Chapter Text
“One small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind.”
The iconic opening line accompanying one Neil Armstrong’s first steps onto the surface of Earth’s moon in 1969 are clever. They’re also parodied to death, and imitated to high hell. Every pretentious, facetious asshole from the top of the Bering Straight to the southernmost point of the South Atlantic Ocean has repeated those words for all sorts of reasons.
Dr Blois doesn’t react to the comment, but for a small unamused twitch of the brow. She’s likely heard it a thousand times before from smart alecks who can’t resist a joke. Leoncio, however, does snicker a little bit, muffled behind his hand. Lance grins.
Lance isn’t pretentious, even if he does get a bit fussy about some things and have a slightly richer taste in clothing than some people he knows, but he can’t resist a joke that’s right in front of him. And, speaking of things right in front of him…
He takes a step forward, testing his weight. The machine attached to him makes only the faintest sound as the motorised joints and shock absorbers do their work to take some, then half, then most, then all of his weight.
The compression sleeve is inlaid with thin, silvery-blue lines shaped like nerves. Comet material, attuned to his essence. There are nodes on the inside of the socket too, connecting the sleeve’s comet wires with the ones inside the prosthetic. That same metal feeds into the joints and a small battery of the stuff buried in the prosthetic calf. The whole leg is powered by the comet fragment, with just enough leftover to fit into a small caged pendant that hangs around his neck, rattling faintly alongside the chain. It responds so effectively as to almost be seamless.
He takes another step. Left foot this time. Then, slowly, painstakingly, right again.
“Well, Lance? How is it?” Dr Blois asks, lips curving up into a proud smile. He presses deliberately harder against the floor, testing the comfort of the socket. Time and again he’s been reminded that as time goes on, he’ll get more used to it and his endurance will go up, but already he’s had the leg on for fifteen minutes and it’s only when he really pushes down that he feels even the twinges of discomfort. He smiles, and lets go of the bar he was holding onto.
“It’s good. Responsive, like you said it’d be.”
He lifts his right leg off the floor, the prosthetic bending at the knee and the two toe-segments pointing straight down. It was Leoncio’s idea to have them designed that way, sacrificing a bit of aesthetic for the sake of better balance and shock absorption. Lance decides that the lack of individual digits is well worth the fact that he should be able to run in this leg once he’s gotten used to it.
“Good. And you’ve been keeping up with the exercises, I see.”
Duh. If he hadn’t, he’d just be making this more difficult for himself. They’ve already been out of commission for almost three whole months. Lance tries switching what side he’s standing on, arms outstretched a little to slow himself from a possible accidental fall.
Leoncio whistles a low, impressed note. He crouches down, inspecting the foot. The white shell on top is holding well, but the silicone material of the toes and sole seem to be spreading to better cushion and balance.
“Look at that, doc. The toe spread is… Are you doing that on purpose?”
“No, it’s… Oh, the comet. Dang, that adaptive tech is more flexible than I thought.”
They let him test walking around next, one hand hovering near the wall to catch himself if he needs it. But he doesn’t. It’s a really high-end device, all told. Shiny white plates with a thin coating to protect them from damage, blue lights that glow faintly down the side of the calves and at the top of the thigh, a storage slot for a bayard built into his literal leg. Plus, the thing is apparently only a few pounds heavier than its predecessor, in terms of approximate mass. It doesn’t feel like it, but that’s probably the missing muscles talking.
He manages twenty minutes of walking the length of the small room before the pressure starts to feel actually uncomfortable and he sits down.
“Remember you can and should keep a cane to hand when you’re moving around,” Doctor Blois reminds him, “And I wouldn’t recommend anything more than jogging at a push for at least a few days. As you get more confident, you can start doing more traditional exercise and really building your strength and balance.”
He gets a basic maintenance manual (which already knows he’ll be passing to Hunk so he can get a look at this thing) and a neat adjustable cane, and then he’s fully authorised to take his new quarter-million dollar leg out for a real test drive.
“Cielito,” his mother breathes when he walks out of the room on his own. He smiles, and leans in to hug her. Not having to perch his balance on crutches is an odd sort of feeling after having gotten used to that.
“Hi, Mamá.”
“Lance.”
