"I'm telling you, it's like I was actually there-"
"Great, Lance-"
"And it's not just stuff I've seen, but what the Lion's seen. She's showed me some really weird stuff and it's just like-"
"You've decided Blue's a girl now?"
It was supposed to be a joke, albeit a very dry one, but Lance barely even pauses. "Well no, not really. She just… likes that? Anyway, I talked to Shiro and he said Black told him a few things, and… you and Hunk should really try it." He leans against one foot- at least, that's what she guesses he's doing by the sound it made. "Get closer to your Lion and all that."
For a moment Pidge flexes her spine the opposite way, bringing her head back into the bright lights of the castle's green bay. She quirks her eyebrows down at him, glassless eyes
"I dunno, Lance, think I'm close enough to my Lion already?"
The Blue Paladin makes an elaborate swinging gesture with both arms, as if he's trying to bodily breaststroke through the statement. "Y'know for someone who's living on a magic space castle you really need to work on your sense of mysticism."
Spoken like someone who hasn't stripped down to a tank top and shorts and climbed into this thing's guts. If she had to admit it, it bothered her the way that Coran and Allura had to go on about mystic this and sorcerous that. They didn't have to rub it in how much more advanced their technology as of ten thousand years ago was.
It wasn't even like she couldn't understand it. She'd modified the Green Lion, hadn't she? She runs a gloved hand over the wires, squinting in the low light. The way they're fastened, it looks like veins, arteries. Thicker headed one way over the other. The Altean mechanics must have been not much larger than Pidge herself, if these crawlspaces were what they had to work in- there was just enough to move, and she had a full set of bruised joints just getting this far. She didn't think much about the sound of Lance leaving, as dimly as it filtered in through the workings of the Lion.
She put the flashlight in her teeth and got shimmying.
If there were arteries and veins, there was almost certainly a heart. The one thing their Altean counterparts did offer on the Lions that didn't come across as patronizing twaddle was they talked about energy- a lot. The Lions had to have a very impressive core.
Applying the camouflage plating had gone smoothly, but it had also been almost entirely superficial. It made her wonder if the Lions had been designed specifically to be modified- everywhere she'd turned, there were extra attachments, unused ports. But superficial wasn't enough.
If she was going to pilot this thing- if it was really hers the way they said it was- if she was going to find her family with Green, she wanted to understand what was exactly at the heart of it.
Starting at the shoulder had been a good idea, but, from the look of things, she had to go down. Dominating her entire left side was a bulky metallic mass that felt warm even through the heavy work gloves she'd borrowed. That had to be core shielding of some kind. Geiger counter was still reading as nothing- but the Altean emission detector was going crazy- even more than it had inside of Green's forelimb.
A low sound, the rumble-groan of metal shifting- Pidge's crawlspace flexed and expanded; the struts ribs, metal plates between them the intercostals that broadened as something like a sigh passed through the frame of the Lion. It had nearly given her a heart attack, to first climb under the Lion's skin, to discover that even dormant there was something moving, shifting and settling continuously.
Yes, she really wanted to know what was going on further inside.
Why don't you just try asking?
Sound. No, not a sound. She hears it like a sound, thin and quiet and muttered through the bulkheads. Coming from inside.
A feeling like an affectionate hand trickles between her shoulder blades and down her spine. Pidge suppresses the urge to jump.
She'll find a way in. There has to be some kind of hatch to the core.
The heart.
Keep crawling. Fine threads of sweat suture her bangs to the skin of her forehead- she swipes them away, leaving behind a smear of amber-colored ichor that she can't remember where it got on her hand. It's getting warmer, and that has to be something.
A fork in the path. To one side, a dim light seeping down from above- leading up to it, a set of metal bars, spaced just so. She tests one of them in hand- cautiously, putting more of her weight onto them. Climbing upwards. The ceiling at the top of the makeshift ladder is solid, as is the space behind it- but ahead her hand meets empty air, and a cooling breeze.
