afterwards. Lance chuckles sheepishly, before walking away with Hunk.

“You’re acting really weird today,” Hunk frowns. “Did the sim really mess you up that bad? Because we’ve failed hundreds of times before, but you always bounce right back. Did Iverson say something to you before class or something?”

Lance opens his mouth, before clicking it shut, not exactly knowing what he could say. “I’m just, tired, I guess.” Which would be one way to put it. He is tired, in a sense. It’s been a long time since he’s interacted with Hunk like this, and he feels a little off-kilter. Friendly smiles are always something easy to defer back to, but Adam had grown accustomed to calling them ‘customer service smiles’. They weren’t real.

It’s been a long time since his smiles around his family felt real.

Hunk’s frown deepens. “You wanna go back to the dorms then? We can always return the trays later.”

Lance nods. “Yeah man. Movie night?”

“Heck yes!”

Lance hands over one of his cakes to Hunk, and Hunk widens his eyes, clouding over with the adoration shining within them.

“You spent five extra dollars for me?” Hunk bits his lip, his eyes watering dangerously.

“I would spend all my money on you if I could bro.”

“Bro,” Hunk breathes out emphatically, holding his lunch tray closer to his chest.

“Bro.”

Hunk shoulders Lance, in an affectionate sort of way, and Lance laughs, feeling his chest soar. This is a dream. An indulgence. But it feels so good, giving him everything that he’d missed and yearned for. He doesn’t think that this Dream Hunk will ever be able to comprehend the extent to which Lance misses him when he says it.

—

After they bring their dinner trays back to their dorm, Lance lets Hunk pick their designated pirating website for movies while he quickly books it to the lab block. If he remembers correctly, Pidge would often skip dinner at the Garrison, sneaking in the extra fruit bars that she’d swipe during lunch. Those couldn’t have been healthy.

Granted, he doesn't know which lab she’s in, so it takes him half an hour to finally find her, tinkering with some kind of radio device. She shrieks and jumps ten feet into the air when he sneaks up behind her.

“Jesus-cabbage-christ Lance,” Pidge scowls, throwing a hand over her chest.

“Don’t take Jesus' name in vain,” he chides playfully.

“You snuck up on me,” Pidge bites out, quickly sweeping her devices and tools into a small pile behind her, away from Lance’s view. Lance shrugs. He’d never really understood how to be an engineer, and his career as a farmer had strayed him even further off the STEM path. Even if he saw what she was tinkering with, he wouldn’t know what to make of any of it. “I’ll take whoever’s name I please.”

“I brought you cake,” Lance says, holding up his plate of cake he’d reserved for Pidge with a bright smile. He’s holding a plastic wrapped spoon underneath it.

Pidge squints at him suspiciously. “What for?”

Lance’s face falls. “What, I can’t bring you cake?”

“I don’t particularly trust you to not have done something to it,” Pidge retorts, but she takes it from his hands anyways. She holds it at eye level, spinning it around to analyze it with a critical eye. “It’s matcha.”

“It’s a thank you gift,” Lance says. He stuffs his hands into his sweatpants pockets, rocking back on his heels. “For helping me during the simulator. I appreciated it.”

Pidge wrinkles her nose, settling the plate down on her workstation. “I needed to pass anyway. It’s not like I was helping you for your own benefit.”

Lance hums. “Hunk also says that you covered for me after I left class.”

“Oh good, have you got my twenty dollars then?” Pidge asks brightly, holding her hand out expectantly. “I need more vending machine snacks. I plan to buy out the entire stock of peanut m&m’s before Rivera wakes up tomorrow. And then I’m going to sell them all back to her at a two hundred percent markup.”

Rivera? Lance narrows his eyes. “You sneaky little rascal.”

Pidge shrugs, but she doesn’t look very apologetic. “A genius scientist such as myself is very hard-pressed for funding these days. Professor Montgomery’s lab is hardly doing it for me anymore.”

Lance widens his eyes. “You’re stealing from Professor Montgomery?!” Wait a minute. He thinks he vaguely remembers this, because there was a three-day lockdown at the Garrison that had hindered his plans for sneaking out to the city with Hunk one week. “You’re causing them to have ballistic meltdowns? You stole one of her fusion cores!”

Pidge rolls her eyes. “What, you’re gonna tell on me now?”

Lance clicks his mouth shut, retracting his finger. “No, why would you think that? I live for trouble.” He used to, anyway. Now, if he doesn’t get up at exactly 6:30 in the morning to feed his sheep, they start ‘baa–ing’ up a storm. The most trouble he gets into these days is making fun of Adam whenever he gets flicked in the face by Kaltheneck’s tail.

“Then you’re an accomplice now.” Pidge waves him off, spinning her chair back around to focus on her tinkering. “Twenty dollars Lance, I expect my payment by Thursday. Latest.”

Lance scoffs, crossing his arms. “And what day is it today?”

“Tuesday.”

“Lame.”

Pidge snorts. “You and me both. I have Professor Santos for Digital Image Processing tomorrow morning. You know how hard it is to not correct him when he’s teaching and says something so objectively wrong?”

Lance raises an eyebrow. Pidge isn’t the type of person to hold back with their criticisms though. “You don’t?”

“Oh no I do, he just gets very pissy.” Pidge cackles, picking up a needle. “It’s amusing to watch. He thinks he’s so smart.”

Yeah well. Lance knew she was evil in the first place anyways. He hadn’t known her much during their time at the Garrison, only sharing two classes with her, but he knew she wasn’t exactly the most altruistic person. “You do that then.”

“Oh I will,” Pidge says conspiratorially. “I’m going to enjoy it, because I’m going to be selling Rivera those m&m’s the entire time too.”

Lance backs out of the room.

Evil.

He loves her so much.

—

Later, when he’s lying on the top bunk of his dorm in the dark, he’s doing his best to swallow down his tears. He doesn’t want these days to end. Returning to the farm wouldn’t be the most saddening thing, because he still has Adam (hopefully, god, he hopes so badly) to return to, but he’d missed how easy these days were. In contrast to the rest of his life after being vaulted into outer space, these days were a godsend.

All he’d had to worry about were his grades and whether or not the pretty girl sitting behind him in class found him cute too. He never had to worry about how much his friends liked him anymore, how much he’ll have to pay in taxes this year, or how well he was holding himself together in public.

“Thanks Hunk,” Lance rasps under his breath, sniffling lightly.

Hunk doesn’t answer. Already snoring away in the bunk below his.

“I really, really miss you,” Lance continues, pressing his hands into his face in order to stifle his tears. “Please let me visit you soon. Please.”

He silently cries himself to sleep that night, his chest aching every time he tosses and turns himself in his bed, hugging his extra pillow close to his chest as if it would be able to hold him back.

Lance wakes up with a sudden jerk.

What time is it?! His sheep! His chickens!

Adam.

He quickly scrambles out of his bed, but he yelps when he suddenly drops six feet onto the floor, rather than swinging his feet down onto solid wood flooring like he’s accustomed to. “What the cheese?!”

“What!” Someone yells, along with the sound of fabric rustling violently. “What happened! Why are we awake! Are we getting invaded by aliens because I knew that’s what would happen when I signed up for this program!”

Lance groans, turning over onto his back and nursing the throbbing pain on his chest. That’s definitely gonna bruise, especially at his old age.

A gasp. “Lance!” Someone drops onto the floor beside him, fanning their hands above his head frantically. Lance can feel it tickling his hair back, and he wrinkles his nose.

Except—that doesn’t sound like Adam. Lance’s eyes suddenly shoot open as his hand stalls above his chest, astonished by the sight he’s greeted with. “Hunk? What are you doing here?”

“Oh god he has a concussion at—” Hunk lifts his head, “—six am in the morning! Hold still, Lance, I’m gonna go find a nurse for you! And then I’m gonna book it out of here because I’m queasy and can’t handle blood, if there is any! We can never be too sure. You stay—!”

Hunk is interrupted by a loud thud against the wall their bunk is pushed up against, followed by a faint, “Shut up!”

Hunk swallows, turning back to pinch his eyebrows together in worry at Lance. Lance stares slack-jawed back at him. “A-anyway, hold still man. I’ll brb.”

“W-wait!” Lance shouts, snatching at Hunk’s wrist before the other could leave. Hunk raises his eyebrows. “I’m good! I’m good. No concussion. I just—” Lance tightens his grip, grounding himself, “—am I still dreaming?” Why are you still here?

Hunk’s face falls. “Lance, if you’re going to give me a pick-up line, at least wait until drills are actually supposed to start.” Hunk sighs in exasperation, scrubbing a hand down his face. “Man, I could still be in bed by now.”

“N-no no,” Lance stutters, pushing himself up to his knees. Hunk falls onto the floor across from him, his eyebrows drawing a flat line over his eyes. Unamused. “No pick-up line. I just—,” he pauses, clicking his mouth shut. He’s still here, in this dream. When he should've woken up by now. “I, are you real?”

“Dude.” Hunk crosses his arms and frowns. “You sure you didn’t hit your head? I’m real. All 65% oxygen and 18% carbon of me.”

“That’s only 83%.”

“Aha! So your brain is functioning properly. Now follow my finger.” Hunk moves his finger through the air, staring beady-eyed at Lance’s face while Lance obediently follows after his instructions.

Until Lance snaps out of it, smacking away Hunk’s hand. “You forced me to do mental math?! Low blow man, I thought you were better than Pidge.” Lance squares his shoulders. “And I’m not concussed!”

“Then is it an existential crisis? Or did you dream that Farah from VLSI Systems pushed you off the roof after trying to kiss you while pick-pocketing your money again? Which, by the way, she actually did,” Hunk says. “Pick-pocket you, I mean. I know you’re still in denial.”