Rachel rushes over next, arms surging around him and squeezing him tight. Marco ruffles his hair annoyingly, as he’s wont to do, and Luis cocks his head as he inspects the prosthetic, probably checking to make sure there’s nothing he needs to warn Nadia and Silvio off from grabbing. The outer shell won’t be possible for them to get past without someone noticing them doing it, so the only real danger is of someone turning the leg off or releasing the suction while Lance is standing. That’ll be difficult given the buttons have covers, are keyed to his fingerprint, and are on the inside of his leg. Even the emergency release involves unscrewing the bolt covers on the sides of the knee, to keep from accidentally setting it off.
“It’s fine, Lu. The littles aren’t gonna be able to zap themselves. It’s well insulated.”
“I was more worried they might knock you over.”
Lance waves him off with a smile. He’ll probably be sitting down a lot over the next few days anyhow, since he gets sore so quickly.
He only stumbles once on the way out of the Garrison hospital, on his left leg no less. It’s just a doorframe that’s higher than he expected, and he catches himself so it’s not really a big deal. But when he turns to make a joke about being clumsy, all he sees is dewy eyes and a few pairs of hands reaching out to catch him. Veronica none-too subtly steps out to hold open the door for him.
It’s a kind gesture. Intellectually, he recognises that. But it still makes his stomach sink. He hates the pity, the implicit weakness, the way he can’t even be trusted to walk down a corridor without someone wigging out about him tripping over a doorframe. He’s done that a million and one times before. He’s silent all the way out to the parking lot, though he feels a little better when he sees a familiar face.
He’s wearing sunglasses of all things, some dopey aviators that make him look way too cool when paired with his red jacket and boots. Lance would almost think it’s for the sight thing, before he spots Ashovak, rocking an identical pair, and Krolia somehow pulling off a pair of cat-eye shaped lenses and her own black biker jacket. They look like they’re fresh off the streets of some weirdly fashionable megacity downtown area, or maybe Lance is just being generous because he’s smitten by how Keith pushes off the wall in the coolest way and saunters over all cool and confident.
“Bright out,” Keith remarks by way of explanation, sounding almost criminally Texan by the way the words leave his mouth. To his credit, it is a sunny Texas day. Despite the season, the sun is beating down from a clear blue sky like it means to flatten the earth beneath their feet.
“We’ve been… cordially invited for dinner. I said yes, if that’s okay with you?”
‘Cordially’, in this instance, meaning Vanessa at best insisted and at worst outright threatened Lance’s boyfriend. He feels his cheeks heat up, and is momentarily grateful for the hot sun to blame it on. Who even gave the weather the right to be this warm in winter?
“Mamá,” he intones, and she gives her usual response; a playful ‘what’ as if they don’t both know she’s embarrassing him. Krolia leans down to ask Ashovak something, muttering between themselves at the back of the group. Ashovak shrugs and mumbles something in response, shrugging off his hoodie at the same time to tie it around his waist.
“I wanted to invite you over too, Lance, but my dining table’s a bit small and al fresco doesn’t really work in the desert heat.”
Lance will freely admit he melts a little bit at that, squeezing Keith’s hand in his. Those claws nick him just a little bit when Keith gives his hand a squeeze in return, and Keith flinches back. Lance snatches Keith’s wrist in his own, and winds their fingers together carefully. He’s not scared of his boyfriend, dammit.
“I’m coming too,” Ashovak announces proudly, “I wanna meet your, uh… Keith?”
“Rhymes with sibling.”
Ashovak hesitates for a moment, and it strikes Lance that he’s been speaking English the entire time he’s been here, a second language. Because the only translators suited to Imperial Standard are the ones on the Castle of Lions, and Ashovak doesn’t exactly travel around with one of those at all times. Just like Lance has to. Dang.
“Oh! Niblings! Silvio and Nadia, right?”
Lance offers up a nod, ruffling Ashovak’s hair. He’s getting a little taller now, Lance notices, not much but noticeably so.
It hit like a lightning bolt when he saw Silvio and Nadia for the first time since leaving earth. They’d both grown so much in the two years he’d been gone. If he’d been here, he might’ve hardly noticed at all, the way baby fat melted off Silvio’s fingers and arms until he gained the classic McClain child pointy elbows and knobby knees. He likely wouldn’t have spotted the way Nadia’s hair has darkened from the warm chestnut she had as a toddler to the shiny near-black she now keeps done up in twin tails.
