Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

 Keith should've known this would be how it ended when they followed an alien robotic red lion through a wormhole. They had founded the yellow lion after, too. They even managed to steal back the green lion from aboard a Galra ship, but the princess hadn't been able to locate the blue one. Without the blue lion they couldn't form Voltron.

 He'd thought that they could handle this ship, even without Voltron. That they could fight with only three lions. But it appeared he had been wrong, without Voltron they were doomed. They should've listened to Hunk when he'd argued to leave.

 Guess It's too late now.

 The tractor beam rendered the lions, and by extension them, useless.

 “It's been an honour flying with you boys,” he said over the comms. He closed his eyes, readying himself for what was to come. Red purred in his mind, unlike what he expected it wasn't to comfort him.

 You want me to ...?

 He followed her instructions; shoving his bayard in the newly revealed dash.

 Whoa.

 He watched in fascination as deep-orange flames exited red's mouth, burning a hole through the Galra ship exterior and interior, sending it crashing down to the planet's surface.

 “Did you guys see that? I've got fire powers.”

 Thanks, red.

 She purred warmly in his mind.

 Hunk's image showed up on the screen. “Cool, man. I mean not cool, it's kinda opposite of cool, cause fire is literally hot, not—”

 “What he means is thanks for saving our asses.” Pidge's image popped up next to Hunk's.

 Keith smiled at them. “Anytime.” 

 Pidge squinted at him over the feed, “Now, don't get cocky on us, Kogane. You did like one cool move.” 

 “Again, it wasn't cool. The exact opposite of—” 

 “Oh, shut up, Hunk. We get it; fire not cool.” Pidge mocked.

 Keith rolled his eyes, tuning them out as they continued to banter all the way down to the castle.

 Shiro came up to them as soon as the lions landed on the ground. “Good job, guys. You did it.”

“Barely, Shiro.” Keith took off his helmet. “I was wrong. We don't have a chance like this. We need Voltron.”

 Shiro placed a hand on his shoulder. “Keith, for once, just take the compliment. You guys did good.” Keith smiled shyly at the praise, Shiro continued, “And the princess has located the blue lion, so we might have that chance after all.”

 “Ooh, but what about the paladin? Can she locate him? Or her? Or them?” Hunk paused. “Wait do aliens have more genders? I mean, there is no reason they should have the same—”

 “Can you?” Keith cut him off, directing the question to the two Alteans as they walked closer. Not because he wasn't interested in knowing more about alien genders, but because Pidge already looked interested in the new topic and Keith knew if they started the conversation, it would not end anytime soon. 

 “Unfortunately, that's a bit more difficult.” Allura shook her head. “I'm hoping once we have the blue lion, it will assist me in locating them.”

 “Okay, but do we have to go, right now? Cause I'm starving and I really need a nap,” Hunk paused, raising his arm slightly and sniffing, “and apparently a shower.”

 To be fair, Keith could relate.

 “It’s alright, I can go alone,” Keith suggested, still feeling guilty he'd pushed for the side of the argument that had almost gotten them killed.

 “Keith, no. I'm not to sending you off to some unknown part of space alone.” Shiro disagreed.

 “I can go with him?” Pidge offered.

 “Thank you, Pidge.” Shiro smiled at her, placing a hand on her shoulder. “Commander Holt, Sam would be proud of you. We're gonna find him, you know, and Matt.”

 She nodded at him.

 Wait, was Pidge's brother Matt? Matt Matt? The same Matt that Shiro never shut up about back in Garrison?

 Interesting.

 A smirk came over Keith's lips. He would absolutely dig into that later.

 Keith and Pidge had made half their way back to their lions when Coran showed up.

 “Hold on a tick, paladins.”

 Keith stared at the twisted mess of a net Coran had shoved into his chest after doing the same to Pidge, before raising an eyebrow at the man.

 “When you'll find the blue lion, its shield will be up. You'll need a way to carry it back.”

 “Wow, I would've thought a dozen millennia old alien civilization would have something better than fishing nets to carry sentient cats, but apparently nooo.” Pidge whined to Keith as the advisor vanished as fast as he'd showed up.

 They piloted their respective lions through the wormhole the princess opened. As soon as they entered the other side, the blue lion came to their sight in all its glory. It stood proudly on the surface of an asteroid. Pidge informed him that there wasn't any planets or even starts close to them for light years to go. He could've said so himself with the view of vast space behind the lion, nothing near it.

 Which is why the state of the lion raised even more questions. “Why's its shield down?”

 “I, I don't know,” Pidge answered.

 Keith detected the annoyance in her tone. Deciding an annoyed Pidge was a dangerous Pidge—Keith might only know her for a day but she could be very scary if she wanted to—he passed on teasing her about it.

 “Let's just take it back to Arus. Coran and the princess will figure out what's wrong with it.”

 “At least we don't have to use the dumb nets,” she muttered.

 Each of their lions took one side of the blue lion, towing it back to the wormhole and to the Altean castle. The others were quick to join them as they walked out of their lions to the hangars.

 “You got it?”

 Keith ignored the question as the gigantic blue lion sitting behind them was enough of an answer.

 “Why's the shield down? I thought that only happened when the paladins are around?” Hunk questioned walking towards them in yellow pajamas.

 Is he wearing lion slippers?!

 “Wait, does this mean the paladin is here? So it must be either Coran or Allura, right?” he gushed, his eyes darting between the two.

 The princess turned her head up at the blue lion hopefully. Keith and Pidge shared a glance, neither wanted to be the one who shattered her hopes. Pidge mouted the words ‘not it’ at him. Great, he resisted the urge to say ‘what are you? Twelve?’ considering she did look twelve.

 He sighed in defeat. “Actually, we found it that way.”

 "What?" The hope in Allura's eyes gave its place to concern as she immediately turned to Coran. “Do you think something is wrong with it?”

 A loud roar shaking the ground beneath them made all eyes shot back up to the lion. Its eyes had turned on, shining in yellow glimmer. Keith got the feeling it was glowering at them.

 Apparently, so did Hunk. “I think you offended it,” he whispered to the princess.

 “Um, sorry?”

 Keith wanted to laugh at her questioned tone, but another roar stopped him. The castle floor shook beneath them, yet again, as the lion moved. Placing its head on the floor of the hanger, it opened her mouth to them.

 “I think it wants us to go in,” Hunk said.

 “Ya think, Sherlock?” Pidge mocked.

 “What is a Sherlock?” Coran asked.

 Keith rolled his eyes and just went in before they would start blabbering. The lion's insides looked familiar to red's, with the slight difference that blue light shone from every corner. He only made a few steps in before he saw it.

 “Guys, get in here.”

 In the middle of the cockpit, where the seat should've been, was a pod just like the ones Allura and Coran had woken from. This one was occupied by someone too. 

 Keith walked closer to get a better look at them. Unfortunately, that's when the glass vanished.

 “King Alfor, please, you have to let me help.”

 Keith's hands reached forward, catching the man before he could crash to the floor.

 Keith's first thought was that the guy was clearly Altean with those pointy ears and markings.

 His second thought was he wasn't a man, more like a boy, probably the same age as Keith.

 His third thought, embarrassingly, was that he was beautiful. With those blue-turquoise markings under his eyes, silky strands of white hair that stood in contrast to the tanned skin. Sets of tiny dots sitting on his cheek, traveling across his nose, but unlike human ones that were dark, his freckles shone in the same color as the markings. Yet, they were small enough to be barely visible. His face was all sharp edges, prominent cheekbones and a sharp jaw. Then the long curly eyelashes fluttered open and Keith's breath hitched, captivated by those blue eyes. Keith could absolutely stand there and appreciate them for a very long time. He's definitely beautiful. Though, anger in the eyes grew with each fraction of second that passed by.

 All his thoughts were forgotten and he would deny ever thinking them for a very long time as the boy's hands came up to his chest and shoved him away.

 “Don't touch me.”

 “King Alfor, please, you have to let me help.”

 His last thoughts left his lips and then he was falling. Something soft caught him, or someone as arms were suddenly wrapped around him. Lance would've almost enjoyed the warm embrace if it wasn't for that annoying scent, the one he was far too familiar with, Galra.

 And that could only mean trouble. 

 He opened his eyes, pushing the Galra away from him self with force. “Don't touch me.”

 Lance finally managed to get a look at the Galra as they stumbled backwards and fell to the ground. He wasn't faced with a Galran face, no, far from it. In fact, if it wasn't for the lack of scales and the weird looking ears, Lance would've said the boy was Altean. 

 The boy was quick to jump up to his legs. “I was just trying to help, asshole.”

 Oh, well, he might not look Galra, but he certainly had the temper of one.

 Lance instinctively reached for his bow, his hands grabbed at empty air. Neither his bow or his quiver were in place on his back.

 Quiznack. 

 Well, he had other means to fight.

 “What have you done to King Alfor?” he asked, charging forwards.

 The Galran's eyes grew wide in surprise, but he dodged at the last second. Lance turned to attack again, but he was faced the silver shine of a sword.

 Where did he even pull that from?

 Lance didn't have the time to find an answer, or to theorize about the possible answers, as the said blade came swinging at him. He bent backwards, avoiding the blade.

 “Keith? What-hey, get away from him!”

 The voice distracted Lance enough to miss the re-attack of the blade just by a hair.

 That was close. He didn't get a chance to catch his breath, a buzzing purple light slashed at him. He dodged it, avoiding the sword at the same time.

 Was it another Galra? How had they found him?

 Had he led them to blue?

 Oh gods, had he lead them to King Alfor?

 He backtracked a little as he dodged another blow by last tick. His body felt heavy, his movements slower than they should be, more sluggish than normal. Ugh, this wasn't fair. Two against one? What kind of dishonorable Galra were these?

 Then again, the Galra had lost their honour quite some time ago.

 He evaded their blows, launching his own. He would've kept doing so if not for the tingling sensation that started from his back and spread through his chest. Quiznack, that hurts. His body jumped forward, he tried to angle himself to get a look at what had caused the familiar sensation. A smaller third person held something triangular in her hand. 

 He didn't get a chance to repay her favor as the bigger man, the one with the mechanical hand, had found a grip on him in his state of shock. The man held his hands back while the other Galra held his sword to Lance's neck.

 “I'm gonna ask you one last time, what have you done to King Alfor?” Lance snarled.

 The black haired Galra raised his sword, He ignored the 'Easy' whisper that came from the man keeping Lance in place. The cold tip of the blade touched Lance’s neck. “You can’t threaten us. We're the ones holding you.”

 Did they really think they could handle him? Lance smirked as he prepared for...

 “You know my father?”

 He hesitated at the voice. he turned to the side of its maker in response. A gasp escaped him as he took in the two figures walking in blue's cockpit. 

 Altean.

 They're Altean?! 

 But how could that be?

 The girl, the one who'd just spoken, frowned as she walked closer. “You're Altean,” she sounded just as he felt. “How can that be?”

Her eyebrows were furrowed in confusion but her eyes gleamed of hope. That was not what made Lance gasp again as he examined the features of her face further. He recognised her face. He'd grown up seeing pictures of it. She hadn't been seen for deca-phoebs, all assumptions had been that she had died.

 Yet, the white hair and the pink scales were unmistakable.

 “Princess Allura?”

 “You know me?” 

 Lance shook his head. “No, I've only seen pictures of you. I knew your father.” Quiznack, Lance'd forgotten about him. He attempted to cut his hands free again but his struggles only resulted in the man tightening his hold around him. “Let go of me. I need to find King Alfor.”

 He stopped moving as he felt the tip of the sword, that had given him a small space upon the arrival of new Alteans, press back to his neck, just close enough not to cut through, and just close enough to cut through in less than a tick. Lance gritted his teeth.

 “Keith, my boy, lower your sword,” the other Altean said.

 “But he—”

“Keith, there is no need.” The Galran boy’s protest was shut down by the princess. “You too, Shiro.”

 Lance watched as the boy moved away his sword but kept it in his hand. He threw a glare at Lance. The meaning was clear: ‘try anything and I won't hesitate.’

 Lance couldn't help it, he let the side of his lips quirk up. The fact that the boy actually thought, even with his sword, he was a threat to Lance was quite entertaining. Almost as entertaining as the frown he gave Lance in response.

 As soon as the other man let go of his hands, Lance brought them up to his chest, rubbing on his wrists. Great, they were gonna bruise.

 Priorities, Lance.

 “I need to find the King,” he told the Alteans.

 “I'm afraid that's not possible.” The ginger haired Altean shook his head.

 Lance groaned internally, he didn't have time for this. He'd already wasted enough time fighting the Galrans.

 “You don't understand. I need to talk to him.”

 At the lack of response, Lance took a step forward. He saw the Galran boy raising his sword from the corner of his eyes but ignored it. “Please, please, I need to talk to him.” He wasn't usually one to beg, but he really needed to talk to King Alfor. He needed to make him understand, to make him let Lance help.

 “You can't. He's,” the princess sighed looking at the floor, “he's dead.”

What? How could that be true? “What are you talking about? I was just talking to him.” He questioned, it couldn't have been more than a few doboshes.

 “Oh, boy.” 

 Lance's attention drew to the new voice: another one with those weird ears. This one was bigger built than the others.

 Is he in sleepwear?

 Focus, Lance. He scolded himself.

 “What's the last thing you remember? Why were you with King Alfor?” 

 Lance considered the Altean man. 

 How much should Lance tell them? Could he really trust them? Even if he could, he couldn't tell them everything. He took a moment to choose his words. “I, I was in blue, talking to the King, trying to convince him let me fight. To let us gather new paladins to form Voltron. To stop Zarkon from doing what he did to Altea,” Lance faltered for a tick, the image passing his eyes, so much for choosing his words, “to any other planets. But he wouldn't accept, he wouldn't even give me a chance.”

 I want that chance.

 I need it.

 I have to fix this.

 He tried to keep his body from shaking. “That's the last thing I remember.”

 “He, quiznack, he must've put you in one, too,” the princess said, her hand gesturing behind him. 

 Lance's breath escaped him as he turned back. A pod. Was that where he'd fallen from? He should've recognized the sensation. It would explain how wrecked his body felt. Lance resisted the urge to place more distance between himself and the thing.

 “It's been ten thousand deca-phoebs since then.”

 Lance blinked at her. Nothing He had ever heard or seen from the princess told him that she was one to jest in that matter and yet...

 He let out a huff, “Well, this has been a—” he paused at 'fun' as he took a look at the two Galra and the tiny one who'd electrocuted her and changed the words, “some sort of experience, but I actually need to talk to King Alfor, so...”

 The Altean man shook his head. “Afraid this is not a joke, my boy. It really has been ten thousand deca-phoebs.”

 “This is not funny.” Lance's fingers curled into his palms, still he heard the crack in his voice. 

 The man kept his gaze on Lance. 

 “No.” The word escaped Lance's lips. but neither the sadness nor the grief in the eyes disappeared. “No.”

 Ten thousand deca-phoebs?

 No.

 Oh gods, please no. 

 He'd failed.

 He'd failed.

 What had happened to ...?

 “It, it can't be.”

 Everyone he knew, even him, must've died thousands of years ago.

 No, Lance felt a lump forming in his throat, “it can't be.”

 Not only had he lost his chance, he had also failed to keep his promise. 

 He stumbled backwards under the news.

 Hands that had attacked him kept him from falling to the ground, “Whoa, kid, calm down.”

 Calm down?

 How could He calm down?

 Ten-quiznacking-thousand deca-phoebs!

 Lance rubbed his palms over his face.

 No, but I promised.

What had happened tohim?

 What had happened to the universe?

 But maybe, maybe, there was some good to it? At least Zarkon was dead. Maybe he had lost the war. Maybe after him the Galra had given up on his wretched mission. Maybe they hadn't taken over the entire universe?

 Lance could only hope. “Please tell me Zarkon lost the war.”

 “Well,” the princess hesitated, avoiding his eyes as they shot up to hers. “No, at least not yet.” 

 yet? 

 Lance sighed. “The Galra still follow his path, even after all this time he's been gone?” 

 How had Zarkon and his witch managed to corrupt the Galra and their culture that vastly in a few deca-phoebs that the effects hadn't worn off in ten thousand ones?

 Lance felt the sour taste in his mouth, he shouldn't be so surprised. If anyone could manage such a feat, it was them.

 “Double 'oh, boys',” the one in sleepwear commented.

 The two alteans shared a glance, “They do because, well, Zarkon, he's, he's still alive.” 

 “What do you mean he's still alive? It's been ten thousand deca-phoebs!”

  All he got in response was serious eyes.

 What kind of fresh nightmare had he woken up to? Could he go back to the old nightmare he was living?

 It was her doing, wasn't it? He should've known Haggar would do something like this.

 His legs gave under him and this time he fell to the ground.

 How many? How many planets had been destroyed because of him? How many people had died because of him and his failure?

 He felt the side of his face growing wet. 

 Oh gods, what have I done?

 What have I done?

 A hand pushing down on his shoulder made him look up through blurry vision. “Hey, it is not over yet. We still have a chance. Now, that we have the last paladin, we can form Voltron. We can fight Zarkon and we will.”

 She seemed determined. Perhaps she had a point. Perhaps there were some things he could fix. But would she, would she really give him a chance?

 “You'll let me pilot blue?” he questioned.

 “Of course. If the blue lion deems you worthy, then you must be.”

 Gods, she was wrong. She was very wrong.

 But Lance couldn't tell her that if he wanted this chance, and he very much did. He nodded at her.

 She smiled, allowing him ticks to collect himself before helping him up.

 “I am Allura as you know. This,” she gestured to the other Altean, the one with ginger hair, “is my advisor Coran.” Lance nodded at him. She pointed to the boy in sleep wear, “this is—”

 “Hunk, ”the boy interrupted her taking a step forward, “I'm Hunk.” 

 The boy's smile was encouraging and Lance needed the diversion. He could ponder about the time that had passed and the ones that it had taken from him later. But right now, he needed to take his mind off of it.

 “Your name is Hunk? Isn't that like if my name would be devilishly handsome? which well, let's be honest, I deserve to be named that.” He winked, gesturing down himself.

 The boy stared at him for a few ticks before breaking into laughter and shrugging. “It's a nickname that kinda stuck.”

 He raised his palm to Lance. Lance stared at it, unsure of what to do. If it was a means of greeting, it was different to the one he was familiar with.

 “Hunk, I don't think he knows what a hand shake is,” the tiny one said.

 Hand shake? Was it as sounded? Lance took the other boys hand in his own and wiggled it.

 Everyone but the Alteans and the Galra boy laughed.

 “Dude, no, that's not how it's done. Here, let me show you.” Hunk said, moving their hands in an up and down motion instead.

 Oh, but shouldn't that be called hand raise or something? Lance shrugged: Alien cultures.

 Hunk put a hand around the tinier one and pushed them forward. “This is Pidge.”

 Lance took a suspicious look at him, her, he corrected at He felt her scent. “You electrocuted me.”

 She pushed her whatever-it-was-that-sat-on-her-nose closer to her eyes. “To be fair, you were attacking my friends.”

 Friends. He side-glanced at the remaining two, these Galra were their friends? Coran and the princess's too? Last Alteans Lance had met couldn't even tolerate the sight of the Galra.

 The man who'd had his death grip on him not that long ago, took a step towards him. “I'm Shiro, sorry for earlier.” 

 He sounded sincere. This close, Lance realised he wasn't Galra. He couldn't be. He didn't smell like one. But the hand? it definitely looked Galran. In fact, it looked like it was her doing.

 The said hand raised up in a motion that mirrored what Hunk had done. Lance eyed the hand. Would it start glowing again if he touched it? Would it hurt him? But the man smiled at him reassuringly, Lance hesitantly shook his hand like Hunk had taught him.

 Shiro took a step back gesturing to the Galran boy, who'd finally put away his sword—again where did he put the sword?—and was busy glaring at Lance. “And this is—”

 Well, Lance couldn't help it, the boy was just glaring too much. “Let me guess, short tempered asshole?” he chimed in with the same insult the boy had used on him.

 “Fuck you,” the boy said taking a step toward Lance, fists curled.

‘Fuck you’? What did that mean? It definitely was a curse word by the way the guy had said it. Lance smirked, “No, thanks. I'd rather not.” he said and hoped for the best. The way the boy turned red proved it’d been a good comeback. Specially, when he heard a quiet snicker next to him. Huh, maybe the tiny girl, Pidge, wasn't that bad after all.

 Shiro placed a hand on the boy's chest and pushed him back, “This is Keith.”

 Maybe it was the way Keith was gritting his teeth or maybe Lance just wanted to mess with him some more. Either way, he raised his eyebrow and placed a hand under his chin. “Keef? What kind of name is that? It sounds dumb.”

 This time both Pidge and Hunk laughed.

 Wow, if looks could kill Lance would be in the heavens right now. Well, hells, he corrected himself.

 “Keith, calm down.” Shiro told Keith, who had his sword back in his hand.

 Seriously, where did he kept pulling that out from? Lance almost felt tempted to make a suggestion about possible places that he could pull it from but the princess's voice stopped him.

“And you are?” Allura demanded.

“The name's Lance,” he said winking at her. His whole interaction with Keith had put him in a playful mode. He was very amusing.

 “Lance? That's not very alieny?” Pidge raised her eyebrow.

 He raised his eyebrow, mimic her. “Coming from the one named Pidge? Is that even a real name?”

 Pidge's exterior saddened. Lance would feel guilty if his back still didn't hurt from her blow. “It's a nickname.”

 “Is that a thing here? Do you all use nicknames? I bet Keith is a nickname for being a dumbass.” 

 The reaction was something, Keith was struggling to move pass Shiro. “Shiro, let me go kick his ass.”

 Oh, Lance definitely liked messing with this guy. He put a hand on his hip swaying it to that side, “You mean this ass? But it's too pretty for kicking, now if you had more enjoyable things in mind I might—”

 “Lance, that's enough.”

 The authority tone of Shiro stopped him. Truly a shame, since he was certain the completion of his sentence and the one he planned to follow with about offering to absolutely return the favor to the guy, would make the reaction ever more amusing. Not that the current one wasn't. He had to bite his cheeks to keep himself from laughing at the way Keith's face had grown red. Two muffled squeaks from next to him told him Hunk and Pidge were struggling the same.

 Even the princess’s voice sounded amused when she spoke again. “These are the paladins of Voltron, your fellow paladins.”

 Lance stood up straight, all the momentary leisure leaving him. He felt his eyes grew wide as they roamed over the ones in front of him, finally noticing three of them were wearing armors. His eyes stood on Pidge, she seemed young, too young. She couldn't have been any older than—

 He stopped the thought before it would choked up in his throat again.

 “They're just children.” His voice shook with more than horror.

 The four stared at him. Pidge frowned, “Then you're a child, too?”

 Hunk agreed, “Yeah, man. You look the same age as us and I'm definitely sure you're younger than Shiro.” 

 Lance let his eyes fall to the ground from the crushing sight in front of him. They might be right. He was probably their age, but he hadn't been a child for deca-phoebes. Not for a long time, even before the war, “I guess.”

 “War knows no children,” Shiro whispered. His understanding tone was almost appreciated but it made the other paladins look at him. Lance couldn't help but shrink more into himself under their curious gazes.

 The princess cleared her throat, “Anyhow, now that we've gotten the introduction out of the way. Let's get you inside—” she was stopped in her track to blue's open mouth by a hand.

 “We can't just believe him.” Keith had somehow managed to move away from Shiro and block their exit faster than Lance expected.

 “And why not?” She demanded.

 “How about the fact that the maniac attacked me?” he glared Lance. He probably didn't get the reaction he wanted, he continued, “Look, how do we know any of that is the truth? For all we know he could be lying.” 

 Huh, maybe he's not a dumbass after all.

 “Keith, come on, man. The blue lion chose him.” Hunk reasoned from next to Lance. Lance was already starting to like this guy, he seemed rather kind, wrong in the side of the discussion he'd chosen, but kind. 

 Keith took a considering look at Lance, “I'm just saying this could be some sort of ploy from the Galra. We can't just trust him.” he persisted.

 “What else can we do?” Shiro, obviously the black paladin, half-asked.

 Keith threw a helpless look at Lance, in which Lance responded with raising his eyebrow. Keith didn't held his gaze.

