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Pidge didn't think she'd ever be able to get over how much life there was out there in the universe. From her perch on the top of one of the towers of the Castle of Lions—the green lion's hangar, to be specific—she could see straight out at the starry evening of the planet they'd managed to save from the Galra earlier that day. Now, it was quiet and beautiful, the only light coming from the stars and the castle lights. The village square that she'd had so much fun dancing in with the rest of the villagers in celebration of their victory that morning was clear of people, who'd gone back to the houses in hills that had actual names, but that Pidge couldn't help but call hobbit holes in her mind.
A year ago, she'd been hopeful that aliens were real, but it had been a hope based on decades of other scientists' speculation, rather than any real knowledge she'd had. And now, aliens, they were definitely a thing.
Thousands upon thousands of inhabited planets, species beyond what she could imagine—or even just name, and an evil galactic power right out of one of Matt's favorite science fiction movies.
In her Altean spacesuit, Pidge was insulated against the cold night, but she still hugged her legs against her chest and rested her chin on her knees. All these planets, all these people, and somewhere out there were her father and brother.
The small panel on the bottom of the ledge swung open and a familiar head peeked out. Through their helmets' connection, she heard him quietly say, "Found her," to the others. Shiro pulled himself up onto the ledge, then reached down and brought a box of deliciously smelling food up with him. Pidge made grabby hands at it instantly, realizing that with all the thinking she'd been doing, she must've completely forgotten about dinner. The helmets' chatter had become background noise to her, easily ignored in favor of thinking of her family.
"I should've known you were up here," Shiro said, sitting down next to her and resting a comfortably warm arm over her shoulders. "Brooding?"
"I'm not brooding," Pidge told him, even if she kind of was. She curled in closer to him and chucked her helmet down into the hanger through the panel. Cold autumn, or whatever passed for autumn on this planet, wind whipped at her hair, but it was worth it to be able to eat Hunk's newest cooking endeavors. "Did I miss anything else?"
"Only Lance's newest love of his life coming for a tour of the castle," Shiro replied. "She's… interesting."
"Is she trying to take over the castle?"
"I wouldn't put it past her. You alright?"
"I'm fine, jeez," Pidge muttered. She was just tired, and she missed her family, and— "I just saw someone who looked a bit like Matt earlier today, that's all. His face was all wrong, but his hair, it was nearly the same color."
"I'm sorry," Shiro said, rubbing her shoulder.
"We're going to find them," she said, before Shiro could say it. Because they would. She wouldn't accept a possible future where they didn't find them. But it was taking so long that keeping up that hope felt impossible at times. They had to find them. She hadn't even gotten the chance to make her brother uncomfortable with PDA with her newest boyfriend. It was a time-honored sibling tradition that they couldn't just break. How the hell was she supposed to spend the rest of her life without her stupid brother at her side? Even though he was four years older than her, they'd always been so close. "I just— fuck the Galra. They took such a shine off the whole aliens are real reveal." She chomped down hard on a green goop cookie in irritation. "I expected aliens—you couldn't not, with Sam Holt as your dad—but I didn't expect them to be evil ones hell-bent on galactic domination."
"It is a version of the Fermi paradox," Shiro said, but Pidge rolled her eyes at him.
"It was never the most plausible one," she said. "I was more fond of us living in some backwater part of the universe, and the more we explored beyond the boring parts, the sooner we'd find somebody out there." She'd really liked the thought of finding less advanced sentient species first, then maybe graduating to some big, scarier ones. If she hadn't been so interested in technology and had been born a couple decades later, Pidge thought she could've made a fantastic space diplomat. Although, with the way the Galra were expanding, she didn't need a couple decades. It was all too likely that they'd already put Earth on their to-colonize list.
"You weren't completely wrong," Shiro said, and she felt his shrug against her body. "Earth's location isn't convenient for colonization and as a planet we weren't advanced enough for the Galra to worry about, from what I overheard when I was captured. And with the way we were already destroying our own planet well enough, their help wasn't even needed."
"At least we're probably past the filter," Pidge tried.
"And not in a zoo," Shiro added.
God, she loved him. Hot and smart and just as geeky about space as she was, what wasn't to love about Shiro? She closed her eyes, leaning into him and letting herself get all the comfort she could. If she never saw her father and brother again, she was glad—that wasn't the right word at all, but something like it—that at least they'd met Shiro. They'd liked him, her father requesting him from the Garrison's graduating class as the mission's pilot and Matt looking up to him when they'd both been students, and they'd approve of him over the last guy she'd been dating back before the mission to Kerberos, she thought. She approved of him, after all. She approved of him a lot.