AN: So, here is my stab at a Voltron fic… as a formal disclaimer, this show and its characters belong to DreamWorks and all afflicted parties. Not me!

Updated this with more details just to make it a touch longer.

That being said, please enjoy!

Sound of One Hand Clapping

The whole process of locating her black suit and pulling it on with armor fully activated, all in under thirty seconds, was something Pidge took personal pride in figuring out. She still had ducked into her room to do so out of habit though. Her heart rate was finally starting to feel more normal from the adrenaline rush that she experienced earlier too. Opening up to the others about her biggest secret had surprisingly gone a lot smoother than what Pidge had imagined, especially after the blow-up that occurred when she told them she wanted to leave.

Keith's angry confrontation about leaving still weighed heavy on her, despite Shiro's reassurances that it wasn't just her decision that made him upset. Maybe it was his own regrets about bad decisions. Pidge realized she did not have much opportunity to explain why yet she was pretending to be a boy. After they had admitted to somehow figuring it out before she told, they just left it at that. And yet, the redhead did wonder exactly how everyone but Lance had figured out who she was. Shiro promised her secret was safe with him, and he didn't sound like the type to go against his word and gossip. Her next guess was Hunk, due to his overly inquisitive nature about her tech and stuff. Then she distinctly recalled Keith's curt comparison of her family with all the other lives in the galaxy. It was that he said two.

Pidge had to admit she really did not pay close attention to who was who before enrolling in at the Garrison. Lance did, from how he would talk about others in their class ranks. She did not always actively listen to everything when the chatty paladin conversed with her and Hunk, especially when her focus was more engaged on research and programming tech. It often became prattle, idle chit chat. Why did she have to know who was who, and where their rank was in relation to what year at the Garrison and at what classification? Well, when said person also knew the pilot who went to Kerberos with her father and brother, she should have realized that connection sooner. That's how Keith figured it out.

Being so caught up in these thoughts had caught her off guard when she found the big guy standing at her door when it slid open, his closed hand still raised as if he was going to knock. At least Hunk took the time to suit up first before coming over to her quarters.

"Um… what is it?" Pidge cocked an eyebrow, glancing up at him. She clearly must have Lance rubbing off on her, because the next snarky response just came to her in a crazy way to just make this awkward situation a little more so. "If it's to ask me out on a date, the answer's 'no'."

"Oh, gosh, no.. why would I? I mean.. uh.." he was waving his hands around in alarm.

Yep, that got a good reaction out of him. She seriously doubted Hunk would like her in that way, but the manner in which the timid boy denied in liking anyone, especially Shay, was almost cute. Somehow, the very thought that she actually thought of him as cute had also left her in a small panic. Heck, all four of those guys struck her as being cute in some way, despite the fact they were a few years older. And that was terribly annoying, and now she had no choice but to stay there. And continue putting up with them.

The younger paladin quickly replaced that thought with another question before her hesitation became really that obvious. "Why else do you keep poking around in my stuff?"

"Well, uhm.. I was going to check and see if you still have any of those marshmallowy things on a stick left. Cause like if this castle launching doesn't go as smoothly as planned, well… just a little something to pass the time with. Because it's been a long time since this castle flew, and.. I don't want to go to the dining area if we'll be launching," he asked, his closed hands raised up suggestively in front of his chest. The yellow Paladin was definitely uneasy about something again. He probably noticed her awkwardness too. Great.

Pidge bit the inside of her lip, trying to not dwell too much on how silly she must also sound whenever she rambled nervously. Nervous rambling does sound ridiculous to another's ears.

"Sure that's a good idea? … it is a launching," the technical genius countered, otherwise reminding Hunk of his struggle with his queasiness and excessive motion.

He frowned, conceding to that point, even though he was getting better about that. The yellow Paladin had reasoned that he felt more in control when he was piloting his lion, otherwise more prepared for what came next. Yellow was most likely helping him keep his head on straight too. But she had a good guess Hunk finally was feeling much more confident about everything due to all the extra training that they've been doing. The engineer was fairly bright, and she had to admit his technical knowledge was actually useful.

Feeling as if she expected more, he shifted his stance, relaxing his hands a bit. "Okay, I also was just wondering why you were hiding the fact that you were a girl. And.. that I'm running out of answers for Lance."

Lance was an idiot, what more could she say.

"Can I ask how long you knew?"

"Kind of.. for awhile," he looked shifty again, quickly jumping to another topic. "But before the castle was attacked, I was hanging out with Keith. He said something about why you were so worked up about the aliens we found on that ship."

"Like what?"

"Like that you also looked like the kid on Shiro's team. What was his name, Matt?"

Pidge bit her lip again, upon hearing her brother's name. Her assumption that Keith figured her out from that was correct. That Nunvil stuff really must have been like a truth serum too, if not like some alcoholic earth drink, if it made the normally quiet and aloof fighter pilot that chatty. Biggest reason why she dared not drink any of it at that party.

