A/N: Voltron has to deal with a missing Black Paladin and maybe doesn't always handle it too well. There isn't an instruction manual on how to be a defender of the universe, and Lance is doing to best he can to hold them together on the fly. They just need to find Shiro and everyone should be fine again, right?

Some langst in a hurting team.

Shiro had been gone for days. Maybe the more accurate assessment would be weeks. Time was different here in space, and Lance didn't know what day it would even be back on Earth. He just knew there had been countless vargas without their leader.

The door to the Black Lion hangar slid smoothly open, and Lance stepped into the vast space. This place always intimidated him. Maybe it was the color of the lights that shone on the lion that constituted the head of Voltron; the electric blue of Blue's hangar always gave off a happy and welcoming feel. Maybe it was the lack of knickknacks and souvenirs Lance had gathered in his own lion's hangar. Or maybe it was all in his head, and the impersonal feel of the hangar was just because it was missing a key part of their team.

"Hey big guy," Lance called, and his voice echoed around the chamber. He tried to avoid this place. He tried to avoid seeing the physical absence of Shiro that caused a tangible ache like a festering wound he hadn't gone to the healing pods for. "I just wanted to check to see how you were holding up. Not that you're not the toughest space robot lion around or anything," he added. "And I know we were all just in here earlier, but that obviously didn't go well…"

Lance broke off when he realized he was rambling and took a deep breath. The whole team had been in again this morning to try and appeal to the Black Lion. The longer the lion went without choosing a new leader, the angrier Keith got, the more dejected Allura seemed, and the more moral the team lost. It chipped away like a physical thing that even he and Coran were having a hard time piecing back together. But the lion just stood inactive and unaffected by their pleas for Voltron's necessity.

"I just…" The Blue Paladin hesitated. He might be alone with the mechanical cat, but there was that feeling of being watched that had started back on Earth in Blue's cave. He'd never felt alone since he bonded with his lion. Blue was always there, and it made him understand that draw that he'd mocked Keith for at the start of all of this in the desert. The constant bond was what made him happy in all of this mess. That bond was what brought him to one of the two rooms in the castle he actively avoided.

"I wanted you to know that I get why you won't let anyone in," Lance finally said. "I think we all kinda forget about your feelings in this whole big mess of trying to get Voltron back together and saving the universe and needing a Black Paladin. Sometimes it's a little weird to remember we have to think about the fact that giant space cats have feelings, but I'm working on it. Anyway, that's not the point. You miss him too, don't you?" Lance took a step toward the silent lion. He knew the others would laugh if they could see him. Leave it to him to decide it was a good idea to ramble to a depressed robot lion. "You two worked harder on your bond than any of us," he admitted. It was a good thing the others weren't here. He'd never live this down. "Plus there was that thing with Zarkon and your bond with him, and I know Keith said you let him pilot you once and that Shiro wants him to take over, which is why he's so frustrated you won't let him in. He and Red really are perfect for each other. Like, exactly the same. Probably why she always chases after him if she senses he's in trouble. He could get a hangnail, and she'd break down her hangar door." He was rambling now that he got going, but he'd always been too good at going off on tangents. "Be-because that bond is… special isn't it?"

He gave the Black Lion a watery smile. He hadn't noticed the tears pricking at his eyes, so he blinked them back and forced his smile wider, more confident. "That's what Allura made it sound like when we first started looking for you guys. I know that Blue is part of me, anyway. I don't even know if I remember what it's like not to have her constant presence. I don't know what it'd be like to lose that. Whoa, random sympathy for Zarkon so moving on. I figure that bond's got to be a two-way street, and Blue always says I'm a part of her now too whenever I suggest she finds a new paladin."

Lance felt that draw, the subtle messages Blue always tried to give him since he first sat in her pilot's seat. He'd gotten better at understanding them as they got to know each other. She hated when he talked about leaving, so he decided to change the subject before he really upset her.

"Anyway, what I'm trying to say is that you lost your paladin, and you're hurting. But letting someone else pilot you isn't replacing Shiro. None of us want to replace him, just… hold it together until he gets back. That's really all we're doing. We might need Voltron to get him back, so someone might need to pilot you. None of us can live up to him, but letting someone in isn't going to make your bond with him any less special. I flew that joke of a skunk headed pilot here to find you," great, his eyes stung again, so he forced himself to laugh past the lump in his throat, "so I know you two belong together. I just wanted you to know that I understand. And I miss him too."

A loud metallic scraping echoed through the hangar as Black moved for the first time since they'd found Shiro's empty pilot seat. She leaned forward until her head was resting on the ground in front of Lance. He didn't need a bond with the lion to know what she needed. He obediently stepped forward and rested his hand on her muzzle.

"We're doing everything we can to find him," he whispered as he leaned his forehead against the cool metal. "We'll get him back."

The Black Lion was back in her usual position the next day, so no one was even a little bit suspicious as to what Lance had been up to for those couple of hours he spent comforting the lion. He'd probably annoyed them enough with his presence that they welcomed his absence. Not that he could help it. It wasn't like he wanted to be annoying; it was just the easiest solution he could think of most of the time.