 His head snapped to the princess after a tick. “He says he knows your father, right? Then go check with him if his story checks out.”

 What?

 “That's,” she paused, “not a bad idea.” The princess sent an apologetic look to Lance, “I'm sorry you must understand, better safe than sorry.”

 “Uh, of course?” he hesitantly said, still confused.

 She smiled and left. Keith standing there, arms crossed, glaring at Lance victoriously.

 “Sorry, I'm confused. Didn't you just say King Alfor is dead?” Lance asked the others.

 Pidge, the green paladin, considering she was wearing green armor, answered. “Yes and no.”

 “Yeah, I'm gonna need a bit more explanation?”

 “The King, he stored all his memories, his consciousness into part of the ship.” Coran explained.

 “It's like he's actually here. It's very creepy,” Hunk shivered. “the dead should stay dead. That's like my rule number one.” 

 “Oh, that's interesting.” Lance said absent-mindedly as a wave of panic washed over his insides. He tuned Pidge out as she gushed over something called AI.

 This is bad.

 No, this was the worst it could get. King Alfor knew. If the princess could really talk to him, he without doubt would tell her. Gods, he’s lost his last chance before even actually getting it. They'd probably eject him into space to die, cold and alone. He shuddered at the thought.

 Then again it was what he deserved.

 But they seemed to have trusted even Keith, even though he was a Galran? Maybe they were generous with the trust they gave out? So maybe, just maybe he still had the tiniest chance?

 Keep dreaming Lance, those were very different situations.

 Of course since he was still alive and could feel, that's the moment his stomach growled.

“You gotta be kidding me,” Keith snapped, throwing his hands up.

 Lance crossed his arms, “Well, excuse me for being hungry, apparently I haven't eaten in ten millennia.”

“Thank you, God. Finally, a normal alien.” Hunk, the yellow paladin—as he was wearing a yellow sleep wear and the fact that the other colours seemed taken— smiled, taking Lance's arm. “no one's staying hungry on my watch.”

 Ugh, well if he was gonna die he might as well do it on a full stomach. Lance nodded, walking alongside Hunk.

 “Move, dude.” Hunk said once they arrived in front of Keith who was still blocking the way outside the lion. Quite the bold action considering he was literally standing right under blue's jaws and if Lance asked she could crush him in a tick. 

 “No, we can't let him lose in the castle,” Keith refused.

 “We're just going to the kitchen, Keith. It's not like I'm giving him a loaded gun,” Hunk rolled his eyes.

 “No.”

 Even without the red armour, Lance could've guessed he was the red paladin. The short temper and stubbornness were too close to what he'd heard of the red lion and seen on the Altean king.

“Oh, for the love of, you can glare at him in the kitchen, too.” Pidge pushed Keith aside, hopping down blue's stairs.

 Yeah, Lance definitely liked the tiny paladin. He didn't try to hide his laugh at Keith‘s offended expression as he followed her with Hunk.

 They were in some sort of hangar. Lance took a moment to bow his head in respect to the three other lion there. He'd seen them before but not this close. Before exiting the hanger, Lance took a glance at blue. 

 Just in case I don't see you again, good bye. Thank you for all you've done for me. 

 Blue, for the first time since he'd woken up reacted to him, she answered with a soothing purr.

 Everything is fine.

 Lance very much doubted that.

 He followed the others into a few hallways before the wall decorations and turquoise lights dawned on him. “Wait, is this the castle of the lions? I've never seen the inside. This is amazing.” He'd heard so many stories about this place. He'd always wanted to see the inside, never was allowed to.

 “Of course it is. My grand father built it ten thousand and six hundred deca-phoebs ago.”

 “Oh, no.” Hunk sighed.

 “Here we go, again.” Pidge groaned.

 Coran continued to tell the story despite the complaints. Lance eagerly listened. He'd always loved hearing Altean history. The man had a way of pulling one into the story, even if he got side tracked from his one story into another.

 Lance jumped up at the sensation of something furry at his ankle.

 Oh, hells no.

 He grabbed on to the first thing he could reach.

Chapter Text

 Keith didn't trust him.

 He couldn't help it. He'd always been distrustful of people. God knew how long it had taken for him to finally trust Shiro.

 And maybe Keith was just being extra skeptical, but he didn't trust Lance.

 Which seemed necessary for him to be since everyone else on the castle had trusted Lance so ridiculously easy. Keith couldn't understand them. How could they all trust him, someone they had just met? 

 Well, technically they had met the princess and Coran less than a day ago, too, but still how could they just trust some random guy they found? 

 Keith couldn't. Partly because Lance’s first reaction had been to attack him, when he'd done nothing but catch him from falling. I mean who does that? Keith ignored the part of his brain that said he probably would do that. Not to mention, how smug Lance had looked during the fight, and even when Keith had his bayard to his neck, his smirk had almost made Keith feel like their situation was reversed.

 And partly because Lance had looked petrified when they told him King Alfor was, in a way, still alive. Alright, so maybe Keith wasn't sure if he had looked afraid. But something didn't add up. Why did no one else find it weird that Lance had somehow survived whatever had happened to the rest of the Alteans?

 Though Keith admitted the way the Altean boy had broken down by the news that Zarkon lived, had even made Keith feel sorry for him.

 Unfortunately though, seeing the boy cry had made Shiro go into his protective mode even more. That was the problem with Shiro, he felt like he needed to help everyone, even someone he just met. Both Alteans had immediately trusted Lance, too. Even Hunk and Pidge. So they were kind of forcing Keith's hand here, he had to be the cautious one.

 Something in his gut just didn't trust Lance.

 So, he was pouting as Pidge and Hunk, against Keith's recommendation, lead the Altean boy to the kitchen. Coran was blabbering on about the castle and Lance, annoyingly, kept asking more questions, making the man talk even more. To be fair, Keith had asked a few questions himself the first time he'd heard the story but after hearing the story for the third time in less than a day he was getting irritated. Very irritated.

 Keith was brought out of his thoughts when someone grabbed his arm, “What the hell? Let me go.” Keith tried to get his arm out of Lance’s hold to get his bayard but he couldn't. How the hell did that skinny boy have such a tight grip?  But Lance wasn't looking at him. Keith followed his gaze and smirked as he saw what Lance was looking at with those wide eyes, “scared of little mice?” 

 “Mice?” To Keith's disappointment the Altean boy visibly relaxed. “Oh, thank gods. I thought they were rats. I hate rats. Those bastards keep biting you in your sleep.”

 Keith squinted at him, the question 'when and why had he slept in a place with rats?' tugging at his mind. Which was ridiculous, they didn't know anything about the boy and that was the question bothering him?

 Well, as much as the question bothered him it wasn't as irritating as Lance still holding onto his forearm.

 “Do you mind?” 

 “Huh?” Lance looked at him before his eyes drop down to his hands as if he hadn't realised they were there. Unfortunately, his lips came up to form a smirk as he let one of his hand slide up. “Oh, I don't mind at all, Keith.” He squeezed Keith's upper arm. “These are quite athletic.”

 What the fuck?

 Lance finally let go of him, laughing as Keith just stared at him and then glared at him, tempted to have his bayard to his throat again. Or yell at him that 'no, they aren't' because they really weren't. Fortunately, or unfortunately, he didn't get a chance to really consider the temptations as they arrived at the kitchen.

 Lance started gulping down the goo like it was the most delicious thing in the world, as soon as Coran placed the plate in front of him. Both Keith and Pidge made disgusted noises.

 “Ew. I've only eaten one spoon of that thing and it was horrible. I didn't think anyone besides Hunk would be able to eat it,” Pidge said.

 Coran huffed something like “ungrateful paladins” under his breath, but Lance, surprisingly for the first time, didn't answer, or at least didn't answer until he was eating the last spoon left in the plate. Princess’s mice had climbed on top of the table and gathered in front of Lance's plate. The Altean boy looked at them, then at the full spoon, and then at the mice again and sighed. He lowered the spoon so they could eat from it. Well, even Keith could admit that was a sweet act.

 Lance petted one of the mice. “Believe it or not, this is the best thing I've eaten in phoebs.”

 Keith didn't know what 'phoebs' meant: days,  weeks, or even months. But they all seemed an awfully long time not to eat anything better than the disgusting goo.

 “Or I guess ten thousand deca-phoebs.” Lance added under his breath, meant for himself. He stared at the empty plate in front of him, shoulders slumped.

 Keith saw as Shiro reached his hand to comfort Lance, but it never came to rest on Lance’s shoulder. For as soon as Lance caught the movement, he jumped from his seat, standing in a defensive position.

Shiro held both his hand up, “Whoa, hey. I wasn't going to hurt you,” he guiltily said, holding his robotic arm away. Keith wanted to punch the Altean boy for making Shiro look so upset.

 “Oh,” Lance sat back down carefully, “sorry. Force of habit.”

 Keith threw a glare at him, how dare he look genuinely sorry? Asshole!

 “No problem,” Shiro smiled at Lance.

 Keith hopefully looked up as he saw Allura coming from the halls; maybe she had good news that this guy was a fake, so they could get rid of him before he could annoy Keith anymore. But as she moved closer the bright smile and the blue bayard in her hand said otherwise. He frowned at her mext words.

 “Well, my father confirmed knowing him. In fact he said we couldn't have hoped for a better blue paladin,” Allura gave Keith a look before turning to Lance, “It appears we finally can form voltron with you, Lance.” she took the seat next to Lance. 

 “Thank you, thank you so much! I won't fail you. I promise I'll do my best. I'll do more than my best! thank you!” Lance had taken both Allura's hand in his owns and was saying the words with shiny eyes.

 “Of-of course, you're welcome?!” she questioned clearly as startled by Lance’s outburst as the rest of them.

 “Welcome to the team, Lance,” Shiro slowly put his hand on Lance’s shoulder, this time Lance didn't react beyond flinching. He stared at the hand before smiling at Shiro.

 Shiro and everyone else in the room smiled back at him. Everyone except for Keith, he wasn't convinced, even with the King's approval. He'd seen the look of relief on Lance’s face as Allura had said that, if Lance really had nothing to hide, why would he look so relieved?! No, Keith had to keep an eye on him until he knew for sure Lance could be trusted.

 Allura placed the bayard in front of Lance, “This is the blue—”

 “Holy quiznack, blue’s bayard! I looked everywhere in blue for this.” he picked up the blue bayard, everyone looked with interest, even Keith. It took the shape of a gun, Lance pouted, “Aw, come on! a blaster?! I can work way better with a bow.” 

 Keith scoffed, he doubted that very much.

 Lance’s head snapped to his side, “Got something to say angry shorty, say it to my face.”

 Did he just call me shorty?! What was he, like an inch taller?! 

 Keith stood up to his face, “Sure, I doubt you can shoot either.”

 He didn't like the way Lance smirked, all confidence, “Choose anything in this room and I'll shoot it in one shot.”

 “What?! No, there will be no shooting inside the castle.”

Keith ignored the advisor's words. He chose the tiniest farthest thing he could see, just out of spite. He pointed to a small turquoise castle light, on the wall out side the kitchen doors, barely visible, “There.” No way in hell Lance could make that shot, even if he was a good shot.

 “Petty, are we?”, Lance said before raising the gun, pointing.

No way! Keith's mouth snapped open as Lance hit the dot precisely.

 “That ... was amazing, young paladin!” Coran praised, the caslte completely forgotten.

 “I know,” Lance said smugly, eyes on Keith, the words clearly meant for him. “now, you got anything to say?”

 “Lucky shot,” Keith frowned, sitting down on his seat, crossing his arms. He was impressed. He hated that.

 Lance laughed at him, resting his hands on the table, “Wow, petty and a sore loser, tell me again why the red lion chose you?”

 It took everything in Keith not to punch that self satisfied grin off his face and only settle for glaring at him and then at the others, since they were laughing too.

 “So, how did you find the blue lion?” Hunk asked.

 Keith watched with satisfaction as Lance’s laugh died out. Though he felt like an ass for that as Lance spoke, “After Altea ... got destroyed. I had to stop zarkon. I went looking for the King to reform Voltron, but he refused. So I started looking for the lions on my own. After a lot of searching, I was only able to find the blue one. I guess the universe didn't hate me completely cause blue responded, to me. I started to take a few fights to Zarkon's soldiers, but there's only so much a one-man-army can do,” Lance tilted his head a bit and smiled at something, “Alright! A one-man-and-his-robotic-kitten-army can do. When King Alfor contacted me, I thought he had changed his mind about Voltron,” he looked down, “guess he hadn't.”

 “My father made a mistake by disbanding Voltron but we will fix it, we'll put the Galra back in their place,” Allura furiously said.

 Lance suddenly turned to stare at him, frowning. Keith frowned back, “Why weren't you dead with the rest of your people in the first place?!” he regretted the wording as soon as he said that, specially as all three Alteans winced.

“Keith,” Shiro scolded him quietly, so only he could hear. Because he did feel kind of like an ass, he mumbled a quiet sorry to the Alteans.

 Lance threw him a nasty look, guess I deserved that one, “Because I wasn't on Altea when it happened, I was on a ship.”

 “Coran! how could we not consider that? there could be other Alteans who lived!” Allura excitedly looked to the advisor.

 “No, there aren't.” Lance burst her bubble, clearly avoiding her gaze, “Zarkon hunted them down, one by one.”

 “And why did he let you live?” Keith asked, unable to keep the suspicion out of his voice.

Lance looked right into his eyes, “Believe me, if he had found me, I would be dead.” for some reason Keith believed that.

 Technically, he wasn't lying. Everything he'd said had happened. Though, he wasn't telling the truth either, at least not the whole truth. But he wasn't lying. Guess I should get used to lying if I'm gonna stay.

 That was the fact; if he wanted this chance, he'd have to lie to these people, these kind people who seemed to have trusted him so fast, well all except for Keith. And he wanted this chance. Honestly, he had no idea how he got it in the first place, why King Alfor hadn't told the princess everything was lost on him.

 Speaking of the princess, the way she'd say they'd put the Galra back in their place, she wouldn't have said that, specially with that much hatred in her tone if she knew Keith was Galra, would she? Could it be that they didn't know he was Galran? Had Keith not told them?!

 “So how did you guys find the lions?” he asked both to break the silence after his last answer, and to get more information on the situation.

 The four looked at each other. Shiro was the one to speak up, “Well me, Pidge's brother and his father were on a mission on Kerberos, a moon on one of the furthest away planets of our galaxy, when a Galra ship found us and took us as prisoners. That was a year ago. I, uh, don't remember much, but I was their prisoner, before I somehow escaped back to earth. Keith and these two found me,” he sent an appreciative look to Hunk, Pidge and Keith.

 The Galra had taken him and Pidge's family as prisoners? That was something Galra do as in more recently. He had to remind himself that it had been 10,000 deca-phoebs, so the Galra have been doing this for much longer than he remembered. So, they were responsible for the man's mechanical hand. How had he gotten that? From the arenas? Lance tried not to shudder.

 "I knew garrison was hiding something, those lying bastards!”  Pidge said.

 Hunk placed a comforting hand behind her back, “We were on the rooftop, not my idea just to clarify, when Shiro crashed. we ran into Keith while trying to get Shiro out of there.” 

 Hunk continued pointing to Keith, “After Shiro woke up and told us ‘hey guys, so aliens are real!’  this cryptid weirdo told us how he had been ‘sensing this energy’ ,” he did a gesture with his fingers Lance didn't recognize, “after he dropped out from the garrison.”

“Wait, He what?!” Shiro interrupted Hunk, looking to Keith with crossed arms and a frown. his expression looked like he was about to scold Keith, Lance always pulled the same look when he wanted to ... he stopped the thought before it would draw him in, now wasn't the time to think about that.

 “I believe you skipped telling me that part.”

 “Oh, don't give me that look, Shiro! you were gone and they kept telling me it was your fault. What else was I supposed to do?!” Keith's voice had a clear vulnerability in it, making Shiro's gaze soften.

 Pidge continued, “Anyway, long story short we found the red lion. It was really funny; Keith and the lion glared at each other for like 5 minutes before it finally let him in.” 

 “By the way, he flies like a crazy man! I threw up like 5 times. The lion got us away from a Galran ship and then got us to the castle,” Hunk finished the story.

 They didn't even knew the Galra existed? But one of them was Galran?! “So what? you guys didn't knew about Galra before that?”

 "Weren't you paying attention? No,” Keith answered. He really sounded sincere, apart from exasperated. Could it be that even he, himself didn't know? But how could he not know he was Galra?!

 Lance needed to be sure, he took a breath and tried to focus all his attention on his hearing, “So you hadn't even heard about the Galra? You had no idea they even existed?” he kept his eyes straight on Keith, waiting for him to answer, listening carefully.

 “Are you dumb?! I just said no! This morning was the first time we heard about them or any other aliens.” Keith answered, glaring at him.

 Nothing, his heartbeat was slow and steady, not a leap, not a quick stop, not even a change in the rhythm. The boy was telling the truth. He didn't know.

Oh gods. He didn't know. This was horrible. Lance suddenly felt sorry for him. How unlucky was he to be pushed to this fight against the Galra, when he didn't even know he was one of them?!

 “You still with us, buddy?” 

 A hand appeared in front of his face, draeing him out of the thoughts “Yes, sorry,” he told Hunk.

 Coran stood up from his seat, “Alright, young paladins, you all have had a exhausting day, you deserve some rest. Hunk you already know where your room is. The rest of you follow me.”

 They all walked behind Coran and the princess. Lance jogged up next to her, “So, what's with the weird ears? Are they all mutants, or something?!” He was curious, alright?

 She laughed loudly, out of the corner of his eyes Lance caught Keith glaring at them, he stuck his tongue out at him.

 "Believe me, that was my first thought upon seeing Shiro, he was not amused,” the princess said, “but apparently that's normal in their species, humans.” 

 “Well, this is my stop,” she turned to everyone, “have a good night sleep, paladins.” she walked to a room.

 Lance only got a glimpse inside, but it looked big, “50 GACs says she has the best room in the castle,” Lance told the others. Coran only laughed in confirmation.

"What's GACs?” Pidge asked.

 “Oh, Galra Authorized Currency,” Lance explained.
 

 Coran showed them one by one to their rooms until only Lance and Keith were left. He entered a new hallway and pointed to the two doors next to each other, “The red and blue paladins' quarters are next to each other, less walking for me!” Coran smiled.

"Yay, lucky me,” Keith muttered sarcastically under his breath. Lance tried not to sent him a look, he still felt sorry for the other boy.

 He waited until Keith was in his room, before going after Coran, “Coran, I was wondering, would it be possible, can I talk to King Alfor?”

 “Of course, my boy. just follow me,” Coran smiled and started walking.

 “So how does this work? Am I supposed to talk to a computer?” Lance asked, walking alongside the man.

 The advisor chuckled, “Oh no, young paladin. it would be just like talking to the King.”

 Right, Lance didn't really understand how that would work. He knew how Altean memory chambers operated but this sounded different. He followed quietly. Coran came to a stop next to a door and pointed him to go in, closing the door behind him.

 Lance took a deep breath, here we go.

 “Lance, I've been waiting for you.”

 What the quiznack?!

 Lance wasn't sure what he was expecting but it was certainly wasn't that. There, standing at the center of the room was a hologram of King Alfor. If he would ignore the transparent part, the King looked like the last Lance had seen him.

 Lance tried to get over his shock and bowed down quickly, “King Alfor.”

 The King nodded, allowing him to walk closer, “I suppose you're here to know why I didn't tell Allura?”

 “Yes,” Lance took another step forward, “I don't understand King Alfor, I know ten thousand years has passed but last time you didn't believe me. You said I wasn't trustworthy, but today you told her that I was? what changed?”

 The King smiled, Lance decided it was a sad one, “Back then I made a mistake, I made a choice to run when I should've stayed and fought. That mistake cost me Altea. I made another mistake when I didn't trust you, I should have given you a chance, Lance. I've made many more mistakes after that and the universe has been suffering for 10,000 years because of my wrong choices. Countless innocent lives have been taken because of my mistakes. I believe my daughter can mend those mistakes, help this universe but if she's going to fix this, she's going to need help, your help. She wouldn't have accepted it had I told her.”

 Oh, the King had decided that he was worthy? He was willing to give him a chance? That was everything Lance had hoped for, even if it was after ten thousand deca-phoebs.

 He kneeled down before the King, “Thank you, I swear I will do everything in my power to defeat Zarkon.” that was the truth, it didn't matter what was needed of him, he would do anything, anything, he would give up his life in a second to stop Zarkon.

 “I know,” the King nodded at him, “it's ok, my boy. get up.”

 Lance stood up.

 “Can I ask you for a favor?” 

 “Anything,” Lance answered.

The King smiled at him, “Can you promise to look after my daughter? I know Coran will, but well,” he made a small laugh, “she's stubborn and sometimes even reckless, Can you make sure nothing happens to her?” 

 Lance nodded, “I promise to do everything in my power to keep her safe. I will put her life and well-being above,” Lance swore. After what the King had done for him, Lance owed him that much.

 “Thank you,” He smiled at Lance. “Coran, I know you're listening in on us, come inside.” King Alfor said voice filled with amusement.

What?!

 Lance tried not to let panic overtake him as the door slid open, an embarrassed looking Coran walking in. How long had he been there? Had he heard everything? Oh gods, What was Lance gonna say now?

 He felt a hand on his shoulder, or at least a sensation of one, the King smiled at him reassuringly, “I think we should tell him.”

 What?! Is he quiznacking crazy?! Living in a computer for ten thousand deca-phoebs had clearly gotten to him. Lance should've known something was up when the King had decided to trust him, “King Alfor, we—”

 But the King held up his hand, silencing him, “You'll need his help if you're going to keep this from my daughter.” 

 Well, he had Lance there. Lance gazed at where Coran was standing, just a few steps behind, eyeing them both with curiosity. Lance sighed; he really didn't want to be the one who told him, to witness as that kind look he was giving Lance turned into one filled with hatred.

 It seemed like the King realized that, because he started speaking instead of Lance. Coran was quiet for a few moments, in shock after the King was done, but then, Quiznack, he went into a outrage. And yeah, there was the hateful look Lance had feared. He started yelling, cursing words that would make even Lance blush in any other situation, if they weren't pointed at him.

 Angry enough, Coran was walking to the door. He would tell everyone. No, please. Lance couldn't let him do that, he tried to stop him. He reached for the man's arm, asking him to just listen, but the older man pushed him away looking at him with disgust. Lance tried to ignore the hurt, gods knew he’d have looked at himself like that too.

 Somehow, somehow, the King managed to calm Coran down. As he started explaining Coran's looks at him changed. The anger was clearly still there, but understanding started to unfold in his eyes. A thoughtful expression taking place on his face. He even asked a few questions from Lance.

 And then to Lance’s utter surprise he agreed to help him. Lance couldn't believe it. He couldn't believe it as he thanked both man. He couldn't believe it as they both said good night to the King and left. He couldn't believe it as the advisor wished him a good night even if there was a newly found sharp edge to his tone, and clear suspicion and harshness in his eyes. He couldn't believe it as he walked the castle's halls. He was getting this chance and he was getting help.

 He smiled happily as he walked to the hallway of his room. Yet, stopped in his tracks as he saw Keith leaning to his door, arms crossed over his chest. Lance almost felt sorry for the ground with the way Keith was glaring at him.

 “I'm pretty sure that's my room,” Lance said as he walked closer to the door.

 Keith's head snapped up to him, “Where have you been?!” he asked in a hostile voice.

 Well, Lance hadn't been expecting the question, “Uh.”

 Keith untangled his arms and took a step towards him, “I don't trust you. I know everyone else does. But I don't. I'm keeping my eyes on you.”

 Lance was panicking internally, but really there wasn't anyway Keith could actually find out the truth without being told. So he placed a calm mask on his face. He smirked and leaned in towards the other boy, “Well then, I'll be sure to give you a good show,” he winked, striding past the boy to his room.

 He laughed as he heard a loud huff coming from the closed doors.

 Lance checked out the room and the bathroom, excitedly checking the products in the cabinets. His skin had been without them for far too long. He took a quick shower and lied on the bed. Man, it had been what? phoebs? deca-phoebs? since he'd laid on such a soft place. He stared at the ceiling.

