Finding My Place

by Dragonfire Alchemist

When you're one of five brand-new, elite pilots with the literal fate of the universe resting upon your shoulders, doubting yourself at some point is pretty much inevitable. Still dealing with the emotional aftermath of the fight with Sendak, a mission gone wrong is enough to shatter Pidge's self-confidence… and it'll take a lot of help from her teammates to pick up the pieces.

Hello, I'm back with another (much longer than my usual) Voltron fic! This was written as part of the Voltron Gen Mini-Bang on Tumblr/AO3, and it was a real honor to be a part of the project! Sadly, I can't embed the lovely artwork my partner made into FF, but if you check this bad boy out on my AO3 account (smolgoodragon) or on my Tumblr (also smolgoodragon), you can see their awesome art.

Long ramble aside, thank you for reading! Be sure to drop a comment if you have the time!

---

"Heh. What's'a' matter, Matty? Got a short temper?"

Matt growls in frustration, trying- futilely, once again- to make a grab for his book. The rather tall, obnoxious sixth-grader carrying said book had no intentions of letting that happen; he holds the book out of Matt's reach, snickering at the smaller child's desperate attempts to jump and scrabble for his prized possession.

Much to Matt's dismay, the bully's two companions laugh along upon hearing the ringleader's short joke.

It's the millionth short joke today out of his stupid, revolting mouth, Matt thinks bitterly. And these two have laughed at every single one of them, just like brainless hyenas.

On second thought, that's an insult to decent hyenas everywhere.

Caught up in trying to get his book back, and with mentally apologizing to every hyena in the world, Matt doesn't notice when another, even smaller and scrawnier person approaches the group of boys.

"Give it back, Kyle."

Matt's head whips to the side, gaze locking onto his baby sister as she storms up to the three bullies. Her hazel eyes are burning furiously, her fists clenched at her sides. It's clear that she wants nothing more than to knock the much larger boy in front of her to the ground, but she's willing to try and peacefully get the book back.

For now.

"Katie-!" Matt hisses, alarm registering on his face. Before he can even try to convince her to stay out of this mess- he knows that there's no chance of that happening at this point, but then he'd at least have plausible deniability for when shit inevitably hit the fan- Kyle leans in close to the girl, a sneer contorting his sharp features.

"Aw, look, ratty Matty's baby sister showed up. I'm sooo scared."

Katie's eyes narrow further as the two lackeys cackle obediently. Idiots.

The taller boy steps forward, getting uncomfortably close to Katie. His face is a mere foot away from her own, his sickly, sour breath causing the girl's nose to wrinkle uncomfortably.

"And what," Kyle hisses, "are ya gonna do about it, huh?"

Katie has never been the patient type. Her patience had already been wearing thin the second she had seen them harassing her brother.

She snaps.

The girl darts her head forward, sharply sinking her teeth into Kyle's angular nose. A sense of grim satisfaction fills her mind as she feels warm blood sputtering into her mouth, as she hears an undignified, high-pitched shriek ring through the air.

The satisfaction is, unfortunately, very short-lived. Suddenly there are hands grabbing at her, very large, strong hands that she can't fight against, despite her flailing. She's yanked backwards. The hands seem to be everywhere, despite there only being three boys. They're yanking at her hair, practically crushing her shoulders, and keeping her still.

Kyle's dirt-brown eyes are furious. Blood is streaming in rivulets from his slightly-torn nose, spindling its way over and around his lips and dripping from his chin.

As he storms towards her, Katie begins- for perhaps the thousandth time in her life- to question her life choices.

"You little fucking brat…!" Kyle snarls, his voice sounding rather, well. Nasal.

"You're going to pay for this…"

"Did you think your little trick could work on me?"

Her heart stops.

"Wh-What…?"

That… wasn't Kyle's voice.

An ice-cold feeling of dread works its way up her spine as everything blurs. The school hallway, stretching on for miles, is suddenly awash with various, ominous shades of purple. Her feet are dangling, and her shoulders and chest are being crushed, her abdomen is being crushed, massive claws are threatening to impale her sides-

Sendak.

The word blares in Katie's mind like an alarm bell.

Pidge's mind.

SENDAK.

A choked, frightened squeak escapes her lips as she weakly tries to flail her legs.

Nothing moves.

She can't move.

"You're weak," he croons, his sickly-lemon-yellow eyes glowing ominously. They're the only things not bathed in that poisonous shade of purple, but it's hardly a comfort. "You're weak and alone."

"I-I'm-"

"Your friends are gone."

"No, th-they're-!"

"You couldn't save them."

"Stop-!"

"You couldn't save anyone."

"That's not true-!"

"You couldn't even save your brother or your father…"

"Stop! Please! Someone-!"

"YOU ARE A COWARD."

Screaming.

The screaming only grows louder as the Galra soldier goes tumbling further into the abyss, clutching Rover in his desperate hands. The screaming crescendos, deafening as images flood over everything.

Ships are blowing up everywhere. Green's laser blasts are cutting through the vessels like a hot knife through butter.

Screams.

The soldier is still falling.

You're next.

You're next.

You're too late.

This isn't a fight.

It's a massacre.

The screaming is drowning everything out.

Pidge thinks his name was 'Haxus'-

CRUNCH.

---

"haAAH-!"

Pidge abruptly sits up, her face pale and beaded with sweat. She swallows thickly, breaths coming out as gasping and panting, as she surveys the room.

The room's lights are dark, so it must be the middle of the night. Or very early morning.

She groans softly before flopping back onto the bed, clumsily brushing the sweat from her face with the back of her clammy left hand. After a long pause, Pidge sighs wearily, shifting before firmly planting her feet on the ground and stiffly getting out of bed.

Not like I'm gonna fall back asleep anytime soon. May as well do something productive…

The green paladin carefully scoops up her laptop before sliding back into bed with a huff.

Mm, just pull up this program, and…

…

…..

"Ugggghhhh."

Any other time, and the strings of code spread before her would have been a comfort. Right now, however, at some ungodly hour, after that rather… violent awakening, the familiar equations were a blurry mess that she was too thoroughly frustrated to try and decipher. More than anything, she just wanted her family. Dad would've sat with her on her bed, pulling from his endless repertoire of terrible jokes and puns. Mom would've given her a big hug- no one could ever beat Colleen Holt's famous hugs.

And… Matt would've sat there with her, talking about space, the stars, coding, the new book that he was reading.

Pidge misses that. She misses the way that there was no stopping Matt once he started speaking on a topic he was familiar with and loved. She missed the excited gleam that would enter his eyes, and his enthusiastic hand gestures, and-

She lets out a huff, slowly running a hand over her face and drumming the side of the laptop with her free hand. I miss all of them so much…

A pause.

Maybe there is something productive she can do, aside from coding upgrades for the lions or the castle.

Pidge quickly taps away at the computer, pulling open a webcam application of sorts. She pauses at the sight of her own face- wow, she really needs to get cleaned up- before taking a breath and clicking the 'record' button.

"Log number…" She pauses and frowns before glancing at something else on the computer. "Uh, let's see… Sixty-four! Sorry about that, I, uh. Lose track, sometimes." Pidge awkwardly clears her throat. "...It's still so odd to me that we've been up here in a giant, floating space-castle for a little over two months. 'Cause I mean, on the one hand, it feels like only yesterday since we left Earth- but on the other hand, it feels like all of us have been up here, hanging out for years. It… can be hard to keep track of time up here, honestly."

There's a moment of awkward silence. Pidge's face falls.

"I wonder what time it is back home. Mom might be asleep by now, or she might just be getting up for work…"

Another pause.

"I wonder if you and Dad are sleeping right now, or…" She inhales quietly. "...Nevermind. Anyways, I kinda should be sleeping, but, uh. You know, being a 'defender of the universe' and everything is cool, but. I wasn't exactly bargaining on the nightmares being a thing."

Pidge huffs before rolling her eyes. "None of us did, really. I… Bet you and Dad have some nasty ones, like… like Shiro does."

She hesitates, drumming her fingers on the side of the computer absently. "...Man, you had better not judge me when I have you watch these recordings later. Because otherwise I am totally going to break out all the stops and embarrass you in front of everyone. I'm pretty sure I still have some excellent blackmail left over from your high school grad party."

A wry smirk settles on her face at that, but it quickly turns into something a bit more thoughtful.

"But… Anyways, I should probably stop blabbing. Maybe try to get in another hour of sleep, or something, I dunno." She pauses, the silence weighing heavily upon her. "...Take care, alright? You and Dad… I promise we'll find you soon. I love y-"

SCREEEEEE! SCREEEEEE!

Pidge jerks, staring in wide-eyed alarm as red lights begin to flash on and off, shrouding her room in eerie shades of crimson.

"Paladins, get to your lions immediately!" Allura's voice commands from the intercom system. "We are soon to be under attack from a Galra fleet!"

The small paladin launches herself to her feet, her gaze darting back to the computer. "Sorry, Matt, gotta go! I'll fill you in later!"

Pidge quickly stops the recording and hastily shoves her laptop back onto her desk, snatching up her armor and putting it on as quickly as possible.

Alright, let's do this.

---

The second the team had laid eyes upon the prison ship hiding at the back of the fleet, it pretty much went without saying that they were gonna board it and free the prisoners.

The boarding had gone without a hitch. "Smooth as ice," Lance had proclaimed over the comm system. Pidge's job was to hack the control center and download prisoner files for later review back on the castle; as always, she was hoping that even a tiny shred of information about her brother and father would be contained amongst the other prisoner records. Lance's job was to accompany Pidge and serve as backup, his long-range fighting skills a complement to Pidge's close- to medium-range bayard.

"Sooo, what's the plan?" Lance hums quietly, sneaking alongside Pidge as they make their way deeper into the ship. His tone is chipper, but it's clear that he's on high-alert. He's just trying to ease the tense silence.

Pidge can appreciate that. Especially after her mood had taken a hit from that stupid nightmare…

"The plan," Pidge responds, cautiously poking her head from around a corner to look for guards, "Is as follows: we make our way towards the control center- preferably avoiding the attention of the crew for as long as possible. I hack the system and download prisoner files while you watch my back." It goes unspoken, but the 'hopefully there'll be info about my family in there' is, essentially, just as loud and clear as her spoken words. "After the download is complete, we free the prisoners… which will, naturally, alert the guards at some point, since we probably can't take them all out before at least one of them puts out a distress signal through the ship. But by then, we should have backup from Shiro, Keith, and Hunk… and Blue and Green, of course. Speaking of which…" Pidge pauses, speaking into the comm system of her helmet. "Guys, how's it going out there?"

