Chapter Text
Shiro was really starting to dislike Commander Sendak. He'd been on the bridge, saluting, for five minutes and Sendak had yet to acknowledge him. Evidently whatever Sendak was discussing with Haxus was more important than the "urgent" summons that had brought Shiro running from the far end of the Predator. That wasn't unusual, exactly, just frustrating. But of course, who would complain? The two officers were intimidating enough on their own: Sendak big and brutish even without his massive mechanized arm; Haxus slighter, built like a cheetah ready to run his prey into the ground. Put them together and only a fool would pick a fight.
So Shiro kept his face blank. Calm. Respectful. Play the part, Champion. Obedience was crucial in the Galra army, and above all for the vanishingly small number of soldiers who had risen from the Arena. Shiro, like the rest, was watched closely for signs of insubordination.
He couldn't afford to screw up now.
He stood straight and tall, head up, mechanical arm across his chest in a salute, and waited for Sendak to remember he existed.
Another five minutes passed. Galra hurried by on either side of Shiro, stealing glances at him. At the one-time Champion, undefeated for six months. At the one and only human in Zarkon’s army. At the favorite pet of a Galra prince.
Sweat beaded on Shiro’s brow; his legs began to cramp from his sprint from the training deck.
Finally Sendak dismissed Haxus and crossed to where Shiro waited. He acknowledged Shiro’s salute with a nod, and Shiro fell into parade rest, hands clasped behind his back, feet shoulder width apart. It was an entirely human gesture, a holdover from his time with the Galaxy Garrison, and that made it a minor rebellion—the only rebellion Shiro allowed himself.
Sendak’s lip curled at the gesture, but for once he didn’t comment on it. Instead he called up the display on his mechanical arm and swiped. Shiro's wrist-mounted communicator chirped at an incoming message, which Shiro opened and quickly scanned.
He glanced at Sendak. “Transfer orders, sir?”
“Effective immediately.” Sendak’s smile was more of a bestial snarl, savage and dangerous. The aperture of his prosthetic eye narrowed as he studied Shiro. “You’ll have to tell your minder.”
“You mean my commander.”
Shiro’s voice was, perhaps, a bit too sharp for a new recruit speaking to the ship’s commander. Shiro found it hard to care. He glared back at Sendak until the Galra’s smile widened.
“If he doesn’t want to go with you, he’ll have to arrange a new nanny. Tell him he has one hour to get you off my ship.”
Shiro swallowed his protests—an hour?—and saluted Sendak once more. “Vrepit sa,” he growled, then turned and stalked off the bridge.
“Are all your commanders like him?" Shiro asked as soon as the door to his small, stuffy quarters closed behind him.
The lump on one of the two narrow bunks grunted a response from behind a massive book. A physical book, which Shiro found no less amusing after seeing it almost daily for three months. How many Galra owned even one book, let alone the two dozen or so stacked haphazardly beneath the bunk?
Shiro leaned against his own bunk and raised an eyebrow. “He called you my nanny again.”
“To be fair, he’s basically right.”
“Keith.”
With a groan, Keith stuck a scrap of paper in his book and set it aside. His hair was matted with sleep, and one of his bat-like ears had turned inside out. It twitched twice and fixed itself, and Keith rubbed at the dark pillow lines on his cheek. He stared at Shiro with tired yellow eyes. “Shiro, three months ago you were still fighting in the Arena. If you wanted them to think you changed your mind this fast, you should have been kicking more puppies.”
Shiro rolled his eyes and crouched in search of a duffel bag. “You don't even have puppies out here.”
“So improvise.”
Shiro allowed himself a small chuckle. He didn't know where Keith had heard about the evils of puppy-kicking; it didn't seem important enough to make an appearance in Galra military intelligence or whatever rumors there were floating around on the intergalactic equivalent of the internet. Shiro had certainly never mentioned it to him, and Shiro was ninety percent of Keith's source material. But that was Keith--always turning up new human jokes or bits of mundane trivia. Shiro appreciated it, even if he didn't understand it. It made the warship feel a little more like home.
Shiro grabbed Keith’s bag from the floor and tossed it at him. “You’d better start packing.”
Keith stared down at the bag. “What?”
“Transfer orders. Sendak wants us off his ship.”
Keith’s voice soured. “What.”
Shiro tossed one last pair of socks into his bag and zipped it up. If there was one thing to be said about being a prisoner-turned-soldier, it was that packing was quick. He stood, slinging the bag across his shoulders.
“No, seriously.” The other bunk groaned as Keith rolled out of it. He was the only Galra Shiro had yet met who was actually shorter than him, a fact Shiro exploited whenever possible. “What do you mean, transfer orders? Where are we going? Why does Sendak want us gone? What--?” Keith cut off with a frustrated grunt, and Shiro sighed.