Hunk had been stress baking new types of food goo when Lance had found him after finally leaving the hangar. That was never a good sign. Hunk loved to cook, but he also used it for comfort too. So Lance had taken it upon himself to distract his friend. He told stories he knew Hunk had heard before, compared his mother's recipes with the Garrison cafeteria food, and generally tried to be underfoot while Hunk was working. It helped to an extent. He watched the exasperated annoyance flare up again and again in Hunk's eyes, but it was better than the bottomless sorrow that had been there to begin with. Besides, Hunk's endless patience never ran out, and he just gave his friend a weary smile as Lance got started on a long tangent about his mother's arroz con pollo. He knew Hunk would never actually call him annoying like the others might when he was trying to pester them out of their melancholy, but the Yellow Paladin probably just wanted Lance to leave him alone for some peace and quiet sometimes.

Peace and quiet was exactly the thing they didn't need. Lance knew that after weeks of frustration they all probably wanted him to stop annoying them and some silence, but Lance couldn't let that happen. He knew that leaving them alone with their thoughts in a time like this was a horrible idea. He'd gotten enough bruises from waking the castle inhabitants up from nightmares to prove it was the worst idea in the history of ideas, and he'd had some pretty terrible ideas.

So Lance happily kicked his feet against the cabinet he was sitting on as he frantically tried to think of another story to tell Hunk that might make him laugh while he stirred the goo. He was really starting to repeat material at this point, not that Hunk was really paying attention.

The real problem had started when dinner was ready.

Everyone ate together for dinner, especially when Hunk cooked. Well, everyone and the crushing emptiness of one chair.

Keith was clearly still fuming about the recent Black Lion fiasco this morning. Lance tried not to take that personally. Despite his initial impressions of Keith and how they still fought, he knew it wasn't because Keith thought he was better than all of them and should be the leader but because he felt like he was letting Shiro down by not following the path he wanted.

Allura was clearly still disappointed with the recent setback, so Coran was telling a long winded story. It involved his silverware and several jabs to his food goo. It had almost everyone rolling their eyes if not fighting back a smile, so Lance focused on the biggest obstacle. A certain mullet haired someone wasn't joining in on the merriment.

"Hey Keith," Lance called. The Red Paladin glanced at him from where he was leaning on the table with his head resting on one hand while the other idly nudged his pile of food. "Didn't anyone ever teach you not to play with your goo?"

"Maybe I'd actually eat it if it wasn't culinary torture," he snapped back. Oh no, that was not the response Lance wanted.

"Hey! I worked really hard on that!" Hunk cried.

"Alien goop is alien goop no matter how hard you try."

"You take that back," Lance cried dramatically. He wielded his spoon at Keith for emphasis. "Hunk is a culinary angel sent from the stars."

"Well then make me," Keith bit back.

Lance could've rolled his eyes at the predictability. It was too easy to get under the Red Paladin's skin, especially when he was clearly already itching for a fight, but Lance wasn't going to let him sit here and take it out on Hunk's cooking.

"Oh yeah! Let's go right now!" he challenged. When he jumped up, he wasn't the least bit surprised that Keith immediately followed suit. Everyone else would go back to their conversation with maybe a small grumble at their antics, but Keith would get what he really needed. He needed to hit his frustration out, and Lance was the best at getting him riled up for a fight. Not that he was exactly looking forward to sparring one on one with a ticked off Keith, but he'd needed someone new to spar with when Shiro had disappeared. Lance had filled the roll with false complaints and taunts, and Keith had gotten less combative with the rest of the castle's occupants when he had an outlet for his frustrations.

As he stormed out of the dining room ahead of Keith, Lance took a moment to lament the almost full plate of goo he was leaving behind. Hunk had really made it taste almost good this time.

"Lance! You're late!" Allura cried.

"Sorry," Lance shot her a smirk, fighting a yawn, "you know how I like my beauty sleep." He was the last to stumble into the training deck after the shrieking announcement rudely woke him up.

"Then you must not get a lot of it," Keith muttered. Lance couldn't argue with him there. It had been late or very, very early when he'd dragged a pissed off Pidge to bed, and he always slept terrible after the warning alarm to wake her up before she had a nightmare. He had forced her to bed enough times to know that she needed enough sleep to still function but not enough to have a nightmare, but it wasn't enough sleep for Lance's liking whenever he had to drag himself out of bed after just a few hours to keep her from reaching the nasty part of her REM cycle. He would never tell her that he did that because it sounded way too creepy that he knew her sleeping patterns, and she was always so mad when he made her go to sleep, he didn't want to imagine what she was capable of if she found out he was the one responsible for her waking up. A sleepy Pidge was a scary Pidge, so he always booked it out of there.

The quick headcount after had revealed that Keith was already up, and he knew the idiot had already started training despite the fact that it barely counted as morning. The others wouldn't be up for hours. Lance had gone to the kitchen to get a simple breakfast and some hydration ready because he knew Keith wouldn't take care of that himself. He ended up having to clean up the mess that resulted from Hunk's brownie experiments the day before. The brownies, if they could be called that, had stuck to anything they touched. Lance wailing about the stuff in his hair had at least cheered the Yellow Paladin up enough to go find Pidge to work on the tracking program they were trying to create for the lions; judging by how furious she'd been when Lance had forced her to bed, they'd made some good progress on it.

