"I'm going to be a fighter pilot!?"

"I know"

"Like Takashi Shirogane, you know!"

"Hmm"

"Maybe someday, I'll work with him"

"Yep"

"Flying though the Solar System, going further than any other person on Earth. Like Kerberos"

"Sure"

"You're not listening, are you?"

"What?"

Marco huffed and stomped his foot on the tiles floor, "I knew it"

Lance sighed, a hand coming up the rub the bridge of his nose, "I-I- look, I'm busy. I have finals in a few weeks- "

"Yeah, in a few weeks"

"That's not the point, Marco. This exam will decide if I get my Honours or not."

Marco huffed and stomped towards the lonely stool on the other side of the lab. His eyes wandering again to the posters on the wall of the enclosed lab. Science. Science. Genetics. Chemistry. Blah. Blah. Blah. Science is boring. Math is better. He flopped onto the metal stool, his butt chilled by the cold surface. It felt like the rest of the lab. Cold and lifeless.

Glaring hard at the white, marble table top of the lab. He was only here because mama didn't trust him at home. He could totally look after himself, he only caused a fire that one time. But no, Mama had to pass him to his weirdo older brother at the College. He's seen other teenagers his age. Lance acts nothing like that.

"You're not normal" Marco said out of the blue as he fiddled with the glass looking stick that was on the bland table. Next to the microscope. The same white ones that his brother was using. Yellow light lit from the bottom with a slide, of what he assumed was a drop was blood.

Lance huffed a laugh, a "you don't have tell other people that" under his breath as he stared at the specimen on the glass slide. His hands moving slowly to the knobs on the neck of the microscope, focusing and refocusing the image. Writing whatever he found onto the notepad below him, already filled with formulas, and other accounts and details of the blood sample of a Leukaemia patient.

"Serious. Other fifteens year olds have relationships and first time jobs and partying and school and prom and-"

"-I get it"

"you're just boring. If you, being a fifteen, is what entails in our family at that age. I don't want that. I want a life" Marco finished, his eyes carrying that sad, kicked puppy glint as he rolled the glass rod (which was supposed to be in its draw) along the table top. Overall, Marco just looked miserable all round.

Lance stopped. He could think of a thousand different ways on how wrong that was. He brought his hands down, into his lap, and twirled his stool towards his brother. Giving him his undivided attention.

"Where is Carlo now?"

Marco stopped, a confused brow raised.

"Wha-"

"Answer the question"

"Um, at school"

Lance nodded, pleased.

"Where is Sofia now?"

"What kind of question is that? With her friends, drinking. Doing everything that Mama tells her not to"

Lance gave Marco a pointed look. If his facial features alone could push him towards the point. Marco stared at him confusingly, until, oh.

"Oh"

Lance smiled, "Exactly", twirling his rotating stool back to his work. His blue gloves stretching familiarly on his tan hands as that turned back to the knobs.

"We all lead different lives, Marco. Graduating way too many years early and starting college at a young age was my choice. And look where I'm at now. A fifteen-year-old on the edge of getting their honours. Carlo, is not like me. He is still in school, studying for his future and going towards being a champion of the swimming team. While, Sofia has decided to throw everything out of the window and focus on her social life. Which will most definitely back lash in the future." Lance continued.

"We don't have the same fate. We choose our fate, Marco. You want to become a fighter pilot, right. Go to Galaxy Garrison in Arizona, thrive there. Become as good, or better than Takashi Shirogane. Marco Charlie McClain, the best fighter pilot in the history of the Galaxy Garrison."

Lance looked over his shoulder. Smiling when he spotted his brother absorbing his words like a sponge. "Write your future, Marco"

Lance grunted as his back was holding a ten-year-old. Thin, lanky arms choking him.

"Thank you, Lance. I needed that more than I thought" The muffled into his lab coat.

Lance smiled, his arms coming behind his back to hold him in a static piggyback ride. Answering questions from the monkey on his back as he stared at his work from over his shoulder.

Red and blue lights covered his vision, even though the world around him was a hospital room. His ears didn't pick up crying of his mother, the arguing of his sister to the nurses, the pacing of his father, the breathing from the huddled form of his younger siblings, or the tapping foot of his brother.

Instead his eyes desperately scoured the medical files, all his textbooks open on the tiled floor of the hospital waiting room. Never bothering (or listening) to the nurses to move his belongings so other people could move around. His younger brother was dying, those people could fuck off.

Hastily pushing back his black glasses back onto his face as he read sections of his heavily, sticky noted, bookmarked textbooks.

