Chapter Text
He should really stop lying to them. That’s what he promised himself every night, lying in bed, staring at the cold, barren ceiling of a room that wasn’t his. Was never supposed to be his. No, he was a fraud, who in some unexplainable way had snuck himself onto the castle ship. It was only a matter of time, really, until he would be found out anyway. Lance had never been a good liar, after all. Or was he? It wasn’t like he had any idea what the “real” Lance was really like, had he?
He was only the cheap copy made by Haggar to… What exactly the plan was he was supposed to be carrying out, he wasn’t quite sure at the moment. It was probably just to stir chaos, that he was at least sure of. Why else replace one of the paladins? To get them confused and turn against each other was the most plausible option. Why Haggar had not taken them out when she must have been so close to them still confused him. However, there must be some sort of reason. A reason for why she was still spooking around in his head, making it almost impossible to sleep at night. The only thing he wanted was looking for a way to make it stop. Which left him with two options:
Number 1: Figure out whatever Haggar’s plan was and follow her orders, or: 2 Try and get the real Lance back and make a run for it. He could of course just pretend that nothing was wrong at all. Though that train of thought always led him back to the realization that, again, he wasn’t the most talented liar. But maybe he could learn to be?
No, that wasn’t happening. That would be entirely unfair to everyone involved. It definitely wasn’t their fault that their teammate, their friend had been replaced by someone else. In fact, it was only fair to them to make it right again. To quietly switch himself with the real Lance. That was if he could manage to find him. He had no idea where Haggar was hiding him, and it was only natural for her not to give him that information in case anyone found out he was a clone.
In truth Lance feared what would happen if they found out. They for sure wouldn’t be kind to him. Though he could only hope, they wouldn’t be able to take their anger out on someone who looked exactly like their friend. The thought sent a shiver down his spine. There was no way he could tell them. Even if it morally was probably the right thing to do. And if he really wanted to find the real Lance, how were the chances he would be able to make it himself? He would need help after all, wouldn’t he? With space being this huge, he probably wouldn’t get anywhere. He had to at least try. That’s what he told himself before drifting off to sleep rather unpeacefully. If he wanted to do the right thing and get out of there alive, he had to do it the hard way, all by himself.
So, he didn’t tell any of them. The next morning, instead of heading for the kitchen to get breakfast, he set out to find Coran. His goal was to gather information about any near Galra bases he could maybe convince them to spy on, so he would at least get a bit of a hint on how the Galra kept their prisoners hidden. Haggar had been so kind to give him access to Lance’s old memories, which he tried to ignore most of the time, however, he assumed the Galra might make a difference in how they kept their low-profile prisoners compared to someone as important as a literal Paladin of Voltron, who was allegedly one of their biggest problems currently. If Haggar wouldn’t tell him then fine, he would find out himself. And so, he made his way over to the control room where he was expecting Coran to be studying a map they had recently acquired. When the sliding doors slipped open waiting for him wasn’t just Coran. The man was talking to Keith, twirling his moustache in his fingers, and looking rather worried. Keith, his hair all dishevelled, was pacing up and down while listening to whatever jumble of words Coran was going on about. He seemed unusually stressed.
“I think you should talk to Shiro about that…”, was the only thing he could gather from their conversation. Lance wished he could make out what they were talking about, but they stopped the moment he entered the room, which if he was honest stinged just a little. As if he wasn’t supposed to know what his teammates were having a conversation about. No, he had no right to feel that way. He had to remember. Those weren’t his friends. He would be fine. He could deal with that. And if Haggar decided to come for him, when he inevitably crossed her plans, it was better the less he knew about the team. At least he wasn’t the only one keeping secrets. The others turned to him.
“Why are you up so early?”, asked Keith giving him a once over. “Aren’t you supposed to be having your “beauty sleep” right now?”
He was right, it was barely 5 am. Thank Pidge for making sure they had watches that displayed Earth’s time. At least one thing keeping the other close to home. Keith crossed his arms and looked at him rather grumpily. Seems like he wasn’t the only one who had trouble sleeping. Keith seemed like he wasn’t really in the mood to talk, which really only benefitted him. If he could get Keith angry enough to leave, he would have Coran all to himself. Which also meant he could ask questions without anyone thinking he was acting suspicious. Keith however, seemed rather determined to stay.
“Well, I should really be the one asking you that. I mean have you looked at your hair?” Keith furrowed his brows.
“Would you shut it about my hair? It’s been going on for long enough already. Starting to get quite annoying.” That was obviously not an option for Lance. Not only did it give him credibility for being the “real” Lance but there was also just an itch in him to comment on Keith’s hair, like, constantly. He was going to ignore that for now. He rolled his eyes and was just about to counter something when Coran stepped in.
“Well, I think we’ve all had a stressful week. How about you boys help me decipher this map if you’re already awake anyway?”
He tapped a few times onto one of the screens, projecting the map into the air.
