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Lance wasn’t a fan of fake people. White lies here and there were fine, but the people who made big, flashy fabrications of themselves being considerate and charming just to be liked was just such a stupid concept. Because really, was earning popularity so important? Was having hordes of people like you so vital for human existence?
Lance was the biggest fucking hypocrite he knew. But then again, he wasn’t a fan of himself, either.
He didn’t know when it had started, but it had been building up for a while; even before being unwillingly sent into space. Perhaps it had been due to his big family, and the competition that came with it - needing to constantly prove himself, comparing himself to his siblings for attention. Or maybe it had begun the same time he had at the Garrison, when he had had big dreams that were always thwarted by a certain mullet-haired someone.
Either way, he knew he had no right to blame anyone but himself; because it wasn’t any of their voices whispering in his brain without stopping, it was his. It killed him to know that if he willed it to stop, it would. Nothing was forcing him to keep drilling those thoughts into his mind. He didn’t know what was preventing him of doing just that, but it was succeeding; because Lance just couldn’t get those thoughts out of his head.
It was always there - a never ending drone at the back of his mind. You’re in a team with a flying prodigy, a young genius, an amazing engineer and generally amazing person, a ridiculously capable leader, a freaking 10,000-year-old princess who can create wormholes and her smart and witty adviser. What are you?
What was he?
A butt in the cockpit of the Blue Lion.
The only remaining option if they wanted to form Voltron.
The unwanted comedic relief.
He knew that. He was aware of his value to the team. He was aware of his capability (or lack thereof). God, he was so aware of it he could almost feel a physical ache. But what could he do about it? If he told anyone, the whole ship would know in an instant and that would just be one more thing for them to have to keep an eye out for. It was so apparent and obvious that his mental state was a speck of dirt compared to that of the team’s. So he didn’t say a word and he lied. And lied. And lied.
-
Lance tapped his foot on the floor of Blue, eyeing the scene in front of him with concentration. The team was struggling. They had been on the way back from a diplomatic mission when the Galra had sprung a surprise attack. Hunk, Keith and Pidge were working together, trapping ships, tangling them in vines and then setting them on fire, but it wasn’t doing enough damage. Shiro was preoccupied with two ships, but he was being overpowered. Allura and Coran were in the castle doing all that they could to help but the particle barrier had broken down. There had been so many targets that forming Voltron would have been pointless.
Lance was a bit further out of the battle, analysing, because despite what the team thought, he could think clearly when he needed to.
“Lance, a little help would be nice!” Pidge yelled through the comm. To them, it just looked like he was hesitating to join the battle.
“On it,” Lance replied, offhandedly, still trying to find the weakness. There it was.
Slowly, as inconspicuous as he could be in a giant mechanical space cat, Lance flew behind the two ships that were ganging up on Shiro. They had been flying in front of the fleet when they had intercepted them. It was pretty likely they controlled the other ships as well. If Lance could make them falter just enough for Shiro to take control again, they would surrender and call the rest of the ships with them.
“Anytime now would be great, Lance!”
The ships hadn’t noticed him yet. Patiently, patiently, he flew behind the ships and aimed. He knew these ships like the back of his hand. They had fought so many of them it would’ve been impossible not to. Everyone else was just too frantic to remember that vital piece of information.
“The Galra have incredible technology, but nothing is without fault,” Coran had said once. “If you can get close enough and if you can aim it correctly, they have a vulnerable spot where the lock of the bay doors join into the ship. If you do it right, it’ll open the door and trigger an alarm system, which causes a good distraction.”
A distraction was exactly what they needed. He predicted the ship’s next move, where it was going to fly in its fight with the Black Lion. He aimed and he shot.
Bingo.
The door opened and he caught the sight of a flashing orange light. Quickly, he shot the other ship as well and flew out to help Hunk, Keith and Pidge. In the corner of his eye, he caught Shiro regaining control and beating up one of the ships. He smiled.
-
“God, what took you so long,” Pidge complained, pulling her helmet off her head. “If you’d come quicker to help us we would have gotten through the ships faster.”
Lance felt the guilt eating away at his stomach. Had it been a bad idea after all? “I was being strategic, Pidge. They would’ve sent more ships towards you if I had been there as well,” Lance replied flamboyantly.
The paladin snorted and rolled her eyes. “Let’s see how long you keep thinking that for.”
He got it, she was joking. But it still hurt.
The door opened and Shiro entered the room followed by Hunk. “Shiro! What happened at the end there? You totally wiped the floor with them!” Hunk said, clapping the man on his back.
Shiro smiled and took off his helmet. “I got lucky. Thanks for the backup.” He looked around at the team, but his eyes never met Lance’s. His heart sank a little. So none of them had noticed. Big deal, Shiro had done more work anyways. Besides, it wasn’t like Lance to think properly and come up with a good plan. People don’t see what they don’t expect.
