A/N: I've literally been writing this since the episode came out and finally just made myself finish it because Lance needs justice and Hunk needs to protect his friend.

Disclaimer: I obviously own nothing.


Friendship, Space Magic, and Other Things

This being in charge thing was new to Hunk.

It wasn't that he was terrible at it. It wasn't even that he didn't like it (he was surprised to realize that he actually did). That is, at least, until everything went to hell.

Hunk had never fully appreciated how much you had to focus on as the leader. He had to keep track of everything, everyone. He needed to constantly problem solve and redirect. He had to put the mission first.

Which was fine, until everything exploded (literally, in this sense).

He watched it all. He saw the shield go down. He saw the shield pulsing, the light growing ever more ominous. He saw Allura in the way of it. He saw Lance notice the same thing.

He heard Lance's shouted warning. He heard Lance's agonized scream as Red took the brunt of the explosion. He saw Red floating lifelessly; he heard the silence where there should have been his best friend's voice.

His focus had narrowed to three things: the silent floating lion; the desperate cries of Allura, begging Lance to respond; and the silence that answered.

But Hunk was the leader, and he needed to keep moving forward. He shoved the blind panic and the mind-numbing fear and the why wasn't Lance responding to the back of his mind, hating himself as he did so.

In that instant he hated being the one in command.

But he pushed forward, taking in the whole picture. He provided a brief recap for Pidge and Shiro's sake and moved forward. He directed, he delegated, he did what needed to be done.

But only half of him was really there. The other half of his mind was focused solely on the distressed cries of Allura, who had entered the red lion. The fact that Lance had not said a word, even as the princess he was so in love with had come to his rescue sank like a stone into Hunk's heart.

With each soft no, no from Allura Hunk felt that dread growing. But he couldn't go to them. He couldn't rush to his best friend's side, just as he always had before. There was a team that needed directions and a planet that needed to be saved. And as the leader, it was Hunk's job to do it.


Hunk took a deep breath. It was over. They had saved the planet.

There would be more permanent repairs to make, but those could wait. At this moment his job as leader was done.

Which meant that he could finally give in to that nagging fear, growing ever larger in his mind. He looked across the wreckage towards Red. The lion was glowing once more. He allowed himself a small breath. "Lance? Allura? Do you read?"

Silence was his only answer. The fear grew into an all-encompassing anxiety. He tried again, "Allura? Lance, buddy?! Come in!"

Silence and static responded.

Don't panic Hunk, he coached himself, the radiation and all of the explosions probably knocked out comms. No big deal, I'll just go see for myself.

With that he released the plate he had been holding and speed across the shield to where Red floated listlessly. He reminded himself to take deep breaths as he exited his lion, and propelled himself towards Red's mouth with his jetpack. There where lots of reasons they weren't answering. There were many other things that may be happening. It definitely did not mean that Hunk's first turn as team leader had led to his best friend's death.

Definitely not.

It felt both like a lifetime and no time at all before Hunk was inside the red lion. He switched off his jetpack and hastily made his way to the cockpit. He rushed inside, almost tripping over his feet. For a moment, his heart almost stopped. Lance was in the pilot's chair, motionless. Allura was clutching him to her chest. Lance was not moving, not speaking, not breathing.

Hunk felt the ground rushing up to meet him. He grasped at the doorway, desperate for something to cling too. This was it, his worst fears realized.

His best friend, dead.

A million light years from his beloved family and home, in a mission that Hunk was in charge of.

Killed in not in a battle but in a repair job. A repair job that had been Hunk's responsibility.

His best friend was dead, had died following Hunk's orders. The one time he had been trusted with a command, the one time it mattered and Hunk had…

A sharp gasp cut through Hunk's spiral into grief. He looked up, back at the lifeless form of Lance, some masochistic part of his mind forcing him to see the image, to seer it into his memory, to see Allura's grief as she held onto Lance's…

But that gasp was followed by a voice. A raspy, strained, wonderfully familiar voice.