“And…what are we supposed to do with that?” Asked Keith after circling around it for a while. He was right. It was mostly just a mess of symbols and notes in a language they couldn’t read scribbled over rough building outlines.
“You are going to decode what it says with the help of our old records! This thing may be a bit rusty, but it is very reliable. And the Princess will be thrilled to hear that you two managed to work together and spare everyone else some of the effort.”
He wheeled in some sort of Altean computer that for some reason had been detached from the main system, before gleefully making a dash for the door.
“Hey!”, Lance yelled after him, throwing his hands up, but Coran was already gone. He turned back to Keith, who had already started fiddling with the machine, which was unusually eager for him, considering it being such a boring task.
“Um. How does this thing turn on?”
“See you just have no knowledge on technology at all. No wonder when you live so isolated from society.” He shoved Keith out of the way only to stare at the display as well. The computer was just one big box with a display on top that was surrounded by way too many buttons, with additional ones spread across each side, none of them labelled or differing from each other in the slightest. He couldn’t just back down now, he could for sure figure out how this thing worked before Keith did. Lance started pressing some of the buttons, but nothing seemed to be happening, that was until Keith pulled out an entire arrangement of different cables from one side of the box.
“I think we might need to plug these in?”
Lance sighed. “Geez, when Coran said rustic, I didn’t think it would be that complicated. Why couldn’t they just have transferred everything onto the main computer.”
“Well, this castle is 10.000 years old so can’t really blame them for not getting behind of updating everything.” Keith was still standing in a pool of cables and looking even more lost than before trying to sort them out.
“Yeah, yeah, whatever let’s just get this over with.” Lance dismissively waved his hand.
They spent the following half hour rearranging the different cables, plugging them into outlets that more or less had magically appeared in the control room. It was more a hassle than anything and they were glad it was over once a light started to flicker on the screen and the device seemed to be booting up. They still had quite a bit of time until everyone else woke up and neither of them felt like searching the entire castle for wherever Coran had gone. So, they resorted to trying different buttons until eventually the screen lit up entirely and they were presented with a selection of different files and folders. What they found was what seemed like textbooks on how to decode and translate different languages, however there seemed to be a lot of files incomplete or missing, which didn’t make their job any easier.
“Great all this work and this thing is totally useless!”, he yelled, getting more frustrated by the minute. He should have made an effort to get more sleep last night. And they had been working together so peacefully only a minute ago. Or mostly, if you ignored the ongoing arguing over which cable belonged where and how the other was doing it completely wrong.
“Pidge would appreciate it.” Keith muttered from behind him.
“Well, good thing she’s currently here!” He exclaimed.
“We have her computer.” Keith added.
“What do you mean “we have her computer”? And you’re only telling me NOW?” He needed to get closer to his goal as fast as possible. He didn’t have the time to do work that would end up entirely useless later on.
“Coran said to use the computer I had no idea there was barely anything on it!”
“Whatever just get me the damn laptop so we can finally make some progress here.”
Ok, maybe he should calm down a bit. This whole “freaking out and getting mad over everything” thing was starting to not be very Lance like. It wasn’t his fault he couldn’t sleep at all at night because he was so damn stressed all the time. He was just glad Keith wasn’t getting back at him right now. Keith crossed the room and returned with Pidge’s laptop, which she had safely placed on one of the chairs.
“Thanks. Why did she leave this here in the first place? I thought she carried it with her wherever she went.” Lance sat down on the floor, booting up the laptop and looking through the files in the hopes Pidge had already done some work translating similar symbols before.
“Oh, Shiro disciplined her on getting more sleep while you were kind of out of it, so she had to leave it outside of her room. He even went to check on her.”
Lance decided to ignore the remark about him getting injured on the last mission and kept opening and closing files. Keith sat beside him and peered over his shoulder, still keeping a good amount of distance between them.
“You don’t think she’ll be mad at us for looking through her stuff, right?” Did the real Lance usually look through other people’s stuff?
“Probably. You know how she reacted when Hunk kept touching her stuff. But we’re just doing her work for her so she can’t really come after us.” Keith chuckled, which was quite nice compared to him being irritated or angry at him. Both of their eyes were glued to the screen when Keith asked:
“Are you alright?”
“Of course, why wouldn’t I be?” No need to panic. At all. Where was that damn file he was looking for? He was sure Pidge had already done similar translations, there had to be some sort of database.
“You hit your head pretty hard that day… I’m just saying that it’s ok if you need to take a break here and there, alright?”
“Listen I don’t want to talk about it. I’m fine, nothing some time in the healing pod couldn’t fix. And who’s gonna make fun of your hair if I’m taking time off?” He faked a laugh still not looking over at where Keith was sitting. That’s when he finally found the folder he had been looking for. Great a distraction!
“See, I knew Pidge was reliable. Now let’s take a look at this map before Coran comes back and gives us something else to do.” He opened a new document and switched between reading Pidges notes and staring at the map projected in front of them. Keith wanted to say something but eventually relented to helping Lance with decoding. It was no use after all.