“I—!” Lance’s cheeks heat up in dark splotches. Wow, um, that all sounds very embarrassing. “Neither!”

“Was it a really good sleep that you woke up disoriented from then? I don’t see any of those sleep lines on you so how good can your sleep have been? Me on the other hand,” Hunk gestures to his cheek and arm, which have red lines imprinted on his skin. “I slept like a baby. Until you woke me up, which uh, kinda rude dude. I was this close to figuring out that last thermodynamics problem I was stu—”

“Hunk!” Lance shouts, interrupting him. He throws himself forward, bracing his hands against Hunk’s shoulders and pushing Hunk back down onto the floor, when he’d been steadily rising during his rant. Lance digs his fingers into the meat of Hunk’s shoulders, hard.

Hunk feels real.

Lance feels him, and the feeling isn’t distant, like he’s pushing against the surface tension of water, one that will never actually break. “I’m—I’m fine. Okay? I was just out of it for a moment when I fell.”

Hunk looks skeptical, but he reluctantly lets it go. After moving his finger back and forth in front of his face again first. Lance shoots him a flat look, and he holds up his hands placatingly. “Alright man, whatever you say.”

Lance looks around the room; their dorm is just as messy as they had left it last night. Everything that he sees, he’s able to commit to memory. Nothing is foggy, every detail is filled in—from the balled up pieces of paper in his trash can, to the rubber tip of the holo-pen that he’d detached out of boredom and accidentally dropped under his desk.

This isn’t a dream. Dreams were never this realistic.

Lance needs to find Adam.

“Are you gonna let me go or…?”

“Oh.” Lance immediately retracts his hands, scrambling backwards before pushing himself up. “My bad man uh.” Lance gestures to Hunk’s bed sheepishly. “You can go back to bed. I can uh, wake you up when morning drills start.”

Hunk narrows his eyes at him, but he slowly picks himself up regardless. He pads his way over to his bed, before sliding himself back under his sheets, all while staring suspiciously at Lance. “Suspicious.”

Lance intertwines his hands behind his back. “Pshhhh, me? What would I even have to be suspicious of?”

Hunk hums. He throws his blanket over his head, cocooning himself until only his face is showing. “Yeah. I wonder.”

“Just go to sleep.”

“I’m going to find out.”

Lance pats Hunk’s head, before forcefully slipping Hunk’s eyes shut. Hunk doesn’t retaliate. “Yeah yeah. Sweet dreams, sleeping beauty.”

It takes a single minute for Hunk to fall back asleep, before Lance is barreling out of his dorm room and staring frantically down both hallways. He sees a student still clad in their pajamas scratching at their stomach as they pass, but he pays them no mind. Because he has a problem.

Where the multigrain sliced bread are the teacher’s barracks?!

Lance is forced to not only attend morning drills, but he’s also forced to attend classes. He doesn’t even remember his courses, much less the classroom numbers he’s supposed to show up at for each one. He’d only managed to find his schedule after he turned on his holo-tablet, where he had stored all his notes, lecture files, and homework. The device is a little outdated, since it was a hand-me-down from Luis, but it worked well enough.

Good news is: he shares two of his four classes of the day with Hunk. Bad news is: he doesn’t have a class with Adam until the second half of the day. Even worse news is: he has Flying with Iverson, directly after Adam’s Aviation Theory and Concepts class. Meaning, unless Lance can somehow catch Adam at lunch, then he won’t be able to talk to him until after 3:35 pm.

Vaguely, Lance remembers having a double block with Adam, before he became a fighter pilot and switched into Iverson’s Flying class. After he’d switched though, he would still have to stay an extra hour after Iverson’s Flying class every other day, so Adam could catch him up to speed on the fighter class curriculum that he’d missed due to the late transfer. He took it for granted at the time, too focused on trying to prove himself to his peers and to anyone who would watch the sims. But now he’s never felt more thankful, for both Adam’s dedication to helping him, and for using it as the perfect opportunity to talk.

But before all that, Lance will have to put up with a total of four inconvenient things: classes, confusion, Iverson, and waiting.

Yeah. Yeah this day is going to suck.

He gets lost like six times but it’s fine.

He also gets told off by Iverson and ‘made an example of’ during the middle of the lecture, reiterating why yesterday’s simulator was a complete and utter disaster. Lance had kept his shoulders hunched up to his ears, tightening his grasp on his holo-pen until he could feel his knuckles creaking. It’s nothing that he hasn’t endured before, but his anxiety about this whole situation wasn’t making any of the taunting better.

It’s the biggest relief when Iverson’s class finally ends, and he ends up as the first student out of the room, booking it at light speed out of the classroom and down the hall. Adam’s classroom is on the second floor, but he doesn’t even get winded when he sprints up the stairs. Being a pilot at a military school meant being physically fit, and his time as a farmer ensured that he was still physically active on a day-to-day basis.

“Adam!” Lance shouts frantically when he throws open the door.

Adam has a cup of coffee (it’s always coffee with him) raised up to his lips, but he pauses to shoot a flat stare at Lance. “Cadet McClain. I thought I told you to stop referring to me with such familiarity.”

“Adam, holy crow, I think that I’m—,” Lance continues (Adam rolls his eyes. “Of course you wouldn’t listen.”), rushing to the front of the room and dropping into his usual seat. He throws his shoulder bag haphazardly onto the floor beside him. “—going crazy or that I might be—!”

Adam takes a long sip of his coffee.

“—stuck in a dream or something! Maybe an alternate reality. Maybe I’ve even time-traveled.” Lance buries his fingers into his hair, yanking at the strands as he tries to gather his thoughts.

Admittedly, he’s not doing a very good job, because every word that crosses his hyper-active mind immediately comes tumbling out of his mouth.

“But that’s impossible, because why only me if I’ve time-traveled? Unless there are others who traveled with me. Or it could also be an alternate reality, because I know that’s a for-sure thing that exists, but what could’ve prompted it? Especially now, when Voltron no longer exists? And the last person I saw before I traveled—either through time or realities—was you.”

Lance snaps his head up, pointing at Adam as if he was the new messiah. Adam raises an eyebrow at him, slowly lowering his cup of coffee.

“Do you know anything?” Lance asks, desperation seeping into his voice. “Is this a dream?”

“Well,” Adam says, “I certainly feel real.”

“Sounds exactly like someone from a dream would say.”

Adam rolls his eyes. “Okay Cadet, how many sci-fi movies have you been watching lately? Or is this some new elaborate prank that you’re concocting?”

Lance ignores him. “What’s the date?”

Adam sighs, but he decides to humor him anyway. “June 10th.”

“Year?”

Adam raises an eyebrow. “22XX,” he enunciates.

Lance facepalms. He remembers this day. He remembers it because this would be the day that his life would change forever. Either for the better or the worst, he still doesn’t know, even after a decade since everything’s ended. “This can’t be happening.”

“What is happening, exactly?” Adam asks.

Lance takes in a deep breath, before leaning forward in his seat, leveling Adam with his most serious expression. Adam must sense that he’s not joking around, like everyone else surrounding him today had expected him to, and knits his eyebrows together as a response. “Would you believe me if I told you an alien race is trying to take over the universe right now, but they could’ve already done it and I might just be dreaming all this and you’re a part of my subconscious mind? That, or I’ve been thrown into an alternate reality where I’m back at the beginning of this crazy cluster-carrot of a world?”

“Well.” Adam leans back into his seat and crosses his arms. “That’s certainly a lot to dissect. I would say no, I wouldn’t believe you.”

Lance frowns.

“But I have enough patience to humor you,” Adam says. “So humor me, tell me everything that you’re thinking. Maybe if you spill everything that’s bothering you, you’ll be able to organize them into more coherent, rational thoughts.”

“I am being rational,” Lance argues, jumping and practically sprawling across the desk. “I don’t know what’s happening, but you have to believe me. If you don’t—and no one else does, then I think I'd probably lose my whole mind. Everyone else already doesn’t listen to me. Please,” Lance pleads, “I don’t have anyone else who will.”

Adam purses his lips, contemplating. Lance knows that look, has seen it on his own Adam’s face one too many times. Whether it’s for mundane inconveniences, or for emotionally heavy problems, it’s always the same look. His approach to every problem is the same: absorbing, rationalizing, and sorting first from every angle; analyzing and thinking after.

“You’re not pranking me?”

Lance shakes his head. “I swear.”

“I can give you detention for the rest of your semester if it ends up being a prank.”

“It’s not!” Lance curls his fingers around the edges of his desk. “I mean it.”

Adam sighs, before tipping his head once. “Talk to me Lance. I told you I would listen.”

So Lance does. He tells him about the Galra, about Zarkon, about Hagger and the druids. About this alien princess that’s locked away in a foreign castle with her advisor, about how he and a few others had to fly through a wormhole to meet them on another planet. All of which is just exposition, but Adam interrupts him in the middle of Lance’s description of Allura and Coran and how they were actually aliens called ‘Alteans’.

“And how did you start this whole,” Adam questions slowly, circling his hand in the air as if trying to find the right word, “adventure, in the first place?”

“Well, it wasn’t me. I actually found Pidge on the roof with Hunk after we were trying to sneak—uh,” Lance pauses, chuckling nervously at the narrow-eyed squint Adam shoots at him. “A-anyway. We were on the roof when the alarms started blaring, and something was flying overhead and crash landed in the desert. I was actually following after Keith, but then we saw that Shiro—”

“Shiro?” Adam widens his eyes, immediately straightening up. He leans forward, clenching his fists on the table. “Takashi Shirogane? That Shiro?”

