A/N: Sorry for the delay—in exchange, this one's longer than usual. Oh, and general hurt/comfort warning. I'm mean to Pidge in this chapter.
Team Voltron been focused on wrecking the Galra mining facility below, and had barely registered the station until after their work was finished. It had contacted them with great enthusiasm; apparently the station, though small, was host to a number of alien species that had been mistreated by the Galra. They were ecstatic to have the influence of the colony removed, and invited the team to a feast on the spot to show their gratitude.
"We can't expect a party every time we succeed," Allura had warned the paladins, but she was pretty sure that no one but Shiro had been listening. Lance was ready to bask in the glory and adulation of the people they'd rescued, Hunk was eager to try the food on offer at the feast, and Pidge and Keith both looked quite pleased with themselves.
Which was how they'd found themselves here, the paladins in space suits in place of formal attire and Allura and Coran both in their best, guests of honor at a feast in a foreign spaceport.
A lot had changed in ten thousand years, and this wasn't an area that Allura was particularly familiar with. She wasn't sure which of those things was responsible, but she didn't recognize half the dishes that had been set before them. She was Altean to the core, though, and curious about all of them. She began taking samples of whatever she thought she could politely get at, wondering what nutrition might be available from them.
The humans and Coran all matched her enthusiasm, with a distinctly lower level of politeness. Shiro was trying, but he clearly didn't know exactly what some of the cutlery was even made for; he kept glancing at Allura out of the corner of his eye, as if searching for hints. Coran and Hunk immediately sampled a little of everything and began arguing back and forth, comparing human and Altean taste buds. Keith tried one thing from a nearby dish, and then, apparently deciding that he liked it, heaped his plate and dug in. Lance poked a little suspiciously at everything before settling on what were probably the most familiar-looking choices. Pidge, utterly unashamed, was sampling everything within reach (including whatever they could reach by standing on their chair), rattling off the results to everyone in earshot and offering up random recommendations to their companions.
None of their hosts seemed upset by their behavior, Allura noted. Neither did the rest of the guests, who were mingling freely in the large hall and behaving just as chaotically as the paladins. Worries assuaged, she settled back to enjoy the feast, watching the rest of her team's antics.
"…And this one's…weird, it's all tingly." Pidge was making an odd face, lips puckering.
Lance, looking over from his nicely-balanced plate, frowned. "'Tingly' isn't a flavor, Pidge."
"Yeah, it is," they insisted. They stuck out their tongue, scraping it against their teeth. "Actually, it kinda hurts now…"
There had been something slightly strange about Lance's expression before, but Allura only recognized the worry now, as it grew more intense. "Hey, Shiro?" he called, pitched to carry over the sound of the feast.
Shiro, on Allura's other side, leaned forward to look down the table at him. "What is it?"
Lance had gone very pale. "We have a problem. A big one."
Shiro immediately stood and walked over to where Lance was sitting next to Pidge. While Allura had been looking away, Hunk had taken a spot on Pidge's other side. He had one hand on their shoulder, and the other poking at the dish they'd said tasted odd. He looked frantic. Shaking under his hand, Pidge was going splotchy pink, and couldn't seem to speak properly. One hand kept reaching up to uselessly massage their throat.
Allura felt her heart freeze in her chest. Pidge had been fine just a few moments ago. What was going on?
"I think it's an allergic reaction," Hunk said quickly. "I don't know what it's to, I don't know what's in this food…"
"It's okay. We'll figure it out." Shiro took Pidge's other shoulder, leaning down to look them in the eye. "Pidge, listen to me. We need to get you back to the ship. Is it all right if I carry you?"
Tears were standing in Pidge's eyes. They nodded.
"Okay." Shiro scooped Pidge up and cradled them against his torso. "Coran, you're with me. We might need to use a healing pod, though I'm hoping it won't come to that. Hunk, bring whatever it was that Pidge was eating. We need to figure out what triggered the reaction."
Hunk scooped up the plate and nodded, and the three of them were off, through a side door and back to the black lion.
Below them, the party was grinding to a halt. More and more people had stopped what they were doing in favor of staring at them; an ominous silence filled the large room, disturbed only by whispers.
Allura raised her head, trying to look every inch the princess. She didn't want their diplomatic relations with these people to falter if they didn't have to. If she could get their hosts to help her figure out what had happened, all for the better.
She swept over to the leaders in charge of the banquet. One, a grayish-brown color with bumpy protuberances for eyebrows, met her worried gaze. "Could we please speak to the cooks in attendance?"
He waved a hand, and a team of aliens in mishmash uniforms—makeshift guards, she guessed—hurried through a door to one side of the hall. Seconds later, the first of perhaps a dozen different aliens came out of the door, most in stained aprons and with increasingly panicked expressions.
Allura, watching, frowned. It wasn't these people's fault that this had happened. She hoped the guards weren't being too rough with them…
She froze. Under cover of a knot of tentacled beings all arguing loudly with one another, she thought she saw…
"Wait!" she called, voice cracking like a whip throughout the hall. She pointed a finger, and every eye in the room followed it. "You, there. If I could speak to you for a moment?"