“All I know is that Sendak said I have an hour to be off the ship. Here.” He brought up the orders on his communicator and forwarded them to Keith, who went silent for a moment as he read.
When he finished, he huffed and crossed his arms. “Well that tells me nothing.”
Shiro offered him a weak smile. “Welcome to Zarkon’s army.”
Pidge had been up on the roof of the Garrison when the siren went off. Their first thought, once the initial shock of steak knives stabbing their eardrums faded, was fire drill. Iverson’s voice had come on the PA telling everyone to stay in their rooms, and then there was a ball of fire—not a meteorite, but a falling ship—out over the desert.
They’d done the only logical thing, and took off running. If it meant leaving behind Lance and Hunk, who had found Pidge on the roof listening to the deep space transmission...well, Pidge wasn’t going to complain about evading that interrogation.
Except when Pidge parked themself on the cliff overlooking the temporary Garrison base that had popped up in the desert near the crash site, Hunk and Lance were right behind them.
“What are you doing?” Pidge demanded, digging through their backpack for a pair of digital binoculars.
“I honestly don’t even know,” Hunk said. “I should be in my room right now. Did you hear Iverson? This isn’t a drill. We’re supposed to stay inside. We’re supposed to let the adults handle this. But you ran off, and Lance said that was suspicious and we had to follow, and I guess I just didn’t want to be left alone on a rooftop in the middle of the night. So sue me.”
Sighing, Pidge, lifted their binoculars and scanned the desert floor below. The mobile base had only a single tent-like structure, but there had to be at least a dozen vehicles around it. Jeeps and hovercraft and even a tank. They're sure taking this seriously.
“What is it?” Lance’s elbow jabbed Pidge in the ribs as he flopped down beside them. “Aliens? Spies? Lemme see.” He didn’t wait for a response, just plucked the binoculars out of Pidge’s hands.
“Hey!”
“I’ll be quick, jeez. Learn to share, Gunderson.”
“Sorry about him,” Hunk said. "Lance, don't be an ass."
Pidge blew out a long breath. There was a reason they didn’t hang out with these two more often. Hunk and Lance (especially Lance) were way too much to handle for extended periods of time. Even just inside the classroom was pushing the limit.
But Pidge let Lance keep the binoculars for now and tuned out the furious whispers as Hunk tried to convince Lance to apologize. It wasn’t as though there was anything outside the tent that mattered. Nothing besides the ship itself, which wasn’t something Pidge recognized—not Garrison. Not human, unless some other country had completely redesigned their ships since the last time Pidge looked.
They didn’t want to get their hopes up, but there was a very good chance that whoever was inside that tent was an alien, which meant there was at least a slim chance they could point Pidge toward their family.
The first thing to do was take a look inside. Garrison security was tight, but Pidge had been hacking their computers for a year now. They knew all the weak points, all the shortcuts the Garrison took when they redesigned their systems. And out here? In a tent they’d set up in less than ten minutes?
Yeah, what they had going here didn’t deserve to be called a firewall. Maybe a line of police tape politely asking Pidge to keep out.
Pidge had the cameras streaming on their laptop in less than a minute.
Their cry of triumph, however, faltered when they saw what was happening inside. A rudimentary med bay had been set up, a single bed with a single monitor. The young man on the bed strained against his restraints.
“No. Please! Let me go! Let me go!”
“Oh my god,” Pidge whispered. They couldn’t seem to get a full breath. Couldn’t look anywhere but at the laptop screen, even though Lance was draped across their shoulders, demanding to see what was happening, even though Hunk was lurking just behind the pair of them, asking questions.
“Hey, wait a minute...” Lance leaned closer to the screen as the medics said something about quarantine and sedation. “I know that guy! He was on the Kerberos mission!”
“They’re not even listening to him,” Hunk said.
Pidge snapped the computer shut and shoved it into their bag. Oh my god. Oh my god. “I have to get him out of there.”
“Wait, what?” Lance grabbed Pidge’s arm as they searched for a point on the cliff where the drop was less "twenty vertical feet" and more "uncontrollable twenty-foot slide". “Hang on. I thought I was in charge of crazy ideas on this team.”
Pidge shook him off. “I’m not going to just stand here and watch while they sedate him!”
Lance tilted his head to the side, frowning at Pidge. “Is this about aliens?”
“No, Lance! It’s not about aliens. That’s--” Pidge’s voice hitched. “That’s my brother in there.”
