A/N: This is the first fic I've posted in years! I also have an AO3 account now (piratesPencil on AO3) and I might start posting new fics exclusively over there, so you should go check it out!

"What's up, Pidge?"

Pidged glanced up as Lance strolled into the workroom, hands in his pockets. He had a black eye and a scratch down the side of his face from their last tussle with the Galra. Allura had offered to patch him up with a few minutes in a healing pod, but ever since the glitched ship had trapped Lance in a pod, he'd avoided them unless it was an emergency.

Rover 2.0 – built from scratch with Galra scraps collected over dozens of fights and scavenging missions – zipped across the room to hover around Lance's head, chirping happily in binary beeps.

"The sky," Pidge said, and went back to tinkering with some newly scavenged Galra tech. "Or in our case, the infinite expanse of space, I guess."

The Paladins had been in space for months – sometimes it felt like years. Wild months of adventure and misery and triumph and pain and excitement. They'd been separated, then brought back together in a rush of relief. They were always busy fighting, working, defending. It was nice whenever they got a second to breathe.

"I'm glad you built a new Rover, you know," Lance said. He perched himself on the edge of Pidge's work desk, knocking over a stack of books with his butt. He patted Rover 2.0 like a small, triangular puppy. "He's a good lil dude."

"They," Pidge said, off-hand, righting the stack of books that Lance had knocked over.

"Who?"

"Rover 2.0. They, not he. Robots don't have genders."

Lance tilted his head, considering the notion. Pidge wondered if he'd even taken Introduction to Robots in high school. That had been one of Pidge's favourite classes, and one of the only ones she'd bothered to pay attention in.

Pidge was smart – she considered herself a genius in certain areas, thank you very much – but classes like English and History hadn't been enough to hold her attention. She might not have gotten into the Garrison at all, with some of her grades – that is, Katie Holt might not have gotten in. Pidge Gunderson did, though.

When Katie Holt joined the Garrison, she took a pair of scissors to her hair, traded her contact lenses for wireframe glasses, and dug through the basement to unearth her brother's old clothes. She researched the best way to press her chest down to boyish flatness, and ordered binders online. She camped out by the front door for a week, making sure she grabbed the package before her mother saw it.

Becoming Pidge Gunderson was a project like any other – it was hacking into a high-security computer, it was building a robot from parts scavenged from the Holt's mess of a garage. Once she'd committed to the idea, she didn't consider anything other than following the plan.

Her mother filled out the Garrison admission forms, but Katie intercepted the files and changed all the information before she submitted them – Katie Holt became Pidge Gunderson, female became male, and she changed her birthday, too, just in case.

When Katie walked through the Garrison doors, she was Pidge. She spent a week on edge, ears straining to make sure she caught the name Pidge, to make sure she recognized her own self-chosen name. By the end of the first week, she didn't have to strain anymore.

When people referred to Pidge as he, it didn't feel any different from she. Pidge settled into his new skin easily. This was all part of the plan. The secret he carried never weighed heavy on him. Once he was sure that Iverson didn't recognize him, there was nothing left to fear. He was there for one reason: to find his family. No one needed to know anything about him.

There were other kids at the Garrison, but they gave up on trying to befriend Pidge after the first week. He wasn't there to make friends, and he was sure they could sense it in the prickly shield he'd built around himself. He wasn't protecting the secret of his identity – he was hiding the secret of his true purpose at the Garrison.

Only Lance and Hunk continued to make an effort to spend time with him.

"Hey! Hey, Pidge, come eat with us!" Lance waved aggressively at Pidge whenever he walked into the cafeteria, obnoxiously loud.

The first few times, Pidge purposefully sat down at a table far away from his overly friendly teammates. Anyone who wanted to know him that badly was a liability. But it quickly became clear that Pidge wasn't welcome at the other tables – groups of friends stared at the unfriendly intruder who'd sat down in their midst and spread out a pile of books, encroaching on their space. Eventually, even Pidge couldn't stand the frosty reactions he got from all the kids he purposefully ignored, and he started sitting with Lance and Hunk, the three of them clustered together at the end of a table near the food counter.

