Chapter Text
The first thing Lance noticed was the darkness surrounding them and the smell that could only be described as rotting piss.
He rested his hand against his forehead, still dizzy from the blast, and tried to piece together all that had happened. There was the machine, and that Galra general, and he was aiming at Keith, and…
Keith !
The paladin sat up, looking around for his companion. A sigh of relief left his lips as he spotted Keith a few feet away, collapsed on the dirty ground. He let out a groan of discomfort, so at least he was alive.
“Keith. Hey, Keith,” he called out. “Hanging in there?”
“Yeah, I guess…” Keith groaned as he sat up, fingers pinching the bridge of his nose. “What happened?” His eyes blinked open and inspected their surroundings, brow furrowing in confusion over the metal walls covered in rust that surrounded them. “ Where are we ?”
“And alley, it seems.” Lance also inspected their surroundings, eyes growing accustomed with the low light. “A very dirty one, while we are at it.”
“I gathered,” Keith scoffed, nose wrinkled in disgust as he stared at a puddle of what Lance hoped was just water. “And how did we get here?”
Now, that was a very good question.
For you see, just a few moments before, they were in a Galra spaceship, following a lead offered by Lotor on some weapon the empire was developing and fighting general What’s-His-Face . And now they were in the depths of a dark alley, surrounded by trash and rust, the only light coming from the busy street.
It was pretty damn weird.
So, they tried to recollect the events that led them there.
∞
It started with Lotor’s intel. He’d been handing out a lot of those lately, a show of good faith towards the Paladins of Voltron in hopes that it would eventually be reciprocated. Weapons had been dismantled, prisoners had been freed, bases had fallen — all thanks to Lotor’s tips.
And even though his tips had proven to be valuable and perfectly on-point, there was still a limit to what they were willing to believe.
“A time machine ?” Allura echoed, scorn and disbelief laced through her voice. “You must consider us idiots if you think we would believe that!”
“It is the truth, princess,” Lotor smiled. “It is one of the empire’s most secret projects. They’ve been trying for millennia now, and are closer than ever to a breakthrough.”
“If they are so close, why didn’t you warn us before?”
“I was testing the waters, so to speak. To see if you’d follow my tips and how willing you were to work with me.”
“A time machine…” Pidge mumbled, deep in thought. “I guess it’s possible… We did travel to another reality. How different could time traveling possibly be?”
“It’s not that simple,” Coran said. “Time is a very, very fragile thing. Who knows what could happen if the Galra are to mess with it?”
“Which is why Voltron must see to it at once.” Lotor’s smile vanished from his face. “I don’t trust my father or that witch to handle this machine with the care it needs. Voltron must find and destroy it before it is too late.”
“Since when do we take orders from—”
“All of his intel so far has been right, Allura,” Shiro interrupted her. “If there is even a chance that this time machine is real, we have to check it out.”
Allura didn’t respond immediately. She studied the Galra prince, locked in that chamber of glass, and at the other paladins that came with her. Finally, she spoke. “You’re right. We need to check out this so-called time machine.” She turned to Lotor with fury in her eyes. “But if this is a trap…”
“Trust me, princess,” Lotor said, “I wouldn’t dream of leading you astray.”
“So, we are really going after a time machine, uh?” Lance wondered out loud as they rode their lions towards the base pointed out by Lotor. “Can they really do that?”
“It… is not impossible,” Pidge’s voice came from the intercom. “If they get their hands on another trans-dimensional material and calibrate them in a way that advances or retrogrades in time and space, they could…”
“I didn’t ask for details, just if they could do it.”
“Yes, Lance , they can.”
“The Blade of Marmora also confirmed that there is something on this base,” Shiro said. “So whatever it is, we still need to check.”
“And how do we fight someone with a time machine?!” Hunk asked with panic creeping into his voice. “They can always reset the timeline and redo the whole thing until they win! There’s no way we can win!”