There's a brief moment of silence, interspersed with the sounds of a typical space fight.

'Typical space fight'. Wow.

Pidge idly wonders when her life had turned into a Star Trek movie.

"We're holding up," Keith responds curtly. "The heavily-armored ships are a bit irritating, but we're working on it."

"I don't think these ships came out here aiming to take us down," Shiro adds. "They must have just stumbled across the castle, and. Well. Decided to start attacking us."

Hunk's voice also joins in on the comm. "It's not really going so well for them, but from what we've seen, I'm, uh. Not sure that they know what 'surrender' means?"

Lance snorts a little at Hunk's comment. Pidge sighs in relief, continuing to lead the way towards the control room. Fortunately enough, it's not hard to find the way; most Galra prison ships have a similar layout, so at least Pidge has a general idea of where she's going. The more difficult part is avoiding the guards, but the three other paladins are doing a good job of distracting most of the crew.

"Good," Pidge murmurs quietly. "I think we're almost there."

A pause. Shiro speaks up once more, a hint of concern lacing his voice. "Just be careful. The closer you get to the room with prisoner records, the more likely it is that you two will run into guards. Be prepared for anything."

"Will do, Shiro. And I'llll keep Pidge outta trouble," Lance drawls, turning his head to check down the halls for guards.

Pidge's eyes narrow as she slugs Lance in the arm. He makes a noise of protest, looking down at the smaller paladin indignantly, before freezing up. In a split second, his arm is around her shoulders and he quickly yanks her behind a corner. Pidge almost yelps, but Lance shushes her.

"Hold up," he whispers. "Two guards just came into the hallway."

Pidge pauses, eyes widening as she goes completely silent. Sure enough, the faint sound of footsteps can now be heard, echoing through the otherwise-eerily-still hallway.

"Did you see if they're robots?" Pidge whispers, frowning as she adjusts her grip on her bayard.

"Yeah," Lance responds, keeping his eyes trained at the edge of the corner. From the sound of it, the guards are approaching. "Yeah, they are."

"Mm. I'll get one, and you take the other?"

"Sounds good to me." He pauses. "We have to wait for them to get a little closer, since your bayard can't hit targets as far away as mine can. When I give the signal, we both jump out and catch them off-guard. You take the one on the right- they're walking side by side, and the one on the right is the one closest to this wall here- and I'll shoot the one on the left side. Deal?"

Pidge blinks before raising a brow. That… actually sounds pretty solid. "Deal. Wherever I manage to hit the guard, the electric shock should be enough to take it out in a second, but you'll have to be a little more precise. Think you can aim for your guard's head or chest and take it out in one shot?"

Lance scoffs a little at that, rolling his eyes. "Pssht, can I."

"...Can y-?"

"Of course I can! Hmph. Ye of little faith…"

"Oh, hush, you big baby. Now get ready."

Lance rolls his eyes, but doesn't argue further. Instead, he focuses on the sound of approaching footsteps. His grip on his bayard tenses, and his breaths become deeper and slower.

Tactical breathing… smart. Pidge silently notes, steadying herself into position.

One…

Two…

Three…

"Now!" Lance hisses, darting out from the corner. Pidge is right behind him.

Blam!

Shink- ZZT!

…

Clunk!

Clunk!

There's a moment of tense silence. Pidge is crouched on one knee, arm extended, gripping her bayard. The wire, drawn taut mere seconds ago, is now loose on the floor. Her bayard's blade is stuck firmly in the chest piece of a Galra sentry robot, and the area surrounding the blade is charred. The scent of fried circuits wafts through the air.

Her head turns slightly to eye Lance.

He, too, is crouched down, tightly gripping his bayard. Even with his gloves on, Pidge is almost certain that Lance is white-knuckled. His robot sentry is sprawled out on the floor, a laser blast mark going clean through its face and out the back of its head.

Pidge swallows before huffing and standing up, hesitantly making her way over to the downed robot to pull her bayard's blade free. "Well, that takes care of that."

Lance huffs loudly before getting to his feet and following after Pidge. "I'll say. And here you were worried I couldn't make the shot!"

"Mm. Either way, we need to hurry and get to the main information hub. They're gonna notice that these sentries are missing sooner or later, and I really don't want to stick around until they do."

The green paladin manages to yank her bayard free, wincing a little as a few sparks crackle in the sentry's chest. Lance watches closely as she quickly moves around the downed robot to continue on down the hall before following after her.

With every minute that passes, the two grow more tense; after all, the distraction the other paladins are providing on the outside is extremely helpful, but they're going to run into more guards at some point or another.

After a while of navigating the maze-like hallways of the prison ship, the two finally stumble upon the ship's log room.

Some maneuvering, hacking, and anxious waiting later, and Pidge manages to get past the locked room's security pad. After that, the doors practically slide open like a breeze.

Pidge huffs a sigh of relief before hurriedly sheathing her bayard and darting for the computer. Lance glances around warily as they enter the room, his bayard still up and at the ready.

"It's not guarded," Lance tentatively mumbles, a wary look on his face. Pidge hums distractedly in response as she begins to hack into the system. "They're probably trying to hold off the others… or they were those sentries we took out. Or maybe they thought the lock on the door would be enough. But I'll do my best to hurry, regardless."

She pauses, quickly surveying the Galra tech laid out before her- standard equipment, perfect- before tapping away at the controls. Her fingers move slowly at first, crescendoing into a frantic blur of movement as she proceeds to sabotage the computer system. It had been hard at first, figuring out how to hack into alien technology… but once she had committed all the numbers and equations to memory, it was almost child's play to hack into standard Galra systems like this one.

Basically, she muses, it's like hacking into Rover. More complex wiring and data storage and firewalls, naturally, but it's the same core principle.

"How's it coming?" Lance questions, uncertainly peeking over her shoulder at the numbers flooding the computer's holographic display monitor.

Pidge only pauses for a millisecond at his interruption before continuing to tap away. "Almost there."

Another pause.

"Aaaand… There we are!"

The screen flashes, and then files are quickly popping up all over the glowing, lavender-colored projection. Pidge smirks triumphantly before sticking her own makeshift USB drive into the computer's central console.

Alright, going good. Click this… Set to download all the files… Mm…

Lance whistles, eyebrows raising. "Nice. And this is why you're our resident hacker."

The green paladin pauses before puffing her chest out a little and glancing over her shoulder, smirking up at Lance. "You know it."

And then the ship jerks violently, sending the two paladins tumbling to the floor, undignified shrieks escaping the both of them. An ominous red light flashes, contrasting the purple hues of the room.

Once the tremors stop, Pidge quickly shoves herself to her feet, swaying a little unsteadily. "What was that?!"

Lance grimaces, clutching his arm as he rises. "Ugh, not sure. But this is definitely gonna bruise."

The two pause as the comm system opens up, allowing the others' voices to come through.

"Hey, you two alright?" Keith's voice pipes up, a bit muffled from static. "Sorry about that. Prison ship was attacking us, and, uh. Red and I struck back. I think we blew up one of its thrusters."

Lance huffs, rolling his eyes. "We're fine, but try not to make the ship blow up with us in it, 'kay?"

There's a pause, but Keith huffs back, a tinge of a growl underlying his tone. "I'm not. It's just a little hard keeping an entire fleet at bay."

"So? Knock out more ships, and-"
"And then have the crew of the prison ship find out what we're up to, and then catch you guys? We have to pretend we're struggling against their forces or they won't buy it."

"Guys," Shiro interrupts firmly. "Now isn't the time. Pidge, what's the status? Is the download complete?"

Pidge blinks upon being addressed before hurrying back to the Galra computer. "We're about halfway there. This ship has a lot of files… Which is very, very good. We can use at least most of them for intel, I think."

And maybe one of them contains something on Matt or Dad.

"...Unfortunately, however, that means that the download is gonna take some more time. Like… Mm. Ten, fifteen minutes? That's… a rough estimate."

There's an uncomfortable silence on the comm system. Shiro pipes up once more. "Hunk, how are your shields doing?"

"Kinda banged up, but Yellow's seen waaay worse, believe me. We're all good to go."

"Keith?"

"I can take a few more solid hits before my shields go down."

"Mm." Shiro's deep, thoughtful frown is almost tangible to everyone on the communication line. "...Alright. Hunk, continue to fight defensively. You and I can cover each other- Black's shields are in about the same condition. Keith, I need you to put your lion's agility to good use- lead some of the ships on a wild goose chase."

"Ten-four!"

"Right."

"Pidge," Shiro commands tersely. "Continue the download, but don't be afraid to cut it short and contact us immediately if things go haywire. Those files are important, but both of your lives are even more so. And Lance, keep your guard up. When the two of you finish, let us know and we'll assist as best we can. The crew won't be oblivious to our plan forever, and they'll probably figure things out as soon as we go in for extraction- so please hurry. Understood?"

"Right, we're on it," Pidge responds firmly, eyeing the computer screen. Alright. Nine minutes left, I think… We can hold out for that long.

"And once the two of us and the prisoners are outta here, we can switch gears and kick Galra butt in our Lions," Lance hums, a slight grin on his face. "Sounds like a plan to me!"

"Right." Shiro's tone carries a hint of amusement at Lance's usual pep. "Take care, you two. Contact us soon."

Click.

Pidge and Lance both take a deep inhale before knowingly meeting each other's eyes. Pidge, wordlessly, goes to stand before the computer, watching with slightly-furrowed brows as the files are skimmed and downloaded for later use. Lance stands at a distance, keeping a close watch over the door. His gaze, however, eventually drifts to look over at Pidge.

"...Soooo," Lance drawls, breaking the silence with a pop of his lip. "You're able to hack into alien tech pretty easily, yeah?"

"Mm-hm."

"Would it be easier or harder to hack into the Pentagon?"

Pidge pauses. "...You know. That is a very good question."