"You saved me," Lance said to Allura, wonder evident on his tired face.

"I owed you one," Allura responded softly, releasing her hold on his body but tightening her grip on his hand.

Just as quickly as it had tilted, Hunk's world righted itself. He allowed himself to breathe again. Lance was okay, he was alive. With a shuddering breath Hunk released his vice grip on the doorway. He swiped at his eyes, vaguely surprised to find moisture coming from them. When had he started crying? It didn't matter though, nothing else in that moment did except for Lance's small groan as he tried to sit upright and Allura's soft smile as he helped him. She was still holding onto his hand.

As the relief sank in, so did the feeling of intruding on a private moment. He cleared his throat pointedly, alerting the pair to his presence. He stepped out of the doorway as their heads whipped around – Lance's rather laboriously. Once his presence had been revealed he closed the remaining distance in long strides and ended in front of the pilot's chair, looking down intently at his friend.

Lance looked up at him with a smile, "Hey buddy, what are you doing in my lion? Don't you have one of your own?"

Hunk silently looked him over, ignoring Lance's smile fading into a questioning look. Everything seemed to be intact. There were no major injuries that Hunk could see. Lance opened his mouth again, likely to ask what had gotten into his friend of something similar, but any speech was cut off by Hunk's sudden attack hug, grasping his friend tightly in his arms and squeezing – not as hard as he usually would have – assuring himself that Lance was here, Lance was okay, Lance was fine. He could vaguely hear Lance's light complaining about not needing a shower and when had he started crying again?

He released Lance and stepped back again, looking him over once more. He swiped at his eyes and finally spoke, "Don't you ever scare me like that again!"

Lance just squinted at him, "You're going to have to be a bit more specific than that buddy."

Hunk looked at him incredulously, "More specific?! Fine, break this habit of jumping in front of explosions and then being unconscious and scaring the shit out of me!"

But even as he said it and he watched Lance scrub a hand through his hair sheepishly he knew this was a lost cause. Lance was Lance, and when it came down to it, he would always sacrifice himself for the people he cared about. Before Lance could come up with a suitable response Hunk took a calming breath and grabbed Lance into another suffocating, but less desperate hug.

"I thought you were dead," Hunk said softly, quietly, "You went radio silent and I had to fix the shield, and then I came in here and it didn't look like you were breathing, and I thought you were dead."

Lance sighed into his shoulder, "You and me both buddy. I'm sorry I scared you, I didn't mean to. I just saw Allura in trouble and I just, reacted. Then… well, I'm not really sure what happened."

As Hunk released Lance once again, making sure to still stay close enough to reassure himself that Lance was actually fine really, he suddenly remembered that Allura was there too and looked over at her. She looked no worse for wear, just tired and incredibly relieved. Hunk glanced back at Lance to see that his friend's gaze had followed him and that he was regarding the princess with interest.

"I can't really seem to remember specifics after diving in front of you," he told Allura, "it's all kind of a haze actually. You were here when I woke up, maybe you can fill in some of the blanks?"

The princess's tired and relieved expression shifted to something Hunk couldn't quite read. Hesitation maybe? He didn't have time to ponder it before she started speaking,

"Well, after y— after the explosion, you weren't responding. I knew you had been hurt, but your lion had no power, and we couldn't raise you on the comms. So, I decided I needed to check on you. I got here only a dobash or so after the explosion, but even by the time I got here you—you weren't breathing."

Here she paused, as if to gather herself, before shoving on, not allowing either of them time to respond. She continued, her voice thick: "You weren't breathing, and…I couldn't find a pulse."

She paused again, but this pause was longer, heavier. It weighed on the air in the cockpit.

Hunk could feel the lead weight settling in his stomach again. When he had been out there: fixing the shield, pushing his worries for Lance aside, telling himself that Lance would be fine; his best friend actually had been dead? That was definitely going to be haunting his dreams for a while.

But…he wasn't now.