"McClain's"

Lance snapped his head back to the Nurse's Station. A doctor stood still as his eyes roamed the waiting room. His dark blue scrubs looked hastily put back on, like he had to change. Lance shot up, leaving his expensive books on the floor as he darted forward, if not, looking slightly crazed.

"Where is he? Is he okay? Was the surgery successful? Was the bullet removed?" Lance repeated these questions as he parents moved forward. Not feeling the movement in the air of his other siblings coming forward. They must have instructed them to sit down and stay. Like dogs.

"Mr. McClain-"

Lance only continued his turret of questions. He stopped when his father placed a hand on his shoulder.

"Is my son alive?" his father asked, the fear trying and failing to stay underneath to need to be a strong figure for his family.

The doctor looked between the three. Torn on something. He took a deep breath,

"May I talk to you in my office"

"-the bullet was removed, yes-" Lance felt the world lift of his shoulders. From the cushioned chairs to the warm lighting. It felt like the he was floating

"-but the bullet ricocheted of his pelvis. Which fractured." The world was dropped back onto his shoulders. The chairs doing nothing to absorb the impact and he felt like he was drowning.

"Then you scan him and find the where the bullet ricocheted" Lance attempted to resolve, his voice shakier than he would admit. The doctor only stayed silent, the same torn look in his emotionless brown eyes, behind the bulky spectacles.

"It's not that simple Mr. McClain. The bullet broke apart" He felt his heart squeeze painfully.

"Then find that piece to-" Lance started. Feeling like his entire world was going to come crushing down. To be honest, it was pretty much true.

"Sir. That shard was directed to his heart." Air rushed passed his lip, like his lungs were being put into a vice. He could hear his mother sobbing behind her white, soft hands.

"Then you get it out. Start doing- "

"Mr. McClain" The doctor interrupted him before he could list all the treatment and procedures surgeons would do in that position.

"The surgery was unsuccessful" Lance felt the world snap. Before he realized what, he was doing, he had stood up and clear the doctor's paper filled desk to grab at his coat. Paper copies of old cases and procedures littered the wooden floor. From personal experience, he knew that was a bitch to clean up. But he deserved it.

He didn't consider the blown wide eyes of the doctor as he world had come to an end, an end to the small child that would wait for him to come home after long lecture in the Science Building, or jump on his back for piggyback when he was less than ready.

His father stood up and carefully unwrapped his thin, piano fingers of the coat to bring him back down to hug, next to his mother.

"At 2:35pm, I'm sorry for your loss"

His pen hovered over the application form. His brain was battling with his heart. His brain wanted him to continue his 'fate' at the College. To be old enough to go into Medicine. His heart wanted him to continue his brother's 'fate'. Overall, he felt sick. Ready to spew barf all over the application form.

"You are not seriously considering it?" His brother yelped from his bed. His legs crossed and looking very unimpressed. Even at eighteen, he still acted like an immature seven-year-old. "You are sixteen, Lance. You are supposed to be eighteen to enrol in the Garrison, unless you're gifted."

Lance took that as an insult, "You are also looking at your brother who completed school by eight, got their bachelors at thirteen and just recently received their honours in Biochemistry." He looked over his shoulder to his room, where his brother laid. His face of neutral of emotion, but an underlying disappointment in his brother.

"I think I'm gifted"

Carlo huffed. Lance was right. He was always right.

Lance hugged every member of his family as long, as possible. The Garrison uniform scratching against his skin. Remembering every feature on each of their faces. It was like he was going to war. Well, he was. With his common mind, his heart in the lead.

"Be safe" His mother kissed his cheek, next to the bold lipstick marks of his sister. He better rub that off before he arrives at the Garrison. If not, well, that would be an interesting first impression in front legit soldiers and generals.

"You look like a man in your uniform" His aunt said has she had her turn of hugging him, just as tight as tight as his mother.

Next was Carlo, his hugged him like it was the last time he was see or touch him again. His moved his face to his ear. "Marco would be proud of you" he whispered. Lance nodded into the crook of his shoulder and silently cried.

He would make Marco prouder.

And he did just that, when he became a hero of the universe. A Paladin of Voltron.

The white goo was cold when he applied it to his face. The smooth solid spread across his unblemished face like peanut butter on toast. It was an old comfort. His sister introduced it to him when he was eight, after graduating school. It got rid of acne like magic. When he found, the box of beauty containers in the draw. There were no words to explain how he felt.

Tightening his robe at the waist, he examined his mask covered face and walked out of the room. His uncovered feet, padding against the floor silently. A habit he has grown use to, from entering and exiting Galra ships undetected, it was the same with everyone else. It was silent, as usual.