"Matt's my brother, and my dad was the scientist who wanted to study the composition of the moon," she responded quietly.

"Well, before Keith left the Garrison, he used to be on a training team with Shiro. While they were in transition to Kerberos, Keith would get transmissions sent to him – I guess he was best friends with Shiro too. Sometimes it would be all three of them, and Matt would make the occasional well wishes for their family too."

She felt another pang of sadness. She only saw the transmissions with just her dad and Matt. With the lag time in transmission, they were simply video greetings and not like a live streaming video chat. She had made a couple to send back with her mom and her dog, but she did not know if they had been received before the incident.

"Did Keith get mad because he wasn't on the Kerberos mission?" That next thought occurred to her.

Hunk shook his head 'no'. "Keith was still lower in rank.. so even though his piloting skills were good, he wasn't cleared to go on interplanetary missions yet."

"So did he get peeved about what happened to Shiro?" Pidge quirked the corner of her mouth at the irony. Maybe that was the connection… she was not the only one to realize what happened to the mission was not by pilot error. Or why Lance guarded her from Commander Iversion when she went off on him about that. No thanks to Keith, and then her getting caught hacking into the commander's database, that topic became a very sore spot.

Keith's outburst earlier about her leaving did catch her off guard though. Coming from someone who dropped out himself, it still made her think. The Red Paladin never got that mad before with any of them, but they haven't really been together that long yet to know what it was like to be pushed to their limits.

"I guess…?" Hunk rubbed the back of his neck in thought. "That picture though… totally sorry for thinking like your brother was you, and you were, uh.. your girlfriend."

"Um, yeah," she confirmed that call, knowing how everyone pretty much has seen her memory of her one picture by now.

"But, the Garrison accepts girls… how—"

She already had an answer for that, since it was something she had been mulling over in her mind many times before finally coming out with her secret. "My mom worked as an administrative assistant in the registration office, and I helped her with clerical stuff. So… it was easy to slip into the commander's office and look through his transmission feeds and other data to find out what really happened on the mission. Until... I got caught. He banned me from even setting foot on Garrison property! My mom was ticked. I mean, she didn't care about the truth now, and it made no difference to her if they were not dead, but instead taken by aliens. But.. it was not fair that the Garrison doesn't care, and just uses lies! I was not going to let Iverson get away with those lies!" she was surprised to feel her temper flaring, and pressed her lips together to get a handle on that again. Hunk appeared evermore on edge as well, but the curiosity was also there to know how this happened.

"But since I was familiar with the registration process from working there, I falsified my records and enrolled under a completely different identity to get back in."

"Wow, okay… how did that work though? You're practically a spitting image of your brother. Just a little... younger."

She just pursed her lips, not answering that query. She felt like she said enough on the subject. Just the way he said 'younger', however, bothered her again. As if being the only girl paladin wasn't bad enough, she was also the youngest of all of them. Like the child prodigy. This left her feeling she had to prove herself, to show her strength, because it she did not want them to feel like they have to cater to her level. She certainly was not like most girls, and did not have the desire to spend time on things like looking pretty and socializing.

"We should get going," Pidge motioned instead, stepping from the doorway of her room to let the door slide shut. They walked in silence down the quickly illuminating hallway toward the control deck.

The events of everything certainly left her head in a spin. Yet, it helped her see what was really important too. The odd connection of one mission gone wrong and how that seemed to have started a chain reaction of events that brought them all together. The energy signatures were part of that too, but just how it happened was beyond her understanding. She sighed, glancing briefly to her big teammate ahead of her. Pidge finally agreed that they all were becoming like brothers, siblings, in the way they watched out for each other in this new role they took on. The team was her new family away from home, and her surrogate brothers.

From what she could sense, Hunk seemed okay with her being the way she was. How he gravitated to her when the others weren't around still intriqued her. The obvious reason was in the fact they both like technology and engineering. She also wondered if Hunk had siblings he had relied on when he needed affirmation.

Fortunately, the trip to Balmera had helped change Hunk's mindset about wanting to go back to Earth. Pidge noticed that much about him when he came back with Coran. He also had realized what it meant to be a Paladin. That made her feel better, knowing her announcement that she wanted to leave hadn't adversely affected her two closest team mates in the long run. The green Paladin was there to stay. They all were.

AN:

Yes.. I admit to watching the first handful of eps a few times over to connect the dots on this, cause the reason why Pidge was a boy went over my head at first (only because I wasn't paying attention at first). It took even more thinking to figure out the backstories with them too! My 10 yr old son was just like Lance when she confessed. *nods*

I do think Pidge and Hunk are cute together though. I have a thing for nerds, I guess. Lance just adds to it, in seeing how those three still cling to each other like it is the only familiar thing they have from Earth.

Thank you for reading!