“We’ve outsmarted the Galra plenty of times before,” Shiro reassured. “We can do it again.”
Yeah, but a good handful of those have been traumatic experiences, Lance wanted to add, but opted for staying quiet for once. He was not going to be the one jinxing the mission.
And hey, they were getting better at their job. They even gave a beating on Zarkon so good that it left him out of commission for a while. So he could relax, right? He needed to relax.
“We are in position,” Shiro said, pulling Lance away from his breathing exercises. “Let’s go.”
It was fairly easy for them to get into the Galra base. Too easy, as Hunk and Allura made sure to remark. But they didn’t have time to linger on that.
“Stay alert,” Shiro whispered. “Our Blade companion should be around here.”
The group sneaked around the corridors of the base, weapons ready for any possible confrontation. Lance could feel the sweat dripping down his neck and his hands were shaking lightly. No matter how many times they went on dangerous missions like these, he still had a hard time dealing with the tension that preluded the confrontation.
They reached the rendezvous point. Some sentries laid discarded on the ground. In the middle of the pile, a Blade of Marmora pierced the last one through the chest, and the robot fell limp on the ground as the sword morphed back into a knife. The whole team relaxed a bit with the sight, arms still ready for any confrontation.
“You must be the agent Kolivan mentioned.” Shiro approached the Blade, hand forward ready for a handshake. “It will be a pleasure to work with you.”
The Blade stared at the team through his mask and turned their attention to Shiro.
“It’s good to see you guys again,” they said in a voice that was all too familiar as they squeezed Shiro’s hand.
The Blade’s mask distorted, revealing fluffy dark hair that struggled to stay under the hood and violet eyes Lance was all too familiar with.
“ Keith !” He called, trying to ignore how his heart leaped with joy with the sight of the former Red Paladin. It had been so, so long…
“Kolivan didn’t mention you would be the one working with us on this mission,” Allura said with a warm smile.
“It will be great to have you by our side, even if for just one mission,” Shiro nodded. “Now tell us, what is—”
Before he could finish his sentence, a strange wave pulsed through them, making them stumble on the spot. For Lance, it felt like falling in his own body. He blinked his eyes one, two, three times trying to process what had just happened. A quick glance at his friends’ pale faces was enough for him to know he wasn’t alone on that.
“Did anyone else feel that?” Hunk looked around. “That— This weird deja vu feeling, but worse ?”
“I wouldn’t call it deja vu , buddy,” Lance replied, “but yes. I guess we all felt it.”
“It was freaky!” Pidge shuddered, embracing herself to stop shaking. “For a moment I thought I was going to die .”
“It’s the machine,” Keith explained. “Every so often this pulse resonates through the ship. It gets stronger the closer we get to it.”
“We need to find it soon,” Allura said, and Lance wondered if the others could also notice the slight shaking on her voice.
“Agreed,” Shiro nodded. “Let’s go.”
They all nodded and followed through the corridors of the space ship. Right, left, left, right, they followed the map of the cruise while following the map Keith had acquired before they arrived.
The time machine was only over in the next room when the second wave hit them.
The lights flickered around them, and Lance stumbled between one step and the other. His vision went blurry, his knees wouldn’t stop shaking, and his ears were ringing as only one thought made sense among a flurry of images and loose words:
What the quiznack were the Galra doing this time?!
As he recovered his senses, he saw the sorry state of his team – Keith was leaning against the wall, struggling to regain his footing. Hunk had fallen on the ground, using his giant bayard to help him get up on his feet, and Allura was on her knees. Shiro, the only one who seemed to be less affected by it, was helping Pidge back up.
“Everyone, take some time to recover,” Shiro ordered, and only then did Lance notice he was out of breath. “I’m afraid that we will all need to be at full strength to take care of whatever is beyond this door.”
They all nodded, still too out of it to just charge into the room and fight whatever awaited them on the other side.
Once they all came back to themselves and could stand without feeling like falling over, they shared a nod and opened the door, ready to face whatever had been toying with them.