"Right? 'Cause I mean, if you think about it, the Galra have had, like, ten-thousand years to develop their technology and firewalls. But at the same time, we're talking about the Pentagon here."

"I mean. I hacked into the FBI's records to fake my identity for the Garrison background checks, so."

Pidge hesitates before speaking up again.

"Well, that was hard. But I also wasn't nearly as experienced back then."

"So you're telling me you could totally hack the Pentagon."

Pidge blinks curiously, but a devious look enters her eyes as she puffs up slightly. "I mean, in theory, since I've managed to hack the FBI and the technology of a ten-thousand-year-old empire… Yes."

Lance grins in response. "Good to know. Speaking of hacking, oh dear resident hacker extraordinaire, how's the download coming?"

The green paladin pauses, eyeing the screen. "Well… About seven more minutes."

Lance groans, arms lowering as he slumps. "Aw, what? It feels like it's already been twenty minutes."

Pidge shrugs. "Sorry, Lance. Can't really rush the download; it gets there when it gets there."

Lance is about to say something else when the undesired scenario finally happens: the door to the records room slides open.

And everything goes to shit.

The two Galra soldiers entering the room, accompanied by two robots, shout upon catching sight of Pidge and Lance.

Lance's bayard goes up. He's firing rapidly at the enemy, desperate to hold them all away while also trying not to get hit by returned fire.

Pidge ducks behind the control panel and brings out her bayard before activating it.

Lance manages to take out one of the robotic sentries. It falls to the ground with a hollow 'thunk'.

Pidge shoots her bayard from around the corner of the control panel, and it firmly embeds itself into the leg armor of one of the approaching Galra. With a hearty zap, the soldier goes down, completely unconscious. Pidge is now down a weapon to use until she gets the chance to free her bayard's blade.

Lance manages to shoot down the other robot…

But, in the process, he takes a blast to the shoulder.

He cries out in pain and nearly drops his bayard, forced to cease firing.

The other Galra is too fast.

They lunge towards the control panel, grabbing Lance by his injured shoulder and yanking him out of hiding. Lance's rifle clatters to the ground.

Screaming.

Lance is screaming and so is Pidge.

The soldier is snarling.

The soldier has a knife.

Lance is screaming louder, in pain.

Pidge can see the blood spurting from his vulnerable stomach as the knife is yanked out.

Her vision tunnels.

She's scrambling for the other soldier, yanking at her bayard as hard as she can to free the blade.

There's a hideous 'thud'.

She doesn't need to look back.

The soldier has dropped Lance.

Tap. Tap.

Her blade is caught in the metal armor, but she thinks she can get it free if she just tugs a little harder.

The footsteps are growing closer.

With a panicked cry, Pidge yanks as hard as she can, wincing as a small spray of Galra blood splatters on her gloved fingers. Her blade is free.

She spins on her heel, bayard up and ready to stab-

WHACK!

Pidge yells as she's kicked sharply backwards, her back hitting the wall with enough force to knock the breath out of her. Before she can regain her wits, the soldier kneels down and yanks the bayard from Pidge's partially-slackened grip, chucking the weapon to the side.

"You won't be needing that anymore," the Galra sneers, reaching his hand past the collar of Pidge's armor. His clawed fingers grasp her throat before he slowly rises to his feet, pressing Pidge against the wall and raising her along with him.

"For a paladin of Voltron, you're such a fragile little thing."

Pidge gasps for air as the soldier's grip tightens, her legs flailing in the air and her hands desperately trying to clutch at his arm. Panic begins to flood through her as she gags and wheezes.

I can't breathe-

"It's a shame, really," the soldier croons, keeping a firm grip. In his free hand, he absentmindedly twirls his knife. "Two paladins of Voltron would have been quite the prize. Though I am certain Lord Zarkon shall not be disappointed if one is dead… after all, it is one less paladin of Voltron to deal with. As for you…"

The sneer on the soldier's face grows, flashing his teeth in a venomous smile.

"Oh, I'm certain that he will have fun deciding what to do with you."

She wants to scream.

Scream in denial, that Lance isn't dead, that she isn't done fighting yet.

Scream in defiance, for the soldier to get his filthy claws off her.

Scream in pain, sucking in a deep breath of air.

Scream because she couldn't do a single thing.

She couldn't stop any of this.

She couldn't save him.

Lance…

...Weak…

I really am weak, aren't I…?

The soldier's mouth is moving, but Pidge's vision is tunneling. Her hearing is warped and muffled, as though she's underwater. There's an irritating ringing in her ears, and everything is burning. Her lungs, her throat, her head…

Her eyes are half-lidded as she watches the soldier before her. Then her gaze slowly shifts to the side- even moving her eyes takes a monumental amount of strength at this point- to try and catch a glimpse of Lance.

A queasy feeling bubbles up in her stomach at the sight of a pool of blood on the floor. Before her gaze can travel any further, she closes her eyes.

When she thinks of Lance, she sees his sun-kissed skin. She sees a face kept flawless by meticulous scrubbing and facial masks and lotion (and remembers how loud he screeches whenever he gets a single trace of acne). She sees a dazzling smile and sparkling, inquisitive eyes- he's trying to persuade her to come and hang out with him and Hunk.

She can't bring herself to look at his body.

She doesn't want to taint the images in her head. He wouldn't want her to see him that way.

...I'm so sorry, Lance.

I-

Screaming.

Despite how muffled everything is, she can hear the scream.

Her knees hit the floor, and the purple blur that was the Galra soldier crumples before her.

Before she can comprehend what's going on, she's coughing, coughing so hard it wracks her slight frame. Air is filling her burning lungs, and she gasps, greedily sucking in as much air as she can in between coughing fits.

Breathing hurts, but at the same time it feels so good.

As soon as she regains enough strength, she lifts her head in alarm to look at the soldier.

He's crumpled in a pile on the floor mere inches away, resting in a growing pool of his own blood. If Pidge tilts her head just right, she can see a gaping hole through the soldier's back.

A gaping… singed hole.

A hole from a certain someone's blaster.

She gasps and raises her head quickly, gaze darting around the room before settling on Lance.

He's sitting up, resting back on his elbows. His bayard is shakily clutched in his hands.

His eyes meet hers.

A weak smile trembles at the corners of his lips.

And then he slumps, his back hitting the floor with a painful 'thump'.

"Lan-" Pidge wheezes, her voice cracking like glass against the air. She desperately crawls forward towards him, too dizzy to stand. "Lance-"

She stops at his side, mouth suddenly going very dry at the sight of the gaping knife wound in Lance's abdomen. The reality is pouring in all too fast, telling her- very bluntly- that he could very much die if she doesn't hurry.

Pidge hisses quietly to herself before placing a hand over the wound. It's tentative at first, but then she presses down harder. Don't have any cloth lying around… My gloves and some added pressure will have to do, I guess…

Lance winces at the contact, sputtering a little. His face is almost an ashen gray, his eyes squeezed shut in pain. Sweat is beading on his forehead, and a little shiver runs the course of his body. All in all, it's a gruesome sight. Pidge can feel her stomach whimpering from nausea, but she refuses to throw up now. Throwing up can wait until after she gets Lance out of this godforsaken hellhole of a ship.

Throwing up can wait until after she's sure he'll even make it out of this alive.

Lance's brows furrow before he hesitantly cracks an eye open. It's a bit delirious, but he shoots her another smile.

He's.

He's smiling.

Her eyes begin to well up with tears, her lip quivering uncontrollably.

Goddamnit, Lance… Think of your own damn self for once and stop trying to make me feel better, you idiot.

The fingers of her free hand twitch. She hesitantly shifts her hand up, softly cupping the side of his face.

Lance…

And then a determined scowl crosses her face.

Tears, get back in line behind the nausea. You can wait until later, too.

"Lance," she croaks, her lips pulling back into a snarl. "I will kill you if you die on me. Stay with me here."

At first, there's no response.

But then his grin grows a little wider…

And his eyes flutter shut.

Pidge inhales sharply, her eyes widening in unmistakable fear, before darting her hand up to her helmet and reopening the communication line.

It flickers with that ever-familiar sound of static, but she can hear the others fighting the fleet loud and clear.

They're still blissfully unaware of her presence on the comms. Unaware of the nightmare that had just taken place.

A part of her almost doesn't want to speak up.

Let them stay unaware.

It was all just a bad dream…

But- no, she couldn't do that.

This was real.

Too horribly, painfully real.

Deep breath.

"Lan…" She croaks fearfully. A frustrated growl escapes her already-bruising throat before she swallows thickly.

"Lance is down. I repeat, Lance is down."

---

"...So, yeah. And that's how I completely ruined the mission and almost got one of my teammates killed."

Pidge absently looks to the side, running a hand through her hair. Her computer is perched in her lap as per usual, recording on the webcam. She's sitting in the infirmary by the healing pods, her back to Lance's pod.

She can't bring herself to look at his face. If she does, she can't guarantee that she won't break down again.

A quiet sigh escapes her lips. "Now I'm just… Taking my turn watching him. Hoping he comes out of the pod alright."

There's a pause before she speaks up once more, her voice even quieter than before.

"...There was so much blood, Matt. I… I was so scared that he was going to die right there in front of me. I couldn't get him to answer me, and it just wouldn't stop coming even when I applied pressure to the wound, and-"

Pidge sharply bites her lip, looking in a different direction once more as her eyes well up with tears.

"I wasn't able to do anything. I felt so helpless, and weak, and... "

She huffs loudly and clears her throat, her voice wavering. "I feel like a waste of space, Matt. And that's… that's really something, considering how much of it there is."

"I don't think you're a waste of space at all."

Pidge inhales sharply, her hand darting to her computer in order to stop the recording and close the laptop's lid in record time. Her head snaps up, her blurry gaze settling on the large figure entering the room.

Hunk quietly makes his way over before plopping down beside her. Pidge automatically flinches, curling in on herself a little more, but doesn't respond.

The yellow paladin merely waits. It doesn't take very long before Pidge finally breaks the almost unbearable silence.

"How long were you listening in?" She mumbles, rubbing at her eyes.

Hunk shrugs. "Not very long, really. I heard you say- well, you know- and I decided to butt in. Pidge, you're really not a waste of space. I promise. You're like the best tech person on the ship, and the most intelligent out of all of us. You know that."