The figure was heavily cloaked, and had almost made it to a large knot of partygoers without her noticing their departure from the kitchens. As she pointed them out, however, four guards dove after them, foiling a surprisingly nimble attempt at escape. As the figure fell, the hood of the cloak fell back, revealing large, unmistakable purple ears.
"A Galra soldier," she whispered. She steeled herself against the chill that ran down her spine and strode forward. "It would appear there is a saboteur in our midst."
Their host, about to be left behind, swept into action. "Search him!" he screeched, rushing to catch up with Allura. "Princess, I had no idea that any Galra had made it here from the site of the battle. I offer you my deepest apologies—"
He was cut off by one of the guards yelling in pain. She fell, clutching at her knee, and the struggles by the Galra grew more intense as he tried to make use of the opening. He failed, and a moment later he was pinned again, pockets and armor being searched methodically by one of the guards.
"Here!" one of them shouted, revealing an empty vial. There was a hint of a dark liquid visible at the bottom."
The Galra soldier snapped at the guard's fingers, almost making them drop the vial. "Let me go! Death to the enemy! Vrepit sa!"
"Was that all you could find?" Allura asked, and the guards all nodded, one pulling out cuffs as the rest of them forced the soldier's arms behind his back.
"I assure you," her host said, voice bubbling in anger, "we will be questioning him thoroughly. If there is more to this story than that vial can tell you, we'll find it."
She should get involved in this, Allura knew. She didn't much like the way the way this man said 'questioning.' But this station wasn't a reliable ally—that had just been made clear—and she couldn't see much benefit in getting tangled up in their affairs. Besides, she had somewhere more important to be. "Thank you very much, but for now this will suffice," she said crisply, tucking the vial into her robe. "I need to get back to my paladins." She let her voice soften a little. "We thank you for your hospitality, though this celebration didn't end in a way any of us would have wished. But we must be on our way."
Her host closed his eyes, defeated. "It is as you say, your highness. Please, take care."
The rest of the station's inhabitants parted before her as Allura swept out of the hall. Keith and Lance, both similarly pale and silent, hurried after her.
She rode back in Lance's lion, because Keith had split off and dashed to where his was docked as soon as they were out of sight of the hall. Lance kept his flirting to a minimum for once, face hard and drawn. His grip stayed tight on his bayard until he had to put it away to work the blue lion's controls.
To one side of the castle's healing chamber was a set of beds, for patients that needed old-fashioned rest more than (or along with) full-fledged cryostasis as a part of the healing process. Pidge was in one of these when Allura and Lance arrived, a thermal blanket pulled halfway up their midsection, surrounded on all sides by hovering team members.
Pidge held up a shaky thumb as they came in. "I'm okay," they rasped out. They looked deflated, sweaty and pale, but their breathing was unlabored. Allura let herself breathe easy, too, settling into a chair that Shiro vacated for her. She put a hand on the lump of their shin under the blanket and squeezed, briefly startled at the frailty of the bones under her grip. She sometimes forgot how small the smallest Paladin was.
Pidge giggled. "Hey, that tickles."
Allura lessened the pressure somewhat and smiled. "You're truly all right?"
"Yeah." Pidge looked around at the others, smiling shyly up at the others. "Seriously, good call, guys. I've never been allergic to anything before."
"It wasn't an allergy," Allura said grimly. She pulled out the vial and handed it to Coran. "At least one Galra soldier made it to that station. He tried to poison us, for revenge."
No one said anything aloud to that, but she heard a couple of gasps, and every face in the room darkened. Coran started muttering about lax security standards, and the rest of the paladins looked various degrees of scandalized and worried. Pidge just flopped back to stare at the ceiling and muttered, "Figures."
"I mean," Hunk said eventually, "I guess space poisons are a little less scary than space allergens. If you think about it."
Lance raised an eyebrow at him. "I think that might just be you, man."
Keith lifted one shoulder in a half-shrug. "Makes sense to me. Think about it."
"I am thinking about it," Lance began, irritated. "Poison is scary! We did really make sure Pidge is okay, right? There aren't any hidden side-effects waiting to spring up without warning?"
"Thanks, Lance," Pidge said with hooded eyes.
"Any time," said Lance, entirely seriously. He was busy catching Coran's eye. "So?"
Coran eyed the vial with a detached curiosity. "I'll run a scan of the poison to make sure we caught everything, but yes, I'm fairly sure. No harm being safe, though." He tucked the vial away and put a hand on Pidge's head. "In the meantime, rest and relaxation till you're back to a hundred percent. Unless it's an emergency, you're staying grounded, pilot."
Pidge sighed, but didn't otherwise complain. Allura hoped they were truly feeling all right; they seemed to be dozing off already. Hunk and Lance followed Coran out of the room as he went to investigate the poison further. Keith went to lean against the wall, frowning absently, and Shiro stayed lurking at the foot of Pidge's cot, arms folded. They and Allura watched quietly as Pidge slipped into sleep, breaths gradually growing deeper, face relaxing. With their defenses down, Pidge looked even younger than usual—too young to be doing this, Allura thought. Too young to be away from home.
From the look on Shiro's face, she suspected he was thinking the same thing. He sighed, unhappy. "Maybe we should quit having public celebrations."
"It's…something to consider," she agreed.