Actions

Work Header

Alternity

Summary:

After five years, the war against the Galra Empire finally comes to a close. Lance is initially disconcerted to find that it's not as satisfying as he anticipated. But he soon realizes that he doesn't even know the true definition of "disconcerted" until a stranger from another reality stumbles into his own. It gets scary, it gets awkward, and it even gets sad. But at least it never gets boring.

Notes:

(See the end of the work for notes.)

Chapter Text

What nobody tells you about nearing the end of an intergalactic war is this:

It can get pretty boring.

Long gone were the days of being woken in the middle of the night (or, rather, in the middle of a sleep cycle, because night didn’t exactly exist in deep space) to disaster alarms blaring. The same went for the days of suiting up, sailing through the stars, and dodging bad guys while kicking butt and taking names. No more violently pounding hearts, no more aching muscles or nursing injuries. No more action.

Instead, the average day’s program was occupied nearly exclusively by diplomacy efforts. There were leaders to meet, civilizations to reconstruct, and only once in a while remaining Empire colonies to wipe out. But that last duty was most frequently designated to allies, more often than not to members of the Blade of Marmora, as “expert non-essentials”—at least, as some nameless member of the Blade explained it once.

For the first time in five years, the paladins of Voltron were allowed to kind of relax, and to even have fun.

And Lance—despite everything that he ever thought he’d feel about the end of the war and the anticipation of finally returning home—hated it.

That’s not to say that this part of the Voltron saga didn’t suit him. In fact, Lance somehow ended up becoming Allura’s second-in-command for their ambassadorial duties with the other planets in the Coalition. Most of the other paladins were, at best, indifferent to schmoozing; and then there was Keith, who’d never quite grown out of the habit of acting outwardly volatile to strangers. Meanwhile, Lance thrived off attention and wining and dining and giving their allies—in Lance’s words, and against the rest of Team Voltron’s wishes— the good old razzle dazzle.

To Lance’s defense, their allies adored him in return. If there were gifts of gratitude to present, they were presented to him. If there were special dinners and parties to attend, invites were extended to him. And if there were single daughters of foreign dignitaries to offer as brides (or, not uncommonly, sons to offer as grooms), the offers were made to him.

It was the kind of recognition that the Lance of the past once looked forward to most. When the time came to enjoy the fruits of their labor, however, the appeal was inexplicably lost on him. Of course, the gifts and the invites were accepted; it would be rude not to accept them, Allura repeatedly reminded him. But she permitted him to reject the marriage proposals, which he did every time with a false, sympathetic smile.

The Lance of the past would have throttled him. The Lance of the present couldn’t have cared less.

What was the point to any of it anymore, really? Five years after catapulting himself at warp speed off the face of the Earth, Lance realized that lavish gifts, incredible parties, and the beauty of alien women had become superficial pleasures. Real pleasure came from hard work, from the knowing he could actually make a difference.

And when he really took the time to contemplate those facts, Lance would inwardly smile. He’d certainly grown up a lot. Becoming a defender of the universe and winning, he mused, would do that to you.

So, as it went, no more critical injuries incurred as the cost of saving an entire race of people from destruction or enslavement. No more aching muscles from overworking training, ensuring that he was physically capable of completing the aforementioned duty. And pounding hearts were reserved for special occasions.

Like when Pidge sat a bit too close to him at dinner and the backs of their hands would brush. Or like when Pidge would tip back her head and laugh, even if it was at his own expense. Or when Pidge was distracted or focused or annoyed and she made that face with her nose scrunched upward and Lance would reach out to pull her glasses with his index finger so that they fell to the tip of her nose and, even when she was at her maddest, the edges of her lips would quirk upward.

Stuff like that wasn’t superficial pleasure. To the contrary, it was stuff like that that made the mundanity a little more stomachable.

---

“Oh, you know what I’m gonna do when we get home?” Hunk said one day as they sat around the Castle’s lounge. He leaned his back into the couch cushion, kicking up his feet. “I’m gonna hit one of the amusement parks near my parents’ place.”

“Hunk,” Pidge sighed from her position perched on one of the steps. She didn’t look up at him, focusing instead on twirling some gadget between her fingers. “You’re telling me that—after years of loop-de-looping through the cosmos—you want to go straight back to loop-de-looping?”

Hunk pouted a bit. “Well, not straight back. But I do want to prove to my sister that my motion sickness is under control. Like, I’m straight up conditioned now. And she doesn’t believe me.”

“Plus the food?” Lance added.

Hunk’s mouth stretched wide in a grin. “Plus the food.”

Lance shifted where he sat on the floor and threw his leg over the side of the steps. His foot dangled within an arm’s reach of where Pidge was situated. “When we get home, I’m going to the beach.”

“You’ve said that one already,” Keith noted, though his voice was absent of any real malice.

It had become a game between the four of them: “When We Get Home.” It was pretty new, largely because they hadn’t wanted to give themselves false hope when returning to Earth was a far more abstract concept. But then, after the fall of the Galra Empire—and after Pidge finished building an insanely long-range communicator that let them contact their families back home, let them say hello for the first time in years and tell their families that they’d be rejoining them in a few months’ time—it became a constant thing. Anytime one of them was reminded of something they missed, they’d list it out loud. Really, “When We Get Home” was a simple game.

Which was why Lance narrowed his eyes at Keith when he replied, “I didn’t realize there were rules.”

Keith shrugged and stretched out his legs over the steps across the floor from Lance. “There aren’t. I’m just saying.”