She sighs before setting her computer aside and bringing her knees up to her chest, resting her arms on her knees so that she can mostly bury her face behind them.

"Wasn't good enough to save Lance," Pidge mutters bitterly.

Hunk frowns at that. "You couldn't have seen any of that coming. It wasn't your fault."

"But if anyone else had been there besides me, he would've been okay! I just… Agh!"

Pidge clenches her fists in frustration, hiding her face even more. "I can't fight nearly as well as any of you! You or Keith or Shiro- heck, even Allura and Coran- could've taken down those two soldiers, no problem! And then I just… I just had to sit there with him, and I couldn't even completely stop the bleeding! And I couldn't carry him, so you guys had to come onto the ship and risk your lives just so you could get the both of us out of there. You had to rescue the prisoners and take down the fleet without the two of us."

She takes a deep breath as her throat clenches painfully. The bruises on her neck were healing, due to some weird Altean gel stuff Coran had given her, but crying still made her throat hurt like hell.

"I just," she finally utters, "I feel like dead weight, Hunk. Like if we go on another mission, someone else is just gonna get hurt again because I'm too weak to protect anyone on my own."

There's another fairly long moment of silence as her words sink in, making the air around the two paladins heavy. Pidge completely covers her face in her arms, knees drawn up to her chest defensively.

After a tense pause, a large, warm, steady pressure settles on her shoulder.

Pidge blinks, lifting her head a bit out of curiosity. Hunk is resting his hand on her shoulder, a soft look in his eyes.

"If anyone else would've gone in your place, Lance and the other person would've been caught a heck of a lot sooner. Shiro and I would've been caught approaching the ship for sure, considering the size of our lions- and we don't have the cloaking system. Keith's lion is small, sure, but he still would've gotten caught. Thanks to you, the mission was mostly a success, y'know? Things got tight towards the end, but…" Hunk bites his lip, his hand squeezing Pidge's shoulder a little more firmly. "You managed to pry a lot of useful info from the Galra empire. And you kept Lance alive long enough for us to get him off the ship and to a healing pod in time. And the prisoners? We got them to safety. You might not think you did a lot, but… Pidge, you really did."

His gaze trails to Lance's healing pod, a somber look in his eyes. "Lance would be saying the exact same thing right now."

Pidge can feel her lip beginning to quiver dangerously. Instead of speaking- far too much risk that she'll break down crying- she hesitantly shuffles to the side and leans up against Hunk. Despite herself, a quiet sniffle and a stifled whimper manage to slip out.

He takes the gesture in stride, moving his hand and leaning a bit to the side so that he can supportively wrap his arm around Pidge's back.

"Shh," he hums softly, "it's gonna be okay. I promise."

She doesn't respond, merely taking a deep, shaky breath to try and steady herself.

So that's how it stays for a good while: neither says a single word while huddled up together in front of the healing pods. They merely listen to the other's breathing as the night slowly marches on.

Eventually, Pidge takes another deep breath, less shaken this time now that she's had some time to cool off.

"...I wish I'd agreed to hang out with you and Lance more often when we were back at the Garrison," she mumbles quietly. "Didn't know what I was missing out on."

Hunk blinks before snorting, a tiny smile on his face. "Mostly just trivia night at this one restaurant in town. But sometimes we'd do movie marathon nights on the weekends… And of course Lance insisted that we raid the kitchen for 'proper movie snacks'. Boy, did we get in a lot of trouble that night."

Pidge can't help but chuckle a little at that. "I bet. I just… I guess I was so worried about getting found out that I wasn't willing to trust you guys, or give you a chance at all… So I'm sorry about that. I never would have imagined we'd all end up in a castle in space, better friends than we ever were, or would be, back on Earth, y'know?"

"Heh… Yeah, I feel that, for sure." Hunk leans back a little, closing his eyes. "Lance was pretty determined to get you to hang out with us, though. I'm sure he would've eventually coaxed you over to the dark side."

Pidge rolls her eyes at that. "Who knows. He's persistent, that's for sure- but so am I."

There's yet another pause before she speaks up once more. "Speaking of which, I've, uh. I've always kind of wondered why he didn't give up when I repeatedly brushed him off and insisted I wasn't interested in being friends."

He looks down at her thoughtfully at that before shooting a glance to the side at Lance's healing pod.

He looks pretty peaceful right now… Good.

Hunk takes a breath before shifting and absentmindedly watching the wall on the other end of the room.

"Sometimes, I'm not really sure. I told him a couple times to quit pestering you, but he would just give me that little smirk he does and tell me that he'd win you over eventually." He snorts before continuing, his tone softening a bit. "I think it's because he could tell how lonely you were. You never sat with anyone at mealtimes, or left your room, or really talked to anyone unless you had to... and he really hated it whenever Iverson picked on you. He wanted to be friends because he knows how shitty it is, dealing with that kind of stuff on a daily basis, and he didn't want you to have to suffer alone through it all."

Hunk shrugs. "That's my guess, anyways. Lance is just… He's one of those people that goes out of their way to make others feel a little better, or a bit more included. That's what he did for me back in our first year, y'know? I was nervous about being there at the Garrison, but he really helped me a lot. Made me feel like I hadn't just gotten in on a fluke, and that I really belonged… and that I'd probably make a really good engineer one day."

Pidge's mouth opens, as though she's about to say something.

Instead, she closes her mouth, staring up at Hunk before glancing away and slumping a bit. "Oh."

"And," Hunk continues gently, "he wouldn't want you to beat yourself up over something like this. He knew the risks of boarding that ship- you both did."

"...Yeah."

"Think of it this way: would you want Lance to beat himself up if you had been the one injured in that fight?"

Pidge hesitates before shaking her head. "I don't think so, no."

Hunk hums a little. "And there you have it."

Pidge takes a while longer to puzzle everything over in her head. She supposes that Hunk is right; his arguments make logical sense, after all. She still feels hideously guilty for what had happened, but… Talking with him about it seemed to have lightened the burden some.

"...Thanks, Hunk."

He gives her shoulder another gentle squeeze before removing his hand and reaching his arms up over his head in a casual stretch. "Yeah, anytime… Say, would you want to hang out here with me for the rest of my watch over him? I wouldn't mind the company."

Pidge pauses before shooting the yellow paladin a grateful glance.

He can probably tell that I'm not going to be sleeping a whole lot tonight, after what happened.

"Okay," she manages before adding, "Yeah. That- That sounds good."

Hunk gives her a small, knowing smile. "And since we're both down here, we can discuss that thrust upgrade you were mentioning earlier, if you'd like? When you said that you'd possibly found a way to make all of our lions go faster, I thought it sounded like a cool idea!"

Nodding, Pidge leans a bit away from Hunk's side- not much, though, since he's toasty warm- in order to have room to move her hands while she speaks. Lance, at the moment, is a sore subject and she really doesn't want to start crying in front of Hunk. Now, technical jargon? That was right up her alley. Hell, maybe talking about the lions' complex operating systems would allow her to forget, if only for a brief while. She wastes no time in getting right down to business.

"Alright, so I was thinking, if we could manage to find a good enough conductor…"

---

"Pidge! Help!"

Pidge hisses fearfully, rushing towards Lance. She can't see his whole body- just his fingers clutching onto the side of a cliff.

"Lance, hold up! I'm on my way!" She calls, running even faster. The blue paladin is trying to hang on as tightly as possible to the cliffside, but it's clear that his fingers are slowly losing their grip, that he's going to fall soon if she doesn't help him.

Just a little more…! He's only a couple yards away-

"KATIE!"

Pidge pauses in shock, whipping her head around in order to see the source of the unnervingly familiar voice.

Matt?

Further along the cliff's edge is another person hanging on for dear life- her brother. Her eyes widen fearfully, gaze flickering back and forth anxiously between Lance and Matt. They're both perilously close to losing their grips on the edge- close enough that she begins to doubt if she can save them both.

Who are you going to choose, K̴̯̎a̶̧̖͇͓͗́͌̈́ẗ̶̝́ì̷͓̰͑̌è̵͔͖̞P̵̛̪͖̼̺̬̞̥͒̍̏̒̂̌̾ͅî̷̳̟̦̼͇̫͍̩ď̶̯̞̙̝̘͐̓̈́̋̋̀̆́͘ͅg̸̨̲̞̠̪̼̜̗͊̈́̽ě̸̛̛̮̐̒͑͑͛͠? Your brother or your fellow paladin?

She hisses, her eyes narrowing fiercely.

No! I can save both of them!

She rushes forward, only hesitating for a brief second before running in Matt's direction. He's closer, and likely lighter than Lance. If she can just hurry and yank Matt up, then she can make it in time to save her friend… And Matt can assist her in hauling him up.

She crashes to her knees, immediately grabbing Matt by the wrist with both hands.

"C'mon, Matt! I've got you! Hold on tight and don't let go!"

Her breaths come out as shallow huffs as she does her best to pull him up onto the cliff's edge. Just when she manages to make some decent progress, however, he suddenly gets… heavier. So heavy that she's inadvertently dragged forward towards the cliff, despite her knees having been dug into the ground.

She grits her teeth and resists as much as she can, stubbornly refusing to let go of his wrist- and then she freezes.

His hand is much bigger now.

And the fingers taper off into sharp claws.

She lets out a panicked cry and automatically lets go, but the clawed hand makes a sharp grab, pointed nails digging into her wrist enough to draw blood. The creature's- this is NOT Matt- other hand darts up, latching onto her other wrist. She struggles fiercely, but this thing is far too heavy and has a death-grip, the claws digging even further into her skin.

She's being dragged to the edge.

She can see the creature's yellow eyes.

No. Not a random creature.

A Galra soldier.

The same Galra soldier who had held on so tight to Rover, holding on for dear life- not even letting go when the drone had plummeted into the dark abyss below.

Haxus.

He snarls as he drags her even further, her head and shoulders now over the cliff's edge. Although she's desperately digging the toes of her armored boots into the ground, it provides little leverage against his weight.

"PIDGE!"

She hisses, startled at the familiar cry. Then she calls back, still struggling to free herself of the impossibly strong grip on her wrists.

"Lance! Lance, hold on!"

Another yell pierces the air.

"Pidge! I-I can't-!"

A cold, heavy weight settles in her gut. She struggles harder, but to no avail. Her entire upper body hangs over the cliffside.