“What’s up Lancito?” Marco asks, scrubbing a bony hand through Lance’s hair. Lance scoffs. He’d swear Marco has a persistent scent of mango about him these days, a faint but constant presence. He must really be losing his marbles then, because Marco hates the stuff.
“Just… realising I missed a lot,” Lance admits, unable to keep the quiet grief out of his tone. Marco’s face drops for a moment, but then he grins, and reaches to ruffle Lance’s hair again. He’s taking it to his grave that he only lets Marco do that because he missed it so much.
“Not with me, bucko. I ain’t changed a bit.”
“It’s ‘have not’, Marco,” Vanessa scolds mildly, still caught up in the sunny-warm of having all of her children together, no doubt. “Now come on, we’ve got places to be.”
“It’s just card games and exercise. There’s nothing to do!” Ezor complains once more with a whine, flopping backwards over the sofa.
Axca has some other complaints. For instance, this castle is constantly buzzing and blindingly bright except at night time. The fighter drones in the training deck are all flexible and speedy, which makes it difficult to prepare for fights against strong but slow heavy hitters. The food goo tastes like misery and regret and has a texture like soft rotten meat.
“We could go pirating, if we could snag a ship. Lotor wouldn’t miss one fighter pod, surely,” Zethrid proposes.
But perhaps she shouldn’t be complaining. She’s mostly here of her own volition now, sticking with the girls because they stick together, rather than because she’s a potential unwitting mole. She could always leave and hang out somewhere less miserable, like with Veronica. But she can’t spend all of her time with one person, Veronica will surely get sick of her sooner or later.
“He would. And even if he didn’t, we’d still be traceable. By Lotor and the emperor. I’m not interested in defecting back to the place we defected from. And we’d run out of supplies far too quickly.”
Before Axca’s even finished speaking, Narti signs an agreement, the very tip of her tail flicking up in irritation.
“It sucks that he can’t trust us.”
For them, or for him? She doesn’t ask out loud, because the answer is obviously both. It sucks that they can’t even trust themselves. She’s spoken to Veronica about it, about how weird it is, and gotten sympathy for it. But the fact of the matter is that the only people who understand on a fundamental level what their situation is like are the people in this room, and one guy who’s off sucking face with a professor. Lucky bastard. Axca still hasn’t worked up the gall to ask Veronica if she’d like to do something similar.
There’s a tentative knock at the door. It opens, and Axca sees some of the tension slip off Lotor’s shoulders as he ducks into the room, carrying a tray under one arm. It’s laden with small snacks, delicately carved fruit and some interesting looking bowls of small, bite-sized things.
“I wanted to talk.” Lotor starts, hesitant. His eyes flick about the room, looking anywhere but them now that he’s confirmed they’re all here. “About… everything.”
Lotor sets about placing everything on the table, turning bowls seemingly with no purpose until he finally runs out of excuses and sits down.
“You seem tired, Lotor. Are you sleeping?” Narti signs, tail flicking back and forth. Lotor, rather pointedly, doesn’t answer.
“I understand that I have caused friction with this whole… situation. And I am sorry for that.”
It’s not his fault that someone’s pulling information from one of their heads. Oh god, how long has this been happening? How long has Zarkon known their every move? It can’t have been while they were at the Centre, right? If it were, then Haggar would’ve found and hunted them all down, surely. For all of the betrayal and everything else too.
Ezor leans over and snatches up a pale sliced thing that crunches when she bites into it. She turns interesting colours as she chews on it, but she’s still listening at least.
“I would like to hear your suggestions moving forward. I may not be able to discuss near choices with you, or tell you where we are, but I can at least listen to what you have to say. If there are any plans you have in mind, any ideas, please tell me. I… I cannot do this alone.”
Lotor’s head hangs low at the admission, as though they weren’t all aware of how much they need each other. Though, having Zarkon as a father and living so long with the strongest voice in the room constantly demanding excellence and independence likely had a negative impact on Lotor. She doesn’t blame him for having internalised that strength is measured by independence.
The room is silent. Axca glances at the others. No one seems to have anything of importance to say for a few moments.
“Well I think we should be looking for that crazy scientist lady. If she escaped alive, especially with samples of that stuff she was working with…”
Zethrid trails off, gesturing vaguely. Axca nods.
“She’s a threat. Possibly bigger than Haggar or Zarkon,” Ezor agrees. "They're distant and won’t get involved with anything that’s not big and interesting enough for them. If what Keith said is true, Ilvok will be dangerous without anything controlling her.”