 Tomorrow, was a new day. Tomorrow, he'll start his fight, but tonight he was gonna mourn. Not for Altea, he'd already mourned that loss years ago. He'd already cried over the people, his family there. No, he was crying for losing one single person, the only family he was left after Altea.

 How long had he waited? How many years had he hoped for Lance to return, before realising he wasn't? Had he hated Lance? giving up on him? Or had he held out hope for the rest of his life that Lance would somehow show up?

 He pushed his face to the pillow to stop the cries going outside. He had failed the one person he promised himself he would never have. He had abandoned him. A part of his brain reminded him that it wasn't his fault, that he'd been sleep for ten thousand deca-phoebs. But he should've tried harder before that. He should've gotten him out of there.

Chapter Text

 Keith pushed the pillow over his head, trying to cover his ears as the most ungodly sound he'd ever heard, broadcasted through the castle. What the hell is that? Was that an alarm?!

 “Everybody up! Zarkon's attacking. The Castle's about to be destroyed. Go, go, go! We need Voltron, now!”

 Ugh, fuck Zarkon and his stupid timing. Couldn't he attack 3 hours later?! With one last sigh, he reluctantly abandoned the warmth of his bed and started running. How much sleep had he gotten? One hour? 2 hours?!

 He stormed in the main deck, bending over with his hands on his knees to catch his breath. Looking around, it appeared he was the last one there. But to be fair his room was the furthest away, except for ...

 “Well, look who decided to finally join the parade.”

  Speak, well think, of the devil and he shall appear. Right in the blue paladin's seat was Lance, half-sitting half-lying in full armor. Face on his hand, resting his elbow on one arm-chair, his other hand laying over the top of his seat, legs crossed, shaking his foot, and worst of all grinning at Keith.

 That guy was not the first person Keith wanted to see in the morning, or ever, he looked to the princess, “What the hell is going on?” he asked, Hunk nodding next to him in pyjamas.

 Princess Allura frowned at them, “Coran and I decided to test our new paladins—”

 Lance interrupted her hopping off his seat, “Guess which one failed,” he smirked at Keith.

 How dare he smirk at me like that? he was the reason Keith hadn't been able to get any sleep last night, and therefore was the last one here. Wait a second ... how the hell had Lance gotten there so fast?

 He frowned, “How did you get here so fast?!”

 Princess answered, instead of Lance, “Oh,  Lance has been up and helping for hours,” she announced proudly, making Lance grin, even wider, rubbing it in Keith's face.

 Yet, Keith was too busy thinking to care. Allura said Lance had been up for hours. Hours? Then how the hell does he look so good?! And not as in look good look good, but as in why wasn't he having red eyes or any circles under his eyes?!

 Keith doubted the other boy knew, hell he had found out about it last night too; but the castle's walls were thin, really thin, and considering Lance’s and his rooms were right next to each other, Keith had heard him cry all night. To say the least It hadn't been a pleasant experience. Jesus, some of his sobs had sounded so broken, so heart wrenching that even Keith hadn't known whether he wanted to ask him to stop, or to go comfort the boy. He hadn't done either. But he hadn't been able to sleep neither, he had a heart after all. Lance’s cries had stopped just a few hours ago and considering what Allura had just said, Lance clearly hadn't gotten a single bit of sleep last night. So how the hell was he so energetic right now?!

 “I thought the red paladin was supposed to be fast, how come you were the last one here?” Lance taunted.

 Oh, okay, fine! he asked for it, “I was lacking sleep, cause someone kept me awake all night.”

 He heard Pidge's gasp and Hunk's ‘Someone what what, now?!’ But Keith's eyes were on Lance. He smirked and raised his eyebrow, and Keith just knew he was gonna say something annoying, “I know my beauty is out of this world, but I can't believe it kept you awake all night … oh wait, I can,” he finished with a self satisfied wink.

 Yup, annoying. But Keith didn't let it get to him as he had an answer, he smirked, “Oh no, it was the noise that kept me awake.”

 He watched as Lance’s smile vanished growing pale as realization set in for him. The Altean boy looked down, bitting his lip, “Oh, sorry. Won't happen again.”

 Keith ... hadn't expected that.

 “Uh, what just happened?!” he heard Hunk whisper to Pidge.

 “I don't know but I think Keith finally had his first win against Lance,” she answered.

 Except that Keith didn't feel victorious, not considering the way Lance’s shoulders had slumped or how his eyes were suddenly glued to the floor.

What the hell is wrong with me?! 

 Keith was supposed to be keeping an eye on this guy, not feeling sentimental towards him. For all he knew, Lance had cried liked that just to make Keith feel sorry for him and let his guard down. He ignored the big part of him that told him that was ridiculous.

 “Well, if this ridiculous drill is over, I would very much like to go back to sleep.”

 “Yes, I second that,” Hunk backed him up.

 Keith turned to leave.

 “Did not take you for the sleep enthusiast type.”

 Oh, that guy just didn't know when to shut up, did he?! Keith took a step back towards Lance and glared at him, his hands curling into fists, if only the others would let him land those fists home, “Again, whose fault is that?”

 Lance frowned at him, “Hey, I said I was sorry. you don't have to be such an ass about it. It's not like I did it on purpose.”

 “I don't know; maybe you did!” he snapped.

 Lance gave him the most incredulous look and huffed, “Oh, just shut your quiznack, Keith!”

 Wasn't quiznack a curse word? That didn't even make sense? “I don't think you're using that word correctly.” 

 Oh, okay, Keith had been wrong before; now, Lance gave him the most incredulous look, throwing his hands in the air, “Oh my gods! Don't tell me how to use a word in my own quiznacking language!”

 Keith had had enough, “You know what? I can't deal with your stupid face right now. I'm going back to bed,” he turned to leave before Lance could say any more stupid irritating things.

 “I'm doing that too,” Pidge said at the same time Lance yelled, “there's nothing stupid about my face!”

“Paladins, paladins,” the princess’s voice made them all calm down, “please, you have to understand the importance of your mission; Zarkon has already conquered most of the known universe, and thousands of planets. But if that doesn't motivate you enough,” she typed something in the platform, revealing a star map hologram, “earth is here. Sooner or later the galra will attack there, too.” she pointed to the tiny planet.

 “Oh, no.” Hunk gasped.

 So did Keith. Sure, he really wasn't that tied to earth, nor did he had anything, beside his shack, or anyone there to return to, but it still was his planet. He had lived there all his life. he didn't want it in Galra's hands. His breath hitched.

 “We won't let that happen.”

 What?! Was Lance trying to comfort him? Even after how much of an asshole Keith had been to him, just a minute ago? But as he looked up to the Altean boy, he realized the statement hadn't been for his reassurance, nor any of the other three humans on the castle.

 “Zarkon won't harm any planet ever again.”

 The sheer determination and the intense gaze Lance had on his tiny planet made Keith be able to think only about one thing: what is his story?

 “No, he won't,” Allura said placing a hand on Lance’s shoulder and smiling at him, one which Lance returned. Well, those two are getting close pretty quick. which wasn't good, at all; if Keith's distrust turned out to be anything real, it wouldn't be good if princess was attached to the boy. Not that the rest of them were any better.

 Sadly, Keith didn't get to get any more sleep; as it turned out princess and Coran did have something planned. With all 5 lions present, now Shiro could access the black lion; which meant they could form Voltron.

 There was just a tiny itsy bitsy problem; they had no idea how to form Voltron. Nothing they thought of worked, flying in formation hadn't worked. Keith had even suggested stacking on top of each other, which Lance had a good laugh over, cause apparently even Alteans had a sport like cheerleading. Thankfully, Keith pointing out that he didn't have a better idea, satisfyingly had ended his laugh and made him shut up. Not thankfully, Keith's suggestion hadn't work.

 They hadn't even been able to form Voltron when Allura made the castle attack them like a mad woman. Are all aliens crazy? Or were all Alteans crazy? Coran was somewhat crazy, Lance was without doubt insane, and now Allura?

 Pidge called their efforts ‘an epic fail’ and honestly, Keith could not agree anymore.
Eventually, the attacks stopped and they flew back in, which, of course did not sit very well with the princess as she threw them to fight against the gladiator in the training room, that Keith gladly noted existed.

 That had been to use Pidge's words; an even more of an epic failure, or at least Keith thought so as he saw the his three friends sprawled on the floor next to him. Yet, apparently Lance somehow defeated the gladiator on his own?! as Keith heard the princess praise, “Not bad, Lance.”

 Well, technically that wasn't a praise, but from princess-no-chill it counted as one.

 Unfortunately, Keith had no idea of whether Lance had actually earned the compliment, nor of how he fought, because as soon as the fight had started Shiro had gotten a flash back and Keith had been busy calming him down. Fortunately, he got to see Lance's fighting in their next training

 Wait, no ... scratch that. That was very very unfortunate. Because Lance was good. The training was that they had to protect each other not to get shot. Lance had managed to stay more than anyone, even more than Shiro! How was that boy a better fighter than Shiro, who'd been fighting in the arenas for a whole year?!

 Since Keith and the others had all been shot and thrown out of the fight, they all got to watch Lance fight against the bots alone.

 And he really was good, much to Keith's dismay. The way he dodged the blows, the way he never missed any shots, the way he moved, that annoyingly satisfied smirk, he really looked like he was enjoying himself.

 And really Keith wouldn't call the way he was moving, fighting. Keith had never been a fan of dancing nor had he ever danced before. He didn't had anyone to dance to, but that's what Lance looked like he was doing; evading the shots, making his owns. Every motion following the previous one like he had a rhythm like a flow. Like the fight was a song and he was playing it. It was mesmerizing. Keith couldn't have looked away, had he wanted to. He didn't.

 How dare he look so graceful?! when Keith had seen him trip over his own foot, twice, on the way there from the bridge which wasn't that far! How dare he look that beautiful?! Asshole!

 It looked like no one else could look away, either. Once Lance had finished the level, making all the drones disappear, he turned to them, smirking at their stunned faces

 Who the hell is clapping hands for him?! As if that guy needed anything to reinforce his ego. Keith looked for the source of the sound, unexpectedly, he found it, them on the floor next to Allura. The mice were cheering Lance.

 Ugh, Lance bowed down in a theatrical way, “Thank you! thank you! not my best performance, but certainley not my worst.”

 The word ‘show off’ popped in Keith's head and he did not restrain himself from saying it out loud.

 Lance placed a hand on his hip, “Well I did promise you a show, didn't I?!” that bastard, “and looks like you've been enjoying it so far,” he added with a wink.

 Keith felt his face go red. Fuck that guy! Keith glared at him which of course made him laugh even more, seriously fuck that guy!

 Keith didn’t have to suffer for much longer as the next training was an invisible maze and the perfect opportunity to get back at Lance. A sort of trust exercise, which momentarily made Keith wonder. That maybe he was the reason they couldn't form Voltron; because he didn't trust Lance? but he didn't ponder on it; It wasn't something he could change right now.

 Keith joined the others on the control room on top of the training room. Thanks to Coran ignoring Lance’s protests to it, Keith got to lead Lance out of the electric walls of the maze.

 This is gonna be fun. Keith decided, smirking. He ‘accidentally’ told Lance to go the wrong way a few times.

 “You're doing this on purpose, aren't you?!” Lance called, pouting at the direction of the control room as he hit another wall, “ow!” 

 Keith smirked but didn't answer. To be fair, even the times that Keith didn't gave him the wrong directions, Lance still wouldn't listen to him. And really Keith couldn't stop now; Lance made the dumbest funniest faces everytime he hit a wall.

 But alas Keith's enjoyment was quite short-lived as Lance finally finished the maze, and Coran told them to switch places. Information that I could've used a few minutes earlier, Coran! Before, he had half-electrocuted Lance to death.

 Keith silently gulped as Lance’s voice came from the control room through the comms. Even from this far he could see the grin on Lance's face, “Well, well, well. let's have some payback.”

 Yup, he probably wasn't gonna leave this maze alive. At least Keith had had the decency to tell him a few correct directions. Lance, however, didn't show him the same courtesy. In fact, every single direction he'd given Keith so far had been wrong, and worst; he shamelessly laughed everytime Keith electrified himself, which was about every three seconds. The bastard didn't even try to sugar-coat it:

  “I think you missed one wall there, you  might wanna go back and touch it. We  wouldn't want your I'm-gonna-hit-every-  single-wall-in-my-way streak to end!”

  “Wow! I think you're actually breaking the  records for times hitting walls there”

 “Doing great, Keith, absolutely electric!”

 Keith gritted his teeth, trying to ignore the comments as they went on. But how the hell could he? Ignoring Lance’s comments, and really really bad puns on their own would've been hard enough, but ignoring Lance’s comments while getting electrocuted? That was just impossible. Keith grew more frustrated and irritated by the second.
His head hurt, his hair had started standing on their ends. fuck, another wall. I'm going to kill him!

 Finally, finally, the maze finished and then Keith was out for blood. It took him two seconds to get to the control room. As soon as he set foot in the room, Lance shrieked and had the audacity to laugh and run, hiding behind an also laughing Shiro. In fact, Hunk and Pidge were laughing too. The only ones who weren't were him and Coran.

 Keith had noticed the sharp looks Coran had been sending Lance that day. Maybe he wasn't that alone in his distrust after all.

 But none of that was important right now. He had to deal with Lance, who somehow was hiding his entire frame behind Shiro, only his face visible.

Like that's gonna stop me, “Shiro, move, so I can kick his ass to the other side of this damned castle!”

 Keith didn't hear or care about Coran's offended noise.

 “You're really obsessed with my ass, aren't you? I mean I can see why but—”

 Lance stopped mid sentence, ducking Keith's blow from over Shiro's shoulder. He moved to the other side of Shiro, once again using him as a shield and stuck his tongue out at Keith, laughing.

 Oh, he is so dead! Keith activated his bayard.

 “Keith, calm down,” Shiro said, hands in the air in a peaceful gesture, “he's just messing with you!”

 I know, that's the fucking problem!

 “What's going on?! Why aren't you training?”

 Allura's angry voice made them all look to her. Standing in the door way, she had both hands on her hips, and was sending them a veey upset look.

 “It's Keith's fault, princess. he's holding us up,” Lance said with a sly grin.

 Oh, he did not! “YOU LITTLE SHI—”

 Shiro cut his yell of anger, “Keith, Princess Allura is right, we have to go back to training.”

 Fuck the training! Keith was teaching that guy a lesson. He charged at Lance, who looked far too amused by him to care, when someone yanked him back in place ... the princess?! 

 “That is enough, Keith!”

 Lance finally came out from behind Shiro; waving his hand at Keith.

Ugh, “I swear to god …” Keith tried to get back at him but the princess wouldn't let him budge! Were all Alteans this powerful? Keith couldn't get out of her grip on his armor.

 Lance seemed to notice his struggle, he smirked and took another step closer, “You,  my friend, have some serious anger issues”

 “I am not your friend!” he bit back.

 “THAT IS ENOUGH!”

 Even Keith winced at princess's furious yell, but thankfully she had finally let go of him.

“You are both acting like children! Don't you understand how serious this is? We're fighting against Zarkon in a war he's been winning for ten thousand years. Do you want him to stay in power for another ten thousand years? Because you're certainly acting like it!”

 Wow, way to make us feel bad. It wasn't like they've been slacking off or anything, all this had taken like 5 minutes?! She was making a little too big deal out of this.

 To Keith's surprise Lance took a step forward, bowing his head down at the princess, “No, of course not. You're right, princess. It was my fault. I'm so sorry, it won't happen again,” he said in a quiet voice.

 Keith squinted at him, thinking this was an attempt to flatter her but Lance was looking down, biting his lips, shoulders slumped. He looked like a kid who got yelled at for breaking a vase. Which he hadn't. To be fair Keith had started it. For some reason, suddenly all the anger he was feeling towards the boy, averted towards the princess; Why was she acting like they were her slaves or her prisoners?! They didn't sign up for this and yet here they, yes even Lance, were trying so hard! So what if they had a fight for a few minutes? It didn't mean she should be yelling like that. Keith glared at her, resisting the urge to say some of that out loud.

 She glared back at him and then at Lance, “See to it that it won't. Get back to your training.” The princess stormed off.

 “Aw, but I wanted to see if Keith would actually murder Lance,” Pidge quietly whined.

 She's weird. Keith liked her.

 “Wow, so Allura is scary. I'm not the only one who thinks that, am I?”

 “No, believe me; she's scary,” Shiro reassured Hunk.

 Coran and Allura gave them a few more trainings exercises. Gratefully, none involved any more fights for Lance to show off. Not that he looked like he would've given the chance. In fact after the thing with the princess, he'd been quiet and down, only following orders.

 Not that it matters! No annoying comments for me. That was good, right?

 They did without doubt fail each and every one of the trainings. It was frustrating, but none of them felt it as bad as the Princess. she looked like she was about to pull each and every hair out of her head, and that was a lot of hair.

 Currently, Coran was giving them the head-bands. From what Coran had explained earlier, this whole mind melding thing sounded like a violation of privacy to Keith. He didn't like it, but hey at least Lance looked even more uncomfortable than him, so it wasn't a total loss.

 They put on the head bands. Nothing happened. Maybe he should give it some time? He sat there, waiting for something, anything. Almost a minute passed, still nothing? Keith opened one eye to check if any of the others had been successful. He caught Lance doing the same thing. So at least he wasn't the only one having trouble.

 “Yeah, I'm not sensing any mind reading going on here, Coran,” Hunk said  opening up his eyes.

 “Oh, sorry paladins. Something seems to be wrong with the program. keep the bands on while I'll try to fix it.” 

 Great, well actually that was great; better than having everyone in his head.

 He heard a loud sigh of relief next to him. It was Lance, wasn't it?! He is hiding something, and suddenly it wasn't so great again. This could be the perfect opportunity to figure what his secret was, if Coran could fix the program.

 Yet as Keith looked up he realized it'd been Pidge who’d sighed. Why would she?! She'd already told them about her family. Were every one on this team keeping secrets?! 

 After a few more minutes Shiro asked, “Coran, are you sure you can fix it anytime soon?!”

 The advisor's cheery voice answered, “Of course, they didn't call me Coranic for no reason! back on Altea I was—”

 Keith didn’t hear the rest as all he suddenly could hear was a scream, no, not a scream, more like a thousand screams, like millions of screams going through his head all at once! Fuck, his head felt like it was tearing open. What is that?! Was that from the head band? he took it off before his ears would start bleeding or he would go deaf.

 “What, the fuck, was that?!” 

 Pidge's voice made him look around to see that once again he hadn't been the only one. The whole team looked startled; all head bands thrown off heads. Pidge was standing a few feet away from hers. Hunk had his hands on his ears. And Lance had curled into himself; honestly, could Keith blame him? he wanted to do exactly that too. What the hell was that? Why did it sound so pained? Keith shuddered as an echo of it rang through his ears.

 “Sorry paladins, that one's on me, I tried to make them work better by using the amplifier. I may have mistakenly set it to the highest degree, it only momentarily worked, though, so you should be fine.” 

 Wait …

 “So someone was thinking that?! Which one of you fuckers—”

 Shiro cut in, “Pidge, language, and it, uh, it was me. I was having another flash back moment.”

 Oh, oh god, what the hell had those bastards done to Shiro? Everytime Keith got reminded of how the galra had treated him, he hated them more and more. He wanted to hug Shiro but he was Keith, and he didn't feel that comfortable doing that around the others. He just placed a hand on Shiro's shoulder and gave it a reassuring squeeze. Shiro nodded and smiled at him.

 Coran picked up one of the head bands. “I'm afraid I don't know how to fix these currently.”

 Good, Keith really didn't want to experience that anytime soon, or ever again.

 “Maybe Pidge and Hunk can take a look at them later?” Shiro suggested.

 “Yeah ... sure,” Hunk said but with the way both him and Pidge eyed the head bands, Keith doubted it was gonna happen anytime soon.

 They decided to disband and have some free time before princess would show up and throw another tantrum or throw them to another killer robot.

 Naturally Keith followed Lance. Really, he should stop feeling sorry for the boy and start figuring out what he was up to.

 They hadn't been able to form Voltron.

 Lance felt like it was because of him. A quick question from blue and she reluctantly informed him that yes, it was.

The other lions knew. And they didn't trust him. He had to talk to them, convince them. The sooner, the better. and considering that they've gotten some break from the training; now, was the perfect time.

 He left the training room but didn't head to hangers, he couldn't yet. He was very much aware that Keith was following him. Not that surprising, considering the boy had very much said so last night.

 Last night, quiznack. he felt embarrassment filling him again at the reminder that Keith had heard him cry like that. Though, he hadn't told the others that, even if he had acted like a jack-ass about it.

 Anyway, he took a turn and waited for Keith to arrive. Keith took the turn and stopped as he saw Lance looking back at him. He looked surprised to be caught; really?! What kind of idiot had he taken Lance for?

 “Are you gonna follow me everywhere?!” Lance demanded.

 Keith didn't answer and just crossed his arms, lookimg away.

 “Well, I'm hitting the shower so feel free to join me, I can give you a real show there,” he  smirked, winking, hoping against the hope that Keith wouldn't see right through his bluff.

 Looked like the universe was on Lance’s side, for once, Keith's face turned red and he turned around leaving without a word, though Lance did hear him muttering “What the fuck?! He's crazy!”

Listening to him walk away, Lance let go of the breath he didn't know he'd been holding and started to actually walk to the hangers. Though, he was looking back, making sure Keith didn't change his mind suddenly. He jumped when someone cleared their throat.

 Oh, what in the heavens now?!

 He looked back in front of him to see Shiro standing right there with folded arms and a frown. Oh, hells, Lance sincerely hoped this wasn't about what he thought it was.

 “Lance, we need to talk.” 

 Wow, he really has the authority figure thing going on. “Sure, what about?” Lance tried to play it cool.

Shiro squinted at him, “You know what about.”

 "Actually I have no idea.”

 Maybe if he acted like he had no clue, Shiro wouldn't press.

 “Lance, that wasn't my thought in the head bands. and considering I know it wasn't those 3, it had to be yours,” 

 Or maybe he would.

 “Or it could've been just a malfunction?!” Lance offered.

 Shiro looked at him in a way that clearly said; I'm not falling for it, “Lance.”

 “Shiro.”

 The man sighed, “Lance, I'm serious.” 

 Of course you are! because gods forbade I have two wins in one day. He sighed, he did at least owe it to the man the truth. After all he had stepped in so no one would know it had been Lance. “Fine, it was me,” Lance reluctantly admitted, “look, I really don't know how it happened, but I'll make sure it won't happen again, okay?” How many times had he said that sentence since this morning?! he was the king of messing up today. first with the princess and now this.

 He was looking down, so he didn't see how Shiro's face softened but he did hear it in his voice, “Lance I'm not, I'm not scolding you. I'm worried about you.” 

 What?! That didn't make any sense, they just met. He could accept why they had let him in the team so blindly; for the sake of Voltron. But for them to worry about Lance?! He couldn't even remember the last time somebody had worried or even had given a quiznacking damn about him! Who are these people?!

 Shiro, apparently, took his lack of answer as a cue to go on, “I know we just met and you probably don't feel comfortable with us enough. But it's obvious you've been through a lot and I know it can make you feel better if you talked about it, not necessarily to me,  to anyone but it can't be good to keep it inside. Whatever … that was, you don't have to deal with it alone.”

 Lance was at a loss for words. He really didn't know what to say to this much care and niceness. And he really didn't want to say anything about what he had remembered, so he just looked down.

 He heard a sigh, “It's okay. I get it; you still don't know me enough yet. I hope after some time you'll be able to confide in us more,” Shiro looked sad, even disappointed.

 Honestly, Lance wouldn’t tell someone he knew about this, but he hated that he had made the man look like that. Who was he to do this to these people?! Taking a breath in, he spoke, “l, um, when Coran said Altea, I just, well I remembered … let's just say the destruction of Altea, wasn't as quick and painless as the princess and Coran believe,” Lance closed his eyes, shuddering as the memories flooded his mind.

 “You were there?” 

 Lance opened his eyes to see Shiro looking at him with wide ones.

“Yeah, I was on a ship. I saw ... it happen. there was nothing I could do,” his mouth dried. That's a lie. Lance shrunk to himself at his own words.