A loud shriek echoes off of the stony cliff, utterly deafening as it rings in her ears. It doesn't stop for a long while- for an eternity, it feels like- and then-

THUD.

Her eyes slowly widen in horror.

"Lance?! LANCE!"

There's no answer.

You couldn't even save one of them.

Matt and Lance… They're both gone.

You couldn't even save yourself.

A choked sob escapes her throat, just as she's tugged further over the edge of the cliff.

There's a moment where everything stops. Time runs still, and her heart catches mid-beat. She suddenly feels weightless.

She's tumbling into the abyss below, her screams intertwined with those of the Galra soldier whose claws are impaling her wrists.

The rocky earth below eagerly rushes up to meet the both of them, lying in wait like the jaws of some massive, hideous monster. And then-

S N A P

---

Pidge lets out a hoarse cry, immediately sitting up in bed. Her crumpled sheets are balled up in her fists, her knuckles white from the force of her grip.

After a moment of dead silence, her fingers go slack, the blankets lazily sliding out of her grip and back onto the bed. She slowly brings one clammy hand up to rest over her chest- her heart is hammering like there's no tomorrow- and runs the other hand through her sweat-slicked hair in absentminded distress.

Her wrists are completely unmarked. Quite a bit paler than usual, but not impaled.

A slow, quivering exhale pushes itself free from her lips.

Just… Just another nightmare…

Her eyes close and she flops back against the bed. However, it doesn't take very long to figure out that she's not going to get anymore sleep tonight. Trembling and sweating, she ever-so-slowly drags herself out of bed, her bare soles pressing into the firm, slightly-cool floor. As though caught up in a trance, she stumbles out of her room and makes her way down the hall, not really even realizing where she's going until she's standing in the doorway of the room containing the cryopods. Five of them are occupied, mostly by prisoners still healing from their imprisonment. From where she's standing, she awkwardly stares at the sixth pod, Lance's pod- he's still very much unconscious with that unnaturally-blank look on his face- and the dark-haired paladin sitting before the pod.

Keith is absently fiddling with a knife in his hands, delicately tracing the patterns engraved into the flat of the blade with his fingers. He doesn't seem like he's quite all there; he appears to just be somberly staring at the wall across from him. However, it only takes a matter of seconds before he notices a flicker of movement in his peripheral vision. He whips his head to the side, startled, before settling upon noting that it was just Pidge in the doorway.

"Oh, uh. Hey," Keith pipes up, already wrapping the knife back up in its worn, brown cloth and setting it to the side. "You're up early."

Pidge blinks before quietly shrugging. "I… I guess, yeah. Is it okay if I sit with you?"

Keith shrugs in response. "Sure."

Pidge shuffles over towards him, rubbing the sleep from her eyes as she plunks down about a couple feet to his right side.

For a long while, the two sit in complete silence. Keith eventually picks his knife back up and continues to shift it between his hands, though he keeps the wrapping on. Pidge vaguely wishes she had brought her laptop down with her, but she really doesn't feel like going back to her room at the moment. Instead, she takes the time to lose herself to her thoughts.

She doesn't remember going to her room at all. The last thing she remembers is chatting idly with Hunk about the FTL systems in the lions, as well as perhaps improving the jetpacks on their armor to be capable of longer bursts of flight. It's not exactly a stretch to figure out that she must have conked out and he had carried her up to her room.

And had also tucked her into bed.

Wow, Hunk was such a mom. Not a replacement for her own mother, of course, but it was nice having him there.

Pidge would absolutely kill a man for even one of her mother's peanut butter cookies or a hug right now.

A quiet, involuntary sigh escapes her lips as she absently begins toying with her disheveled mop of hair. She forces herself to try and think of something else; memories of home were dangerous things unless she wanted to sullenly mope around the castle for the rest of the day.

Which, given the circumstances, she was probably gonna do anyways, but she doesn't exactly want to tack on more reasons to sulk and feel sorry for herself.

She's only roused from her thoughts when Keith clears his throat.

"Were you having problems sleeping?"

She's blinks in surprise, a bit startled that he had actually spoken up. It takes her a second to collect herself before she answers.

"That obvious, huh…?"

Keith shrugs. "No offense, but you kind of look like you got hit by a train."

Pidge's brows furrow. She doesn't have a mirror or her laptop's camera to check herself with, but if she looks as terrible as she feels at the moment, then it's probably not a pretty sight. She gives a long, drawn-out sigh. "None taken."

There's another pause before he speaks up again. He's not making eye contact, merely staring at the wall while continuing to twist and turn the knife in his hands.

"A good spar in the training room usually helps to calm my thoughts for a while. Also helps me sleep better, I think." He shrugs before continuing. "If that's any help to you."

Pidge blinks up at him. And then she turns her head, joining him in the perpetually thrilling activity of staring at the wall.

"...I'll have to try that out. Thanks, Keith."

"Mmhm."

They return to the silence once more, but it's not an awkward silence, no. It's… pretty relaxing. Pidge's heart rate eventually settles down, any remaining traces of the jitters from her nightmare slowly ebbing away. After a while, Pidge softly inhales. She casually gets to her feet before meeting Keith's gaze, his dark eyes inquisitive.

"I'm gonna head back to my room," she explains. "I should probably try to get in an hour or two of sleep, at least."

The red paladin nods, leaning back a little. "Right. See you later, then."

She lets out an affirmative grunt before turning and walking to the doorway- giving Lance's pod one last, lingering glance- and heading for her room. Along the way, she casually stretches out, her muscles stiff from lack of activity since the mission had gone awry.

Once she steps foot into the room, she automatically snatches up her laptop and plunks down on the bed. She highly doubts her ability to fall back asleep at this point; much as her body needs the rest, she's always been one of those people who can't fall back asleep once they're up and about. That wasn't even taking into consideration all the uneasy, invasive thoughts lingering at the back of her head.

A quick glance at the laptop screen tells her that it's about five in the morning. Well, something to that extent; she'd adjusted the clock on the thing in order to grant her some semblance of time after she and the others had left the solar system- and Earth's satellites- behind.

She frowns, idly tapping her finger on the keyboard.

Maybe Keith had a point when he'd mentioned sparring. Not only would it wear her out enough so that she could sleep a little easier at night, but it could also toughen her up.

Make herself stronger, so that something like the recent 'incident' wouldn't happen again. So she could protect herself and her friends when it came down to it.

Pidge huffs quietly, absentmindedly chewing on a strand of hair in her face. Training with a sparring robot would probably be helpful, but those things could be so terribly predictable when you had read over their (lovely and beautifully-detailed) coding at least three times. She could always ramp it up to a high difficulty to make it more unpredictable, but. Well. Seeing as how the higher difficulties were extremely dangerous and she ran the risk of breaking an arm or worse (that had been a rough week for poor Keith), she decides against it. Sparring with her teammates might be a little more productive (and less dangerous), but they were unfortunately predictable, as well. With all of the information she had gathered about their individual fighting styles, it might be a bit too easy.

It's an unfortunate predicament, really. She needs a degree of unpredictability in training in order to better simulate fighting against an enemy soldier- after all, she doesn't have several months to analyze the enemy's every strategy, every strength, every weakness. She needs to practice making quick analyses in the heat of battle, formulating a plan to take her opponent out as fast as possible. However, she doesn't want to risk getting harmed and putting herself out of commission by attempting to fight a training bot at an insane difficulty level. Getting hurt would only serve to set her back.

Unpredictable, yet relatively safe. Hm.

And then it hits her.

There's still one other paladin who she hasn't figured out. Someone with an intimidating range of fighting skills, and with no calculable weaknesses she can effectively exploit in a fight. Someone with an incredible amount of self-control, who knew their own strength and when to hold back, so that the risk of getting hurt in a fight with them was rather minimal.

Pidge immediately gets to her feet, setting aside her laptop before quickly moving to where she keeps her armor, grabbing her gauntlet and shoving it on.

Contact Shiro.

As she waits expectantly for the other paladin to pick up, she frowns. Hopefully she isn't waking him up- though, if her calculations are right, he's usually up by now-

"Pidge?"

As soon as the familiar voice speaks up, she takes a deep breath.

"Hey, uh- morning, Shiro. Sorry if I woke you up, but I wanted to ask you something."

There's a pause, and if she listens closely, she can vaguely hear the sound of him shifting to sit up a little straighter. "No, no, you're fine. I've already been up for a little while- it just took me a second to answer because I was in the middle of a warmup. What do you need?"

She'd been correct in her assumptions, then, fortunately green paladin lets out an inaudible sigh of relief, thankful that she hadn't disturbed the already-brief amount of sleep he gets on a daily basis. And then she braces herself, clearing her throat.

"I was wondering if you wouldn't mind sparring with me…"

---

THUD!

Pidge grunts in surprise as her back hits the training deck.

"Ah- Sorry, Pidge. I didn't mean to hit you that hard-"

She stares blankly at the ceiling.

'That hard'. He didn't mean to hit me 'that hard'.

"Pidge?"

She sighs. "Yeah, yeah, just gimme a second…"

It's been almost a week since she had started regularly training with Shiro, and yet she still can't even come close to taking him down.

That by itself might not have swayed her- after all, Shiro was notoriously difficult to face in close combat- but what really rubs salt into the wound is that he's been holding back.

He refuses to hit her with any full-force blows, and not once has he activated his arm. She might have the advantage of speed, but even that isn't much; he's fast, too, and his reflexes are sharp, and he's much taller and stronger than she is.

His skills are balanced. The only real weakness he has is his flashbacks, but it would be impractical to try and figure out how to use those to my advantage in combat- not to mention, it'd be crossing the line. I'm not gonna make him suffer just so I can win.

Pidge huffs and gets to her feet, swaying unsteadily and wincing. Yup, that was gonna leave a bruise.

Shiro hesitates before walking over. "I think we're done training for today, Pidge."

She makes a noise of protest, her brows furrowing. "I can keep going. Just a few more minutes, and-"

Shiro holds up his hand and cuts her off. "It won't help if you overwork yourself. Rest up and we can train again tomorrow, alright? You're definitely showing signs of improvement, but it'll take some time."

He must have seen the dubious look on her face because he sighs and rests a hand on her shoulder.