That shocked the other two into silence for a moment, and Pidge took the opportunity to skid down the hillside. They were already running through plans in their head by the time they picked themself up at the bottom of the slope and brushed the dust from their clothes. I need a distraction. An explosion? How can I build a bomb in the next thirty seconds?
Scraping feet and soft cursing chased Pidge down the hill and they turned, blinking at Lance and Hunk. What were they doing here? "You’re going to get kicked out of the Garrison if you aren’t careful.”
“So are you,” Lance shot back.
Pidge scowled. “That’s different.”
“Because it’s your brother?” Hunk glanced over the top of the dry shrubs lining the base of the cliff, then ducked down out of sight. He looked more than a little anxious about being so close to what was certainly a restricted area, but his voice was resolute. “You can’t take them on alone.”
“Yeah.” Lance brought his fist down on his open palm. “We’re a team, and that means we’re in this together. So. What’s the plan? Deep cover? Frontal assault?”
“With what weapons?” Hunk asked. “Unless you have some latent psychic powers you’d like to manifest, we're a few guns short of 'guns blazing.'”
Pidge just gaped at them.
They had to be joking. Choosing Pidge over the Garrison? Why? The three of them didn't stand a chance against the Garrison. They were the lowest ranked team at the Garrison—the pilot who had yet to complete a simulation without major structural damage to his ship, the engineer who got too motion-sick to do his job, and the unsociable shrimp of a communications officer with an attitude problem.
But if Hunk and Lance wanted to throw it all away to help Matt, Pidge wasn't about to question it. They pushed aside a branch and squinted at the base. “We need a distraction.”
“No worries, Pidge, I've got you covered,” said Lance immediately, with a grin that promised trouble.
Pidge hesitated, but, well, Lance was the most distracting member of the team. “Fine,” they said. “Sure. Go wild. Give us as much time as you can.”
Lance flashed a thumbs up. “You got it, Gunderson—er... Holt? Whatever. Wish me luck.”
It didn’t take luck so much as a helping hand from Hunk, who hot wired a low-altitude hoverbike for Lance. Pidge didn’t see where Lance went after that, but about ninety seconds later explosions lit up the night sky on the far side of the mobile base. The impacts shook the ground under Pidge and Hunk and whipped the Garrison troops up into a frenzy.
More than a dozen soldiers piled into their vehicles and sped off toward the source of the attack, leaving Pidge and a very nervous Hunk a clear shot at the front door.
Pidge darted in, kicking the first guard in the knee. He screamed and toppled, and Pidge paused just long enough to wrestle the stun baton from his belt loop, then took off running. Hunk crashed after them, whispering warnings that Pidge elected not to hear.
The mobile base was, thankfully, quite small, just three short corridors branching off the central chamber. Pidge zapped another soldier and two medics, and then there was Matt, pale and fragile-looking on a gurney. He’d lost weight since he’d left home—a lot of weight. There were bags under his eyes and knots in his hair, and Pidge's legs turned to jello at the sight.
“Matt...”
Hunk glanced at Pidge as he joined them, then started working on the restraints. “I’ve got your brother, Pidge,” he said, sliding an arm under Matt’s knees and shoulders. “You just worry about the guards.”
“Right.” Pidge glanced around the cold, sterile walls of the med bay, fingers itching for—they didn’t know what. A way to make the Garrison pay for losing Matt. For covering it up. For tying him down and knocking him out when he’d finally found his way home. Would Pidge and their mom have ever known about this, if Pidge hadn’t been on the roof tonight?
Pidge wanted to burn the entire Garrison to the ground.
Instead, they headed back the way they'd come, stunning the second soldier again as he tried to grab Hunk. They made it outside easily enough, and headlights in the distance momentarily dazzled Pidge. The soldiers were returning.
A blast of exhaust from overhead made Pidge cough and stumble back. They ran into Hunk, who grunted, squinting upward.
“Hey, guys. Need a ride?”
“Lance!” Hunk cried. “You didn’t die!”
Glancing at the approaching headlights, Pidge scrambled up onto the bike’s open back. Hunk passed Matt up to them, then climbed up himself.
Lance gave them both a dirty look. “You know, I expected a little more confidence from my team.”
“You’re joking, right?” Pidge locked their arms around Matt as Lance took off, keeping just ahead of the Garrison speeders. “I’ve seen you fly.”
“Pssh. In simulators. This is real life.”
“Yeah,” said Hunk, looking a little green as Lance took a turn too sharply. “And real death when you crash.”
“I’m not gonna crash.”
A Jeep careened out of a gully ahead, and Lance pulled up sharply to avoid the sudden spray of bullets. Pidge braced both feet against the side of the speeder and buried their nose in Matt’s hair. “Less talking, more not dying please!”