“Uh,” Lance frowns. “Yeah. He’s supposed to be coming back tonight, but the Garrison is going to lock him up and put him in quarantine. Keith is going to bust him out.”

“And Keith too? Keith Kogane?”

Lance nods slowly. “Yeah.”

Adam doesn’t say anything more, just knits his eyebrows together (in contemplation—Lance can tell), before signaling for him to continue.

He tells him about Voltron, his connection with Blue, all the insane planets they’ve visited, all the alliances they’ve forged. The rebel fighters, the Coalition, the Blades. Beating Zarkon only for new enemies to pop up, all while Haggar was still behind the scenes of it all. Lotor, Sendak, alternate realities. Years passing on Earth before they could return, Earth getting overrun with the Galra and taking people hostage.

Teaming up with the Garrison, their giant spaceship named Atlas that could turn into a big mecha, one final confrontation. The sacrifice that Allura made, the lives the rest of Team Voltron decided to pursue, his own decision to stay on Earth and build a farm.

How he’d met Adam one day, and how they started up a friendship that lasted three years. And by the end of it, Adam had told him that he had already died, but believed in Lance and his ability to change. Lance tells Adam everything. Everything that he can remember, doubling back occasionally when he’d remember another point. Most of them are throwaways, but Adam needs to know. Lance needs him to know.

Nearly an hour and a half passes when he finally finishes, thirsty and hysterical and possibly even more frazzled than when he’d begun. He’s going crazy. Adam most definitely thinks he’s crazy, if the pinched look on his face is anything to go by.

Adam presses his lips together, clenching his jaw and closing his eyes. Before he sighs, pushing up his glasses and leaning back into his chair. “You have quite the active imagination.”

Every single sheet of hope that’s been typing itself up in Lance’s heart with every word that he pours out—hoping, praying, begging that Adam would understand and believe him—is promptly shred to pieces.

Lance feels himself deflating. Of course Adam wouldn’t believe him. He clenches his fists into his lap, lowering his head while trying to swallow back his tears. He’d just bore his entire soul and half of his life to Adam, recounting every single detail of his life that he could never bear to let go of, when everyone else has surely placed all those memories on the backburner by now, looking forward to new adventures. And now he feels cut open and raw, with nothing to show for it. Like always.

“Look, Lance. I understand that failing multiple simulations in a row can be very taxing, but you have to understand that you’re new to the program.”

Lance shakes his head, sniffling. “That’s not it!”

“There’s no doubt that you’ll be lagging behind your peers when you haven’t been placed at the starting line at the exact same time they were. You—”

“You told me I could change!” Lance shouts, snapping his head up to glare helplessly at Adam. He’s crying. He knows he is, the stress of this entire thing twisting up his insides until torsion breaks it all apart, splintering until he’s all cracked and shredded. “You told me I could change, but I didn’t mean for you to help me change like this!”

Adam parts his mouth, bewildered. “Lance—”

Lance sobs, wiping his sleeves over his eyes and drenching them in tears. “I c-can’t change like th-this. I do-n’t have the strength to do th-is all over again. I can’t,” he whimpers, hunching into himself and palming at his eyes. “I can’t.”

He’s a battle-worn warrior, a survivor from war. Except out of all of them, he’s probably seen and done the least. Shiro and his time as a Galra captive, Keith and his time as a Marmoran agent, Allura and her time as a princess-trained soldier. Coran and Hunk and Pidge. Any of them could've done so much better, could’ve just either gone back in time to find someone else to fill in the role of Blue’s Paladin, or whip Lance into shape themselves now that they’d know how little he actually contributes.

Lance can’t do any of it on his own. He doesn’t know how to. Adam was right. Having a farm on Earth was the safest path. He knows how to garden, he knows how to take care of animals, he knows how to live on Earth, already used to Earth’s customs and cultures. He didn’t need to think much about it, and if he’d run into a little trouble, he could always search things up on the internet. Unlike everyone else on Team Voltron, who had to brave new circumstances and grow and learn and prosper.

“I’m weak,” he croaks, dropping his head onto the table.

He cries, and he continues crying, until there’s a soft patch of warmth suddenly claiming his shoulder. It gently coaxes him to lift his head, consoling him enough that his tears die down to just small droplets, instead of thick rivulets.

Adam kneels on the floor in front of where he sits, his expression softened. His hand is still a steady weight on Lance’s shoulder—just like he’s always been. “Lance. I need you to know first and foremost that you’re not weak. You’ve persevered and achieved quite a bit, coming this far. Statistically, the Garrison only accepts 6% of its applicants, and we get over a hundred thousand applicants each year. An even lower percentage of that makes it into the fighter class.”

Lance sniffles, his voice coming out nasally from all the snot. Adam leans back and plucks the tissue box off his desk to hand to Lance. “I made it because you recommended me.”

Adam shrugs. “I did, yes, but not because I was fond of you.”

“Oh, um, wow.” Lance’s stomach flips, ripping out one of the tissues and blowing his nose harshly. “That’s a low blow.”

Adam sighs. “You interpreted me wrong.” Adam pushes himself up, and Lance tilts his head back to keep eye contact with him. “Look, I do regard you with more familiarity than most of my other students, otherwise you wouldn’t still be calling me by my first name on more than one occasion. It’s just disrespectful and inappropriate.”

Lance frowns.

“But I am a man of science and cold rationale. I wouldn’t be teaching for the Garrison if I wasn’t, so what I meant is that I didn’t pick you because I was fond of you, I picked you because I saw potential in you that I thought could develop.”

Lance slowly widens his eyes. “You’re fond of me?”

“Focus, Lance.”

“Yeah, yeah right. Of course.” The small, warm smile that spreads across his face doesn’t go unnoticed by Adam. Adam just simply chooses to ignore it by sighing deeply again.

Adam furrows his eyebrows together. “I…do think you can change. I think you have the capacity for it, if you’re worried about remaining stagnant at this point in your studies. I just, don’t know how to believe everything else you’ve said with no concrete proof for it.”

Lance’s smile drops again. “You know I—or you. You said that you couldn’t change up until the point you died.”

Adam frowns. “Right, when I…died. Or will…die.”

Lance nods, slowly lowering his eyes to the middle button of Adam’s uniform. His own Garrison uniform feels foreign on his body. “You said that I’ve always limited my choices to what’s already been placed in front of me, and that I could change that.”

“Oh.” Adam’s voice sounds strangled. “I said that?”

Lance nods again. “Yeah. And I can see what you mean. You were right, now that I think about it. That’s really all that I did, because I wasn’t really thinking critically most of the time. I just wanted to fit into the stereotypical roles of comic book heroes, so I never really thought outside of the box. Or pushed out of that either.”

Maybe, a couple times he did, but that was when Keith—it was all…with Keith.

“I believe what I see,” Adam says quietly. “Because it’s easy to analyze and to discern the consequences of every single course of action that’s taken thereafter. It’s easy to react to what you know.” Adam inhales deeply, before steeling his voice. “And you said that I told you I couldn’t change? Even up until the point I died?”

“Yeah,” Lance affirms quietly.

Adam falls into a few minutes of silence. “Okay."

Lance peers warily up at him. “Okay?”

Adam nods, even though he still looks conflicted. “I…can see where I would’ve come from if I said something like that. Maybe it’s not something I’m proud of, but I still can’t bring myself to admit that I was wrong.”

Lance furrows his eyebrows. What?

Adam lowers his eyes. “But perhaps I wasn’t right either.”

“What?”

Adam shakes his head. “Something I’ve been ruminating over this past year or so. I’ve been trying to corroborate my answers, so to speak. But I think you might’ve given me another angle to this whole thing.”

Adam smiles lightly, and it makes him look older than he actually is. Lance remembers Adam’s actual age to be very young, one of the few youngest instructors next to Shiro. He’s always had this underlying look of exhaustion ever since last year though, the same one he’d had on the farm, but now it’s all bubbled to the surface. Weary.

“Thank you, Lance.”

Lance huffs out a breath of laughter, wiping at his eyes again. “They were your words in the first place. Thank yourself. Or, your future self, I guess.”

“Hard to do that when I’m supposedly dead.”

“Oh.” Lance falters, before he straightens up with a renewed vigor. “I think you can blame Admiral Sanda for that one. Listen to me, when the Galra invade Earth, or when there’s something suspicious going on but the higher ups refuse to send out the MFE fighters and instead just orders to send out a regular fighter squadron, you have to refuse.”

“MFE fighters?” Adam asks. “Is that a new unit?”

“Yes, or they will be.” Lance shakes his head. “Point is, the first squad sent out when the Galra and Sendak finally arrive are all wiped out. You were a part of it.”

Adam raises an eyebrow, crossing his arms and leaning back against his desk. “Okay,” Adam says slowly. “How much time do we have left then?”

Lance brings a hand up to his jaw contemplatively. “It was roughly a year and a half before the Galra found earth but,” he pauses.

Sure, that’s what he remembers, but time dilations are also a very fickle thing. Depending on whether or not Lance can follow the exact same timeline the first time around, time could either elongate or shorten.

General relativity is something he had to study in order to become an astro-explorer, but it’s not like he knew anything past the basics. That’s Pidge and Hunk. He just knows that time will pass differently in different locations due to a cosmic body’s varying gravity and relativity, so if they can’t travel to the exact same places at the exact same times like they did the first time around, Lance could be wrong.

He could be wrong, and Adam could die again.

He can’t be wrong, but he also doesn’t remember the entire timeline. Specific memories are very clear, but those memories are like discrete points. He can’t remember the continuous line that’s supposed to connect all those points. Another reason why he’s the wrong person for this.

“But?” Adam prompts.