"Pidge. I know how badly you want this, and I know it's been bothering you-"

"It's not bothering me-"

"-But you have to pace yourself. If you push yourself too hard, you'll get hurt. And that would set you back, not make you stronger. Everyone has their limits, Pidge. It's just a matter of knowing those limits and working around them."

She merely sighs, awkwardly running a hand through her hair. Her gaze doesn't meet his. "Yeah… yeah. Alright."

Shiro eyes her carefully, gauging her reaction, before speaking up once more. "You know you can always talk to me… and the others, too, of course. We're all here if you need us."

Ahh, she's heard this plenty of times before. Mostly back on Earth, after Matt and her dad had been presumed dead. She'd looked like a mess back then, and she probably looks like a mess right now- especially if Shiro's worried enough to give her the "you're not alone; we support you in these trying times" talk.

"I…" Pidge finally meets his eyes. "Yeah, I know. Thank you, Shiro. I appreciate it."

And she does appreciate it- really, she does. She doesn't think any of the others will be able to help her with her nightmares or her guilt, but she appreciates their support, regardless.

Shiro looks like he's about to say something else when the door of the training room slides open. He and Pidge both turn their heads as they catch sight of Hunk entering the room.

The yellow paladin appears to be slightly out of breath, his eyes wide. "Guys! Hey- sorry to interrupt, but Lance is gonna wake up any minute-"

And, just like that, they're all heading for the infirmary, any other conversations temporarily forgotten.

Lance had been in the healing pods before, of course, after the blast… but even then, he had been healed and able to wake up after only two days or so. This time, well. Evidently, lethal stab wounds and severe blood-loss could take almost a week to heal.

Regardless, the team had been pretty worried this past week.

It only takes a couple minutes for the three paladins to make it to the infirmary. Pidge eyes the room as they enter, noting that Allura, Coran, and Keith are waiting in front of Lance's healing pod. Coran is busy tapping away at some sort of monitor, but he turns his head as the other paladins enter the room.

"Ah, I was wondering when you would be coming! Shiro and Hunk, would you two be so kind as to help catch Lance when the pod opens? He may be a bit... weaker in the knees than the last time he was in a cryopod, as he lost far more blood and spent a longer time in the pod this time around."

The black and yellow paladins quickly nod their assent before moving into suitable positions.

"Alright, good! Any tic now…"

Everyone in the room seems fairly anxious to some degree; Coran and Allura appear to be confident that the pod had healed Lance well, but Pidge knows the two had both been extremely stressed by the fact their blue paladin had been incapacitated for so long. Coran evidently likes to pace a lot and tinker with literally anything he can get his hands on when he's stressed- which, naturally, Pidge can respect. Allura had been more… snappish than usual, her temper a bit more fiery.

Hunk's eyes are filled with rather-obvious concern, and for good reason. Lance is his best friend, and the one person here that he's the most familiar with. Basically, he's been suffering from the "I don't really know anyone at this party very well and my party buddy has vanished, leaving me alone with all these people" syndrome, and been using cooking as his preferred method of coping (something Pidge had never really gotten the chance to see him do at the Garrison, but he probably would have if he could have during finals week). At the moment, he's waiting anxiously to catch Lance, uncomfortably shifting on his feet.

Keith, on the other hand, has been acting like a stressed animal. Pacing, severe discomfort (and pretending to not be in discomfort), having an even more messed-up sleep and eating schedule than usual. The works, really. Much as he claims to be bothered by the blue paladin, it's clear that he cares. At least one of those bonding exercises must've done something right, Pidge briefly muses.

Shiro hasn't even known Lance for very long at all, having never seen the boy before he crash-landed on Earth and had to be rescued from the Garrison, but he was concerned, too.

Lance was right. He really must be the life of the party, as he so proudly boasts on a consistent basis, because everything kind of really sucked without him there.

Pidge is concerned like the others, of course.

But she mostly just feels a crushing sense of guilt as she surveys the room.

After what feels like an eternity of dead silence (punctuated by Coran's methodical tapping at the hologram pad before him), a smooth 'shh' slides through the air, announcing the cryopod's front panel vanishing.

Lance remains "hovering" for a brief second before he collapses forward. Fortunately enough, Shiro and Hunk are ready. They both manage to catch one of Lance's gangly arms before slinging said arms over their shoulders and basically making a two-paladin crutch.

There's a brief moment where everyone holds their breath, all eyes on the blue paladin.

And then he stirs, his head bobbing lazily.

"Mmmgh, what year is it…" Lance mumbles, yawning. "Just lemme sleep for, like… the rest of this year. Maybe another couple of months after that, depending on how many months are left in this year…"

A collective wave of relief washes over the others in the room, and everyone lets out the breaths they'd been holding in.

"My apologies, Lance, but you cannot sleep just yet." Allura speaks up, her voice tinged with amusement. "You will need to eat something first in order to help replenish your strength… but then you will be allowed to rest afterwards."

Lance blinks sleepily, eyeing Allura dubiously. "Mmmm, I guess I can do that." And then a smirk flickers onto his face. "But I gotta admit, a kiss might make me feel a little b-"

Everyone in the room groans, cutting Lance off.

"Lance," Shiro chides, "I can and will drop you."

Lance huffs. "Sheesh, guys, I was just making up for lost time. I haven't seen anyone or been able to flaunt my dashingly-good looks in… uh…" He pauses before glancing at Hunk. "How long was I out, again?"

Hunk snorts. "Little less than a week, bud."

Lance gasps in mock horror. "What?! That's way too long to go without my witty sense of humor and general charisma. I am so sorry. I mean, granted, it kinda feels like I was out of it for longer than that- maybe a couple years- but, wow. How did you guys even survive?"

Keith crosses his arms and rolls his eyes. "Pretty easily, actually."

Funny, Pidge recalls that Keith had been one of the most distressed over Lance being out of commission than anyone else (even if he showed it differently).

Not that she'll say that out loud, of course. She would rather not have to deal with a ticked-off Keith.

Lance scoffs, lifting his head a bit more in order to turn his nose up at Keith. "Hmph! You're just jealous of my irresistibility."

"Hardly."

"Oh, you wanna go, Mullet? I might've just gotten out of a cryopod but I can still kick your-"

"Paladins, please," Allura scolds. "Lance, settle down. You'll wear yourself out before you can eat if you keep up this behavior. Keith, do not encourage said behavior."

The two glance over at her and frown- no doubt debating whether or not they can get away with arguing a little more- before huffing.

"Fiiiine."

"Fine."

Coran steps back from the cryopod controls, clapping his hands together eagerly. "Well now, speaking of eating, I know just the thing to make in order to restore your strength to normal!"

Lance blanches, but Hunk quickly pipes up. "Oh, no, Coran, I can handle cooking for today! You've, uh- Been working really hard lately on getting the ship back up in functionality. You pulled an all-nighter last night, yeah? It's hardly fair that you have to cook, on top of everything else."

It takes a minute of haggling, but Hunk finally coerces Coran into agreeing to sit back and relax while Hunk is in charge of the kitchen. Lance looks immensely relieved at the development, and the second Coran leaves the room, he leans over a bit to whisper to Hunk- no doubt thanking him.

After that, everyone files out of the infirmary to continue about their business for the day.

Pidge keeps a close eye on Shiro as he assists Lance towards the living room so he can sit down and relax while he waits for food, and watches as Hunk hurries off to the kitchen before Coran can change his mind. Allura makes her way back to the ship's control center, likely to check the radars to see if they need to move the ship. Keith seems to look rather conflicted as to where to go, but he eventually decides to loosely follow Shiro and Lance to the living room. He'd already finished training for the day, so he likely didn't have much else better to do.

Speaking of which, Pidge still has plenty to do.

She sighs, running through a mental checklist of everything begging for her attention.

The info she'd gathered from the ship would most certainly need to be further decoded. From what she'd uncovered so far, the wealth of knowledge she'd taken from the Galra ship looked rather promising. Then she would need to slip in another workout... god, she hates push-ups and planking but she needs to get it out of the way. And after she gets done with decoding, she definitely needs to work more on the prototype cloaks for the other lions. The failed mission was just further proof that she needed to hurry up on that project; it could give them a much better advantage over the Galra empire- not to mention, lower the risk of missions crashing and burning like the most recent one.

Making her way to her room, she tiredly runs a hand through her even-messier-than-usual hair.

Yeah… Just gotta keep working…

---

Pidge really isn't sure how much time passes before she hears a knock at her door. It startles her out of her sleep-deprived daze, her drooping head snapping up in surprise. She eyes her laptop resting on her legs as she reclines on her bed (ugh, she'd made so little progress before she'd started nodding off).

"Uh- come in!" She calls, hurriedly attempting to sound more awake than she is and to blink away the weariness in her eyes.

To her further surprise, Lance slips into her room, a plate balanced in one hand. The other hand is casually stuffed into a pocket on his jeans- at some point, he'd changed out of the cryopod suit and back into his normal clothing.

"Heeeyyy, Pidge-podge. Hope you don't mind me interrupting your Pentagon-hacking session."

He plunks down onto her bed next to her, offering the plate in his hand. It's full of food- oh, she must've missed dinner by accident- and, judging by the fairly tantalizing scent, Hunk must've made it.

Either that or she's so starved that even Coran's cooking smells appealing… but she highly doubts that.

Pidge quietly snorts, setting her laptop off to the side before reluctantly taking the proffered plate. "Thanks, Lance. Shouldn't you be resting?"

Lance shrugs. "Took a three hour- 'scuse me, three varga- nap after stuffing my face. I'm still kinda drained, but I'll live for a little while."

Pidge starts picking at her food, resisting the urge to wolf it all down. It tastes excellent, almost like mashed potatoes. It's a weird shade of red speckled with green splotches and shredded gray leaves, but she's hardly deterred by the odd colors at this point.

"...Mostly, I just kinda wanted to check on you. We didn't really get to talk after I woke up, and… yeah."

Pidge pauses in eating before slowly resuming. She keeps her gaze lowered, eyes fixated on her plate. "...Oh."

"Yeah."

The two sit in fairly awkward silence as Pidge finishes eating. Finally, she takes a deep breath and closes her eyes, setting the now-empty plate aside. "I'm sorry."

