It is interesting, when reflecting upon the jagged journeys that lead us to where we are today, how things change so drastically yet remain very much the same. Three years might not be a long time for those who have lived monotonously with a year being yesterday and tomorrow yet another year. However, there are changes that occur, shifts that are subtle but necessary. They provide a structure of strengthening character, maturity and an increased depth.

It's unnoticeable in day-by-day life.

It's something people might notice, only, upon reflection.

And it's something so intrinsically human - it's almost necessary that people not notice. Because when it's suddenly rebooted? It's a hollow sort of happening.

"We're in space?" Lance's voice crack in the middle adding to a quickly quadrupling list of things affirming what Pidge and Shiro had hastily hypothesized to be true.

Lance was every bit an eighteen year-old again.

"Yeah, buddy. We got abducted by your lion and launched through a wormhole into this castle and…" Hunk paused, his expression tightening as he saw the look of concentration on Lance's face.

And oh, he did look younger. There weren't the subtle bags under his eyes and that barely-there scar from the bomb blast? Not decorating his left cheek.

Most shockingly, perhaps, was how openly upset he looked.

After three years of fighting a space war everyone had hardened - even just a bit. Lance was still the most expressive but… this sort of raw emotion? It was laced with an innocence that was lost to the past Lance.

Hunk had every intent to barge onward in his retelling but was interrupted by the piercing eyes of his best friend.

"Hunk? How long have we been in space?"

"Almost three years."

He looked confused, eyebrows knitting together.

"It feels longer…"

Here's the thing about being human. People say things all the time. Communication is both a favorite thing and a constant thing- so much so that it's almost white noise. But there is a weight to words. It might not hold up in court where evidence must be physical or at least made physical, but hunches are not always anxiety. Sometimes they're more truthful than what is right before your eyes.

There's a dark static in those words. A weight of mysterious, void-filled knowledge. The sort of knowledge one might have in a dream- where things don't make sense but you know more than you should. There's an almost predictive air of clairvoyant clarity. The hazy fog of an ocean that is right there but the surface of which not even the scientists who study it understand.

De ja vu at it's finest.

What Lance says, his cadence and his conviction is far too deep for a sophomore in a military college. Something has shifted and it isn't just his appearance.

It is this hunch that makes Hunk hold his hands still, his gaze lifting up to the navy orbs staring just left of his own.

"Longer how?" He asks. Stringent. Steady.

Suddenly Lance's face, previously staring in stoney silence, comes alive his eyes widening and head whipping rightward towards a wall. A whispered, "they're here" is all Lance says before he's dragging Hunk up and out of he room.

A room that shakes as the wall- that very wall Lance had looked at- implodes with enemy fire.

Alarms blaring perhaps a second too-late.

The doors leading into the room begin to close- a contingency wired into the castle so oxygen and people aren't sucked into the void should the room become suddenly more spacious.

A contingency which worked actively against the two paladins who, mere inches from the frame, began to be sucked into the vacuum.

They were locked off from the castle. And they were fast-approaching the abyss.