A/N: Happy Birthday to my precious boy. You are deeply, deeply loved.

This fic is set around chapter four or five of The Godsent Wanderer, but it's readable alone.

The evening started out like any other. Twilight began to fall, and Hunk, Pidge, and Lance all turned away from the firelight so it wouldn't be in their eyes. They huddled together, chatting and joking, staring into the distance and seeing little. They trusted the lions to alert them if danger arose, which might have been a foolish assumption, seeing that the lions usually spent these times cuddling in a big pile of multi-colored fur, purring and dozing and lazily grooming each other.

Eventually, the hazy image of an inner room in The Crystal Lion appeared before them with Allura's face front and center, and the three adventurers smiled in greeting. Allura grinned back, and Lance thought perhaps she was more upbeat and sparkly-eyed than usual. Did she have news about her and Coran's research into the Galra spell runes? No, that would have made her more solemn and satisfied, not so distinctly pleased with herself. She looked like Blue after getting into Coran's prized whipping cream.

Lance squinted at her, but before he could ask what was going on, she looked directly at him, and her smile got even bigger. "Lance! There's someone here who wants to speak to you. Well more than one someone, actually." She giggled into her hand, which was adorable, of course, but also somewhat concerning.

Lance leaned forward, getting up on his knees as if that would help him see her better. "Allura, what are you talking about..."

She was already gone, whisking herself out of the image. Her voice still came over, faint, but all he could hear was the excitement in her tone as she gave instructions, and then Lance heard other voices. Suddenly, he couldn't breathe. His throat closed up, painful and tight as his heart skipped a beat. He felt dizzy, almost sick with it. It couldn't be, could it?

"Mamá?" He could barely hear his own voice. It sounded small, and young, and far away, as if it was echoing from a distance or muffled under a thick layer of water. There was a buzzing in his ears and black spots in front of his eyes. On either side of him, Hunk and Pidge went very, very still.

Then she was there, her image suspended before him. She looked nervous, hands clasped in front of her chest, eyes darting back and forth as she took in this magic. But it was her. It was Lance's mamá, short and solid and soft and beautiful and his. His mother. It was his mother.

And not only her. Papá was there, too, and Javier, and Mariposa, and Tiá Josefina. Lance's limbs felt weak as water, and he fell to his hands and knees. He heard Hunk and Pidge's voices from the same strange, echoing distance, felt their hands on his arms as they tried to support him. But he had eyes only for his mother.

"Mamá!" It came out strangled, halfway between a scream and sob.

She looked older. It had only been two years. Why did she look so much older? Tears filled Lance's eyes, and he blinked hard and fast, furious at this water for obscuring his vision. There were wrinkles around his mamá's mouth and eyes that hadn't been there before, more gray at her temples, and her hands looked more work-worn and tough than they'd ever been. Lance reached out, hardly aware that he was doing it, but he touched only air.

"Lance, no," Hunk murmured, grabbing his hand and pulling it back. "Don't disrupt the magic. It'll dissipate."

Hunk's hand was big and strong and broad, and he had the calluses of a swordsman instead of a sailor. He didn't have the old rope-burns, the weathering of salt and wind and wave, the bird-like bone structure under sinew and strength and soft, feminine edges. But in that moment, almost delirious with longing, Lance thought for a moment that it was his mother's hand he was holding. He squeezed hard, desperately hard, as if he could make her feel how much he had missed her and how glad he was to see her again with nothing but the strength of his fingers.

"Mamá..."

She looked back at him through the impossible distance between them. She could see him. She was looking at him. She smiled, slow and soft and wide, and tears filled her eyes, too. "Mijo..." she murmured. "You're alive. I knew it. I never stopped believing."

"Mamá." It was fully a sob now, pushed out of his throat on a desperate gulp of air. The tears spilled down, and Lance wrenched free of Pidge's grip so he could swipe his fingers over his face, though he kept squeezing Hunk's hand as hard as he could. He needed to see her, he had to get rid of these stupid tears, they were in the way…

It wasn't enough. This was miraculous, wonderful, fantastic, the best present he had ever received, and it wasn't even his birthday. He had never expected it, and he had no idea how he would ever repay Allura and Coran for making this happen. But it wasn't enough. He wanted to be there. He wanted to touch them. He wanted to kiss their faces and be kissed in return. He wanted to hug his mamá.

"Lance," Hunk murmured. "Buddy. You gotta breathe. C'mon."

Lance sucked in a breath. It burned in his throat and ached in his lungs. His eyes were starting to hurt from keeping them so wide open, staring at his family. "How...?" he asked. Not that it mattered at all.