…That shouldn't be right. She's facing inwards- did she get turned around? She shouldn't be outside into the bay. She reaches with her hand into the space, trying to feel where the air is coming from-
The entire structure bows around her, a heaving sigh and a rolling shrug, and she's tumbling, falling. A surface strikes the back of her head, stars firework in her vision. Fuzzily, it's a good thing she left her glasses outside. Matt wouldn't forgive her if she broke his glasses-
-the way he was so angry when she fell out of a tree when they were younger, tears in his eyes even though he was yelling, he told her, he told her not to climb it, but she had to, she had to prove she was good enough, not too little and too soft and the view from the top had been-
-the chest of the Lion, moving like a bellows, and they really were ribs, and you could pretend those big structures were lungs, though they didn't rise and fall properly at all, they undulated, shimmied. She was lying in a pool of shallow liquid, she was-
-lifted in her father's arms, hearing him say Well now, that's a broken leg right there, but she told him about the view from the top of the tree and as much as her leg hurts it isn't enough to stop her and the rest of summer she hobbles on her crutches staring at the trees that they pass and wondering what it'd look like if she climbed that one. She falls many times after that, but never breaking her leg, and usually not on bets- she gets better at climbing.
You were never scared of what you didn't understand, were you, Katie?
Pidge swings hard at the humid air even though there's nothing to connect with. Her hands make splashes in the water as she sits up, doesn't even care that her vision goes a little fuzzy at the edges when she does, doesn't care when she realizes belatedly that her foot is at a bad angle and staying there.
"Don't talk to me like that in my voice." She snaps, breathless, and not knowing why. The air is thick but not motionless, it slides on itself, tugs her hair.
Is that what I sound like?
A whole nest of prodding fingers reaches for her mind. They run at the surfaces of thoughts, not digging, but scratching, impatiently, like Booker when he wanted in and no one was letting him-
What is a Booker?
Pidge pokes at her hair, feels what's probably going to be a bruise, but not a concussion. She draws her legs in, pulls the boot and soiled sock off the foot that's already swelling, rubs it irritably while she stares up at the center of the chamber. "You know… Lance made this sound a lot more fun."
Well I'm not a Lance. You're not a Lance. I know what Lance is!
Besides, you wouldn't like this if it was easy.
Most of the Lion's insides are dark, but this chamber is very bright. The things that look like lungs are some kind of pump, and there, pulsing, dominating the center of the room…
Pidge knows engines, and she was expecting one, but this is not an engine. She knows enough to tell. It hangs from an aorta- though 'hangs' is not the right word. It's more like a tree, the way it branches from the top and bottom, roots in the floor, branches in the ceiling. There's even leaves- thin, iridescent things that move and shuffle in the wind. But the heart itself pulses steadily, its rhythm one that she recognizes. Eight chambers, versus only four.
You always want to fight everything, Katie! You know that you can ask sometimes, right?
"Don't-" she chokes on the word. Sputters. Keeps going. "Don't call me that."
Confusion. Understanding. Hypotheticals. She feels them like they're humming through the structure, like it's her head. A funny little lump sitting in her ribcage, a funny little child nursing a sprained ankle.
And then silence. Hard silence, contrasting against the heartbeat, the breath. If it can be called breath- the Lions travel in space, airless vacuums. It's some kind of systemic circulation, she can figure it out if she-
Will you tell me about your name?
"It's-" It is her name. It's the name her dad calls her when he comes home from work, and it's been months, and even he's sick of dehydrated peas, and Booker barks and dances circles around everyone's ankles and tries to wedge himself between every hug- it's Matt, trying to tell her not to climb the tree, he just knew she was going to get hurt, it was a stupid dare-
It's her mother, taking her by the shoulders, looking at her- her chopped hair, her borrowed glasses, her uniform. Saying it, one last time. And then 'Pidge'. Little tears at the edges of her eyes, a little plea, don't go where they went. Don't go where I can't follow.
It's her family name. She doesn't want to hear it when it isn't from them.
A great sound passes through the Green Lion, something like a whine, whisper grumble. It sounds like the wind between the leaves of a tree Pidge has never seen, but she knows what it sounds like all the same. She can see them, and the leaves are green- they're so green that there isn't a single plant on Earth that you could call green in that same breath, like little emerald suns, and the wind and the leaves and the faintest shimmer of blue in their veins are a concept that threads together in syllables, and Green has pronounced them, in a way that Pidge feels in the throbbing of her twisted foot more than she hears.
It is a name.
Only they call me that.
"The other Lions?" A lump that she thought she had swallowed a year ago comes back and lodges under her jaw. "…They're your family."
Yes.
When they were gone, I thought no one would ever call me that again. I made many friends.
But they were not the same.
"Oh."
Missing people is a little bit like understanding the spaces between stars. The emptiness is too big to render in meaningful numbers. The only way to glimpse its boundaries is in the small things. Like the way that two empty chairs at a four-person table had never felt so cavernous before then.
Everyone in the universe has a family, Pidge.
She really does keep forgetting that her problems aren't only hers.