Down the hallway, his ears picked up the distinct sound of gagging. Heavy footfalls of someone then the echoing sound of liquid hitting into something solid.

Lance sighed, "Why me?" he mumbled to himself. With a change of direction, Lance turned towards the communal bathrooms.

A dark figure was heaving into the metal toilet, their lungs sounding like they need to be replaced rather than fixed. Spitting whatever stomach acid that was left in their mouths into the water below. The stark smell of bile filled the room. Space Goo vomit smelt weird, Lance wondered. And that was never a thought he ever thought he would come up with.

Grunting and spitting one last time into the bowl, the figure rose. Keith wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and stumbled to the basin, an obvious sweat on his brow. The water ran from the tap sliding down the basin like a slide before cupping his hands underneath it to drink.

It was then that he noticed Lance standing at the doorway through the mirror. His tan face showing the frown of displeasure.

Keith coughed, "What are you doing?"

Lance shrugged before stalking towards him, a frown marring his usually cheerful face.

"I heard you vomit a few hallways down. Did you know that you spew chunks louder than literally anyone I know? I swear Earth could hear you"

"Fuck you" Keith spat as he wiped his mouth with his shirt. Lance tsked.

"Such language"

Keith flipped him off.

Lance chuckled but stopped and quickly threw an arm around his shoulders when Keith pushed away from the basin with definite struggle.

"Alright Mullet, I'm taking you to the Infirmary."

Keith didn't argue.

"I can't believe that you dragged me to the infirmary. I can walk you know!"

"Well, you are sick and didn't put up much of a fight. It was like dragging a lifesize doll across the floor"

"Fuck off!" Lance shrugged his shoulders as he pushed Keith down onto the Altean, infirmary cot. With little fight than he was expecting. Keith just flopped on there like a fish. A very sick fish.

With a temperature, he checked.

He stared at the pods on the other side of the room. He was entirely sure they worked on illness. Well, maybe Pidge, but she knew everything. Anyway, they are about to find out.

"Stay here while I go get Coran. All right. Here's a bucket" Lance handed him the bucket from under the bed and gently placed this in Keith's shaky hands.

Keith whispered his "thanks" as he bowed his head into the grey bucket. Lance walked out silently.

Lance found Coran with a high fever, sick on his bed. Then dragged him to the Infirmary. So, he did the next best thing. Allura.

He found her with Shiro in the bathroom. Both leaders sick. Whatever this is, he prays that Hunk and Pidge weren't infected.

They were.

"I did not expect it to go in this direction" Lance said aloud. Pidge snorted into her hot chocolate as she snuggled into her pile of blankets with her bucket close by when the hot chocolate would most likely come up again within the next few minutes. She was like a caterpillar.

When Lance asked, he found out that no, the pods do not work on illness, just fucking perfect.

"Sucks to be you"

Lance turned to her, to frown. "Thanks" he whined.

Pidge laughed. Lance cringed at the sound. The sound was like nails against a chalkboard.

At the moment, Lance was staring at the view in front of him. Every other member of Team Voltron in one or other symptoms of an unknown illness that had plagued them, from what Coran hypothesised, from the previous planet they were on. Why Lance wasn't affect was a mystery.

"I feel like shit" Pidge voiced, burrowing deeper into the mountain of pillows than he thought possible.

"I know"

"I want to die"

"I know"

"If you say, 'I know' one more fucking time. I'm going to kill you"

"I-uh sure"

Pidge grumbled.

"So, this is your medicine cabinet?" Coran looked at him confusingly, probably at the word 'cabinet'. But continued.

"The problem is that they're only for Alteans. And is extremely expired. If Allura and I use it, we could die" Lance hummed in response.

"And they weren't, they would have been too concentrated for your species to use"

Silence laid on the pair, Coran's sniffling filling the void.

"Where are your chemicals?"

"These are the components we use in our medications." Lance stared into the storage room. Shelves and shelves of alien chemicals. The thought alone made him giddy with excitement. It was bigger than the College's. Lance bit his lip to avoid having his smile shown in such a dire situation.

"Where's the equipment that you use?" Coran looked at him weirdly before continuing.

"In the storage room in the Infirmary. Why?"

Lance shrugged his shoulders. Coran huffed, his breathing sounding like a whistle.

Coran sighed before turning back into the hallway, Lance following. Lance could see the tiredness in his eyes, the dread of working in the condition he was in. He looked older than he biologically was. And from what Lance imagined, from the symptoms of the others; Headache, vomiting, shortness of breath and the general, alien flu. Maybe something more.

"Did the scan reveal anything" Lance asked. The more information he could gather, the better.

Coran started to shake his head, stopping from the growing pressure pulsing in his head. Coran grimaced in pain.

