When Lance opens his eyes, he sees Allura looking down at him with a sad smile etched into her face, and Lance can only think about how pretty her face is for a moment before the pain kicks in, before the memories kick in, and he closes his eyes and lets out a sigh, because the sudden brightness after so long is hurting his eyes and his throat hurts too much to let out a moan or a groan.

He's okay now.

He's alive now.

He's okay now.

He's alive.

That's… New?

(It shouldn't be.)

"How are you feeling, Lance?" Allura asks, and Lance opens his eyes again and squints up at her, taking in her beauty, her multicoloured eyes that shone with concern, the warmth of his hand in hers and the light flush on her cheeks from the adrenaline of the situation. The coms are alive with fear, Hunk is worried about the shield and something's going wrong with Pidge and Shiro (Shiro?) if the Green Paladin's yelling is anything to go by, but Lance ignores them all for now, just taking the moment to breath, to feel air in his chest and blood rushing around his body and his heart pumping in his chest and the warmth of Allura's hand on his wrist.

"Better than I thought I would be," he responds quietly, his voice sore from screaming, taking one final moment before he sat up properly, looking at the controls and making sure that everything is online with Red, and he catches Allura nod in the corner of his vision before she leaves, going back towards Blue. He smiles and watches as she flies back towards Blue open mouth, and when she goes inside, she rushes to help Hunk with the repairs, and Lance does the same a moment after, but his hands are shaking as he presses on the controls and he is sweating more than he normally would and he's getting these weird hot and cold flushes, feeling more like he had a fever rather than an adrenaline rush, and they are not the things that cause most of his concerns, no, his physical condition were pretty low on the sudden pile of things to be worried about.

Red was cold, much colder than Blue ever felt to him, and even as he uses the flamethrower he can't help but shiver in the cold and quietness of the Lion, and he couldn't help but be glad that Voltron wasn't required then, because he didn't think he would form Voltron with him and the Red Lion in the state that they were in.

'It's because of the electricity beam, she just needs to heal,' Lance tells himself as he lands in the Castleship and leave Red behind to go and congratulate Hunk on leading the mission today.

Lance ignores how she puts up her shields as he leaves.

Lance ignores the voice in the back of his head telling him the real reason for the sudden change in behaviour.

Lance smiles through the shaking and the hot and cold flushes and the light-headedness he feels when the team are surrounding Hunk and are laughing and joking about Lotor's nanny that they met a couple of varga ago for them, but a lifetime ago now for Lance, until Lotor pulls Allura away to do some weird quintessence stuff that he doesn't understand, and Hunk and Pidge say something about repairs that he doesn't quite get the gist of, and Shiro (Shiro? Not Shiro.) mutters about plans and diplomacy that he's rather not help with at the moment, and they all leave him standing in the middle of the hangers staring at the Black Lion in wonder and in bafflement, before he too, leave it all behind him.

It's strange, how life ended up like this.

He thought it was all strange, how he ended up like this, when he opened his eyes and saw that his deepest, darkest fears were confirmed.

It was all strange, in the end.

Surrounded by space, the stars twinkling and flickering with no rhyme or reason, he took in what was once a comforting sight, a scene that he would go to when feeling low and in need in reassurance, and he couldn't help but feel that the universe had thrown it all in his face when he turned on the spot and saw that the scene didn't change, the stars here were flicking and twinkling too, and he turns around again just to make sure that the once behind him were doing the same, and, unsurprisingly, the scene behind him is the exact same as the one in front of him, and to the left of him, and to the right of him. There was nothing different between them; nothing was unique. They were all the same. Everything was the same.

This was it, huh?

The last line of the book? The final word uttered by the main character? The full stop at the end of the sentence?

Is this how everything ended?

There was no end of space, just stars that twinkled and flicked and flicked and twinkled, mindless to Lance's thoughts of the star.

There was nothing comforting about that, but after everything Lance had gone through, it was strangely surprising to find out that it all began and ended with the stars for him.

It was not surprising to find that time was not a thing here among the stars.

Lance is still surprised when he wakes up the next day, and surprised again when he continues to do so on the next day, and the same thing happens again the day after.

He's surprised when he finds himself grounded in his bed, staring at a plain celling instead of a starry sky. He's surprised when he feels the blanket that he had pushed to the side in his sleep instead of the nothingness that he had grown so used to. He's surprised when his lungs breath in the recycled air from the Castleship, because he's forgotten that it was something that he needed to do here, in the realm of the living.

The living, huh.

That's surprising.

