Chapter Text
*******
“Sir, our scanners have picked up an anomaly in the cosmic background radiation. We believe it may be extraterrestrial communication.”
“Thank you, Johnson; this is news indeed. Keep me apprised of the situation.”
“Yes, sir.”
*******
Lance gently brushed the moisturizing mask over his face. Jellyfish stings and the humidity of the ocean floor had left his skin dry, flaky, and a little red.
Still better than Shiro has it, he thought with a frown at his reflection. Aloud he added,
“What’s some eczema compared to a magical wound?”
The movement burned his mouth.
“Ow! It was a rhetorical question,” he muttered, out loud again in self spite. “A day in the pod…”
Lance had two thoughts at once -
I spent two days in the pod.
I wonder if pods fix dry skin...
- and cringed at his own vanity.
Shiro could have died. I could have… we could die any time.
Suddenly, Lance’s skin didn’t seem so important anymore - but neither did anything else. So he slipped on his sleep mask and headphones, and slid into bed. It was a good forty-five minutes of restless half-wakefulness before he realized he’d forgotten to even start his playlist.
~
Shiro was in the pod less than a full twenty-four hours.
He awoke paralyzed and unable to draw breath, still present in the reality of his memory-dream. That panic faded as mobility returned to his limbs and lungs, but the sense of urgency remained. He stumbled out to tell his teammates what he had remembered.
“The Galra cannot be trusted,” was Allura's cynical response. She was angry at the genocide of her people, fresh and recent in her mind. It felt like she was angry at him, and Shiro resented that.
But Allura had a right to be angry. Shiro had no right to hate her for it.
So he hated himself for that.
~
Allura struggled to separate the grief of her past from her mission in the present. Nor could she hold any Galra free of blame, even after the rebel Ulaz had taken them to his base and given his life to save them.
“Their kind have tricked us before,” she reminded Coran, who needed no reminder.
“The memory of that betrayal is no older to me than to you,” he agreed. “But, Princess, so much could have changed in... 10,000 years is a very long time.”
“Nothing has changed!” Allura contended. “Not even the one on the throne, it has been him all this time, - alive…!”
Coran paused and chose his words with uncharacteristic care.
“You are right, Princess. It may well be that little or nothing has changed in all that time. But even all those years ago… Allura... you were too young to understand the politics of it all.”
Allura reddened. “The Galra do not deal in politics , they deal in terror! I am old enough to know what they did! To their own planet… to ours, to… to Father…" she blinked rapidly, mouth turning down at the corners as she tried to swallow her sobs. “Father... Coran, my father… ”
Giving up his side of the argument immediately, Coran took the Princess into his arms and whispered,
“I know, Allu. I know. It isn’t fair, I know.”
“My father,” Allura repeated, soft and choked, “my father...”
~
“My daughter. Katie Holt.”
“No, I’m sorry, ma’am, we don’t have any students by that name in our register. Is there anything else I can help you with?”
“Please connect me with Commodore Johnson.”
“I’m sorry ma’am, I can’t - ”
“This is the widow of Commander Holt. Please put me through to Commodore Johnson.”
“I - one moment please.”
Hold music. A recruiting advertisement. More music. Click.
“Hello? Mrs. Holt?”
“Commodore Johnson?”
“Commodore Johnson is busy. This is Commander Iverson.”
“I see, well… I am calling about my daughter, Katie - ”
“Your daughter has been banned from these premises for nearly a year, Mrs. Holt.”
“Banned? Why - a year? No, that can’t be possible,” Colleen thought aloud, synapses firing. The conspiracy theories… all the secrecy, the sneaking around that Colleen had been too lost in her own grief to…
“Pidge... try Pidge.”
“Pidge?? Pidge Gunderson?”
“Yes - yes, Gunderson is mine, my maiden name, that must be….”
Silence. Then,
“Shit.”
“Excuse me?” Colleen gripped the phone tighter and sank into an armchair, her heart pounding. It had been weeks since she’d had any contact with her daughter. Though she feared the truth now more than ever, the uncertainty was driving her mad.
“Mrs. Holt. It is my duty to inform you that Pidge… that your daughter was…”
“Was?” The word wormed its way around Colleen’s heart like an icy serpent.
“Pidge Gunderson was killed last month. In an accident. The details are classified. I’m so sorry.”
Silence. Then,
“I deeply regret that you were not informed sooner. Please accept my sincerest condolences, Mrs. Holt.”
“Doctor.”
“I - ?”
“My name is Dr. Holt, and I can assure you, I will get to the bottom of this.” And with a sob that surprised her as much as anyone Colleen let her phone drop to the carpet without ending the call. Iverson’s voice on the other end continued for another few seconds before cutting out, leaving Colleen wrapped in the ringing silence of her three bedroom home.
~
“I heard you talking about my Lion!” Lance accused, popping into the hallway without warning, comically serious in his bathrobe and mud mask. “Whatever you think you have with her, you need to forget it! She’s very happy with me.”
“I’m not trying to steal your Lion, Lance, I have my own!” snapped Keith. Even as he spoke he could feel the Blue Lion’s Energy thrumming through the depths of his consciousness like the distant memory of a home he’d never had.
“Don’t lie to me!” Lance was still talking. “I know you’ve had your eye on Blue from the beginning!”
Longer than you have, Keith thought obstinately. The Blue Energy spiked with Lance’s emotions and Keith scoffed. It muddied his thoughts, swirled around his mind like oil in water.
Yet it was a comfortable feeling. It - it smelled like his shack in Comstock, when he was chasing the mystery of something greater. Magic and mystery had since faded into day-to-day reality, and he'd learned to live with the Blue Lion's Energy in the back of his mind.
But in it, Keith sometimes still felt the echo of fevered excitement. It was... like Lance, it was... sometimes annoying.