Keith had been right. He wasn’t alright in the slightest. It all went terribly wrong on the mission to the small planet Rezelia. They had gotten a distress signal in the literal middle of the night, even for the inhabitants of this specific world, and immediately set off to investigate when they realised there was no other way to contact whoever was calling out for them. They had just exited their lions leaving them in front of the cave system they were about to enter.
Pidge and Shiro were staying back just in case, immersed in an argument about how Pidge was still dragging her laptop with her, while Shiro tried to convince her to take a nap while he held first watch. Judging from the bags under her eyes it was a fight destined to be lost, it was just a matter of who gave in first.
Hunk, Keith, and Lance were supposed to scout out the area, while Allura and Coran went over the data they collected on the ship and keeping watch from a distance. Who knew, it could be an ambush anytime they went somewhere.
Keith and he had had a fight just hours before, the reason for which clone Lance couldn’t recall. Probably wasn’t that important anyway. It caused Keith to waltz into the cave without so much as a second thought. Lance and Hunk trotting after him or at least trying to, since there was soon a far too great distance between them. Hunk had even called out to him to slow down multiple times but to no avail. It was only a matter of time for Keith to be completely out of their sight and hearing, having them even locked out of his comms. Shiro reassured them to go onward anyway, probably scolding Keith in a private channel. The cave consisted of many small paths, their armour scraping along the firm stone walls, the small glow of it barely making any difference in the dark. They had their bayards ready, unsure of what was awaiting them at the other end of the tunnel. They had no access to their actual weapons though, having to squeeze themselves through some parts of the path. Lance was leading the way when they came across a junction. Which was problematic since they still didn’t know from which direction the distress signal had come from but also since they couldn’t tell in which direction Keith had gone. Great.
“See, this is why I hate when he does this.” Lance grumbled.
Hunk pouted. “Could you stop arguing with him when he’s like not even here?”
“I’m not arguing with him, I’m complaining about him! Totally different.”
“Well, then stop complaining and concentrate on the mission maybe?”
“Hunk! I thought you were supposed to support me!” Lance put his hand on his heart in shock.
“Yeah, but it’s getting kind of stressful when the two of you keep arguing when we could get attacked literally any minute!”
“We’re not getting attacked! Look there’s literally no one here!” He theatrically pointed in the direction of the tunnels before them, his voice echoing off the walls.
“Well, if there is anyone here, they definitely know where we are now. Great job Lance.”
Lance rolled his eyes. “Allura was probably wrong about the signal otherwise we would have found any signs of an attack by now.”
“Even if, can we just keep going? Because I don’t know about you, but I’m not going all the way back. So, if we could just walk on so we can figure out if there’s another exit? And maybe pick up Keith on the way so we can leave?”
Lance turned back to the two paths in front of them. “Hey Shiro,” he uttered into the comms, “do you know which way Keith went?”
“What do you mean?”
“We’re at a crossing and can’t decide which way to go.”
“No, I meant I thought he was with you? How did you lose him so quickly?”
Lance looked back at Hunk. “Uhm, we lost him about half an hour ago, you knew that ‘cause we told you.”
“Yes, but he just told me that he saw you and was joining up with you guys again.”
“Well, we definitely didn’t see him. Maybe he was just lying to get you off his back. He’s been in a bad mood all day.”
“No, he definitely saw you. And it really brings down morale to assume your teammates are lying, Lance. He said that you were in a hall in front of him. He’s probably still there. Hopefully.”
“We haven’t come across any halls yet and there’s no way he somehow got behind us.”
“Hold on.” Shiro was walking up and down in front of the cave trying to get a signal, ready to tell Keith to stop messing with them, when he realized there was no way he was getting a hold of him.
“I can’t get in contact with him. There’s complete radio silence.” That was the moment he was starting to get kind of nervous. “Tell me if you need me to come in.”
“No, I think it’s fine. He can’t be too far ahead of us. The cave is probably just blocking the signal. We’ll split up and search for him.”
“Do you really think that’s a good idea?” asked Hunk the same moment Shiro went: “But keep in contact at all times. If you can’t reach each other go back immediately you hear me?”
“Roger that!”
“Yeah, this mission is starting to weird me out…” Hunk mumbled behind him, shrinking into himself.
Lance patted his shoulder. “It’ll be fine. I’ll go left. See you later.” And with that he trudged towards one of the tunnels.
He had been walking for quite a while now, his helmet and armour barely spending any light with the tunnel seemingly getting darker every few steps. At one point he could only make out his hand in front of him everything else being completely invisible. Slowly, he made his way onward making sure not to fall into any gaps in the floor, if there happened to be any. Not that he would be able to tell until it was way too late. Keith must have been really mad at him to just storm through this place without second thought. On the other hand, he was Keith. Lance thought about making a comment to Hunk about there possibly being traps in the walls they wouldn’t be able to notice, but he kept his mouth shut, instead listening to Hunks ongoing monologue about how he wished he was in the castle’s kitchen cooking instead.
