A/N: Well, I'm over a month later than I said I would be, so I owe you all an apology. Real life caught up to me, classes and all, and I'm a fair bit behind my deadlines for this fic. That said, the update schedule on this one is going to be longer than St. Erasmus' Fire-two to three weeks instead of every week.
Oh! Fair warning to any new folks: In case you missed the summary, this is the second part of a Sendak redemption au splitting off at Crystal Venom (S1E9). Part one is entitle St. Erasmus' Fire, and can be found on my profile, the next fic down.
Pidge
Pidge felt it the second Green's paws began to lift from the floor. The Lion shot a pulse of anxiety at her, and Pidge squeezed the controls and twisted them just so. Green sank her claws into the hanger floor, gouging at it, fighting to stay anchored. The forces outside her open bay doors were too much. The claws ripped free. Pidge squeezed the controls tighter and shut her eyes.
Panic leapt across the Voltron mindlink like static electricity, bouncing from Paladin to Paladin and coming back stronger each time till it shook her to the bone. Someone was screaming over the comms. Maybe it was her. It was too much. It was all too much. The swirling, chaotic energy in the corrupted wormhole spun Green like a leaf in a tornado and flung her sideways.
And then, suddenly, the resistance was gone. The relentless pull was gone. She opened her eyes. The viewscreen blurred blue-green-yellow-grey, too fast to focus on. She slammed her eyes shut again and winced as bile burned the back of her throat.
Something smashed into Green's back. The cockpit jerked violently. Pidge gripped the controls harder, fighting to stay in her chair. A second impact made her shriek, and then a third-she could feel Green tumbling out of control. The fourth nearly did throw her from her chair into the dash. She braced her feet for the fifth, smacked her head on her knees when the sixth impact slammed her forward.
The seventh was more Green's side than her back, and she came to a rolling, grinding halt. Weightlessness returned a second or two later. Pidge picked herself up and peered around. The viewscreen was off. The cabin lights were off, save for a low green glow that barely illuminated the dimness.
"...What's the matter, girl?" she asked, reaching up to fiddle with the controls in case it helped. No response. Not even a flicker of light. She sighed. "Okay. Rest a bit. I'll see what I can do."
A little more fiddling brought reserve power online, and she pulled up the viewscreens immediately. Long strands of metal floated past amid clouds of green and yellow gases. All of it had been worked-the metal, that is-in some fashion, discarded parts of ship hulls and satellites and god knows what else hovering weightless in the void.
"Looks like there's no gravity here," she said, half to herself and half to the Lion. "It's like a...trash nebula of some kind." She'd be willing to bet it was all Galra junk, too. They were exactly the kind of species to just leave their garbage lying around wherever.
She crossed her legs and settled a little more comfortably in her seat. "Okay, Pidge, stay calm. You know what they say, 'when you get lost in space, the best thing to do is stay put and wait for people to find you.'" It was too quiet in Green without the familiar hum of her engines. She set her chin in her hand. "...This'll be nice. I'll have some me time."
Too. Quiet. She tapped her fingers against the side of her helmet.
"...No one to annoy me," she said softly.
And then something shot directly past her, red and grey and spinning out of control, tumbling deeper into the junk nebula. Pidge scrambled upright and maneuvered through the control menus until she got to the viewscreen recordings, paused it in the middle of the flyby. And blanched. That was unmistakably a Galra fighter pod in distress-not damaged, but spinning wildly out of control. It took her a second or two to place it.
The fighter that had helped them out at Zarkon's central command. That had to be it. None of the others had been close enough to enter the wormhole with them. She felt bad for the pilot-whoever they were, they had to be terrified. And probably hurt, if their pod crashed the same way Green had. Those fighters were way less durable than the Lions. She could go help them. She had to go help them if they were the same person who'd helped fend off the AI-controlled fighters at Central Command. It was only right. What had Allura said about the Paladin Code? Something about helping all those in need.
Well, if that fighter wrecked as hard as Green did, the pilot was going to need help. Pidge let herself out of the cockpit and made her way out into the junk nebula.
Pidge had had the bare minimum zero-G training back at the Garrison; class-wise she had at least three more years before her cohort went anywhere near actual space, but they'd taught everyone in the space program the technique. She bounced carefully off every available surface, little hops that took her a yard or so at a time to keep from pushing off too high or too long and overshooting. At least the Paladin armor had jetpacks-she could use the thrusters if she ever got too far from a solid surface to control her momentum. She snagged hold of a spar-probably the tip of an antenna or something-and peered around.