Lance blinks. "Wait, for what?"

Pidge bites her lip. "For the mission. I messed up, and I'm sorry."

"Wait- Pidge, you didn't mess up, though. None of that was your fault." Lance frowns. "If anything, you're the reason that mission didn't go even more haywire."

Pidge shifts uncomfortably at that, absentmindedly reaching for her computer. "I just… It's hard to explain, Lance. I still feel awful about what happened. I shouldn't have let my guard down."

He shifts as well, frowning as he watches her tug her computer back onto her lap. "Okay, first of all? You couldn't have known that was gonna happen. Second, both of us should have been paying more attention. If anything, if you think it's your fault for not being on-guard, then I'm just as much responsible for what happened. And third? You literally kept me from dying until the others could get there. I'd say that's pretty important."

She doesn't meet his eyes, preferring to watch her computer screen. She fidgets and bites her lip. "...Yeah."

They sit in silence for another few moments before Lance sighs, stifling a yawn. "Look, Pidge. I know you still feel bad about what happened. Heck, I would too, if the roles had been reversed. But I promise you that you have nothing to be sorry for, alright? I don't blame you for anything- you did your best, I did my best, and things went from there. You really did save the mission from being a total failure, too, y'know. Kept me alive, got all that intel off the Galra, and? Yeah. You really should trust yourself a li'l more, 'cause honestly, you do a lot for this team. We need you, y'know?"

Pidge finally lifts her head to meet his gaze, a slightly taken-aback expression on her face. "I… I, um… thanks, Lance."

The blue paladin grunts an affirmation before stretching and yawning loudly, wincing a bit as the muscles around his stomach area protest at the stretching movement. Sadly, the healing pods hadn't quite gotten rid of everything- a scar stretches across the area where he had been shot (but he's not going to let Pidge see it, not when she's feeling so down about the whole incident. She doesn't need anything else to feel guilty about).

"Anytime, Pidge. Just… remember that, okay? I know it's easy to blame yourself for what happened, but you did a good job out there."

He briefly pauses before reaching over and affectionately ruffling her hair.

"For now, I gotta go pass out, 'cause otherwise I'd fall asleep on your bed. And probably hog the whole thing, not gonna lie."

Pidge snorts in response, but she'd be lying if she said she hadn't leaned into the caring gesture. "Alright, yeah. Need me to walk you to your room?"

Lance hums, getting to his feet. He staggers a bit, but steadies himself quickly. "Pssht, nah, I'm good. It's not that far."

"...Mmhmm."

Lance sniffs, pressing a hand to his chest in mock hurt. "What, you don't believe in my capabilities? Rude."

That finally draws a small smile onto Pidge's face. She sets aside her laptop before getting off the bed. "I'm helping you to your room. Shiro would kill me if I didn't."

"Uh, excuse me? I'm perfectly fine. I don't need an escort."

He sways a little on his feet, frowning as the floor seems to grow blurry and… kind of swirly.

Pidge crosses her arms, raising an eyebrow.

Lance pouts before huffing. "...Okay, fine, maybe I would appreciate an escort."

Pidge snorts. "Yeah, I kinda figured. Let's go."

As she guides him out of her room and the two make their slow way down the hall, Pidge silently puzzles at his words from earlier.

Had she really kept the mission from going even more sour? She still feels guilty, but… they both had tried their best, hadn't they? Maybe it had been impossible to completely prevent the mission from going awry in the first place.

---

No.

No, no, no, nO-

Pidge's eyes snap open, her breaths coming in shallow gasps. Taking a shaky inhale, she sits up and rubs her head miserably with her clammy hand.

It's dark in her room, and it doesn't take long to figure out that she's woken up from another nightmare.

To her weary surprise, however, she can hardly even remember tonight's nightmare. Even now, any details she can even begin to process are slipping away from her head.

Maybe it's a good sign- she can hope, anyways. However, she doubts she's going to be able to fall back asleep anytime soon, so she sighs, rolls out of bed, and grabs her computer. She'd been making some decent headway on decoding more information before she'd grown too exhausted to work (a decision reluctantly reached after she had found herself reading the same string of code over and over again).

She takes another breath- gotta get back into the swing of things- before resuming her work where she had left off.

It's comfortable and familiar territory, working with the computer. The minutes tick away, eventually turning into an hour before she begins to grow tired once more.

Her half-lidded eyes scan the screen before her.

Tap, tap, tap.

Tap, tap. Tap, tap, tap-tap.

Tap-

Pidge suddenly freezes, her eyes opening wide.

She reads the line again.

And reads it a third time, just to confirm that her eyes aren't playing tricks on her.

All of a sudden, she knocks the covers of her bed away, grabbing her laptop and rushing out the door.

If she's right… the entire team is in danger.

---

Pidge can feel dread twisting up her intestines as she stands before the other paladins, Allura, and Coran. The entire team looks exhausted from being woken up in the middle of the night, but it's clear that her fears are mirrored in their eyes.

"Pidge," Shiro begins, a concerned frown on his face, "Are you absolutely certain about this?"

Pidge bites her lip before nodding, gesturing to her laptop's screen. "Yes. I'm positive that this… thing they're building-" she pauses to point at a diagram on her screen, "-is a sort of particle destabilizer. Judging from its sheer size and proportions, it's supposed to disrupt something big. Not nearly planetary level, like I'd originally thought, but something… Voltron-sized. I'm not sure what a blast from this prototype would do to Voltron, but I doubt it'd be anything good."

An uneasy silence passes over the group before Allura speaks up. "Pidge, were you able to decipher where this prototype is being created and tested?"

The green paladin nods, her brows furrowed. "I found the coordinates the weapon is being shipped to for further construction and testing."

Hunk crosses his arms nervously. "We have to go after this thing before it's finished, then, yeah? We can't risk getting blown to bits or ripped apart."

Keith nods. "I agree with Hunk. We need to destroy it first before it can destroy us."

Coran frowns, tugging at his mustache absentmindedly. "Pidge, did you see when it was set for completion?"

She pauses, looking at the screen, before nodding. "About a week from now- uh, what was it in Altean- about seven quintents from now?"

Shiro pauses before speaking up. "We don't have much time, but I third Hunk's idea. We need to take this thing out as soon as possible… and find a way to eradicate any files or blueprints on the weapon, so we can at least delay any further attempts to create the weapon."

Lance taps his chin. He's resting on the couch- standing for too long had made him feel a bit dizzy again. "Wait, you're talking like there's only one of these things. Why aren't they making a bunch if they want to take Voltron out so badly?"

Pidge nods. "Good question. I had been wondering the same thing, but judging from the size of the weapon and all the parts required- heck, just keeping such a huge thing stable takes several interlocking mechanisms bound with rare conductors, reflectors, amplifiers, redirectors, a cooldown system, and everything in between- they might not be mass-producing the weapons because it takes a ton of resources and can't be efficiently made." She pauses, frowning grimly. "...Yet. If they manage to make this thing and then improve upon the original prototype's blueprints, they may be able to make thousands of anti-Voltron weapons- maybe even tens of thousands- across the universe. Which would spell big trouble for us."

As that information sinks in, a sense of bleakness washes over all of them. The stakes are far too high to risk the weapon's creation; even if it turns out to be a trap, it still has to be looked into or they risk meeting a very quick end to their fight against Zarkon's empire.

Allura runs a hand through her sleep-tangled hair, biting her lip. "Pidge, would you please give Coran and I those coordinates? It seems to be agreed upon that we must destroy this prototype as soon as possible. We shall discuss a battle plan on the way to the location."

Pidge nods quickly. "Yeah, I've got them right here."

As she reads off the coordinates, she feels eerily… calm, yet the uneasiness is bubbling just under the surface.

"Calm before the storm" briefly comes to mind.

They're all suited up by the time the castle reaches the location of the base, hidden behind the three moons of a nearby planet. It's as close as they can get to the base without being detected, but they'll have to fly a fair distance to reach the infiltration point.

"Alright," Shiro commands tersely, "Princess, Coran? We will need you to remain here- in case we need backup or require a fast exit, you know the drill. Be prepared for anything."

Allura looks mildly disappointed at having to be left behind once again, but she nods mutely. She'll have to be ready to open a wormhole at any given time. Coran seems put-out as well, but he nods a little quicker.

"Keith and Hunk, you both will remain on standby. We want to remain undetected for as long as possible, but in the event we get caught in the act, you both need to be ready to attack the base- and any backup that may arrive."

The red and yellow paladins nod, a determined look in their eyes.

"Lance," Shiro begins, eyeing the blue paladin. "You're still recovering from the last mission, so it's not a wise idea to throw you into the fray. I'll need you and your lion to remain here and guard the castle, just in case things go wrong and they pick up on the castle out here."

Lance scowls indignantly. "Aw, what?! C'mon, I can handle a little action, Shiro!"

The black paladin returns Lance's scowl with a stern look. "I'm not saying you can't handle fighting, Lance. In fact, that is why you are to remain here- you'll be our last line of defense, aside from the Castle's own defense systems, if things go sour. Understood?"

Although he still looks rather miffed, Lance sighs and nods. "Yeah, yeah. Last line of defense, got it."

Shiro nods approvingly before looking to Pidge. "Pidge, you and I are going to infiltrate the base. Accessing systems might be a little easier if you use my arm, and I can watch your back while we figure out the layout of the place and destroy the blueprints for the weapon. Once we finish that, we can get out and, knowing exactly where the weapon is, coordinate a full-scale attack on the base."

She thinks her heart nearly stops.

"W. Wait, Shiro, are you sure-?"

He nods firmly. "Yes, I'm sure. I'm going to need your technological expertise in this, and your lion has the ability to keep up a cloak long enough for us to get in."

Pidge hesitates before nodding, still rather uncertain. "...I'll do my best."

"And that's all I could ask for from you." Shiro glances at everyone else in the room before straightening up. "That's all I can ask from any of you. We'll all do our best to get in, get out, and eradicate this thing. Understood?"

Various noises of agreement resound between everyone on the team.

And, just like that, they're all hurrying off to do their respective assigned tasks.

Yep, her heart had definitely stopped… but now it was racing at full throttle.

As she makes her way towards Green's hangar, she feels a weight resting on her left shoulder. She quickly glances up, quickly noticing Shiro's prosthetic hand resting on her shoulder.