"Not much. Just a misty substance in the lungs and in the digestive track, nothing dangerous that the scan found"

Lance hummed along.

"Why?"

Lance grumbled. Hunk stared at him, eyeing the syringe in his gloved hands. It was good news that Altea had the general same medical instruments as Earth. Or things would be different. Hunk was the healthiest out of the bunch, and the one he trusts the most.

"I just need your arm." Lance said, his patience dwindling. Disappointment heavy on his chest.

Hunk shook his head furiously. Still eyeing the needle that glinted from the overhanging lights. It was suspicious enough that Lance asked Hunk to follow him to his room while rest of the team watched them. It was just the two of them in Lance's room, several hastily scribbled notes on his bed and now with a needle pointing in his direction.

If Lance was still on Earth, this wasn't even his job. The qualified nurses do this, they just stay in the lab and scan it, find out whatever the fuck was wrong with them or make and study new medications.

The moment Lance was alone, he grabbed the first thing that sightly even resembled paper and a pen and wrote down everything he knew on this subject of illness, formula's and procedures. All strewn across his bed, not necessarily in order.

"Are you even qualified for that?!" Hunk screeched, despite the high temperature, he acted on, like nothing was wrong with himself.

Lance mumbled incoherently into the floor before turning back to Hunk's terrified face, terrified that his friend was acting like an entirely new person.

"N-not necessarily,"

Hunk paled further than thought possible. Lance quickly unravelled his thoughts to quickly amend the situation.

"Well, not my place of area." Lance breathed deeply, "but I need a sample. I need to have a look at your blood at a microscopic level." Lance's eyes didn't meet Hunks, "…Please?"

Hunk continued to stare at the 'weapon' in Lance's hands. The syringe that Lance managed to retrieve undetected in the Infirmary. Hunk's resolve cracked at the look Lance was sending him. It was always that puppy dog face that broke him. It made him younger than he actually was, and was always a sucker for that.

Hunk sighed to the heavens, as if the lord himself would grant him the courage in need.

"Fine"

Lance shot up. A blinding smile plastered on his face. Hunk never saw him like this, much less about human biology.

"REALLY!"

The sound echoed through the room, his excitement resounding off walls of and floors. A shrill cry of indescribable happiness. Hunk quickly backtracked.

"Only a little bit"

Lance nodded like a toddler on a sugar rush. His brown bouncing like a basketball, his smile still engraved to his face.

"I promise!" Lance cried, "Only five millilitres. I swear!"

Lance instantly grabbed his arm, turning it so the underside of Hunk's elbow was facing upwards. He started tapping it, feeling the cold touch of gloved hand to his dark skin. That was always something Hunk wondered why nurses and doctors do that. Then, with precision, Lance jabbed the needle into, what Hunk presumed, was the vein, the cold metal sliding into his arm. Crimson flowing through the needle and into the blue glassed syringe filling up with crimson slowly.

The needle slid out as quickly as it went in, the crimson stopping at the fifth line. Lance grabbed the Altean version of a cotton ball and dabbed in on the puncture sight. Hunk ignored the sick feeling in his stomach, whether from the illness Team Voltron caught, or his anxiety (which had decreased these past few months in space).

"There we go!" Lance cheerfully added, adjusting the syringe when the needle was detached from the syringe. He dumped the needle into a heavy covered tissue bag (or a handmade biohazard bin) and what was left in his hands was a tube of his blood. Dark, leaving red wherever it moved to.

"You haven't been drinking enough water, mister" Lance mumbled as he looked through it with one eye, in the direction of the ceiling light.

"What?" Hunk asked from his position on Lance's bed, amongst papers upon papers of messy notes.

Lance laughed and set the tube down on his desk, which was in desperate need to be cleaned. The tube sat on a plant from one of the planets they visited previously, the leaves curling around it like a precious item. Along with pencils lifted in the air and the pair of black spectacles hung from the nose frame.

"Nothing, don't worry"

They sat in silence. Lance staring at the tube of blood, figuring out ways how he was going to study the sample, whilst Hunk tried to figure out what the fuck just happened. The idiotic, cheerful, flirty, wonderful Lance became someone he no longer knew. He was dropping terms he didn't even think to exist or Lance knew in his vocabulary.

The flirty, strict beauty regime, blue paladin of Voltron Lance became excited at the prospect of studying blood, much less anything related to science and the human body. AND HE KNEW HOW TO USE A FUCKING SYRINGE! LIKE STABBY STABBY KNEW! And he's read the notes on his bed, or tried. They contained terms even he doesn't know! Math, sure. Engineering, absolutely, Chemistry, sorta, fucking Biological terminology, no fucking clue.