Nothing. Nothing . It couldn't have gone that far, could it? What if it had? How was she going to find it if it had gone out of her range? How was she gonna get the pilot back to Green if they were hurt?
There . The fighter had come to rest against a long metal panel a ring over. It didn't look damaged-the pilot must have gotten it under control before they could wreck. That was good. She could take a little more time getting over to the pod if it wasn't about to blow up or catch fire or something.
And then, out of the corner of her eye, she spotted something glowing in the shadow of a curved piece of metal. Two somethings. Cyan, eye-shaped, eye-distance apart. A second pair lit up. A third. Four. Five. She let go of the spar to grab for her bayard.
"Who's there?" she demanded.
More lights-six, ten, a dozen, too many to count. One of the nearer sets grew larger and larger, approaching the opening. Then the eyes' owner emerged into the light, and Pidge couldn't help laughing with relief.
The 'eyes' were bioluminescent spots on the face of something that looked like a large, fuzzy, pink grub or caterpillar. Nothing harmful. It floated out towards her, the others in the shadow rafting out to follow the first. Not all of them were pink-some were pastel shades of blue, or green, or yellow. She lowered her bayard as the nearest ones approached.
"Aww, hey little guys," she cooed. "You guys are so cute ! Too cute to be found in a dump like this." The creatures-trash caterpillars? Junk grubs?-swarmed around her, and she could see more of them emerging from the rest of the structure. "Are you guys the only ones living here? I hope my rough landing didn't disturb your day. I'll only be here for a little while, I'm just trying to get back to my friends. We were separated during a wormhole jump."
A quintet of the trasherpillars grouped up, bumping into each other in their eagerness to be closer to each other.
"Yeah! Friends!" Pidge agreed. "I think that's one of mine over there-" she pointed to the fighter pod- "do you think you could help me find a way over?"
The trasherpillars swarmed and looped around her. She could faintly hear them squeaking and chattering through her helmet. Well, that meant there was enough of an atmosphere to carry soundwaves and support life, but she wasn't going to risk removing her helmet until she knew its composition. If the green banding in the gas clouds said anything, there was probably oxygen in the mixture, but for all she knew the ratio of oxygen to other gases would be too low to support her. And with the way things had been going lately, it was probably full of sulfuric acid or some toxic gas that would kill her the second she took her helmet off. Yeah, she wasn't going to risk it.
The pink trasherpillar that had approached her first did a loop around her body and jetted off along the metal ring. Several others did the same, swooping off to follow the green one, and Pidge took the hint and bounded after them. They led her down along the ring, well past Green's hiding place but closer to the fighter pod, until-finally-they came to a spot where the rings came close enough that Pidge could jump the gap. The trasherpillars looped and bobbed around her like a pack of small, eager dogs when she figured out the jump and joined them on the other side.
Pidge could feel her tension rising as she approached the fighter. She'd called the pilot a friend, but...well, she didn't really know , did she? They'd helped her and the other Paladins out at Central Command, but she hadn't so much as heard their voice over the comms, much less seen their face. The person in the fighter could be anyone. Hell, they might even be a spy or an assassin sent by Zarkon to gain Team Voltron's trust and then destroy them from the inside. Not that it was particularly likely-Zarkon's preferred tactic seemed to be a frontal assault rather than anything sneakier. Why be sneaky when you had the biggest military in the universe and could pound your enemies into dust faster than you could say 'Galra Empire'?
Her bracer beeped.
Pidge glanced down at it. A light blinked back up at her-some kind of notification from the computer integrated in her suit. It might be important. And even if it wasn't, it couldn't hurt to check. She flipped open the holo-screen.
Proximity Alarm , it said, and then a string of numbers she half-recognized. A code. She'd seen it before, some time recently. Where? Coran's datapad. Not during the malfunctions, much more recently than that-
-The tracker in the cuffs. Sendak.
"Mother fucker ," Pidge declared.
The fighter pod had stayed closed, but unless Pidge's eyes were playing tricks on her, the red lights were dimmer than before. Much dimmer. Hardly glowing at all, actually, when earlier they'd been bright enough to see all the way back at Green. That couldn't be a good sign. She bounded closer, closer, right up onto the ship's prow.