“What if I’m wrong?” Lance hesitates. “What if I mess up the whole future because I can’t remember what we did? Or, well, I was never a leader in the first palace, so it’s not like I ever led anything, but—,” Lance widens his eyes.

That’s right, he never has led anything.

He’s done very few good things, but in contrast, there are far more things that he’d messed up. The rest of the team usually made all the big decisions, all striving to overcome the challenges they were facing while Lance always just took it. What if the future actually improves now that he knows there are certain things that are wrong? Things he had been too vain to see in the past?

He swallows thickly, shooting up in his seat to stare owl-eyed at Adam. Adam mirrors his expression, but his eyes are widened in confusion.

What if—what if Allura doesn’t have to die this time around? What if they didn’t have to lose the Castle of Lions? What if they could stop the Galra a different way—sooner—one that didn’t involve them bringing Earth down to its knees, one that didn’t involve them massacring and enslaving millions of humans for labor. What if—what if—

‘You can change.’

“I can fix this,” Lance says, squaring his shoulders in determination. “I will fix this.”

He can’t be a director, but he can do gentle nudging, stepping back and providing subtle assistance. Allura makes a great Paladin. And Keith—Keith, can be a director. He’s always been fearless, and if he hadn’t left for the Blade after Shiro reappeared, then he would’ve been able to fix every wrong thing that happened.

He would’ve been the leader he was always meant to be. The leader that Lance knows he is.

Adam presses his lips together into a thin line, before nodding. “If you think you can, then you will. One and a half years then? Until we’re invaded? Roughly?”

“Yeah.”

“And when do you have to leave?” Adam asks.

“Whe—”

The Garrison’s alarms suddenly start blaring, an indicator on the far end of the classroom blinking a bright red.

It’s starting.

Shiro must be back by now.

"Attention! All students are to return to their barracks immediately!” Iverson’s gruff voice sounds from the overhead speakers, crackling around the edges. “This is not a drill. We are on lockdown! Security situation Zulu Niner. Repeat: All students are to return to their barracks post-haste, and remain inside until further notice."

Lance sucks in a sharp breath, before looking up at the clock hanging above the indicator. It’s nearly 6 pm, and he’s missed getting dinner with Hunk. He’s missed sneaking out with Hunk. He was supposed to be on the roof of the Garrison with Pidge by now. “Now.”

Adam grits his teeth, leveling Lance with a meaningful look. “You said that Takashi’s supposed to be back tonight?”

Takashi? Does he mean Shiro? Lance has never known anyone who calls Shiro by ‘Takashi’ extensively before. Even Curtis just refers to him as ‘Shiro’ most of the time; ‘Shirogane’ when he’s especially mad.

Lance nods. “Yeah, but I think I might’ve already fudged this timeline up, I’m not supposed to be here! I’m supposed to be outside and going to rescue him with Keith! And then we’re all supposed to be escaping from that quarantined zone on Keith’s hoverbike to go to some ransack shack in the middle of—!”

“Then get out of here,” Adam interrupts. He pulls the collar of his jacket down, before taking off something hanging around his neck. Without wasting a single second, he shoves the lanyard into Lance’s hands and grabs Lance by the elbow, deftly dragging him towards the door. Lance stumbles after him, looking down to find that Adam has handed him his ID badge.

“Wha—?”

“The Garrison has high-speed land rovers that are only accessible to faculty members. They use the ID badges as user-authentications,” Adam explains. He turns to face Lance, determination settling across his features. “If what you said is true, then that’s what they’ll be using to chase after Takashi and Keith when they try to escape. If you can’t catch up and make it to the supposed ‘crash-site’ in time, then chase after them using that. I’ll cover for you once they retrace the logs.”

Lance pauses, tugging his arm out of Adam’s grasp. “But they’ll blame you!”

Adam scoffs, stopping in front of the door. “Of course they’ll blame me, but I’m one of their most valued faculty members. The worst they’ll do is put me on probation.”

“Sanda sent you to your death last time,” Lance argues. He curls his fingers protectively over the badge, anger simmering low in his gut every time that he remembers. He knows that he shouldn’t be, and what he’s feeling is ugly, but he’s glad that she got what she deserved. Even more so than when she betrayed Voltron.

“Admiral Sanda sent me to my death last time because she was vain and inept with her judgement. She’s not an executioner, Lance.” Adam hovers his hand over the scanner by the door, hard-set eyes boring into Lance’s until he yields. “I’ll live so long as these so-called ‘Galra’ don’t invade Earth, but when it comes to that,” Adam smiles lightly at Lance. Reassuring. “I’ll do my best to survive.”

Lance bites his lip. “But that’s not good enough! I want you to live! I want you to survive! I need you to live!”

“I don’t make promises I can’t keep,” Adam says, cocking his head. “It’s a waste of time. But if you can provide me with proof that it really is Takashi that you rescue tonight, then I’ll promise you that I will.”

Lance’s heart nearly beats out his chest, filling with hope. He nods frantically. “Okay, okay how?”

“I’ll give you my number on the way, come on.” Adam opens the door, quickly yanking Lance out the room and walking briskly in the direction of the student barracks. “You said you needed to take your friends with you?”

Lance swallows thickly, quickening his pace to match Adam’s speed better. “Yeah.”

Voltron needs Hunk and Pidge. He doubts that anyone else in the entire universe could do a better job at piloting the lions and give them all the technical upgrades they needed to succeed.

“Then we’ll get them first,” Adam says, before he starts jogging. “Lead the way Lance, I’ll cover you.”

Lance nods, pulling ahead of Adam to race down the near barren halls towards his dorm. Adam easily keeps up with him, keeping one step behind him as they weave through the corridors and corners. Once or twice, they get called out by Garrison guards, but Adam shuts them all down with the excuse of making sure that Lance gets back to the barracks safely.

Once Lance reaches his room, he throws open the door to find Hunk in his pajamas, hunched over his desk with his holo-pen in hand and playing music quietly from the speakers at his desk. He only startles when Lance slams the door shut behind him.

“Get up Hunk! We’re going out!” Lance shouts, tearing off his Galaxy Garrison uniform to change into his casual clothes.

“W-what?! You can’t be serious right now.” Hunk shoots up from his seat, flabbergasted. He points his pen up at the ceiling. “Dude, did you not hear the announcement?! We’re on lockdown! It could be aliens!”

“I know, and it is (“Wait what?”), but unless you want to be on Professor W’s bad side for the rest of your life, then you better get changed.” Lance yelps as he tugs on his jeans, nearly tripping over himself.

Once he zips up his fly, he rounds Hunk’s table to grab at his holo-phone. He won’t have any reception once he flies into space, but he can just shoot Adam one last message with proof of Shiro’s survival before he leaves. And a message to his family that he’ll be safe, and that he loves and will miss them very, very much.

“Professor W? Dude?! He would be furious with you if he found you sneaking out right now!”

“Are you all done?” Adam suddenly asks, peering into the room. He gingerly steps inside, shutting the door silently behind him.

Hunk shrieks. “Professor!”

Adam blinks at Hunk. “Oh, Cadet Garret. What are you still doing in your sleepwear? I thought Lance would’ve told you that you needed to leave?”

Hunk whirls around on Lance, eyes wide and incredulous. Lance smiles smugly at him. Hunk narrows his eyes, placing a hand on his hip and pointing his pen at Lance in mock accusation. “Who did you bribe to look like Professor W?”

“It’s me Cadet. I have you for General Aerodynamics after your self-defense class. You were sneaking a blueberry tart under your desk in class today but I chose to say nothing about it,” Adam says. “Now hurry up, before I attempt to give you detention for the rest of your semester with me.”

Hunk parts his mouth, darting his eyes between Lance and Adam. He lifts an affronted finger, inhaling a sharp breath, before clicking his mouth shut.

Lance smiles hopefully at him, bringing his fists up to his chest in expectation. He also throws in his puppy eyes, because Hunk is too nice and will fold to anything that is teary-eyed and sad.

Hunk sighs, clearly disappointed with himself. Haha! Lance has still got it. Even though Adam had shut him down every time Lance tried in the past—er, future. Hunk turns to his closet dejectedly. “Yeah, okay.” Like beautifully creased origami.

Lance whoops. Adam tells him to quiet down before they get caught.

Chapter Text

They’re all screaming.

Well, Pidge and Hunk are, to be exact.

“Do you even know how to drive?!” Pidge shouts, fisting a hand into Lance’s hood and tugging, yanking Lance’s head back with a loud, ‘Ack!'. This is honestly the most adrenaline inducing stunt that Lance has engaged in in years, so it takes all of his willpower not to automatically swerve their vehicle into the one racing directly parallel to them.

Okay, let’s rewind a bit, yeah? Just for some context.

Long story short, Adam helped him and Hunk escape through the kitchens and into the aircraft hangars and garages. They got a rover, skedaddled, found Pidge perched on some cliff edge, kidnapped her, and then raced off to the crash site only to find that Keith had already knocked everyone out and took off with Shiro on his hovercraft.

So now they’re chasing after them…along with the rest of the Garrison.

And yeah he knows how to drive. He drives a tractor on a day to day basis! Also he’s an adult!

Lucky for them that the other commanders are too busy chasing after Keith to notice that one of their rovers isn't exactly driven by one of their—you know—accomplices.

Yeah.

Now that Lance is really thinking back to the situation, much more actually experiencing it for the second time while fully comprehending just what is about to happen; the Galaxy Garrison really does suck, don’t they? Well, with Admiral Sanda still in high command, of course it would.

“I’m a pilot!” Lance shouts back, looking down his nose as he presses down on the accelerator until his foot starts cramping and the rover is tremoring quietly. The rover clearly isn’t too happy about operating at high speeds for prolonged periods of time. “You think I can’t pilot a land rover?!”

