"Lance, you're fine. Let's just focus on defeating Zarkon's army." Keith states in a terse manner and fidgets with his feet. Lance looks down in hopelessness and knows it's time to stop bothering the other paladin. "Right, Keith," Lance says briefly and looks at his own feet meekly while exiting Keith's room. He sighs dejectedly when he's just outside the sliding door and he realizes the only thing that has changed was the fact that he's only been bothering Keith more with his doubts. He has also realized that the only things Keith would say were something along the lines of, "let's just try taking down Zarkon, You're fine, focus on Zarkon's army. Leave that to us and let's work together to defeat Zarkon." He's never tried comforting Lance with words like, "Lance, you're an important part of Voltron, don't worry. It's alright, we'll figure it out together and see what works. Don't get so down, you're the red paladin now, feel proud." It's always when Lance leaves Keith's room that he feels like he should give up talking about his insecurities with his leader, but he knows that won't happen because it's the same thing he thinks to himself every week and he always comes back.
Lance decides that he should give Hunk a visit, thinking that his buddy might cheer him up for a change. He reasons that he hasn't seen much of Hunk lately and that they've barely talked at dinner time as well. The thought of Pidge to blame comes up but Lance pushes it away, reprimanding himself for thinking bad of his teammates. He finds Hunk, not in the kitchen where he initially thought, but rather in the quarters where Pidge resided. He hears their casual conversation which was composed of Pidge asking Hunk's favorite food, and in turn Hunk asking Pidge her favorite decoding methods. They chatter on before Hunk changes the topic, "So, I was thinking that we maybe had it all wrong," Hunk starts while holding his yellow helmet, "Maybe the electromagnetism of our helmets probably did need adjustments, it's just that we looked in the wrong place." Pidge nods in comprehension adding her thoughts to the conversation while thumbing the small screwdriver in her hands, "Yeah, I thought it seemed a little weird that it didn't work, I calculated everything right and I was sure that we did it correctly."
"Hey, guys!" Lance greets them with a half-hearted wave as he strolls through the quarter, trying to be casual, "What have you two geniuses been working on, lately?"
"Hey, Lance." Hunk greets him back. "Um..." he nervously chuckles while scratching his head, "Nothing much, just sciencey stuff, y'know?" Pidge looks at Lance and gives a simple greeting. She explains their project to him in something Lance doesn't bother to decipher. Before she finishes explaining, Pidge stops to look at Lance's completely baffled face and sighs disappointingly. A guilty look begins to frame her face as she looks down at her screwdriver. Hunk does the same except with his yellow helmet and tries to lay it on the counter nearby. He says in silent voice, just loud enough for Lance to hear, "It's a bit complicated to understand."
Pidge's lips quiver in a slight frown and says, "Yeah, we need all the space we can get and Lance, you wouldn't really know how to help." Lance's wince goes unnoticed from the pair. It hurt him that his friends said that but he understood "Yeah, sorry. I get it, I'm, like, totally ruining your guy's vibe. I should go." Lance said awkwardly before making a hasty escape.
As he leaves the room and stands idly with his hands in his pockets, he thinks about visiting Allura. He's not sure specifically for what, but he guesses it's for a mix between friendliness, care, and pity. He looks around for a while until he finds her in her usual residence, navigating the ship in the front quarters. She has her fingers in front of the blue, holographic panels, her eyes observing for any signal of distress beacons. Lance, at the entrance of the door, notices Shiro on the steps. He was looking down at his Galra arm, rested on his knee, with a solemn face. After a quiet while, right after Lance tries to enter, Shiro initiates conversation, "It seems that Keith has finally become a leader, huh?" Shiro lightly smiles and Lance thinks it's the most inconvenient time to look for Allura. "Shiro, we had no choice, we've been looking for you for months." Allura reasons, shifting the conversation much to Lance's relief.
"I know it sounds bad, but I was glad that team Voltron was able to form without me." Shiro smiles and Alluras grins back at him. "Speaking of which," she says, "how did you manage to escape in a Galra ship?"
Shiro stutters, "I don't know, it all came too fast. I was escaping this huge ship and the next, I got into a Galra fighter ship searching for you guys and almost..." he stops, visibly shaking and tearing his focus away from his arm. Allura notices the brief silence and abandons the panels to comfort him. She crouches down next to him and rubs small circles on his shoulder. She gives him a kind and reassuring smile until he stops his shaking and looks at her, worried. "It's alright, Shiro. You don't have to force yourself." He sighs and finally reciprocates Allura's smile. Lance steps out from the entrance of the door to allow the two to enjoy a moment of silence. He didn't want to bother the quiet moment between two of them, especially after Shiro had recent experienced a terrible thing. Lance knew better than to ruin the moment with his problems.
Dejected, Lance moves as far away as possible from the front quarters and looks for anybody else to have a decent conversation with. The thought of Coran comes up and Lance looks for him in the hangar. Coran was on the floor near the blue lion and tightening the screws around it. He was holding a wrench and had a toolbox next to Coran hears the footsteps of someone behind him, he turns around to find Lance looking at him. "Oh! Hello there, Lance!" He greets with a joyful tune.
"Hey, Coran!" Lance greets back eagerly, happy to have had some positive attention today.
"Do you need anything, Lance?" Coran asks but Lance shakes his head. "Nah, nothing like that. I just thought you needed a chat since it's kind of quiet down here."
"Oh yes, the lions barely speak." Coran continues tightening the screws around the blue lion's leg.
"Yeah, but I mean like chatting with someone." Lance reasons.
"Yes, I chat with Allura all the time! Oh, how we talk about the juniberries!" he daydreams naively. Lance sighs, and trying a different approach says,"Do you need any help?"
"Not at the moment." He replies and proceeds to put all of his strength into tightening a particular screw into the lion. A sharp pain runs down Coran's back and he immediately jumps back and presses the his palm on his back to soothe his pain. His face is plastered with pain and he bends both his back and knees at an awkward angle, presumably to alleviate the pain more. "Ooh," he moans in obvious anguish, "Sorry Lance, I'm afraid I'll be out of commission for a while. You know how it is, after 10,000 years, I've gotten a bit rusty." He measures it with his thumb and index finger and hastens to leave the hangar with Lance in complete silence.
Lance, after finally realizing the fact that no one had time for him, decides to go to his room for the day. When he enters his quarters, he slides down the door and brings his knees up to his chest. He thinks about how everyone else was too busy contributing to the team by fixing up the lions, or training to become better, or augmentating helmets for communication purposes, or just helping others feel better. However, he couldn't do any of that at all, hence he was useless.
When he thought about it, this would've been the second time Lance felt lonely in space, other than that one time where he asked Coran how far away they were from Earth. Sometimes, he missed his family, sure, but he didn't feel lonely because he had the other paladins to hang out with, but too much has changed. Hunk was with Pidge now, Allura and Shiro were getting along, and both Keith and Coran seemed okay with the occasionally chattering with others. Lance questions if he really was the only one felt alone, truly alone, in space.
A/N: Hello everyone, thank you for reading my first chapter. It had taken about a week to finish this due to the start of a new school year and the three initial drafts I felt uncertain about. Although I still feel a slight uncertainty of the quality of the final draft, I believe many of you will find it enjoyable. I hope that many of you can not wait for the next chapter as I will continue to write.