“Yeah,” Hunk said with a nod. “I mean, you can’t have that short of a list. New rule: no repeats.”

“Fine.” Lance crossed his arms over his knee and rested his chin on top of them. “Then, when we get home, I’m going to take my sister to the zoo.”

“Which sister?” Pidge asked.

“The second youngest to me. Elena. She was always bugging me to go with her when we were kids, and I never did.”

“D’you think she still wants to?” Hunk asked. “Like, do you think she’s still into that? I mean, how old was she last time you saw her?”

“Seventeen,” Lance answered, a bit more quietly than he intended.

“I think that’s nice,” Pidge said, glancing up from her gadget to meet his eye. She smiled softly, and then looked back down. Lance’s chest throbbed momentarily in response.

But Lance was properly distracted from that whole issue when Keith piped up, “When we get home.”

Keith very rarely actually participated in the game himself. Part of it, Lance suspected, was probably because Keith was the only one of them without anyone, any family, to whom to call home. Plus, the last time he did play, he had told them that when he went home he was going to talk to Shiro’s family before suddenly deciding that he needed to leave the room at once. So there was a long moment of silence as everyone waited for him to go on. Meanwhile, Keith pursed his lips at the ceiling.

After a couple extra ticks, Hunk probed, “‘When we get home’ what? You’ll what?”

Keith smirked. “I don’t know. Probably give therapy a try. This game is kind of a bummer.”

There was a beat before everyone dissolved into laughter. Just then, though, the door at the far end of the room slid open and Allura stepped through, her mice riding in on her skirts that billowed in her wake. “Hello, paladins!” she greeted with a beaming smile.

The group called back various versions of greetings in return, and then Pidge stood, bringing whatever that gadget was close to her chest. “Is it time?” she asked, eyes bright and eager.

“It is,” Allura confirmed, coming to a stop and waving vaguely behind herself. “Coran is loading himself onto the Green Lion as we speak, so you should go put on your armor and ready yourself to leave.”

“Her armor? Leave?” asked Lance, volleying his gaze between Pidge and Allura. To Allura, he pressed, “Why does she need her armor?” Then to Pidge, “Where are you going?”

“Dude, relax,” said Pidge. Ascending the steps, she kicked Lance in the ankle lightly as she passed him. She then briefly waved the gadget in his face and explained, “I made me and Matt a couple of short-range, single-channel communicators. He’s gonna be at a nearby swap moon in a few vargas, so Coran and I are meeting him there to hand his over.”

“Also,” Allura added with a half-grimace, half-smile. “Coran would like to use the opportunity to shop for a new cape. I’m afraid the last few galas rather did his previous one in. He’s really quite excited for the trip.”

“You’d think he’d be pretty practiced at flinging that thing around by now,” Hunk said around a fond smile.

“Yes, you would think so, wouldn’t you?” Allura responded. “Alas, practice only means so much when there are aimlessly floating trays of nunvill at play.” With a slight shrug, she sighed and turned back to Pidge. “Well, I’ll be headed to the bridge now so that I can see you off.”

“Right behind you,” Pidge told her. With a wave and a quick, “See you lot later,” to the group behind her, she and Allura disappeared behind the closing door.

Lance stared after it for an extra-long moment. “Okay?” he said quietly to no one in particular. And then he slumped backward onto the couch below him.

There was a long silence that preceded Keith’s low chuckle. Hunk returned a heavy exhale of his own before saying, “When Lance gets home.”

That was the second part of the game that developed over time. When one of them said, “When we get home,” they would follow it up with something they wanted to do. But when one of them said, “When Insert Name Here gets home,” it opened the floor for speculation—sometimes genuine, sometimes not. For example, “When Pidge gets home, she’s going to pull an Allura and sleep for a ten thousand years.” Or, “When Keith gets home, he’s going to become a camp counselor and teach arts and crafts.”

Lance had mixed feelings about this part of the game anyway. But just then, as he side-eyed Hunk and Keith looking mischievously at one another, his scale tipped wholly out of its favor.

What?” he snapped when Hunk started waggling his eyebrows.

“When Lance gets home?” Keith repeated around tight lips. “Huh. I don’t know. Hunk? What do you think?”

“You know, Keith, I’m not sure either. Mice?”

Only then did Lance realize that the mice had stayed behind after Allura’s departure, occupying themselves by chasing each other around in circles around Keith, up and down and up and down the stairs. But at Hunk’s call, all four snapped to attention. The little blue one crawled into Keith’s lap, batted its eyelashes, and began to swoon. The pink mouse followed, catching the little one in its arms and leaning over it with puckered lips. The slender blue mouse gagged, and the round yellow one wiped faux tears from its eyes.

Lance bristled. Sitting up and crossing his arms over his chest, he spat, “I have no idea what you’re implying!”

Which did nothing but reduce Keith and Hunk to a flat-out giggle fit. Even the mice seemed to be laughing at him, as they collapsed out of their scene and squeaked out high-pitched chatters. Lance crossed his arms tighter and scowled at the lot of them.

“Come on, bud,” Hunk admonished, wiping a real tear from his eye with the back of his hand. “You’re not at subtle as you think you are.”

Again,” Lance grunted, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“The heart eyes. The pining.”

“This isn’t even the first time we’ve ragged on you about it, man,” Keith supplied, eyebrows crumpled sympathetically as he patted the little blue mouse gently with the tip of his index finger.

“I’m not—” Lance spluttered. “Heart eyes? I don’t— Pining! How— If you mean what I think you mean—”

“We do,” Hunk said.