“And,” Narti raises a hand to interrupt, “if we’re assuming the testament of the paladins to be true, she could be willing to give dangerous power to people outside of the empire who don’t need it.”
Axca decides to offer up her own thoughts. She’s seen the red paladin, they’ve all heard his story, there's nothing good there. A pirate crew doped on kralaesyn might be unstoppable, but they'd also be uncontrollable. And given there are plenty of unscrupulous powers within the empire willing to take part in lokeb to get their kicks, Axca would bet there's just as many commanders and such interested in getting their hands on a substance that will empower them to greater chaos. Kralaesyn seems to be gearing up as a new, stronger, less controlled alternative to quintessence. And for an empire that cares only about strength, being on the backfoot would be the least of their worries as rebel pirates.
“An injected drug which gives the user strength enough to rip a person apart at the molecular level. That’s a lot of power. Anyone would be tempted. She could dominate a new market of performance enhancement for the criminal underworld, funded by a substance only she and Sendak know the recipe for. She'd be unstoppable.”
The room descends into a grave silence. Zethrid taps her foot impatiently on the cold floor.
“Well then we need to go after her, obviously. There's no knowing how far she's got already in a few phoebs.”
Faint murmurs of agreement all around, and Axca scratches at her knee just to get out some of the nervous energy.
“Right. It would be best to search after Ilvok, prioritising dark ports and such,” Lotor pauses, brushing over his markings nervously. “After everything that’s happened, I understand if you do not wish to return to the Zear-tulk-Kral with me.”
Axca scoffs. She's not the only one.
“Yeah right!” Ezor proclaims, jumping up and over the table eagerly to land directly in front of Lotor with a smug grin. “And let you and Siltuk have all the fun? We might not have clearance anymore, but you won't get rid of us that easy.”
“No. Of course not,” Lotor laughs, the wall coming down a little more.
“And, well, they’ve not been seen since, lord.”
Commander Siol drew a short straw to be here. Arguably the shortest of her entire career. Her posture is ramrod straight and her eyes don’t dare to raise above the floor. Five steps to the stairs, maybe twelve to the throne. All the same she’s maybe one misstep from certain doom. Every word must be selected with the utmost precision and care, if she doesn’t she might not walk out of here at all, nevermind if it’s in chains or free.
“If it has been phoebs, why do we continue to fail to reclaim Everall 35?”
So many Kral-forsaken reasons. It seems like every strike they plan falls through somehow, and no checks or balances anywhere seem to be working to prevent it. A message will get corrupted and the wrong number of ships will be provided for an assault, or this or that commander will go AWOL or turn up dead mere vargas before an operation. Their administration is as airtight as it’s ever been, but their soldiers keep vanishing around that sector in small chunks, just a few here or there, but enough that…
Siol doesn’t dare mention her superstitions here.
“A combination of factors,” She settles on, instead of raving about curses or ghosts and ghouls. “Their choice to focus on clusters of already strong planets in dense living planet zones and our relative weakness in surrounding zones on account of the dead zone beyond E-35 means we were ill prepared to lose it in the first place. Reclaim will be difficult.”
They ought to have used the space beyond Everall 35 for something useful, she thinks. Nearby systems could have provided the resources to fuel it, and then it wouldn't have seemed to be so full of boogeymen. The dead zone might be where Voltron is hiding out, with unknown resources at their disposal there. Their scouts might not have returned often, but that doesn't mean there's nothing out there. Thinking about what things might be beyond the empire's reaches sends shivers down her spine. She never was one for the scouting ships.
“Put more pressure on those planets,” Zarkon demands, as though the art of war were merely an act of pointing at a thing and demanding it like some petulant cub. No such luck to be had, unfortunately. Such things need strategy.
“I’m afraid it’s not that simple, lord. There's little value to be gained from the area, less now that we will have to expend the resources to claim them, and Paxicar is still being inundated with cyber-attacks.”
And there’s the other thing. Those paladins keep supposedly coming up with new, clever ways to shut down the local Central Comms Hub. Paxicar’s new Commandant, Izzam, has taken the trouble in stride and is maintaining control over the six sections still under Paxicar with an efficacy worth admiring, but between combating the cyber-attacks and managing the planets already under her control, Izzam seems to have no time or resources to dedicate to the reclamation of Everall 35.
