Title: A Place to Remember

Rating: T

Chapter: 10

Author's note: first season story

"B?" I opened my eyes. The room looked different, it was brighter. Looking outside the window, there was a meadow with flowers. That's weird, when did we land?

"Lance?" She was sitting there next to me, had she been there a minute ago?

"Hey, B, where are we?" I feel disoriented something isn't right.

"Come with me I have much to show you." She reached out her hand for mine.

Her hand was smooth and warm when I grasped it. She gave me a playful smile and tugged me up to my feet. She is like super strong. I sometimes forget how much stronger Alteans are.

"Where are we going?" I asked as she drug me out into the hall of the castle?

"There are things I want you to see." She smiled again and pulled on my arm. The castle was different, brighter, cleaner, newer maybe?

She drug me from one hall to another and stopped in front of a door. I recognized it as hers, this was where I had found her picture, the first one.

"B? How are you here? How am I here?" I'm a little concerned at this point because this doesn't make sense.

"You are here. Come?" She shrugged and held open the door for me.

I'm thinking this is the trippiest dream I have ever had, but might as well roll with it. So I walk through the door. Her room is full, like lived in full of stuff. She has a million bottles of who knows what on her table. There are clothes hanging off of the chair and a soft sent in the air something almost orange vanilla.

"This is where I lived. But my name is not B, why do you call me that?" she gave me a curious look.

"Oh um, your facemarks are blue, I hadn't seen any other pictures with Alteans with that color, so B for blue." I'm a little embarrassed I didn't expect to have to explain my nickname for her.

"Ah, okay, my name is Ella, I was a…hmm….I'm trying to find the right word in your language…medic? I think. An emergency medical worker who would go into battle with the soldiers and aid the wounded." Her frown was adorable and she smiled openly when she found the word she wanted.

"How do you speak English anyway?"

"Oh, from you, the language is yours, or at least one of yours." She answered. "There was only one language on all of Altea, some different words here and there, but just one language. It is fascinating that your world has so many." She walked around her room straightening things as she talked. She picked up a bottle.

"I had so many hair products, Crista used to make such fun at my expense."

"Who's Crista?"

"My best gal pal," she smiled again wistfully. "We used to get into such mischief. She was a nurse in the infirmary of the castle. One night we snuck out with a bottle of Nunvil and went dancing in a little village just south of the main city. They were having a harvest party." She started dancing and reached out to me, "Dance with me, Lance?"

I couldn't resist and we spun around her room laughing.

"Is Crista the girl in the picture with you?" I asked as we twirled in a complicated rhythm. I was really enjoying this dance.

"Yes. Would you like to meet her?" Ella looked up at me and smiled, "Would you like to meet all of them?"

Suddenly she was gone, the room was gone, and I was standing in that field I had seen outside of the castle. I pinched my arm, this dream is getting out of hand, but I didn't wake up and it hurt.

"Ouch." I rubbed the mark I had made on my arm.

"Well, don't hurt yourself, silly." A light voice called from behind me. I turned and there was the girl with the short white hair, Crista. She was frowning at me and came over to look at my arm. "Hmm…no harm done then."

"It hurt," I didn't appreciate the tone, seriously did she have to be so snarky.

"Well then don't do it again." She offered flippantly.

"I thought you were a nurse, aren't you supposed to take care of people?"

"Taking care of people does not mean coddling them. You should know better than to pinch your arm, and if you had really been hurt I would have taken care of you. Now, what are you doing here anyway, stuck in your mind." She turned and looked at me somberly.

"Is that where I am? I'm in my head? How did I get here? How do I get out?" Okay so that's a little panic worthy I think.

"I don't know, but panicking won't help." So I guess she didn't find it panic worthy.

"This has never happened to me before. How does this happen?" I sit down in the flowers. They feel real, they smell real, how am I in my head.

"I suppose there are lots of ways, have you been across any magic lately? It can go haywire. I once saw a person turned into a Yarstokian Boliveer. There was so much fur!" Her eyes crinkled and she laughed. It was a lovely sound, like something rare and special that didn't happen all the time.

I couldn't help but laugh with her and at the same time I'm wondering why I'm laughing because I should be more worried. Suddenly, I wanted to know more about her. Why I was here didn't matter so much. "Why are you a nurse?"

"I want to help people," her eyes were like emeralds, so deep green and sparkling. "I'm not actually good with people, I tend to be abrasive." She chuckled to herself. "But sometimes abrasive can be motivating and I'm really good at pushing people to do better. I worked mostly with people in our rehabilitation area, overcoming wounds that couldn't be healed even with the cryopods."

"What wounds can they not heal, they seem pretty miraculous to me?" I mean I was pretty close to dead and then all better within a few varga.

"Missing limbs, missing eyes, sometimes a deep enough wound will not be completely sealed…not everything can be fixed back to the way it was." Her eyes were thoughtful.

I couldn't help but picture soldiers from home, even Iverson with his eye, "Did that happen a lot in the war?"

"Even one is too many, but yes, it happened far too often." She turned and picked a flower and handed it to me. "However, with effort one finds a way to continue, adapt, and move forward."

"You make it sound easy." I wondered if maybe there was some magic Altean way to recover from those wounds.

"Well it's not, it takes hard work and effort. Change is hard Lance, it doesn't happen without pain. It doesn't happen without trying and pushing and taking chances." She looked right into my eyes and suddenly I had the impression she wasn't talking about her patients anymore.

"I don't know what you mean." I look down at the flower, it is really beautiful, delicate and pink. I might have an inkling what she means, I might just not want to talk about it.

"You need to give your team a chance to get to know you. You need to reach out to them. You need to stop being a coward and hiding behind that fake smile." She grabbed my chin and lifted my face up to look her in the eye. "You are more than that."

"Abrasive, huh? I can think of some other words." My anger flared and I jumped up. Why was she calling me a coward. My heart thudded in my chest.

"You are afraid. What are you afraid of?" She asked intensely.

"I'm not afraid! What is your problem, I'm not your patient?" I snarled and stepped back.

"Patient or not you need help and this is how I help people." She stated stepping forward.

"You help by being hateful, oh good call."

"I do not hate you Lance. Neither does Keith or Allura, no matter what you think. What are you afraid of?!" She yelled at me and I yelled back.

"I'm afraid they'll see I'm not good enough to be a Paladin! I'm afraid they won't even like me! I care too much about this to lose it!"

She smiled softly, "Then don't lose it. Fight for it. Fight, Lance. Don't you feel it? You're dying."