That close, she could actually see through the thick red glass. The pod looked like it had powered down, and its lone occupant slumped over the controls. She almost couldn't tell it was Sendak-a helmet hid his distinctive ears, and from this angle he looked much smaller-but she could see the way the left sleeve hung empty and the bulges at his wrist and around his thigh where the cuffs were still attached. It was him, alright. And he wasn't moving. His right hand, the only visible part of his body, splayed limply across the dash.
"You'd better not be dead," she grumbled. Then she began searching for the door to the pod. There had to be a way in, and she was going to find it.
As it turned out, the door was the glass. Pidge located a seal at the back, where the glass met the steel of the pod, and tracked it all the way to the front where she found a nearly-invisible hinge. She bounded back across the glass and searched for a latch, a button, anything-and found it, again, concealed. The dark marks across the button that probably would light up if the pod was on were the only giveaway. She pressed the button and moved back out of the way.
The seal on the hatch hissed, beginning to depressurize, but didn't open. She tugged on it, grunting with effort.
And then it did, too fast, and would have flung her off if something hadn't grabbed the back of her armor and slammed her down hard against the pod. Pidge shrieked, grabbing her bayard and thrusting it in front of her. The tip came to rest against something, and she prepared to squeeze the trigger and shock it. And found herself staring Sendak directly in the face.
The Galra stared back, lone eye wide and wild, his lips peeled back from his teeth in a snarl. He seemed to recognize her in the same instant and let go, pushing off slightly so her bayard was no longer touching him and reached up. He grabbed the trailing sleeve, squeezing it shut. Keeping his suit pressurized, probably. Smart.
"What the fuck ?" Pidge demanded, pushing herself upright.
Sendak scowled and reached up, tapping the side of his helmet.
"Oh, yeah," Pidge said, feeling lame. "No comms. Right." She pushed off the fighter and turned to head back to Green, then waved him after her. "Come on."
Sendak's eye narrowed further, and he pushed off the pod-in the wrong direction. Away from her. He kept his grip on his sleeve, but the hunch of his shoulders shifted to something more...defensive? Yeah, defensive, and he'd adjusted his stance to brace against the metal with his feet. Pidge crossed her arms.
"I said, come on ," she snapped. "You don't want to stay out here by yourself, do you?"
Sendak backed further away, and Pidge ran out of patience and bounded toward him. The Galra launched himself aside, scrambling and slipping on the metal underfoot. His boots skidded out from under him, and he dropped onto the metal surface, landing hard on his left side and rebounding. She heard something -his voice, unintelligible through their helmets-before he bounced off the steel, wrapping his arm around his abdomen.
He left a blue streak behind on the metal.
"...Shit," Pidge muttered.
She launched herself after him, grabbing Sendak by the shoulder and turning him over-much easier in a microgravity environment and without resistance on his part. He looked worse up close, now that she wasn't too startled to take note. His eye was squeezed, jaw clenched like he intended to grind his teeth to powder. Blood oozed from what looked like puncture wounds on his lower lip and several small gashes on his cheek. She ignored it, turning him further to get a look at his helmet. There . On the side, a pad with writing beside it. Her helmet's screen translated it almost instantly- communications .
"Bingo," she said, and pushed the button.
The comms filled instantly with agonized gasping, and Pidge's stomach did a slow roll. She'd never heard someone make a sound like that before, that high, whimpering inhale and almost choked exhale. Not even Lance had make sounds like that after the bomb went off. Sendak flinched under her hand, and she let go immediately. She heard him take a deep, shuddering breath, and then he flipped himself upright and pulled away, staring at her intently. God , was his face hard to read without the ears.
"Are you okay?" she asked.
Sendak glowered back. "Flesh wounds, nothing more," he growled.
Pidge eyed him suspiciously. "That didn't sound like 'flesh wounds'."
"Landing directly on injuries hurts."
"You bled on the ground."
"It'll stop soon." He hadn't pulled his arm away from his abdomen, and the black suit would make it impossible to tell anyway, but Pidge had trouble believing him.
Well, if Sendak wanted to be a tough guy, that was his problem. Pidge turned back towards the Green Lion. "Fine, whatever," Pidge said. "I'm going back to Green. If you want to stay out here, that's your deal."
She made it five leaps before the Galra landed beside her, just out of arm's' reach but keeping pace, and she ducked her head to hide her grin. He might have been an asshole, but Sendak wasn't stupid. That was just what Pidge had been counting on.
"The others," Sendak said abruptly.
Pidge jumped, startled. "Huh?"
"The rest of the Paladins, and the Castle of Lions," he clarified. "Where are they?"