The hollow of the Lion's chest is warm and wet, and the structures that expand and contract the ribs- a material that constricts with electrical impulses, synthetic muscle fibers- flutter as they work. Beneath the sky of Green's exposed spine, Pidge suddenly feels like an intruder.
A shudder of stricken breath passes through Green's body.
No..!
Contrite, warm, patting furiously at the sides of her face and the top of her head. The rapid strokes of someone who doesn't really seem to understand how a comforting gesture works, but is trying very, very hard. A laugh bubbles to the surface, carrying with it the tears that were forming.
The presence retreats. Hovers at the edges- not touching her, but she can feel it in the air as a kind of tangible hesitation. It's hard to imagine such a large and powerful creature as nervous.
Green waits while Pidge cries. With anyone else it would feel intrusive.
Her ankle feels less sore in the liquid at the bottom of the chamber. Looking at it, she wonders why she wasn't concerned. She's covered in it now- it could have a health problem.
Fine. Electrolyte. Dissolves easily. Won't hurt. Wouldn't let you in if it wasn't safe.
As if it's being spelled in front of her eyes, she sees the molecule tangle itself apart. Elements she doesn't recognize- and some that are new, but she's starting to.
"…I could've just asked, huh."
Yes, but you wanted to see it.
She can't deny that, not really. She looks back at the heart.
Green hums to herself at length. Contemplates. (And Lance is right. And she'll eat Hunk's gloves before she'll admit it to his face. The Lions have pronoun preference. Green, unmistakably, is her)
Heart is very old. Grew like a tree.
Chemicals- a lot of chemicals. Complex molecules. Electricity, heat, light… something else. Quintessence, if Pidge had to guess. And something a bit like Green's name, images and feelings and sounds wrapped together, partitioned by letters and characters. Words, sentences. Looking at it and comprehending almost nothing there are still patterns that emerge. The spaces between stars and the metal hearts of planets, the searing blood of magma, the depths of the sea. Seeds, with all of the promise and information of a thousand-foot sequoia. Like fine strands of woven cloth, or the veins in an arm, there was something that tied them all together, and there was a language to it like the sequence in a strand of DNA. The universe boiled to its raw essence- existence in binary code.
"…Y'know 'magic' sounds a lot more convincing when you put it like that."
And this sounds like a purr, and it tickles as it moves through Green's body, through Pidge.
You were right. It is a kind of science.
Coran could've probably explained that, she realizes grudgingly. If she'd actually asked him for an explanation.
Pidge.
You do not always have to fight everything. You can ask sometimes.
"…When I put the camouflage filter in, did you let me do that, too?"
Yes.
Green sounds terribly proud of herself.
I wanted to see what you would do. This time, too.
"…Mostly I guess I just made a mess of things." Her discarded flashlight bobs in the fluid, and she picks it up.
But that was okay, too. Warm reassurance, filtered straight, and this time Green seems to understand a bit more of how to touch a human- the phantom presence feels as if it's ruffling Pidge's hair.
We learned today. About names. And that was good.
Because maybe human beings are just as weird to giant magic lions as giant magic lions are to human beings. Maybe if she met something ant-sized that could climb around in her guts and she wanted to be friends with it, that would be about as weird as what was going on.
But it's very informative.
"…Yeah. Yeah it is."
Maybe sometimes you couldn't make the algorithms fit until you understood something from a perspective that was really weird.
She leaned against the back wall of the chamber. Maybe she would just… take a break, let the swelling go down in her foot before she went climbing out of here.
You do not have to fight everything Pidge.
Sometimes you can ask.
"Thanks, Green."
She drifts off, dreams- dreams about stars that bleed odd characters that sing in her ears, the view from the top of the tree. About the heartbeat of the Green Lion, the way that Green had opened herself, trusted, offered- let Pidge climb inside of her and tamper with things, a kind of education, a kind of a game. She dreams about her father carrying her inside after she fell out of the tree, but her father never had a metal arm.
She dreams about Green coming back to the castle, tapping on hesitant feet- hearing her name called again, the name only the other Lions used for her, for the first time in ten thousand years. A name with pieces of Altea in it, but more importantly, with family in it, and she dreams about paladin armor and long hair and her family, her name. It will wait, and she will wait.
When she wakes up in her bed, clean, with a foot that doesn't hurt, she isn't frustrated as much as she's personally committed to figure out just how Green did that.
From the bottom of the castle, Green hums to herself.
Of course.
We don't stop learning from each other this early.
That would be no fun.