Drol’set will be no help to them as usual, being far too occupied with trying to combat their constant tirade of pirates, brigands and other ne’er-do-wells to lend a hand. Palensorok charitably donates most of its spare resources to Drol’set, and the leftovers were taken by Sendak before his disappearance somewhere outside Lenicaln 64. One bad quintant in any of those three comms hub zones, and their control over an entire third of the empire would be on the edge of collapse.
Zarkon vents a sigh that makes Siol momentarily fear for her life. He stands, skirting around something that isn’t there to step down from the throne. She ducks her head fully, and drops to one knee.
“Emperor Zarkon, our ships cannot be everywhere at once. Your son’s military dismantling caused-”
“Silence. It is no matter. Apply pressure as best as we are able, and expand our borders in the Rebulon zones.”
Siol nods, quietly relieved that she still has a head, and her rank.
“Of course, Lord. Vrepit Sa.”
As she turns to leave, though, the emperor holds up a hand to stop her.
“Commander, you are an uninterested party. I would ask for your opinion.”
She feels a sinking in her gut.
“On what, Lord?”
She tries to keep her tone light, but professional. Just loud enough to be heard without straining, not a bit more.
“The high priestess believes we ought to exercise discretion in our efforts to capture Voltron. I believe we should be swift and decisive. What is your belief?”
Siol swallows. Neutral statement. Neutral. Do not lead him to believe that he faces any opposition from her. Do not disrespect the high priestess. A razor-thin balance. State obvious facts.
“Well, Lord… General Raliuk was hasty. His rash decision-making and desire to be swift and decisive was well-known. It left him ill-prepared and exposed.”
Zarkon’s eyes narrow. Siol feels her fur begin to stand on end. She has to say something else, surely. She wracks her brain, trying desperately to come up with some counterargument.
“However,” she hastily adds, “Reports indicate General Sendak was either captured or killed by the paladins shortly before their disappearance. He was more tactically-minded, and likely spent phoebs researching. He likely focused on details which were not necessary nor helpful to his search.”
It might be a moment of foolishness on her part, but she thinks she knows the way through this, the argument she can make that’s least likely to end horribly for her.
“Perhaps a moderate approach? Allow for an opportune moment to find you, and then strike swiftly and decisively.”
She ends with a nervous exhalation, a moment of weakness she’ll allow herself if for no other reason than because it’s better than bursting into tears or tearing out of the room screaming in terror. She can’t tell if Zarkon seems pleased or enraged or in fact does not care at all and never did. She can’t read his face at all.
“But that is… is just my opinion, Lord. Of course, I defer to the wisdom of yourself and Lady Haggar above all else.”
Zarkon hums. A low breath that echoes through the vast throne room. The stars twinkle distant and neutral as the emperor before her, completely ambivalent to her situation.
“I will consider your advice, Commander. You may go.”
“Thank you, Lord. Vrepit Sa.”
She recognises this room. The dark shadowed ceiling, the observation window at one end. Her finger hovers over a button on a control panel, pressing down just enough for a beep to resonate out through the silence. A deep, bloody red emanates from the lights as the shutters lift. Gore splatters the glass, stringy red and slime-slick viscera clinging in chunks to the fogged-up surface.
Pale blue eyes glint under the light, lurching as though the head they take up residence in were swinging back and forth. Catlike teeth catch the red light, half-buried in dark brown flesh. A crack runs up the glass and she finally catches sight of the thing inside.
Eyes, too numerous to count, peer down at her from a mass of flesh of mixed sepia-tones. Pale, cyanotic lips split, blood trickling down faces and noses she knows well. She can’t breathe. The forest inside of her is rotten and dying, what remains of it that hasn’t been burnt or buried or storm-wracked, that is.
No flowers bloom in her mind, no living, growing thing clings to her and presses warm affection into the chemical pathways of her mind. There is only her, rotted and broken, and the thing on the other side of the glass. Only those two things, in the cold dark of an imperial research centre’s test room, lit from beneath by red lights like the fires of hell.
A palm presses against the surface, tan but lacking the characteristic paler palms of a human with such a skin tone, because its owner never evolved that trait in her people’s history.
“Katie,” a hoarse voice mumbles. “Katie-cat.”
Matt? Where is he? She can’t see him, can’t find him, there’s only the red light and the dark walls and clutched in her hand a syringe full of something black and rotten. She did this. She made that thing behind the glass.
