Pidge sat on the Castle wall, swinging her legs and staring out into the stars as Rover hovered and whirred beside her. She had no idea how long she'd been there, but it was apparently long enough for someone to miss her; she could hear quiet footsteps behind her. "All right, Katie?" a voice said softly, and she knew who was there without looking. Only Shiro ever called her Katie, and only when the others weren't around.

"It's Christmas on Earth now," she said absently, still gazing out at the stars. "I've . . . never been away from my family at Christmas. Mom's all alone; Dad and Matt . . ." her voice broke, and she fell silent, tears falling from behind her glasses.

"Shh. . . hey now, none of that, huh?" Shiro's arm went around her as he sat beside her; as always, she pretended she couldn't hear the mechanical whirs of the horrible prosthetic. "I promised you, we'll find them. And we will. Then we'll go home, have one of your mom's great dinners, trim the tree. . ." he reached over with his other hand, gently turning her face to meet his gaze. "But for now . . . we kind of have our own family here." The sounds of yet another Keith/Lance squabble drifted out from the Castle, and he rolled his eyes. "Complete with annoying little brothers," he finished, and Pidge giggled. "Look . . . I know it's not the same. I know it's not as good as home. But we can make the best of it, right?"

Pidge looked away. "I—I guess. Maybe." She really didn't feel like trying, even for her honorary big brother. Not when her actual family was . . . out there somewhere, and she didn't even know if they—she cut the thought off, unwilling to consider it.

Shiro's arm squeezed her gently. "I miss them too, Katie-girl. I'm not asking you to forget them. Just . . ." his voice trailed off as, for the first time since Pidge had known him, he seemed at a loss for words. It was then that she remembered a conversation between her parents that she wasn't supposed to have heard.

"It's such a tragedy, Catherine," her father told her mother softly. Katie frowned and pretended to be absorbed in her calculus homework, hoping to stay unnoticed. "His mother was all he had left, and she was killed in that shuttle accident. He's all alone, just in time for Christmas."

"He most certainly is not," Catherine Holt answered. "You go right back to that base, Sam Holt. And don't you dare come home without our new oldest son. Understood?"

Her father had laughed and retreated; a while later he had returned with a quiet young man he introduced as Takashi Shirogane, who very soon was part of the household as Katie and Matt's older brother Shiro.

Pidge blinked back into the present, stunned at a realization. With the sole exception of Keith, all of them were missing their families, whether it was Lance's massive Cuban madhouse of a tribe or the smaller family Hunk talked about. "I'm not alone," she whispered, and Shiro looked down at her affectionately.

"Of course you're not." Both of his arms slid around her, and she let her guard down enough to accept the embrace—though she'd deny to her dying day that the wetness on Shiro's shirt was her tears. Really. Finally she sat back and took a breath.

"Feel better?" Shiro asked, smiling when she nodded. "Good. What do you say we go hunt up Hunk and Coran, see what we can put together for a Christmas?" As they walked back towards the Castle, Keith and Lance's raised voices drifted out again, and the Black Paladin groaned. "With any luck, Coran knows of an Altean version of coal for those two's stockings."

Pidge laughed all the way into the Castle, not missing one family so much now that she had stumbled into another.