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Day 32: “Voltron’s super-fantastic intergalactic road trip.” 22:03Planet XC54 "Ba'Speraq." --Stronghold (floating)
Well, shit.
Pidge groans quietly, dragging a hand—the one that against all odds is still in possession of it's glove—over her eyes while the other moves to fiddle with the torn remains of her dress. In the distance, a small flock of space-cuccos squawk bloody murder, a faint, familiar song plays on loop over the blaring of emergency sirens, and a steadily approaching rush of footsteps grows ever closer as the gunshot wound in her thigh spurts blood under the hasty bandage—a strip of her dress she’d torn off an hour ago.
In hindsight, perhaps rushing onto an unfamiliar planet with not much in the way of a plan and no backup hadn’t exactly been the best idea.
And quiznack, she really wishes she had her Bayard at the moment.
Well, no use dwelling on the past, right? Not like she can really do much about past decisions at the moment.
Her eyes dart around the small, unfortunately windowless tower room she’d been cornered in, looking for something, anything, to work with.
Nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing, nothi—
Oh. Wait a second.
That. That just might work.
A small, dangerous smirk finds its way onto her lips as the footsteps grow ever closer.
"Embrace The Chaos"--that's what she's been saying for the past week, after all.
Day 25: “Voltron’s super-fantastic intergalactic road trip.” 11:17Planet 0755 "Anala" — Temporary camp.
“You can’t be serious.” Pidge deadpans, raising one eyebrow at the utterly evil being in front of her. Keith gives her a tiny smile, as if that would actually help the feelings of complete and utter betrayal currently narrowing her eyes.
Spoiler alert, it doesn’t
“Pidge—“'
“Yes?”
“It’s just not a good idea.“
“Since when do you care about ‘good ideas?’”
“Since I became the Black Paladin.”
“Oh, really? Well then. Shiro!” She doesn’t break eye contact with the traitor. “Your decision making skills have ruined my life!” Shiro looks up with a small smile from where he’s watching Hunk try and start a decent fire with the tiny amount of kindling they somehow managed to scrape together out of the lint from their Lions.
“First, ouch. Second, Keith’s right. You really shouldn’t—“
“Traitor!” She shouts at him, still not looking away from Keith as Shiro snorts out a tiny bit of laughter. It’s a nice sound to hear. Everyone’s been a lot more than a little quiet since the whole thing with Ezor and Zethrid a few days ago. It’s—frankly—infuriating. She’s fine. Those two hadn’t managed to get that many hits on her, and the stab wounds and broken rib had healed up nicely after just a couple hours in the remaining cryopod.
Keith frowns at her, and of course it’s at that moment that the worst happens, because she’s beginning to heavily suspect that someone has some sort of superpower that allows him to detect every single time a certain other someone has anything worse than typical brooding on his face.
“Now Pidgey,” The worst coos, moving to lean on Keith’s shoulder (Pidge doesn’t miss how Keith’s cheeks flush the colour of a flamingo) with an incredibly infuriating grin. “You know I literally despise, like loathe, abhor even—“
“Lance.”
“—Saying these words, but Keith… is…right.” He hacks out the last word as though it were a particularly displeasing chunk of phlegm. Keith tosses him a disgruntled look, but doesn’t interject.
Pidge actually raises her eyebrows at that. Lance may be desperately in love with Keith (even if he is in a truly shocking amount of denial) but some things haven't changed. Lance would still rather give up his moisturizer for the rest of his life then admit Keith had actually made a point.
“Yeah, yeah. I know. Horrible words. Truly astonished by myself. But Pidge—“
Something softens in his eyes at that, something that just seems so familiar and she hates it and she loves it and she wants it to go away and she wants it to stay forever and Matt— (She cuts her train of thought off at that, just in time to tune back into the real world)
“—It’s a really, really bad idea. And you hardly ever have those so just, maybe, let this one go?” She knows this tone. She knows all about the pleading look and the compliments.
She knows it always, always works on Hunk.
She knows it’s never once worked on her before.
“Nope.” She says brightly. "It's literally the furthest thing from a bad idea, actually."
Keith sighs again. He does that a lot these days.
“Pidge, just let me go. Or Allura, or Hunk, or quiznak, even Lance.”
“Rude!”
Hunk makes his way over just as the two lovebirds have fallen into a full-on scuffle, Pidge watching with a faint snort.