“Pidge,” another voice chokes out, sounding strained and choked off. She hears ribs cracking. Are they hers? Someone else’s? A remembered whimper of pain, skin bubbling freshly burnt in her nose. Hunk cradling his arm like it’s broken, but it’s not. The shield malfunctioned. “It hurts. It hurts, Pidge.”
Lance’s face is gaunt when she turns back to the thing no longer constrained behind the glass. Gaunt and pale, blue eyes glazed over with a waxy film. Dead. Dead because she wasn’t clever enough, wasn’t fast enough.
She drops the needle, and it lands in her foot, the plunger sinking down and injecting poison and infection into her veins. That’s not right, none of this is right.
“I- I didn’t do this,” she whispers, a hollow attempt at self-assurance. This doesn’t make sense. Lance is alive, right? Alive and okay. Okay-ish. The mass lurches, and suddenly Keith is in front of her instead, eyes dark as the unlit ceiling, inky voids that stare right past her and bleed down his face.
“You could’ve stopped it though. You’re supposed to be the smart one.”
Keith’s voice rings with a hollow accusation. He chuckles, quiet at first but then manic, ringing through her skull like a bell struck right beside her ear as he heaves great sobs through his laughter.
“I didn’t- I- I couldn’t-”
It is her fault. She is supposed to be clever enough. God, she can hack into a government building, break a code in a matter of hours, build a computer and a satellite from scratch but she’s still useless. Still broken. She still couldn’t save her friends.
The thing plunges a many-fingered hand into her chest and pulls out something squirming. It’s not her heart, but she chokes and spasms like it might’ve been. It pulses with malaise, and if it could grin at her it would do so with a mouthful of shark-like teeth.
The thing is a reddish sort of colour, glowing from within with a purple sort of tone. It screams with a radio-static whine from no mouth she can see, sharp edges spiking out and pulsing to a rhythm that she can taste like arsenic under her tongue.
“That’s your soul, Pidge,” the creature mutters in a dozen choral voices. “That’s all you are. How are you any different to Haggar? To Ilvok? They started out curious, just like you did. Now look at you, look at them.”
She never saw them, she has no idea what they look like besides descriptions. Monsters, all sharp and vague, like the thing in front of her.
She can’t answer the amalgam’s question. Some dubious moral standard? But she sees no issue with hurting others like that general on Kehghi to protect her own. Kinship? She finds herself repulsed by skin contact often. Species is no object and based on the speed of the power growing and festering inside her, she is no less capable of the atrocities committed by those mad scientists, or at least will not be so incapable forever. What is it that truly sets her apart?
The thing made of her friends goes to put the smaller mass back in her chest, where it belongs, faces melting into one another, features indiscernible. She tries to back away from it, but finds herself against the cold glass, the crack aligned with her skull. Something hooks her cheek and rips her face open, pinning her to the glass from behind. This isn’t right, this isn’t how this is supposed to happen. She is not a monster!
She can’t be, right?
Lance’s eyes and Keith’s pallor and Hunk’s broad face and Allura’s glinting marks and Shiro’s scar, Matt’s hair, her dad, her mom, everyone screaming out. They’re all right. Oh god, they’re right, every voice reminding her that she is no less a monster–
“Katie-cat! Oh fuck, Katie-”
Hands on her shoulders shake her once, firmly. She scrambles for a weapon, for a way to get the vile thing out of her chest, gaunt faces and pitch eyes flashing every time she blinks like a fucked up emergency light.
“I didn’t do it,” she breathes, frantic. “Matt, Matt, I didn’t, I swear-”
He reaches to offer her a hug, and she’s sure there’s something really broken in her because she flinches back. She doesn’t want a hug, her skin is prickling like she’s covered in pins and needles head to toe, the cold drip of sweat dribbling cold down her spine. There’s so much poison in her, on her, she’ll kill him-
“Katie, it’s not real. It was a nightmare. Look-”
“What’s wrong?” Two voices ask in unison, and Pidge would swear she can feel her heart trembling hollow in her chest. Her parents lean around the doorframe, both looking tired but concerned.
“Nightmare,” Matt explains shortly, waving his hand in front of her face to get her attention. “Come on, Pidge, eyes up. What’s five things you see?”
Grounding technique, her rational mind supplies. Concentrate on what’s real, and use the body’s senses to do it. Not universally useful, but she’s never hallucinated — to her knowledge — so the trick does apply to her.
