Of all the paladins, perhaps Lance has the greatest chance of being found with his lion. He's always present with the other pilots, hanging off Hunk's every word, bickering with Keith, complaining with Pidge, wreaking havoc between the three of them, and yet at the same time, he's gone so often. And when he's gone, he's with Blue.
Or, as the case may be, Blue is with him.
The castle is large, but not large enough to keep them apart, and Blue cuts into his waking moments seamlessly, no matter where he is. One moment, she is just a robotic lion in a hangar, and the next, Lance's head swims with her presence. Colors he's never seen before explode behind his eyes until Blue's gears and sprockets rise into what very well could be the sweetest symphony in the galaxy. The first time this happened, he thought the castle was under attack, but now he recognizes every note in Blue's call with perfect clarity, particularly the low thrums of pride and the high keen of worry.
It's that high keening that resonates with him tonight. Blue is not especially prone to startling him anymore, not since their moods have begun to shift as one, but the knot in his gut is not his own, not after a hot shower and the quietest moment of peace to watch the stars drift by. Not to mention the castle alarms aren't blaring.
"I'm coming," he says, sliding out of his bunk and into his jacket in one fluid motion. He almost makes it out the door before thinking better of it and snatching his bayard from the shelf. Just in case.
Barely an hour ago, the castle halls felt peaceful, like the rare hour before dawn when everyone else is asleep and the rain patters a lullaby against the roof. Now, Lance fights the urge to check over his shoulder every few steps, and when he does check, and when there's nothing there, he gets the unshakable sense that there should be. If there isn't, then he's just scared of his own shadow, something his pride can't bear when the universe teems with far darker things to fear.
The hangars are close, but not close enough right now. Even a single turn is too many as Blue's distress sharpens, slashing through his twisted gut and leaving cold terror to fill the wound. The zip line takes an eternity, the speeder ride a lifetime more, and the moment Lance spills out on the hangar floor, he sprints to her side.
She looks sick. Her chin rests on the floor, cradled between her paws, and even though her eyes glow softly as he reaches up to run a hand over the side of her muzzle, the yellow lights are dimmer than usual. "I'm here, beautiful," he tells her when even chin scratches don't do the trick. "It's me, I'm right here."
Together, they sit in the dark of the hangar, and even though Blue doesn't have lungs, Lance refuses to believe that she isn't breathing in perfect sync with him. The lines between lion and paladin blur in that strange way they have, almost imperceptibly. With his eyes shut, Lance watches himself trying in vain to soothe Blue, his lips moving with stories he doesn't have to say aloud to share. His hands seem to scorch against the cool metal of her hide, and he can hear his heartbeat thundering in his ears.
Then the storm breaks, and Blue drags him under.
Connecting with Blue is usually like wading into the shallows or sifting through tide pools, searching for treasures in crystal clear water, but this time, it's like a rip current has snatched him by the ankle and whisked him out into the heart of the ocean. The waters are murky, he cannot think, he cannot breathe, and the pressure is everywhere. He fights the urge to inhale, desperate to find the surface, any surface, but even Lance cannot hold his breath forever, and when he gives in, the rest of Blue floods him in an explosion of noise and color.
He knew from the moment she filled his head in his room that she worried, but now he knows the rest. He knows why the alarms haven't sounded, why the worry isn't his, why she looks so limp on the floor.
Blue is worried about him.
The sea clears as quickly as it drowned him, and he floats on Blue's music, letting it rock him in waves. In the deep, she was erratic, even violent. Discordant. Every click and rumble, the ones Lance is used to hearing in her joints as she flies, fought against one another, tearing the notes out of harmony and into pieces. Now, though, Blue is easy to read, like sheet music, even if Lance doesn't have a wealth of formal musical experience at his fingertips. Her worry crests and falls, punctuated by the color of white beach sand and bleeding sunsets, by old lullabies and new pop hits, all in fragments somehow recognizable among the chaos. Everything swirling through Blue is keyed exclusively to Lance, all the way down to his earliest days, before Blue was ever his and he was ever Blue's.
And then he recognizes the familiar pang of homesickness laced into it all, and lets himself sink under the water and back to the surface, where the hangar is no brighter than it was before. Not entirely to his surprise, the rest of his face feels dry compared to the tear tracks running down his cheeks, and his voice is hoarse.
"I want to go back," he croaks, resting his forehead against Blue's paw. She shifts, sitting upright and filling the room, and her tail curls around to graze Lance's back, the closest thing to a hug that a robotic lion her size can come to. He'll take it, though, because the only thing he could need more right now is a wormhole straight to Earth, which is precisely the one thing he cannot have.
He chokes on his next words, swiping the back of his hand under his nose, hissing between his teeth as he grazes his knuckles on the upper edge of one of Blue's claws. Skinning his knuckles in itself isn't a big deal, but suddenly Lance feels so clumsy, so misaligned, like the audio stuttering and skipping half a second behind its video, so intolerable and frustrating and insufferable, and with that the dam breaks.
Blue makes an uncanny mirror for his misery. Eyes screwed shut to hold back tears, he has to deal with snatches of the past hurtling his way. He hears his family laughing, singing, and he can name every voice like it was only yesterday (except was it yesterday or yesteryear because now it's hard to keep track, too hard), and he can see the pilot classification lists in hard black type, and he can feel the shudder of the flight simulator as it crashes again, and, and, and…
Everything rises to the surface at once, all of it tainted with the ugly black sense of watching from the outside. No matter how hard he tries, Lance somehow always manages to be an observer in his own life, cut out from the bulk of the story by everyone who is so much better suited to the roles he so desperately wants to play. How many of his siblings and cousins tell better jokes, cook better meals, craft better stories? Most of them, he thinks. And how many people outstripped him to reach fighter class from the start? Enough that he only made it because Keith flunked out, and chance doesn't equate to talent. And what about the other paladins?
