Hi everyone! It has been a while. Life has been insane as usual and last year was a rough year for me, but I want to write more in 2019.

Anyway, I started this ages ago and decided now was as good a time as any to finally finish it and upload.

This could take place anytime during season 1 after Pidge revealed she was a girl, or even after season 1.

Enjoy :)

Pidge walked through the hallways of the castle, working her way toward Lance's room. She began to notice everything about the castle that didn't bother her before. The walls were too white and sterile looking and the rooms of her friends were spaced out where she had to walk farther than she wanted when, quite frankly, she wasn't in the mood for it. She guessed this was so each paladin was closer to their respective lion and that came in handy in an emergency, but any other time it seemed to be more of a hindrance. The common rooms were more in the middle, between all of their rooms. Lance wasn't to be found in any of them, though. Which, is rare for him. She had to think about the more trivial things that bothered her at the moment in order to push the darker thoughts back. She wasn't allowing herself to lose her cool until she was safely inside the green lion's hanger. Better yet, make that her lion's cockpit.

She rounded the last corner before Lance's room, thankful that she was almost at her destination. His door was open, which meant Lance didn't mind anyone popping in. Good, she wanted this to take the least amount of time as possible. She was about to tap lightly against Lance's open door to get his attention, when he looked up.

"Hey Pidge. I haven't seen you much lately. What's up?" Her friend was worried - and that was the last thing she wanted right now.

"Nothing much. I've been working on some adjustments for green and got caught up in it. But I came to see if you had my headphones?"

"Yeah, they are right here," Lance pointed to his nightstand where Pidge saw the familiar green color poke out from under an earth magazine Coran had managed to print off for Lance. He lifted the magazine off and grabbed the headphones for Pidge, "You okay?"

"Yeah. I was just going to listen to some music while I worked." Pidge walked over, taking the headphones from Lance and looking around the room to avoid eye contact while she answered.

"Alright, just don't overdo it or else Hunk will chase you down and demand you eat something. Or Shiro might find out and come drag you to your room and insist you get some sleep." Lance smiled, thinking about the two's mother hen tendencies.

"I'll try not to. No guarantees though; you know how I get when I'm in the zone." She ended with a laugh that she hoped Lance didn't see through. She also mentally slapped herself for rambling slightly, which she knew she tended to do when covering up something.

….

All of the paladins except for Pidge were eating dinner. They had hoped Allura and Coran would join them, but the two had took an early dinner and set to work on improving the castle's shields not long before the usual dinner time.

"Does anyone know where Pidge is?" Hunk spoke up.

"She stopped by my room earlier to get her headphones. Said she was going to work on green some. Probably just lost track of time." Lance responded, shrugging it off and bringing another spoon of beef stew flavored goo to his mouth. He didn't know how Hunk managed to pull it off, but it tasted delicious. His thoughts began to wander while he ate and suddenly he realized something. "Hey Hunk? Doesn't Pidge usually hate noise while she is working?"

"Yeah. Whenever I go in there and help her, we don't talk. I brought her a radio once and she waved it off, saying it would interfere with her work. The radio is in my room now, if any of you want to use it. It picks up some strange music though."

"Well, that's weird. She came to get her headphones from me to listen to music while she worked." Everyone at the table stared at Lance for a minute. He sat his spoon down, "What?"

"Lance, did she seem okay?" Shiro's calm voice cut through the silence that followed. He had an undertone of worry lacing its way through his usual calm demeanor however.

"I mean, she was acting a little different from usual but I asked her if she was okay and she said yeah." Lance answered, looking back and forth between Shiro and Hunk, who were standing up.

"Lance, people can say they are fine when they aren't actually fine." Keith answered, anger painting his voice instead of worry. He stood up, moving around the table toward the others.

"What? What did I do?!"

"Nothing. Come on, we need to go check on her." Shiro answered, laying his hand on Lance's shoulder.

….

Pidge forced herself to walk slow all the way to her lion's hanger. In reality, all she wanted to do was run there and be within the safety of Green as soon as possible. Once the hanger's doors opened and she noticed no one was in there, she ran to Green who sensed her distress and opened up before she even reached the lion. Once inside, tears started falling from her eyes as she went to where she kept a blanket in case she ever got stranded. The tears fell faster once she was curled up in her pilot chair. Green hummed into her mind, trying to soothe the paladin.

Pidge couldn't be soothed though. She wrapped the blanket tight around herself and tried to disappear from the world as she thought of how half of her family was missing. It had been months and they had found nothing pointing to her father or her brother. She didn't even know if they were alive or dead and the chances of the latter were increasing as time goes on. She cried because she couldn't get any information. She wasn't trying enough. She needed to stay up later and get up earlier to make sure she didn't miss anything. Pidge began to think that if she can't find anything after this long, that she is useless. Why was she even alive if she was going to fail not only her father and brother, but her mother also?