The room wasn’t much different from the many others they had seen on their previous Galra ship raids. There were computers scattered everywhere with various holographic screens illuminating it in shades of red and purple, as well as a high platform from where a commander could monitor the work.
The biggest difference was the machine, built against a wall in a way that looked like a portal. Wires and tubes of quintessence were attached to its circumference, connecting it to the rest of the room in a tangled mess. And God, that was a lot of quintessence.
“Ah, the Paladins of Voltron and the Blade of Marmora!” A Galra general called from the platform, arms open and a challenging smile on his face. “It is a pleasure to see you again.”
“’Again?’” Hunk echoed. “Sorry, I’m confused. Guys, have we met this guy before? Because I’m almost sure we haven’t.”
“I don’t know, I… I think we have?” Lance said, his eyebrows knitted together. He stared at the general, trying to know where exactly he saw that one before. They’d fought so many at that point, it was hard to tell them apart, but he was sure he saw that one somewhere .
“I don’t expect you to remember me,” the Galra chuckled. “After all, this is the first time for you. I just had to repeat this encounter. And I will repeat it as many times as necessary for my victory!” With that, the general leaped from the platform and landed right in the middle of the paladin’s formation, a giant hammer in hands and a manic smile etched across his face. “I have time on my side! Only victory or death shall stop me!”
The general swung his hammer and hit Hunk, sending him flying against the wall and knocking his bayard out of his hand. From his back, Allura attacked with her whip only for the Galra to grab it and pull her. Almost like he knew it was coming.
Keith charged towards him, his knife turning into a sword, and the general parried it with the handle of the hammer. Shiro charged from the opposite direction, purple light following the movement of his cybernetic arm, and was blocked by the head of the hammer hitting his stomach.
And so that dance went – every attack from all of them, to Pidge’s blade to Hunk’s shooting, was thwarted in one way or another.
Lance was getting tired of that. He took a few steps back from the fight and let the others take the attention of the Galra general. With a deep breath, he took aim and waited for the moment none of his friends were blocking the path.
And shot him directly in the eye.
“ No !” the general roared, covering his wound with one of his hands. He stumbled towards one of the screens and erratically stabbed some buttons. “I refuse to lose! It is victory or death !”
In Lance’s memories, everything that followed happened in slow motion, but it might as well have been in five ticks.
One, the Galra general was slamming the buttons and activated the machine, the quintessence lighting up in gold and purple, the portal on the wall filled with a swirl of smoke and colors.
Two, Lance saw Keith charging against the general, sword in hand, and thought ah… He’s still an impulsive idiot . Charging like that against a psycho general that seemed to read their every movement and was now surrounded by unstable energy… That guy had no value for his own life.
Three, Lance thought that Keith might be an idiot that doesn’t value his own life, but that didn’t mean he had the right to just leave them behind again . Which was probably why Lance rushed across the room, to try and reach him before he did something stupid.
In retrospect, he realizes now his own attitude was stupid. Maybe Lance ran too fast. Maybe he slammed against some buttons himself on the way. Maybe, once he reached Keith, he might have realized the error of his actions because the machine had its own gravity and was pulling them both towards it.
Maybe they were both idiots.
Four, something went wrong. Lance remembered lightning, his hand on Keith’s, and the general roaring a loud “ No !”
Five, the world around them melted into white.
And Lance woke up in a dark alley, surrounded by rust and the smell of rotting piss…
∞
“Oh no…” Lance swallowed dry and raised his eyes to meet Keith’s. The shadows of the alley covered most of his features, but Lance’s eyes were accustomed enough to the dark that he could see the color vanished from his friend’s face. “You don’t think…”
The silence between them was broken only by the dripping of water somewhere nearby and the hustling of the street connected to the alley. The former Red Paladin looked Lance in the eyes, and he knew Keith had also understood their situation.
“We traveled through time.”