By the time the kitchen was spotless again, the mice had hunted him down. That usually meant that Allura was sleepwalking through the castle again. He had to trust that Keith would wander into the kitchen and find what Lance had laid out for him as reluctantly trailed after the squeaking rodents. He always felt like they were trying to talk to him when they led him around, but all he got was squeaks and excited gestures as they hunted the princess down. When Lance finally got Allura guided back to bed, it was well into the morning.

Of course today would be a drill day. He'd thought he would have time for at least a little nap before Allura woke up fully, but clearly that had been wishful thinking. He needed to get Hunk to make some kind of space coffee.

"I will have you know," Lance started in a huff, "that this perfection is the result of a well balanced moisturizing routine that must be followed vigorously." He hadn't had the energy for his routine last night. Had he done it the night before? He couldn't remember.

"Well then do it on your own time," Allura warned. "We have to be especially ready for any kind of attack now."

Lance wanted to ask if she'd been dreaming about her father again when she was wandering around asleep and if that was why she was unusually grumpy this morning, but he resisted. That would only make it worse. Instead he just gave her a tired salute.

"Aye aye captain."

At least Hunk gave him a halfhearted chuckle for his antics.

"We're going to be doing a group training exercise," Allura announced as if that was somehow news to them. "You will all face a mob attack scenario and be expected to rely on your teammates to despatch the enemies quickly and efficiently."

"That'll be easy," Lance scoffed with relief. They were like a well oiled machine at this point.

"Then we will have individual members sit out the following rounds," Allura continued like he hadn't spoken, "to prepare for changing group dynamics if one or more teammate is missing."

If a teammate was missing. Right. Like Shiro.

The thought clearly settled with everyone else, so Lance yelled loudly, "Dibs on sitting out first!"

Allura sighed under her breath while Pidge elbowed him in the side. Lance wished she hadn't done that. He jumped back in pretend annoyance as he tried not to let the hiss of pain escape. He may have yelled that jokingly, but he really did want to sit out as much as he could. On top of being exhausted from the long night, he was sporting some spectacular bruises from egging Keith on during dinner. He knew Keith would never intentionally injure him, but Lance really hadn't thought through challenging him out of armor and missing his bayard. He was a little more banged up than he was used to and didn't think he was going to fare much better at what Allura had planned.

"Let's just get started," Keith offered

"Didn't you just train all day yesterday?" Lance teased. "How are you not sick of this?"

"Why? You tired?" Keith taunted back. "Did I go too hard on you?"

Lance was tempted to say yes and show Keith the collection of bruises he'd give him, including the one from getting hit in the stomach with the hilt of his sword that Pidge had inadvertently elbowed, but he wasn't trying to make the other paladin feel guilty for just being upset that Shiro was gone, and taking his armor off to prove his point just sounded like more work than it was worth. Instead he just let out a huff of air to show his annoyance. "As if. Prepare to get show up today, mullet."

"It's a team building exercise, guys," Hunk pleaded.

"No way," Lance crowd with completely false confidence, "I'm putting fingerless glove boy in his place." Keith could probably take him down with just his gloves at this point.

"Bring it on, cargo pilot," Keith smirked as they headed toward the arena. Lance had to pause before following the team. He reminded himself that Keith didn't know that particular comparison was one Lance couldn't stand. It always felt less like a joke, but it wasn't like the Red Paladin was doing it on purpose. He hadn't been at the Garrison when Iverson had compared them to each other. Even if he had been, Lance was being more confrontational than usual, so Keith did have a right to snap. It was just hard to fill the silence that was where Shiro would offer advice or tell them to calm down or just be Shiro with anything other than loudness. Lance was trying to fill a lot of silence these days.

Blue gave him a gentle nudge. She always knew how to fill the pain with something other than poorly timed jokes and bad pickup lines. Lance could only hope the other lions were as good at doing the same for the others. She offered him her support so that he would fall into step behind the others to start what would probably be another long day.

Lance couldn't wait for them to get Shiro back. It had been a lot of long days since he disappeared. None of them could fill the emptiness that he'd left, and it wouldn't get better until he was back.

A/N: I don't want anyone to think the team is purposefully mistreating Lance. They're all a bunch of kids and traumatized adults, okay? They're just doing the best they can. It's not like any of them are trained at healthy coping or know how to deal with this kind of emotional distress. I just think that Lance would be a little more adept at noticing what everyone is going through. Some people are better at that than others, so it isn't necessarily the team's fault for not being as perceptive in return. A lot of people with a lot of negative emotions or depression are good at noticing those things in others while being horrible at sharing what they themselves feel. I feel like Lance would be one of those people. They all, Lance included, just need to have better communication.

In Chapter 1 the team has to learn how to cope with Shiro missing, in 2 they learn how to rebuild when they get him back, and they learn they aren't as strong as they thought they were in 3.