Lance wasn't quite following the plot. Everything felt muted and little distant. He was aware of Pidge cuddling against his side like his own personal space heater, and he was deeply touched by the princess's gift (the tea was delicious; it reminded him of hibiscus), but a lot of what the others were saying passed right over his head. Nothing quite made sense. It was close, he could feel it, like a hazy world just barely out of reach that he kept stretching for and couldn't quite touch.

Though his body was sluggish and not as responsive as it usually was, he was pretty sure this wasn't a physical problem. It felt like his brain was numb, like his mind had been struck so forcefully and violently that all sensation had been cut off by the blow. It reminded him of the jungle planet. He didn't remember having a seizure, not really, but he remembered the slow, painful way he'd come back to his senses afterward. It was like his entire self was a computer undergoing a hard reboot. Sensations and abilities came back online one at a time, and there was a jarring, terrifying sense of disjointedness while some things were working and others weren't.

The feeling faded, slowly, bit by bit. He knew he was in the lounge next to the dining room, now, had a vague memory of Hunk carrying him. He was wrapped in blankets, lying limp against the cushions, and he was warmer now. Pidge was helping with that. Allura still sat next to him, occasionally running her fingers through his hair. It felt so nice that it made Lance want to cry. Again. But he was too tired. It was like he had just...run out of emotions for the time being.

People had apologized to him. Keith. Shiro. It hadn't made a lot of sense. Lance had tried to listen, tried to understand what they were saying. He wasn't sure...had he done something wrong? Shiro was saying that he shouldn't have depended on him, that he shouldn't have... At least, Lance was pretty sure that was what he said. And Keith had said something about Lance being fantastic and wonderful, but that couldn't possibly be true. No way. He'd heard that wrong; he must have. It was so frustrating not being able to trust what his senses were telling him.

Lance gave his cup back to the princess and folded his hand against his stomach. He was tired, with a kind of bone-deep, aching exhaustion that he didn't know how to deal with. He didn't think eight hours of sleep would fix it. He didn't know what would.

Shiro asked him if he was ready to talk now, and Lance said yes. He still didn't quite know what Shiro wanted from him, but he would do his best to respond to his leader. He couldn't look at Keith across the circle, couldn't make his eyes stay there, so he tried to focus on Shiro's face.

Shiro watched him carefully for a moment, then looked to Allura. "Princess, could I...?"

"Of course." She stood up, and the two of them traded places. Shiro was now sitting next to Lance, turned on the couch to face him. He was smiling, soft and kind and gentle. Lance blinked at him, still not sure what was going on.

"Lance, we need to talk about what happened in the dining room."

Lance caught his breath. His hand rose and pressed tenderly against his chest. Oh, that was right; he'd lost control and thrown a fit like a toddler. He felt cold all of a sudden, shivering harder than he had before. Pidge pressed herself into his side, and he tightened his arm around her shoulders. "I...I'm sorry..."

Shiro shook his head, looking somehow even sadder. "Not what I meant. You don't need to apologize for having an emotional breakdown. It had been coming for a long time, and we're all aware of that. The signs were obvious. Plenty of us should have done something to help you before it got to that point, and I'm one of them. I should apologize to you, not you to me."

Lance swallowed. "O...okay..." He could barely hear himself. What was happening? He didn't understand.

"What I meant is that we need to talk about what you said. When you were yelling, when you were letting out all of the pain and heartache that's been building up in you for such a long, long time. You said, 'Stop. Make it stop.' Do you remember that?"

Lance nodded, not a little hesitantly. He remembered yelling. Remembered the desperate need to make the tempest of terror and agony and rage in his chest subside so he could breathe again. He had no doubt that he had said something like that, though he couldn't remember the exact words he'd used.

Shiro watched his face. "Do you know what you were saying that to? What did you want so badly to stop?"

Lance thought about it, then tapped his fingers against his chest. "This. In here. I wanted it to stop."

"What you were feeling?"

Lance nodded. He was so tired.

"What were you feeling?"

Lance blinked at him. "A lot."

Shiro smiled. "What feeling was the strongest?"

