It wasn't anyone's fault. Not really. The Galra just got a lucky hit and Blue fell into the waters of the planet they were trying to free. It was an emergency call, so they knew next to nothing about the planet, except that the inhabitants needed help. The waters were acidic, deathly so. Lance hadn't been expecting to be ejected from the pilot's seat, but Blue had crashed headfirst into the bottom of the water.
And Blue hadn't made it out intact. The shots that had sent both of them careening down into the waters had shot a hole in the lion's side. The waters had corroded the metal on its hindquarters and damaged the wired of its framework. Blue'd crashed head first, so the screens that made its eyes were cracked, its nose scuffed. For a week after, it had mourned.
Not that Blue's mourning mattered. It wouldn't bring him back to life. He was gone. He wasn't coming back.
Or, at least, he thought he was gone. Everyone did.
And was he really there when he couldn't touch anything when he couldn't say anything when his body had been recovered and burned.
He wasn't there. Not really. If he tried to touch someone, they didn't react. They passed right through him as if he was merely air. He couldn't even touch himself or see himself. No one could hear him. He could scream and shout until his throat was raw, but no one heard him. When he walked in front of mirrors (was it considered walking when he didn't have a body?), there was no reflection. He couldn't even do anything. He couldn't eat, not when he couldn't touch food, or locate his mouth, or open his mouth if he even still had one. He couldn't lay down, not when he melted through the bed, not when he couldn't bend his non-existent limbs to even lay down.
He was stuck standing. Or at least something resembling standing when he didn't have a body.
But it seemed that his natural human needs had not disappeared.
Where his stomach was supposed to be clenched and groaned in pain for food he could not eat. When he saw food, it clenched harder with need. His throat was parched, feeling like desert sand. He felt the need to sleep, but he had no eyes to close, and no brain to shut down, no body to relax.
He would give anything to have those back. Except, he had nothing to give. He wasn't there, he wasn't supposed to be there. Instead, he was stuck in a state of non-existence, in a state of absolute misery .
His emotions were a swirling state of negativ agony.
His anxieties plagued him in a never-ending song. They made questions filter through his form until he couldn't think of anything else. What was he supposed to do? Would the Galra destroy the universe? What about his family? He never got to say goodbye? Was Blue ok? It caused his not-breath to come fast and panic to consume his everything. The next second, sadness weighed down on him like water pressure in the ocean. He hadn't mattered in the end! His actions hadn't changed anything. He was dead and he could never complete his life. And then the emptiness that was all consuming. He felt nothing, nothing at all.
He wanted it to stop. He wanted to pass on into death. But perhaps this was what death had to offer.
There was no heaven, no hell, no light at the end of the tunnel. Death was literally being aware that you were dead, but not being able to do anything. Being aware that there was no purpose behind his existence.
And it was insane how people acted when you weren't there. Of course, everyone acted differently when they were around other people. It was human nature. And they acted differently around different people because they had different comfort levels. But this, the way Voltron acted, was so completely wrong .
The castle was always silent. He hadn't noticed it when he was alive because he was always loud, but now it was silent. No one talked willingly, and they only interacted when they absolutely had to. They didn't acknowledge each other when they walked down hallways. They didn't eat meals together. They didn't hang out anymore.
Sometimes there was noise. A soft clatter of pans and utensils when Hunk was in the kitchen cooking. Small zapping and fizzling noises with the occasional ding where Pidge worked in her lab. Grunts of pain or exertion and the sound of metal on metal from the training room where Keith lived and Shiro came to train. Shuffling of paper or tapping of skin on the screens where Coran and Allura looked through documents or made battle plans.
He hadn't thought his death would tear the team apart, but it had. And it affected how they did in battle.
The first battle after his death had been a complete disaster. Lance had to watch the team fight the Galra on a prisoner transport ship. They'd been too distracted. Voltron had to retreat before they even got halfway through the mission.
It hurt. He had wanted to scream and shout. He'd wanted to find death, if it had a physical appearance, and beg it to give his life back. His life wasn't worth that of the universe.
After that, the team continued to fall apart.
Pidge began to neglect everything, opting to isolate herself in her lab to find her brother and father. She only ever spent time with the Green Lion, making improvements to its body, and talking in a hushed voice about what she was working on.
Hunk spent more time in the kitchen, often falling asleep in the dining chairs he had dragged in there when he was waiting for the food to finish cooking. All he did was cook now. Obsessively scrubbing pans as soon as the food had been cleared off them from the rare passerby, and aggressively mixing ingredients. Staring mindlessly at the oven or stove when he was waiting for the meal to finish. He hadn't uttered a word since the failed mission.
Allura spent so much time on the Holodeck looking through the map and often staring emotionlessly at an empty point on the map where Altea must have been. Coran at her side most days, and when he wasn't compulsively cleaning the castle. They both worked so hard to keep the castle running, but it was taking its toll on them.
Keith spend more and more time with the Blade of Marmora, skirting his paladin duties to go on missions with them. He was barely even in the castle anymore.
Shiro tried to hard to stop the slowly disintegrating Voltron, but he could only do so much until he gave up and just helped Coran or Allura.
Eventually, Keith disappeared completely. The Blade cut contact with Voltron, and Keith went with them. No one noticed until a month after he left. Except for Lance who had sunk into sadness at his choice. After that, he spent time with Red, not that it could see him, in Keith's place.
After three weeks to Keith disappearance Pidge left. She didn't talk to anyone, much like Keith and only left a passing note to Blue who she'd come to see before she left. Then the green paladin, along with her lion, were gone.
Hunk left next, a few days after that. He talked to Allura and Shiro on the matter, stating that there was no point for him to stay. He wasn't contributing to anything. He wanted to go back to the Balmera with Shay and her people.
He left Yellow, taking an escape pod with all his cooking supplied and left a batch of cookies inside of Blue. Lance had to watch the mice eat them, not able to reach down to take the offering, and not able to look away due to his unending hunger.
This left Allura, Shiro, and Coran to run Voltron and the Coalition. They were losing allies fast because they were unable to save them. They didn't have enough manpower.
The Galra were taking over the universe again, this time under the rule of Lotor.
And Lance had to watch it happen.
About a year after the other three paladins had left, he watched with emptiness as the Castle of Lions was stormed by Galran Troops. He watched as Allura, a strong-willed princess he had served, and Coran, the good-natured fatherly figure the team had found in space, fought to their deaths to defend the remnants of their home. He watched Shiro take his own life, plunging his own arm into his chest and ripping out his heart, in desperation to stay out of Galran hands.
After that, he sat in silence in the broken remains of the castle. The same castle that so many happy memories had been made, only to rot away. The same place where he and four other humans had become soldiers given the duty of saving the universe, only to fail.
It hurt. It shattered him more than anything else he'd ever been through. It pained him more than feeling his skin erode away under the acid.
He was the cause of this! He was the cause of this failure, of this death.
A voice called out to him, sounding at the edge of his conciseness. He looked around the empty, broken, melancholy remains of his residence. Words washed over him, and he felt a sensation he hadn't felt in a long time. Relief washed over him in a tidal wave as the agony and misery melted away into numb regret. He almost cried.
Light filled his vision, blurring out the last residence of Voltron, and then there was nothing.