“You know Pidge said she was craving Pizza lately so I was thinking maybe we could use that one weird ingredient Coran talked about last week to make a dough? If we don’t die on our way back that is...” He kept rambling on for a few more minutes, Lance listening contently, nodding along or giving simple comments until he was met with complete silence to a joke he had just made.
“Hunk? Aw come on, it wasn’t that bad!” He pouted until he realised, he really wasn’t getting any answer at all. He tried again with Shiro to no avail. He squeezed himself along the tunnel wall turning around to walk a few steps back, but it didn’t seem to help his case.
Lance lamented. That meant he would have to turn back completely. Maybe Hunk had had more luck on his part. There was a chance he had already found Keith or the aliens they were actually there to help that hadn’t shown themselves until now. With the lack of evidence Lance wasn’t even sure if there was a civilization at all on this planet. Maybe the distress signal had been really old or come from somewhere else entirely and just been reflected back to them by something on this planet. Whatever it was Lance was tired of trying to figure it out. The walls around him felt suffocating and he really wanted to get out and stretch. He had only walked a couple of steps when he heard something behind him.
At first, he thought it was just the sound of loose stones falling to the ground, but as it got closer it sounded more like someone calling out. Seemed like he had found the aliens after all. Against Shiro’s orders, he turned around again, keeping his Bayard ready. The tunnel led around a curve and after a couple more minutes of walking he started to see things more clearly with light seeping through somewhere in the distance. He couldn’t quite make out the voice that was calling out for him but as he got closer and closer it seemed more and more human. His hand rose to his helmet trying to get any kind of connection to any of his team members but all he heard was static. He was more than a little relieved when he finally managed to step out of the tunnel and into a larger room he could move around in more freely. The rocky walls were far prettier to look at, the stone almost glowing, each side lined with an abundance of torches. Lance walked around a bit, circling the area to get a good look at his surroundings, though there wasn’t really much to look at aside from the big rocks emerging from the floor that were scattered across the space. The room led into many others as well as a few tunnels all pointing in different directions as the one Hunk had taken though.
He hoped to able to find wherever the voice was coming from and leave. Something in the aura of the place was creeping him out. There was not a single soul insight. He stepped forward, his Bayard now in the form of a rifle, ready to shoot. Lance walked all the way into the room behind it, his steps echoing of the walls until he heard the voice again. It was more of a shriek this time, shrill, piercing and completely untypical for the person it belonged to. Hearing Keith’s voice so clearly almost made him drop his weapon, completely in shock for a few seconds. Lance turned around yelling into the different corridors to his sides. He started running once he heard it again, through tunnels he could barely see in, rooms that all looked the same, filled to the brink with the smell of smoke from the torches making him cough. He never got an explicit answer, but hearing he was getting closer to wherever Keith was, was really all he needed. He really only needed to see that he was ok. Until that point, he still hadn’t figured out if Keith was calling for help, was in distress or actually hurt. The other could have been dying and he wouldn’t know. Lance never found out.
When he turned around the next corner, his rifle raised ready to shoot at anything that wasn’t Keith, there she was. Standing with her hands intertwined in the most casual manner as if the screaming in the distance didn’t interest her in the slightest. A hooded figure, melting into the shadows around her, emerging from them just the same. Then Haggar moved her head up, spying upwards behind her hood, looking straight into his eyes. He almost dropped his weapon then and there. Lance was captivated in the worst way possible. There was something in her eyes luring him in as if, if he just kept looking, he would find some kind of grand revelation. The walls around them seemed to inch in closer, swallowing them into almost complete darkness, even though the torches’ fire was burning much stronger than before. Later Lance told himself that she must have been using a dark magic spell of hers, otherwise he would have charged right at her. Or maybe it had just been the circumstances: They had expected a fight when the distress signal came in, but standing alone in front of one their biggest enemies, with no way to call for help at all had left him utterly unprepared. He forced himself to look away, ignoring the whispers sifting through the air and aimed his weapon at her again. There was no way he was going to let her get away. He was going to fight whatever it would take. And so, he fired.
After that, real Lance had no more memories because that’s when he had taken over. Hours later he woke up in a healing pod. The other paladins surrounding him, bright smiles on their faces as they welcomed him back, Hunk shedding a tear or two, encompassing him in a big hug. And for a few moments he felt truly at home, until he had to realise that he was just a fraud. He had waited for them to notice. The way he talked, his posture, how caught up he was with making the right jokes. But they hadn’t figured it out and so he sat on the floor with Keith doing tasks that felt completely unimportant to their dilemma. And not a single one of them having as much of a clue. Sometimes when Keith had that strange look about him, when it seemed like he was looking right into his very soul, he was sure he had just been caught red-handed. But then Keith said something encouraging and Lance wished Keith would just punch him in the face instead.