Hunk hurls. “Oh god.”

“First of all, you’re not using your technical terms correctly,” Pidge says, pushing Hunk aside as she climbs over to the front seats. It’s only then that she finally lets go of Lance’s hood and he’s able to right his head, only for Keith to suddenly swerve to the left and drop off onto the platform one level below theirs, forcing the rest of the rovers to jerk left and fall off with him.

Obviously—and Lance actually remembers this—the rovers aren’t designed for sharp turns like Keith’s hovercraft is, much less throwing themselves off of cliff sides, so he narrowly misses getting flipped over by a stray rover crashing into his side once they all land, bouncing a few times on the terrain before they’re properly racing again.

Hunk screams. Lance screams. Pidge shouts, “Second of all look out!”, tugging on his jacket and directing his attention to the upturned rover a few feet ahead of them. He narrowly misses crashing into that one too, but there are still four more rovers ahead of them and Keith has widened the distance between the rest of them.

“I’m not gonna make it!” Hunk cries, smushing himself dramatically against the windows. “Tell my mom and dad I love them, and my niece and nephew that I love them too! My uncle, not as much, but he actually makes really great sapasui and I’m kinda really sad that I never got the recipe from him when I enrolled into the Garrison but—!”

“Yeah yeah yeah!” Lance interrupts, steeling his eyes after Ketih’s hovercraft in concentration. Keith swerves harshly to the right, dropping off a bridge and landing on a curved bank. “Will do bud, I swear it on my grave! Except we’re all going to die with you because of Keith’s reckless driving!”

The rest of the rovers follow after Keith, but not all of them land safely. He twists the wheel harshly to the left right after his own rover lands, narrowly missing another tossed rover and driving further up the curve, before they fly off the bank and land back on even ground. Another one down, three more to go—sans their own, but Keith doesn’t know that.

“I think that was Professor Montgomery,” Hunk chokes.

Lance actually feels his blood pressure rising, not having experienced this much high-paced action in a long, long while. (The failed simulation does not count.) The most stress-inducing activity he’d done before being flung into the freaking past had been trekking outside against a major storm to make sure that there was a tarp covering the juniberry flowers, ensuring that none of them would get torn apart by the hazardous wind. Flooding was a different matter altogether, but he’d perfected the irrigation system a couple years ago.

“He’s headed straight for a cliff!” Pidge shouts, yanking incessantly on Lance’s jacket and pointing straight out their windshield, as if Lance couldn’t see.

“Yeah thanks! I kinda got that!”

And then Lance promptly floors it. He shoots straight past the two rovers that flank him (“That’s Mr. Harris oh my god.”), struggling to hold the creaking wheel in place with one hand while disengaging the roof of the rover. There’s a slight hiss, before the entire glass canopy is flung off its hinges from the speed they’re currently traveling at. Another rover behind them goes down with a loud crash and boom. (“There goes Mr. Harris OH my GOD.”)

Two left. Lance has practically used up the entire speedometer.

“What are you doing?!” Pidge screeches, climbing Lance’s torso and clinging onto him like a koala. Her hair whips all over the place, and so does Lance’s, but his hair is now short enough that it doesn’t cause a problem for his sight. The little gremlin that’s crawling all over him like an invasive centipede on the other hand….

“We’re jumping!” Lance shouts, mentally calculating the frame of the jump. “Pidge, grab Hunk!” She doesn’t even hesitate to curl her fingers into Hunk’s vest, yanking him into Lance’s side. Hunk goes pretty easily, considering how queasy and pliant he is at the moment.

“You’re kidding!” Hunk cries.

“No, I'm Lance!” Lance cackles with glee.

Holy crow this is stressful.

But by god is the adrenaline so addicting and fun.

“Cadets!” A gravelly and downright furious voice calls through the intercom, but Lance can barely hear it over the sound of his own racing heartbeat, over the sounds of Pidge and Hunk’s screeching, over the howling sounds of the wind. “Cease and desist, immediately! Or I will have you all expelled at once!”

How far would the rover need to be from the ledge before he lets go of the steering wheel and ultimately veers the vehicle off course? Would Keith still be descending by the time they’re jumping? Which way should he turn the wheel when they jump so he can avoid crashing the rover into Keith’s hovercraft on the way down? How far would they even jump, in order to fall into the same line of trajectory as Keith’s hovercraft?

Keith, time and time again, has proven that he will stop at nothing to keep Shiro safe and by his side, so even if they all land unceremoniously onto his vehicle, he won’t do anything to slow down. Threats yes, but if Lance can cut through all of that before Keith pulls his knife on them with an explanation of how they were on his side, then they’d have a winning chance.

A ten percent chance. But still, that’s a winning chance. In Lance’s book anyway.

“On a count of three!” Lance shouts, finishing all the mental calculations he’d needed to perfect the jump.

He’s not Pidge and Hunk level of smart, but he wouldn’t have gotten into the Garrison without having above average intelligence. He wouldn’t have been able to keep up with Adam in all those last years of friendship, keeping his mind sharp.

And this? This was simple kinetics, but you know, with a few added kinks.

“You’re a horrible best friend and I’m never trusting you again!” Hunk screams. Keith’s hovercraft disappears over the edge of the cliff.

“Three! And we all know that’s a lie!”

“You’re a horrible influence and I’m going to shank you in your sleep if we make it out of this alive!” Pidge adds. The land rover to their right gains, nipping at their tails. Obviously, the driver hasn’t caught sight of the cliff yet.

“Two! And that’s a little more withstanding but meh, you can do better!”

“You’re crazy!” Hunk and Pidge both cry in tandem.

“Now that! Is believable! One!”

Lance launches himself out of the rover with a shout, twisting the wheel a full 180 degrees to the right as they soar through the air. The rogue vehicle crashes into the second to last rover and they both go tumbling off to the side, just shy of tipping over the cliff edge.

Pidge clings onto him and screeches his ear off, keeping her legs cinched around his waist and death grip on Hunk’s vest. Hunk, to his credit, even if he had vomited his dinner into the rover right before they had reached the edge, had managed to vault himself over the vehicle’s dashboard. Hunk’s also screaming buuuut that was kinda already expected, so that’s not really noteworthy.

Lance is screaming too, but it’s all dopamine and adrenaline. He feels so alive.

That is, until they all crash into Keith’s hovercraft on the way down, dragging down the vehicle right as they reach the bottom of the drop. The bottom of Keith’s hovercraft scrapes across the rocks, but at least the engines haven’t blown out from the sudden jerk, or else they’re all toast. The shack is actually quite far from what Lance remembers.

Keith growls, tilting his head back just a sliver. “You—!”

“Just drive, mullet!” Lance shouts, clawing his way forward until he can grab onto the back of Keith’s seat. He steadies himself on one of the wings, while Pidge hangs on for dear life on the other, essentially balancing the craft. Hunk is letting his stomach rip in the passenger’s seat directly behind Keith's, clutching an unconscious Shiro to his chest.

They’ve both seen better days, truth be told. The first time around was honestly, dare he say it, smoother than this.

“Who are you?!” Keith shouts, turning his head further back until he can properly meet Lance’s gaze. He doesn’t look any less angry.

Lance frowns, flicking his eyes off to the side to pretend that that question doesn’t sting as much as it should. It hurt the first time around, but wow does it hurt even more after knowing what Keith’s friendship feels like.

Because even though he knows that Keith would never forget him on purpose, a nagging part of him thinks that this is something his own Keith could end up asking him. He could lock eyes with Lance one day, after making a brief pitstop on Earth, and go, “Do I know you?”

It’s another one of his recurring nightmares. Keith’s come to know more about him than anyone else—barring Adam—and to have someone know your insecurities, and then having them go and completely forget you exist, it’s—Lance squeezes his eyes shut.

Figures.

He hasn’t seen Keith properly over the last three years, with Keith being gone the first two and then Lance being lucky enough to catch him once or twice during the last year. Keith’s matured far beyond his years, and the gap between them only ever widens, every year that Lance is stuck on his farm with the heavy feeling of inadequacy. Don’t get him wrong, he loves his farm, he just…doesn’t like the circumstances that surround it sometimes.

Then again, Keith’s only about what, eighteen here? Lance is now that older one, and it’s to this that he sweeps his eyes back to meet Keith’s. “Just be glad I’m not Professor Santos. Now focus on driving, those rovers can actually jump from very tall heights once their gravity settings are re-calibrated!”

Keith furrows his eyebrows, but he does as he’s told. “That’s not a real thing.”

Lance blinks stupidly at his back, feeling oddly out of place. Keith wasn’t going to fight with him longer on this? He doesn’t remember Keith doing a single thing Lance had suggested during this stage of their relationship. The only time he would get him to listen was by doing reverse psychology.

“No,” Pidge croaks, dropping her forehead onto the wing with a loud clunk. “No it’s not a real thing.”

“Could be though,” Lance says. The crystal tech was pretty awesome, from what few new tech he could gleam from his yearly visits to the Garrison after Allura…after she…she…. Moving on.

At the very least, Pidge—future Pidge—had been making considerable progress with the deep-space exploration vessels that she had been designing, run primarily on crystal technology like the MFE’s had been. He doubts that she would’ve needed that intricate of a craft for traversing galaxies though, not with her dad finally reaching the stabilization process of the network of teludavs he’d been working on over the course of the past decade.

It’s been more than difficult without the help of the green lion, but the Holts are geniuses beyond geniuses. The modern Einstein, so to speak.