Shaking his head in frustration, Keith walked away, ignoring Lance’s provocations.
~
At first, Coran was grateful for the distractions. The Princess was in a such a delicate state, he would rather she worry about saving others than dwell on her own losses. But it was a fine balance, and running from Zarkon was draining her body and spirit. She blamed herself for so much and took everything so seriously - except her own well-being...
“Is the Princess with you?”
Coran knew the answer before Shiro even asked.
“You both need to come back to the ship immediately, please!" he said "If Zarkon finds us again we won’t be able to form Voltron or wormhole away!”
“And more importantly!” added Lance in a squeaking parody of sternness, “um, what are you guys doing out there? Alone? Like...”
“We can’t come back until we know Zarkon isn’t tracking the ship through us," Allura answered. "We can’t put you all in danger.”
“Princess, please think this over,” Shiro implored. Shiro - Shiro and Allura were kids, thrust into positions of huge responsibility. Coran was a seasoned adult, with experience in a wide variety of undesirable situations. He knew exactly what to do.
“Princess Allura, turn that shuttle around right this moment or you are grounded!” he demanded, stamping down his foot. Shiro sighed, because he thought Coran didn’t understand how ridiculous he sounded.
Oh, but how little these children understood the calculation, the deliberation behind every face, every pun, every silly sound...! All for their benefit. They would fret about everything, they would worry with abandon, and they would all feel alone and adrift.
So Coran would be their anchor, their reminder that even in the most barren reaches of space, laughter still echoes through the stars!.......
“ - to see if Zarkon is tracking you why did you leave together in the middle of the night - ”
“Lance,” Shiro warned.
“ - if he shows up, which he won’t , by the way, how did you think you’re going to know which of you - ”
“And here I thought you really didn’t understand the concept of a variable,” muttered Pidge.
“Lance!” Shiro repeated, more forcefully, then turned his attention to the screen. “Listen. I hope you will both reconsider and at least - return within the hour. If Zarkon is tracking you, he’ll have found you by then.”
An alert appeared on the Castleship's screen and before anyone could answer, the connection with the pod was lost.
“Not to worry, team!” chirped Coran, dodging remnants of the planet Taujeer. “I have very magnetic presence that I’m sure the princess and our young Keith won’t bear to be separated from for long - now in the meantime, let’s go see what happening to this planet, and how we can help!”
“Agreed,” said Shiro, though Coran was pretty sure he was only agreeing to the last part.
And that was good enough for him.
~
“Klanmural,” Pidge mimicked. She stared at the alien bear, trying to make some connection between this hologram and the sound she had just made. What she didn’t expect was for the bear to growl and grow several inches.
A smooth, artificial voice repeated the Altean word.
Come on, when am I even going to need this? Pidge thought in agitation. Her lazy classmates had said the same things about math, and Pidge had rolled her eyes at them. Even to elementary-aged Pidge, math had been more intrinsically appealing than other people.
“Klan-merl!” she yelped, crawling backward from the darkening projection.
It hadn’t been until her transition that Pidge took any interest in the social conventions of her peers. That was when she grew out her hair, pierced her ears, experimented with makeup. She cared, for the first time, how her classmates saw her; and she was desperate to cement her femininity.
But when she would immerse herself in code, in tech, those social expectations fell away. She was only her naked self, her simplest existence, a string of cosmic ones and naughts....
Pidge took in the Altean word for the third time, with adrenaline-sharpened ears.
“Klanmüirl," she spat back, "klanmüirl!” -
- and heaved a sigh of relief when the nightmare before her shrank and disappeared.
Pidge hoped the lesson would continue with grammar. The mathematical structure of language was more her area of expertise; the organic and evolving reality of its everyday use was… well.
On the other hand, Pidge thought with pride, if I can hack a tree, then I can damn well hack an ancient alien language.
It had been an epiphany on Olkarion, understanding how the math she loved permeated the very world she used it to escape. The same patterns and constants described the void, the stars and the lives they illumined. Where did those lives intersect? How many configurations of binary digits could there be?
Feeling curious and empowered, Pidge straightened and looked up to face her next word...
A series of impossible clicks and stops incongruous with the soft automated voice. Pidge felt her confidence falter.
Perhaps there were more permutations than she had guessed.
~
Hunk was a good engineer - a brilliant engineer - but he could just as happily spend his life in a kitchen.
Only...
Not chained to a sink, washing dishes.
Come on. Lance…? Someone? Someone will have to find me… he thought gloomily, tension in his shoulders growing with every passing tick. He was not the best fighter. He was not the best pilot or leader, he didn’t have some… psychic connection to alien technology. Hunk knew his limitations, but he also knew his strengths. Vrepit Sal’s robot breaking down was an extraordinary stroke of good luck.
So what if he didn’t know what any of this food was? Cooking it was easy, natural.
This spice and this tuber fit together like scaultrite cookies and a teludav. This vegetable and this sauce repelled each other like Lance and Keith.
And Sal, Sal cowered before him, as tall and purple as any of Hunk's enemies. That experience was surreal. Sal, Ulaz, Zarkon… they clashed against each other like mismatched flavors in Hunk's gut.
But these were flavors Hunk did not know how to reconcile.
*******
“Sir. The transmissions have increased in volume.”
“Exhilarating. Momentous. What do they tell us?”
“We have collected what we believe to be conclusive evidence of their alien origin, sir, but our linguists and code-breakers are still working to decipher their content.”
“This is a security concern, Johnson, you understand? It is our top priority to learn what these communications mean. We must be prepared to respond.”
“Yes, sir. I will reassign more personnel to this project.”
“Thank you, Johnson - but be careful whom you inform. This information cannot leak to the public.”
“Yes, sir. I understand.”
*******