Lance realized he had been staring at the same empty document for the last 10 minutes. Keith was looking at him sceptically but leaned away. “I think we should get some breakfast.” He mumbled, stood up and left the room without looking back. Lance stared after him slowly blinking for a while, before returning to Pidges work. Working until he had translated every piece of information on the map that was still glowing hollowly before him. He would have everything fixed soon, and this map was exactly what he needed to make that happen. His legs were stiff, his fingers were shaking from a lack of energy and part of him wished Keith had stayed a little longer. It was better that way however; he wouldn’t need to keep lying to him. He didn’t even hear the footsteps getting closer in the distance. The door swished open, and Hunk walked in holding a plate of food goo.
“Hey there, Buddy! Keith told me I’d find you here. You missed breakfast, but there’s no trouble, everyone was so busy barely anyone noticed.” He slid next to Lance on the floor, switching the plate with the laptop and closing it shut. “Speaking of Keith, he seems decently troubled right now, don’t you think? Stared Allura down in the kitchen earlier. I don’t know what she said but, boy did he look angry! Man, you should have been there! Pidge taught Rover this new trick. Well, she tried to, but she almost knocked down a cabinet, so Shiro told her to focus on her training for now instead of tinkering with unimportant things.”
“Seems like Shiro’s not seeing Rover’s potential, then.” Lance returned, gesticulating with his spoon before taking another bite. He wasn’t really hungry, but he had to put on a show after all. Otherwise, Hunk would catch on. Maybe that was a normal development though. Maybe clones didn’t need to eat all that much. Or maybe it just was his guilty conscience.
“I think he’s just stressed. Then again, he’s kind of always stressed… What were you working on by the way? Is that Pidge’s laptop?” He turned it around in his lap examining it.
“Yeah,” he pointed at the map. “I’m trying to figure out where the Galra keep their prisoners.” Hunk followed his gesture, observing it for a while. “Oh, so you’re planning some kind of grand rescue mission! That’s so cool! Though to be honest I have no idea what any of this says. Are we looking for anyone in particular?”
“No. Just in general. Looking for possible allies and stuff. Easy missions.” Missions that could be done alone, without putting any of the others in danger. And without having them find out the truth.
“Sounds good. Oh! Shiro said he wanted to train with us so we should probably get going before he comes looking for us.” Hunk helped him up and Lances heart dropped for a second. He had really hoped to be able to delay this a little longer. What if he didn’t match the other Lance in skill? What if Blue wouldn’t even let her near him? He wasn't looking forward to figuring it out, but he would at some point have to deal with it anyway, so he couln't think of anything to protest for now. They made their way back to the kitchen, quickly changed into their suits on the way and then continued into the hangar where the rest of the team was busy putting on armour or standing around chatting. Allura was helping Pidge figure out how to fix a technical device onto her suit without limiting her movement, Shiro and Keith were at the very end of the hall talking agitatedly. When they walked in Shiro looked over and Lance swore he was about to get a heart attack. If Shiro found out, he’d be dead within seconds that was for sure. He prayed they’d keep him for interrogation. Shiro had furrowed his brow and was watching him cross the hangar, before refocusing on Keith. When the other, who had been rambling on about things Lance couldn’t hear from that distance, realized, he snapped his head around, with a look of terror on his face. Before turning right back around visibly scolding Shiro in a manner that said, ‘don’t look at him!’. Lance needed to applaud himself for being able to read Keiths body language from that distance, when he wasn’t even able to read Keith when they were alone, and he was sitting right next to him.
“See? Totally stressed out!” Hunk exclaimed next to him. “Maybe we should talk to him?”
“Yeah, because Keith’s totally the type of person who will just puke out all of his problems and feelings in front of anyone.”
Hunk frowned. “Sorry, I didn’t’ mean it like that. But you know how he is…” Lance put a hand on his shoulder.
“Would have just been great if we could trust each other more as a team, you know,” Hunk sighed.
“And that is exactly what this exercise is for!”, Coran chimed in from behind them.
The objective seemed simple, the execution not so much. The goal was to have two of the lions fly out together, one of them however submerged in one of this planet’s plenty oceans. They had struggled to find a place to land the castle in safely without it getting drowned on accident, but they made it work. This option was a little safer than drifting through open space, since the planet’s many moons prohibited clear sight onto its surface. It didn’t exactly shield them from scanners, but they could at least get some fresh air once in a while. The plan was to have them fly over each other, though unable to see each other since this planet’s water was pitch-black. Meaning they had to communicate to each other which turns they took and which direction they were going so they would both in the end reach the same destination. The pair that could stay closest to each other, with the clearest communication, won. The prize to win was the rest of the day off – for motivational purposes – which Shiro and Allura were protesting the minute it was announced. The rest of the group pretended not to hear them. They were trying to figure out how to split them into groups when Keith approached him.