“He can’t even say it,” Keith sighed, shaking his head at Hunk.

“Oh, yeah. It’s sad.”

Lance was borderline seething. “Say what, exactly?”

“Come on,” Hunk chuckled as he shook his head in tandem with Keith. “Don’t make us say it.”

Keith added, “Again.

“Say what?

“He’s gonna make us say it, Hunk.”

“At this point,” Hunk said, “it’s probably better to sing it.”

In a moment, Lance was standing, nearly bouncing on the balls of his feet in anxious anticipation. “Don’t sing it.”

“I’m sorry. You’ve left us no choice.” Hunk dropped his head solemnly, and then took an abrupt, deep breath.

Lance pointed his finger at each of them in turn. “Don’t. Sing it.

But it was too late.

Lance and Pi-idge, sitting in a tree!” Hunk bellowed.

His hands flying upward to cover his ears, Lance spun on his heel and booked it towards the door. “I can’t hear you! I can’t hear you!” he chanted.

Then Keith joined in, and even the mice squealed in harmony, creating a din comparable to that of a thousand laser canons firing at once. “K-I-S-S-I-N-G!

The door slid open automatically, and Lance flung himself through it. Before it could shut again, he hollered over his shoulder, “You’re both children!” Even when the door did seal itself, however, the chorus leaked through, and Lance was forced to stomp down the hallway and around the corner to escape it.

He eventually dropped his hands, opting instead to push them deep into his pockets. Distracted by his burning ears and the idea that he ever decided to have those two quiznacking idiots as friends, he wasn’t fully aware of where he was headed until he stopped in front of a door on the far end of the Castle.

Ignoring the intrusive thought that Hunk and Keith would never let him live it down if they knew, he waved his hand in front of the door’s sensor, and it slid open without protest.

At the opposite side of the hangar, the Green Lion stood sentry. Lance took a moment to gaze around the room, which looked completely vacant of anything other than scattered computer parts and large blueprints. The elevator that would usually spit its paladin out from the bridge was still.

“Pidge?” he called out.

And she appeared, as if she was simply popping into existence at the sound of his voice, around one of Green’s front paws. “Lance?” she called in response.

He couldn’t keep the easy smile from springing onto his face. “Hey,” he said, and he approached her.

She was already in full armor save for her helmet, which he quickly located on a workbench nearby. Meanwhile, her hands were preoccupied with tying her hair back. He was sidetracked for a second considering that he only just then realized that it’d become long enough for her to do that. How long was it when it was down? If Lance remembered correctly from fifteen minutes earlier, he supposed its tips would barely brush the top of her windbreaker. And when precisely did she decide to grow it out anyway? And why? Not that he was complaining, of course. She didn’t not look nice with longer hair, he begrudgingly admitted in his mind. But, still, it was different. Her face itself still looked nearly as young as it had been when they met at the Galaxy Garrison all those years ago, with the exception that it had maybe hollowed out a bit. She certainly hadn’t grown much in height, either—much to Pidge’s frequent and vocal disdain, he knew. But Lance found that it was the hair that made her look older, like the young adult woman that she’d become.

It was, in a word, unsettling.

“What’re you doing down here?” Pidge asked, successfully breaking Lance from his trance. She secured her ponytail with an elastic band, and then she dropped her hands to cross them over her breastplate. With an eyebrow quirked upward, she smirked. “Gonna beg me not to go?”

Lance barked out a half-hearted laugh, then said, “Yeah, more like gonna beg to come with.”

“Do you want to?” Pidge gestured her chin to her Lion behind her. “There’s enough room in Green for all three of us. Could be fun.”

And Lance would be a liar if he said he didn’t consider the offer for a moment. He definitely liked spending time with Pidge. In fact, recently, it didn’t really matter if he’d already spent an irregularly enormous amount time with Pidge; he always felt like spending more. But there was a difference between spending time with Pidge, and spending time with Pidge and someone else. Especially if that someone else was Coran, who—bless his heart, and stars love him—tended to speak for the vast majority of any given conversation. Plus, there was the pending matter of the trip’s purpose, which was meeting up with Pidge’s older brother. The mere thought of doing so, for some inexplicable reason, made Lance’s chest feel as if someone was sitting on it.

“Nah,” Lance said after a tick spent chewing on his bottom lip. “I should probably stay back and use the time for training.”

Pidge rolled her eyes. “Like there’s anything to train for these days.”

Lance beamed at her. “Right?” he gushed, throwing his arms up and back down to his sides. “Tell me about it!”

Humming, Pidge returned Lance’s smile before staring down at their feet. “Anyway,” she sighed. “Why did you come down here?” Then she sharply looked back up at him with narrowed eyes (although her grin remained transfixed on her mouth). “Unless you’re stalking me?”

Ha. No. You wish.”

“I really don’t.”

When Pidge didn’t say anything more after that, it finally dawned on Lance that he didn’t actually have a viable excuse for wanting to visit her.

None that he would say out loud, anyway.

So, instead, he faltered, “Why did I come down here? I—uh—” Hoping for a distraction, he paused to flash her another charming smile. It had little to no effect. “I came here—down here, to your hangar—to—” He looked around wildly, his eyes falling once more onto Pidge’s helmet, next to which sat the little gadget from earlier. “To ask you about that doohickey you built!” he said (perhaps a touch louder than he intended) as he pointed to it. “The one for Matt.”

Pidge turned her head to follow Lance’s pointed finger before furrowing her brow. “Oh. What about it?”