Pidge still spent most of his meals reading and ignoring his teammates, but at least he felt welcome.

He had to remind himself not to get comfortable.

Lance would cross Pidge in the halls and toss an arm around Pidge's shoulders, inviting him to play video games in the common room, or to sneak out, or to taste the mysterious clear liquid he'd won in a bet (which was probably alcohol?).

Hunk didn't even bother with the inviting. He treated Pidge as if they were already friends, always leaning over Pidge's shoulder, reading his notes, asking him about the doodles in his margins, ignoring Pidge's pleas for privacy.

At some point, Pidge figured the three of them probably had become friends, even if they got along like charged wires, sparking and volatile.

Still, Pidge never worried about the secret of his identity. It hardly felt like a secret – it was a detail they didn't need to know. If he'd dyed his hair black, he wouldn't have felt the need to tell them it was really brown. He had bigger problems, and bigger secrets.

It wasn't until they became Paladins that Pidge started to feel the weight.

Hunk going through his diary had sent a spike of panic through Pidge's chest, but it was nothing compared to the other Paladins rooting around in his head. Mind-melding was a nightmare. Pidge's identity hadn't felt like a secret until he was faced with the possibility of being found out.

The night after the mind-melding, Pidge lay in his bunk, Allura's mice rooting around in his hair and climbing over his chest, and stared at the photograph of Katie and Matt. Pidge could hardly recognize himself in Katie's face. The picture was kind of old – he looked younger, had a rounder face. He was used to seeing himself with glasses, short hair, a flat chest.

Why was he still keeping this secret? Iverson was a wormhole and lightyears away. That was the only reason Katie had become Pidge, right? His secret was pointless out here in the far reaches of space. The other Paladins all knew his real secret, the search for his family. They didn't know about the whole hacking-the-Garrison thing, but they didn't really need to.

He figured he was just in too deep at this point. It would be embarrassing, admitting he'd been keeping this secret for so long with no reason.

He rolled over onto his side and tried to see himself in Katie's face. He tried to imagine Lance and Hunk, even Shiro and Keith and the others, calling him Katie. Her. Calling her Katie.

Maybe he liked being Pidge.

Once the secret started to feel like a secret, Pidge couldn't hold it inside without it feeling like a barrier blocking him off from the rest of the team. He didn't doubt that the others had secrets – who didn't? – but the fear of being found out, of Hunk flipping through his diary again, of Shiro slipping up, of being caught without a binder at night or after a shower, gnawed at Pidge relentlessly.

Finally, finally, after Pidge almost left the team entirely, after Lance almost died and Pidge felt the terror of nearly losing a friend, Pidge's shield shattered.

"I can't man up," Pidge said, and rambled, because a secret wasn't an easy thing to reveal, even once you'd made up your mind to reveal it. "I'm a girl."

And no one – except for Lance, but Pidge had never had high expectations of Lance – was surprised. They all knew, they said. And Pidge thought she should be relieved, but instead she was disappointed. Disappointed that she wasn't as good at keeping secrets as she'd thought? Disappointed that her reveal hadn't had the dramatic flair that she'd secretly hoped for?

Disappointed that she hadn't actually been perceived as a he?

She didn't tell them her birthname – only Shiro knew that, and he'd only used it once – and that was good, at least. She told herself Katie was a name that reminded her too much of her family, but even the thought of her father and brother calling her Katie if they reunited – when they reunited – didn't feel right.

She'd become Pidge. She'd chosen the name for herself, carved out a new identity that suited her better than anything she'd been before, and she didn't want to give that up.

Sometimes, the other Paladins slid back into calling Pidge he out of habit, flip-flopping between pronouns. Only Lance launched fully into calling Pidge she, almost like he was trying to prove something – he hadn't figured out Pidge's secret before, but he was going to embrace the reveal now. He was so insistent sometimes that it grated on Pidge's nerves, like a reminder of who she'd been before – who he'd been before – and who she was now.

She didn't know how to bring it up, though. She couldn't ask Lance to call her he again. It would have felt like going back to pretending.

So Pidge worked towards defending the universe, and didn't think about her identity too much. Most of the time, she didn't.