“There’s no way,” Pidge groans. “You’re telling me it can alter its own gravity as opposed to the gravitational field that Earth already has? Unless those rovers can increase or decrease their mass at will, which mind you, would still not change the gravitational pull that the Earth has on them, and would only reduce their overall weight—”

“Yeah,” Lance interrupts, raising an eyebrow at Pidge’s monologue. Better stop her before she passes the threshold of calculus based physics, where his knowledge on the subject ends. “Anyways, it’s totally a thing.” Or it will be, anyway.

Pidge rolls her eyes.

“You’re crazy,” Hunk slurs, his tongue lolling out of his mouth. He looks like he’s left his soul and stomach behind during their jump. Shakily, he gives Lance a thumbs up. “Love your optimism though.”

Lance smiles, feeling something in his chest squeeze. Hunk is and always will be a great friend. He’s the second half of their Dynamic Duo, and he’d missed the support Hunk would always give him, no matter how stupid the suggestion.

Okay that’s a lie, Hunk would call him out, but it’s the supporting letdown that counts.

“Still an impossible idea,” Keith cuts in. He revs his engine, and steadily increases their speed.

Lance has to shield his eyes with his sleeve in order to keep the wind from drying them out, while Pidge has taken to curling her head into her chest. Hunk’s bandana is tugged down, and Keith doesn’t need to worry because he has a pair of goggles strapped over his eyes. Shiro, remains blissfully knocked out.

Lance opens his mouth to respond, but then he remembers that he and Keith aren’t supposed to be on good terms. Right? If he wants to keep this timeline on the correct path, then he has to be sure that he follows through exactly on his actions the first time around, with just a few slight deviations? That’s how this works?

So, following along on that line of logic, he puts his entire chest into scoffing. “I don’t know why you of all people wouldn’t believe it. Didn’t you like, build this hovercraft or something?”

“How did you know that?” Keith asks suspiciously. Lance can feel the pointed glare on his elbow.

“Uh.” Right, he’d forgotten how prickly Keith could be in the beginning too. “Because we’re rivals? I keep tabs on all my rivals. Obviously.”

“Rivals?” Keith asks.

“I have never once heard you mention a Keith,” Pidge drawls.

“Oh no, you should’ve heard him when Keith was still enrolled,” Hunk groans.

Lance narrows his eyes at Hunk, making a pointed and frantic cutting motion across his neck. Keith from the present—FUTURE, future, he should remember that—doesn’t know this and neither will past—present, this the present now—Keith. Future Keith would probably just smirk at him, but present Keith?? When they barely know each other (even though Keith should’ve known him)? If Pidge doesn’t shank him first, then Keith will.

Hunk, though, can’t see it because of the bandana over his eyes, clutching Shiro to his chest like a stress-relief ball.

“Hunk, Keith beat the simulator time again like, this is ridiculous, he’s set the last six records!” Hunk parrots with the worst impression of Lance that Lance has ever heard. “Hah! Look at this Hunk, I finally beat Keith in rank but I know it’s only because he missed those two exam days so I’m not gonna count it this time. He better be grateful. Hunk! He was the first to finish the exam and walk out! Hunk! Did you see how he weaved the craft through those—!”

“Okay! Okay okay, no no no stop!” Lance shouts, frantically throwing one of his arms in the air. He wants to die. Adam—Adam! Take him back into the future! He’s tapping out right here and now.

“No no, let him continue,” Pidge cackles. “Were you whining about him or praising him?”

“Honestly man,” Hunk heaves, but there’s laughter in his voice. Lance glares at him with enough venom to burn. “I think it was whining about how much he was praising him.”

“I hate you,” Lance seethes. Pidge’s cackling grows even louder, until she’s practically hacking them out. Lance ignores her and points an accusing finger in Hunk’s direction. “I should’ve left you wandering in the halls and let you get lost the first day I found you.”

“But you didn’t,” Hunk says smugly, looking oddly proud of himself. “Love you too man.”

Lance clicks his tongue. He’s glad that Keith is still traveling at high speeds, because he doesn’t even want the opportunity to see what kind of weird or disgusted look is on Keith’s face right now.

“So,” Keith starts, who’s been quiet the entire exchange, his voice a little off. “What else did he say?”

Lance sputters. “Why are you even asking?!”

“We’re coming up on another cliff.” He revs his engine again in lieu of answering. “If you don’t want to fall off, then hold still. Big man,” Keith warns, tilting his head back, “you better hold onto that man you’re carrying like your life depends on it.”

Hunk swallows, shifting Shiro a little closer to his chest and nodding.

—

It’s weird staying in Keith’s rundown shack for a second time—time travel or not. He’d kinda—maybeee not saying that he did but he might’ve with a capital M—snooped through it thoroughly the first time around, so he doesn’t do it the second time.

He just sits in a chair in the makeshift kitchen, playing games on his phone and ‘keeping watch’ while Hunk and Pidge sleep. Pidge isn’t really asleep though, she’s just passed out, but he knows that she wouldn’t feel safe without at least someone that she knows staying awake.

So right after he’d offered, she’d conked out on top of the dining table.

He peers up at Keith across the room, watching him as he watches Shiro. Shiro’s still out-cold, laid down comfortably on Keith’s raggedy couch. Technically, he’s safe now, but Keith still looks at him as if something could take him away any second. Sitting on the arm of the couch like a faithful guard. Lance bites his lip, and then ducks his head back down.

He’d known that Shiro and Keith were always close, but the extent of it was something he’d always gleam over, too busy arguing with Keith or too busy tunnel-visioning on Shiro as his number one hero. Now it just makes his Kuron-filled memories even worse, when Shiro had given him all the signs, and Lance had still missed all of them, too busy chasing after Allura and Lotor.

He wants to apologize to Keith again, but he couldn’t even do that. In the end, Keith was the one who brought Shiro back, and they solidified their relationship into something unbreakable. Out of all of them in the future, Shiro got transmissions from Keith the most, so whenever someone would ask, ‘How’s Keith?’, Shiro would be the only one who knew all the answers.

Lance would find himself to be the one asking the most, his heart sinking each time.

“You’re a cargo pilot,” Keith suddenly says, cutting through the silence.

Lance’s thumbs still, snapping his head up to meet Keith’s gaze. He can’t exactly see Keith’s face that well in the dark, but he can see that Keith has his arms crossed.

Defensive, unlike how open he is in the future.

“Was.” Lance shrugs. “I got promoted after you washed out.”

“Oh. Is that,” Keith pauses, tilting his head down, “what you wanted?”

Lance lets out a long breath. “Yeah.”

“Congrats.”

This is so awkward.

Their talks are also awkward in the future now too, but that’s only because Lance doesn’t know how to interact with Keith anymore.

He used to. He used to be so comfortable around Keith, but after so many long absences that are only disrupted by brief, thirty minute to hour long (if he’s lucky) conversations once or twice a year, friendships are bound to fracture at some point. Maybe not all, but coupled with Lance’s…feelings, they were bound to fall apart.

Keith. Lance tightens his grip on his phone. Out of everyone who’s left him behind, it’s Keith’s departure that….

“Whatever,” he mutters. He restarts his game with a renewed vigor. Keith doesn’t say anything more than that.

Except, Keith remembered that he was a cargo pilot.

Did Keith remember that the first time around? Lance couldn’t remember.

—

Shiro wakes up when the sun is just beginning to peek over the horizon, and after changing into the clothes that Keith lends him, he shoots them all a weak smile before stepping outside. Keith waits a total of thirty minutes in anxious silence before following after him.

Hunk borrows Keith’s dingy bathroom to freshen up, Lance already having borrowed it beforehand. His skin looks terrible, the smudges under his eyes more pronounced than ever, but he’s hoping to fix that once they get back to the castle. Pidge is groggily rubbing her eyes on top of the dining table, roused from the sounds of Hunk’s loud humming. The walls are extremely thin.

Lance also takes the opportunity to snap a quick picture of Shiro and Keith standing outside, heads turned towards each other in a conversation he couldn’t hear, and pulls up his chat with Adam.

[Adam — 6:37 am]

Lance [6:37 am] : [IMAGE SENT]

Lance [6:38 am] : One buff space-explorer rightfully delivered to your inbox (*˘︶˘*).｡*

Lance [6:38 am] : Keith is there too

Lance [6:38 am] : Payment comes in the form of SWEARING ON YOUR LIFE THAT YOU’LL LIVE

Adam [6:40 am] : Yes Lance, I swear that I’ll live.

Adam [6:41 am] : And, thank you. This means more to me than you’ll ever know.

Lance [6:42 am] : Heyyyy, no prob bob, I’m not your star student for nothing (｡•̀ᴗ-)✧

Adam [6:42 am] : I have never once said that.

Lance [6:43 am] : It’s implied no biggie. I can read in between the lines don’t worry fam

Adam [6:44 am] : Goodbye Cadet, stay safe.

[END CHAT]

Lance smiles. If he’s going to have to go through this entire experience again, it’s nice to know that there’s someone who knows about the whole situation and is supporting him through it. He looks down at Adam’s ID badge, the one that he had shoved into his pocket after starting the rover, and thumbs over Adam’s profile picture.

Thank you, for being there in the future, and for being here now.

He exhales slowly, before pulling the lanyard over his head and tucking the badge underneath his shirt. He’ll return this back to Adam when he returns back to Earth. This time, hopefully, with Adam still alive and Earth still on its feet.

Though, to be honest, he doesn’t really know how to do that yet.

Adam stares down at his holo-phone, pinning his eyes to the picture that Lance had sent him. Occasionally, his eyes will start to burn and he’ll be forced to blink, but he can never find himself looking away for more than a few seconds at a time. He doesn’t want to, he can’t, hope and dread weighing down his stomach until it swoops out from under him. This, this single photo, in just the span of the few minutes of it being sent, has become his lifeline already.

He takes a deep breath in and closes his eyes, before leaning back into his seat.