Lance muttered something that was lost to the howling wind. He gunned the engine, Hunk yelled in fear, and Pidge kept their eyes screwed shut, fingers curling into the grimy, sweat-drenched rags Matt wore. I found you, they thought. I found you.
Twenty minutes later found Shiro and Keith on a shuttle to the Envoy, Commander Torrak’s warship, along with a few dozen other soldiers and nonessential staff. Shiro watched through a viewscreen as Sendak’s ship opened a wormhole and disappeared from sight.
There hadn’t been time to dig for information before leaving the Predator. Maybe that had been by design. Maybe just an unlucky coincidence. Either way, Shiro felt antsy. He walked a thin line here in the Galra army between discovery and impotence. He had to push the boundaries to keep himself from feeling like a traitor to the human race, yet he never stopped worrying about pushing too far. All it took was a single misstep, and he and Keith were both dead.
Without information he was powerless, and he hated it. It felt like being back in the Arena, where there were only two rules: Take things as they come, and do whatever it takes to survive.
Keith stood next to him, silent and frowning.
“We couldn’t have stayed,” Shiro said. He wasn’t sure who he was saying it for; Keith had always been more of an act-first-think-later sort of person. It didn't bother him, having to react without all the facts. Or any of the facts. Keith did seem bothered by the transfer orders, though. “Direct orders from Sendak...as long as we’re on his ship, no one but Zarkon himself could override that.”
A frustrated growl curled in the back of Keith’s throat. “I know.”
“We have a habit of toeing the line between independent thinking and mutiny, but this would have been a step too far.”
“I know.”
Shiro paused, studying Keith’s face. Once he’d found it unreadable: yellow eyes hollow of emotion, fangs always twisting the mouth into a threat. Funny how much things could change in just a few months.
Shiro leaned one arm against the display panel, making the projected view from outside warp and dissolve. “Okay, so let’s talk next steps.”
Keith rolled his eyes, but indulged Shiro. "There's not much to talk about, not until we know more." He kept his voice low and glanced at the other Galra on the transport, each lost in their own world. “I’ll see what I can find in the archives once we dock. You take a look around the Envoy, see if anything seems off.”
Look around the ship. Right. Keith didn't mean anything by it, but the words still hit Shiro like a knife to the chest. The story never changed. Keith found the information, asked the questions, heard the whispers, wiped the records. Shiro waited, and he watched, and he kept a low profile. It was necessary, but that didn't make it any less frustrating. If not for Keith, Shiro would be helpless.
He pushed away his frustrations, though, and nodded at Keith. Their system had worked so far; now wasn't the time to change it. Calm. Patient. Play your part, Champion, and wait for the right moment to strike.
Pidge wasn’t sure what was more surprising: that Lance managed to lose the half dozen pilots on their tail, or that he managed to do so without losing his passengers.
Truth be told, Pidge hadn’t watched Lance’s flying, so they couldn’t say what exactly had happened. It certainly had felt like they were always a split second away from dying, and Hunk’s commentary had bolstered that impression, but...maybe it hadn’t been that bad. Maybe Lance really was a better pilot outside the simulator.
Pidge doubted they’d find out for sure anytime soon. The stolen hoverbike had run out of gas a few hours before dawn, and Lance had set down in the middle of a system of canyons and caves out away from civilization. The good news was the Garrison wasn’t likely to find them here, not with the bike hidden away in a cave and no other signs of life for miles around.
Unfortunately, that meant no one else was likely to find them, either. They had no food, no transportation, and they were miles away from help. More than just a few miles, too, since Pidge doubted the Garrison was going to give them all a pat on the back after this. Pidge's cell had no signal, either, as they realized when they tried to get in touch with their mother. She probably wouldn't have been able to offer much immediate help, but she was the one ally Pidge had outside this cave. They hit send on their text, hoping it would catch a weak signal at some point and make it back to Carlsbad.
There was water here, at least, and it hadn’t killed Lance when he’d shoved his face into it, so they probably had at least a day or two to figure something out.
Lance and Hunk slept for a few hours, once Pidge volunteered to keep an eye out for the Garrison. Not like they’d have been able to sleep anyway, not with Matt lying two feet away—still unconscious, thanks to whatever the Garrison medics had given him, but not quite as tense as before.
Pidge combed their fingers through Matt’s hair, working out the worst of the knots. It was going to need a trim once he woke up—it hung past his shoulders now, lank and greasy--but if a overdue haircut was the worst of it, Pidge would be grateful. They'd looked him over for any obvious injuries already. There were scrapes and bruises and minor burns from his crash-landing in the desert; a long, thin gash below his collarbone, freshly sutured; and an old, ugly scar on his shin, but he seemed otherwise okay.