“Oh, Lance.” Shiro said, pity evident in his voice, I don't deserve that, before placing a hand on Lance's shoulder, “thank you for telling me this and for trusting me.”

 What? He was thanking Lance for trusting him?! As if that was the issue; him trusting them, and not the other way around. He didn't deserve their trust, nor to be thanked for reciprocating it. He didn't deserve the comforting smile Shiro was offering him as if Lance had done something good. He shrunk even more to himself.

 Shiro removed his hand, “I'll let you go back to ... whatever you were going to do."

 “Wait,” Lance called before Shiro could turn away, “don't tell princess Allura and Coran?There's no point making them suffer for something they can't change.” There really wasn't. What was the point of them knowing how much the other Alteans had suffered?What was the point of them knowing their pain, their screams? Quiznack, Lance wished he could forget about it. To get it, them out of his head for one single quintant.

 Shiro smiled at him, “Of course.”

 See, Lance had spent his fair share of time with mind melding head bands, so when Coran had suggested they do the excercise, he had been able to keep his panicking to a minimum. At this point, there was no way any of them could see anythjng that he didn't want them to in his head.

 Unfortunately, when Coran had told them the head bands were having problems, he'd let his guard down. So when Coran had mentioned Altea, everyone had heard the quiznacking memory that had popped in his head. Thankfully, he had been able to take back control quickly, before anyone had seen anything. Which he really wished on no one to see a scene like that. But he could never afford a mistake like that again! What if it had been another memory, like ... no, he shook his head; he won't make a mistake like that ever again.

 Lance made sure he was out of the view, before going to the hangers. He felt the lions tense up as he walked in. Well, all except blue who was sending him encouraging words.

He took a breath in, Well, here we go.

 You can do this, Blue assured him, making him smile. He really must've done something incredible in his past life, because nothing he'd done in this one made him worthy of her. Lance could sense her discomfort without her needing to use words. She hated when he talked like that. Yes, yes, I know, blue. but now's not the time.

 He walked forward to stand in the middle of the lions. He took a deep breath, clearing his mind. Slowly reaching with his mind towards each lion. He pulled back quickly as he felt the burning sensation of hot flames; Red lion, obviously.

He sighed. Alright, doing this the old fashioned way. He listened carefully to make sure no one was anywhere near the hangers to hear him. Nothing.

 Lance took a step forward, purposely towards the red lion. He had a feeling red was the main reason the other lions had an issue, “I know you don't trust me, and you have good reason not to, but believe me; I'm not trying to harm anyone here. I just want to pilot the blue lion, and if she would choose another paladin, I would gladly let them pilot her,” he stopped as he heard her loud roar in his head.

Never. He was hers. He was her paladin, she would never let him go. never replace him. Never exchange him for someone else. She had waited ten thousand deca-phoebs for him to return to her and she would wait another if she had to. He couldn't help but feel the warmth of her feelings; I love you too, blue, but I was in a middle of a point here. he felt her laugh.

 “As I was saying, before your sister rudely interrupted me,” he felt green and yellow's amusement; “she won't choose another paladin and I know I'm not a worthy paladin for her,” he finally sensed something from the red lion; even if it seemed to be an agreement on his worthlessness. He could feel blue was ready to roar at her red sibling; angry at their agreement. He asked her not to, “but I'm all you have right now. I'll promise to do everything in my power to keep you and your paladins safe but please, I need you to give me this chance, I need you to trust me, can you do that?”

 He felt blue sending waves of request to his siblings and backing up his every word. He felt a connection, an acceptance from green yellow and even black, albeit a hesitant one from the last.

 Red, however, stood silent. Lance expected that. he took another step, “Red lion, I know Keith doesn't trust me.”

 Red had been mostly blocking him but even he could feel red's pride at that. This time he didn't get a chance to stop blue from mentally roaring at her sibling. Obviously, red roared back. He had to stop them before they started actually roaring, instead of mental ones and draw the whole castle there.

 Blue, please calm down.

 He felt her complaint; she would not let anyone, even her precious sibling, insult him.

 Blue, please if any one in the castle finds out,  I'm done for.

 He got a sensation from her that she was skeptical of that but she calmed down anyway; for you.

 Thank you.

 He once again turned to the red lion, “I know neither of you trust me, but I promise; no harm, no harm will come to him from me. Please, King Alfor used to be your paladin, wasn't he? He has accepted me, that has to mean something to you. Please red, we need Voltron if we're going to defeat Zarkon. You do want him gone. You all do, don't you?”

 He heard five roars of agreement in his head; red being the strongest and black the weakest. That was expected; after all Zarkon did use to be black's paladin. Shiro would have to work on that. There was no doubt in his mind that Shiro would be a much better paladin than Zarkon for black.

 And what was important, was that red had accepted him, he could finally feel her letting go of the block in his way, he bowed his head down at her, “Thank you, and red, you can't tell him. None of you can, please.” he told the lions. He knew the other lions wouldn't but red ...

 “Red, please I can't lose this chance. please I'm begging you, don't tell him!” he put all his desperateness in his voice, pleading by his eyes and got the feeling blue was doing the same.

 He felt an uncomfortableness from red which eventually turned into her caving in. This time he felt what red psychically told blue ,something like; if you turn out to be wrong about him, I'm disowning you. he heard blue's laugh.

“Thank you, all of you. I won't fail you.”

Chapter Text

 It'd been 3 weeks since they'd arrived at the castle, 20 days since they'd found Lance. Life had been quite uneventful. Well, as much as living in an alien castle with actual aliens, and piloting sentient robots to form an even bigger robot, in order to defend the universe, could be uneventful.

 They had formed Voltron. It had been strange; one morning they couldn't and the next they could. Keith doubted it was because of all the ridiculous trainings Coran and Allura had made them do, but he wasn't about to question it. Specially since Coran had informed them; if they hadn't been able to form Voltron any longer, he was planning on handcuffing  them all together. Keith was glad that hadn't happened; Keith was having a hard time tolerating Lance as it was, he couldn't even imagine having him stuck next to him.

 But even though they had formed Voltron, something was still wrong, something still felt missing. They weren't really in sync. Like they were misconnected. Shiro had brought up the issue with Allura, and the princess's solution, naturally, had been that they should train more.

 They had gone into a routine after that; everyday they had trainings as Voltron, individual training with their lions, and individual and group trainings in the training deck. The last one was the most annoying one, because Lance for some reason had gotten the idea that he should train them on fighting. Not Shiro of course, but him, Pidge, and Hunk. Keith's immediate reaction had been refusal;

 After one of the training levels, Lance had turned to him, “Keith, I get that you're the red paladin and being the ‘instinct guy’ is your ‘thing’,” he had said saying instinct guy the thing with air quotes. That was another annoying, but kind of funny Keith reluctantly admitted, thing about Lance he'd taken an intense interest in earth's culture and he over did every little thing he learned. He had continued, “but if you stop and analyse the situation for even one tick before running into the fights, you'll get much better results.”

 Keith had rolled his eyes and given Shiro a look ‘can you believe this guy?!’ in which Shiro had responded with shrugging and saying, “he's not wrong, you know.”

 Even after that Keith hadn't listened, because who the hell was Lance to tell him how to fight?! alright, so actually it was mainly because it seemed to be driving Lance crazy. Lance had become almost as intense as the princess about the trainings after the whole ordeal with her. Normally, he was an annoying tease, messing with everyone, but once the training started, he became completely serious.

 “Keith, will you just listen to me?! I've even thought kids how to fight but you, ugh!” he had snapped at Keith eventually.

 “Are you calling me a kid?!” Keith had answered.

 “I don't have to call you one, you keep acting like one!” he had rebuked poking his index finger at Keith's chest.

 It had gone pretty down hill from there. Eventually Shiro and Hunk had to break them apart before they would get into a physical fight.

 Reluctantly, Keith had to accept his help after he saw how much Pidge and Hunk had improved in only a few days. Thankfully and very surprisingly, Lance hadn't rubbed that in—didn't mean he had stopped walking on Keith's nerves outside the trainings though. So, Keith had started taking some of his advice, of course in a way that would still annoy Lance, and he had improved too, a lot. Specially with his sword, and short range.

 That's how he'd ended up paying close attention to the way Lance fought for the rest of the week; for purely educational reasons of course, and not because it was practically impossible for Keith to look away from Lance once he started fighting.

 And that's how he'd noticed that Lance’s close combat skills weren't as good as his long range ones. Now, when Keith said weren't as good as he didn't mean he was bad at it, no, far from that. He was as good as Shiro. The battle between him and Shiro had been amazing. It had been almost a draw, but after a whole half an hour of fighting, Lance had won, and yet he had given praise to Shiro. He could be such a mystery to Keith sometimes.

 So unfortunately yes Lance was really amazing at close combat, but it was nothing, nothing next to his skilled shooting. Keith had waited the whole week for Lance to miss one target so he could throw a snarky comment. Lance hadn't.

 Currently, Keith was chilling in the kitchen after one of their training sessions. Fortunately, Hunk was there so he wasn't bored, as Hunk was making new dishes and making them try it. Them because, unfortunately, Lance was there too. Which to be fair he wasn't even bothering Keith, not at the moment anyway, but still Keith stubbornly wanted to keep thinking that he did.

 “This is amazing, Hunk! You gotta make Pidge try it. Where's Pidge anyway?!” Lance said with a full mouth. Keith made a disgusted face at him, which resulted in Lance showing him the contents of his mouth, like a fucking five year old, and laughing.

 Hunk scratched his head, “He's probably at the infirmary again?”

 "She's waiting for those prisoners again, isn't she?! I really hope they have some information on her family's whereabouts.” Keith watched with confusion as Lance’s shoulders dropped after saying that, staring down at the fork in his hand. Then he remembered that Lance probably had lost any family he had ten thousand years ago. Well, Keith could relate to that.

 Ugh, stop feeling sympathetic towards him. That was the problem with keeping your eye on someone 24/7; you noticed everything they did. Keith hated that because he was very much happy with continuing to hate Lance. And Lance, even with all his teasings and annoyances, was making it hard to do so.

 Hunk made a nervous laugh, looking nervously to Lance, “You meant he buddy, right? and his family, right?!”, Keith rolled his eyes. subtle Hunk, really subtle.

 “No I meant her, we were talking about Pidge, remember?!”  Keith almost wanted to laugh at explaining tone Lance had taken, like he was talking to a kid. Almost.

 “Haha, well Pidge is a he.” wow, Hunk was sweating.

 Lance frowned, “No, she is not?!”

 “Yes, she is, she is a he,” Keith mentally face palmed himself. Did Hunk hear himself?!

 “You just said she,” Lance pointed out.

 Hunk paled and sighed, “Alright, Pidge's a girl but you can't tell her that.”

 “Uhh, Hunk, I'm pretty sure she already knows?!” Lance questioned. Keith groaned; this conversation was gonna go on for a while, wasn't it?!

 “No, no. I mean you can't tell her that you know she's a girl! She doesn't wants us to know yet, or at least you guys, cause well she knows I read her diary. but I think she may gonna tell us, though I'm not sure?!” Hunk explained.

 “Wait, so let me get this straight; she's pretending to be a boy, and you know she's a girl pretending to be a boy but pretend that you don't, and she knows that some of you know she's pretending to be a boy but pretends that she doesn't, and you know that she does that and pretend that you don't?!” Lance asked with a ridiculous look and a serious tone.

 “Yup, that's pretty much it.” Hunk confirmed.

 Lance held his head in his hands, rubbing his temple, “That hurts my brain.”

 That was Keith's cue, “You can't hurt something you don't have.”

 Lance repeated his words in a mocking way.

 Keith frowned, “What are you, 12?!”

 Lance frowned back, “No, I'm 17. how is that relevant?”

 Now Keith really wanted to laugh at the confused look on his face, and he would've if it'd been anyone else. But since it was Lance, Keith just glared at him.

 Hunk, however, was laughing loudly, “He means you’re childish,” he explained.

 Lance huffed,  looking back at Keith, “You're kidding me, right?! You're calling me childish?”

 Keith smirked, using Lance’s own words from a few days earlier, “I don't have to call you that, you're acting like it.”

 He saw the fight sparkling in Lance’s eyes but Hunk stepped in, “Well, if you ask for my opinion. I think you're both acting childish.”

 “No one asked for your opinion, Hunk,” Keith said at the same time Lance said, “Yeah?! well no one asked for your opinion.” and then they both glared at each other.

 “You know you both just proved my point, right?” Hunk said effectively breaking their glaring match. Lance sighed and look away, “where's Shiro?”

 “I think he's checking on Pidge?” Hunk offered.

 “Allura and Coran are working on the castle again. I guess it's just us then,” Lance said placing his chin in his palm.

 Keith didn't really knew what Coran and Allura, and sometimes Lance were working on, and why Lance kept asking the other two when the castle would be operational. It was already providing them with water, security, ventilation, and heating system; I mean how much more operational can a castle get?!

 “No, it's just you. I'm hitting the training deck,” Keith informed, getting up. There was no way he was tolerating a whole evening of Lance.

 “Focus on your left,” Lance called after him, making him look back.

“What?”

 “You're always covering your right, but forget about your left side. that's why you get so many sneak attacks, so look out for your left,” Lance explained.

 He was trying to help and it probably was good advice. Keith knew that, it still didn't stop him from throwing a glare at Lance. Lance only stuck his tongue at him. He, he's definitely the childish one.

 Keith didn't take more than a few steps before castle's alarms went off.

“I swear to god if this is another drill, so help me ...” he told Hunk and Lance as they all started running. Because enough was enough, they already had done 3 drills that day.

 “Race you to the main deck?” Lance asked.

 Keith ignored him like he'd done every other time Lance had challenged him to something like that; it just felt too friendly, and Keith sure as hell did not count Lance as friend.

 Lance pouted looking away, “You're no fun.”

Keith rolled his eyes. That was the problem or one of the thousand problems Keith had with Lance; sometimes he was more serious than even the princess or Shiro, and other times he was a fucking 5 year old.

 They ran into the princess and advisor in the hallways, “Allura, what's going on?” Hunk demanded.

 “Someone's approaching the castle, we think it might be a local Arusian,” Allura answered walking quickly. They all followed her, Keith prepared his bayard in case the Arusian was a threat. But princess caught him from the corner of her eyes, “don't, Alteans believe in peace first.”

 Keith obliged deactivating the bayard, but he kept it in his hand just to be safe. They walked out the main door, the Arusian immediately hiding behind a bush as he saw them. Which really wasn't that useful; they all could see him clearly. 

 “Aw, it's adorable!” Hunk adored in a baby voice as they walked closer.

 “Maybe we can knit him a little sweater?!” Lance said making Keith want to face palm himself. Over the course of the past 20 days, Lance had proven to be way more crazy than Keith had initially thought. He said the most random weird things. What he just said being a case in point. 

 “I'm not taking any chances,” Keith informed activating his bayard.

 “Wow, nice to know your mistrust isn't exclusive just to me, it includes cute little creatures too,”  Lance commented sarcastically.

 Keith would glare at him, but he didn't want to risk taking his eyes off the Arusian, “I could list you at least a hundred creatures that are cute but dangerous.”

 “Oh?! Bet I'm number one on your cute-but-deadly list.” Lance winked.

 Yeah no, that definitely deserved a glare. Keith gave him the flattest look he could, one that said ‘not in a million years.’  And he considered pointing the bayard at him for the hundredth time these past days. Lance just laughed at him.

 Princess took a step forward, “Greetings. we know you're there. I promise no harm will come to you, little friend.”

 Yeah, Keith wouldn't bet on that, but princess gave him a look, “Keith, put that away.”

 Keith sighed deactivating the bayard. Why did no one ever listen to his warnings?!

 The Arusian walked out from the bush carefully, eyes scanning them, “I am Klaizap bravest warrior of my people, they've sent me to investigate the castle to know why the lion goddess is upset with us. why she is sending the giant and the five lionesses to dance in the sky?!”

 “Lion goddess?! Giant?! lionesses?! I think he's talking about Voltron,” Hunk whispered to them.

 “Really?! What gave it away?” Lance whispered back sarcastically.

 But Keith only focused on the part about the Arusian being a warrior, “This castle has been here for ten thousand years and you're investigating it just now?! I don't think so,” he said once again activating his bayard at the Arusian.

 “Ugh Keiiith,” He heard Lance sigh next to him, “maybe they're just not curious people, maybe they're just that lazy. stop pointing your sword at the cute Arusian! He's too short to be a threat ... I'm sure you can relate to that,” Lance said with a smirk at the end.

 “What the fuck did you just—” he stopped his sentence as he felt a sharp sting in the back of his neck and heard a clapping sound. Well, two simultaneous ones.

 “Allura!” Lance complained rubbing his own neck.

 “Stop offending our guest, you two and Keith, lower yout bayard.” Allura scolded. Did she ... did she just smack them?!

 Sure, she and Lance had become close enough for her to do that to Lance. Keith had saw them spend a lot of time together. The two had started vanishing together for hours after the first few days, and since following Lance was kind of his job now, he'd followed them to the holodeck interface where princess's father was. Keith had no idea what they were doing in there, Honestly what were they talking about in there?! 

 To be fair Lance had gotten close with Hunk too, and Pidge, and Shiro ... okay, he had gotten pretty close to everyone but Keith and maybe Coran a little. but the point was considering their quick closeness maybe Lance was okay with her Gibbs-slapping him, but Keith was not.

 Who did she think she was?! She may be a princess but all her people were ... well, dead. So currently she was only the princess of Lance and Coran. And Keith sure as hell did not count her the princess of his. He disobeyed, raising his sword.

 He didn't know what happened or how but one second he was holding his bayard, next it was out of his hands and in Lance’s, who was smirking at him.

 “What the—”

 “Told you to watch your left," Lance explained victoriously.

 “Give it back,” Keith said reaching for his bayard.

 “Nah,” Lance raised his hand in the air, effectively taking it out of Keith's reach. It didn't stop Keith trying, even though he knew how ridiculous they might look.

 “What's wrong?! Can't reach?” Lance taunted, raising his eyebrow.

 Fuck him and his stupid long limbs.“Give it back,” Keith said through clenched teeth.

 Lance’s mischievous smile vanished as he lowered his hand, “Okay, but only if you stop pointing it at him.”

 Keith considered his options. The bigger, more stubborn part of him wanted to punch Lance, take the bayard and point it at the Arusian, but he was pretty sure if Lance wanted to, he could kick his ass in matter of seconds. And plus Klaizap wasn't really holding a threat, at least not at the moment. If he did, well keith wasn't exactly making any promises. He nodded reluctantly.

 Lance handed him the bayard, his mischievous smile had returned and before Keith  could react, Lance petted the hair on his head, “Who's a good boy, Keithy?”

 That bastard! Keith didn't care that Lance could kick his ass right now; he went for the fucking punch.

 Lance ducked like he'd done every single time Keith had tried that, “no! No! Bad boy!” he said laughing and using an also laughing Hunk as coverage. The only reason Keith didn't pursue him was Allura's frustrated voice.

 “Are you two done? Can I continue now?” she said in a voice that clearly meant dare to continue and see what'll happen.

 Keith nodded before glaring at Lance who winked at him. Fucking Lance.

 “The lion goddess is not upset with you,” princess assured the Arusian.

 “How would you know?” he questioned, tilting his head

 Hunk bent down a little, “Little dude, this is her castle, she is the lion goddess!”

 The Arusian gasped looking up at the princess in awe. Allura smiled, “please bravest warrior, take us to your people.”
Keith sent a questioning look to her as they followed Klaizap.

 Keith didn't need to look at Lance to know he was smirking as the village emerged and small Arusians came to their welcome. Because yes, they were very cute.

 Lance picked up two of the smaller ones, “Me, I can get but I can't believe you felt threatened by these cuties.”

 Keith gritted his teeth to resist the urge to tell him he wasn't threatened by him and he could kick his ass if he wanted to, which wasn't true like at all.

 The five of them watched as Klaizap went talking to a bigger and older Arusian. He started walking to them bowing down in front of the princess, “Oh, lion goddess, I king of the Arusians, formally beg for your forgiveness. please have mercy on us and accept our traditional way of forgiveness.”

 A smaller Arusian walked in front of them started moving, well ... weirdly was the only word Keith could use for it.

 “What is she doing?” Hunk whispered to him and Lance.

 “I think she's failing at some sort of crazy dance?” Lance whispered.

 Keith gave them both a victorious look, “Ha, I was right they are crazy!”

 Lance rolled his eyes at him, which made him glare back, “Keith, just because they have weird traditions, doesn't mean they're—” Lance’s eyes rounded at something, “actually never mind, you might be on to something ... Allura, what are they doing?”

 Keith looked at where he was pointing. The Arusians had started a big fire and were walking towards it ... what?!

 “I told them there was no need for whatever that was and they started doing this,” Allura answered, looking confused, and horrified which were both understandable.

 The king turned to his people, “The goddess has refused our dance of apology, we must throw our selves in the sacrificial fire to earn her forgiveness.”

 “No!” all five of them yelled together.

 The king looked to them hopeful, “We may proceed with the dance?” he asked.

 “Um, sure,” princess answered, sounding very unsure.

 As the Arusian started dancing again Lance said, “Wow, would you look at that, apparently there is a first for everything; Keith was right, they are crazy.”

 Keith squinted at him, how was it that the little shit managed to insult him even when he was giving Keith a compliment?! Whatever, were they really gonna watch this? didn't they have more important things to do?

 “I'm sorry princess but don't we have more important things to do right now? like Voltron?” he asked.

 “Keith, part of Voltron’s mission is to spread peace and diplomacy, we have time for this. now quiet, you're offending our hosts.”

 Keith pouted, crossing his arms. Okay, sure this morning they didn't have time for him to drink a glass of water between the trainings, but they had time for this, but yeah, whatever, no biggie. And how horrible were these people at dancing?! He hadn't danced once in his entire life and he could do a better job than them.

 Thankfully, the horror show was over soon, and the princess sent them each to get to know some of the Arusians. Keith decided to sneak off as he saw how cuddly the Arusians were, and how many hugs getting to know them included. But of-fucking-course Lance didn't let him have some peace, “And this guy?! he is the king of hugs, he just liiives for them. you should all hug him once. actually you know what? go for as many hugs as you want, he really appreciates that.”

 Lance’s sentence wasn't even over before half the village started roaming to Keith for hugs. He glared at Lance angrily as Arusians started literally climbing him. Lance, of course, didn't have the decency to even look sorry. He was bending to hold his stomach from laughter.

 Seriously, fuck that boy.

 When Allura called Shiro's name worriedly, Keith almost felt thankful as he didn't have to deal with the remaining half of the Arusians who still wanted hugs with him. Though his good mood was quite short lived as he saw the gigantic ball of fire falling pretty fast from the sky.

 He put his helmet on, “Shiro, you okay?”

 “Get to your lions!” Shiro answered, ordering.

 “What about the Arusians we can't just leave—”

 The princess cut Lance’s sentence, “Coran and I will help them get to safety, You get to your lions!”

 “I'm on board with the safety plan,” Hunk said, starting to run with the Arusians. Keith grabbed a hold on his arm and yanked him back saying “not you!” at the same time Lance said, “we might need Voltron, Hunk.”
Keith realized Lance had grabbed Hunk's other hand in the exact same way he had.

 Hunk pouted but gave up, running with them, “What do you think that thing is?”

 “Who cares?! let's just get rid of—”

 Keith didn't get to finish his sentence as the ground suddenly shook at the impact. Whatever it was, it was here. The three were back on their feet. They all got into their lions.

 “Guys, we need some help here,” Pidge yelled.

 “We're coming,” Keith yelled to the comms as Lance said, “don't worry, we're on our way.” Keith was getting quite annoyed at this new-found synchronization.

 It took only seconds for red to arrive at the fight scene, what is that?! Was that a robot? If the purple color was indication, it had to be Galra.

 Keith tried to get over his shock quickly, as he saw how the robot had Shiro and Pidge's lions trapped, “Lay down some covering fire, so they can get out of there,” he said shooting at the robot but the blue lion remained unresponsive next to him and very much not helpful.

 “Lance!” No answer.

 What's taking Hunk so long? And why wasn't Lance truing to help? “Lance, they need help. I can't take down the robot by myself!” he yelled laying another shots of laser at the robot.

 “Lance!”