Papá answered, giving Lance a smile that was loving and pained at the same time. He had always excelled at that. "Your friend with the orange hair found us. He said he had been going down to the docks every day since you left Sura City, asking for the Álvarez family. Imagine our surprise with this strange elvish gringo approached us, asking if we knew a boy named Lance."

Lance laughed moistly. He could too easily imagine Coran doing that, tramping down to the docks and talking loudly to every fisherman and sailor who would lend him an ear, flummoxing them with his foreign accent but charming them with his good cheer and sincerity, until he finally, at long last, found who he was looking for. "I bet you weren't even there for a full day before he found you."

His family laughed. It hurt to hear it, this familiar, long-missed medley of voices, Mamá's sweet chuckle, Papá's gruff rumble, Javier's hearty guffaw, Mariposa's giggle, and Tiá Josefina's nasal snicker. Lance wanted to be there hearing them in person so, so badly, but this was next best thing. A hole in his heart was being filled, not perfectly, but at least the patch would hold longer than his own poor attempts.

"I'm not sure that we were even there for a full hour," Javier said.

"I'll have to thank him," Lance said. "I'll have to, I'll have to..." I have to do so much. I want to do so much. Why am I here instead of there? What ever made me think that my presence was so essential to this mission? It's not, it's not, it's not, and I want to go home. I want to go home...

"Lance." Mamá's voice, soft and sweet. Her hand was raised in the air, reaching out as if she longed to touch him just as much as he longed to touch her. "What happened to you, mijo? Where...where did you go? Why..."

Lance blinked. His throat clogged up with too much, too many words, a flood behind a creaking dam. He wanted to tell her everything, wanted to pour it all out on the floor between them in a rush, but at the moment nothing would come. Irony of ironies, for the bard to be speechless against the force of his own story.

"I..." He gasped, then laughed, small and strained. "I fell overboard in that storm. But I didn't drown. I washed up in Sura City..." He told his mother what had happened to him in as few words as possible, skipping over the loneliness and homelessness of the first year and going right to moving in at The Crystal Lion. "I've learned...so much magic," he forced out. "I'm so much better at being a bard now, and I want to show you, I want to show you all, I want to show you everything..."

"There's time, Lance," Papá said gently. "We have all the time you need."

Lance shook his head desperately, eyes widening. "No, you don't understand. This...the magic that lets us talk like this... It's not going to last much longer. And we have to use it for important things, we have to... There's a quest. I'm on a quest, and I didn't want it, but I chose it, I chose to leave Sura City, and I knew I would miss you again, and I didn't want to, but I did, I decided to go, and I'm so sorry, I'm sorry, Papá..."

He devolved into sobbing, harsh and unrestrained. Hunk sniffled beside him, too, always quick with the sympathetic tears. Worse was the fact that Pidge was trembling. He could feel it as she leaned against his arm, and he didn't want that. But he couldn't help it. Couldn't help a lot of things, it seemed.

Mamá turned away, wrapping her arm around Papá's waist and hiding her face on his shoulder. He put his arms around her in return, but he looked back at Lance steadfastly with not even a shadow of tears in his eyes. "I know, Lancito," he said. "Your friends here... They couldn't tell us everything. But they told us enough. You left to save the family of your friend. The small one beside you, yes? Her father and brother are missing, and you are going with her because she had no one else." He turned his eyes to Hunk briefly, offering him a bright smile. "But you found little Hunk from the shell village along the way, that's good. I'm very happy that you're together again. That you're all together."

Lance squeezed his eyes shut, unable to look at him. His head bent down, and his tears fell in the dirt. Hunk held his hand almost as tightly as Lance was holding his.

"You don't have to apologize," Papá said, low and strong and rich, like a deep current sweeping the boats in to shore. "You don't have to apologize, mijo. Not for this. Never for this. Don't you dare say you're sorry for being a hero."

"I am though," Lance sobbed. "I miss you, Papá. I miss you so much."

"We miss you too," Mariposa said, wavering but fierce. Javier murmured agreement, his voice thick with emotion. "We miss you very, very much, baby brother. But we're proud of you, too. More proud than we can say."

"I don't..." Lance could barely speak, and it was killing him. He wanted to say so, so much. "I don't deserve..."

"Don't you say that," Javier rapped out, Lance's big brother taking the reins as he used to when Lance was a wild child running around the deck and threatening to tip overboard at any moment. "You deserve everything. You deserve the world. You're an adorable little brother and a wonderful bard, and I can't wait to listen to you sing and tell stories again. But we have time."

Lance shook his head, helpless, wordless. They didn't have time. They had no time at all. The light was fading from the sky, and soon it would be gone.