What happened to you, Matt? Where’s Dad? Where did you get that spaceship, and why did you come home now?
Pidge had so many questions, but until Matt woke up there was no point dwelling on the unknown. They found an extra pair of socks in their backpack and wet them in the stream at the side of the cave. The water trickled down the wall into a pool in the floor, then flowed deeper into the cave. Maybe it was the remnants of the river that had carved these canyons, maybe a natural spring of some kind.
Whatever the case, it gave Pidge something to do: clean Matt’s cuts, wipe the grime from his skin. Pidge wished they had some antibiotics, or even clean bandages, but anything had to be better than letting all that dust and grime fester in the cuts. Soon they would have to figure out how to get Matt real medical supplies, and some clean clothes, but this was a small step in the right direction.
Lance and Hunk woke with the sun, stiff and grumpy. Hunk grumbled something about breakfast, Lance patted his hair and whined about missing his shower, but they forgot their worries when they saw Matt.
“How’s he doing?” Hunk asked.
Pidge shrugged. “Okay, I think. I don’t know if this is still the sedative, or if he’s just tired from—god. Escaping an alien prison? I guess?”
Lance stretched his arms over his head, yawning. “So the whole alien thing is real, then?”
“Matt’s been gone for a year, and he just showed up in a different ship than the one he left on. If not aliens, then what?”
“I dunno. Time travel?”
Pidge rubbed the bridge of their nose.
“So...” Hunk glanced from Pidge to Lance to Matt, then back to Pidge. “I didn’t know you had a brother.”
“Yeah.” Pidge trained their eyes on Matt, debating how much Lance and Hunk needed to know. Or...maybe that wasn’t fair. Maybe they should be asking how much Lance and Hunk deserved to know. They’d both risked everything to help Pidge get Matt back. If the three of them hadn’t been expelled from the Garrison yet, they would be as soon as they got back. Didn’t Pidge at least owe them the truth?
With a sigh, Pidge turned back to their teammates, then settled their gaze on a loose rock on the ground between Hunk and Lance. “My name isn’t Pidge Gunderson. Or...at least, it wasn’t always. Most people know me as Katie Holt. Matt’s my brother, and Sam Holt—the commander of the Kerberos mission—is my father.”
“And you’ve been looking for them all this time?” Hunk asked. "With the deep space scanners and everything? That's...that's really impressive."
Pidge hunched their shoulders. “I had to. The Garrison was covering something up--I knew as soon as I heard about the supposed crash. I tried searching their records at first, but I got caught in Iverson’s office too many times. He banned me from the Garrison and told everyone to keep an eye out for me. I had to become Pidge so I could get back in.” They shrugged. “So I changed my name and cut my hair and tried not to draw any attention to myself.”
“Ohhhhhh, I get it.” Lance fired a finger-gun at Pidge and smirked. “That’s why you didn’t want to hang out with me. Didn’t want to get too popular. I gotcha.”
Pidge stared at him, blinking slowly. “Something like that, sure.”
Hunk sat down a few feet away, watching Matt sleep. "Sounds like Matt's pretty lucky to have you--uh, is Pidge still fine, or should we call you Katie?"
"Pidge." They looked up at him, smiling shyly. "Pidge is good."
Hunk seemed content to leave it at that, for which Pidge was grateful. They were tired, and they weren’t great with people, and mostly they just wanted to be alone with their thoughts and with Matt. So when Lance got up to explore the cave and Hunk shot Pidge a questioning look, Pidge gestured for him to go with Lance.
“Someone’s gotta keep him from falling down a hole and dying,” they said as brightly as they could manage.
Hunk smiled, pulled Pidge into a quick hug, then hurried off after Lance, calling out warnings that made Lance scoff.
A few minutes later, they passed beyond Pidge’s hearing.
“They’re headed for Earth.”
Shiro stopped, halfway through his second set of pushups, and stared unseeing at the floor. Earth. A tremor took up in his arms, building until he had to drop to his knees to keep from collapsing.
“I checked the deployment records,” Keith went on. “The orders came in less than two hours ago.”
“Earth.”
Keith shifted his stance uncomfortably. “Yes.”
“Zarkon is going to Earth.”
“It’s not a full-scale invasion,” Keith said. “The Predator isn’t equipped for that. Reconnaissance, maybe? Or there’s a resistance ship in the area. They've checked it out once or twice since they picked you up, and nothing ever came of it...” The silence stretched between them, filling the room like a balloon about to burst. Zarkon was going to Earth. Shiro knew that Keith was right; this wasn't the first time--the intel on Earth's defenses had to come from somewhere, after all. But that had all been when Shiro was still a prisoner. It was different hearing about it in the moment.