Promise to live? What kind of optimistic idealization is that? Nothing in life is guaranteed, it’s just the way it is. Some things exist longer than others, either through a biological or compositional advantage—both animate and material objects—but they’re never built to last forever. And if one were to feel as if they could no longer handle the burden of that notion, let it go.

It’s simple. It should be simple. Adam couldn’t handle the prospect of losing Takashi in a place he couldn't follow, couldn’t handle Takashi prioritizing an opportunity over his own life when Takashi’s life is something so valued and precious to not only Adam (especially Adam), but everyone else around him—and so he let him go. It shouldn’t have been complicated.

It shouldn’t have been.

And yet here Adam is.

He opens his eyes, letting out a hollow breath.

He’s never let go in the first place. Because Takashi is, and always will be, the only thing in Adam’s life that he couldn’t rationalize, couldn't compartmentalize without having it all spill out in a colorful mess, disrupting all the order that Adam has organized his life into. A top Garrison fighter pilot, one of the youngest instructors, a knowledgeable and educated man all-around; that’s what Adam is.

Adam doesn’t have the propensity for change. Development, yes, because he knows his own potential. He knows what he’s able to grow into so long as he pours effort and experience into something he wants to achieve. But change? That wasn’t Adam, that was all Takashi.

They were both the same in that they could see and forge their own paths to their futures, but their ideals and methods of achieving it were different. Adam is rational, he can write out charts and develop routes towards what he wants to achieve. Takashi, on the other hand, is a dreamer. He keeps his head up, and draws pictures with his mind in the sky, amongst the stars; before whipping his head back down to grin at Adam and tell him every single detail of it.

Adam always listens. And then he tells Takashi of what his own desires are. Takashi would always listen too, with the utmost rapture. They listened to each other. They balanced each other out. Adam would help Takashi set clear-cut paths towards his dreams, mapping out specific routes that would make them all a reality. And Takashi would elevate Adam’s plans, give Adam more than what he would set out to do.

Adam would keep Takashi grounded, and Takashi would raise Adam up beyond that.

Perhaps that was what had drawn Adam to him. It was a balance, an equivalence. They filled each other in where the other lacked, during their time at the Garrison at least. Shiro, however, has grown since then, growing into someone more pragmatic, into one of the most respectable pilots at the Garrison and falling into a leadership role as easy as sifting his hand through air. And how has Adam changed?

Adam’s grown, but has he changed at all?

There’s a knock at his office door, before it slides open to reveal Admiral Sanda with her frigid face and even more rigid posture, not even bothering to wait for his confirmation before barging in. She betrays nothing of her emotions, the wrinkle lines etched across her face from old age doing nothing to dampen the authority that she wields like a serrated knife.

Adam immediately straightens his back, dropping his hands to his lap on instinct.

“Lieutenant,” Sanda greets.

“Admiral,” Adam nods back.

“I assume you’ve received my email regarding the lockdown we had last night?”

“Ah that.” The grip that he has around his holo-phone is near belligerent, channeling all his animosity into the device that’s starting to cut into his palm. It takes everything he has to not let it show on his face, to not lash out like Keith would have. If only Keith was here now, Adam is sure he wouldn’t even have hesitated. “An unmanned, unidentified flying object has been spotted crash-landed 900 meters east, correct?”

“That is correct,” Sanda nods. “However, I was actually referring to what had transpired last night, involving three Garrison Cadets and a stolen rover.”

Adam raises an eyebrow, like he’s surprised. “That’s impossible, unless they had user-identification.”

Sanda walks up to his desk, placing down a holo-pad and sliding it over for Adam to see. “Yes well, as you can see, the logs show that the stolen rover was registered under your name.”

Adam furrows his eyebrows, like he’s still confused.

“Not to mention,” Sanda continues, slamming a hand down onto his desk. Adam looks up, meeting Sanda’s furious glare. It’s nothing compared to the anger and hostility that Adam feels though, so he stares back at her with audacity. ‘Unmanned UFO’ his ass, the proof is right on his phone. “Security footage showed you running around with two of the Cadets responsible for the theft.”

Adam purses his lips, shutting off his holo-phone and discreetly tucking it underneath his thigh. “If you’re referring to Cadet McClain and Cadet Garret, then yes, I certainly was running around with them last night. Security situation Zulu Niner allows students to exit their barracks under the condition that an approved faculty member is escorting them. I am an approved instructor, and they were hungry. I took them to the cafeteria.”

“And you left them there, unsupervised.”

“On the contrary Admiral, I was supervising them the entire time.”

“Then how did they also manage to get a hold of your ID badge?” Sanda asks, leaning up to her full height—which is admittedly, not a lot of inches, compared to Adam anyway—to glower down at him.

“It’s simple, really,” Adam says perfunctorily. “I gave it to them. They wouldn’t be able to access the kitchens if I didn’t. There are no security cameras in the kitchens, I’m well aware, but if you replay the footage in the cafeteria, you’ll notice that one of the Garrison guards pulled me over for questioning—which was wholly unnecessary and counterproductive, so I handed it to them and they took the opportunity to slip away. I’m just as exasperated as you are.”

She observes him in silence for a few seconds, clearly calculating. Adam’s poker face is something to be revered though. “They’ve committed an offense that has reasonable grounds for expulsion,” she finally states when she obviously doesn’t find what she’s looking for.

Adam raises an eyebrow. “Admiral, I think that’s going a little too far without questioning them on their motives first.”

“So you are defending them?” Sanda asks, something cutting settling into her tone, like he’s slipped up and just stepped into one of her well-hidden traps.

“You know as well as I do what my personality is like,” Adam counters. He meets her gaze directly, his tone sharpening with each word that he calmly bites out. “I don’t judge by the action, I judge by the intent, and then I apply that intent to the action. It’s how I operate as an instructor, and reckless as those two Cadets are, they are still mine.”

Sanda huffs through her nose. “Your loyalty to your students is admirable.”

Adam smiles sardonically. “I wouldn’t be an instructor if I wasn’t.”

“Very well.” Sanda takes back her holo-pad, before tucking her arms behind her back and spinning around on her heel. She tips her head back, intent gleaming in her eye as she stares coldly down at him. “You’ll be detained for questioning for the time being, and if you don’t manage to divulge anything incriminating, you’ll be put on probation for the next five months.”

If, like it’s a threat he’ll fall prey to.

Hah. Adam nods. “Fair enough. I have nothing to hide, I know my own innocence.”

“We’ll see,” Sanda sneers. She turns away, walking out of his office with a toss of her hand. “Good day, Lieutenant.”

Adam clenches his jaw, and turns on his holo-phone. He stares down at the picture of Takashi’s broad back one last time, eyes roaming over his sharp profile as he turns his head to talk to Keith, and slots something he’s been missing ever since Takashi left into place.

Takashi, if you manage to come back from this whole adventure in one piece, and you’ll still have me by the end of it…

Adam takes a deep breath in, committing the picture to memory, before he deletes his chat with Lance, taking care to wipe all the incriminating data from his holo-phone. He’ll get a new one too, just in case.

…then please, teach me how to dream in full color again. Until then, I’ll do my best to fill in those colors with the ones you’ve already shown me—to change, until I have the right to ask for your hand again.

Lance also makes the split-second decision to explain to his parents and siblings that he’s going to be leaving for an indefinite amount of time and that he loves and will miss them dearly. And to not trust the Garrison for whatever BS they’re about to pull about their disappearances like they did with Shiro’s and Kerberos. Lance also tells them not to tell anyone and to let Hunk’s family know too if possible, since their families have become pretty close ever since Lance enrolled into the Garrison.

He tries to make sure that he sounds as vague as possible, but not to the point it’s worrying. It’s not too hard, since constructing sentences in Spanish has always come easier to him than constructing them in English ever has, even though he’s required to speak English at the Garrison.

[The OffspringTM — 6:59 am]

Lancey Lance [6:59 am] : [DOC SENT]

Lancey Lance [7:00 am] : going to space brb

Ronnie-McDonald [7:00 am] : you WHAT

[END CHAT]

Lance shuts his phone off and tucks it into his back pocket, standing up to approach Hunk. Pidge sits on the floor beside him, doing something with her headphones and holo-pad. “Figure anything out man?” Lance asks, peering over Hunk’s shoulder to raise an eyebrow down at Pidge’s radio that Hunk had snatched.

“Yeah,” Hunk nods. “What exactly were you doing yesterday Pidge? This tech is pretty up there, and I’ve never seen something like this in the Garrison. I don’t even think the Garrison has the right brains to build something like this.”

Pidge smirks, pushing her headphones down to her neck. “Cuz I built it.”

“With Professor Montgomery’s stolen equipment,” Lance adds, crossing his arms.

Pidge shrugs, looking even more proud of herself. “What can I say?” She jerks her head at the radio in Hunk’s hands. “I was picking up alien chatter all night at the edge of the solar system, and I’ve picked up something vital. But given that Takashi Shirogane himself is already standing outside, my hypothesis leading up to these months has practically been confirmed. Kerberos didn’t malfunction due to pilot and crew error.”

Hunk widens his eyes and drops his jaw in shock, flicking his eyes between the radio in his hands and the window, where Shiro and Keith are still standing outside. “No way.”

“Yes way,” Pidge seethes. “The Garrison’s been covering it up this entire time.”

“Sounds like something the government would do,” Lance says. And once they come back to Earth after the whole Voltron Coalition thing, they’ll only find out that the Garrison will hide more than just an alien abduction. They’ll try to hide an alien invasion too. “They're bound to hide a lot of shady stuff.”

Pidge raises an eyebrow, leaning forward a bit. “Are you a conspiracy theorist too?”