“Well,” said Lance, stepping past her and swiping up the gadget from its place on the workbench. “Mostly what it is, exactly?”

There was a small, exasperated huff before Pidge walked around to Lance’s front and plucked the item from his fingers. “I told you already. It’s a short-range, single-channel communicator. It’s a smaller, less sophisticated version of the communicator I built that lets us talk to our people on Earth. Plus it’s just half-duplex, so only one end can speak at a time.”

Lance leaned down to examine the thing cradled in Pidge’s hands more properly. “So,” he said, drawing out the single syllable as his brain processed her words. “It’s a walkie-talkie?”

To his surprise, she smiled at that. “The actual tech is different, and this one has a far wider range. But in layman’s terms, yes. It’s a walkie-talkie.”

What?” Lance made a grab for the communicator, which Pidge pulled further away at the last minute. “Man, I want one!”

Pidge scoffed, “Oh yeah? Who’re you gonna talk to?”

“You wound me,” he said, standing upright and throwing his hand dramatically over his chest. “I mean, I could talk to you!”

“Me?” Pidge blinked. “What do you want to talk to me for?”

“Eh,” Lance said with a shrug. “You have interesting things to say sometimes.”

Pidge rolled her eyes again. “That I do. But we already have our helmets.”

“You think I want to wear that thing all the time? Plus, everyone else can listen in with those.”

“You’re saying you want to talk to me—and only me—at all hours of the day?” Pidge’s voice dripped with skepticism. “Even if we’re just across the Castle from each other?”

A hundred quips flashed through Lance’s head to say in response. But anything clever died on his tongue. Instead, he simply nodded. “Yeah. I guess I am.”

Pidge just blinked at him again. Then—slowly—her smile returned. A genuine smile that made Lance’s heart leap. “Well. I suppose I could jury-rig a couple more for us. When I have the time.”

“Of course,” Lance said. “No rush.”

His face warmed. But it sort of looked like Pidge’s did, too, if the flush crawling across her cheeks was any indication. The room itself was obviously becoming hotter. After all, what other explanation was there?

Ready when you are, Number Five!” a voice rang out, echoing off the walls of the hangar.

Lance and Pidge jumped back from each other (though Lance hadn’t realized they’d drifted close in the first place). Pidge looked up into the face of the Green Lion and shouted—“I’ll be up in a dobosh!”—before looking back at Lance with a slight grimace.

“Has Coran been up there the whole time?” Lance asked, his hand pressed to his sternum in an effort to slow the violent, erratic beating of his heart.

“Yeah,” Pidge sighed as she mimicked his position. “I forgot.” She then hooked her thumb over her shoulder, gesturing towards her Lion. “I ought to get going.”

“Okay. Well.”

They both stepped forward at the same time to hug one another. It was quick, though, and they dropped their arms immediately after they released each other.

“Stay safe out there, Pidgey,” Lance said, reaching out the tip of his finger to pull her glasses down her nose.

She snorted. “Whatever.” And then Pidge took her glasses off her face entirely, folding the earpieces down and offering them to Lance. “Take these to remember me by, I guess,” she said, mouth pressed tightly in a line in an attempt—Lance suspected—not to smile.

“Shut up,” he replied. But he accepted the glasses anyway and tucked them into an inner pocket of his jacket. “I’ll keep ‘em safe and sound for you.”

“Thanks.”

Without another word, Pidge stepped away, scooped her helmet up from her workbench, and made her way towards the Green Lion. Lance, meanwhile, hurriedly made his own way back across the hangar to the door through which he’d entered. Keeping in mind the fact that he had no desire to get sucked into the void that was deep space as soon as the back hatch swung open to let the Lion and her passengers out, he didn’t waste any time throwing any last waves or winks over his shoulder at Pidge’s retreating form.

But that’s not to say he didn’t want to.

---

After wandering through the Castle for a little while longer, Lance eventually found himself stepping into the bridge. At the far back of the room stood Allura, who turned instantly to him at his entrance.

“Oh, hello, Lance,” she said simply before turning back to stare out at the galaxy before them. “What brings you here?”

Lance shrugged, but—realizing Allura couldn’t see that—sighed, “Eh. No reason, really. Just bored.” He walked to his usual seat and collapsed into it, stretching out his legs and crossing one foot over the other. “What about you? What’re you doing?”

Allura pointed at a star. “Seeing Coran and Pidge off.”

Sitting up a fraction and squinting his eyes, Lance located the star in question—which, he supposed, was not actually a star at all. Once he really looked at it, he noticed its bright green color that faded bit by bit with every passing second.

“Huh,” Lance grunted. “There they go.”

The two were silent for a while as they watched the blinking light disappear from view. Then Allura turned to regard Lance once more. This time, one of her eyebrows slanted upward curiously. “So, Lance,” she said, dragging out the vowel in his name just long enough to make his spine stiffen. “How are you?”

“Uh—” He tipped his chin a little to his right so he could side-eye her more properly. “Fine. How are you?”

“Fine,” she answered quickly before stepping away from the window. Or was it technically a screen? Lance was never entirely sure what they qualified as and, at that point, he was too afraid to ask. But whatever it was, Allura certainly stepped away from it and planted her feet a spitting distance away from Lance’s chair instead. “But enough about me!” she said brightly. “Is there anything new with you?”

Lance resisted the urge to narrow his eyes at her. In lieu of that, he just smirked and kicked a leg up to rest his ankle on his knee. “Well, you know me. Killing it at social appearances and breaking hearts left and right. But I wouldn’t say that’s new.”