“I think you should sit this one out.”
“Why? Scared you’re going to lose?”
“No. Obviously not.” Keith crossed his arms. “But someone is going to have to sit out and I think it should be you.”
“Ok now you’re just being rude.” Lane put his hands on his hips. “Do you not trust my abilities? Do you have to insult me like that? If you don’t want me on the team, just say that.”
Keith looked puzzled. “No! I am not insulting you; I’m trying to be helpful!”
“How is “Hey, I don’t want you to train with me” being helpful?!” He was about to throw hands.
Keith frowned. “Like I said. You hit your head pretty hard, and we don’t know what’s on this planet. There might be some creatures down there we aren’t aware of yet.”
“So, you think I’m incompetent? I said I was fine!” Lance turned to leave when he saw Shiro shaking his head and facepalming in the distance. Pidge, who was walking up to him, threw a puzzled look at them. Lance sighed. He made his way over to his lion. To his surprise there was no hesitation on blue’s part at all to let him in, leaving him insanely relieved, but still anxious he might not be able to live up to the part the others were expecting of him. Especially after Keith was already questioning his abilities. He tried not to think about it and concentrated on getting himself out of the castle ship without crashing into something on the way. It all seemed so familiar though, that it only took him a couple of seconds of hesitation for his natural instincts to kick in and so he ended up flying circles around the caste as if he had never done anything else in his entire life.
Only a few minutes later everyone was out in their lions and Lance wished he had shut up and talked himself out of the situation. As much as he loved the feeling of flying a spaceship, the whole “training with the team” thing was stressing him out. If he was unlucky Haggar was constantly watching them from behind his eyes, enjoying every bit of information she could get out of them. Who knew what secrets he would be giving away when training with the others? But, then again, following that logic, he shouldn’t be talking to the others at all, and he couldn’t avoid that without everyone getting suspicious. Maybe he could accidentally get the mission wrong and get himself out that way. He couldn’t call in sick now though, feeling like he had to prove himself to Keith. As it turned out, nobody had to pass the exercise. Pidge, who had taken a liking to photographing basically any landscape they came across for research purposes but also to show off to her family once she finally reunited with them, had volunteered to go twice. Right, real Lance had family – no, not going there. He needed to focus. He would have this all fixed in a couple of weeks tops. Just needed to put in some work. The exercise was going smoothly so far, with everyone getting to their positions. Lance hadn’t asked who he’d be flying with, figuring Hunk would volunteer, just wanting to curl up in Blues cockpit and soak in his emotions for a while. Turns out, that was a bad idea. Hunk was still standing in the control room watching them from afar, while everyone else was slowly getting to the start of their routes.
“And remember to watch out for sea creatures! Once in my youth I came across this awful Kjag-“
“Coran, I don’t think any of us know what that is,” Shiro interrupted him over comms.
“Right. Well then, get this over with we still have lots of things to do today!” Coran chirped before hanging up on them.
Lance stretched in his seat, having spent the last minutes successfully thinking about absolutely nothing for once. Maybe he should tell real Lance to pick up meditating. He flew closer towards the water’s surface, cause there was no way he would let anyone take him out of his element like that, or, well, real Lances element at least, watching a shadow slowly creeping up somewhere above him.
"Oh, you’ve got to be kidding me!” It was red, swirling down in a show-offey manner, spinning around itself before settling next to him.
“Hey Pidge, can I switch partners?”
“Ehm, that’s kind of bad timing.” Pidge gave back. “We already started and I kind of need to concentrate here.”
Lance groaned. He just wanted peace for a little while. It was awful enough knowing Keith had probably gotten hurt pretty badly that day with Haggar and Lance (both clone and real) hadn’t been able to do crap to help him. No, now he had to go and rub it in his face by thinking he needed to babysit him during training. Lance wanted to go home. Which he couldn’t do since he actually didn’t’ have any home to go to and… he really needed to focus.
“I think the start is over there.” Keith steered towards a high, dark blue rock formation peeking out of the black water. He either hadn’t heard Lance’s request or just pretended not to. Good enough. Lance lowered the lion into the water, following Keith’s trail, quickly realizing he wasn’t able to look through the surface at all.