She pulled out her headphones and plugged them into her phone. She hadn't been able to find a way to download earth music from that far away yet, but the music she had on her phone when she left should help. But a sad song came on and it very much did not help. Her crying turned into a sort of crying/hyperventilating hybrid. It was then when the hanger room doors opened and the other four paladins entered.

….

Shiro and the others walked into the room and looked around, not seeing her anywhere. Naturally, this scared them all. They darted toward Green, Shiro in the lead with the others not far behind. Shiro placed his hand on the lion's head, "Please let us in. We want to help."

The lion didn't budge, loyal to her paladin. Lance stepped up and placed his hand on her head, "Listen Green, this is my fault. She seemed a little down earlier and I didn't notice. I am here to right that. So please let us in."

Green opened up and, once inside, the paladins heard crying.

They follow the sound until they see Pidge under a blanket in the pilot's chair. Shiro pulled the blanket back in an effort to find her face and ended up startling her where she had the headphones on. Pidge bolted upright in the seat.

"Green, what the hell?! Why did you let them in?" Her outburst causes all of the paladins to freeze. In her head, she hears Green urge that they could help. Pidge just huffed and tried to sink back under her blanket. Shiro stopped her though, squatting down in front of the seat and sliding her headphones off her ears. She just stared at him before wiping her current tears away and looking at the others that had crowded around her chair.

"What's wrong?" Shiro asked at last, the others not knowing what to do. Pidge just shook her head.

"Please, Pidge? None of us have seen you much lately and you seemed down this morning. Now you're crying alone in your lion." Lance piped up from her right, placing a reassuring hand on her shoulder.

"You know; you can talk to me any time you need to." Hunk came into view from her left, seeming sheepish.

"That goes for me too. I'm pretty sure that goes for all of us. We are all here for you." Keith threw in from behind her. She couldn't believe that Keith had come with the others to make sure she was okay too. At this realization, she burst back into tears and Shiro pulled her forward into a hug. The others joined in on the hug, shrouding her in gentle warmth until she had cried herself out.

"Now, what caused all this?" Shiro asked, pulling away from her so he could see her face.

"I just feel like a failure. I haven't been able to find dad or Matt after all this time."

"Pidge, you are not a failure. Your dad and brother will be so proud of you when we find them. And we will find them. You have fought the Galra and you have helped so many people and planets. I may not be here now if you hadn't had my back in some of our battles." Shiro explained, his hands on her shoulders.

"You don't have to do all this work alone; your dad and Matt wouldn't want that for you. I can help you with your scanning sometime." Lance said and Pidge laughed. Lance pretended to be offended that she would laugh before rephrasing, "Okay, I probably can't help with it; but I can keep you company. Or can come hang whenever you feel like it, Pidgey." Shiro and Keith looked confused at the nickname, but Hunk had a knowing grin. Back at the garrison, Lance had started calling her this because she was always on some sort of tech device. He would say she was playing Pokémon (Which Lance secretly enjoyed). Lance had stopped using the nickname casually because she would usually throw the nearest object at him. After that, he usually just used it when Pidge was sad in a strange effort to cheer her up.

"Don't call me that." Pidge responded, shoving Lance's shoulder gently while she tried to hide her smile at the memory from what seemed like ages ago.

"Yeah, and whenever you need a break you can train with me. It really does help get your mind off of things." Keith spoke up, giving her shoulder a squeeze. She realized that this may not mean much to some people, but it meant a lot coming from Keith.

"Whenever you miss them and want to talk, you can come share memories with me. It would be great to learn more about them. Or if you just want to talk in general, I'm always here." Shiro beamed from his spot in front of her. She may take him up on the offer sometime; after all, she realized he must miss them a lot too.

"I'm happy to help with the scanning any time. I'm also always here for when you want to stress eat. Or just try out my new creations. I've actually been working to create peanut butter flavored goo. And I understand that it will never be peanut butter, but I am trying to get the flavor close at least. Speaking of, you should come try what I've managed so far since you skipped dinner." Pidge's face lit up at the mention of peanut butter. She missed a lot of things about Earth, but peanut butter was high on that list. She reached over and hugged Hunk. After a second, the others joined in again. When they broke apart, Hunk grabbed her hand and hauled her up, pulling her toward the kitchen.

"I'm coming too!" Lance yelled, hopping up and following after the two. Shiro looked at Keith.

"What are we going to do with them?" He asked with a smile. Keith smiled back and shook his head.

"I don't know." With that, they silently followed after the trio. Shiro was glad Pidge had everyone to help her through the weight of not knowing the whereabouts of Samuel and Matt. He was also glad that Lance, Hunk, and Pidge had been friends at the garrison and found their way here. Keith was glad that he had them as friends, and what he considered to be family. Shiro was glad he had them all. They kept him together after everything that had happened.

Let me know what you all thought! I hope you enjoyed it :)

I'm currently working on another Voltron fanfic that will be multiple chapters. No guarantees for when I will start uploading it though, because this is my last semester before I get my Bachelor's degree. It's probably going to be a busy semester, but I hope to make progress on that story!