"I wouldn't have chosen to take you with me if I didn't think you were capable," he says softly, his eyes warm with support.

Unable to find words for a moment, Pidge merely stammers out a quick 'thank you' before they reach the hangar to board the green lion.

Oh dear god please let this plan work.

---

All of the lions, as well as the castle, are in place.

Pidge managed to navigate a cloaked Green, with Shiro by her side, to the base and land.

They even managed to slip in undetected.

So far so good, but Pidge can't help the anxiety and unease clenching up her stomach.

Don't let your guard down, not even for a second. The stakes are even higher than the last mission-

She takes a slow, shuddering inhale as she creeps along the base hallways along with Shiro. They just need to find the base's mainframe… then she can figure out how to corrupt the weapon blueprints and hopefully destroy all of the records on the thing in the process.

Do that and get out. Simple enough… hopefully.

It takes an agonizingly long time to sneak through the base, avoiding and hiding from any Galra robots- thank goodness that they haven't run into any living Galra soldiers yet- but they finally, finally reach what appears to be the central mainframe. It's locked and takes a bit of hacking to get into, even with the help of Shiro's arm- seems the mainframe is off-limits to all but those with admin signatures. However, she manages to replicate an admin signature by hacking the system and confusing it into allowing Shiro's arm's signature.

There are three battle drones inside, but that's hardly a surprise. As soon as the doors open, Shiro and Pidge attack as fast as they can. Shiro's quick, fluid movements allow him to destroy two of the robots before they can get the chance to signal an alarm, and Pidge uses her bayard to fry the third one's circuits to a crisp.

Although she's now even more on edge than before- tense, shaking, vibrating with adrenaline and the memory that she and Lance had been attacked last time not too long after they had gotten to this point on the last mission.

She manages to get into the server- seems they still haven't found a counter for the magic that is Pidge- and begins sifting through information and files on the holographic screen. Shiro guards the door, tense and ready for action. Although Pidge is still uneasy and has a bad feeling about all of this, she allows herself to focus on the task at hand. The quicker she gets this done, the quicker they can get out of here and then the team can move in and destroy the weapon… wherever it's at.

Shiro shifts from his left foot to his right.

She taps at the screen periodically.

The occasional grunt of irritation or a hum of mild success comes from her direction as she hacks the mainframe.

These movements and sounds are the only thing that break the stillness in the otherwise-silent room.

And then Pidge suddenly gasps, hunkering in front of the screen to get a better look. Shiro blinks in surprise before piping up, his voice low. "Pidge, did you find something?"

"I've got the blueprints… and I know where the weapon is, now. It's the base, Shiro! The entire base is the weapon- that's why the layout is odd, and why there aren't any living Galra operating the base."

Shiro's brows raise in surprise. "It makes sense. Well, now we have our work cut out for us- destroy the base with everything we've got, and there goes the weapon. Do you think you'll be able to destroy all the blueprints and such?"

Pidge nods firmly. "They kept the most classified information tucked away in this base's mainframe, likely to keep it out of the hands of rebels… or away from us, since we couldn't have found the base without the information I siphoned from the prison ship's system. In this case, that's gonna be their downfall."

She resumes her frantic tapping on the holoscreen, brows furrowed in concentration.

"Right now, I'm tearing down the security and firewalls of the system so then I can use viruses to completely tear this mainframe system apart from the inside."

Shiro blinks before nodding, a smile finally tugging at his lips. "Good. Keep up the great work, Pidge."

"Mmhm…"

Disable this system, open up the back door.

Tear down this firewall, let everything else in.

Almost...

Pidge is so focused on her task that, when the room begins to flash an ominous red and an alarm goes off, she nearly jolts out of her skin. Her head darts up to look over at Shiro, who is tensed up in alarm.

"Pidge, you might have tripped something on the computer. What's the status on those files and blueprints?"

A shaky breath escapes her lips as she tries to reign in the sudden surge of panic sweeping through her body. "I- I-it's just about done. The viruses are tearing down the firewalls and corrupting the files now-"

Shiro quickly nods. "Can it be left alone or do you need to see through the rest of the process?"

"I- I'm pretty sure it can be left alone. The viruses are snowballing, and it's only a matter of time before the mainframe is completely wrecked."

"Good."

Shiro quickly moves over to Pidge, eyes on the door. "We're going to have to hurry and fight our way out of here. You ready?"

She's really not.

She's not ready to fight, or to see Shiro get wounded, or to die.

She nods anyway.

He nods firmly in response before immediately leading the way to the door. The two break into a sprint down the winding hall… and it's not long before they spot the first wave of incoming robots.

Shiro wastes no time in rushing forward towards the small group- once again, his speed and strength allows him to take out about three of the robots in a few fell swings. Pidge is right behind the black paladin, her bayard drawn and crackling dangerously.

SMASH!

One more robot down, felled by Shiro's hand slicing through its head.

Shing!

Circuits fried, another falls to Pidge's blade.

The two manage to clear the hall of the first group, and they waste no time in continuing to run towards the exit.

Another group shows up a mere two minutes after the first. It's a bit of a struggle, but the second group goes down.

After the third wave of robots, Shiro and Pidge are wearing down. The running and the fighting are taking their toll on the two.

Pidge's side is grazed by an energy blast. It's only enough to barely expose a patch of her skin through the black fabric- and draw a thin layer of blood over said skin- but it rattles her.

The third group of robots barely goes down.

And then a massive blast shakes the base like an earthquake.

Shiro and Pidge go stumbling.

Over the comm system, Hunk's voice pipes up. "Sorry, sorry! The base's defenses shot at us- are you guys alright?"

Shiro pokes his head around the corner, noting quickly that there are no drones in sight in this hall (yet) before breaking back into a run. "Yes, we're alright. If anything, that might have bought us a little more time, so thank you for that."

Keith's voice crackles in their helmets. "We saw the alarms going off in there. Are you almost to the exit?"

Pidge answers this time as she rushes behind Shiro, but her voice is strained. The pain in her side is getting to her and the fatigue is beginning to set in heavily. "We're almost back to Green, yeah. The entire base is the weapon- so once we're out of here, feel free to open fire."

"Alri-"

BOOM!

"WOOOOOO! SCORE ONE FOR LANCE!"

The other four paladins briefly go dead silent in shock and confusion as to the noise coming in through the comms.

And then Shiro breaks the silence.

"Lance? Lance, what's going on over there?"

It takes a second to respond, but Lance's smug voice pipes up over the comm system.

"I totally just annihilated a bunch of reinforcement ships headed your way, in one of the most stunning flight maneuvers I've ever pulled in my whole life. You're welcome.~"

Although they can't see each other on the comms, Keith's facepalm is quite audible.

"You'd better be paying attention in case more are coming," he growls.

"Pssht, you kidding? I've got the best view out here. Great vantage point, coupled with my outstanding sniper skills and Blue's incredible assists-"

"Guys, now isn't the time," Shiro grits out as he skids to a halt before peeking around another corner. "Save it for later. Pidge and I need to focus on getting out of here."

A few muffled, sheepish apologies come in at the same time over the comm. Shiro merely sighs before heading around the corner-

-and running right into another group of robots.

Shiro hisses and his hand immediately lights up, rushing towards the group and avoiding their attacks. Pidge, as per routine, follows up with her bayard.

It's getting harder and harder to fight back. The robots just keep on coming, Pidge is faltering, and Shiro is getting slower.

And then Pidge sees it.

Shiro is surrounded, busy dealing with the enemies in front of him…

But one had snuck around behind him in all the chaos.

Time seems to slow down as the robot takes aim at the center of Shiro's back.

No.

Not again.

She will never let it happen again.

Shiro manages to destroy the robots in front of him, but he's too slow to respond to the one behind him. He sees the gun leveled at him, and then-

Vwip!

SHINK!

Shiro watches incredulously as the gun clatters to the floor, followed by the crash of the robot that had been about to kill him.

Pidge is panting, her arm held out. Clenched in her fist is her bayard, the wire completely extended. The blade is embedded in the robot's back, and the stench of burned metal wafts through the air.

There's a moment of dead silence before Shiro shoots Pidge a genuine smile.

"Thank you for saving me."

Pidge stares at Shiro, disbelieving (had she really just done that? She just cleared a path through the robots and then saved Shiro's life-).

And then she breaks into a grin, the first time she's smiled in what felt like ages.

"Now," Shiro continues, "Let's hurry. We're almost to the green lion."

"Right!"

---

"...And that's how we managed to destroy the weapon, take out a wave of reinforcements, and then hightail it out of there via wormhole."

Pidge lets out a breathless laugh, winded from rambling over the mission. She's sitting in front of her computer, which is currently recording once more. "Matt, you should have seen it- it was so amazing, and we won- and I managed to completely corrupt the mainframe of the base and eliminate blueprints, so we'll be safe for now…"

She pauses before leaning back and exhaling, closing her eyes. "...I think I finally found my place in the team, Matt. I might not be the strongest or… well, anything like that, but that's alright. I'm not perfect at everything, but at least I can be the awesome resident hacker of the group, and I can be there for them when they're in danger."

Another pause. Pidge absently runs a hand through her hair, a soft look in her eyes as she stares off to the side.

"The battles are gonna get even tougher and more dangerous from here on out. I'm kind of worried, but… y'know, I think we might be able to pull it off, Matt. And I'm still going through the ton of coded intel I found on the earlier mission, so…"

She quietly clears her throat, looking back to the laptop camera with a hopeful look in her eyes.

"Who knows? Maybe I'll find some records on you or Dad in there. But even if there isn't, I promise that I'll find you guys. There'll be more leads, eventually."

"Hey, Pidge! C'mon, you're gonna be late for dinner!"

The green paladin blinks in surprise at the muffled voice from outside her door before humming and calling back. "Coming!"

She glances back over to her laptop, a steady smile on her face. "Sorry Matt, gotta go. I'll record another log soon and keep you updated… 'cause you're gonna be watching them soon enough here, once I find you and Dad."

Pidge hits the 'end recording' button, pauses to stare thoughtfully at the computer screen, and then gets to her feet to put the laptop away.

As she rushes to the table to meet with the others, a warm feeling spreads through her chest.

Guess I really do belong here, huh?