It surprised Lance as to how quickly he, and the rest of the humans, got used to everything.

After the first couple of days of fighting the Galra and collecting the Lions and starting the really hard training courtesy of Allura, everything seems to fall into place for everyone. They all get used to the new, shorter, day cycle that the castle has, and they all get used to the fact that they needed to educate Allura and Coran about what Earth was like and they all get used to the idea of having sentient robotic Lions that could join together and form a bigger sentient robotic Humanoid that was, in all respects, fucking badass.

As there are things they need to adapt to as a group, there's things they need to do on their own. Pidge needed to learn to trust the rest of the team with whatever secret she was hiding along with her gender (not that Lance could say much about it), Keith needed to learn to let his barriers down for just a bit, and relax with the lot of them. Hunk needed to understand that this all was real, that people were getting hurt, and Shiro needed to understand that depriving himself of sleep and continuously working out would not help these people out.

Lance knew exactly what he needed to do, he needed to tell the truth to everyone, to let them know everything that he knew, but every time he found what could be the perfect situation, the words got clogged in his throat, unable to leave.

He wasn't stupid, no, he knew something like this might happened. He knew the risks of coming to space, what it would come with it, the dangers as well as the add-ons. He hadn't spent sleepless nights with Paulyne talking over the phone while in the Garrison, or on the roof watching the stars together when he was younger and back at home, about 'what if's' for , this isn't what they had talked about. They had talked fighting the Galran despite not being able to get to space. They had whispered about working with rebels, with making sure that they never said that they were Alteans in fear that they would be killed before they could explain everything, and instead hiding as another type of alien until they could be trusted but the others around them, and until they trusted those they worked with.

They were going to use their druidic powers for good, never to use it against someone or cause others pain. They were going to help save the universe, and prove that not all of their species were bad, and prove that not all Galrans were bad as well, a childish dream that they've carried ever since Lance was old enough to have a dream like that and now realised how unrealistic it all seemed, not that it had deterred him nor his sister from it, even if he was the more vocal one.

But this, being the Blue Paladin and flying off into space with Humans and finding pure Alteans are supposed to be dead, this wasn't part of the plan.

Paulyne was going to kill him. No question about it.

Sighing, Lance applied some more of the weird but familiar goo that Coran had given him underneath his eye, careful to avoid his markings that were out, before wiping his sticky fingers on a blue wet cloth, and starting the ticker on the counter for five doboshes, and listened to the ticking noise that soundly slightly too slow to what he was used to. Smiling into the mirror in front of him, he admired the weird contrast between the green of the face mask and the blue of his markings and the random strand of blue hair that got too close to the sticky substance, making sure to push it back to make sure none of the face mask went into his hair and caused him issues later.

It felt way too relieving to have his natural skin out, instead of his human mask. It felt like his face could finally breathe after so long at the Garrison hiding it due to sharing a room with Hunk, but now he didn't have that problem, meaning that he could finally sleep without the constant anxiety of having the mask fade away in his sleep. It was like relaxing a tense muscle after using it for so long, and it felt so nice to be able to relax like he would at home. But, at the same time, it caused anxiety, making him self aware of how mong he had been in the room by himself, how long he had until people came looking for him, how quiet the castle was and how thick the walls were.

He would never know if they were coming, an if they didn't knock-

The ticker on the counter started buzzing; his five doboshes were up. Picking up the wet cloth, he started to rinse off his face, and he smiled at the feeling of the weird material over his skin and his markings as it quickly picked up all of the face mask with no residue, leaving his skin smooth and sparkling.

Finally, before he left the room, he let his skin ripple, letting his own quintessence wash over him as he faded his marking until they were nothing and the blue pigmentation left his hair, leaving it brown. Finally, he felt his ears pinch as they became round and his eyes ache for a second as they too changed, to become the more human like rather than the multicoloured pupils that he shared with Allura and Coran.

Finally, he was done and presentable, able to leave his room without having to worry about the others, now, all he had to worry about was the training that he would be put under today. He goes to leave, and his eye catches the white crystal that radiated from his bedside table.

He wouldn't need it today, it was only training.