Tiá Josefina snorted in that brusque, caring way she had. "What my idiot nephew and idiot brother are trying to tell you, Lancito, is that we are waiting for you. Always. We have time, because we will see you again. Your mamá made us put off doing the rites of burial, always swearing that you would be back, and she was right. We will never doubt again. We will wait until you return, no matter how long it takes. Then we will be together again, and you can tell us everything you want to say."

Mamá let go of Papá and turned to look at Lance again. Her eyes were wet with tears, but she was smiling. "Yes. That's it, mijo. You go and be a hero. Finish your quest. Save the lost, bring hope to the hopeless, protect your friends. Spread joy and happiness everywhere you go, just as you have done since you were small. We will travel the ocean as we always have, and someday we will meet you again. I know it as I know that the sun sets in the west."

Lance swallowed. He wanted to believe his mother's words, but he knew that the world wasn't quite that simple, and fate was not that kind. Coran and Allura hadn't told his family everything. They didn't know about Zarkon and Haggar. They didn't know about the forces of evil that Lance and his friends would eventually face. There was every chance that Lance would never return to them. Rather, it was likely.

He couldn't show that. Not in front of his family. Lance sat up straighter, his shoulders going firm. Hunk's grip on his hand was warm and supportive, and Pidge pressed close on his other side, shivering but strong. Lance raised his chin and gave his mother a smile. "I will," he promised. His voice was rough with tears, but he injected some of the cheerful optimism she loved into it, even so. "I'll make you proud, Mamá. I'll be the best bard in the entire world, you'll see."

"I'm already proud," Mamá said, as the image and voices began to fade. "I love you, mi cielo. I love you more than words can say." The others echoed the sentiment, smiling at Lance through the misty distance.

"I love you too, Mamá. I love you, Papá, Javier, Mariposa, Tiá Josefina. I love you, I love you, I love you."

The image vanished. Twilight was over. Lance collapsed in the dirt and cried. Hunk wrapped him up and held him, his mighty frame shaking with sobs, too, and Pidge twined her arms around his waist from behind and pressed her face between his shoulder blades. After a few minutes, he felt Blue butting up under his armpit and loosened his grip on Hunk so she could squeeze under his arm and purr like a thunderstorm in his lap.

It went on for a while. Finally, though, Lance's tears ran out. He leaned back from Hunk, feeling damp and sticky and exhausted, breath still coming in little hiccups. He wiped at his eyes, and Blue stood up in his lap with her paws on his chest so she could lick his face and help him clean up.

Lance giggled and craned his head, trying to escape her rough tongue. "Thanks, Blue. I'm good. Really. It's okay." He could see Hunk's distressed face in the firelight, and he blinked up at him blurrily and managed a shaky smile. "Thanks to you, too, big guy." He patted Pidge's hand still on his waist. "And you, little buddy. I don't think I could have gotten through that without you guys holding me up."

"Aw, it's okay," Hunk murmured. He reached out to ruffle Lance's hair with his gigantic slab of a hand. "I know that was hard. And for what it's worth, I'm proud of you, too. You could have stayed in Sura City and ignored this whole quest thing, but you didn't."

Pidge's hand clenched in Lance's shirt, and he covered her fist with his own and pressed it there. He didn't want her feeling guilty about this. It had been his choice, and it hurt sometimes, but that didn't mean he'd been wrong. "Nah, no way I could have let this little pipsqueak wander around by herself anymore," he said lightly. "She could have gotten hurt, and her god would have come after me for vengeance."

"Hey!" Pidge snapped. Her grip on his waist turned into a painful pinch, and he laughed and squirmed away. "Who you calling a pipsqueak, you string bean?"

The fraught moment had been broken, and they moved from there into their usual playful insults and bickering, until the three of them sacked out in their blankets and fell asleep under the sky. Right before Lance drifted off, he felt Pidge scoot closer in the darkness until her head was next to his. Hunk was already asleep and snoring, and her voice was almost buried under the noise.

"Um, so, for what it's worth... I'm proud of you, too. I'm glad you're with me. Thanks for coming along."

Lance smiled into the dark and blinked back one last tear. "No problem, little sister," he said. "I couldn't have done otherwise. I mean it."

They fell asleep, drained and content. The next morning dawned bright and cloudless, the sky a beautiful shade of blue.

A/N: Yeah, so I almost made myself cry with my own fic. This one just really hit home for me, maybe because my own family is so precious to me, and the idea of being separated from them like Lance is here, and in canon, is almost physically painful to imagine. But at least he has Hunk and Pidge.