Lance had to think about it. His eyes drifted away from Shiro for a moment. He felt a hand on his shoulder, above where Pidge was pressed. The hand was big and strong and warm. Hunk, offering all the support he could.

He looked back to Shiro. His voice was a bare whisper. "I was scared."

Shiro nodded. He looked sad, but not surprised. "What were you scared of?"

Lance blinked. Wasn't it obvious? "I..."

Shiro took pity on him. "Were you afraid that what Keith said was true?"

Lance nodded. He couldn't speak. Hunk squeezed his shoulder, and someone gasped in pain. It might have been Coran.

Allura's voice, quiet and sad. "Shiro, how did you know?"

Shiro looked away from Lance to tell her. "On the planet. Lance and I had a conversation. He asked me..." He pulled in a breath, his face twisting. "He asked me to leave him behind. He was in bad shape, and the Galra were after us, and he wanted me to get away. He said... He thinks he's the least important. Hunk and Pidge are geniuses, and Keith's a brilliant pilot, and I'm the indispensable leader. But he's...just...Lance. He thinks he's replaceable."

He looked back to Lance, his eyes hard and bright, though he still spoke to the princess. "I told him that's not true. I told him how important he is, how much we all need him, every single day. But I guess I didn't quite manage to convince him. And today, when Keith said those things, and with him being exhausted and run down from helping me and the other things he's been suffering lately..." Shiro sighed. "It was too much. It was all too much."

Shiro watched Lance steadily for a moment, then started to reach toward his body. Lance felt his breath catch, his throat tightening. Shiro paused, his hand hovering in the air.

"That's right," he said softly. "You don't like anyone touching your chest right now, do you?" He offered a smile, sad and gentle, and spread his fingers to show that he meant no harm. "It was your hand. I just wanted to hold your hand. Would that be okay?"

Lance considered. He felt dizzy. What was happening here? After a moment, he nodded. He lifted his hand off his chest and reached back to Shiro.

"Thank you." Shiro folded Lance's hand in his, holding it warm and close, palm to palm. Then he brought his other hand over and wrapped it around the back of Lance's hand as well. A lump rose in Lance's throat, though he didn't know why. Both felt warm and kind and supportive, the metal hand and the flesh hand. He wasn't sure he deserved this.

"Lance." Shiro's voice was quiet and firm and utterly, utterly serious. "What Keith said earlier is not true. He told you so when he apologized, and the rest of us will tell you, too, as many times as we have to. You are not replaceable. Not even remotely. You are immensely valuable, right where you are. You are wanted. I know you miss Earth and your family and everything you left behind, and that makes my heart ache, it truly does. But I don't want you to be there, even so. Maybe it's selfish of me, of us, but we want you here. We need you here, and I can't be sorry for that, I can't. We can't do this without you. I can't do this without you. Please, please believe me."

Lance stared. That blankness was back, that numbness and distance. He didn't know what to do, didn't know how to respond. He breathed, and his chest hitched, and it hurt. Everything hurt. What was he supposed to do? He didn't understand.

"Lance?" Shiro squeezed his hand, pressing it between his palms. "Do you believe me? Please, answer me. Even if it's no. I need to know what you're thinking right now."

"I..." Lance pulled in a breath, his chest shaking. He felt even dizzier. His head lay limp against the cushions behind him, and he rocked it from side to side. "I don't, I..." Why couldn't he believe? He wanted to. Lance closed his eyes. Something wet trailed down his cheek. He opened his eyes and looked at Shiro again. "There's too many...pieces..."

Shiro looked even more concerned, his face bent in worry. "What do you mean, Lance?"

Lance's breath sped up. It was starting to hurt. "I can't...keep track..."

Who was he supposed to be? He didn't know at the moment. Friend Lance, Family Lance, Teammate Lance? Shiro was all of those, needed all of those, and Lance couldn't tell which one was most important at the moment. He didn't know which one Shiro wanted to see.

He couldn't keep track, and he couldn't keep the other pieces repressed anymore. They'd gotten too strong, demanding their turn, and now they were at the forefront and he couldn't push them away. He had no strength to do it, everything drained by that breakdown, that emotional storm that had taken it all away from him. He was Weak Lance, Fragile Lance, Scared Lance, Traumatized Lance. He couldn't keep control. There were too many pieces.