It wasn't just training today, oh no, it was also finding out that there was an entire species of cute cuddly aliens not even a mile away from the castle's location. Not that they were bad for his first alien species to meet (because technically, the Alteans didn't count if he was one and he has yet to meet a Galran even if he was supposed to be helping fight a war against them).

And that wasn't enough, oh no, they just had to be attacked by a ginormous robot beast thing that Shiro apparently recognised. It was terrifyingly huge, the same size of Voltron when it was fully formed. Humanoid shaped with a magnetic ball for a weapon that hurt like hell when they were hit with. It was extremely lucky in Lance's opinion that Shiro had fought it (Lance didn't think it was an 'it' when Shiro had first fought it in the arena, but he knew what druids were like, he was one after all, he knew from hands on experience that it wasn't all glowing stones and colourful lights) before it became what the Paladins fought.

But, they had won (by the scrape of their teeth, but, no matter how grateful he was, Lance was not going to say thanks to Keith for pulling out a sword of thin air, just, no), and now they got to celebrate, which would be pretty cool, even if it was only just going to be the Arusians, the Paladins and the two Alteans in attendance.

Lance wasn't the only one to think that having a party would be a great idea, Hunk couldn't wait to be in charge of all the food (even if he didn't recognise it), and Coran seemed to be pulling out all the stocks for this event, going into all the storage that the castle had (and it was a lot, even when you took out everything that had expired in the last 10,000 decapheobs) and getting things out, from some weirdly named drink called Nunville (Lance didn't trust it one bit) to some odd looking trumpet that sounded more like a violin, insisting that he played a few songs to their guests, but for some reason, Lance got the idea that this would only be happening after he drunk the weirdly named drink that he mentioned before.

Not everyone was happy about this event happening, of course. Pidge had frowned when Lance had gone into Green's hangers to announce the news, before looking back down at her computer and typing at her insanely fast typing past, to the point that Lance is now convinced that she is just keyboard smashing rather than typing. Shiro had nodded when he had bumped into him on his way to his bedroom, and Shiro had smiled and said that the event was good for Voltron, but there was a weariness in his eyes that Lance knew from his Grandfather, and he didn't have to read Shiro's mind nor his quintessence to see that he was anxious and paranoid of the upcoming event.

But, Lance was excited for the event. A party with cute cuddly aliens, celebrating the fact that they were all alive after the terrible ordeal that was that weird robot beast thing (they really needed a name for that), nothing could go wrong!

(A lot could go wrong, like Coran cooking food instead of someone who could cook or time catching up with the castle and something breaking down because of it, but they were low risks, and they were ones that everyone was going to take.)

Of course, no one seemed to know what they were doing after the party, after all the cute Arusians had gone back to their village and self-sacrificing to the gods, but could they be blamed? They were supposed to be taking on the entire Galran Empire, no one really knew how you were supposed to start off with that.

Well, Lance had a couple of ideas, like going to the Blade of Marmora or some other rebel group for information and then going from there, which did seem better than just going from planet to planet, freeing them from Zarkon's grasp (not that it was a bad plan, just a long and boring plan riddled with holes). The problem with his plan to go to the Blades would be the fact that he would have to explain how he knew about the Blade of Marmora, and to do that he would have to explain that he was Altean and, yeah, while it was a needed thing to do, he knew for a fact that some people would not be taking it well, as well as the other questions that it would bring up.

They were going to ask about the other Alteans, about why he didn't tell them after so long. They were going to ask about his family and about the rebels and about Earth and so many other things that Lance either didn't care about or he didn't have the answer to. On one hand, he wanted to avoid it completely, never tell them anything about his heritage, which was a bad thing because it was inevitable, in the end. On the other hand, the suspense was killing him, he just wanted to scream it from the top of his lungs at this point, but because of the fact that people will have questions and they just simply didn't have the time between now and the party, Lance had just resigned to tell them afterwards.

So, he helped Coran set up the hall and he listened to Allura's ranting about how it needed to be perfect, then he helped entertain Hunk while he cooked and then he collected the other Paladins from whatever they were doing, Keith from his room, Shiro from the training deck and Pidge from one of the pods, and then it was time for the party to start.