“You, mom, dad, bed- bedsheets, uh… uhm… door?” She manages, scanning the room. Speaking is a clumsy act, but Matt grabs her hands in his own and meets her eyes firmly. It’s less overwhelming than a hug, but the contact still makes her shudder. The sleeves of his shirt are rucked up to his biceps, arms on display.
“Good job, Now four you can feel.”
“Blanket. Hands — your hands. Wet hair. Socks.”
She swallows against the dryness in her mouth as Matt prompts her through the rest of the exercise. Hearing; her breath, the AC unit, Baebae scratching on the back door. Smell; mom’s lavender pillow mist, sweat. Taste; blood off her torn open lip.
She fiddles with the digits of her brother’s left hand, tracing each finger with her own. She hasn’t missed the scars, even though Matt tries to hide them. Of course she hasn’t missed them. She traces the curved line from the knuckle of his pinkie finger down to his elbow, clearly patched well by how faint and silvery it is. His other hand thumbs the cut on her cheek, smearing tears or sweat off the damaged skin.
“You’re alright, Katie-cat,” Sam mumbles, sitting on the end of the bed and patting her ankle through the blanket. She lets out a heavy sigh. “Want to talk about it?”
The rotten, sickly feeling in her chest would answer for her if it could. Her blood still seems to be running cold and dreadful through her. When Matt hugs her, she doesn't shake him off. He squeezes tight enough for her skin not to crawl any more than it already is anyway.
“Just- just a nightmare. I don’t even think it made sense.”
It did make sense. Okay, the contents were nonsense but the meaning was clear to her. But it doesn’t fit right. The meaning she parses doesn’t adhere to anything she understands. Why does she blame herself? She knows nothing she saw was her fault. They were thrown into the war, she’s made the choices she had to in order to survive. There’s nothing about it that she chose, nothing she would’ve wanted to do without the circumstances hounding her like wolves.
“Katie,” Colleen leans up against the door frame, arms folded and face unreadable. “I think we need to have a talk.”
So that’s how she ends up at the kitchen table as dawn creeps up on them, a cup of chamomile tea clutched in her hands and steadily going cold. She doesn’t feel up to drinking it. Colleen sits opposite her, with her own cup. The floral decorations around the rim drip down the handle, creeping vines under her palm.
“I don’t think you should go back up there. It’s dangerous, you’re still young, and you’ve already been hurt by this.”
Matt and Sam are listening in. Pidge knows they are, and no doubt Colleen does too. She can see out of the corner of her eye where their shadows flicker on the floor in the living room, the light of the rising sun betraying their position. They’re sitting on the couch, but the lack of glow from the TV and the way their breaths aren’t even audible tells her they’re trying very hard to listen in.
“And leave trillions to suffer under Zarkon? When I can do something to help?”
She can’t do that. Maybe the only thing keeping her in the war is that she doesn’t want to be the first one to crack under the pressure, maybe it’s that she can’t stand the idea of stopping when people need her. Maybe she’s just running on inertia, and when she hits a wall she’ll break.
Colleen’s face hardens. She takes a sip of her own tea, and the mug clinks when it hits the wooden table. It’s a quiet sound, but with dawn creeping up silently and only the faintest sound of warblers chirping in the early hours, the ceramic click echoes loudly.
“Yes. You’re only sixteen. How old do you have to be to sign up to the military?”
Nineteen for training, twenty for actual enlistment. She knows that well. Something about lobe development. She’s only sixteen, though she’ll be turning seventeen in four months.
“Voltron isn’t the military, mom.”
It’s a petty protest. She knows that. She knows she’s no different from the soldiers on the other side of the firing line.
“You say that, but you fight an enemy army, you go away from home for years at a time, and you and all of your friends — who you didn’t know very well before you all got thrown into this war — came back injured, traumatised, and so dependent on each other that none of you feel safe in your own homes without a weapon on hand and your backs to the wall. I don’t see much of a difference.”
Pidge flinches. The ‘T’ word, the big old word she doesn’t like to think about. She knows it’s true, deep down, but that doesn’t mean she has to like it or think about it.
“It’d be just as bad as if something else had happened, mom. And I’m dealing with it, in my own way.”