"I don't know," Pidge said. "They all went in different directions when the wormhole corrupted."
Sendak hummed. "And you haven't tried to locate them?"
"I'm not letting you interrogate me again!" Pidge snapped.
"I am not -" Sendak cut himself off. She glanced back at him, saw him shake his head out of the corner of her eye. "...There was no intent to interrogate," he said.
Pidge sighed. There was no point to withholding information-they were about to come back in sight of Green anyway. "The crash knocked the Green Lion out of commission," she said. "Until the main power comes back online, I can't use the navs or try to contact the Castle." She paused and eyed him again. "Is that what happened with your fighter?"
Sendak snorted. "I shut it down myself," he replied.
"What? Why the hell would you do that ?" Pidge yelped.
"There's a distress beacon in the pod programmed to activate when it enters specific sectors of known space across the empire. Since I've been declared a traitor, I would prefer not to have a signal, particularly a distress beacon, pointing to my location."
"So you know where we are?"
"The Artos nebula wrecking grounds." Sendak leapt past her, landing on a crumpled frill of steel. "This cluster eats ships. Hence the distress beacon. It's coded directly into the pod, so the only way to turn it off was to shut it down."
"...You don't sound too concerned," Pidge said. She caught up and passed him easily-then stopped dead and turned around. "Wait, you actually betrayed the empire? You mean you weren't just waiting for an opportunity to betray us ?"
"I did say they would kill me if I went back," Sendak said, neatly dodging her question and her reach as he bounded past her. He perched lightly on a twisted spar of metal, watching her approach. The hairs on the back of her neck stood straight up.
"...Didn't you say you were going to kill me the next time I got too close to you?" she said, coming to a halt. They studied each other for a minute, the silence stretching like a spring about to snap.
Sendak looked away, breaking the tension. "Survival comes before vengeance," he muttered.
"...Oh," Pidge said. That made a surprising amount of sense. Why hadn't she thought of that? She could feel her cheeks heating with embarrassment and took off again along the ring to hide it.
They rounded the corner of the ruined hull just in time to watch Green raise her head and the yellow lights in her eyes come back on.
"Hey, you're working again! Welcome back!" Pidge shouted. She launched herself across the void immediately, activating her jetpack when her jump wasn't enough to reach the Lion. The trasherpillars swarmed around her in wide, exuberant loops.
Green's massive head tilted towards Pidge, and she had the feeling that those glowing eyes regarded her fondly. The Lion inclined her head downward, like she was going to swallow Pidge whole, and she launched herself up into Green's mouth, heading for the cockpit. If Green was back online, she could use the comms, the nav, find the others before they had to find her. She settled into her chair, opening dialogues and looking through them for any sign of the Castle or the other Lions.
Nothing. They had to be out of range.
She was so absorbed in the search that she didn't even notice Sendak had entered the Lion until something thudded behind her. She turned around in the chair, and there he was, leaning heavily against the wall. The thud had been his helmet, which he'd apparently dropped. He pushed himself back upright when he noticed her gaze and stared at her intently. Pidge stared back.
She'd never felt this tense before, not even her first day infiltrating the Garrison.
"Nothing?" he asked.
Pidge shook her head. "So what do we do now?"
"Why are you asking me ?" Sendak huffed, flattening his ears.
"I dunno," Pidge snapped. "Maybe because you know where we are? Maybe because you've spent your whole life out here? Maybe it's because you're an alien commander from an intergalactic empire and I've been going to a school run by a species that hasn't even left our solar system for one year?"
Sendak's head tilted, his expression becoming thoughtful. "You make a good point," he said slowly. "But this situation-stranded in enemy territory, with all allies totally out of reach-isn't what you'd call common ." His brows furrowed. "You need a way to reach your team without alerting this sector's commander or any of the patrolling subcommanders to your presence."
"Hm…" Pidge drummed her fingers on her armrest. "What we need is a way to amplify Green's signal so we can get in touch with them...or let them get in touch with us …"
Sendak shrugged. "Don't ask me. I know nothing about technology."
" How . You fly spaceships , how do you not know how to repair them or amplify signals or anything?!"
"Because I don't work on the tech. My job is to show up with the big gun, destroy things, and kill people. I can do very minor maintenance work on some of the ships I know how to fly, and that's all." Sendak went to cross his arms, paused, and set his hand on his hip instead. "If you wanted a tech specialist, you should have killed me instead of Haxus."