Lance still gets out of bed, except this time there is not enthusiasm that he had before, and he still does his morning routine of facial washes, even if it feels more like a chore now than a choice. When he leaves the room, he goes down the kitchen, because that's where Hunk and Pidge are this early in the morning, as Allura and Lotor don't eat with them anymore, more concerned about the ship that their building, and Coran barely ate with them in the first place, back when Voltron was new to them and the universe was a beautiful and wonderful place to live and protect.

Lance wasn't sure about when Shiro ate, and previously thought that he either came by earlier than Lance did, or came by later, after training perhaps. Now though, Lance can't find it in himself to care that much at all at what Shiro was doing.

Because, was it even Shiro anymore?

After breakfast, there are a couple of things that change. He either follows Hunk and Pidge down to the Lions' hanger and watched as they did their nerdy thing while adding a few comments of his own, just to remind them that he was there, or he made his own way to the royals to hang out, something that became less and less common as they rejected his advances and comments about third wheeling. Most of the time, however, he finds himself in the training room, either shooting at the drones or sword fighting with a dummy as his opponent. He was getting better, his scores attested to that, but he couldn't find even the pride of being the best in something anymore, not when people didn't notice, or they just didn't care about it.

There were some things that changed things up a bit, like when he bumps into Coran and he helps him clean something while offering an ear to his stories of the 'old times' as he would refer to them, or when he spent time with the animals that resided on the ship, milking Katlenecker to make milkshakes later or talking to the mice as he bathes them. They throw off his loneliness for a while, helps him forget everything that happened when they fixed the shield, but then, when he leaves the outdoor simulator or when the mice run off to who knows where, it comes back and hits him full force, and it hurts.

Then he goes back to his bed, and he's surprised by how supportive the bed feels, how empty the celling is, how quiet the world is without the voice of others or even his own lighting it up, and then he closes his eyes, and he thinks it takes a while to tumble back into the familiar dreams of before.

He thinks it takes a while before he begins to wonder, who knows how long a while is when there's no time, the peace of having died and accepted the fact that he had died finally settling over his mind.

He wonders how the others reacted, he hopes they don't take it too hard. He wonders if they've cried over him, and he hopes they have, but not for too long, they've got things to do after all. He wonders who gets angry first, Coran or Hunk, and he wonders who screams first, Pidge or Allura. He wonders how they're going to break it to his family, to Keith. He wonders who will replace him as the Red Paladin, though the answer comes quickly to him, because Keith is still there, and Keith could always come back to the team, they told him that.

It's probably for the better that they get Keith back, Lance never made a good replacement, especially when it's Keith's place to fill.

It was always him having to replace Keith. He was always the second choice. He was always in the other's shadow, always following in the footsteps.

He sighs at the wonder, at the thought, and he leans back and smiles when the twinkling and flickering stars above him became the flickering and twinkling stars in front of him, because here there was no up nor no down, no left for right, no right or wrong.

There were only the stars, twinkling and flickering and flickering and twinkling with all their might.

Lance thinks that he could get used to Death. Maybe.

"Lance?"

Lance turns, and it took him a while to notice him, but when he does, he can't stop staring at him.

It takes him a while to finds this window, a small one in Red's hanger, but when he does, he can't stop staring through it.

Not a lot could be seen from this window, it was nothing like seeing the stars from the observation deck or using the star map, no, this was rather pathetic compared to that. Here, in the cramped little corner that was forgotten by the rest of the Castleship's occupants, the stars were easy to see but hard to admire, as it only really showed a glimpse of what the universe had to offer, and nothing more.

Maybe that's why Lance liked it so much here, because he had quiet enough of what was out there now, he's felt like he's everything he's ever wanted to see, done everything that there is available to do here in this universe. Here, he finds that the stars don't twinkle or flicker, but instead they gleam and glimmer, which seem very similar but are fundamentally different, especially to Lance, as he's already hand an eternity to study the stars, their shape their size and how they flicker and glimmer and twinkle and gleam.

An eternity is a long time to do something, maybe even a bit too long.

He didn't know how Shiro had been okay with all of it.

"How are you okay with this Shiro?" Lance hadn't been facing the Black Paladin, no, he wasn't visibly there, neither of them were. He couldn't see Shiro, and Shiro couldn't see him. The only thing that could be seen was the stars.

It went quiet for a bit, but who knows how long a bit was anymore, it was the same length as the longest of times, and the same amount of time as no time at all. There's no time here. It was unnerving, and yet reassuring and it all just hurt.

"I-I don't think I've been okay for a while Lance," the other spirit had said. They left it at that for the longest of times, which was the same length of time as a bit, and the same length of time as no time at all, because there was no time here.