“Man, you should see how dark it is down here! Wait I think I just got past a fish, …or something… No evil sea creatures in sight so far.” The light from the lion didn’t help much with navigating, but he felt unexpectedly at ease. A few fish (and other creatures he’d rather not look at too closely) scrimmaged around him and he enjoyed the silence it brought to just float through the endless darkness. They took turns explaining which turns they had to take, dodging any obstacles, and describing the views to each other. Lance was especially excited to explain the differences between the fish he could see there to the wildlife real Lance remembered from home when going to the beach with his family. Keith had no clue about that but resorted to listening to him rambling. They did get in a bit of a quarrel over directions, since Keith feared Lance had gotten lost, which excuse him he was able to follow directions just fine thank you, but overall, it was mostly peaceful. They reached their destination shortly after, Lance steering Blue out of the water and avoiding crashing into the shoreline in front of them where even more blue rocks were rising out of the ground and towering over them. They had almost made it, staying close to one another throughout not being able to actually see each other. Well, if you counted Keith being on the complete opposite side of the shore. Lance climbed out of his lion, stretching, before letting himself fall onto the green sand below them. It still felt like home. Not his home but home, nonetheless. Keith flew a little closer, landing next to him, swirling up sand around them, before stepping onto the ground as well, leaning against Red. Lance closed his eyes and enjoyed the breeze on his face. The others were slowly flying in a few minutes later. Pidge having already completed both of her rounds, chatting with Hunk over the comms about the pictures she had taken. Everyone gathered on the shore, when Shiro announced, they were going to form Voltron as practice. Lance’s eyes shot open, and he scrambled to get to his feet. The other’s lions were building a wall in the sky, looming over him.
This was the moment he had been dreading. He wasn’t a real paladin. He was only a copy. There was no way he would be able to form Voltron without complications, right? He didn’t have any connection to the others like real Lance had. It was already a miracle he was allowed to pilot the blue lion at all. He was sure it would end up in one big disaster. Blue was maybe only playing along to not endanger the other paladins, who knew. Maybe she would throw him out somewhere in the middle of space if she got the chance to and he would just suffer in silence until he ran out of oxygen, and no one would come to save him –
“Could we do that tomorrow maybe?”, he asked, feeling unwell at the thought of everyone seeing him fail, rubbing the back of his neck with his hand.
“We could get attacked at any moment. The faster we are able to do this and the more practice we have the better,” Shiro remarked.
“I’m just…” Keith looked at him from the side. “…not feeling very well.”
“Right, I think he didn’t get enough sleep. It’s fine if we try tomorrow, right?”, Hunk, a blessing in person, butted in.
He could hear Shiro sighing over the comms, but it was clear, he was feeling bad for him. “Right, it makes no sense to have you overwork yourself if you’re not feeling well.” Lance knew he would have normally pushed him harder; they were in the middle of a war after all, there was no time to feel unwell. Or maybe Shiro was just tired too. Since he and Pidge had won the competition, they took a break on the beach they had landed on, Shiro guiding Hunk on his fighting stance from afar while Pidge installed a new function into Rover. Everyone’s training was cut a bit short with that, with the others supposed to train on their own accord. Shiro couldn’t help himself from getting up from the floor after a while though to help Hunk gain more stability and confidence in his stance. In the end, Lance was allowed to calmly make his way back towards the castle. He was just on his way back to his room to take a nap to get his brain to shut up again, when he heard someone walking behind him. He was going to go crazy.
“Could you please stop following me!” He turned around to find Keith stopping in his tracks about 20 meters behind him.
“I’m not following you… I’m going to the training room.”
Right… that was just around the corner. Great now he had made it awkward. Of course, he just had to do that. He covered his face with his hands.
“Sorry, I’m just going to go take a nap now.” He pointed towards the end of the hallway.
“You’re not going to get food first?” Keith took out his phone. “It’s been a few hours you should eat something.”
“I can think for myself you know.” He crossed his arms.
“I know. Hunk’s just been bugging us since you stormed out of the hangar just now when we got back. He’s going to try feeding you in your sleep or something if you don’t eat enough.” Lance wanted to protest but stayed silent, his shoulders dropping.
“Fine. But then I want to be left alone.”
He made his way to the kitchen, gobbling up some food, leaving a note on the counter for Hunk to stop worrying. Keith having followed him silently before turning around at a corner and entering the training room. Lance was on his way back to his room, already yawning, when a thought crossed his mind. What if Keith kept lurking around him, showing up everywhere he went, watching him closely when they were out training because he knew. He had been there after all. It wasn’t a totally absurd assumption. That would explain why he had wanted Lance to sit out during training. And he had gone and agreed with him later! There was no way he could have been more obvious. Keith had probably already left the training room and was on his way to Shiro to sell him out! He had to be stopped. Lance rushed down the halls, slipping on the sleek floor, almost falling on his face while turning a corner. The food in his stomach was making him nauseous and he was sure he wasn’t going to make it to the next day if he couldn’t manage to catch Keith before he got to anyone of the team first. If he hadn’t already done so. He was shaking down to his boots when he heard the clanking of weapons in the distance. They weren’t going to try to fight him, right? He slowed down and peaked around the corner. There was no one in sight, but the noise remained. Lance kept on walking. He stopped in front of one of the rooms and listened. That was where the noise was coming from, but it seemed to be moving around inside, instead of waiting to attack him. He took a step back, trying to orient himself. It was the training room. Of course. Lance put one hand on the door and watched it slip open. Inside was Keith, in the middle of fighting one of the robots. Lance had to brace himself against the wall. One day he would give himself a heart attack.