 The blue lion move. No matter how many times Keith asked for Lance’s help, it didn't lift a finger, or fucking paw, to help.

 I fucking knew it. Keith had been right. They shouldn't have trusted Lance to have their backs in a battle, a real battle. They shouldn't have trusted Lance at all. He hadn't even try to help.

 Keith sent another set of lasers, but the robot's body seemed immune to them. Come on, I have to get Shiro, and Pidge, out of there.

 It was actually Hunk who came through, “Check this out, battle lion head butt, haha get it, head butt?!” he said as he, well, head-butted the robot.

 “Yes, Hunk we get it, nice job.” Pidge said.

 Keith sighed in relief as he saw the green and black lion were okay, “Shiro, are you okay?” he asked just to be sure.

 “Still alive … for now,” Shiro answered.

 “I'm fine too, Keith. Thanks for the concern,” Pidge said, voice dripped with sarcasm. Keith felt embarrassed.

 “So we're thinking this is from the Galra, right?!” Hunk asked.

 “Probably, I mean it's all purple.” Pidge answered.

 “Ugh, those guys are ruining that color for me!” Hunk complained.

 “Yeah, even the gigantic box they sent it in was purple.”

 “It was in a box?! you think it has a return to the sender option?”

 “I wouldn't bet on it.”

 “Guys, focus!” Shiro said, effectively ending Hunk and Pidge's rambling.

 “So, what's the plan?” Keith asked, because if the lasers didn't work on the robot then red's fire power wouldn't work either.

 “I think Voltron is the only way we can defeat it.” 

 Lance?! That bastard!

 “You!” Keith yelled, turning his lion. He awas ready to shoot at the blue lion at its sight. He felt red’s uncomfortableness at the thought.  He took a deep breath in, because Lance was right, they probably needed Voltron to defeat that robot but afterwards?

 Nothing, nothing, would save Lance from Keith's anger. Lance did nothing when Shiro and Pidge were in danger. He did nothing. I knew we couldn't trust him.

 Lance stared at the gigantic robeast in front of him, feeling stuck. Even from this far he could feel the heavy waves of quintessence coming from the beast. He could hear talking, someone yelling his name, but he was too stunned to make out the words or answer; how?! How had she managed this? Last time Lance had heard of it, the robeast project had been nothing but a mere idea! Not even applicable with the knowledge Haggar had at the time. How? How had she managed to make it possible in such a short time?!

 10,000 deca-phoebs, he reminded himself. Why did he keep forgetting that?! It had been ten thousand deca-phoebs, not a short time. Panic rose within Lance, that was a long time; how many of her other horrible ideas had she managed to make possible?! What poor soul had she used for this one? How many killing machines had she created?! Oh gods!

 Calm down, in the end it was blue's calming voice that pulled him out of his swirl of thoughts, only to realize the robeast was no longer there.

 Quiznack, how could he lose his cool like that?! He opened the communication with the other paladins and moved blue towards them.

 “So, what's the plan?” he heard Keith ask.

 Even With what he remembered of her plans, Lance still had no idea how to defeat this robeast. But if there was one thing that had any chance against it, it was Voltron, “I think Voltron is the only way we can defeat it.” he offered.

 “You!”

 He heard Keith yell. Now, if he wasn't used to getting angry hateful shouts, that would've startled him. The red lion's head turn to his side, he felt a sensation of uncomfortableness from her. Whatever Keith was thinking was bad enough to put even red at unease. But Keith had every right to shout; why had Lance froze like that in the middle of battle? What if something had happened to Pidge and Shiro? Gods, he already felt guilty everytime he looked at one of his team, he would never have forgiven himself if they had gotten hurt because of him. Keith had every right to yell at him, just after they defeated the robeast.

 “Lance is right, let's form Voltron,” Shiro ordered, everyone complying. Lance tried to get over his guilt, at least for the moment, so it wouldn't affect the others in Voltron.

 It probably wouldn't anyway. They were still really horrible at forming Voltron, they couldn't connect with each other or work in sync. He'd heard enough of Voltron's adventures to know that never happened with the paladins of olds, at least not in the first deca-phoebs.

 And even if in situations like this, when their lives were at hand, they could work with Voltron, normally they couldn't. They really had to find a way to overcome that problem, if they wanted to have any chance against Zarkon. And considering the lions didn't have a problem with him anymore—red even joked with him sometimes now—and the team had bonded, well most of them, the only issue Lance could think of was his relationship with the red paladin. Or well lack of any relationship with him. Keith didn't trust him and he had every right not to. Lance only wished he could at least try to work with him. Though thankfully, sometimes on rare occasions, Keith did try, so Lance was at least hopeful. Not at the very second though, he could feel Keith's fierce rage dripping through the red lion.

 They formed Voltron, “Remember guys: we're one team, one unit fighting with one goal. Don't forget who the real enemy is.” Shiro said. Clearly, Lance wasn't the only one who could feel the anger the red paladin was sending towards him. The anger cooled down a little at Shiro's words. Lance had picked up pretty quickly that Keith held the black paladin's opinions very highly.

 Lance tried to focus as they charged at the robeast, it blocked red's punch but that made an opening for Pidge to blow at it from Voltron's left side, effectively throwing it back. Just as they were about to attack it again, Lance felt something, a large amount of quintessence, a ball of energy coming right for them. He didn't even had the chance to open his mouth to warn the others before it hit them from behind. Voltron fell to the ground as they felt pain go through them.

 “What the hell is that?” Pidge's image popped up.

 “Some sort of energy thingy?! An orb of energy? I don't know, man, space is weird,” Hunk offered.

 “But it seems to return to his hand so shouldn't it be a boomerang?” Pidge asked.

 “Focus, guys!” Lance snapped as the orb or boomr… whatever the hells Pidge called it headed straight for them.

 “Ugh, no. he's in serious mode again,” Hunk complained.

 “Yeah, we don't like serious you, bring the fun Lance ba—”

 Lance interrupted Pidge with a yell of “Duck!"

 Thankfully they reacted in time, dodging the orb.

“Alright, maybe keep in serious mode till after we finish this guy,” Pidge admitted as they charged for it. Of course just as they were about to land the blow home, the orb kicked them again.

 “How are we going to finish this guy?! He's totally winning our asses! Every time we focus on it, the orb hits us and everytime we focus on the orb—” Hunk went silent as the robeast charged at them, they successfully evaded it, “that happens!”  he finished.

 Lance’s mind was working fast looking for possible solutions; maybe they could trick it, making it hit itself with the orb? Or maybe they could … his thoughts got shattered as the orb came for them. They dodged again but in their moment of imbalance, the robeast sent the orb after them again, throwing them to the ground, Lance closed his eyes for a tick at the pressure of the impact.

 “Guys is that ... a village?”

 Pidge's questioning voice made him open his eyes, again not liking what he saw. She was right; the Arusian village was not that far from them.

 No, Panic filled him. No, no, no, they couldn't let them get hurt. He couldn't let them get hurt. Not again! He wasn't watching this again. No! He wasn't watching innocents get hurt again. Not like Altea. Before he could stop he was thrown into a spiral of memories that tried to drown him. He didn't stop it. He didn't stop them. He didn't stop him. The Alteans died right before his eyes. The planet died before his eyes and he didn't do anything.

 “Yeah, apparently there are local Arusians on this planet. They're too cute to die!” Hunk's voice brought him back to reality.

 Not again, never again. Lance wasn't letting anyone die on his watch, again, “No one's dying!” he yelled through gritted teeth, “we have to get it away from the village.”

 He didn't wait for anyone's agreement, turning on Voltron's heel, they ran in the opposite direction; thankfully they distracted it long enough getting it away from the village before the orb got them.

 “We're completely losing, guys,” Pidge announced. Thanks for stating the obvious.

 “Didn't you say Voltron was the strongest weapon in universe?!” Keith's image popped up.

 “It is!” Lance answered.

 “well, clearly, you're wrong, because that thing is stronger!” Keith retorted.

 Lance didn't know what it was, the absolute horror he was feeling for the Arusians; the guilt he was filling for not being there where Pidge and Shiro needed him; the fact that he still had no idea of how to defeat Haggar‘s creation; or the clear self satisfaction in Keith's voice when he'd said Lance was wrong that made Lance snap at him, “What is wrong with you?! Do you truly hate me that much that you prefer us and all those innocent Arusians dying to me being right?”

 He felt the waves of shock from the other lions and a hurt one from red as blue wrapped him in a soothing calmness.

 Keith's face on the image changed to something Lance couldn't or didn't care enough right now to decipher, “I didn't mean,  I—”

 Lance cut him off, “How are we going to defeat it?” he asked from everyone else. But before he got an answer,  he felt a call of help  coming from black, that wasn't normal, black was the quietest lion to him. Something must be wrong, “Shiro?!” when a few ticks past and the black paladin didn't answer him, he asked again, “Shiro, are you okay?”

 The lack of answer got the rest of the paladins' attentions, “Shiro, is something wrong?” Keith asked.

 “Why isn't he answering?” Pidge asked.

 Lance bit his lips nervously. This was bad, this was really bad. They had no idea of how to defeat this robeast and now Shiro wasn't responding? He considered his options, maybe he could ... ? But it was too dangerous, he hadn't done this in a while and he could hurt Shiro if he wasn't careful enough. No, he wouldn't do it, it was too risky.

 “Guys, we gotta move!” Hunk's voice made him see the orb was heading for them again. Oh, quiznack!

 “Why can't we move?!” Pidge screamed.

 “We can't move without the head of Voltron,” Lance explained.

 “Shiro, come on man, we need you!” Keith spoke.

 The orb hit them sending them to the ground.

 “I know how to beat him,” Shiro's voice made them all sigh in relief.

 Keith's voice immediately followed, “Are you okay?” he asked just as the orb came for them again, with Shiro back in control they dodged.

 “Yes, sorry for not responding. but I recognize the monster from my gladiator days.”

 Lance shivered at the reminder that Shiro had been forced to fight at the arenas. They listened as Shiro explained to them how the gladiator operated. at least now they knew its weakest points, Lance could work with that.

 They dodged a second too late and the orb hit them, Oh quiznack! why hasn't Pidge unlocked that shield yet?!

 “How are we supposed to defend ourselves without anything to defend with?” Hunk asked.

 “We'll just have to hold on until the third time the orb attacks and then we get our chance.” Shiro answered.

 “And then what?! Our lasers don't seem to be working on it!” Keith screamed to the comms as they evaded the second blow of the orb.

 Lance’s brain was ticking fast, Keith was right, They needed something to cut through, something sharp,  something ...

Something like red's sword.

 Red?! He called to the red lion; red, I know it's not my place to tell you when your paladin is ready, but if you don't let him unlock the sword right now, none of us might get the chance to see that ever happening. 

 He felt a hesitance from red, before the lion purred in agreement.

 “Uh, guys? I think red wants me to do something,” Keith said right after.

 “Well whatever it is, hurry up and do it!” Lance said as he saw the orb coming for them again. Hurry up, you idiot! He felt red's annoyance; she didn't appreciate him insulting her paladin. Yeah, yeah, you can be mad at me after we're out of the imminent death situation. He felt red laugh at him.

 The robeast was running towards them from the left, as the orb was only ticks away from hitting them from the right side. Keith's yell of anger came just as the robeast closed in on them from the left, Lance watched in amazement as the sword appeared, cutting through the beast.

 “You did it!” Hunk cheered Keith.

 Lance felt relief flooding him. They pulled through, they were alive, no one had gotten hurt, the Arusians were safe. He could feel a laugh forming in his mouth.

 “Ha, take that Lance! Now who can't watch their left?!”

 Lance tried not to feel hurt at the tone; as if for some reason Keith thought he wanted them to fail.

 Honestly, when Allura had asked him to train his fellow paladins he'd told her Keith wouldn't like it, but she had insisted so he'd complied. He had been right; Keith had clearly hated the idea. he had given Lance hells, until he had finally listened to him. and even after that he still gave Lance hells before accepting any of his tips and guidances.

 But it was still worth it to Lance as the way Keith had improved. He was truly talented with his bayard. If he kept it up and if he would just let Lance help, he could be a better swords man than Lance had ever been in a less than a deca-phoeb. And Lance wanted that to happen, because it would be good for Voltron, it would make them stronger. But Keith always acted like Lance was against that. He threw every little improvement he had at Lance, like Lance hadn't been the one who told him exactly how to do them.

 He was almost tempted to tell Keith the only reason he had the sword was because Lance had asked red, but they had won. That was what mattered. That was all that mattered.

 “Nice job, Keith,” Pidge praised.

 They flew back to the castle. Lance had only made it a few steps outside of blue before he heard Keith's yell of anger, “you!”

 “What?” Lance asked almost startled before remembering what had happened earlier. Oh.

 “Don't think I forgot about the little stunt you pulled,” Keith yelled, marching towards him.

 Lance was almost shocked by the utmost anger and hatred in his eyes. Almost. Keith's loud cries had taken the rest of the paladins' attentions too as Lance  could see them walking towards them from the corner of his eyes.

 “Care to explain why you didn't help Pidge and Shiro?! Unless it's what I told everyone the first day, that we couldn't trust you!”

 Keith's raised voice made Lance want to yell at him equally, but in his time here, he'd learned pretty quickly that that would only rile Keith even more, and even if Lance normally used that to poke fun at the red paladin, it wasn't something he thought he should be doing now; he tried to keep his calm, “Look, I'm sorry when I saw the beast I froze, I-I panicked—”

 He was cut off as the red paladin took a hold of the collar of his armour drawing him in, “How stupid do you think we are? You froze?! That's your explanation for almost getting Pidge and Shiro killed?! How—”

 Keith's words of furry were interrupted by Shiro, “That's enough, Keith.”

 Hunk nodded, “Yeah man, I mean you don't ever blame Shiro for freezing, and it could happen to any of us.”

 Lance didn't get a chance to sent him a grateful smile before Keith's hold on him turned tighter, “But it didn't, it happened to him! And I don't think it was a coincidence, why didn't you try to help them? Were you planning on them getting hurt? And don't give me that panicked bullshit, if you're truly that much of a coward then you shouldn't be a paladin, you should just let blue choose a true paladin instead,” he yelled to Lance’s face.

 Lance could deal with a lot, he could deal with Keith's lack of trust, Keith had a right to do so. He could deal with Keith's constant refusal of his challenges. he could deal with Keith's rejections of his constant offers of friendship. They hurt but he could deal with them but this, this he couldn't deal with.

 He had done everything in his power for this team. He analysed every one of them. Figuring what were each's strong suits and weak points, trying to help them with those. Staying up at nights, remembering his own trainings, figuring which one suited which paladin best. He'd planned training exercises for them. He'd helped Coran, even with the man's displeasure of tolerating him, with all the chores and all the fixing and cleanings around the castle. Quiznack, he hadn't slept in five days, that was a lot even for Alteans, to help anyone with anything they would need and yet, Keith dared to stand in front of him accusing him of wanting to hurt this team?! He stood in front of Lance and told him what Lance already knew to be true; that he wasn't worthy to be a paladin.

 In his moment of absolute rage and hurt, he forgot that humans weren't as powerful as what he was used to. He shoved Keith back with too much force, resulting in the red paladin stumbling to the floor on his back. Still, it took everything in Lance not to attack him with all his power.

 Keith's angry eyes looked up to him, Lance didn't give him a chance to say anything; “Quiznack you Keith!” he yelled, taking a step forward, “don't you think I've asked her to do that a million times? I get that you don't trust me, but can't you just accept I'm part of this team?! don't you see I'm doing my absolute best here? Don't you see I'm doing everything I can for this team? Don't you see that we're the reason Voltron can't function properly?Because you refuse to accept me?”

 He turned to where Pidge and Shiro were standing, “I am truly sorry that I panicked, that I wasn't of any help. I never meant for any harm to come to either of you,”
He returned his gaze to Keith who was looking at him with now wide eyes, “you don't trust me?! Fine, I don't quiznacking want you to trust me. but can't you at least acknowledge me as a part of this team?! For the sake of defeating Zarkon?”

 He had to stop himself from running outside, but he did leave as quickly as he could, before the tears that were threatening to fall would fall in front of the red paladin.

 He didn't go back to his room. The risk of Keith hearing him there were too high. Instead, he went to the holodeck. The Altean flowers could calm him down if only for a little. And he would be safe from the others there. Well, at least till Allura and Coran came back from the Arusian village.

 The first time he went there when the princess was there, had been an accident he'd gone there to ask King Alfor about his bow, he'd completely forgotten about that at the sight;

 Altea, it was Altea, he was in Altea. How long had it been since he'd set foot on these grounds?! The green valleys of Altea. He slid down to his knees. Heavens how? How?! How was this possible?

 Altean flowers were surrounding him. They had always been one of his favourites. And they were right there. They were right in front of him. His hands reached for them without his permission. The tears left his eyes as he touched the pink petals. Oh gods, just as soft as he remembered. He picked one closing his eyes and raising it to his face, maybe if could smell them, this terrible spell would be broken and he would open his eyes back in Altea, to see that everything that had happened had been a horrible nightmare, that Altea was still there, that he could be with his family again. He could almost hear ...

 “They don't have the fragrance.”

 Princess’s voice startled him, making him look up at her to see she was sitting just a little away from him, he hadn't even noticed her being there in his absolute state of shock, “What?” he asked feeling hazy, like he'd been drawn out if a dream.

 Princess brought a flower up to her nose, smiling sadly, “They don't have the smell, the scent that you could feel from far away back on  Altea, the smell of home,” she gestured for him to try.

 She was right, the flowers might look the same, even feel the same but they didn't have the smell. The one he always felt when playing in the valleys.

 It isn't real. It was just a kind of projection. He sadly realized. It still felt real, “Can I, can I  stay?” he asked her, begging with his eyes.

 She nodded. He sat down taking a hand full of the flowers. gods, they felt so real.

 “They were always my favourite thing. the Altean flowers. I miss them the most about Altea ... what about you?!" she silently asked.

 “The ocean,” Lance answered without a second thought. He still remembered it; the first time he'd seen the beautiful blues of the water, the push and pull. The way the two suns reflected on the surface of the waves, making them shine like a thousand pieces of shattered glass. It was beautiful, it was free.

 He'd been to many planets after, he'd seen a lot of breath-taking views, but nothing had ever came close to the sight of the oceans of Altea. And He doubted anything would ever come close.

 “Can I come here again?” he asked, when the princess had announced it was time for them to go to bed.

“Of course,” she smiled at him making guilt flood him. He had no right to come back here, he had no right to miss Altea. Not after he'd done nothing to stop it.

 Still, he couldn't stop himself from going back everyday. It had been so long since he'd seen Altea. That's how he and Allura had started getting closer quickly. Mostly they just sat there in silence.

 He probably should leave the holodeck before someone would tell her what had happened and she would come here to scold him or comfort him. Lance wasn't sure whose side he would take on the matter.

 Didn't matter, she had decided to give Lance this chance, and if Keith had a problem with that, he could just suck it up, because Lance wasn't leaving till they defeat Zarkon.

Chapter Text

 Lance, initially, had planned on ignoring the red paladin from that point forward. He would help Keith in training and work with him in Voltron, but apart from that, he'd decided on keeping any form of contact to bare minimum.

 His decision, however, didn't last for much longer than the night, as the next morning when he’d arrived late at the breakfast for the first time—he hadn't slept in 5 quiznacking nights and was emotionally drained, I think I'm allowed to oversleep, even if he hadn't gotten any actual sleep, more like rolling from one side to the other—Keith had saved him a plate of goo and had handed it to him with a apologetic look.

 Lance was sure his eyes had rounded as much as the said plate, it had taken some serious self-control for Lance to keep his jaw from dropping to the floor from shock. It's just that that was about the nicest thing the red paladin had done for him in the last three movements they had started living in the castle.

 As the sorry look stayed with the red paladin for the rest of the day, Lance decided to bury the hatchet. He hadn't gotten an apology, not even by far, but something told him it was the best he was gonna get from Keith. And considering that Keith hadn't given up on following Lance all the time, to keep an eye on him, Lance realised that Keith was planning on doing exactly what he'd asked him; to work with Lance but not to trust him.

 And Lance could hold a grudge; trust him, if he wanted to he could hold a grudge for years, but what would be the point of doing that?! it would only break Voltron farther apart, leaving them in an even more of a vulnerable state, making it easier for Zarkon to win, and Lance would be damned if he ever was the reason for that again.

 So yeah, he had decided to let it go, Keith was an asshole, but Lance could deal with him. Which is how the red paladin had ended up standing next to him, in one piece, in the celebration the Arusians were throwing for them inside the castle.

 Lance had seen a lot of shows and theatres but gods, he was truly amazed—not to sound ungrateful since this whole thing was in the paladins' honour—the Arusians were the most talentless people in show business he'd seen in his entire life. But they were so cute, so who cared?!

 “Well, thank god that abomination is over,” Pidge turned to him and the red paladin once the Arusians reenactment of the previous day’s events was over.

 “Yeah, no kidding. these people do not know how to perform,” Lance agreed, quietly so the Arusians wouldn't hear him and take offence.

 Hunk joined them once Allura was done talking to the Arusian king, adding them to the Voltron alliance. “We gotta get a cheer like that,” Hunk said pointing to the Arusians cheering for them. Lance raised an eyebrow at him. “you know like a team cheer that we do,” Hunk explained.

“Yeah, okay, I'm listening," Lance agreed.

Hunk placed his hand on his chin thinking, “oh, how about I say vol, you say tron, vol?” he said looking expectantly at Lance.

 Lance looked to the red paladin for assistance but he looked even more lost than Lance was, “Voltron?!” Lance answered, more like asked.

 “What? no! I just told you what to say. See I'm gonna try it with Keith, when I say vol, you say tron, vol?” Hunk said turning to Keith.

 Keith shared a quick questioned look with Lance, “Uh, Vol ... tron?!”

 Hunk face palmed himself, “I'm disappointed in both of you. at least Lance is the alien, Keith, how can you not get this?!”

 Unfortunately that reminded Lance that Keith was indeed Galra. Lance forgot about that part quite frequently, it was just that the only part of Keith that did look Galra were his eyes. Lance doubted purple was a common eye color even on earth.

 Lance didn't know what he should do about the knowledge, he couldn't just come out and say Keith was galra, it would raise the question of how he knew the fact in the first place. But anyone, even Keith, deserved to know if they were Galra, specially in this situation Keith was in. Maybe I should talk to Coran? Assuming the older man would even listen to him. As much as Coran had listened to King Alfor's orders, and did tolerate Lance, his mistrust was quite obvious. Not that Lance blamed him.

 “Now guys when I say vol, you say tron, vol?!” Hunk looked at them both.

 They both shared a puzzled look, what else were they supposed to say?! “Voltron?!” they said at the same time.

 Hunk just gave them a flat look, “I'm gonna go talk to the Arusians,” he departed from them, while Pidge was having the time of her life with the whole exchange.

 Lance just shrugged, aliens, and picked up one of the drinks from a floating tray, looking inside.

 Wait is that ...?! No way, but it did suspiciously look like it, “Coran, what is this?” he practically yelled across the ballroom. It wasn't like he was bothering anyone with how loud the Arusians were.

 Well, anyone but Keith, who had to put his hands on his ears with how loud Lance was and really that just seemed like an additional bonus to Lance. What?! he was allowed to be still a little upset with the red paladin.

 “Nunvill,”  Coran answered from across the room, quickly turning back to Shiro.

 Nunvill? It really was Nunvill?! Oh gods, how long had it been since he had some? how much he missed that divine taste. Lance looked at the drink in his hand endearingly.

 “What's nunvill? And why are you looking at it lile you wanna have its kids?” Pidge asked looking inside the cup.

Lance laughed, “the traditional drink of Alteans; the nectar of the gods,” he quoted, raising the cup to drink some of it.

 Ummediately spluttering it all out, “And it tastes nothing like that.”

 Lance wanted to go get something to eat to get the horrible taste out of his mouth, but Pidge's snicker made him look up to realise he had spluttered the drink all over the red paladins face.

 Oops.

 He did not hold back his laugh as Keith made a disgusted face and proceeded to clean his face with his hands. What?! it wasn't his fault that the red paladin was standing right in front of him!