Allura nodded in understanding and said, “Well, of course.

And it was that that roused Lance’s suspicions more than anything else. The agreement. The lack of a withering glare.

Lance straightened up in his seat, digging his heels firmly into the ground and folding his arms across his chest. “Okay. What’s your angle?”

“My ‘angle?’” Allura repeated, her expression falling into one of confusion as she peered down at her feet. “Ninety degrees, I thought? Perhaps eighty-five?”

No, I mean—” Lance stood and placed his hands on his hips. “What are you getting at? What’s with the questions?”

“Oh,” said Allura as she looked up at him again. And, again, she smiled. “It’s just been a while since we’ve spoken, hasn’t it? About something other than diplomatic measures and parties and the like. Don’t you agree?”

“Oh.” Lance deflated a touch, his arms slumping down to rest at his sides. Defensive, much? a voice in his head chided. “Yeah. I guess it’s been a minute.”

“Certainly more than that! It’s likely been well over a phoeb since we had a proper—what is it that you call them? A bonding sess?”

Completely incapable of hiding a grin, Lance said, “Yeah, you got it.” He ran a hand through his hair and scratched the nape of his neck. “All right, sure. A bonding sess sounds good.”

Fantastic,” Allura said, reaching forward to capture his free hand between both of her own. She then dragged him to the center platform and, sitting herself upon it first, pulled him down next to her.

“So,” Lance groaned as he stretched his legs in front of himself once more. “What do you want to talk about first, Princess?”

Allura’s eyes opened wide, and she began to play with the ends of her hair. The picture of innocence. But it was a picture that ended up being entirely at odds with her reply, which was a quick and firm: “How about you and Pidge?”

In a flash, Lance was on his feet and dashing towards the exit. “Nope.”

“Lance!” Allura called after him. “What’s the matter?”

“Nope.”

“I’m sorry if I’ve offended you!” The sound of footsteps pursued him. “I was just wondering—”

“Nope.”

“I’ve noticed that you’re spending a lot more time with her, and—Lance, please, stop. Really, I don’t understand why—”

Nope.

“Lance.”

“Nope!” He nearly started singing as he chanted, “Nopesolutely not. Nope thank you. No—”

Lance, look!

Right as the exit door whooshed open, Lance threw a backwards glance over his shoulder. Then he threw a second one, and then he turned around fully. “What. The cheese. Is that?”

Allura stood not far from her platform, but her own head was turned in the opposite direction. Beyond her, though, the window-screens were awash with a pulsing, dull light.

In a trance, Lance stumbled back to her side. “What’s going on?” he asked.

Allura didn’t respond. She just gaped openmouthed alongside him.

Without warning, the dull light disappeared. It was replaced, however, with a blinding flash and a sound like an explosion. As if a tidal wave had hit them, the Castle Ship rocked violently upward. Allura cried out as she lost her footing, and Lance—who’d flung his forearm over his face to block out the surge of light that had filled the bridge—barely had the wherewithal to clutch her elbow to keep her upright. The Castle fell back down, surfing the inexplicable wave. It teetered for a few moments, and then it came to rest.

Space beyond the Castle looked just as it did before. Expect, that is, for the sudden appearance of a comet that hurdled off into the distance.

And, of course, for the thing it left behind.

Wordlessly, Lance released his hold of Allura’s elbow. He stepped forward to the panel where Coran usually stood, and he pressed one of the only buttons he actually knew how to use.

“Uh, guys?” His voice reverberated loudly throughout the bridge and—he was certain—throughout the rest of the ship. “If you get a chance? Come meet us in the bridge.”

---

Glowy explody area,” Hunk whined, his extended finger shaking towards the place from which the comet had arrived.

“I know,” Lance replied.

Allura, still a bit shell-shocked, said dazedly, “It looks as if the comet tore a hole through the fabric of space itself.”

“But is that possible?” Keith stood with his hands firmly pressed against the front-most window-screen. Like everyone else, his gaze was intently trained on the space—the tear, or the rip, or whatever one wanted to call it—that rippled before them.

“I mean,” Lance said, shrugging his shoulders with a nonchalance he didn’t feel. “It’s happened before, remember? Wasn’t that the Empire’s whole deal?”

“Trying to spread their reign of terror throughout every possible universe,” Allura confirmed, her voice taking on a disgusted quality that usually preceded a person spitting.

Lance continued on, “Plus, there was that time we went through one of these things ourselves.”

Glowy explody area,” Hunk repeated.

“Exactly, buddy.”

Yes—” Keith whipped around to face his companions. His eyes were big and wild. “—but how is it possible that the comet went off—wherever it went off to—but this is still here?”

Allura sighed. “That, I can’t explain.”

Keith looked directly to Lance. “You guys were here, right? You actually saw the thing?”

“Kind of,” Lance said.

“What do you mean, ‘kind of?’” Keith snapped. “Did you or didn’t you?”

Lance’s face suddenly grew hot, his features feeling tight. He stalked over to Keith and jabbed his finger into his shoulder. “We were a little busy trying not to get thrown around, you know! I didn’t exactly have a moment to prance over and examine it!”

Keith shoved Lance’s hand away. “I was just asking. Keep your fingers to yourself if you’re interested in keeping them.”

“Enough!” Allura scolded as Lance growled under his breath at Keith, and as Keith stepped so closely to Lance so as to almost butt foreheads.

“What are we supposed to do about it, though?” Hunk asked. “Like, can we sew it up or something? Because what if there’s something—or someone—waiting on the other side to burst through?”