Eventually, Keith broke the silence. “I should have taken Sendak up on his offer.”
Shiro turned toward him, frowning. “What offer?”
“To dump you on someone else.” Keith’s lips twitched toward a smile. “To think I missed my one chance of finally seeing Earth because I had to babysit you.”
Shiro threw a shoe at Keith, who raised an arm to block it, laughing. “You’re a terrible commanding officer.”
Keith raised an eyebrow. “Why do you think they assigned you to me, Champion?”
“I honestly have no idea. They already know I can beat you bloody.”
“Ha,” Keith said flatly. “Ha.” He tossed his bag onto the bunk across from Shiro’s. “Laugh it up while you can. Sooner or later you’ll figure out what they did, assigning you to a Legacy officer. It’s just another prison, you know. A dead end.”
A sarcastic retort rose to Shiro’s lips, only to die when he saw the look in Keith’s eyes.
A Legacy officer. It was a sore subject for Keith, one of the only things Shiro was aware of that made Keith truly uncomfortable. Dragging an explanation out of Keith had been an ordeal in itself, and Shiro still sometimes felt like he was missing something.
Zarkon had ruled for the last ten thousand years; Shiro knew that much. He had no heirs, but somewhere along the way people had started calling Zarkon’s inner circle his princes. Not because they stood to replace Zarkon’s—the Galra seemed to regard Zarkon as immortal and unkillable—but because Zarkon couldn’t be everywhere at once, not with as big as the empire had grown. When he was away, he gave his Commanders, his princes, complete autonomy.
Most Galra princes earned the position through some combination of scheming and raw, brutal combat prowess. They were his best officers, the ones who refused to let anyone stand between them and power. A few, though, had inherited the position. Legacy officers, they were called—descendants of Zarkon’s original war council. As far as Shiro knew, only three families still held Legacy titles. Two of the current Legacy princes had been in power for years, long enough to prove themselves worthy of the position. They were resented by the other princes, but also respected.
Then there was Keith. His father, the previous prince, had died in battle a year ago, leaving his seventeen-year-old son to take his place.
Shiro wasn’t surprised the learn that Keith was still treated like a child playing dress-up. Although Keith was an accomplished duelist, he had yet to take part in any major battle, and Shiro was the only soldier under his command. He was small for a Galra—quick, but weak. He may have technically been a commander, but more often he was treated like a trainee.
It’s just another prison, you know. A dead end.
Sighing, Shiro placed a hand on Keith’s shoulder. “Maybe they meant it as an insult when they assigned me to you, but I got lucky. I don’t know what I’d do without you, Keith.”
Keith looked startled for a moment. He recovered quickly and shrugged off Shiro’s hand, then turned toward his bag and began to unpack. “Yeah, whatever,” he said.
He probably thought Shiro didn’t see him smile.
Matt woke slowly. The sun had cleared the horizon by now and begun to warm the canyons, Hunk and Lance had not returned, and Pidge had begun to doze against the cave wall. The sudden hitch in Matt’s breathing jolted them fully awake.
“Matt!” Bleary-eyed and stiff with fatigue, Pidge scrambled to Matt’s side. They reached out, then hesitated with one hand hovering over Matt’s shoulder. “Matt?”
A low groan built behind Matt’s teeth. He stirred, and his eyes opened. He blinked, then squinted up at Pidge. “Who… Katie?”
At the sound of his voice, the last of Pidge’s resolve shattered. They collapsed on top of Matt as he tried to sit up, eliciting a gasp of pain. Pidge snaked their arms around Matt, who stiffened only briefly before returning the embrace.
“What happened?” he asked, rubbing small circles on Pidge’s back. “Is this real? Am I...home?”
Pidge pulled back, wiping tears from their cheeks. “Yeah. Yeah, you’re home. I don’t—" They faltered, just for a moment. Then the dam broke and words tumbled over each other in a rush to get out. "You’ve been gone for a year, Matt. We didn’t know what happened to you, where you were, if you were all right. The Garrison said you'd all died, but I knew you were alive. You had to be alive. And now you’re back, and--and—Matt, where’s Dad?”
A strange look had come over Matt’s face: brow furrowed, lips parted, eyes focused on something over Pidge’s shoulder. Pidge pulled back, frowning.
“Are you okay?”
Matt sat up, slowly, wincing and touching a hand to his side. Once upright, he dropped his head into his hands. He was shaking. “We were... We were taken prisoner. There were these aliens—the Galra. They sent Dad away, they made Shiro fight in their arena. I haven’t seen either of them in—in a long time. I don’t know if they’re still alive.”