 Either way, he was about to say sorry when something came to his mind. And gods he really shouldn't, they did just have a fight last night. he really shouldn't tease Keith like that, the red paladin seemed to hate him enough already without Lance’s constant teasings, but it was just too tempting. And maybe it was the tiny bit of the Nunvill getting to him too quickly, but he really couldn't let a situation this good pass.

 He took a step towards the red paladin, resulting in Keith taking a step back. However he didn't get a chance to do so again as Lance took another step standing right in his personal space, which he had learnt shortly that Keith hated anyone evading.

 Keeping his own hands crossed behind his back, He leaned over Keith, the boy instinctively leaned back. Lance smirked further, he was expecting him to do exactly that; it effectively prevented Keith from being able to take another step back. Lance kept his eyes on Keith trying not to laugh as he leaned even further over Keith's body, without actually any part of them touching.

Keith's hands came up defensively, “What the—”

 Lance interrupted Keith's question by leaning to his ear, “Don't worry, Keith. I don't normally spit.” he whispered, standing back quickly after.

 Oh, he had to bite his cheeks and his lip to keep himself from bursting out of laughter at the way Keith's eyes rounded as the realization of what Lance had said set in. And yeah no, Lance couldn't hold back anymore, he laughed out loud. Asshole or not, Lance didn't think he could ever give up on teasing Keith, the way his face turned red in a few ticks was just too entertaining to Lance. Oh man, he had to hold his stomach to keep himself dropping to the floor from laughter as Keith turned around leaving with a red face saying, “What the fuck?! He's crazy! He is fucking crazy.” Well, he wasn't really wrong.

 Pidge was laughing just as much next to him, she wiped a fake tear, “That was fun, I love it when you mess with him,” she was holding a fist to Lance. Lance looked at her hand and then up at her, throwing a puzzled look.

 “Oh, right. you don't know what a fist bump is.” 

 “Fist bump?!” he questioned.

 “Yeah, remember when I taught you the high five?” Lance nodded. “It's like that, but with fists.” Pidge said, taking the fist he was holding in mirror of her action, and well bumping their fists together. Oh, the name made sense now.

 “And then you go Bah-A-La-La-La,” Pidge said, raising her hand in the air with a gesture. oh, humans got weirder and weirder with everything he learnt about them. Funny, sure, but weird too.

 “Here, let's go one more time,” Pidge said. Lance followed what she had told him with the Bah-A-La-La-La at the end, Which made Pidge laugh for some reason, “Aw, I can't believe I'm not gonna see Hunk trying to convince you that isn't actually part of it.” she whispered, then raising her hand to ruffle Lance’s hair. The only reason Lance let her was how adorable she looked standing on the tip of her toes to reach him, “I'm gonna miss you, dork.”

 Lance stared at her confused as she walked away. He had no idea what dork meant or why would the green paladin miss him, he wasn't going anywhere. Yeah, she was definitely weird, but he liked her. She reminded him of ... nope, not the time, Lance cut the thought before it would bring a lump in his throat. At least tried to.

 Another tray was flying by so he took a cup. Should he give it another chance, maybe this one would actually taste like Nunvill?! He took a small sip, nope, still tastes like feet. Lance placed down the cup on an empty tray. If only it had tasted like Nunvill. Lance thought about the last time he'd had some of the drink. It had been years ago, but it had been a fun quintant with all the sneaking arounds, well it had been fun up until the end. He closed his eyes, sighing. the thought of Altea and the thought of his home, both drowned on him. He decided his mood didn't belong with the party anymore, leaving quietly.

 He started walking in the bridge's direction, remembering that there was a star map he could activate there. It only took a few ticks for a set of footsteps following him. Right, Keith. Guess Lance didn't really have the luxury of being alone anymore. It wasn't really that bad; he had grown quite accustomed to the constant sounds of footsteps over the time, but it was particularly annoying times like this, times that he wished to be alone.

 He sighed, “Keith, if you're going to follow me everywhere just join me, it'll be easier for both of us,” he said, looking to where he knew Keith was behind a pillar. What was the point of him hiding? Did he really think Lance wouldn't notice his constant followings?! did he really thought that stupid of Lance?!

 Keith cleared his throat as he walked next to Lance. Lance started walking, Keith beside him, “So where are you going?” Keith asked him.

 “Guess you'll just have to wait and see,” Lance answered, or to be more clear didn't answer. Keith's huff almost brought a smirk to his face. Patience was not one of the red paladin’s virtues.

 They arrived at the bridge, Lance tapped a few of the buttons on control deck before they were surrounded by the entire universe. Small lights fluckering showing different galaxies. Lance slid to get to his solar system, walking up to small projection of the planets, he pointed to one, “This is Altea,” he gestured with his head to the smaller one right next to it, “and that is Daibazaal, the Galra homeworld.”

 Keith gasped but didn't say anything so Lance continued, “You know what is almost funny? The two planets couldn't orbit around our suns without each other, so Zarkon didn't have to destroy Altea, it would've turned uninhabitable a few deca-phoebs after Daibazaal.” Lance stared between the two planets, “funny how two things this close can bring this much destruction to one another ... I guess just like Zarkon and Alfor.”

 “What?!”

 Lance looked to Keith at his question.

 “what do you mean like Zarkon and Alfor?” Keith looked at him expectantly.

 Oh, didn't he know? Allura and Coran had told Lance they had told the other paladins everything about the paladins of old, perhaps they had forgotten that part? That seemed like a pretty important thing to forget, “Zarkon and King Alfor were close friends for years, really close, as much as brothers.” at least before everything.

 Keith's frown deepened, “How could King Alfor be friends with someone like that? How could he trust a Galra? What was wrong with him?”

 “Keith, he wasn't the only one. Alteans and Galrans were very different, yes, but they had managed to look pass that, live together in harmony. I mean for quiznack's sake half of Altea's population were Galra,” Lance explained looking at the planets, “I suppose that's what made it so easy for Galra to defeat them.”

 “It's their own fault,” Lance sent a sharp look at Keith at his comment, “what?! If what you say is true then it is. Your people shouldn't have given the Galra that much power over them, they shouldn't have trusted monsters like Galra,” the red paladin said or spat.

 Lance was shocked by the amount of hate in Keith's voice when he had said Galra, how could someone come to hate an entire civilization that much in such a short time? Princess he understood, but Keith?! Not to mention that they were Keith's people after all.

 “Keith, I don't think you understand; Galrans and Alteans?! they were the closest people I've ever seen. Even Zarkon's wife was Altean,” Lance had to control himself from shuddering.

 Keith's eye's rounded for a second before turning angry again, “What?! Then How could he destroy ... How could Zarkon do something like that to his own wife?”

 Lance shivered, turning the star map off, “Perhaps she wasn't as innocent as you might think,” he answered in a voice that warned the red paladin no more questions were welcomed. So much for lifting his mood.

 “We should go back to the party,” Lance said, Keith walked in front of him, stomping his feet, clearly upset by the information he had gotten.

 They were at the bridge's main exit when Pidge's pet robot flew in. “Hey rover,” Lance greeted. The robot flew past him, oh great, he was getting ignored by a robot.

 Wait, where was Pidge? Didn't the bot always accompany her? He turned back to look at the bot only to see that the normal green lights of the robot were now red.

 Oh, quiznack! he only had a tick to think that Keith may be an asshole but he didn't deserve to die.

 “Keith!”

 Keith opened up his eyes to someone calling his name. With a heavy head he sat up.

 “Keith, are you okay?” Shiro put a hand on his shoulder.

 “I ... what happened?” Keith asked instead. Slowly coming to senses, he looked around, the team was standing around him.

 “We were hoping you would tell us,” Hunk answered.

 Keith looked around again, but nothing was really visible with the pillars of smoke rising everywhere ... wait smoke, “A bomb, I think,” he said, rubbing the sore on his head.

 “Yeah, we figured that much,” Pidge nodded.

 Shiro helped him up, letting go once Keith regained his balance. “Are you hurt?” he asked in his worried voice.

 Keith reassured him, “I'm fine.” well except for the ringing in his ears, and how the world seemed to be insisting on tilting around.

 “Lance!” 

 Allura’s scream made everyone run to a lump on the floor. Keith followed slowly, something pressing at his mind. It was only as he stood next to the injured body on the floor when he remembered what. His latest memory resurfaced; Lance yelling at him, “Keith watch out!” someone pushing him forward, covering his body with their own on the ground.

 Oh.

 Lance had pushed him forward. Lance had saved his life. Lance had risked his own life to save Keith's life. Oh.

 Why?!

 Why had he done that? Why had he risked his life for Keith? Why? With the horrible way Keith had treated him since day one, with how much of an asshole he'd been to him, Keith knew he wouldn't have saved himself if he'd been in Lance’s shoes. And yet the Altean boy had.

 “Keith, you still with us?”

 Hunk's voice brought him back to the chaos around him, which really couldn't be more confusing than the one going on in his head,  “He risked his life for me ... why would he do that?”

 “Dude, can you have your crisis later, we have to help him, now,” Hunk answered.

 Right, he looked at the bruised unconscious body on the floor, “We have to get him to the pods,” Keith said, still confused.

 “There's no point,” the princess shook her head.

 Keith felt anger rising within him; how can she say that?! “What do you mean ‘there's no point?’ he's injured!” for me. He might not understand why Lance had done that, but nevertheless Lance had done it for him. And Keith was not letting the other boy die for him. That wasn't happening.

 The princess glared at him, “If you were listening, you would know they won't work without a crystal,” she said pointing to the broken crystal that not that long ago had been shining at top of the bridge, yet now it lay in broken pieces on the floor.

 “Then change the crystal!” he glared back at her. Lance was not dying for him.

 “What, Do you think we just have a crystal lying around?!” she questioned with anger.

 “Guys, calm down.”

Keith ignored Hunk, raising his voice equally at the princess, “Well, then get a new one.”

 “You think that's easy?! We ha—”

 Keith interrupted her yell, “I don't care how fucking hard it is, Just get a new one, we have to help him,” the last sentence left him desperately.

“You don't think I want to?! He didn't have to sacrifice himself for some of us to care whether he lives or dies!” her words hit right at home.

 Keith was about to open his mouth when Pidge stepped between him and Allura, placing a hand on each, “Enough already! We all want to help Lance, and right now neither of you are helping by your stupid fighting,”  she said, then looking up to Allura, “Allura, can we get a new crystal?”

 She nodded in response, “Yes, but we have to hurry, he—”

 Allura once again got interrupted, not by Keith, no this time by the Arusian king running to the bridge, “Lion warriors, our village is under attack, we need your help.”

 Great.

 “Get to your lions,” Shiro ordered from where he was holding Lance on the ground.

 “You can't. They're sealed in the hangers. No part of the castle will work without the crystal.” the princess answered. This was bad.

 “Will you not help us?” the Arusian king asked, fear clear in his voice.

 Hunk quickly answered, “We will, we just ...”

 This was really bad, “We need a new crystal, right now,” Keith told the others.

 “We need a ship to get one,” Coran, who finally had stopped staring at Lance, said.

 “The pod I was loading, can we use that one?” Pidge asked.

 Why the hell was she loading a pod?! Keith left that question for later.

 Coran beamed up, nodding, “Yes! Hunk come with me, I need your help to carry the crystal.”

 “I'm coming too,” Keith said.

 “No, you need to help the Arusians,” Coran disagreed.

 But Keith insisted, “Hunk can do that, I'm helping you,” Lance had gotten injured for him, he needed to help.

 Coran shook his head, “I need someone big to carry the crystal.”

 “Plus, the Arusians need a fighter and you're our best, well after Shiro. Lance said so himself,” Hunk added.

What?! Keith looked at Hunk with shock, “When did he say that?!”

 “I don't know, a few times? does it matter right now?” Hunk asked.

 Yes! Yes, it mattered. Lance had said that?About him?! Exactly how much had Keith misjudged him? He ran a frustrated hand through his hair, and sighed, “Fine! go.”

 Coran began running, saying something about a Balmera, whatever that was, to Pidge and Hunk, as they followed him.

 “You two go help the Arusians, I'll tend to Lance and the castle,” Shiro told him and Allura.

 Some part of Keith wanted to disagree, to send Shiro to fight, so he could help Lance, but Shiro had finished his medical training in the garrison and he hadn't. Shiro would be a better help to Lance right now.

 Allura started running with the Arusian king, but Keith stopped in his track looking back; “Don't let him die,” he told Shiro.
Shiro nodded. Keith took a last look at Lance’s injured face; don't you dare die before I can make everything up to you.

 And with that Keith was out of there following the princess. They arrived at the Arusian village shortly. Flames of fire running everywhere in the village. The king pointed to one of the houses where a few sentries were standing, “the attackers”

 “I'll go in for a closer look. stay with them,” Keith told the princess, flying his jetpack to get closer. Activating his bayard, he hid behind a rock. He could count at least 9, 10 of them, but ... Why were they standing like that?! and Keith could at least see a few holes in their bodies ... 

 No! but Keith was made sure as half of one’s body fell to the ground. “No!” he yelled turning around.

 “What's going on?” Allura asked through the comms.

 “It's a ruse, They tricked us!” Keith yelled as he began making his way back to the castle.

 “What?!” she questioned but she was following him.

 “I think it was a diversion, to thin the castle's defences,” as if on cue, just as he finished his sentence, the castle's light began shining in a purple color. Oh, no.

 “Oh, no.”

 Allura shared his thoughts as a purple shield began descending around the castle; oh, fuck no. Keith raised his speed.

 The shield closed in on the ground just as he reached it.

 “No! “ he yelled punching the shield. Shiro was in there. “We're too late,” no, this situation just kept getting better and better.

 “They've taken control of the castle, they have Voltron,” princess cried.

 “Voltron? They have Shiro, they have Lance and Voltron is what you're worried about, right now?” he screamed at her.

 “If Zarkon gets Voltron then no one will live, so yes that is what I'm worried about,” she screamed back, Keith was ready to retort but her expression softened, “doesn't mean I'm not worried about Lance and Shiro.”

  Keith let out a sigh, activating his bayard, “Can we break in?”

 “No.”

 “Can we tunnel underground?” he suggested.

The princess shook her head, “No, the barrier goes as a sphere around the castle.”

 “You're telling me there's no way to break in?!” he questioned. There has to be a way something, anything. He wasn't losing Shiro again.

 He felt red's presence in his mind, putting an idea there. He looked to princess, “Wait, red. can red destroy the shield from inside?”

 Something brushed past his mind, he'd felt it last night too, it had been angry then but now it felt the same urgency as him. As curious as he was, Keith didn't have time for this right now so he just ignored it, looking to the princess for answer.

 “Without her fire canon, she’s just one lion it will only damage her.” she answered.

 Before Keith had time to feel disappointed, Red was trying to communicate with him again, telling him something it took some time but he finally understood red's message; the blue lion.

 “How about two lions? Red and blue?”

 “It could work but it would take vargas, we don't have that much time,” she said sadly.

 Vargas?! was that hours? Once this mess was over they were gonna sit down and explain the whole Altean time measurements, assuming they all lived through this. Keith ignored the thought, “Why not?”

 Allura looked to him nervously, “Who ever's taken the castle clearly has a crystal. They could launch the castle long before that.”

 What?!  “Launch the castle?! what do you mean launch the castle?”

 “The castle is a ship,” she explained.

 Oh, now it made sense; that's what Lance meant by operational. Lance. Keith frowned at the reminder. Any other time he would've been happy to know he'd been living in a castle-ship but not now, not when it was about to launch away with Shiro. And Lance.
“How long do we have before it launches?”

 “Doboshes?” Allura said, looking horrified.

 “English, Allura!”

 “I think you call them ... mines?!” she said hesitantly.

 Minutes! they had minutes before the castle would fly away? Before it would take his brother away, before the Galra took him away from Keith again? Before it would take Lance, who'd saved his life away?

 “You're telling me there is nothing, absolutely nothing we can do to stop it?” he asked her desperately.

She shared the desperation, “I—”

 “Keith? princess? anyone come in,” Pidge's voice in the comms interrupted her.

 “Pidge, are you okay?” he asked immediately. Hadn't she gone with Coran and Hunk? Where was she?

 “Where are you?” Allura asked his question.

 “Inside the castle. Sendak has taken over, cause apparently he's still alive, I swear that guy is a cockroach. He's got Shiro and Lance and he's freaking preparing to launch the castle, which by the way would've been fucking nice to know it's a ship,” she complained.

 Oh great, that Sendak guy just didn't give up, did he?! how the hell did this situation managed to keep getting worse? 

 Wait, if she was inside the castle maybe she could turn the shield off from inside? he turned to the princess to ask but she was already talking to Pidge, “Pidge, we don't have long before they take off, I need you to stop the launch sequence.”

 There was a moment of silence before Pidge answered again, “Alright, tell me what to do.”

 “Do you remember where the main engine control panel is?” Allura asked.

 “Who do you you're talking to? Of course, I do and even if I didn't I have a fucking map on my hand,” Pidge answered.

 “Good, get there and disconnect the primary turbine from the central energy chamber. Sendak will have to reset the whole system. That might give us just about enough time to find a way to stop them.” that was better than Keith's plan; this way Pidge would stop the launch and then have enough time to lower the shield.

 “And, Pidge?” Keith added

 “Yeah?” 

“be careful”, Keith tried not to sound worried, he really did.

 There was a laugh from Pidge's side, “Aw, the Tin man does have a heart.”

 “Shut up!”

 There wasn't really anything more Keith could do now, so he just sat on the ground waiting for Pidge to come in. He had never felt more useless in his entire life.

 “Allura, I'm near the turbine. I think it's started.” Pidge said in a while.

 Keith didn't need her to tell him that; it was quite obvious the launch had started with the way the castle was shaking. “We know, hurry up!”

 “Cross the catwalk to the main column in the center.” Allura instructed.

 “Do I have to pose?” Pidge asked with the most serious tone ever. If they weren't in a really fucked up situation right now, Keith would've had a good laugh over the confusion on Allura's face.

“What?!”she asked.

 “You know, The catwalk … ugh, never mind, I'll explain later,” Pidge said.

 “Now, open the hatch. Find the central computer control hub and enter the following sequence.” Allura instructed.

 “Whoa, wait, wait, wait! Which one is it? All the labels are in Altean!”

 Keith groaned, yeah, they really needed to solve that communication problem once everything settled.

 “I can't tell which o...ne it i…! Allu…ra? A...?”
Keith ran up from where he was sitting as Pidge's voice went to statics.

 “Pidge, come in.” princess ordered.

“Pidge?! Pidge, answer me!” he yelled at the comms.

 “We've lost connection with her,” Allura announced sharing a worried look with him.

 It took only a few seconds before the castle's shaking suddenly stopped. Pidge had succeeded, “She did it!” Keith laughed in amazement.

 “Guys, did it work?” Pidge's voice one again travelled through the comms.

 “Pidge, you're okay.” he exclaimed in relief.

 “Yes, it worked, but we don't have much time before they get the ship up and running again. You must shut off the particle barrier so we can get in. The generator is beneath the main hull.” The princess said.

 “You got it.”

 “Pidge, have you made it to the generator room?” Allura asked her after a few seconds.

 “Uup; I'm in … heh, That's what he said,” she laughed.

 “Pidge! can you focus?!” Keith snapped at her.

 “I am focused. I'm just stressed, okay?! this is how I deal, so shut your quiznack, Keith!” she said. The nervousness and fear in her voice reminded Keith that she was just a kid. she made it easy to forget that. But she was just a kid trapped in a castle about to launch away to space with their enemies who were keeping their friends hostage, he couldn't imagine how afraid she must be.

 “Pidge, don't be stressed, you got this and don't say that stupid line, it's bad enough that Lance says it all the time.” he tried to help her calm down.

 “He only does that to be piss you off, which is what I was going for right now,” she answered.

 “So that's what you two bonded over? pissing me off?” he joked.

 “Well, you do have the best reactions or at least Lance tells me.” She teased, he smiled at her teasing tone. He might be useless out here but at least he had managed to calm her down.

 “Allura, I found the barrier generator, but I don't know how to work the Altean technology … it's really complicated, I don't think I can figure it out.”

 “Of course you can, you're Pidge,” he reassured.

 “Okay, I don't know what's up with this new happy go lucky attitude, but you're kinda freaking me out, Keith,” she answered.

It was the only way he coukd help right now. Keith didn't get a chance to answer her before Allura said, “Besides, you have to. The fate of the universe depends on it.”

 Really?! Keith threw a glare at her, he had actually managed to calm Pidge down, which really was a miracle for Keith and here the princess was, throwing it out to the wind, “so you know no pressure,” he said. “You can do this, Pidge.”

 Keith heard her sigh, “Okay, Talk me through it, Allura."

 “Pidge, I need you to be very careful; Shutting down the barrier from this room can be dangerous. Remember, the barrier is also a weapon. So, stay away from the energy arcs and keep away from the—”

 Pidge interrupted her, “Allura, cool it. I got it; Don't touch anything unless you tell me to.”

 “Yes, Now, I need you to—” Allura was once again interrupted—today was really not her day, was it?—as there was a shout from Pidge's side. “Pidge! Are you there?” she asked.

 “Pidge, what's going on? Pidge?!”

 Pidge was in danger. Every sense in Keith was screaming at him to do something, to help her but he couldn't do anything, not with that damned barrier.

Allura looked up at him suddenly, “Wait, the mice. Maybe they can help?” she closed her eyes, making a concentrating face, “Friends, I need your help.”

 Oh great, the mice were being more helpful than him, but as long as it would work, Keith would be grateful.

 “Pidge, are you there?” he asked again.
Please don't let anything happen to Pidge, he didn't think he could take that too right now.

 After a few minutes of sheer worry, with a loud voice, The barrier was turned down. Well remind him to get some cheese for those genius mice, if there even was cheese in space. “It worked,” he said running in. Allura right behind him.

 They ran down the hallways to the bridge to see Sendak fighting Pidge, he really wasn't fighting as much as holding her up in his mechanical arm.

 Keith's blood ran cold as he saw her struggling in his grip. He'd come to consider the small girl a friend, maybe even a sister. Sendak had no right to treat her like that, he activated his sword, “let her go.” he said through gritted teeth.

 “Stand back or the child will get it,” the one eyed bastard threatened.

 “I told you I'm not a child,” she struggled in his grip but Sendak only held on tighter, that is until something hit him in the back, making him fall forward and let go of her. Keith only had a second to see that it had been Lance who shot him, before Shiro was attacking Sendak and he had to help.

 Not that he seemed to be much of help, that fucking mechanical arm got the better of him everytime. He charged again only to get punched back by it. Pidge, the little genius however used the opportunity to cut the arm off.

 Oh, now we're talking. Keith attacked with his sword and tried not to smirk as Sendak held on to the sword. Just as Allura yelled now Keith used his grip to kick him in the chest, just as Lance had taught him, effectively sending the Galra a few steps back. A shield ran up surrounding Sendak.

 “Let me out!” he yelled punching the shield. Keith smirked at him, He could punch it all he wanted, there was no way he was getting out.

 Keith turned around, Pidge had went to Shiro's help, so he ran to Lance, “Lance, are you okay?!” he said, bending down and offering a helping hand.

 Lance who seemed to be barely conscious took it, sitting up, “Huh, can't believe we manage that.” half conscious or not the look he gave Keith then, bore into his mind, “we make a pretty good team, don't we?”

That brought a smile to Keith.

 “Well, at least when you're not too busy yelling at me,” Lance added with a barely audible laugh, his voice slowly drifting off.

 Keith panicked as Lance went entirely limp, he checked the boy's pulse; it was weak but it was there, it was there. But it wouldn't for long. He needed help now.

 It appeared the universe had decided they had went through enough for now, cause that's when Hunk's voice came through the comms, “Guys, we're back and we got the Crystal.”

 “Good, Lance needs a pod right now,” Keith said.

 “I'll help with the crystal. get him to the infirmary,” Allura told him.

 Keith nodded, placing a hand under the other boys knees, and the other around his back picking him up. Keith gasped a breath in surprise, whoa, he's heavier than he looks. The thought of how Lance would react if Keith told him that brought a smirk to his lips. One that quickly vanished as Lance’s head lolled to the side.