Allura stepped forward to join Keith and Lance near the window-screen. “I’m not sure,” she said pensively. “When we entered that alternate reality before, the comet that caused that rift was at its center. And perhaps when a similar comet collided with Daibazaal over ten thousand years ago, the comet had left enough fragments to keep that rift open.” She looked back towards Hunk. “What I mean to say is that I’m uncertain whether a rift can remain open if its comet has left it behind.”

“So, what?” Lance prompted. “We just wait and see if it closes itself up?”

“That might be for the best. After all, my father could only destroy the rift on Daibazaal by destroying Diabazaal itself.” Allura returned her gaze to the tear ahead of them. Its edges undulated as if caught in a breeze. Its center, however, burned ever brightly. “And I hesitate to shoot into it without knowing exactly what will happen.”

“Okay, sure,” Hunk said, nodding. He joined the others, the four of them standing in a line side by side, staring beyond. “And if some big bad monster comes through?”

Allura shook her head. “Hunk, a majority of the universe is empty space. The chance that this comet ripped the fabric between universes and that there was some sentient thing waiting close by on both ends of that rip are astronomical.”

“Yeah, well,” Hunk grunted, “it’s happened before.”

The four of them were silent for a full minute. Then Allura said, “Well. You might have a point there.”

“We should probably have Voltron here, just in case,” Keith said. He stepped backwards out of their line, and then turned to approach Coran’s control panel. “I’ll call the Green Lion back right now.”

Lance followed him. “Oh, come on. Don’t do that.”

“Why not?” Keith asked as he rounded the panel, eyeing Lance warily.

“We don’t necessarily need Voltron!” Lance said. “We’ve got four of the Lions here. That should be more than enough, don’t you think?”

“No,” said Keith.

“Lance,” Allura reproached. “I think it’s very kind of you to not want to interrupt Pidge’s meeting with her brother. We all know it means a lot to her. But—”

Pidge?” Lance said, his voice an octave higher than he intended. He blew out air between his lips, creating a pfft sound in its wake. “This isn’t about Pidge.”

Hunk turned from the window-screen to raise an eyebrow at him, a sudden grin spreading across his face.

“It’s not. It’s about not needing Voltron! And, really, if anything, it’s more about Coran getting his cape. He’s so excited about it, you guys, and he doesn’t ask for a lot.”

“I’m calling her,” Keith said.

Lance, meanwhile, lunged across the panel to push Keith back. Keith responded by catching Lance’s collar and pulling him over the panel to the ground.

“Now, really!” Allura shouted, running around the panel herself to pry the now-brawling boys apart. “I cannot believe, after all these decaphoebs, that you—All right, that’s enough!

“Ow!”

“Guys.”

“I am supremely disappointed in you both.”

Guys.

“He started it!”

I started it? How old are you?”

“How old are you?”

How old are you both? Paladins of Voltron, defenders of the universe, scrapping like children.”

“Ow, ow, ow—”

Guys!” Hunk bellowed.

What?” Allura snapped, too preoccupied with twisting Lance and Keith’s ears and bringing them to their feet to look up at him.

“Pidge.”

“That’s what I’m trying to—ow,” Keith said, clawing at Allura’s hands as she twisted his ear even harder.

“No, guys. Pidge!

The three behind the panel looked to Hunk, who stood at the center of the window-screen, once again pointing out towards the rift. Following the path of his finger, however, all three gaped.

Drifting noiselessly through the rift at that moment was the Green Lion itself. Its head and most of its body was already through, and the four paladins watched in silence as its hind legs and tail followed. Then the Green Lion stopped, and waited, and did nothing else.

“That’s not possible,” Allura muttered, dropping her grip on Keith’s and Lance’s ears.

“Call Pidge,” Lance said. And Keith sprung, pressing buttons with lightning-fast fingers. A new screen appeared in front of the front window, partially shadowing the Green Lion from view. And then Pidge’s face popped into existence.

“Hi, guys!” she greeted cheerily.

Coran appeared beyond her shoulder, waving enthusiastically. “Paladins and Princess! To what do we owe the pleasure? Oh! Is this a bonding sess?”

“Hey, you two,” Hunk said casually as he plastered on a large, noticeably taut smile. “Just checking in. Where are you at?”

Pidge said, “We’re just entering the Jercol Galactic region, so we’re probably half a varga out from the swap moon.”

“So.” Hunk gulped audibly. “You’re not floating in front of the Castle right now?”

“Uh.” Pidge’s eyebrows furrowed. “No. Why?”

The screen cut out just then, replaced instead by white and black static.

“What happened? Pidge?” Lance called out, clutching the edges of the panel in a vicelike grip. “Pidge?

Words began to break through the crackle of white noise. “—Paladin—Voltron—” A longer pause, then, “—hear me?”

“That’s not Pidge,” said Lance, his voice quavering a little beyond his control.

“It’s whoever just came through the rift! They’re trying to communicate with us!” Allura said.

“They can’t though,” Hunk replied. “Assuming that is the Green Lion from another universe, it’s probably trying to use the same frequency as Pidge.”

“Get Pidge back,” Allura instructed.

Keith groaned, “I’m trying.

The static disappeared, and Pidge’s face reappeared. And Coran’s too, whose cheek was pressed flush again the side of Pidge’s helmet. “Princess!” he called. “Are you there?”

“What happened?” Pidge asked with a frown, a crinkle appearing between her eyebrows. “You cut out for—”

“There’s no time to explain,” Allura said. “We need you two to return as quickly as you can. It’s urgent.”