He tore his hand out of Shiro's grip, then sat up and doubled over, letting go of Pidge at the same time. His breath was rough and ragged, tearing at his lungs and wheezing in his throat. He pressed both hands to his chest. It hurt. It hurt. He couldn't breathe.

Hands on his shoulders, and he startled at the touch, then was furious at himself for being so weak, so out of control. Why couldn't he control this? He needed to, he needed... He sobbed, breathless, helpless, panicking. A hand on his back. A voice in his ear. Hunk, low and calm and soothing, though he sounded close to tears, himself.

"Lance, buddy. You can breathe. You can breathe. Just calm down. It's okay, everything's fine. Just take a moment and feel your body. You can breathe. There's no more pneumonia. No one's putting pressure on your lungs. The air is good here. It even smells nice. Calm down. Slow down, buddy. C'mon, you can do it. You're okay. You're okay. Everything's okay."

"Hunk, I'm scared." His voice was high, broken. Hunk's hand rubbed over his back.

"It's okay to be scared, buddy. You've been through some really scary stuff. But you're home now. You're safe now and everyone's here with you, and everything's gonna be okay. Just slow down and breathe."

He breathed. He breathed. Bit by bit, breath by breath, everything began to slow down. The pain and pressure in his lungs... That was his heart, beating too fast against his rib cage, nothing else. He was fine, he was fine, everything was fine.

He straightened, tears streaming down his cheeks. "I'm sorry." His voice was a bare squeak, pushed out through a tight throat and aching lips. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry."

Big hands held him up, pulled him back. He was leaning on Hunk now, his back against his big buddy's side. Hunk's hand rubbed up and down his arm, slow and steady and predictable as a tide. "It's okay, Lance. It's okay. Don't apologize. You're fine. You have nothing to be sorry for."

Shiro still sat facing him, his face drawn in dismay. Beyond him, Keith's face was utterly white, as if he had seen something unexpected and terrifying. Lance couldn't see where Pidge went, but then he felt her hand in his hair, combing through it with her fingernails. She had climbed out of the sunken couch and was sitting behind his head, and she was petting him just like Hunk was. Lance closed his eyes.

"I've never...had a panic attack before..." he said in a small voice.

"It's okay," Hunk said. "First time for everything."

Lance choked on a laugh, then went still, just breathing. Shiro moved closer to him on the couch, until his knee pressed against Lance's. Lance reached his hand out, and Shiro took it again. He heard Allura's voice, tense with worry, muttering about how this was worse than some self-confidence issues, and Coran hushed her.

Lance huffed with something like laughter again, though it wasn't funny at all. More tears slid out of his closed eyelids. He was so tired, and everyone was being so ridiculously kind to him, and he still didn't really understand what was happening.

Shiro pressed his hand. "Lance." His voice was low and cautious. "Do you know what that was?"

Lance wanted to nod, but he still felt dizzy. "Yeah." He let his eyes slide open, just a bit, so he could look in Shiro's face. "It was a panic attack. I have PTSD."

It felt strange to say the words so calmly, so flatly. But also oddly...good. It was good to have a shape to put to things, especially something so overwhelming and frightening.

Shiro nodded. "I have PTSD, too."

Lance pushed out a breathless little chuckle and relaxed into Hunk's side. "Yeah, but yours is worse. A lot worse. Mine is piddly. It's stupid." He closed his eyes. More tears. He was so tired. "I was supposed to just get over it," he muttered. "I thought I would just get over it."

Shiro sighed. He sounded disappointed. It made Lance's heart squeeze in his chest, but he didn't have the energy to respond. "Lance." But his voice was so, so soft and so, so kind. "I told you that first night, didn't I? When you told me about your nightmare? Your feelings aren't stupid. They're never stupid."

"Wait." Hunk sounded confused. His hand found a spot on Lance's arm and pressed there. "Lance has been having nightmares, too? I thought..." He blew out a big, gusty sigh. "Didn't we just clear this up?"

"He had at least one." Shiro pressed his hand. "Lance? Have you had others?"