Keith turned and shot a look at him while dodging one of the opponent’s hits. He blocked another attack, swiftly circling the bot and kicking at its back. The robot staggered, regained its stability for a short moment and swung at him again. Lance watched from a distance, while Keith stabbed it in the back with his sword. “Level 3 completed,” rang from the castle’s speakers somewhere, as the robot vanished. Keith put the Bayard on the floor and walked towards him.
“Level 3? Oh, come on, that was easy! Could have done that blindfolded…” Lance said, trying to not let his nerves get the better of him. Just pretend everything’s fine.
“Sure…” Keith chuckled, before standing in front of him awkwardly. If he had really sold his identity out to the others, he was a pretty great actor. Or maybe he was just waiting for the right moment to get back at him. To stab him in the back like he did with the training bot, playing along to get information out of him first. Lance looked into his eyes. Keith a great actor? No way. If he really knew he would have already had a knife at his throat by now. He couldn’t possibly know. Yet. Lance still needed to be careful.
“Weren’t you going to go take a nap?” Keith asked, looking at him puzzled. Right, he had no reason to be there.
“Oh right, I’m gonna go do that.” Lance was already backing off towards the door again when he was interrupted.
“Wait.” Keith looked around sheepishly. “Are you sure you don’t want to talk about the mission?”
Oh gosh, he knew. Lance’s hands began shaking. Why wasn’t he yelling at him? There was no reason for Keith to look at him like this if he didn’t know. He had to know. Lance couldn’t quite read his expression but the way he was standing there his arms crossed but in a defensive way, not able to hold eye contact for long, was truly unsettling to him. Maybe he was reading too much into it but he couldn’t quite get his nerves to calm down. He didn’t look like he was going to charge at him though which was positive. Keith wasn’t scared of him, was he? The way he initiated the conversation meant he maybe wanted to lure him out of his defences first, before getting mad at him. But then again, Keith wasn’t a great actor. He looked more guilty than anything else. Which made no sense, considering he was the one who had been attacked first. Did he feel bad for not being able to save the real Lance? Great, now he felt even more guilty than he was already feeling all day.
“No, I’m good.” He put his hands on his hips in an attempt to stop them from shaking and forced a smile, which made his overall posture seem extremely forced.
“Are you sure?” Maybe Keith thought he had to negotiate with him to get the real Lance back and was trying this approach first, before resorting to telling the rest of the team and making a huge fuss about it. That was… really thoughtful.
“Yeah, it’s fine. Nothing to bad happened right? It’s all good now.” He forced a low chuckle…, which only resulted in a cough. There’s no way he would know. He wasn’t there for most of it and only had access to real Lance’s very limited memories. Maybe Keith almost lost an arm or something and he was being really insensitive right now. He should have thought about that beforehand.
“Nothing to bad?” Keith stared at him in shock. Oh. So, he was mad at him for being a clone after all. Not like it was his fault really. Or Keith’s for resenting him.
“Do you not remember?” Remember what? This conversation was not going the way Lance thought the confrontation would go.
“No… remember what exactly?” Keith didn’t say anything for a long time.
“I mean… couldn’t have been too bad if I made it into the pod, right? And I mean, maybe you were hurt, which sucks, ‘cause I was supposed to be there, but like, you’re ok now right?” Keith kept staring.
“Oh wow, that was insensitive. I mean if you were hurt badly someone would have told me, right? And Shiro would not be letting you train all by yourself all day long if that was the case.”
“I’m not worried about myself!” Keith shouted at him. Ok, that was unexpected.
“It’s ok if you’re mad at me, I get it!” Lance threw his hands up. Seemed like they were dealing with this now. Maybe he and Keith could somehow work together to get real Lance back once he had convinced him he wasn’t some kind of threat to any of them. Keith teared at his hair.
“Why the heck would I be mad at you?!”
“I don’t know!” Alright, so he didn’t think he was a clone. Abort mission.
“So, you don’t remember?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about! I promise I have no clue!” Keith put his hands down but kept staring at him strangely.
“No seriously! I came across Haggar and fell unconscious due to her voodoo magic or whatever. I already told you all that when I came out of the pod!”
“Oh.” Keith avoided his eyes again, hugging his arms to his chest. The awkward silence from earlier came creeping back in and Lance really wished his hands would stop shaking for a second, so he could concentrate. Easier said than done since at this point, he was sure he was only kept awake due to adrenaline and would pass out practically anywhere as soon as his heartbeat calmed down.
“Why? Did you see something different? Did Haggar do anything else?”
Keith shook his head vigorously. “I don’t know what she did. I don’t know what she’s capable of.”
“Then what’s the issue? No one was hurt, right? Everything’s ok. We’re all safe now.”
He shook his head again. “I don’t think you understand.”
“What do you mean?” Keith looked up, staring straight into his eyes.
“When I found you…” he swallowed, “I thought you were dead.”
Keith truly wished he wasn’t a liar.