“You know,” He begins, and Pidge turns, just slightly, towards him. “It’s not that we think you can’t handle yourself." It's exactly like that. "It’s just…” He takes a breath, twiddles his thumbs. “Can you really blame us?”
“I’m fine.” Pidge says. She doesn’t answer the question.
“It was bad. You… weren’t in good shape.”
A long appendage wrapped around her throat, squeezing the air from her lungs.
“I know.” She says, rubbing at one of her temples. “And I’m really, really sorry I scared you, but I’m ok. Honest.”
Hunk looks at her for a moment.
“Twelve hours, Pidge. You were in there for twelve hours.”
“Hence why I need to go, because god forbid if we need that pod again and we're not near a convenient source." She pinches her nose. This should not be such a damn argument. "I used up the last of the sap. It’s only logical.”
Hunk looks at her like he very much doubts that conclusion.
A thread of concern and displacement slips into her mind, and she whips her head around to glare at Green.
“Ok will everyone please just shut up!” She shrieks, and Hunk jumps a little while Allura, just returned from a water supply run, nearly drops her cargo—and the mice along with it. Keith and Lance freeze where they are, Lance in the process of giving Keith a noogie. Shiro’s head whips up from the pot of soup Hunk clearly left him in charge over, a small dollop falling off the spoon with a tragic splat onto the mossy ground. Coran doesn’t even blink, probably too focused on checking Black’s booster jets, while Krolia simply keeps on sharpening her knife and Romelle doesn’t even twitch in her slumber, her snores still echoing throughout the small forest glade.
Green sends a tiny twinge of amusement, and Pidge bats it away with a growl before taking a deep breath, steepling her fingers in front of her.
“As I’ve said,” she begins calmly. “I am fine. I am perfectly capable of walking a few hundred meters into this perfectly safe, very well lit forest to find a perfectly docile tree—with Green acting as a very helpful GPS.” Keith opens his mouth as if to speak, so she sends a sharp look his way before continuing. “So, if you will all please just let me do this incredibly simple and perfectly safe task, we can quite easily be on our way by tomorrow. Can we all agree?”
She grins one of her favourite grins, the ever-so-slightly unhinged one that's crooked corners and sharp edges, and a stray beam of sunlight glints off her glasses.
There’s a beat of silence.
Then Keith gets to his feet, brushing off the grey dust clinging to his jacket before crossing his arms. “You’re going even if I say no, aren’t you?” He asks, the voice uncannily similar to Shiro’s ‘dad voice.’ Like they needed two of him.
“Yep.” Pidge says cheerfully, and Keith sighs, rubbing the bridge of his nose.
“Fine.” He says. “But—“ He cuts off, turning to Shiro, who quite gleefully picks up the sentence.
“We have ground rules.” He continues. “No sidetracking. No putting yourself in unnecessary danger. No field studies—”
“Really just gonna take the fun out of everything, huh?”
“—Bring your comms. Come back once you’re done. And listen to Green.” He sits back. “Deal?”
Pidge huffs out a breath.
“Ok, fine. Deal.”
***
Turns out, sap collecting, even from a relatively soggy tree, is a way more labour intensive process than she’d thought.
Pidge comes to this conclusion after struggling for fifteen minutes to attach the tap to the right sap vein, spending another fifteen trying to figure out how the filter Coran had given her even worked, getting sprayed in the face four times, losing a crap ton of the stuff after the vial apparently hadn’t been fully secured even though the light was green, she swears, and finally getting sprayed one last time as she’s disassembling the setup after what was probably, all in, four hours. (She’s not counting the extra hour spent studying that weird lichen. Don’t blame her, it was neon pink and smelled like chocolate she had to)
Green snickers in her mind after the last on that list, nudging her consciousness affectionately. Pidge happily reciprocates, having gotten used to that whole feeling months (years?) ago.
Har-Har. She shoots back. Green gives her the mental equivalent of a lick on the head.
She starts on the long, slow process of packing up. The tap has to be nestled ever so carefully into the space-foam casing. The filters have to be laid perfectly on top of one another and sealed in that airtight glass box. The sap itself has to be delicately positioned in the climate controlled holsters.
Pidge might take a little longer than she specifically needs to. Green quite helpfully reminds her of this.
I’m just being careful.
Green doesn’t buy it. Pidge snickers under her breath just the slightest bit. Sue her, the boys hadn’t given her a second without one of them hovering over her for the past week.
