prologue
In the dark hours of the night, the castle was filled with ghosts.
Hunk knew this for sure. They followed him around like wisps of wind, singing in the back of his mind, fluttering past his weary bones as he trudged down hall after hall. They surrounded him, the ghosts of his parents, the ghosts of the kids who played 'mechanic' with him down the block—spiraling about, twirling in poised pirouettes, in his hazy vision.
Allura saw them, too. The princess sometimes glanced behind him as he entered the cockpit doors, as if a small child would come leaping through right after, or a kind mother would wave and greet with soft hellos. Her eyes were misted and cloudy when she scanned the holograms for Galra activity, in a panic despite Zarkon having fallen weeks before.
But along with Zarkon, fell Shiro.
Just one more ghost to linger, and it destroyed the yellow paladin with self-inflicted guilt. Hunk busied himself the best he could, he kept his eyes on his hands, he worked on meaningless trinkets and recipes to keep him busy, but despite the oil and the flour that coated his calloused palms he still imagined red blood seeping through.
Hunk was going crazy, he thought. So he latched onto Lance.
Lance was fine with this, of course. He let Hunk lurk in his room long after they both should've be asleep, he let Hunk linger a bit closer when they headed for the cockpit in the early hours of the morning, he applied creams and lotions to Hunk's face after a good long cry; Lance would bundle him with blankets in the break room when he couldn't sleep, telling him stories of the stretches of beaches he called Cuba.
"There are so many ghosts in this castle," Hunk had sobbed one night, "they dance around me all the time. I'm going crazy."
But Lance had laughed, cracked a joke, before replying with all seriousness and a thousand-watt grin, "Then let's dance with them!"
So that's how Hunk spent his birthday, fumbling through the Salsa in a hall, with the only music being Lance's melodious laughter and the tap of their bare feet.
Pidge was unsure, as most teenagers would be. Unsure—however, unlike most teenagers, the fate of the galaxy weighed on her shoulders, and the fate of her family lay in her hands. God, was it difficult sometimes, with the early mornings and late nights and rows and rows of code; she hated it. Sometimes, with guilt weighing in her heart and panic crackling in her chest she wished, desperately, that she had never let her father leave, never let her brother leave; she wished she'd never gone after them.
Now she was searching, in space, with all the resources in her grasp, resting just in her fingers or a little farther out, keeping her up in the late hours of the night, despite there being no moon to light up her rows of printed pages or sun to warn her the day.
Just space. Cold, dark space, seeping in her window with hues of purple and black and gray, threatening to swallow her hole.
And Shiro. Shiro was who she needed, a hand on her shoulder, an overwhelming presence of calm, safety, so she knew he would protect her, they would find them together.
Now Pidge has to find Shiro, too. That broke her more than the thought of her mother, sobbing over three empty coffins, and the bodies of her father and sibling floating out in the void.
Because without Shiro, it was just her—not Pidge, the brainiac, cool and collected green paladin—but fifteen year old Katie Holt, small and alone in the most frightening part of the galaxy, rotting away over blinking computer screens and hopeless coordinates.
"Pidge?" A voice called.
Pidge didn't answer. The sobs shook her body, silent and pure; she didn't want him to see. Didn't want him here, in her trashed, disgusting room, didn't want him to see pathetic Katie Holt, barely alive in the dark hours of the night.
"Pidge."
Lance's hand was on her shoulder. It wasn't powerful or commanding, not the safe security that Shiro always held with him—but smooth, warm, comforting, calm, so painfully Lance that tears anew spilled from Pidge's eyes.
"They're gone," Pidge wailed.
Lance pulled her close, like Pidge's mother often did after the kids teased her in class.
"They're gone," she repeated like a mantra, "he's gone."
Lance didn't say anything. He wasn't like Shiro, he didn't make false promises, he didn't fill her ears with pointless apologies. He was simply there, stagnant and wrapped around her like water, a presence for her and for her only. For both Katie Holt and Pidge.
So there was nothing to say.
Keith wondered if Lance can see souls.
It was like he could see through them—blue eyes always wondering, despite the constant glimmer, calculating their every move, peering behind their dismissals or heavy sighs. He was there when the sun fell, throwing a comment here or there to turn Hunk's frown to a grin, flip Coran onto a ramble, send Allura to giggles, or even get Pidge to full-out sock him in the shoulder. He was there when the sun shined, throwing a arm around someone in celebration, laughing with a lopsided smile.
For Keith, he did the simplest of things. The rivalry had died down—not that it was ever there to begin with, obviously—but now it was subtle, hints of a friendship that Keith, though he would not admit it, was petrified of. Often Lance would pull Keith away from training to binge awful cartoons with Hunk and Pidge—the CDs snagged from the space mall, of course—laughing with the alien equivalent of popcorn spilling all over the carpeted floor. Occasionally, Keith's shirts would go missing, coincidentally after Lance would spot a hole in one and nag the red paladin endlessly about it; a day or two later, the article of clothing would show up in his closet as if it had never left, a row of stitches in one spot but otherwise as good as new. There was the smiles, too, coming randomly, from behind Allura's head when she lectured them or from across the table when Keith bothered to show up for dinner. The bickering was there, petty and sometimes infuriating, but it distracted Keith from his might-be-dead brother and heavy expectations.
Keith didn't know what to think about Lance. So he didn't think about him, and instead thought about Black. Black, who he poured his whole heart to, who still wouldn't let down her barriers. It made Keith want to scream.
So..maybe thinking about Lance and his weird friendship thing was better than that.
"Eyes are the window to the soul," Shiro has once said, after a long, long lecture about patience, "you can find some answers there."
They were pretty clear, eyes. Little glass orbs, glinting with certain emotions, dulling with others. Sheer, almost, like fabric.
Lance seeing souls seemed pretty dumb, but to Keith, it would make a lot of sense.