The door at the other end of the room opened and Allura entired, silver hair flowing behind her. “Good work, paladins,” she smiled. “Shiro, taking advantage of the Galras’ ship malfunction was very clever. Hunk, Pidge and Keith, your teamwork is getting better every time I see it.”
That was the cue for Lance to say something. “Good work to you too, princess,” he smirked, flashing finger guns and wiggling his eyebrows. Perfect.
She turned to him and frowned. “Lance, you should take this more seriously. In fact, you’re the only one I have a complaint about from this battle.”
His smirk died.
“Everyone was giving their all out there, but where were you? Ogling some Galra women? You are a paladin of Voltron and I expect you to contribute to this team. Do you understand?”
His first thought was, ‘But I did do something. Those Galra ships don’t just malfunction on their own!’ But he knew no one would believe him. Her words stung, and they just reinforced what he already knew about himself; he was a useless, good-for-nothing seventh wheel. He just plastered another smile on his face and whistled. “Ouch, princess, you wound me,” he said, clutching his heart for dramatic flair.
Allura just sighed, exasperated, and rolled her eyes, as if to say, ‘He is the most useless quiznak-ing paladin I have ever laid my eyes on.’ She congratulated the team again and then left, shooting a frown at Lance on the way out.
The voice - his voice - in his head got a fraction louder.
-
Everyone else was sleeping and Lance should have been, too, but his brain just wouldn’t shut its quiznak. Ever since the Galra jump attack, it had been screaming a plethora of deprecating thoughts spilling into the crevices of his mind and keeping him awake.
Useless.
A burden to the team.
Everyone’s only keeping you around because they have no choice.
They’re probably already looking for another blue paladin.
Blue’s probably helping them.
He groaned and clutched his head and blocked his ears, trying to make it stop. The thing about voices in your head, however, is that you can’t really make them shut up. He wandered around the castle a bit, trying to quieten down his head. His body was sluggish but his head was buzzing. When was the last time he had slept properly? When had he stopped his skincare routine? He couldn’t really remember. He was going to go into his room and put it on before the others woke up anyway, just in case they saw him and thought something was wrong.
Somehow, he found himself on the observation deck. It was quite a beautiful room, with floor to ceiling windows that allowed him to see into the cosmos, however it didn’t make him sigh with relief or gasp in wonderment like it was meant to.
No, instead he was hit with yet another bout of homesickness. He had no idea around which planet or which galaxy he was in. He had no idea how far away he was from home. He had no idea how much time had passed on Earth. Time was different in different galaxies. What if a century had already passed on Earth, and everyone he knew and loved was already dead and had been for decades? He had probably missed Maria’s graduation and Antonio’s wedding. He had probably missed Roberto’s first day of school and Sara’s first words. God, he had probably missed so much. His family probably hated him.
He wished he could be back at Varadero Beach, with all his siblings and his whole family. He wanted to feel the clear, blue water on his skin and over his head and all around him.
Because he was alone, he let the tears come. He let them fall and fall and pile up. He secretly hoped that he could cry an entire ocean, that he could make the beach come back. He could imagine himself now, under the waves, sinking, sinking, sinking. But he knew that if he couldn’t even support a team of capable people, there was no way he could accomplish that. What was the point anymore? He sat in front of the windows and lost count of time, staring blankly out of them and hoped - pleaded - for the water to pull him under sometime soon.
It never did.
-
Lance first came to terms with the fact that he had given up the day after. He was thinking about it as he entered the dining room, face mask on and towel wrapped around his hair and yawning as if he’d had the best few hours of beauty sleep of his life.
He was thinking about it when he ‘argued’ with Keith over breakfast. He was thinking about it when he was using bad pick-up lines on Allura. He was thinking about it when he was doing group training.
He still didn’t stop lying.
-
The one time Allura decided to leave the castle to be extra support, the mission was going wrong. The team was separated. That wasn’t good. The others had somehow been forced to leave a few corridors ago, and now it was just Lance and the princess. Lance peeked out around the corner and saw Galra closing in. He cursed under his breath and told Allura.
“This isn’t good,” she said. “We’ve g—” Something glinted and caught the corner of Lance’s eye and before he knew it the princess was behind him and his abdomen was killing him. He collapsed onto the ground. Great, now Allura had to deal with two groups of Galra and a fucking corpse. But it was either that or the princess and it was clear as day who was more expendable.
“Lance! Quiznak!”
As his vision was fading, he saw Allura bust out the most impressive moves he’d ever seen. Yeah, taking the shot had definitely been one of the few good choices Lance had made. Suddenly he was being jostled violently and lifted. He hissed in pain.
“Lance, I’m sorry, but this is going to hurt,” Allura said. The princess was princess carrying him. Lance was ready for the ground to swallow him up. Or for him to bleed out, whichever was faster. “I don’t know how the human body is composed, but you need to stay awake, okay?”