Lance didn't want to say anything. But even this far away from Blue, he swore he could still hear her voice, lingering in his mind. My pilot must ask for help. She was darn pushy, for a giant mechanical magic space lion.

Slowly, reluctantly, he opened his eyes and looked at Shiro. "Not...nightmares. Not since the first night. But... I can't forget... I can't forget Ragnak. The image keeps...coming back. Every now and then." He thought about it, then modified that. "Pretty often."

Shiro looked pained. "Lance, that's called a flashback. You've been having flashbacks?"

Lance rolled his eyes. "I know what they are." His voice sounded peevish to his own ears. "I'm not an idiot. I just...I thought I would get over it. And then I didn't, and I didn't, and it got worse, and... I'm sorry." By the end he was crying again, just a big rush of weary, embarrassed tears. Ugh, these mood swings were awful. He just wanted it all to stop.

Shiro turned Lance's hand over in his and started rubbing calming circles on his palm with his thumb. "Okay. Okay, I get it. You thought you could handle it. You thought you could handle everything. For someone with such low self-esteem, you sure can be ridiculously overconfident, sometimes."

Lance snorted wetly. It was true. He couldn't argue with his fearless leader.

Shiro looked into his face very seriously. "This is what I meant when I said you weren't completely blameless, earlier. You can't hide these things from us, Lance. I don't want you to apologize anymore, and I don't want you to feel guilty about breaking down today. But I do want you to understand. We're all in this together, as perhaps no military unit in the history of the universe has ever been. In the old days the paladins of Voltron had a whole castle of support staff, but we just have each other. We have to take care of our teammates, and that means taking care of ourselves. And that means we have to do things that might make us a little uncomfortable at first. Like talking about our feelings."

He looked around at the others, too, Hunk, Pidge, Keith, even Coran and Allura. "What happens to one of us affects all of us. If we didn't know that before, we certainly do now. Maybe we should all be thanking Lance for making that lesson very, very clear today."

Shiro looked back to Lance's face and gave him a soft, wide smile, affection and remorse shining in his eyes in equal measure. "And yes, I'm including myself in that. I shouldn't have hid my problems, either. I know you were a little out of it, earlier, so maybe you didn't hear me when I apologized to the group. And to you. I'll repeat everything I said to you later to make sure you understand. For now I'll just say that I'm sorry, Lance. I should not have put everything on your shoulders. Things are going to change now, and they're going to be better. I promise."

Lance gulped down his tears and nodded, small but sincere. He was so tired now that Shiro's voice seemed to be fading in and out, but he got it. He had been wrong about his ability to handle this, wrong about a lot of things, but it was going to be okay because Shiro knew now and he was going to take over.

Shiro stopped rubbing circles in Lance's palm and just pressed his thumb in the middle. He was still looking seriously into Lance's face. "This isn't finished. We have a lot more we need to talk about. I need to know what you meant when you said there were too many pieces and you couldn't keep track of them. And I know I haven't convinced you yet that you are wanted and valuable and needed here. We'll all work on that later. But for now, you look like you're barely keeping your eyes open. How does a nap sound?"

Lance blew out a breath in relief. His eyes were almost shut now. "Sounds great."

Shiro chuckled. "Do you want to go to your room or just stay here?"

Lance opened his eyes wide, a jolt of panic at the thought of going back to his lonely, empty room when he felt this shattered and fragile. Shiro caught his breath, eyes widening, and squeezed his hand. "Okay. I get it." He looked at Hunk over Lance's shoulder. "Big guy?"

Hunk nodded, the side of his chin brushing Lance's hair. "No problem." He folded his arms over Lance's abdomen, carefully away from his chest, and Lance relaxed against him again. Hunk huffed a sigh and muttered something about "gotta feed him too, geez," but Lance's eyes were already drooping and he wasn't paying attention.

He'd been holding on to the last shreds of his awareness because Shiro had been talking to him and it had seemed important. Now, with this permission, it was easy to let go. Someone covered him with a blanket, and someone else blotted his tears away with a handkerchief, and someone else ran their fingers through his hair once again, and that was all he knew. Sleep seized him like a wave, big and dark and driving him deep into tropical waters, warm and comforting and home. And he was gone.