 Not dead, just unconscious. Keith reminded himself as he started walking. Really, Lance had probably only managed to wake up and hit Sendak on adrenaline rush, did aliens even have adrenaline? Of course he was gonna fell unconscious. But why was he so cold? Was that normal?! Well sure, he was injured but he shouldn't be that cold. Keith bit his lips nervously; exactly how much internal damage did he have?

 Keith was walking in the infirmary when Lance began shifting in his hold, was he walking up?

 The lights inside the castle turned on. the pods shining in that turquoise light. princess worked fast, he gave her that. Lance shifting again, returned his attention back to the altean boy and yeah this time Lance was definitely awake.

 He wasn't looking at Keith though, he was looking at the pods through half open eyelids, “No.” he said starting to struggle in Keith's arms.

 “Lance calm down,” he told him.

 But Lance did not calm down, if anything he began moving even more, “No, no, no, no,” he kept saying, pulling backwards.

 Keith was already having enough trouble carrying him, but with the way Lance kept moving, Keith decided to put him on the floor scared that he would drop him.

 “What's wrong?” he asked, once he carefully placed Lance on the ground.

 “I'm not going in them.” them?! Keith followed Lance’s eyes to the pods. Oh.

 “Lance, you're injured, you have to.”

 But Lance looked at him with more awake eyes, “I'm not going in a pod.”

 “You'll die if you don't,” Keith decided to go for the blunt truth; there was barely any color left in Lance’s face.

 But Lance fully conscious now tried to sit up “I said I'm not going in—” his sentence was interrupted as a pained cry left him in his attempt of sitting. But he still finished his sentence looking at Keith with determined stubborn eyes, “a pod”

 Keith let out a frustrated sigh; they didn't have time for this, “Okay, why not?”

 Lance just looked away or at least tried to before another hiss of pain escaped him.
Keith placed his hand around him to keep him from moving again, he was only hurting himself doing so, “Lance, I'm sorry but you need the pods.” he proceeded to pick Lance up again but Lance gripped his arm so he couldn't.

 Okay, what the fuck?! how strong were Alteans, that Lance even in his five minutes from death state could do that? Or was it just because of how determined Lance seemed to be not to go in the pods? “Can you at least tell me why not?” Keith asked sounding exactly as exasperated as he felt.

 Lance sighed closing his eyes, Keith didn't think Lance would answer but he was faced with scared blue eyes once the Altean boy opened them, “What if I don't wake up?!”

 “What?” Keith asked puzzled and a little astounded. 

 “What if I don't wake up, Keith?! What if stay stuck in them again? I can't let another ten thousand years pass again! I just … can't, what if this time there is no Voltron? what if you're all gone? how would I defeat Zarkon?what if—”

 Keith stopped Lance’s panicked rant, “Lance, you're gonna wake up in a few days,” he tried to reassure. Tried being the key word.

 “You don't know that! I can't risk it, too many people have died already, I can't risk it!  I have to fix this ... I have to ...” Lance said, voice slowly quieting. It wouldn't be long before he would pass out again, and Keith wasn't sure he was gonna wake up again from that one, ever. Keith was not letting him die.

 Even if Keith didn't know what he was talking about, he still tried to convince him, “You won't be fixing anything if you're dead, Lance.”

 Lance’s eyes were half closed, so Keith decided to try picking him up again but Lance’s hand closed around his wrist again, “No.”

 Keith rubbed his face. After everything they'd went through the pods were finally working but now Lance wasn't letting him help. God damn it, “What if I'll wake you up?” he asked.

 “What?!” Lance whispered. He was getting too cold in Keith's arm.

 “What if I stay here and if you don’t wake up in a few days, I'll wake you up?” Keith offered. Lance was dying right in front of his eyes, for him.

 Lance was clearly considering it as his half closed eyes searched in Keith's face, “Three quintants,” he eventually said.

 “What?” 

 “Three quintants, after that you'll wake me up, I don't care if I'm injured or I'm dying. you'll wake me up,” Lance answered.

 “Okay,” Keith answered a little too happily. “okay, quintants are days, right?”

 Lance just hummed in answer, his grip on Keith's arm loosened, “promise,” he whispered.

 “what?” Keith asked again, picking him up.

 Lance opened his eyes, blue eyes bore into Keith's mind, “Promise you'll stay and wake me up in three days.”

 Keith didn't have to promise, Lance would probably fall unconscious any second now. And he really didn't look like he had the energy to keep Keith from putting him in a pod anymore. Keith did anyway, “I promise.” Lance’s eyes closed just as the words left Keith.

 Keith carried him infront of one of the pods, facing a new problem. Exactly how was he supposed to put him in one; just push him in?! Ugh, Where was Coran or the princess when you needed them? Keith pulled Lance in a standing position and pushed him inside the pod, ready to catch him if he fell but the glass appeared infront of the pod. Finally, he sighed in relief.

 “Keith, do you need any help?” he turned around to see the advisor arriving at the door of infirmary, the man looked at the pod and then back at Keith, “oh, seems like you managed just fine.” Coran smiled as he walked in.

 Yeah fine, Lance was about 3 seconds away from dying but sure yeah, fine.

 Keith stared at the other boy from behind the glass, “How long does he have to stay in there?” he asked Coran who was typing on a panel next to the pod.

 “Two quintants, three at tops, I'll tell you the exact time once the pod is done scanning him.”

 Well good, Keith really wasn't looking forward to how he would explain it to the others, if he'd have to pull Lance out of the pod by force.

 The others arrived shortly after that. He went to Shiro's side. Shiro seemed to be in pain but Coran said he didn't need a pod after examining him, and only gave him a few tiny cubes, which apparently was how Altean pain killers looked like. Though they suspiciously looked liked candies.

 Pidge cleared her throat taking Keith's and everyone else's attention, “I wanted to say something, my dad, he always told me how he always felt like his crew were his family,” Keith noticed how Shiro smiled at that, “and with everything that happened and Lance,” she paused looking at the pod, “It made me realise how much you guys mean to me even if we haven't known each other for long. So I'm not gonna leave anymore, let's kick some purple alien asses first.” she smiled.

 Leave?! what did she mean? “You wanted to leave?! How could you Pidge? That would be like giving the universe to Zarkon in a wrapped box! I can't believe you were even—”

 Pidge interrupted him, “Keith, I literally just said I'm not leaving.”

 “You dodged a bullet, he wasn't around when you were breaking that news to us.” Keith heard Hunk tell her.

“Yeah, no kidding,” she whispered back.

 “So, how was the balmera?” Pidge asked Hunk.

 “It's a long story, I'll tell you guys on the way to kitchen, come on, I need a few plates of goo.” Hunk said walking out of there with Pidge Allura and Coran following.

 Once they were gone Keith turned to Shiro, “You gave me a scare there,” he lowered his voice, “I thought I was about to lose you, again.”

 Shiro smiled hugging him, Keith was too exhausted to protest, not that he wanted to, “Don't worry kiddo, you're not getting rid of me that easily.”

 Keith squinted at him, “I'll hold you to your word this time.”

 “Fine.” Shiro laughed, gesturing to the door, “Are you coming?! I have a feeling Hunk has a few interesting stories to share.”

 Keith shook his head, “No, I think I'm gonna hang here for a while.”

 He sat down on one of the beds after Shiro left. Keith had promised to stay and he was keeping the promise. He had to with how much he had already wronged Lance.

Chapter Text

 As it turned out, there wasn't much one could do on an alien castle-ship, specially when one was stuck in the infirmary. True to his promise, Keith had barely left the room, only to eat, shower and train—because even getting almost killed by a one eyed purple furry and having one of their teammates injured to death didn't mean they could skip training for a few days, or at least the princess didn't think so.

 Even counting the time he slept, he had a lot of time to bore his mind around the pods. By now, He knew every little pattern, every light, where every little furniture laid around the infirmary by heart. He'd tried playing around with a few things in the room the first day—he was curious and bored, okay? There was only so much you could do when you were waiting around with an unconscious person—but one of the monitors had turned red and ran an alarm that brought Coran and Allura there. The two, after scolding Keith for playing around with medical stuff he didn't understand, forbade him from touching anything else in the room.

 So now, Keith just sat on the ground staring around, mostly at Lance’s pod, which gave him a lot of time to think. He really wasn't a fan of that, not the thinking part, the thinking about Lance part. Everytime he did he got reminded of how much he had wronged Lance. He was quite ashamed of the way he'd treated Lance. Even if he was just trying to be careful, he shouldn't have treated Lance so horribly. He didn't usually regret trusting what his guts told him, but this time he did. He'd misjudged Lance.

 He kept thinking about Lance’s face a few days ago, the day that the galran robot had showed up, after their fight. That had been what really got to him; not how upset Pidge and Hunk had been at him; not the disappointed look Shiro gave him after Lance left the room; not how angry Allura had been when she'd found out; not even Lance’s words or the fact that Keith had been the reason Voltron didn't work; no, none of that but the look on Lance’s face was what got to him, even before Lance had saved his life. Lance’s teary hurt eyes, right before he turned on his heels and left the room. That's what had gotten Keith to offer him a silent truce the next day. To accept him as part of Voltron, but not trust him.

 Now though, he couldn't get that look out of his head. He'd been mean, he had been really mean to Lance. Sure, Lance had teased him, too, but still they were jokes Keith shouldn't have acted so intense. Keith had been an absolute asshole to him, and yet, Lance had almost given his life for him. He wasn't one for apologies but he definitely owed one to Lance.

 It was the morning of Lance’s third day in the pod when Keith woke up, or rather was rudely awakened by Pidge shaking him.

 “What's going on?” he rubbed his eyes, sitting up on the infirmary bed he was sleeping on. Hunk and Shiro were standing a little farther away from Pidge too. Was something wrong? Lance wasn't supposed to wake up till later that day, so why were the three here? “Is something wrong?”

 “Yup,” Pidge drawled the p sound, “this is an intervention, bitch.”

 “Intervention?!” Keith questioned, still sleepy, “for ... what?”

 “For you staying here to ‘keep an eye on Lance’” Pidge raised her hands air quoting the last part. “I mean what's the worst he could possibly do while in those pods; have a nightmare?!”

 What's she on about?

 Hunk nodded his head, “Yeah, like we got the whole mistrust thing before, we didn't agree with it but we accepted it; cause you know to each their own, but now?! it's just getting ridiculous. the dude saved your life and you don't even let him heal in peace?! not cool, man.”

 oh, they thought Keith was staying here because he didn't ... trust Lance? Well the assumption wasn't that unreasonable considering how Keith had acted before. but Keith did trust Lance, that kinda came with territory of someone putting themselves at risk to protect you.

 “This has gone for long enough. They have a point, Keith.” Shiro gave him a half smile.

 “Of course we do,” Pidge said, “I will never admit this to his face, but Lance is a cool guy, we like him, Keith. Stop being a dick to him.”

 “Yeah, man, he's probably the coolest, most human alien we'll ever—”

 “Oh my god, shut up,” Keith let out a laugh stopping the three before they would start worshipping Lance or something. “I'm not staying here because I want to ‘keep an eye on him.’” He did the air quote in mimic of Pidge. Technically, he was keeping an eye on Lance but not in the way they thought; not because of mistrust but simply because of Lance’s request.

 “Um, then why are you here like 24/7?!” Hunk questioned.

 Keith raised his eyebrow, “It's only been 3 days, how have I been here 24/7?”

 “Not the point, Keith.” Shiro scolded, expecting an answer.

 Keith hesitated, he wasn't sure Lance wanted everyone to know how he'd freaked out. Not that Keith thought it was something Lance should be ashamed of; Lance had been injured and barely conscious, even without considering the fact that the pods had taken ten thousand years from him, it still was acceptable for him to panic over them with the horrible physical state he'd been in. And to be honest Keith wouldn't trust those freaky pods either.

 Still, he didn't think Lance wanted him to say anything. Keith was not giving Lance another good reason to hate him, not anymore, he rubbed the back of his neck, “He didn't want to go in ... he just asked me to stay here, okay?”

 The three looked at him with rounded eyes, Hunk and Shiro looked doubtful, but Pidge ... Pidge's gaze on him was the worst of all, she was narrowing her eyes, looking at him quizzical, examining him like she had just found something interesting.

 “Why would he—”

 Hunk's question was cut short as Pidge suddenly jumped off the bed, and began pushing the other two towards the door, “Okay, then. let's leave them to it.”

 “Leave them to what?” Shiro asked but Pidge had already pushed him out the door.

 Keith just stared at the door. What the hell just happened?! He shook his head. Keith doubted he would ever fully understand Pidge.

 He turned to Lance’s pod. Or Lance, I guess. He still didn't understand why Lance had risked his life for him without a second thought.

 By afternoon, around the time Coran had said Lance would wake up, everyone started showing up to the infirmary one by one. Keith just leaned to one of the pods trying to avoid the weird look Hunk and Pidge kept giving him.

 “Coran, What language is this?” Allura pointed to the monitor in front of Lance’s pod.

 “Oh, it's in ancient Altean, princess. I wanted to practice it, I'm afraid I might forget the language of our ancestors if I don't. I might be the last person alive who knows it.” Coran announced both proudly and sadly.

 “That's nice, Coran. can you change it back, though? I want to read Lance’s status and I can't understand a word of this,” Allura frowned, she clearly was trying and failing.

 The advisor shook his head, “Afraid I can't. Not while he's still in the pod.”

Allura's face turned into something that suspiciously looked like a pout. Keith held back his laugh at it, she had visited Lance more than anyone, “At least tell me how much longer is he gonna stay in the pod?” she asked.

 “Just a few more ticks.”

 “He's been in there for 3 days, how much are a few more ticks gonna do?” Keith questioned, Allura's impatience has added more to his own.

 “Eager much?” Pidge smirked at him.

 Something about the way she sounded put him on defense, “Yeah, I have a life to get back to.”

 “We literally have nothing else to do,” Hunk pointed, ignoring the offended voices Allura and Coran made at that.

 “Besides, what are ticks anyways?” Pidge asked adjusting her glasses.

 Keith groaned, he'd had a long conversation with Coran about Altean time measurement units, he'd had it all written down, “Seconds.”

 “But exactly seconds? Cause there's no way two civilizations this far apart have the same time units,” Pidge questioned.

 “We can measure them,” Coran answered in his cheery voice, “I've got a ticker right here.” taking a device out of his pocket and holding it next to Pidge's watch. Everyone else gathered to watch. Come on, seriously?

 “This is ridiculous!”

 “Shush, Keithn we're wining.” Hunk shushed him without even looking up.

 “Winning what, exactly? The intergalactic time measuring competitions?”

 “Yes.”

 Keith shook his head, returning his attention back to the pod while everyone debated on whether seconds or ticks were longer. Keith certainly couldn't read the number on the monitor but once the two digits countdown turned into one digit he realised Lance was coming out any second. He didn't get a chance to tell the others as the glass opened up, Lance falling. Keith instinctively reached forward, catching the Altean boy, I forgot how heavy he is, balancing him by holding his arm and shoulder.

 Lance blinked a few times before his eyes focused on Keith, “Keith?”

 He looked around the room, focusing on the pods, eyes rounding, “You ... stayed?”

 Lance sounded so shocked, Keith couldn't help his smile, “Well, I promised.” he half-shrugged.

 “But, I-I didn't think you'd keep it. Why did you? You hate me.” Lance looked at him eith eyes full of questions. 

 Keith's smile turned into a frown. The sentence had been stated so surely like it was a fact, Keith really couldn't fault Lance for believing it, “I didn't hate you, per se. I just didn't trust you, but I didn't hate you.”

 Lance narrowed his eyes at him, it looked like he wanted to say something probably disagreeing, but he never got the chance at Allura's happy scream of “Lance!”

 She ran forward taking Lance from Keith and hugging him. Alright then, the apology would have to wait for later. It was probably for the best, Keith wasn't  comfortable properly saying sorry to Lance in front of the others. Everyone gathered around Lance.

 “Quiznack, Allura, please stop crushing my bones,” Lance complained at Allura's tight hold on him. Keith sent him a sympathizing look, he had seen how tight of a grip the Alteans could have.

 “That's for being a reckless idiot who worried everyone,” She said as she let him go. The reckless idiot who saved my life.

 Poor Lance only had one second to breathe before Hunk scooped him up in a hug, “Yeah, man. You gave us one hell of a worry.”

 Keith did see the small hesitance Lance had. “Seriously, are you guys trying to send me back in there?" Lance asked in a barely audible voice with how tight Hunk was holding him.

  Lance wasn't sure whether he felt shocked or confused, probably a mixture of both.

 Sure, he'd thought the team would care whether he lived or died, but the way everyone had hugged him, had told him how worried they were, how much they cared, it just didn't seem possible. Neither did the kind look that was back in Coran's eyes or the way he'd thanked Lance for putting the team in front of himself.

 But perhaps the most unbelievable thing was how nice Keith was being to him. What the quiznack?!

What the quiznack was going on here? The question did not leave his mind as Keith, of all people, was the first one to volunteer to help him walk to the kitchen.

 Lance knew he needed the help, he just came out of the pod, he could barely stand let alone walk on his own. To be honest, he just wanted to go back to his room and sleep for a movement. His body felt like a wreck, gods, he hated pods. Plus Allura and Hunk squeezing him like a grape, and Pidge punching him in the arm had unsurprisingly, not helped the situation. Though the fact that they seemed to care about him so much certainly was warming his heart.
Everyone seemed so excited to see him—was this some sort of a dream?—so he decided to postpone his nap till after he ate something, and well, he was quiznacking starving.

 Even with everyone walking with them, Lance really was expecting Keith to move away, stopping Lance from using him as support, making him fall to the floor. Yet, the only falling that did happen was his jaw’s; It practically dropped to the floor when Keith asked him if he was comfortable.

 By the stars, what was going on? Had he somehow portalled himself to another universe? Maybe he should ask Pidge later, because it seemed the only possible explanation for Keith being so nice to him ... and was that almost a smile? No, no way, Lance was clearly suffering from some sort of concussion the pod had missed.

 He sat down at the table, the others surrounding him. He might be hungry but man, he really wished there was another thing besides the goo to eat.

 Sure, when he first had woken in the castle it had seemed like an appetizing meal comparing to what he'd been eating before, but after one phoeb of eating the disgusting taste Lance was quite fed up with it. He was not disappointed as he saw the colorful dish Hunk put in front of him.

 “Hunk, where have you been hiding that?” Pidge took a seat quickly, taking a plate for her own. “it looks so good.”

 “Um, I've been trying with them for a few days, but I thought Lance should be the first to try it.” Oh, Hunk smiled at him.

 “Thanks, Hunk. It looks great,” Lance immediately busied himself with the food, before the others would see how choked up he'd gotten. It was just … why were they all so nice? It made Lance feel much more guilty.

 The others began telling him what had happen once he'd been injured while He let the mice share the last of his food, they were too cute, Lance couldn't say no to them.

 “We both would be Sendak's prisoners right now, if not for Pidge. Or if Hunk and Coran hadn't gotten a new crystal,” Shiro finished smiling proudly at the team.

 “Wow. If I'd known jumping into an explosion would make you guys work so good together, I would've done it sooner.” The others laughed except for Allura who glared at him, and Keith who gave him a weird look.

 Lance just shrugged, “Anyway, thanks, everybody. Though sounds like these guys did most of the work.” He petted the blue mouse, it made a quiet squeak. He stroked the yellow one's stomach too, it made a sound that was far too close to a laugh. Aw. It had taken him some time to trust the little things, his previous experience with rodents had not been that enjoyable. but these were just cute and fun to be around and they definitely did not bite you. Plus how often did one came across smart mice that could understand words?

 “I punched Sendak!”

 Keith's offended voice made Lance look up. Now, he looked more like the red paladin with that frown. What was he so worked up about, anyway? Lance was just joking. He raised an eyebrow, “Yeah, apparently after I emerged from a coma and shot his quiznacking arm off.” Technically, Lance didn't remember much, and according to what the others had said, that wasn't exactly how it had happened, but Lance needed a comeback.

 “We had a bonding moment. I cradled you in my arms!”

 “Nope. Don't remember, didn't happen.” Lance definitely remembered that. But there was no way he was admitting to it, he just ... felt so embarrassed about the way he'd panicked. It was embarrassing that he'd been that scared of healing pods. Lance didn't want everyone to know that.

 Keith scoffed crossing his arms. Lance was wrong before, now Keith looked really worked up. He looked personally betrayed. Lance couldn't help his laugh.

 “Hate to burst your bubbles, but neither of you did any of those to Sendak,” Allura pointed out, one hand on her hip.

 “Oh, come on. Let us have our fun.” Lance pouted, “why you gotta ruin my groove, Allura?”

 “Your groove?!” Keith uncrossed his hands, “how do you even know what that means?”

 Lance smirked, sharing a subtle wink with Pidge. Earth's culture was truly fascinating, after he'd kept asking questions about it, She'd made a deal with him to teach about earth in exchange of Lance teaching her the Altean language, “A magician never reveals his secrets.”

 Keith narrowed his eyes at him, considering it for a few seconds. “So, Pidge?”

 What the?! How did he guess that? Lance tried not to let his mouth fall open, “How?”

 Now, it was Keith's turn to smirk, “A magician never reveals his secrets.”

 Before Lance had a chance to react Pidge snorted, “Lance, I think you just got Lanced.”

 “Don't use my name as a verb,” Lance crossed his arms to his chest, while everyone laughed.

 Sure, He was annoyed but his mind was somewhere else; this was probably the longest time he'd been in the same room with Keith, without him getting mad at Lance—well, he had started frowning at Lance ever since he denied their ‘bonding moment’ oh Lance was gonna make so much fun of him for that later, but his glare wasn't as heated as it normally was. It wasn't the usual ‘I'm wishing your head would fall off' look he usually gave Lance—what was up with that?

 Lance decided that was something to think about after he got his sleep, as he excused himself. Besides, it probably would wear off by then and Keith would go back to hating him.

 Coran, probably too. Lance looked back over his shoulder, checking one more time and yes, the man was still smiling at him, not a sharp smile, a kind one.

 Okay, that alternative universe thing was starting to feel more probable every tick.

 He didn't know how but somehow he didn't fall sleep in the way to his room, but as soon as the door closed, he collapsed onto the bed. Oh, thank heavens, he pushed his face to the soft pillow, sleep already warming his eyelids. For a tick, he thought he heard a noise but … ugh, yeah, someone was definitely knocking at the door.

 Oh, come on! Maybe if he ignored them they would go away? He buried himself in the pillow and nope they weren't going away.

 “Lance?” he heard Keith's voice from the closed door. “Lance, can I come in?”

 Lance sighed, he had a feeling the ignoring thing wouldn't work with Keith, “Why?”

 After a moment of silence Keith answered, “I need to talk to you?”

 “Keith, I'm barely awake right now. Can't it wait?” Lance practically cried.

 “No. It's important.”

 Lance groaned as he got up from the warm tempting bed, this better be urgent. The trip to the door was way too long, and he was way too sleepy to move for anything less. I swear if he's here to tell me he doesn't think I should be here or something, I will flip out. Normally, Keith had every right in his mistrust, but right now, Lance was too exhausted to care.

 Lance walked to the door panel, tapping it to open, letting Keith in, “It better be,” He threatened.

 They both stood in the middle of the room. Lance crossed his arms, tapping on them; mostly to keep himself from falling sleep while standing. But Keith seemed to be determined at staring at the floor, and staying silent.

 “Look if you're not gonna talk just let me—”

 “Why did you do it?” Keith cut in.

 “Did what?!” Lance questioned.

 Keith looked up, staring right into Lance’s eyes with an intense gaze, “Why did you risk your life to save mine?”

 What kind of question was that? Lance shrugged, “Because I didn't want you to die?! I mean anyone would've done the same. I'm sure you would've too, right?”

 It was asked as a rhetorical question. Lance wasn't expecting an answer but the way Keith suddenly avoided his eyes, looking embarrassed was enough of one, oh, “Never mind, please don't answer that.”

 “I would, now.” Keith offered with something that was too close to a smile.

 “O-okay?!” Lance wasn't sure what he should say. 

 “Thank you,” Keith said, “for saving my life.”