“How’d you escape?”
Matt lifted his head and stared at his hands. “I don’t remember.”
He sounded terrified.
Before Pidge could take a stab at comforting him, the ground beneath their feet rumbled. Matt jerked upright, his eyes wide and white. “They’re here.”
Pidge lost their balance and fell backwards as an aftershock rippled through the cave. “They? Who’s they?”
Matt gave a start and looked at Pidge like he’d forgotten where he was. He swallowed, then, without answering Pidge’s question, crept toward the mouth of the cave. Pidge followed half a step behind, eyes trained on the back of Matt’s head. What did you say when your brother disappeared for a year only to crash land back on Earth with a nightmare lurking in his eyes? There was no handbook for this sort of thing. No schematic Pidge could pull up to see what was broken and how it all fit back together. Every word of comfort Pidge had stored away for when something needed to be said fell flat here. I’m sorry you went through hell. Can I do anything to help?
Matt stopped just inside the shadow of the cave, staring up at the sky. Pidge joined him, but didn’t see any ships overhead—Garrison or alien. “Maybe it was just a rock slide?” they offered.
Matt didn’t seem to hear.
After a moment of silent debate, Pidge reached out and tugged gently on Matt’s sleeve. He looked down at their hand. Pidge had never seen their brother look so lost, so...distant. It was like a part of him was still up there in that alien prison, somewhere far beyond Pidge’s reach. “No one’s here, Matt,” Pidge said in a small voice. “Let’s head back inside.”
With one last, long look out into the canyon, Matt nodded. “Yeah,” he said. “That’s… yeah.”
As he turned, a shadow fell over the canyon. It was like a storm had rolled in, blotting out the sun, but far more quickly than any storm cloud Pidge had ever seen. It was silent, though, the eerie silence of a horror movie right before the monster showed up and killed someone. Pidge tensed, and Matt pushed them behind him. His hand shook as it closed around Pidge’s wrist. “When I say run, you run. You hear?”
Pidge latched onto the back of Matt’s shirt. “I’m not leaving you.”
“I’ll be fine,” he said, though it was obvious he didn't believe it. “You can’t let them get you.”
Pidge pushed Matt’s hand aside, drawing a startled look from him. “I’m not letting anyone take you away from me again, Matt. I don’t care how many aliens I have to fight. I’m. Not. Leaving.”
An unfamiliar expression passed over Matt’s face. Part shock, part fear...but Pidge thought they saw pride in Matt’s eyes, too. He smiled, a small, tight smile, and Pidge grabbed a fist-sized rock off the ground. It wasn't much of a weapon, but the first alien to show its ugly face would get a nasty surprise.
Pidge wasn't expecting the lion.
It wasn't a normal lion, though that would have been strange enough out here in the New Mexico desert. No, this was a giant, blue, mechanical lion. And it was flying. Silently. More like a dream than any hovercraft Pidge had ever seen.
The lion set down with a burst of flame, lowered its head, and opened its mouth, which was big enough for a grown man to walk through without ducking. Pidge wasn’t sure whether to be scared of the thing's sheer size or awed by the tech they were almost entirely positive wasn’t from Earth.
Hunk stumbled out of the lion’s mouth, clutching his stomach and weaving on his feet. A moment later, Lance appeared behind him, practically dancing. He thumped Hunk on the back as he passed, then struck a pose for Pidge, leaning one arm against the lion’s metal snout.
“So, what do you think of my new ride? Oh, hey! Matt! You’re awake! That’s awesome. How ya feeling?”
“Uh...” Pidge glanced at Matt, who was staring intently at the lion...ship...thing. “Where...did this thing come from?”
Lance grinned. “Oh my god, Pidge, it was the coolest thing. There were these cave drawings, and they started glowing, and then the floor caved in!”
“Which was terrifying,” Hunk put in. “Just, you know, for those who were wondering.”
Lance fluttered a hand at him. “Sure, yeah, okay. Terrifying. Except for the giant lion robot we found down there! It’s, like, psychic or something. I barely have to control this thing.”
Pidge crossed their arms, raising a skeptical eyebrow. “Uh-huh. Psychic robot lions, huh?” Still, they couldn’t keep their eyes from drifting back to the sleek lines and neon glow of the big cat. “Some kind of AI, maybe? I wonder if my computer could connect to this thing. What do you think its code looks like? I mean, how old do you think this thing is? Buried out in the desert, surrounded by cave drawings? It must predate Unix by a couple of centuries, at least.” They glanced to the side of the cave, where they’d left their bag with the laptop inside. “Hey Lance. You don’t mind if I poke around in there for a while, do you?”