Lance grunted in response. “Just… leave me for the data… princess. It’s a lot more important…”
The princess wasn’t looking at him but she responded. “What are you talking about, Lance? Of course I’m not going to get the data when you’ve been shot!”
“’Tis but a flesh wound,” he croaked. He summoned up a grin.
“It’s a bit more than a flesh wound, paladin.” She didn’t appreciate the joke. Did memes not exist in Altea?
“Seriously, Allura- fuck!” his body throbbed. Black spots danced in his vision. “Tell everyone… I love them… and leave me here.”
“What are you—”
“I’m a paladin of Voltron…” he said, quoting her, “and I’m… contributing to the team.”
The spots took over, and so did his voice.
-
It was the best sleep he had had in a while. Though his voice was still rambling on, it had at least been dreamless. Besides, the voice wasn’t doing much anymore, because he had already heard and accepted all of it already. He had played his part as the most expendable part of Voltron. He knew he was useless and he was glad that Allura had left him to get the data because that data could save the universe and he couldn’t.
So he was surprised when he woke up and all the residents of the castle were huddled in front of him, all in varying stages of consciousness. Was he in a cryopod? When did that happen? He was meant to be dead.
The door opened and he stumbled out and suddenly everyone was up. He was being smothered and again there were voices, but none of them were his. It took him a second to realise they were all group hugging him.
When they let go, he turned to Allura. “I— What?”
Hunk, poor guy, was full on sobbing. “Lance!” He threw himself over him. Lance looked over Hunk’s heaving shoulders with confusion. Everyone else was looking at him, hell, even Keith looked concerned.
“Allura, you—”
“Lance, I would like to apologise,” she said sincerely. “But I would also like to ask… Why?”
He looked at her incredulously. “Why? Isn’t it obvious? Actually, I should be asking you that.”
The princess looked just as confused. “No…? Lance, what are you talking about?”
Hunk drew back and Lance looked Allura in the eye. “It was either you or me. I was clearly the more expendable one, so you were meant to drop me there and leave for the data. The Galra would have been interested in me, so they would have been distracted and you could have escaped really easily… I told you to do that, so why am I here?”
All the paladins, Coran and Allura looked at him as if he’d said he was actually Zarkon in disguise. “Lance, you didn’t seriously think I would be heartless enough to leave you to die in enemy territory, did you?” Allura asked in disbelief. “I thought you were just being delirious.”
“What am I compared to all the lives in the universe, Allura?” Lance retorted. “Please tell me you got the data, at least.”
“I— Yes, Pidge managed to hack into the system and get it while I brought you to Blue—”
“Oh, thank God.”
“But Lance, you knew that wasn’t our only option—”
“It wasn’t, but it was our best option,” Lance said coolly. “That data was really important, more than me—” he looked at the people in front of him to stop them from interrupting, “—because you all know that I’m the most useless one out of all of us and my family’s probably already dead because who knows how long it’s been on Earth so no one would care if I disappeared—”
“Lance!” Pidge yelled, stopping him in his rant. He looked at her, tears that had built up threatening to spill. “Lance,” she repeated, quieter this time, “we care.”
“You’re just saying that because I’m about to cry,” he averted his gaze and looked down. “Why should you care? It’s not like any of you have noticed this entire time.”
And suddenly his head was being tilted up and he was looking Keith in the eye. “You idiot,” he said, almost growling. “If you act like you always do and don’t say anything, how are we meant to notice?”
“I—” He looked around and everyone was looking back sincerely. He couldn’t really believe this.
“Lance, you’re so valuable to our team.” It was Shiro this time. “You’re our sharpshooter, you keep our spirits high so we don’t have to constantly feel the weight of what we’re doing. What would we do without you?”
Before Lance could reply, Coran spoke, looking at him calculatingly. “Lance, it was you that time, wasn’t it?”
The boy was confused. “Which time?”
“The surprise attack.”
“Oh yeah,” he said. The others looked at him, puzzled. “I remembered how you said there was a weakness in the ships, so I sneaked up and shot at the bay doors.”
“That’s why they malfunctioned?” Shiro asked in amazement.
Lance nodded. “Sorry for not telling you.”
And suddenly they were all hugging him again and they kept telling him that they cared and that he mattered. He didn’t really believe them but he cried anyway.
-
The voice in his head didn’t disappear but it wasn’t an endless buzz anymore. It was loud on bad days and almost nonexistent on good days, which Lance considered a good improvement.
He still yearned to be back at Varadero Beach and his rickety house with his family. He still sat at the the observation deck when everyone else was asleep and waited for the water to pull him under. He still lied.
But in-between those times, he spent time with the other paladins and Allura and Coran. And in-between those times, he restarted his skincare routine and started sleeping more. And he and Allura developed some kind of closer friendship, which made him happy, because who didn't want a beautiful, talented, ten-millennia-old princess as a friend?
So yes, Lance was still a hypocrite, and he still wasn’t a fan of himself.
But with the help of the others, he was getting there; it was just going to take some time.