“But—” Pidge began to reply before the image disappeared once more. The black and white static returned.

“They’re coming,” sighed Allura, leaning forward a bit to squint at the screen in front of them. “Now, try to talk to this person.”

Keith pressed a few more buttons, pulled at a dial. The static hiss lessened, although a new picture still refused to come through. “Uh—hello?” he said. Then, more loudly, “Hello? Are you there?”

A moment of silence, and then a woman’s voice came through. “Yes, I’m here. I can hear you.”

Hunk twisted around to look at Lance. He mouthed out the word, Pidge? In response, Lance shook his head.

Allura raised her own voice then. “I am Princess Allura of Altea. Please—” She visibly faltered for a moment, clearly at a loss on how to proceed. “State your name and business.”

The screen still did not display any recognizable image, and the person at the other end said nothing.

“Hello?” said Allura.

“Sorry,” the woman’s voice replied. “Sorry. I just—I know who you are.”

“Do you?”

“Yeah, of course I do, it’s me.

“I’m—” Allura looked beseechingly to either side of her at Keith and Lance in turn. “I don’t know who ‘me’ is. Who are you, and how did you come into possession of the Green Lion?”

The voice took on a slightly annoyed quality, “She’s mine, that’s how.” Lance could just hear the eye roll at the other end, and he resisted a strange urge to smirk.

Keith grumbled, quietly enough to only be heard by those in the room, “So what do we do? Do we engage?”

“Yeah, this doesn’t feel right to me,” Hunk said.

“Your name, please,” Allura insisted.

“Elena,” the voice responded. “This is beyond crazy. The odds—”

Allura interrupted her. “Elena of where?”

The voice was quiet for a moment. Then, in a borderline jokey tone, “Uh. Elena of here, I guess? Elena of the blackest void of space. Elena of—”

“Do you have any additional names?” Allura pressed as her face reddened. Lance rarely saw her so rapidly annoyed at someone who wasn’t—well—him. “Any identifiers so that we can be convinced a preemptive maneuver is not necessary?”

“Sorry, Princess,” the voice said quickly, any and all flippancy discarded. “Elena McClain.”

What?” Lance practically hollered, looking up and staring first at the static, and then past it to the part of the Green Lion he could see. “Elena?

“Yes?” the voice—Elena—responded. “Who’s that?”

“Who’s Elena?” Hunk asked.

“My sister,” Lance said, now fast-walking around the panel to the window-screen, pressing himself against it in his effort to see into the Green Lion’s eyes.

“Your sister?” Allura gasped.

Spinning on his heel to face Hunk, Allura, and Keith, Lance said, “Let her in.”

“What?” Keith said, pushing away from the panel and coming around to meet Lance toe-to-toe. “We have no idea who she is—”

“She’s my sister.”

“She can’t be—”

“Pidge followed Matt into space to bring him home,” Lance choked around a sudden lump in his throat, stepping back from Keith and looking wide-eyed up at Allura. “Why couldn’t Elena have done the same for me?”

“But, Lance,” Allura told him in a near whisper. It was the kind of voice one might use at the bedside of a sick person. “You’ve spoken with your family recently. Wasn’t Elena with them?”

“Yeah,” Hunk said, equally softly. “Plus, you just watched this girl pop through a glowy explody area. It can’t be your sister.”

“That’s it, though!” Lance pleaded, gesticulating wildly at the window-screen behind him. “On the other side of that rift is an alternate reality, right? Maybe in that reality—” Lance looked back over his shoulder at the Green Lion. “—that’s my sister in there.”

The other three didn’t say anything, trading glances between themselves and the back of Lance’s head.

The voice did chirp up again, though. “Hi. It’s me again,” Elena said. “I’m sorry, this sounds like a very—well, I’m picking up that this is all a bit emotional.”

Lance scoffed, wiping the back of his hand across his forehead.

“But,” Elena continued, “I’m an only child. So. Sorry, Mr. Unidentified Voice.”

Fine,” Lance spat, now glaring at the screen of static above him. “If you’re not my sister, where in the quiznak did you get that name?”

At once, Elena replied, “My parents?”

“Oh, go eat an egg,” Lance mumbled as he crossed his arms and slumped against the screen.

“What are you doing here?” Keith abruptly called out. “What do you want from us?”

Nothing happened. No response. Just the sizzle from the static.

Keith yelled out again. “Hello? Are you there?”

“Yeah,” Elena responded. “Uh—sorry. I was distracted. Thinking.”

Keith rolled his eyes and threw up his hands. Allura just shrugged at him.

“Hey,” Elena said after an extra moment. “Can I come aboard?”

“Absolutely not,” Keith answered.

Ignoring Keith, Allura asked, “Why? What do you want?”

“I have a hypothesis,” explained Elena. “I want to see if it’s correct.”

“Okay, vague,” Hunk muttered.

“Sorry, I can’t jeopardize the experiment by giving you any more information than that.” After a moment, she added, “If you let me into my hangar—”

“S’not your hangar,” Lance said under his breath.

“—I’ll leave my bayard in the cockpit. I will enter completely unarmed. And if I’m wrong, I will leave and I’ll crawl back into the rift I came out of.”

“Come on, Allura,” Keith said in a low voice. “We know nothing about her other than her name, which we don’t even know for sure is real. We can’t see her face, and we can’t see if she’s alone. It’s too risky. She could be dangerous, or she could be crazy.”

Hunk tacked on, “Or dangerously crazy.”