Pidge glared at him. "Well it's too late to change that now." She stood up and walked past him, towards the door. "I'm headed back out to see if there's anything in the junk I can use. You can come if you want, or you can stay in Green if you're too chicken ."
Sendak's eyes narrowed. "... Chicken ? What does that mean ?"
"Cowardly," Pidge said smugly.
Sendak snarled. "Call me a coward again and I'll rip your arm off and beat you with it."
Pidge turned around, crossed her arms, and met Sendak's stare. Sendak stared back, ears flat to his skull. His upper lip curled, exposing blue-black gums and long, white fangs. Pidge bared her teeth in response. It felt inadequate and almost stupid, but, to her surprise, Sendak hunched his shoulders and looked away.
"...Fine," he grumbled. "But I will need to do something about this sleeve before I can leave the ship."
"Could you tie it off?" she asked.
"If I had two hands," Sendak said, "but that would also negate the problem."
Pidge hesitated. "...I could tie it off for you."
Sendak's ears flattened. "Leave the bayard in the pilot's chair and I'll consider it."
Pidge sighed, walked back to her chair, and put her bayard down on the seat. She looked back over her shoulder at Sendak, who flicked his ears up-a signal to approach, she guessed. She tied the sleeve off about halfway up, as high as she could reach. Sendak stepped back out of range as soon as she finished, eyeing her warily. Good. She deliberately made eye contact with him when she retrieved her bayard, relishing the way his ears flattened and he avoided her gaze.
She made sure Sendak exited Green before she did, waiting in the Lion's mouth until he leapt out past her and into the void. Gravity seemed to work more on him than it did on her-probably because he was heavier, so stronger forces worked on him than on her. Unfortunately, it also meant he got more oomph when he pushed off something, making his leaps longer than hers and propelling him away more quickly. Pidge growled and launched herself after him, activating her jetpack to propel her further-and her foot caught on a cable, smashing her to the ground in a pile of junk. The scraps and shards of metal around her floated up and away, leaving her draped over a wide metal rim-an iron alloy by the way it had rusted. The trasherpillars swarmed around her, chirping and squeaking. One of the green ones floated forward to hover over her shoulder.
"No, it's not my friends," she said, giving the little alien the side-eye. "It's just an old, rusty satellite." It took her a few ticks for that last word to sink in, and then she bolted back upright. " Satellite ! Sendak, get over here! I think I've got a way to reach the Castle!"
The Galra bounded back toward her, stopping a safe distance away, and eyed her. "What is it?" he asked.
"I found a satellite!" she said, pointing down at the hunk of metal under her boots. "If Allura's in the Castle, she'll be able to pick up the Green Lion's energy if we can broadcast it far enough for her to detect, and they can come pick us up!"
Sendak hummed thoughtfully, brow furrowing. "Will the Empire be able to detect your energy transmission as well?"
"I dunno," Pidge replied. "How'd you find us on Arus?"
"I was given the name of the planet and looked for Altean spacecraft," Sendak said drily. "There was no scanning for Lions involved because we already had your location."
"...How?"
"I don't know, but my best guesses have to do with the Witch." Sendak shook his head slightly, then said, "Disregard that. What do you need me to do so you can build your transmitter?"
Pidge eyed him dubiously. "Why are you being so helpful?"
"The sooner we contact the others, the sooner I'm not alone with you ," Sendak shot back.
"...Fair," Pidge said, shrugging. "We're going to need to gather the materials to build this thing and get them all back over to Green so I can hook it up, and I'm gonna have to look over the satellite to see what needs fixed, and-"
"What materials do you need?" Sendak interrupted.
"-Uh, connector cables, mostly, and signal antennae or anything else you can scavenge to amp up the signal? And if you can find a power core to help boost I wouldn't turn it down-"
"On it."
And then he was gone, bounding off into the rings of junk. Half of the trasherpillars went with him, looping excitedly around his broad, dark form. Pidge watched until Sendak maneuvered around a half-crumpled hull and vanished, then pried open the service panel on the side of the satellite. No power. She couldn't tell what parts of it worked and what needed replaced if it wouldn't power on.
"...Whatever," she said, shrugged, and set to work excavating the satellite from the rest of the junk heap.
It took entirely too long to work the damn thing out of the garbage heap. Rust and solidified lubricants had all but fused the satellite to some of the surrounding junk, and it was too big to move easily, but finally, finally , it came loose. Pidge shoved it back toward Green.
