Chapter Text
When Lance opened his eyes, he expected to see the medical bay, and maybe all his friends around him looking anxiously or relieved at him, maybe Pidge being herself again. What he got instead was not at all what he thought he would see.
He was slumped in a seat in one of the smaller ships the Castle of Lion had, his head resting forward at a really uncomfortable angle thanks to gravity. He groaned loudly as he moved to sit up, hand going to his wounded side and he had to blink hard to really see through the pain. He saw movement coming from the other seat in the ship and turned to see who it was, a groggy sort of question already on his lips when he saw who it was.
“Pidge?” He called to the other, still feeling pain from the wound that should have been fully healed from the pod he had been put into. When he looked down he saw his shirt had been taken but he still had his jacket on mostly covering his torso.
Pidge turned to him with a scowl. “I don’t know who this Pidge guy is but it’s not me.”
Lance gave the other a confused look. “You are Pidge. What’s wrong with you, how can you not remember your own name?”
“My name is Pawn, not Pidge, idiot.”
Lance paused in his movement to sit up properly to look at Pidge incredulously. He couldn’t think of what to say when a shooting pain stemmed from his wound, which now just looked cauterized so he assumed the pod had healed most of the internal stuff before he had been taken out of it.
Pidge turned back to the front, her face grim and set.
The two sat in choking silence for a couple minutes before Lance spoke up again. “Where are we going? Why aren’t we back in the Castle of Lions?”
“You really should shut up.” Pidge growled, looking over at him. “I couldn’t complete my mission but I was told I wasn’t allowed to return empty-handed. You were the easiest to take.”
“You’re saying you kidnapped me?”
Pidge rolled her eyes, muttering under her breath just quiet enough that Lance couldn’t hear it clearly.
“You don’t have to do this, Pidge. We can go back, find a way to make you normal-you again.” Lance sat up, looking almost pleadingly at his friend, who’s eyes were blank when they stared back at him.
“If you don’t shut up I’ll knock you out.” She warned.
“But this isn’t like you! You have to see this isn’t you, Pidge, you’d never help the Galra after they-AH!”
Lance hadn’t seen Pidge move until he felt a hand pull at the healing wound and a hard hit to the temple, then he saw nothing more.
~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~
Shiro had stayed up the entire night looking for some way of tracking the ship Pidge and Lance had been on, but there was no way of tracking it, like something was blocking any attempt.
He sighed angrily, running his fingers through his hair as if it would help him figure a way of tracking the two Paladins he hadn’t thought of before. He couldn’t sleep, his mind too wired on the missing teens, so he decided to head to the training deck, hoping that would help in some way.
While he worked in the training deck, the rest of the Castle woke, one by one, to the chaos of the night before.
Hunk was the first one awake, having always been a bit of an early bird. He grumbled a bit, somewhat regretting staying in the medical bay as his back ached something awful, but it was to be there for Lance in the most literal sense of the word.
At the thought of Lance, Hunk turned to check on the pod, but when he found the pod to be completely empty, his eyes almost bugged out of his head. He looked around frantically, thinking maybe Lance had gotten out a bit early because he was better or something but he saw no one else besides Keith sleeping with a frown on his face. Hunk almost wondered if Keith ever had a moment he wasn’t acting moody for some reason or another before he knocked the thought away to wake the other teen.
“Keith. Keith, man, you gotta wake up. Tell me you saw Lance.” He shook the other.
Keith mumbled incoherently, swatting the hand away sleepily but Hunk persisted, needing to know if the other had seen Lance and ignoring the growing worry that something was gravely wrong.
“Keith, come on, man wake up.” Hunk shook him harder and that did just the trick to wake up the older teen.
Keith’s eyes snapped up, looking fed up as his eyes snapped to Hunk. “What?”
“Lance is gone from his pod. Have you seen him?”
Keith frowned and sat up with a bit of effort, turning his head over to Lance’s pod. “But, he’s not supposed to be out for another few vargas.” He grumbled, confusion laced in his words that Hunk caught easily and the worry settled in his gut.
“You haven’t seen Lance since last night? Oh man, where did he go? Do you think he, uh, he healed fast and just went off to bed or something? Can that happen, being let out of the pod early? Why wouldn’t he wake us up if he had? He would have been weak coming out an-”
“Hunk.” Keith interrupted with a loud sigh, stretching before he stood up to head over to the open pod. “Breathe. We can’t have you hyperventilating now of all times.”
“Yeah, yeah okay. I can do that.” Hunk nodded quickly, sucking in air and just focusing on his breathing before he saw the empty pod again and his mind scattered into different directions. “We gotta find him.”
“Yeah, c’mon, let’s see if he really is up and going or if the others have seen him.” Keith answered, putting a hand on Hunk’s upper arm to guide him out of the medical bay.
The two teens walked around the Castle before they passed the training deck to hear someone practicing. They looked between each other before heading in to see Shiro decimating the practice opponents, sweat making his head glisten, and they saw him take deep, deep breaths as he finished one robot before going for the next one without a break.
“Shiro?” Keith called out to their leader, heading over to him with a frown, one that even Hunk could interpret. Shiro wasn’t normally up this early training, or ever going at it at an anger similar to Keith.
Shiro didn’t seem to hear Keith until the practice opponent was finished and he turned to see the two by the door still, with Keith closing the distance as soon as he turned.
“What are you doing up?” Shiro panted, wiping his forehead.
“We should be the ones asking that, Shiro.” Keith replied. “What are you doing?”
“Practice. Felt like I haven’t in awhile.” Their leader answered, looking away from the teens.
“Have you seen Lance since last night?” Hunk asked, stepping forward, and both saw the tension freeze Shiro where he stood. “Shiro, have you?”
“I…” Shiro looked around the training deck before he closed his eyes with a deep sigh. “Yeah. Yeah I did.”
“Great!” Hunk’s worry lessened a bit, trying to look at things optimistically. If Shiro had seen Lance recently, he must have been okay.
Keith had the opposite feeling, and he frowned at their leader. “Where is he then?”
“He’s…” Shiro finally opened his eyes to look at the two with a strained expression. “Pidge took him.”
“Pidge? What?” Hunk asked.
“But wasn’t Pidge put in a place she couldn’t escape?” Keith asked a moment after.
Shiro shrugged. “I don’t know. I just know Pidge had Lance and took off with him. She’s… She’s still not herself. Haggar did something to her, seemed to like, possess her when I saw them.”
The worry spilled into Hunk’s blood, solidifying like ice and from Keith’s expression, Hunk knew the other felt the same.
“And you didn’t do anything?” Keith asked, deadly quiet.
“I couldn’t. She would have done something to Lance, to them both. At least when I didn’t do anything, I knew Lance would still be okay.” Shiro answered, looking between the two teens. “And I tried to track the ship they took, but it was impossible.”
“So we’ve lost Pidge again and now Lance, too? How do the Galra keep doing this?!” Hunk demanded, knowing no one would give him the answer he wanted to hear, but couldn’t keep the worrying thought out of his head. “Are we ever going to see them again?”
“We have to find them again.” Shiro said with such conviction the words seemed to soothe the two teens a smidge. “I’m not letting the Galra hurt them anymore. We just need to figure out some way of finding the two.”
Chapter done!