Lance forces himself to open his eyes so Blue can't keep reflecting the worst parts of him, but it's too late. He loses himself to Pidge's wild brilliance, Hunk's endless capacity for friendship, Shiro's easy leadership. Keith can fly through an asteroid field and make it look like the simplest thing in the universe, and Allura can heave a grown man through a wall, not to mention the fact that she flies a ship bigger than anything Lance has ever dreamed of, doing so with confidence forged of iron and ice. Hell, even Coran has his value in the Castle of Lions, the resident jack-of-all-trades with a lion's heart. He may not be a paladin, but he could have been. Maybe should be.
His bayard feels heavy in his pocket, and he is caught between the desire to hurl it across the hangar and the desperate need to cling to it, his lifeline. Without the bayard, what is he? Without Blue?
Blue. She is still there. Waiting.
Lance sucks in a haggard breath and closes his fingers around his weapon, scratching his nails into the rubbery black grip. For every nick he finds, he forces himself to hold his breath for five seconds, then exhale for another five. He does this seven times before he thinks that he's just finding the same flaws over again, and by then, the tears have stopped, replaced by a numbness that blankets his mind, even from Blue. His lion keeps prodding until he finally notices she's there. Expecting to be let in. Maybe even demanding.
"So you can show me everything else I've done?" he snaps, wishing immediately that he could take it back. Blue would never try to hurt him; it isn't her fault that she speaks in reflections. She's merely taking what he provides, seizing on the sights and sounds to make her point. Sometimes, those memories get away from them both.
As he reaches up to pat her nose in apology, though, it seems she has gotten a much better grip on them. Grip enough to speak.
This was in you, she says. The words are cobbled together from fragments of his past, each spoken by a different voice. They are simple words, easy to find no matter where inside his head that she looks. We had to talk. I was worried for you.
"You didn't have to show me all of...that, though," he protests.
Her great mechanical joints click as she fixes him with her glowing eyes. I did. So I could show you why it is all false.
Though it's not precisely her tone, borrowed as it is from Lance's mother, two cousins, Coran, and Iverson, Blue still brooks no argument. Lance can do nothing but accept the scenes she shows him.
Pidge's overbite gleams at him first, rapidly hidden by the video game they bought with scavenged fountain money. It doesn't matter that it isn't compatible with Altean technology, or that they haven't figured out how to fix that just yet. What matters is that they spent half an hour splashing around an alien fountain, and ended up with one power glove, one cow, and one desperate need for a change of clothes. Blue loops Pidge's laugh a couple times for good measure, then points out, You did this. This is happiness.
In a similar fashion, she returns him to the planet of the mermaids and his adventure with Hunk, followed by their crusade to rescue Yellow from the mining planet, and still after that, she dredges up the Galaxy Garrison, distant as it is. Lance relives the first night that he and Hunk snuck out after curfew, which involved Hunk worrying the entire time that they would be caught, all the way up until they returned without a scratch from making a secret snack run to the nearest convenience store in that godforsaken desert. At the end of the night, clutching a pack of glazed mini donuts to his chest, Hunk had given him the warmest thanks, tearing the plastic wrap to offer him one. That had been the seal on their friendship. An unsanctioned donut run. Lance can't stop the weak laugh from escaping at that point; how much had they risked just for junk food and a quick flirt with the cashier? Probably too much, but being the master of his impulsivity has never been his strong suit.
For better or for worse, Blue observes. It goes on this way. For every fault Lance can dream of, Blue can dream bigger and better and kinder. She sees the consequences that span wider than her paladin first realizes, and instead of telling him that he is not this shortcoming or that, she shows him, laying the proof irrefutably at his feet. He is quick on his feet, he is persistent, he is enthusiastic, he is vibrant and clever and passionate.
Most importantly, she reminds him as his hand nervously seeks out the bayard, the one thing they have not addressed, he is the Blue Paladin of Voltron. He is hers.
I did not choose you for who you should be. The markings on the cave glow, fresh in his mind as the day he first laid his hands upon them.
I did not choose you for who you wish to be. The ground crumbles beneath his feet, giving way to water, and with his jacket streaming out behind him, he feels like he's flying. Like he's alive. And then there's Blue's formidable barrier, impenetrable except all he has to do is knock, say hello, and just like that, she lets him in, claiming him as her own for the first time.
Do you understand? she asks, releasing him from the chain of memories. I chose you for who you are, and all that you can be. I chose you.
"And if you chose wrong?" He has to ask. The question escapes before he can even think to bottle it up again, perhaps for the better, given how Blue has taken to his previous attempts at bottling.
But Blue is gentle, even as her eyes begin to dim, as she powers down for the night once again. I did not. And Lance? His name is a hundred voices all at once, each one of them overflowing with affection. Not just from family, but from friends, too. The other paladins particularly, even Keith. And most startling, his own voice, touched with a hint of flirtatious pride that brings the faint heat of embarrassment to his cheeks.
"Yeah, Blue?"
You are not alone. Not now, not ever. Remember that.
Lance leaves her to rest in the hangar, returning to his room and draping his jacket over the lone chair. For a heartbeat, he considers sliding under the covers in search of beauty sleep, but he hesitates, staring at the weight hanging from the jacket's pocket. Then he takes his bayard out and rests it on the desk, positioning it just so. As it deserves. As he deserves.