It moved maybe a foot. Pidge groaned in frustration and shoved it again. Another foot. Another. Pidge peeped up over the edge and whined when she realized how far she was from Green. At this rate, she wasn't going to get anywhere. She screamed and kicked the satellite in frustration.
"Ow," said Sendak, and Pidge blanched. She'd forgotten he was there.
"...Sorry about that," she said.
"Don't do it again," Sendak grumbled. Pidge thought he sounded irritated, but it was hard to tell. "I'm returning to the Green Lion now with what I've scavenged. Do you need assistance?"
"Not from you ," Pidge muttered."
"Is this really the best time to be a petty brat?"
"...Shut up or I'm zapping you."
"It wouldn't be the first time today."
It took a second or two for that to sink in, and then she scrambled up on top of the satellite to look for the Galra. "Wait, what ? You've been electrocuted ?"
"I've had worse," Sendak said.
"No no no, wait a second, you were electrocuted today?" She could see him now, further down the ring, taking enormous leaps toward her. "Who did it? Why?"
"Exactly who you think, and for the obvious reasons," Sendak said coolly.
He was moving much more quickly than Pidge had thought, and within a few minutes his heavy boots slammed down on the satellite in front of her. She could hear his ragged breathing over the comms, watched his chest heave for air. He trailed a long streamer of black cable with various parts lashed to it like a tail. His head tilted slightly, studying her with that sharp yellow stare. She stared back, unflinching. Sendak didn't look like he'd been electrocuted recently, but the suit and helmet hiding most of his body made it difficult to tell. His head tipped the other way.
"Why don't you take these back to your Lion and allow me to handle the satellite?" Sendak suggested, offering her the cable.
Pidge lowered her gaze to his stomach, to the faintly discolored splotch along his abdomen and side. "Counteroffer," she said. "I'll take those back and then we move the satellite together."
Sendak's eye narrowed. "This is because I told you about the electrocution, isn't it."
"Yeah, and? What are you gonna go about it?" Pidge folded her arms across her chest.
Sendak growled and looked away. Pidge thought she saw his ears twitch, but with the helmet confining them it was hard to tell. She reached out, grabbing the cable, and launched herself toward Green. Kicking on the jetpack halfway across gave her the boost she needed to make it, and she landed lightly beside the Lion. Another boosted leap got her up on Green's back, where she ditched the cable and scavenged parts. Sendak huffed in her ear, and Pidge looked up in time to watch the satellite lurch toward her. She hurled herself off Green, scrambling back over the junk to reach the satellite. It lurched again, then lifted free of the trash heap. Pidge landed hard and scrambled around to the other side.
Sendak grinned victoriously at her. " That's what I was going to do about it," he said, sounding all too pleased with himself.
"Fucker," Pidge muttered.
Sendak's head tilted, brows creasing. "...Fucker?"
"Yeah." Pidge planted her hands against the satellite and shoved, activating her jetpack.
Sendak braced his shoulder against it and chipped in, and the satellite began to move smoothly under their combined effort. "What does that even mean ?"
"What, don't Galra have an equivalent term?"
"I don't know , because none of you have deigned to give me a definition for the fuck word."
"It's, uh, it's really vulgar slang for sexual intercourse." Pidge cringed a little saying it. "God, why couldn't you have asked Lance or somebody?"
"Because Lance isn't here," Sendak huffed. "...This is one of your species' weird taboos, isn't it? Aliens are so bizarre."
"Hey, you're the ones who don't have slang for it!"
"Because it's not vulgar or taboo! There's no reason to have insults or obscenities regarding something that isn't-" Sendak cut himself off, then said, "...Actually, nevermind. It isn't important."
Pidge braced herself against the satellite again and shoved. Sendak joined a second later, snarling with effort and throwing his whole weight against it, and the satellite began moving again. Slowly, slowly, inch by incremental inch until the momentum caught up. They gained real ground then, until finally, finally , the satellite came to rest against Green's side. Pidge let herself float off it, panting for breath. Green rumbled somewhere in the back of her mind, pleased and affectionate and-proud?-yes, proud. Something warm swelled in her chest.
Then she righted herself and clapped her hands together. "Alright! Let's get started building this transmitter!"
"What do you need me to do?" Sendak rasped. When Pidge turned to look at him, he was still leaning against the satellite, shoulders slumped and brows pinched.
"...Nothing," Pidge said. "You already said you don't know anything about fixing tech, so you won't be any help with this. As long as you promise not to mess anything up or try to steal Green, you can hang out inside until I finish. Sound good?"