“Uh,” Lance furrows his eyebrows. “No.” That’s Keith, what with the whole cork-board he’s about to reveal.

“Come on,” Keith says when the front door opens, clearly still engaged in a conversation with Shiro. Their trio turns their attention to him, and he pauses briefly, like he remembers that he still has an audience. “You guys don’t wanna leave?”

“Uh,” Hunk trails off, nervously looking at Lance and then at Pidge. Pidge shrugs.

So does Lance. “We’re in it for the long haul, just show us what you got.”

Keith frowns, but he opens the door wider to let Shiro in. They go through introductions again like clockwork, and then Keith pulls off a giant sheet hanging off his wall to reveal his conspiracy board—except it’s not really a conspiracy since what he’s been researching is actually true—about his energy findings and outcroppings and ancient markings, all detailing the Blue Lion’s life before and after her arrival on Earth.

Hunk teases Pidge about her “girlfriend” (Lance has to hold back a snort, before he freezes, remembering that Pidge’s family is missing right now), talks about her diary, and then something about fraunhofer lines. Lance draws a blank on those lines like he did the first time, but this time, it’s because he’s not really paying attention.

He’s too busy sneaking glances at Keith to really pay attention to a conversation he’s already had before. Because now that he’s thinking about it, really thinking about it—Keith is the lynchpin to a lot of things that happen in the future. Crippling Zarkon, fending off Lotor, finding his mom, Kosmo, and the Altean colony. Retrieving Shiro, their entire trip back to Earth, forming Voltron when Haggar wouldn’t let them. Keith is essential, the pivotal piece that slots everything else into place, but all of them involve him having to leave for the Blade of Marmora first.

Lance initially thought that he could just keep Keith on the team in order to fix the future, because he would’ve been perceptive enough to find out everything that had been off. But if Lance does that, then many things could change. Big things, things that actually worked out well for them.

He frowns, gripping his bicep tighter.

Lance meant it when he said Keith was the future, because he is, even now, if his Marmoran humanitarian aid group is anything to tell by. If Keith never goes to the Blade, then the chances of that aid group coming to fruition lowers by a certain chance. He doesn’t want that aid group to disband. Keith does so many good things for the galaxy, and he looks so happy and fulfilled doing it. Lance doesn’t want to take that away from him if he can help it.

Keith’s future is boundless, but that’s only because the paths and options he could take at any point in time are boundless. One little change in step from him could change the future in ways that Lance wouldn’t even be able to comprehend, even though he thinks that it will all work out because it’s Keith. He doubts that Slav could even predict each outcome.

Lance bites down on his lip. He doesn’t—he doesn’t know what to do with Keith.

“Come on,” Keith says, suddenly snapping Lance out of his thoughts. He holds up the chart that Hunk had handed him at some point, detailing Voltron’s element location. “I’ll take us to the location.”

“You okay man?” Hunk asks when he passes by Lance, shooting him a concerned look.

Lance shakes his head, smiling tightly in reassurance. “Nothing man, let’s go.”

—

They find the cave, and the murals on the wall light up under Lance’s hands again. They fall down the cave, they find the Blue Lion, Lance touches her particle barrier and it falls, they get a vision of Voltron forming with five lions, and then Blue lowers her head for them to enter.

Lance only feigns a second of hesitation, before he’s racing inside.

“Lance!” Hunk shouts after him, but that’s the only sound of protest he gets.

“Come on!” Pidge cries after him, obviously leading their little merry band of soon-to-be space explorers into the cockpit after Lance.

Lance takes the pilot’s seat in the center, and it feels like coming home, when the command console lights up all around him, the seat sliding forward until he can reach the controls. There’s no seatbelt. He doesn’t remember ever wearing a seatbelt, but it’s fine because he feels the seat bolstering him, securing him in place.

Unbidden, he can feel the large grin that splits across his face. I’m back, Beautiful Blue.

Blue laughs in unbridled mirth—or, Lance feels that she’s laughing, given that the lions are incapable of communicating through anything other than feeling—because she’s always been friendly like that. He suddenly stills, hands stalling over the controls. Welcome back, my Paladin.

Lance widens his eyes, inhaling a sharp breath. What?

"Okay guys,” Hunk says nervously, inching closer to where Lance sits and pressing his arm into Lance’s shoulder for comfort. But Lance can hardly register it, still too focused on the fact that Blue is welcoming him back. As if she knows that he’s already done this before. “I-I feel the need to point out, just so that we're all, you know, aware: We are in some kind of futuristic alien cat head right now."

“The specs on this thing are insane,” Pidge says, awe evident in her voice as she leans forward to gleam over the holographic controls. “The Garrison’s got nothing on this.”

“So this is what they’re after,” Shiro murmurs.

“What do we do now?” Keith asks. “Can you pilot this thing?”

Lance grips at the controls, fingers flying over the buttons on autopilot. Thrusters, lights, hydraulic systems, pneumatic systems, temperature, and navigation. He didn’t know what he had pressed the first time around, so Blue was on autopilot for a majority of their time flying after breaking out of the cave, but he actually recognizes what all these knobs and buttons are supposed to do now. The cockpit dims around them, blue light washing over their skin as several holo-screens pop beside Lance: their side views as well as their rear. Lance swipes them all aside, leaving them in his periphery.

“How do you even know what all these buttons are supposed to do?” Keith asks. Lance ignores him.

His mind is racing from the implications of what Blue has just said, but he has to make sure that they leave in time. Because Blue is telling him that there’s an alien ship that’s steadily approaching Earth, and they have to take it down, again. Again, like they’ve done this before.

Blue knows. Blue knows that he’s not from this timeline, that he’s done this all before.

What do you know that I don’t? What am I here for? What the quiznak is happening?

Adam had told him that he could change, so Lance had thought that his purpose was to go back in time to fix just a few things that had gone wrong, the biggest thing being Allura’s sacrifice. But now—

Calm down, Blue tells him. Fly first.

Lance grits his teeth, creaking his jaw. His lips stretch into a painful smirk, bordering on the edge of hysterical before he yanks the controls back, and Blue is lifting herself up and smashing out of the cave with a loud roar. Everyone behind him screams, some even latching onto his jacket for purchase, but the thundering of Lance’s heart drowns everything out.

To the stars.

Hagger’s lip twitches. Her scrying had found nothing no matter how hard she had tried, but now, now all of a sudden, she’s picking up an energy that she’s thought has long since been lost. Hidden away by abhorrent and vainly noble kings.

It’s the energy of a trans-reality comet, matching that of the same energy that their command ship currently has captive, and something else. Something else that she can’t see, intricate magic weaving together in a finely threaded shroud, hiding it away from her.

She hums under her breath, clearly displeased. Her druids say nothing around her, not possessing the same level of prowess in magic and alchemy as she, but even they, she can tell, senses something amiss. They are her fingers, far from her eyes, so everything that she reaches towards, they are bestowed upon with the opportunity of touching.

Tentatively, she reaches towards the shroud, dark magic condensing in her mind—before it electrocutes her for even daring to touch, and she’s quickly drawing away.

Not quick enough, it seems, because one of the druids to her left falls with a loud shriek. Haggar pays them no mind. They are inessential deadweight now, having served their purpose.

She narrows her eyes at the shroud, watching as that something else travels along the same path as the trans-reality comet. No matter, if they are traveling along the same path, then they are both bound to cross Zarkon’s path at one point or another. She will be there when it happens, and then she can probe and dissect it all she wishes.

Against her displeasure, she decides to leave the shroud alone, for now, and continues scrying.

After so long, ten-thousand years, it’s finally starting.

Adam blinks down at his gloved hand, clenching and unclenching it slowly. He’s been contemplating, like he always is, but this time, he won’t have anyone to share his thoughts with. It’s been odd, keeping his thoughts to himself when he had become so accustomed to letting someone else into his mind. As straightened out as he always makes his thoughts, there’s something freeing about letting them flow out of him like a printing press, words strewn across a page as coherently as he can make them, in order to have his recipient understand.

He sighs, before pushing himself up, summoning his daggers to his hands when he senses distant rumbling. He’d thought that they would lessen during his three-year absence, considering that she had been confident enough to send him away in the first place, but they’ve only grown more frequent.

“So soon?” A female voice asks. He peers down at her with his good eye, taking in her serene and close-eyed expression from where she’s sitting cross-legged on the floor, spreading her hands out before her, palms facing down. Another woman lies still beside her, currently in an exertion-induced coma.

“The attacks will become constant soon,” Adam answers, looking up at the figures that bubble up from the invisible plane they’re standing on. They’re all molten and dark, bordering on the edge of black, but not quite. It’s a harsh juxtaposition to the pastel pink that surrounds them, the soft backdrop glittering with the unwavering stars of the universes. “Do you think this will be enough?”

The young woman—one that Adam had met only two years after her arrival, one that holds many names and titles with varying amounts of weight and prestige attached to each of them—opens her eyes. She stares off into the distance, into the cosmos, where Adam can hear the tell-tale roar of a lion.

“I can’t say for certain.”

The creatures bubbling have nearly formed into something corporeal by now, but Adam can’t even tell what they resemble, what they’re supposed to resemble. All they do is attack on sight, and so he always attacks them back. He lifts his daggers, holding them out before him in a defensive position. “I believe in him.”

The young woman—who had so many names, but Adam has only ever heard her being referred to by a single one with the utmost affection, and therefore has only used that single name for her—chuckles under her breath. She stands up behind him, because he’s been given the task of being her protector in this nexus. Just as he had been before she had sent him away. Just as he is now. “So do I. Sector aL–Zen is next. Cover me until then?”

Adam nods. “Roger that, Allura.”

And with a swift push off the tips of his toes, he charges forward.