 Lance felt his eyes rounding, “You're welcome?!” Lance suddenly felt his face warm up. Keith's thanks sounded too sincere, Lance wasn't used to that from anyone really. Is that why Keith had suddenly turned nice to him? Lance really hadn't done that to get appreciation, he just didn't think Keith deserved to be dead. “So, if that's all …” he hoped it was, too many confusing thing had happened since he'd gotten out of pod, and Lance really wasn't in the proper mental state to digest them.

 “It's not.”

 Lance looked at him expectantly but Keith, once again, was drilling the floor with his eyes. Eventually he sighed, rubbing his eyelids with one hand, “I'm sorry.”

 Lance stared at him. Did he just say sorry? to Lance?! Okay, I might be hallucinating. Keith never apologised to Lance, ever. Even when something was his fault. “Sorry?! … sorry for what?!”

 “Everything?!” Keith half shrugged. “for the way I've been treating you since you got here. I know I've been a total ass. I'm not really good at apologizing, so that's all I've got. Do you think you can you can look past it? Cause I really am sorry. I guess what I'm trying to say is sorry for not trusting you. I misjudged you without giving it a second thought. And sorry that you had to almost die for me to do trust you.” He was talking too fast, and Lance was getting the feeling that he'd rehearsed this before. He looked up at Lance, biting his lips. “I think we'd make a good team if you can forgive me.”

 Lance could feel his eyes getting twice their normal size. Even ignoring Keith’s last comment and how soft it sounded, Keith was apologizing about not trusting him? That was the one thing Keith had every right to do. Keith's word from earlier rang through his ears. ‘I didn't hate you, I just didn't trust you.’ Lance had wondered why Keith had used the past tense, so this was why. He honestly had no idea what to say.

 Apparently Keith took his silence as a refusal, he rubbed the back of his neck, “Look, I know this probably isn't a good explanation, but you tried to kill me the moment we met ... That kinda made me feel suspicious, and I know it doesn't explain my assholish behaviour, trust me if I could go back and change it, I would but I can't. And It's not like we can start over. But if you could just …”

 Lance tuned him out as he went on his nervous ramble, that certainly is new. Everything wasn't Keith's fault, though, Sure he'd been a total douchebag, but It wasn't like Lance had been completely innocent, most of the time he did try to rile the red paladin up, there were a lot of things he regretted too.

 “Keith, stop.” He couldn't help his laugh as he interrupted Keith—who was still going on his rant, this was by far the longest time he'd ever heard Keith talk, “I understand you were just trying to look out for people you cared. And look, it's not like I've been a saint here, either. We both made mistakes.” He looked at Keith who half nodded in agreement. “ So how about we do start over?”

 “What?” Keith questioned, eyes rounding.

 Lance smiled instead of smirking, which was his usual default with Keith, and held out his hand, taking Keith's, wrapping his hand around Keith's forearm, “How about we start over?” he closed his eyes bowing his head slightly, finishing the formal greeting gesture.

 Keith stared at him blinking, before staring at their hands eventually grabbing back to Lance’s elbow.

 It was clear, “So, I take it your people don't greet this way?” Lance suggested.

 Keith shook his head, “No, maybe in the older times, but now it's just the handshake”

 “Well, I mean, I am ten thousand years old,” Lance mused, half shrugging.

 “Don't worry you don't look a day older than five thousand.”

 Was ...was that a joke?! Holy quiznack! “Did you just make a joke?” Lance asked, disbelief dripping from his tone.

 Keith pouted, “I make jokes.” Apparently he did.

 Lance looked down to see their arms were still conjoined. He shamelessly decided to place the fault on Keith, “Can I have my hand back, or are you enjoying it too much?”

 Keith looked down, letting go immediately, his face getting a red shade. Lance didn't hold back his laugh, as always, “So the name's Lance. Handsome, funny, probably the best fighter and pilot you'll ever see.” Lance winked at him.

 Keith made a confused face, “Uh, what are you doing?”

 “Introducing myself? remember we're starting over, we just met,” he answered with a raised eyebrow, “now you go.” 

 “Go?!”

 “Introduce your self, duh.” let's have some fun. Lance couldn't help his smirk.

 “Oh ... I'm Keith?!” Keith said sounding very doubtful of his own name.

 “And?!” Keith just gave him a questioning look. Oh, Lance was having too much fun with the confused paladin, “this is the part where you say something about yourself, like I did.” he gestured with his hands for keith to go on.

 “I ... uh.”

 “Uh?! Okay 'uh' isn't a bad quality, not the best either, though. I think you're selling yourself kinda short, here. I'm sure you have good qualities.” Lance made a considering face, stroking his chin, “none comes to my mind at the tick but I'm sure you do.”

Keith smiled, it wasn't close to smile, it was an actual smile, he smiled at Lance?! “Huh.”

 “What?”

 “Apparently me thinking you're annoying has nothing to do with me not trusting you,” Keith said.

 For some reason, with the way he was smiling, Lance couldn't bring himself to be offended. Keith almost had a nice smile, “Probably because me being a little shit has nothing to do with that.”

 Lance watched with something between horror and fascination as Keith tilted his head a little back and laughed, laughed. 

 Keith doesn't laugh! Lance had seen him smirk, or scuff, or grin but Keith had never laughed infront of him before. Lance had been pretty sure he wasn't even capable of laughing. And wow, Keith didn't have a nice smile, he had a nice laugh, actually he had a nice both, “you should laugh more,” Lance said, which unfortunately stopped the said laugh.

 “What?” Keith asked with raised eyebrows.

 “I said you should laugh more. You have a nice laugh,” for some reason lance couldn't help being honest about it.

 Keith's face was that getting that red shade again, “Oh, uh, thanks?!”

 It appeared Lance had really misjudged the red paladin too; Keith seemed nice and even a little shy?! To be fair, how was Lance supposed to realise that with the way Keith had always been at his throat before? But that was partly Lance’s fault too. he did enjoy teasing the red paladin. He wasn't sure he was gonna give up on that. “See we're already off to a better start”

 Keith smiled again, “Yeah.”

 “Though, I did like kicking your ass the first time around.” Lance teased.

 Keith's smile turned into a frown in less than a tick, “You did not kick my ass!”

 Actually nevermind, Lance was sure; he wasn't giving up on messing with Keith, Keith's reactions were always too amusing. Lance arched his eyebrow, “Oh yeah? we can go right now and I can kick your ass.”

 Keith made a dismissive gesture with his hand, “Nah, Coran said you need rest.”

 Lance snorted, “Uh huh. I'm sure that's the only reason.”

 Keith glared at him but it wasn't as heated as what Lance usually got before, not even close. He pointed to the door, “I'm gonna go, before I have to give in to urge punch you and ruin this newfound friendship.”

 “Goodnight,” he added as he walked out the door.

 Lance returned to his bed, he was exhausted but he didn't think he could sleep now or ever again, not with the guilt that suddenly was choking him. Friendship, apparently Keith already counted them as friends, even if it had only been a few dobashes.

 They were friends, it bothered Lance more than the others because unlike the others, Keith hadn't trusted Lance from the beginning.

 Lance had thought he would feel at ease when the red paladin finally trusted him, finally stopped following him around, finally stopped being suspicious of his every move but Lance didn't. With the things he just said, it appeared Keith had trusted him because he felt like Lance had earned it. It made Lance filled with guilt because he hadn't. Keith had given him a trust he hadn't earned or deserved, ever.

 Was this why Coran was starting to be nice with him? Gods, that was even worse than Keith's scenario. Keith didn't know, but Coran did. Not in much detail but still he knew, how could he trust Lance?!

 It was almost near morning when the thoughts finally left him alone as exhaustion took over.

 When he woke up, it felt like he'd been sleep for an entire movement. The light from the sun Arus orbited around was shining through his room. It was weird living on a planet again, there wasn't really time in space, so that was an upgrade. One of the thousands of upgrades living at the castle had to living in blue in an abandoned asteroid.

 He stayed in bed while his mind caught up to the events of previous day until he got to his conversation with Keith. It was safe to say he was still in shock. Wow, if he did not remember it so vividly, he would've thought he'd dreamt it. That honestly seemed more possible than Keith apologising to him.

 He still debated on the probability of whether it actually had happened while he made his way to the kitchen.

 “Oh, look who finally decided to grace us with their presence,” Pidge sarcastically said, looking up at him as he set his foot in the room. Hunk and Keith were there too.

 “Good morning,” Lance covered his yawn with his hand.

“Morning? try past noon.” Keith mused, giving him a half smile.

 Okay then, he totally did not dream that; it actually happened. He shrugged, taking a plate, “I was tired.”

 “Yeah, sleeping for three days must've really exhausted you out.”

 “Hey, you've never been in a pod, it is exhausting. Healing takes energy!” Lance pouted, putting a spoonful of goo in his mouth. Unfortunately Hunk's delicious food had finished yesterquintant.

 Keith's expression turned into a guilty one?! Gods, nice Keith was so weird, “Oh, so that's why Allura forbade us from waking you up.”

 Aw, remind him to thank her later. People looking out for him was definitely new to him ... and nice.

Pidge cleared her throat taking their attention, “Guys, I have something I want to tell you. Shiro and Allura already know so I thought you should, too,” she re-adjusted her glasses, “I'm a girl.”

 Lance was about to say ‘obviously’ when the conversation he'd had with Hunk on the subject came to his mind. Act like he didn't know? Okay, he could do that, he gasped loudly, “What?!”

 “I'm a girl,” Pidge repeated.

 “You're a girl?! You're a ... girl! WHAT?!” he shrieked, “we had no idea! this is absolute utter news to us! we didn't even have a clue! I mean what do you mean you're a girl?! this is the most unbelievable piece of knowledge I've heard in my entire life! How is this even poss—”

 He was cut off by Keith grabbing his shoulder to make him stop, “Alright, tone it down a bit, Oprah,” He laughed.

 Lance didn't know what Oprah was, but he got the message, “Too much?” he asked whispering .

 “Just a bit.” Keith whispered back.

 Hunk narrowed his eyes at them, “Now they're talking to each other, Pidge? what the hell?!” he gestured to him and Keith.

 Pidge smirked, “Oh, I am so winning our bet.”
Lance had heard the bet they had made yesterquintant, but he had no idea what it meant.

 “I'm just glad I don't have to see you guys yell at each other anymore,” Hunk smiled, “or Lance teasing Keith out of his mind ever again.”

 Lance looked at Keith's tiny smile and couldn't help it, “I mean I wouldn't say ever again.”

 Oh look, the tiny smile turned into a frown.

 “What?!” Lance shrugged lifting his hands up, “I don't remember not teasing you to be part of our friendship agreement.”

 Keith narrowed his eyes at him, until just shaking his head and rolling his eyes, “yeah well, Neither was strangling you, so I would watch it.”

 Lance couldn't help the genuine smile that took over his features.

 “What?” Keith questioned.

 “It's just that's the first time you've said that, and I don't feel like you mean it.”

 He was rewarded with an equally genuine smile from Keith, “Well, give it some time I'm sure it'll happen again soon enough.”

 Lance laughed. Huh, Keith really could be funny. “So, where is everyone?”

 “They're making sure the castle is ready to take off.” Pidge answered, reminding him of what they'd told him yesterday.

 He bounced up in his seat, “I can't believe we're actually going to a balmera.”

 “Okay, him I can get he wants to see his giiirl friend,” Pidge pointed to Hunk, “but what are you so excited about?”

 Needless to say Hunk's protests of 'she's not my girlfriend' went unacknowledged by Everyone.

 “That we are going to a Balmera, an actual real life Balmera. I've wanted to see one all my life. They're practically impossible to find, I mean it's an alive planet, do you know how quiznacking rare that is?! And their crystal, it's actually part their of skin and it has the capability to store not, just power and energy but quintessence, without getting destroyed or even fractured. Do you have any idea how amazing that is? they usually live for millions of decaphoebs! They can store memories from any one who lives on them all that time, through the crystals. And you can even communicate—" he stopped his excited rant as he noticed the three looking at him with wide eyes, “what?”

 “Dude, Coran, it's his job and he's a little bit crazy, but How do you know so much about them?” Hunk asked.

 “I read it in a few books,” he hadn't even started on telling everything he knew about Balmera's. he felt the need to explain more with the way the three just continued to stare at him, “I had a lot of free time as a kid.” That kind of came with the territory of being stuck in your room.

 Keith's lips turned up at one side, “You're a nerd.”

 “I am not.”

 Keith raised a knowing eyebrow, “Do you even know what it means?”

 Lance didn't, but it couldn't be a compliment with how amusing Keith seemed to be finding this. “No, but I'm pretty sure it's an insult.”

 “It's not, as a nerd; I can tell you: nerds are cool,” Pidge reassured, which wasn't very reassuring as Keith still was smirking.

 “‘Nerds are cool’ said only by nerds, ever.” He said.

 “Sorry buddy, looks like you're getting out numbered by those nerds.” Hunk took their side.

 Keith looked betrayed, “I can't believe I'm getting—”

 He was interrupted by Shiro's voice, “Guys, are you in here?” he walked in, “hey, what's going on?”

 Keith pointed to Lance with his hand, “I'm getting alienated by the alien.”

 Lance tried not to think about the double irony of the words, and instead explained to Shiro, “He's getting out numbered by nerds.”

 “Out-nerd if you will.” He added. He couldn't help his smirk, he really loved puns. Keith made a face at him.

 “Oh, that is so bad ... I love it.” Hunk high-fived him.

 “Well, hate to break it to you; but he's not; Keith is king of the nerds.” Shiro said.

 The knowing look he shared with the red paladin that left the boy a little blushing and looking away piqued Lance’s curiosity, “Okay, you know something that Keith is embarrassed about and I want to know it,” he smirked at Keith's fully red face, “nope. I need to know it, now.”

 Everyone's laughter got worse when Keith made a questioning gesture with his hands, “hey!”

 “What?” Lance half shrugged, smirking at him, “old habits die hard.”

 Keith crossed his arms huffing. Shiro smiled at him before looking to Lance, “Oh, he's been quite obsessed with conspiracy theories since I can remem—”

 “Ha! I knew I knew that board in his shack looked way too cryptid-y type.” Pidge pointed triumphantly. Upon seeing Shiro's raised eyebrow she cleared her throat, “sorry, please carry on.”

 “Or don't.”

 Shiro ignored Keith's comment, “He went on cryptid hunts everyday. My all time favourite though was the time he was convinced he'd found Mothman,” he laughed shaking his head.

 Keith just frowned more, glaring at Hunk and Pidge as they burst out laughing. Lance was sure he'd be laughing too if he knew what they were talking about.

 “Yeah, he tried to lure it in by setting a Mothman costume to flames, it was—”

“Shut up, Shiro,” Keith practically shrieked as the others dissolved into another set of laughter. Wow, that was probably the highest Lance’d heard his voice sound. “I was 12! And moths do like flames.”

 He once again was ignored by the others in favour of laughing. Even Lance was laughing at his defensive tone, even without having context, "I need some explaining? What's a cryptid? Or a Mothman?” he asked, and well, he couldn't help the teasing, “And why does it sound like Keith had a crush on him?” he winked at the red paladin.

 “I did NOT have a cru—”

 “Oh, he did,” Shiro interrupted, making Pidge snort and Lance smirk. Which both got worse as a sound, that was too close to a growl, escaped Keith's throat. It probably would've felt more threatening if Keith wasn't so ridiculously red in the face. Seriously, if Lance hadn't caused that face at least a few dozen times by now, he would be worried for Keith's health; his entire face was crimson.

 “Is anyone gonna answer me, though?” Lance asked.

 Since the others were too busy laughing, Keith answered him. Actually, he looked like he wanted to, with the way he perked up, “Uh, cryptids are animals, uh, actually no, more like creatures whose existence hasn’t been proved,” he took a look at Pidge, “or disproved by science. they usually come from folklore. We try to prove they exists thing Like aliens, which I obviously was right about that one,” he pointed up and down Lance as he side-glanced Shiro. Oh boy, if only he knew how right. “or you know … wait actually you don't know; Yeti, Bigfoot … I don't know, mermaids?” 

 “Aw, you sound like you wrote the wiki page on cryptozoology,” Hunk laughed.

 “Shut up.”

 Lance ignored the exchange, frowning. Hadn't Shiro said Keith hunted them? He crossed his arms, “You tried to hunt mermaids? Why? That's not nice of you. They're not animals, they're just as mentally developed as us, if not more.” He probably sounded too harsh, but he hated, hated the way Zarkon treated them, considering them lower life forms.

 Four sets of eyes stared at him. “Why are you talking about mermaids like they're real?” Hunk asked.

 “What kind of question is that? of course they're real. Now, why did you—”

 “Did you hear that Shiro?! Mermaids are fucking real. Oh my god. Oh my god! I was right!” Keith excitedly jumped up and down. Lance couldn't help staring.

 Shiro pinched the bridge of his nose, but he was smiling as he put a hand on Keith's shoulder, “Alright, calm down, Keith.”

 But Keith brushed his hand off before grabbing to Lance’s arms, what the ...?! “I need to know everything you know about them, everything.”

 “Absolutely not,” Lance took his arms out of the shocked Keith's hold, “You're trying to hunt them, I'm not giving you any additional information so you can hurt them.”

 Keith laughed, even in his angry state Lance was still taken aback by it. It just seemed so weird for Keith to laugh, not bad weird, just weird. “No, no. I wasn't trying to hunt them, hunt them, Lance. I was just trying to prove they exist.”

 “Oh,” Lance said a bit dumbfounded, “well, good. ‘Cause they're actually really nice and friendly, unlike popular belief.” the memory brought a smile to his lips. After all mermaids were the reason he'd found blue.

 “You've met mermaids?!” Keith's voice was so high. 

 Lance nodded.

 “Lance, I need details, right fucking now. How do they look? Do they have scales all over their body or does it turn to skin. Are the scales different in each of them or are they the same color? Do they have gills or do they breathe through their nose? Can they breathe outside of water? Do they have—”

 Lance held up his hands, laughing, “Whoa, whoa. One question at a time.”

 “I think Keith just found his new best friend.” Pidge teased.

 “Well, he's gonna have to wait until after training.” Shiro said.

 “Training?”

 “Yes,” Shiro nodded, “that's why I came looking for you guys. Allura wants us to have a last training with the lions before take off. So move it guys.”

 Keith deflated immediately, looking down and pouting. Lance took pity on how disappointed he looked, “You can ask a few questions in the way?” he suggested.

 Though he regretted it slightly as a maniacal excitement shined in Keith's eyes. He practically dragged Lance after him, raining another set of questions at him. Lance looked back sending a 'help' look to the laughing figures. The only answer he got was the ‘you asked for it’ look Hunk gave him.

 Lance was already developing a headache by the time he basically ran off inside blue. Man, he really had misjudged Keith; He'd thought of him to be the quiet type. But nope, nuh uh. Give him something he liked and he wouldn't shut up about it.

 But Lance wasn't really annoyed, Keith looked as happy and excited as a kid who'd been handed a pack of baby yalmors to play with. It was a ... funny look on him.

 The lions exited the castle. Coran had set a  stimulation training in the lions; where they had to take down ships that showed up on the screen.

 Lance let himself warm up, taking down as many as he could, “Bet I'll take down more ships than you guys, as usual.” He said to the comms. Technically, he had had his lion for much longer than the other paladins, and he was much more familiar with blue's controls.

 “I'll take you up on that.”

 “What?!” Lance questioned his hearing, surely, Keith hadn't said that.

 “I bet I can take more.”

 Lance felt stunned, truly stunned in place. Keith had always, always refused Lance’s bets or races before. Yet, his tone was so playful and challenging right now. How many more times had Keith surprised him in the cycle of this quintant?

 “Lance, watch out.” Hunk warned.

 Right, right. He was in a middle of a fight, an imaginary one, but still a fight. He ignored the wave of amusement both red and blue were sending him, instead moving blue from where he'd stopped her in the state of shock.

 “So, is it on?” Keith asked his picture popping at the corner of screen, he was smirking.

 “oh, it is so on. You are going down, mullet.” Lance smirked, rushing blue toward a few ships.

 Keith frowned, “It's not a mullet ... wait, how do you even know ... ugh, Pidge!” he growled her name, while charging the red lion at some ships.

 Lance didn't hide his laugh nor did anyone else. Lance opened a private line to Pidge quickly, “It was the 80s, right?” humans had a weird way of referring to their time.

 “Yup.” She snickered. She'd suggested Lance use the word to tease Keith about his hair after she had a very informative talk with him about mullets and why they sucked. Which she really didn't have to Lance completely agreed as soon as she showed the pictures to him. Though unlike the pictures, the red paladin actually didn't look bad in the haircut. Did not mean that Lance wasn't gonna mess with him about it.

 “Hey, don't shoot the messenger,” Pidge told Keith, over the comms.

 “It is not a mullet!”

 “You sound upset, Keith. Is it because the 80s called and asked for their haircut back?” Lance teased.

 “You ... ugh. Pidge once I'm done killing him, I'm coming for you.” Keith threatened while the others laughed. Funny, even now his threats felt playful and not serious like he used to.

 “Oh, but I doubt you can catch me, mullet,” Lance winked to the feed, making blue fly away from red.

 She was chasing them shortly as Keith's smug voice came through the comms, “You know red's way faster than blue, right?”

 “Excuse me?!” blue came to a halt on her own. Red's so called faster speed—technically Lance knew red was faster, there was no way he, or blue were admitting it, though—prevented her from stopping in time, she bumped into blue's back, going flying down to the ground.

 “Lance, What the hell?” Keith blamed.

 “Oh, that's on you. I didn't do anything, it was all blue, Apparently she doesn't like being called slow.” Blue purred in agreement.

 “Yeah? Well, red doesn't like crashing to the ground. It's coming for you.”

 Both Lance and blue had sensed that from red, even before Keith's warning. Blue started flying as soon as she could, but red was on their tail in a tick. She literally was on blue's tail, biting it. Ouch.

 Unfortunately, the lions had reached a mountainy part of the planet, and red pulling on blue's tail caused her to lose balance, hitting some rocks and going crashing down a cliff. Oh no, She kept hitting the rocks on the way down. Quiznack, Lance felt the immense pain blue felt when she dropped to the bottom. Blue, you okay?

 She purred a yes to his mind but he could feel she was hurt. He made her sit up slowly, closing his eyes. Lance focused on merging with her, seeing through her eyes and feeling the mechanical body, being one with her, he made sure everything was undamaged before returning to normal. He breathed fast, he always felt out of breath and cold when he returned from their merging state.

 “Lance, you okay?” Keith asked his image popping up on the screen again.

 “Keith!” Lance scolded.

 “I'm sorry, I wasn't really in control. It was like red took over or something.” Keith sounded sincere, so Lance directed the blame at red.

 Though, he immediately felt waves of regret coming from her. So did blue, as she looked away from her. Red kept sending apologising purrs though.

 “Uh, what's going on?” Keith questioned.

 “Your lion’s begging mine for forgiveness.”

 Keith's scoff was aligned with red's offended thought. Lance smiled as he felt blue's slight amusement.

 “Red does not beg.”

 Lance raised an eyebrow, “Well, what else does this look to you?” he told both Keith and his lion, pointing to red. Blue kept looking the other way, while red tried to get in front of her still sending sorry towards her. Eventually blue caved in, she bumped red's nose with her own.

 “I'm guessing that means red's forgiven?”

 Lance nodded, “Yup, blue's not one to hold a grudge.” He announced proudly.

 Keith whispered something like ‘like its paladin.’

 “What?”

 “Nothing. I didn't know the lions felt so much.” Keith sounded fascinated.

 “Yeah, they—”

 Lance was cut off by Shiro's voice through the comms, “Lance, Keith, where are you? Come back, we want to form Voltron.”

 “Is blue okay to fly?” Keith asked.

 “Yeah, she's a tough girl.” Gods, he loved her so much. She purred fondly at him.

 They flew back to the others. They formed Voltron when Shiro ordered. It felt very different than all the times they've done this before. more natural, more in sync now. More comfortable, it didn't take all the mental energy and focus it took from them before to stay in the state.

 “Oh, this is much better. You guys were really messing with our synergy before.” Hunk pointed out.

 “Sorry.” Keith's voice was barely audible.

 It wasn't just his fault though. Lance doubted anyone else could feel it, and if it was up to him they wouldn't but he could feel it, the lions weren't 100% in sync, Voltron wasn't working in its full capacity.