Maybe, now that there was no time, now that they had taken it out of the equation, they were no longer in the space-time continuum, which of course made sense if they were dead. However, that left him confused, as back when he was alive they were in the 3rd dimension where they could measure the fourth dimension but never travel it, as there was no way to time travel. But, now that there was no time, did that make him an Shiro in the 2nd dimension? It made sense in his mind, as he could see that he could travel in the plainer dimension, he could go backwards and forwards and sideways, but he couldn't see a way that they could go up or down.

He should write a book. He had the time for it.

He had all the time for it, as there was no time at all, because who needs time anyway, it was so overrated.

"I am afraid I must leave you all now," Allura announces after they defeat the boss, much to Coran's displeasure, "Lotor and I still have a lot to work on, and time is of the essence." She stands and leaves, quickly followed by Pidge and Hunk who have had a long enough break that they are able to solve the problem that they had, and are in a hurry now that they have the motivation and inspiration to fix whatever they needed to fix.

"Time isn't of the essence, time is stupid," Lance mutters under his breath, not that the others notice his remark, which is probably for the better now that he thinks about it. It would be hard to explain, especially since no one's really acknowledge what happened, but Lance thinks it's because they don't want to think about it too much rather than because it was him (he doesn't think this, he hopes this, but he also lies to the others and he lies to himself). Everyone is already a bit confused as to why the Lions have gone silent on them, and Lance isn't really in the mood to explain everything, not when nobody seems to want the answers for the unspoken questions anyway, since they haven't raise the said upspoken questions.

Ignorance is bliss, and those who strive for bliss and peace must also accept the ignorance that grows with it.

Soon the ignorance balloon will pop with daunting realisation that all that they believed was merely a blanket over the truth, but that will come in time, and Lance likes to believe in the impossible.

So, instead, he watches quietly as Coran and Not Shiro argue over the roles in the game and how it is satisfying to be a Paladin in the game, even if he was a Paladin in real life too.

"I just want to be a Paladin," he responds, picking up the figure that one of the mice had knocked over and frowning at the missing arm, before shrugging and asking Coran what the next move would be. Lance feels bile rising in his throat, and he has to leave for the toilet (an excuse of training gets him out, he trains a lot now, he's got nothing better to do) before he throws up green goo and milkshake, a disgusting mixture of flavours.

That wasn't Shiro, it couldn't be, not now, not ever.

The others will find out soon. Whether it be a minute, a month, an hour or a week, the balloon will pop.

Time had become a silly thing in Lance's mind, abstract, unneeded, but either way, it would take a while.

It takes a while, or a second, or eternity, or an hour, but Lance recognised where he was.

It wasn't anywhere he could have gone as a human, no human, or any alien he had met for that matter, had been able to breath in space like he was doing (at least he thought he was breathing; you don't need to breath when you were dead thought). And while he had been in space for a good while now, a decapheob and 4 pheobs according to Coran, however long that was, he never spent his time trying to memorise any star pattern because they all moved so fast. Voltron moved so fast, the stars blurred, and there was no pattern to see after the blur.

But, he knew these stars, the blue and red that didn't flicker but stood so close together, the memories of the rest of his team screaming for help, screaming for Shiro to hurry up and for them to break out of the vines and for Lance to get them out of there, the feeling of Red surrounding him and the other lions leaning on him as much as they were leaning on the other Paladins, relying on them.

He's been here before: the astroplane.

He remembered Shiro calling from him here, asking for help, and as Lance looked at the figure coming in to focus in front of him, just as he was last time, he can't do anything but ask himself why.

Why was Shiro here? He should be with the others, looking after them and doing leader-y things. Why was he looking so confused? Surely the team knew about what had happened, but then again, he didn't have a ticker on him, who knew how long he had been here, staring in shock as Shiro looked at him sadly.

Maybe he did know what happened. Maybe he was saying goodbye?

So, when Shiro opened his mouth and started to explain what happened, how he never came back to the team, how he's been dead all along, how it was a clone the entire time ('and what a corny trope that was; it wasn't me, it was my clone', and Lance couldn't just help but laugh, because, what does it matter anymore, he's dead anyway).

Lance just stares at the place where Shiro had flicked out, before turning around and staring at the stars that were once behind him, not that direction had much use here anymore.

Wait until the critics get a load of this gay, am I right?

A.N. So season seven comes out next week, and I have been working on this since the last season came out, and it's not complete yet but I like where it's out now to take it or leave it I guess.

I WILL be updating Yellow soon, in the next week or so. I didn't realise how long it's been since the last update and things have been getting out of hand (like plot bunnies) and I guess I lost track of time. But, I'm almost done with this chapter now, just writing the last couple of scenes and stuff.

Also, how emo is this title XD