“What do you mean, poke around?” Lance squinted down at Pidge, and slowly looped an arm protectively over the lion’s nose. “You’d better not break my ship.”
Pidge rolled their eyes. “I’m not going to break anything. Just...take a look at the computers.”
“Voltron.”
Lance, who had opened his mouth to say something, paused and looked at Matt, who took one trance-like step toward the lion, his hand outstretched. His lips were parted, his eyes glassy.
Forgetting all about the alien lion and its computers, Pidge stepped toward their brother. “You know about Voltron?”
Matt blinked. “What?”
“You just called this lion Voltron. I’ve heard that word before—the transmissions I picked up on my scanner—the aliens. They kept talking about something they called Voltron. Is this what they were looking for?”
“Yes.” Matt frowned. “Maybe?” He shook his head and pressed the heel of his hand to his temple. “I don’t know, it’s all so… I know the name Voltron, and it feels like this lion is connected somehow, but… I don’t know how I know that.”
Lance gaped at Matt for a second, then glanced up at the lion and rapped his knuckles on its snout. “Well, whatever you’re called, you’re awesome. Who wants to go for a ride?”
Hunk looked green. “I’ll keep my feet on solid ground for now, thanks. That thing’s worse than a roller coaster.”
Lance shrugged. “Suit yourself, man. It’s a long walk back to Carlsbad.”
As Lance disappeared inside the lion, Hunk shot Pidge a frantic look. Pidge shrugged. “He’s got a point.”
Hunk’s face fell. He groaned once, but trudged back toward the lion as Pidge collected their stuff. When they turned around, Matt was still standing outside the lion, staring up at it, a look of intense concentration on his face.
“Matt…?” Pidge came up next to him, a thousand shapeless questions in their voice.
“I’m fine, Katie,” Matt said softly. “I just...I feel like there’s something more I should know about this lion.”
“Oh.” Pidge scuffed their toe along the ground. “Is it dangerous?”
Matt’s mouth tightened. “Very. But I think that’s a good thing.”
Pidge didn’t know what to say to that. Matt had a certain tolerance for danger, like anyone who went into space for a living. He’d never sought it out, though, not the way some people did. But Matt just smiled at Pidge, ruffled their hair, and walked into the lion. And what was Pidge supposed to do?
They followed, of course. Even with Lance at the controls, it was a super-advanced blue lion ship, and it was a way out of the desert. That could only be a good thing... right?
Maybe not.
The blue lion had barely pulled up out of the canyons when a streak of light appeared in the sky. Matt was the first to see it, and the first to know what it meant. Galra—the aliens Matt had only just escaped from. Pidge wasn’t sure if they’d come looking for Matt or for the lion, but either way they’d been spotted. Lance wasn’t exactly keen on getting the city of Carlsbad leveled by alien lasers, which meant that the only way out was up.
Five minutes later, they were at the edge of the solar system. Kerberos had fallen out of sight behind them, though Matt still had his eyes trained in that direction, as though he were expecting a shuttle to rise from the surface, Sam Holt and Takashi Shirogane on board.
The lion did at least have an impressive arsenal of weapons, so they weren’t completely helpless. But, well, it was Lance in the pilot’s seat, and he was no better at flying a space-lion than any other spacecraft. He got in a few decent hits on the massive battleship following them, but it was becoming increasingly clear that they needed to escape.
So when a giant, glowing blue portal opened up in empty space ahead of them, everyone seemed to be thinking the same thing.
“What is that?” Hunk asked, hovering on the fence between scared and relieved. “A wormhole? Does that look like a wormhole to anyone else?”
Lance yanked the controls to the side, narrowly avoiding a laser blast from the ship behind them. “You know what it’s not? Trying to kill us.” He hesitated, glancing at Matt. “Hey, um… You’re officially the highest ranked person here, and also the only one who’s actually been to space, so… thoughts?”
Pidge bit their lip, looking between Matt and the wormhole. “You only just got back,” they whispered. “You shouldn’t have to--”
“No,” Matt said. He swallowed, but his eyes didn’t waver as he looked out through the lion’s eyes. Turning, he offered Pidge a smile. “Dad and Shiro are still out there. I wouldn’t have been able to stay on Earth knowing that. I can’t make this decision for the three of you, but if I was the only one in this lion, I’d go for it.”
Pidge smiled, then looked at Hunk, who nodded despite the nerves plain on his face. Lance seemed to be waiting for some kind of sign, so Pidge placed a hand on his shoulder.
“All right,” Lance said, adjusting his grip on the lion’s controls. “One wormhole to God knows where, coming right up.”
He dodged one last laser, then shot forward into the wormhole.