Never mind the fact that she’s saved their asses like fifteen times by now. Never mind the fact that she’s been fighting in a literal space war for over a year. No, Pidge gets beat up one time, and we’re just gonna completely forget about all of that.
It wasn’t even that bad! She only got three stab wounds and one broken ankle and a couple mildly fractured ribs! Keith’s had triple that and they all fussed over him way less! (She has to admit that may have been out of a justified fear of being bitten if they tried to mother him. It didn’t stop Shiro, of course. She still has the blackmail pics)
She’s still griping to herself about this when it hits her. ‘It’ is a spear, a crossbow bolt, a lightning strike of Green’s consciousness ramming into her cerebral cortex. ‘It’ is absolutely dripping in urgency and pain and fear. ‘It’ seems to be very conflicted about whether to tell her to run as far away as possible or get her ass back to base right damn now.
Because this is Pidge we’re talking about, and because her admitted mild impulsiveness when it comes to family tends to win out over literally any other mental processes, Pidge immediately starts hauling ass back to camp like she’s being chased by a cougar in the mountains. By Green’s grace, the verdant forest doesn’t impede her at all as she darts through the foliage. Snaking vines sink a little lower in the ground to remove the threat of tripping, the moss becomes almost bouncy under her feet.
It’s one of those small, absolutely incredibly useful things their Lions do for them—Blue’s manipulation of the currents was one of the only reasons Lance was able to catch that quintessence shipment three months ago. (she guesses it’s three years ago now, which, weird)
Pidge has never been more grateful for it.
Green is still screaming in her mind, all danger-danger-run-other cubs-danger-hurry-loss. She still spares a moment to chastise her for nearly stumbling over a log. That’s her lion for you.
Pidge manages a breathy laugh through the bond, but she can tell it’s forced. Green’s presence is… fading. It's slipping from it's well established crook in her mind like space goo. She knows all the things that could mean. She doesn’t want to think about a single one of them, not when the extended paladin bond is fading and slipping just the same. Not when Green had specifically mentioned them in her warning.
Instead of letting her thoughts run wild like they very desperately want to, instead of letting herself cry at the fading grip she has on Green’s celadon-emerald-chartreuse presence, she focuses whatever of herself she can spare on sending love-be there soon-safe back through the stretching threads of their bond.
This is weird, for them. She knows they both know it. Green’s usually the one soothing Pidge’s frayed nerves. Green’s the one who coralls her thoughts and purrs comfort into her mind when they spiral out of control. Pidge isn’t the one who usually does the comforting.
For fuck’s sake, she left for five hours to get sap.
It was supposed to be a simple mission.
The thread, frayed and stretched to the brink, snaps the second she bursts into the clearing, Green’s last message of love and trust arcing like thunder down the frayed end. Pidge frantically chases after it, grasping and reaching as the thread (and Green) drifts further away.
She realizes why the second she’s gathered enough to be able to look around.
Because their camp is completely and utterly destroyed, and there's not a soul left.
What’s left of her critical thinking—the part not currently screaming into the void for that flicker of sage and mint and rosemary—clocks the scuff-marks on the ground, the still-boiling soup Shiro had been guarding all morning. The heavy imprints where five sets of paws had laid not three hours ago. The haphazard scatter of burn marks from blaster fire and slashes etched into the trees and ground by a sword, or two. The clear landing marks of Galra spacecraft.
They’re gone, everyone. It doesn’t take anything much to discern that. And yet for Pidge, it only sinks in once she catches sight of the blade.
It’s Keith’s.
Not his Bayard, that particular weapon is one he’s lost before for a second or two in the heat of battle. No, this is his Marmora dagger, the dagger that for most of his life had been the only thing left of his mother.
The dagger that Keith fought a base full of Galra in order to keep.
The dagger that he would never, never leave behind.
Not if he had any sort of choice.
Pidge doesn’t look up. She doesn’t scan the sky for any trace of the fuckwads who stole her family. She knows they’ve jumped by now, no chance torturing herself if it won’t bring her family back.
What Pidge does do is pick up the dagger like it’s made of gossamer and diamonds. She packs it securely and gently in the satchel that's still, somehow, hanging around her shoulder, cradling the sap that's the only reason she's not vanished too.
She serves herself a bowl of soup.
And then she sits down and starts planning.
Because the black holes will fucking disappear before Pidge lets this slide.
Because there is going to be absolute hell to pay.