She spoke to a licensed therapist a couple of months ago, who told her to her face that she should try breathing exercises and baths, and that if her nightmares kept up she should try meditating and not using a phone before bed. It did a little, lessened the frequency of her restlessness maybe a third, if she's being generous. Space-melatonins are about as useful. So yeah. Dealing with it. In context, this means not talking about it to anyone who doesn’t get it, and skirting the issue with anyone who does.
“And I would be just as opposed to you repeating any other kind of traumatic experience. This is a war we’re talking about. War is for adults, Katie.”
It sure doesn’t seem like it to her. The last time a group of all adults were responsible for using Voltron to stop Zarkon, they fucked it so immensely they plunged half the universe into a ten-millennium-and-counting war. No discredit to Allura’s father, Pidge is sure the man was wonderful, but he could have at least tried to stop Zarkon before scattering the universe’s last hope to the winds and hoping someone else would be able to pick up the pieces he left behind.
“It’s never been that way, mom. War doesn’t pass over children just because they’re kids. It never has. It never will. I’m already a soldier.”
It’s Colleen’s turn to flinch. She’s met Ashovak and Kuo, both children. They’re not soldiers, but there’s no denying that the war against Zarkon has shaped their lives. It shapes too many lives to count every day. For those who know space, who know the universe as it currently is, war is ubiquitous. Colonisation is omnipresent. The Galra empire is either here, or on the way here. For those who don't, the truth doesn't change, they just can't see it.
“And I don’t stop being one because I’m not on the front line right now. I can do more, I can help more people. The fights are scary, and there’s danger all over the place. But that’s true here too, mom.”
The room is silent. Just breathing and some kind of cardinal perched on the windowsill, its little head bobbing and twisting curiously. Colleen stands. She takes both mugs and dumps the remnants in the sink. Pidge worries that she’s said something wrong, that she’s somehow broken this bond beyond repair too, that she’s the source of the problem.
“You’ve really got your heart set on this?”
Pidge splays her fingers out on the table, the wood veneer smooth under her hands. Please don’t let this be an ultimatum.
“Yeah. I know it’s dangerous, I know. I just… If I don’t do this, and my friends die-”
She pauses, surprised by how choked up she sounds. She scrubs her eyes, glasses pushed up to her forehead. Colleen comes around the table, a piece of paper unfolded from the pocket of her cardigan.
“Your father and I expect no less than one hour-long phone call a week. And you’ve got to come home once every two years at least for two or more months. If you don’t, you’re grounded as soon as you get back.”
It’s a pledge. She’s signed a few in her lifetime. Promises, signed agreements written in ink. When she was a lot younger it was things like not being a bully, and telling if she was getting bullied. It evolved slowly. At first, it was a way to agree to a rule, or commit to something. By the time she was fifteen, it was something unspoken put to words.
The last one she’d signed had also been her and her mom, sitting at the dining table alone. Matt and Sam’s shadows had loomed more metaphorically, and Pidge had agreed that she would not let her grief consume her life. Her mom had signed that one too.
Before then it was a stupid little thing that she knew her mom did because she cared, but she had internalised it as a meaningless scrap of paper, a contract in name alone. A promise easily destroyed. No one could make her abide the pledge, no one could say the paper was more than just that. But that promise to keep living, this promise to keep living, they’re different. Quiet declarations of love.
She reads it twice, every word, every letter. Files it away mentally under the list of things that she knows means someone loves her deeply. A pen clicks down on the table. Ballpoint, black gel ink. One of the nice ones, with the grip and the little friction eraser on the end. It fits precisely in her hand.
“I want a copy,” she whispers as she writes her name on the dotted line, and leaves enough space for Colleen to write hers too. “And I want Dad and Matt to sign it too.”
Her signature is nothing more than a scribble of her initials with a straight line underneath. Colleen takes the pen next, leans over the table, and writes her own large, looping signature. The C which contains the rest, the n that bleeds into the first line of the H below it, the way the tail of the t loops up and over and actually makes the C.
Sam’s sharp one goes underneath, just ‘S.Holt’, no flourish or flare. Then Matt, a long tail on the M providing a line on which to write the rest of the letters. They take it to the photocopier together, print a few copies, and each take one. Pidge folds hers up and slides it into the breast pocket of her shirt. Matt’s stays clutched between his fingers. Sam slides his into his work bag, and Colleen places hers in the box, with the other pledges.
“I mean it, Katie. If you’re really set on going back up there, I won’t tolerate radio silence.”
“Of course, mom. I’ll call. I promise.”