Sendak's head tilted, eye narrowing. "You're being unusually nice."
"And you're being unusually pathetic, now get in the Lion."
" There's the rudeness I was expecting."
"Fuck you. Get out of the way so I can rebuild this satellite."
Sendak pushed off the satellite and leapt toward her, toward Green's mouth. "Sorry, I'm not interested in children, aliens, or alien children," he said smugly.
He hurtled past her, and she spun around and shouted, "You know what I meant, you asshole!" at his retreating back. Sendak all but cackled in reply and disappeared around Green's bulk.
And then he was gone. Pidge set to work.
She'd expected Sendak to just grab parts at random, but as she sorted through what he'd retrieved, she realized he'd scavenged everything she'd listed-and more, stuff she hadn't even considered. Structural supports, a complicated length of equipment she eventually recognized as an energy converter, not one but three spare power cores at varying levels of charge. Not a bad haul, all things considered.
She scrambled on top of Green's shield and pried open a plate, revealing sockets underneath. Pidge had located them while adding the cloaking device to Green-she'd checked every inch of the Lion she could access, building her own blueprints because the originals had been behind three firewalls in a hidden file in some completely illogical location in the Castle's database. And written in Altean, as it turned out when she hacked the files. Really, at some point, she was going to teach herself to at least read Altean, if not speak it.
Well, she wasn't going to manage that unless she got back to the Castle. Pidge shoved the thoughts aside and started piecing the transmitter together. Component after component, figuring how the scavenged parts fit together, the spire growing taller and taller atop Green's shield with each addition. Until, finally, it was time to wire in the last piece-the satellite itself. Pidge eyed it unhappily. Getting it up top where it needed to be was not going to be pleasant, at least not on her own. She didn't necessarily want to ask Sendak for help, especially after she'd told him to get out of her way, but, well…Pidge scrambled off Green's back and maneuvered her way over to the Lion's mouth.
Sendak wasn't in the cockpit like she'd expected. He hadn't just stopped in the airlock, either, and she'd thought he wasn't in the main chest cavity until a flicker of movement in the alcove between the back wall and the last 'rib' strut caught her eye. She tried to keep quiet as she approached, but it wasn't enough-Sendak peered out of the alcove, narrowing his eye when he spotted her.
"You're finished, then?" he asked.
"Not quite," Pidge said. "I still need to get the satellite up top and attached."
Sendak's ears tilted, and he arched a brow. "And you're going to ask me for help moving it." Not a question. He already knew the answer.
"...Yeah," Pidge said lamely.
Sendak sighed and lurched to his feet, grumbling something under his breath that she didn't quite catch. He swayed, clearly unbalanced, and braced himself against the wall for a moment or two. Then he pushed himself back upright and brushed past her. Pidge followed him back outside, watching his back and frowning.
He was hurt worse than he'd told her, that was obvious. She'd watched Shiro ignore his injuries after they retook the Castle, and he'd moved the same way: cautious, testing how far he could push before it was too much to take. Shiro hadn't let it stop him, though, and neither did Sendak. He prodded the satellite with the toe of a boot, then crouched beside it, hooked his forearm under it, and pushed upward. Pidge could see the strain in his legs, saw the junk under him actually crumple on itself beneath his feet. And the it was aloft. He sank back to his knees, head bowed.
"Your turn," he panted.
"...Thanks," Pidge said.
She launched herself at the satellite, bracing her shoulder on the underside of the disc, and ignited her jetpack. Higher, higher, higher, until she was level with the top of her amplifier stack. Pidge let it drift upwards a couple more seconds, then grabbed hold of a ledge and pulled it back down on top. She fit herself into the narrow gap between the satellite and the rest of the stack, wired in the last connection, and pushed back out, down to a control panel further down. Another connection clicked shut, and the panel lit up.
"That ought to do it!" she said, and peered back down at Sendak. He offered her a tentative thumbs-up, which she returned, grinning eagerly. They'd done it. They'd done it! "Let's see if we can get ahold of the Castle!"
Blue light raced up the sides of the tower, glowing lines and arcs of energy, all the way up to the disc and over the edge. And then she heard it. Something in the tower whirred and hummed distressingly. The lights higher up flickered and faded, dimming to black. Pidge wailed and jabbed frantically at the control panel, trying to get it to light back up.
"No! No, what's wrong?!" Nothing was responding. A scream built up in her throat. "We need to get out of here, come on !"