Between his stomach gurgling and cramping, and the massive migraine rippling through his head, he was at a lost to the person he thought he knew in and out.

"How?" Hunk started, Lance instantly slumped. Like the world rested on his shoulders, and indescribable motion emitting from his very form. From the way Lance reacted, he knew what he was asking for.

Lance turned his face to his wall, his thin fingers playing with the soft material of the altean sheets.

"I…" He starts to try, like his mouth was changing its mind every few seconds. Opening and closing like a fish, "I have an honour" he managed to choke out. Refusing to look Hunk in the face. Knowing he lied to his best friend. The first proper friend he ever had. Not leaving friends behind because he was far too ahead academically or having no time to hang out with them within the struggle of studying.

Hunk snorted, the sound making his own head ache. No, not true. Not Lance.

"No" He drawled, even his voice sound doubtful of his own thoughts.

Lance looked back at him, such shame glinting in his eyes. "I have an honour's in Biochemistry." Lance repeated. His hand clenching the pale blue sheets, as a lifeline, from the shame of lying to a team that he should trust with his life.

Hunk continued to stare from his position of the bed, his head leaning against the wall.

"I graduated high school at eight, and got a scholarship to one of the closest colleges to where I live and finished my bachelors at thirteen, then did another two years for my honours" Lance concluded. Quickly adding, "I received my honour's last year".

Hunk stared. Just stared.

"So, you're a post-"

"postgraduate. yeah"

They sat in silence. Lance trying to find a way to continue this rapidly growing awkward conversation that has taken down an ugly turn, while Hunk tried to process the information.

"Why did you join the Garrison?" Hunk asked.

Lance resolve broke. He knew that question was coming, he just wasn't prepared. Tears gathered in his eyes. He stopped fiddling with the sheets to grab them like a life line. Lance choked, he could see the guilt in Hunk's eyes as he tried to find a way to take it back.

"It's not something I want to talk about, right now" Lance rasped, pushing through his constricting throat. Despite not knowing whatever was wrong, Hunk did was he does best. He drew Lance into a hug, his large arms encasing the boy.

By the next morning, the virus turned into something worse than previously imagined. Lance woke up to vomiting teammates, fevering, and cramping. Their lungs worse than twelve hours prior. Even Hunk had gotten just as sick as the others, and the dread that was on Coran's face tenfold as he knew he had to make new medication for both human and alteans during his illness.

By then, Lance had managed to scavenge the lab equipment and materials from the storage room, without suspicion. Somehow. Now, they reside in his now, overly cramped room. He even remembers the relief he felt when he discovered they were just like Earth, if not, incredibly stronger. Lance could feel his fangirling come out.

"I can't seem to find the lab equipment" Coran said aloud as he stared down the storage room, his hands bracing on the doorframe as his voice sounded like something from a horror film.

Lance, while in the midst of wiping the sweat off Allura'a brow and handing back to the bucket to Shiro, froze.

"I'm sure they couldn't have gone far?" Allura questioned from slightly below him, a voice like a chalkboard being scratched.

"I swear it was in here" Coran mumbled. Lance turned back to the man in question.

"Coran, go to bed." Lance asked, more of an order from the underlying tone when he noticed Coran's unstablity as he leaned up against the metal wall.

"Lance, my boy-"

"Coran, I'll find them"

That seemed to put the older man at ease, and he slowly stumbled back to the unoccupied bed of the Infirmary. Lance let out the breath he hadn't realised he had been holding.

They were moving.

The bacteria, he meant. They were moving, on the slide. Sliding around the place like slime. From the few hours, he's worked on Hunk's blood, he has so far concluded that, one; this mysterious bacterium multiplies and eats, and two; by eating, Lance means their white blood cells. This was another form of Leukaemia, without the abnormal cells, aka, cancer.

"Interesting," Lance mumbled to himself. This illness was worse than previously imagined. Nothing from Earth could come close to this virus, other than cancer, but that wasn't a virus.

From the rate of its multiplying and eating habits, it's safe to assume that the virus would have completely wipe out any white blood cells within a week, leaving the paladins and alteans weak from any cold and flu. But that still doesn't answer for the substance in the respiratory system and digestive track.

Lance sighed. The clock that Pidge created ages ago flashed 12:00am obnoxiously, and he could feel his exhaustion seep through the barrier of space caffeine. The whole five cups of it. With a yawn, he pushed himself to the machine that laid beside the microscope, and turned it on.

Humming filled the air as Lance stared at the instruction settings , unfortunately, all in Altean.

"Fuckin Perfect" Lance slurred to himself.