"I mean, robots could have genders if they wanted to, right?" Lance offered. He was still sitting on the corner of Pidge's work desk, kicking his feet while he watched Pidge work.

Pidge shrugged. "Depends where you stand on robot sentience."

Lance pressed his face up close to Rover 2.0's one glowing eye. "I think Rover is sentient."

Pidge laughed. She considered Rover 2.0 one of her better friends, but that didn't mean she'd fooled herself into thinking the little bundle of microchips and wires had a mind of its own. She'd yet to meet a machine that could truly think for itself, but with everything she'd seen in the vast universe so far, she believed they could exist.

"Maybe there are robots with genders somewhere in space," she conceded. She rested her chin in her hand. "Still. Robots don't have default genders. They could choose whatever they wanted."

"Like you," Lance said.

Pidge raised her chin from her hand. "What?"

"Like, how you decided you're a girl. You know, you always did remind me of a robot, Pidge."

"I didn't decide, Lance. I just am. I am girl."

Lance paled a little, almost looked embarrassed, and leaned back on the desk. "Well, I know. You are a girl. But, I mean, you didn't just accept the default you were born with."

"Wait." Pidge snorted and crossed her arms over her chest. Her chest was still pressed flat with the binder she hadn't stopped wearing even after she'd revealed her secret to the other Paladins. It was a part of Pidge, part of the identity she'd carved out, like the glasses and the short hair that she hadn't abandoned either. "You thought that I was born a boy and that I… that I was coming out as a girl?"

Lance's eyes widened. Rover 2.0, still hovering around his head, chirruped as if they were confused, too. "Is that not what happened? When you said you were a girl – that wasn't a post-near-death hallucination, was it?"

"No, it was real," Pidge said. "But… I was born a girl, Lance. I was just pretending to be a boy. At the Garrison. Because - uh, it doesn't matter. But I didn't come out as a girl. That's not… what I would have chosen. If I was choosing."

The words tumbled out of Pidge's mouth, and Pidge hadn't realized they were true until they'd been spoken out loud. If Pidge was choosing – Pidge wouldn't choose to be a girl.

"Wow." Lance buried his face in his palm. "I'm an idiot. How did everyone else figure that out?"

"I don't know," Pidge said. "I thought I made a really convincing boy."

A part of Pidge scoffed at Lance for not figuring this out – but another part, a bigger part, was flattered. Thankful. Pidge's identity hadn't been as obvious as everyone else had made it seem.

"So, then." Lance rested his elbows on his knees and leaned towards Pidge, a little conspiratorial. "What would you choose? If you were choosing. Because you can choose. That's, like, a thing you can do."

"I know," Pidge said quickly, defensively. And Pidge had known, intellectually, that you could choose whatever name, whatever pronouns, whatever identity you wanted – hadn't Pidge already chosen a new name, even if it was part of a disguise that had become an identity? The name, the hair, even the wireframe glasses – they had never felt like a disguise. Being a boy, though – that was the part that had felt like a lie.

But being a girl didn't feel any better. It felt like another lie, but a more complicated one – a lie that Pidge hadn't invented, a lie that had been forced upon Pidge.

"I would choose nothing, I guess," Pidge said. "I would choose neither. They."

"Goddamn, Pidge, I knew you were secretly a robot," Lance said. He reached out to ruffle Pidge's hair and Pidge ducked out of Lance's reach.

"Shut up."

"Hear that, Rover 2.0? You're not the only robot around here. They're here, too." And Lance pointed at Pidge, and it felt so obviously right that Pidge couldn't believe they hadn't thought of it earlier.

"You know what this means, right?" Lance said.

"What?" Pidge asked warily. This felt like a new discovery, like something warm and exciting that Pidge wanted to hold close to their heart and protect from whatever Lance might say about it.

Lance hopped off the table and threw an arm around Pidge's shoulders. "You gotta do another big reveal, and this time I'm the only one who'll know ahead of time."

Pidge nudged Lance with their shoulder and laughed. Despite everything, despite the universe crumbling under Galran rule around them, Pidge felt lighter than they'd felt in months – in years. They figured they could let Lance gloat. As a thank you.