Below her, Green threw her head back and roared .
The lights came back on, racing up the sides of the tower, all the way to the satellite disc. A moment later, a rippling pillar of cyan energy burst from the top, arching away into the trash nebula. Pidge all but sobbed with relief. Sendak whooped over the comms, startling her, and she turned to get a look at him. He looked back, and she could tell even at this distance that he was elated . She floated back down until she was eye-level with Green.
"Thanks," she said, beaming up at the Lion. "Now, let's see if this thing works!" She scrambled back inside, into the cockpit, and barely bothered to throw herself down into the chair before she started fiddling with controls. "...I hope the signal's strong enough to reach the Castle," she said under her breath.
"It had better be, or we're going to have a problem," Sendak said.
"...What is it?"
"We must be closer to the edge of the wrecking yard than I thought. There's a cruiser out in one of those gas clouds, and I think they've sighted your distress signal."
"...Shit. Shit ." Pidge's hands rushed across the controls. "Come on !"
"They're beginning an approach," Sendak said. There was a faint tremor in his voice, mostly masked but not quite enough to hide it. "Still far out, and they'll have to navigate the wrecks, but they'll be here in fifteen, twenty doboshes if they don't crash."
"What do we do?" she asked quietly.
"...We have two options," Sendak said slowly. "If you can maneuver your Lion in here, we can head deeper into the wrecking grounds and evade capture until they either begin blowing things up to come after us or retreat to call for reinforcements, but moving will cost us your distress signal and it may be a while until we can recreate it. Or we can remain here and either fight them when they arrive or cast off the satellite and flee, and hope the Castle arrives before they do."
The cruiser had registered on her sensors now. Pidge squeezed her eyes shut. "I think we should wait and hope the Castle gets here first," she said. "I don't want to abandon the satellite unless we have to."
Sendak sighed. "Let us hope the Castle reaches us first, then."
Ten doboshes into the wait, Pidge's sensors detected a wormhole opening. She turned Green's head until she could see it, and the familiar shape of the Castle darting from it and flying toward them. Pidge whooped and scrambled from the cockpit, launching herself to float in gleeful rings around Sendak.
"We did it! We're getting out!"
The Galra snorted, but his expression was relieved. The trasherpillars circled them in wide, jubilant loops, and Pidge laughed out loud.
Her comms crackled a second later, and Allura's familiar voice hit her ears. "You saved us, Pidge! We were stuck in a time loop!" The princess sounded as relieved as Pidge felt.
"Did you get us out with that giant trash pile?" That was Coran, and Pidge had never been so glad to hear his voice.
"It's a makeshift communications link that sends out the Green Lion's energy," she started, "like the one that guided the Blue-"
Sendak prodded her in the ribs. "Cruiser. Keep it short," he said tersely.
"Is that-" Allura started.
"Yeah, it's Sendak," Pidge said quickly. "Listen, we gotta get out of here. There's a Galra cruiser heading our way, and I don't wanna tangle with it."
"...Right," Allura said. "Come on, let's get out of here, and find the rest of the Paladins."
"We're on our way now," Pidge said, and maneuvered back into Green's mouth. The quiet thunk behind her said Sendak had followed, but she ignored him until she'd landed Green safely in her hangar on board the Castle. Not that the Galra made himself obtrusive-he stayed silent, and that somehow made him more worrying. He stayed quiet all the way to the bridge, too, trailing her by a couple feet and avoiding her gaze whenever she looked back at him.
When they arrived at the bridge, Coran and Allura were visibly absorbed in some task with the controls. Allura had the 3D star map up and flicked through it, searching it intently. Coran was bowed over his control panel, but he looked up when they entered the room and flashed them a wide, welcoming smile. Pidge beamed back and very nearly launched herself across the room to hug him. She looked up at the viewscreens instead, taking in the wide, black expanse of space they displayed instead of the yellow-green bands of the trash nebula. For a moment or two she almost missed it.
And then one of the distant stars in the projection lit up, flashing black and red. Allura sighed with evident relief and zoomed in on it, lighting up the second planet in the solar system.
"There they are," she said, and turned to face the door. "Pidge, you're going to have to go and get them-we're undetected in this quadrant, and I'd rather we didn't have to move the Castle again until after we've rescued the other Paladins. We're going to need time to recharge after that...mess...at Zarkon's central command."
"I'm on it," Pidge said, and hurried back toward her hangar.