And judging by the baffled expression on Lance's face, he was following a similar train of thought. "So, you did CPR or something?" he asked skeptically, looking down at his armor clad chest as if wondering about the mechanics of that with their nearly impenetrable paladin armor.

Allura furrowed her brows and looked at him in confusion, "I don't know if it was CPR, I've never heard of that, but I used Altean Alchemy."

She paused again, and continued in a softer, less confident voice, "I didn't know if it was going to work, I've never tried it before and it is exceedingly rare, but I had to try."

Hunk was officially confused. First Lance was dead, then he wasn't, and apparently there was some sort of alien magic involved? "What did you do and how did it result in Lance not being dead?" he asked aloud. He was very, very happy about that fact, really, but he was still confused as to how this had all happened.

Allura seemed to consider her words before she spoke, "Altean Alchemy involves the transference of quintessence between one living being and another, or in some cases an object, like the teladove. In this case, I transferred some of my quintessence into Lance, which revived him and allowed him to heal."

Lance and Hunk were both staring at her in awe, but Hunk, who was running hypothetical equations in his head, voiced a question that was nagging him: "how did you manage to give Lance enough quintessence to," he cringed as he said the next part, "come back from the dead without hurting yourself? It had to have taken a lot."

Allura smiled softly at him, touched by the look of concern on his face, "it did take quite a lot of quintessence, but I still had my bond with my lion to draw from. I think since Lance has also had a bond with the blue lion it was easier for me to do it for him than it would have been anyone else," she looked at Lance with a soft smile, "Blue was just as eager to save you as I was."

Lance looked out the window to wear the blue lion floated nearby, "Thanks Blue," he said softly.

He turned his gaze back to Allura, "I don't even know how to thank you for this—" he began, only to be cut off by Allura.

"There are no thanks necessary, she said to him softly, "as I said, I owed you one. But more than that, I didn't want to loose you."

Yeah, Hunk was definitely the third wheel here.

But he was completely fine with that. He silently watched as his two companions gazed at each other, having some sort of wordless conversation Hunk was not privy to with a fond smile on his face. He felt no desire to draw any attention to himself or interrupt in anyway. They deserved this moment, and Hunk was so beyond grateful that Lance was okay he would have happily stood still in this exact spot all day if that had been required of him.

The peace in the cockpit of the red lion was broken only a few ticks later however, when Pidge's voice flooded though the comms in Hunk's helmet, set on the ground near the pilot's seat where it has been hastily discarded in Hunk's hurry to get to Lance.

"Hunk? Lance? Allura? Does anyone copy?"

The silence was broken and Lance and Allura looked away from each other as Hunk reached for his helmet, pulling it back onto his head. "Yeah, I'm here Pidge," he said into the comms, "I'm in Red with Lance and Allura."

"…Why are you in Lance's lion? Why are there three of you in Lance's lion?"

Hunk sighed and wearily rubbed the back of his helmet, though the only witnesses to the action were not privy to the conversation at hand, "There was an incident with an explosion on the shield and Lance got caught in it and the comms were down…you know what, it's a really long story. Why don't we wait to get caught up when we reconvene? We should head back to the castle anyways, were going to need some more materials and equipment if we're going to fix this shield properly anyways."

Plus, Hunk added to himself, he wanted Lance to get a once over from Coran anyways, just to be safe. He just wasn't going to mention that until the very last second, to prevent a longer battle than necessary.

"What? What explosion? Is Lance okay?!"

"Pidge, I swear I'll tell you everything when we get to the castle. And yeah, I think he is – now."

If Pidge heard the minute crack in his voice, she didn't say anything. Instead she simply informed him that she and Shiro would be meeting them at the castle within a few dobashes.


A/N: There it is folks, the first part. Part 2 will probably be up tomorrow.

Let me know what you think and if any of the characters seemed weird or anything else you think could be fixed (I've never written Voltron before and it's taken a while to get something that sounds decent I think). Also, just leave me a comment to tell me what you think!

The rest of the paladins show up in the next part.