Elena quipped, “I can hear you. But whatever.”

Allura looked to Lance. “Thoughts?” she asked.

Lance stared back out at the Green Lion. “I don’t know,” he said. Despite his slight exhaustion from the emotional roller coaster he’d just been on, he could feel pure curiosity tickling his spine. “I mean, that is the Green Lion. And she says she has its bayard.”

“That doesn’t mean anything,” Keith said. “She could have stolen them! Who knows?”

“I didn’t steal them,” Elena’s voice snapped. “Look, you can scan me when I get in there, okay? Don’t you have that kind of tech? You can see that I’m alone. You guys outnumber me so, really, if you think about it, I’ve got a right to be a lot more scared of you than you are of me.”

Allura looked around at the boys once more. Keith shook his head. Hunk shrugged. Lance shrugged, too, but then gave a small nod. Allura returned her gaze to the screen ahead, and to the Green Lion beyond it.

“Elena,” Allura said, narrowing her eyes. “Are you a paladin of Voltron?”

A short pause, then, “I am, Princess.”

“And what does that mean where you come from?”

“That means,” Elena said, so much more quietly than she said anything thus far that Lance had to strain to hear her, “I’m a defender of the universe.”

Allura stared out the window-screen for a few additional moments. Then she nodded.

Keith heaved a great sigh.

“You may approach,” Allura said. “Once you are secured in the hangar, we will run a scan. If you pass that scan, we will greet you down there. If you do not, you will be ejected. Do you agree to those terms?”

“I do,” Elena said, a smile evident in her voice. “Thank you. I’ll see you soon.”

The screen full of static disappeared instantly. Then the Green Lion picked up and flew around the window-screens to the left and beyond their field of vision.

“Well,” Lance said, kicking off from his place leaned against the window. “She knows where the Green Lion’s hangar is.”

“Yes. That is interesting.” Allura said with a nod.

Hunk brought his hands up to massage his temples. “‘The universe is mostly empty space,’ she said. ‘The odds are astronomical,’ she said.” He pointed to Allura, and groaned, “I told you. If something statistically improbable was gonna happen to someone, of course it was gonna happen to us.”

---

Allura watched on the security monitors as the Green Lion—or, rather, a Green Lion—landed in the empty hangar and as the hatch sealed shut behind it. And, to everyone’s moderate surprise (except for Keith; it was to his supreme surprise), the scan checked out totally above the board. One Lion, one pilot, and that was it.

The princess then led their way to Pidge’s lift, all four squeezing in at once, and together they traversed her usual path to her hangar. It took a while longer than it would’ve taken Pidge on her own; after all, her zipline couldn’t carry more than one at a time. But eventually they stepped into the hangar itself, their footsteps echoing metallically off its floor and walls.

Lance, meanwhile, felt as if he was watching the whole scene from above, too trapped in his own mind to appreciate it all from his own perspective.

The imposter Green paladin.

The imposter Elena McClain.

What in the name of the universe was happening?

There was the Green Lion standing before him, but not in her usual glory. Now that he could see it up close, he noted that there were long, white marks where her coloring had been stripped. There were more dents than he remembered the Lion having, and even a few places where the exoskeleton looked punctured.

When the head began to lower to the ground, the four of them stopped in a line. In other circumstances, Lance might’ve considered how authoritative it looked, how it portrayed a united front. Instead, Lance held his breath.

As an automatic response, he was initially solaced by the sight of a green-armored person stepping from the robot’s mouth. But as the stranger approached, even from a distance, Lance could tell that she was a good amount taller than Pidge. Taller than his sister even (although not by as much). An icy twinge in his gut interrupted any comfortable warmth, and Lance shuffled his feet.

Once she’d made it to the metal ground, and once Green had stood upright again, the stranger put her hands up. “I come in peace,” she chuckled. And then, as she continued advancing towards them, she dropped her hands to pull off her helmet.

Lance’s heart sunk a bit. Despite everything, he’d been holding out some hope that this woman would prove to be his sister. So, on top of it all, he felt stupid. Embarrassed.

(How he hated it when Keith was right.)

This woman—or girl, rather, because she couldn’t have too much younger than he was—was indisputably not his sister. Her skin was fairer. The hair that was half tied back, half falling loose around her shoulders was lighter, a dark brown rather than his Elena’s black. Her eyes were not his family’s signature dark blue, but brown.

And yet, there was something indistinguishably familiar.

Before he could even dream of attempting to place it, the woman’s eyes locked onto his own.

Elena—this Elena—beamed at him. “Shut. The front. Door. I knew it,” she said, pulling her helmet roughly into her own chest. It clacked against her breastplate. “I know who you are.”

Lance balked. Blinked. Opened his mouth to say something, then closed it, then opened it again. “Uh—you—I don’t. Huh?”

Her smile grew impossibly wider. “You’re Lance, aren’t you? Lance McClain.”

He didn’t say anything at first, just continued to stare blankly at her.

Hunk was the one who asked, “How did you know that?”

And without taking her eyes off Lance for a moment, Elena tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, shaking her head back and forth in clear, unadulterated, delighted disbelief. “I’m his daughter. That’s how.”

---

In hindsight, Lance would’ve liked to take back anything he’d ever said—even internally—about his life being boring. Was it terrifying sometimes? For sure. Did he like it anyway? Eh, depends on when you asked him. As soon as those words left Elena’s mouth, for example, he probably would’ve answered in the negative.

But boring? Not by a long shot.

Boring sure sounded nice.