Would you tell me I was wrong?

Would you help understand?

Are you looking down upon me?

Are you proud of who I am?

There's nothing I wouldn't do

To have just one more chance

To look into your eyes

And see you looking back.

~Christina Aguilera, "Hurt"

CHAPTER FIVE

Found and Lost

Hi Keith,

Are you back from Daibazaal? I'm on a semi-urgent delivery of chlorobots to Titan. I should reach Titan in time for the Feast of St. Elmo. If you're back in this solar system, let's meet there.

I have some news! I'll get to that later. I have to process it first.

Message soon.

Forever friends,

Pidge

Lance's story didn't add up.

Shoes off, comfortably seated on her plush bed, holoscreen at eye level, Katie stared at the troublesome algorithm, her analysis muddied by another puzzle.

Unlike civvy ships such as Athena, commercial haulers like United Planetary Transport or UPT as it was commonly called, were permitted to run fully armed. Point of fact, corporate haulers had the biggest and baddest guns that money could buy.

Of course, space criminals weren't the sharpest knives in the drawer, and skirmishes, usually minor dog fights, did occur. But it was unlikely that pirates would get close enough to a corporate hauler to board and engage in hand-to-hand combat.

Even more unlikely with an experienced pilot like Lance at the helm.

Katie rubbed her fingertips over her thumb, remembering the texture of the scar on his warm brown skin. Even if he had been injured, a UPT ship would have had a top-notch sick bay. A scar like his was the result of a slipshod patch job, the kind of medical care one would get on some interplanetary backwater.

What have you really been doin', Lance?

Despite her feigned ignorance, Katie knew Lance had left Cuba for life back in the stars; knew he'd gotten some sort of education. Nothing traveled faster than the speed of gossip. Some of his post-Voltron history was public, notably his brief romance and failed engagement to Egyptian pop star Zahra a couple years ago. For several months, her news feeds had been aggravatingly dominated by stories of the glamorous singer and the dashing Voltron Paladin. Science and technology, not vacuous pop culture, commanded her attention, but even so the basic details of his public romance reached her.

The years before his celebrity coupling, however, were shrouded in mystery. Katie heard through the galactic grapevine that he would periodically disappear for months at a time, returning to Cuba with fresh scars and sharpened cynicism. The grapevine being her brother Matt and Lance's sister, Veronica.

Katie never asked, but Veronica made point of passing along tidbits about her brother's activities. Through Veronica, Katie knew that Lance, though still all about the ladies, had become an equal opportunity flirt. "You think he was bad when you knew him? Now, he flirts with everyone! It's a miracle he doesn't get his skinny butt kicked every day," said his sister.

Matt had the distinction of being the only one, aside from Lance's sister, in Katie's social circles, that had actually seen Lance in the flesh over the past decade. Her brother's encounter with the former Blue Paladin occurred in a dive bar on Ganymede about five years ago.

Matt had described Lance as polite, but distant. "I didn't recognize him right away. He had a short beard and longish hair. Wasn't wearing any blue. I don't think I'd ever seen him before without some kind of blue clothing. He was with a tall, dark woman. Human, but she reminded me of Allura." Pidge took in this information the way she took any Lance gossip—with a disinterested nod, then by changing the subject.

Who was Lance McClain now?

Her headphones sat on the bed next to her and she slipped them over her ears, but paused before hitting "play," listening instead to the hum of the hopper's life support. Listening for and feeling Lance's presence press against her awareness in the hopper's tiny interior.

Under the luxurious trappings, Athena was a lean, mean model of efficiency. Humans were fragile and expensive cargo, and the penultimate goal in space travel was keeping them alive in an environment antithetical to life. The cockpit and living quarters added up to just under 200 square feet. The cockpit and tiny lavatory had doors, with remainder of the space taken by two beds and a combo kitchen/laundry/med/exercise station. Storage lockers of various sizes lined the walls. Mechanical systems could be accessed through a small hatch in the rear. The bulk of the hopper's structure was allotted to engines and the multitude of systems, and system redundancies required to keep passengers alive.

Casting one last look at the cockpit door, Katie switched on the headphones, the hypnotic thump of a Altean tone poem covering the ship's noise.

One week, with one stop at Rinconda Station, sequestered in a small room in deep space with a stranger. This should be interesting.

Mom,

Change of plans. I won't be coming home tomorrow. I'm headed for Titan.

Remember Pidge from Voltron? Turns out she was the rep from PlentiHarvest that I met on Sandy. Her colleague had a family emergency, so I'm going to accompany her to Titan and help her with an installation. It will be at least another two weeks before I'm back home.

Love,

Lance

"I'm in love." Lance stretched out on the bed, which despite being the glorified top bunk in Athena's compact living quarters, was euphorically comfortable, form-fitting nano-tech supporting his aching lower back in bliss.

"Should I leave you two alone?" Pidge's voice, with its familiar acerbic tone, came from the bunk below.

He wiggled onto his belly and hung over the edge, grinning at her. "Would you? Bed and I are having a moment." She chucked a pillow at him, and he, no longer as nimble as his teenage self, grunted at the impact of plush foam to face.

The human body, even in space, did best when adhering to some form of circadian rhythm, even if it was imposed with lighting and chrono-supplements. Since the hopper's autopilot handled everything from navigation to security, he and Pidge could stick to the same sleep schedule.

They had both spent the "day" immersed in their own work, or at least Pidge had. Lance had an aversion to immersion, preferring to dip his toes briefly in the waters of responsibility. He checked his messages (what few there were as data packets travelled slow out in the black), read a couple of scientific articles he was supposed to review, and made slow progress on a scoping report for an expanded hydroculture plant on Earth's moon. Although the years had eroded his youthful hyperactivity, he still had the attention-span of a caffeinated space mouse, and large chunks of his day were spent playing video games and surfing old news feeds. Old, because, like messages, news traveled slow in space.

Hours earlier, sitting in the pilot's seat, he had traced the gold, inlaid Leonine symbol on Athena's dashboard, amazed at how easily Pidge and Shiro still wore their Voltron past. Shiro, a man literally unmade and reassembled by the experience, had more reason than all of them to run from the past. Pidge's right, he had thought. I should have talked to him.

Athena's cabin's lights were slowly dimming, set to fade-to-darkness save for a smattering of unobtrusive night lights. Both he and Pidge were winding down for the "night," chrono supps in their system and dressed in comfortable sleepwear.

He climbed off the bed, scooped up the pillow and tossed it to her. She sat on her bed, the bottom bunk, back against the wall, wearing green sleeping shorts and a matching T-shirt. Lance's garb mirrored hers except it was dark gray, his shirt bearing the words: "Hecho con orgullo en Cuba."

Her haircut was obviously done by a professional, and not a teen girl with dull scissors, but little bits of it still had a tendency to stick out at unruly angles. As a result, she always looked like she'd just had a roll in the hay with some lucky person. Lance's brain hiccupped, as his memory superimposed the image of a much younger Pidge over this older and sexier version. The mental glitch stuck his feet to the floor. Shaking it off, he continued to the bed.

As he approached, her expression changed, abruptly confused and looking as though she didn't quite recognize him.

"What's wrong?"

Shaking her head dismissively, she gestured at her bed. "Have a seat."

He joined her in supporting the wall with his back, keeping what he hoped was a non-threatening amount of space between them. One day hurtling through space at sub-light speed in a tin can wasn't enough to feel totally at ease with one another. Over the last several hours, he'd caught her eyeing him suspiciously, but so far, she hadn't chucked him out the air lock, so he filed the day under "Success!"

Pidge removed her glasses, and held them in her lap, lenses gleaming in the fading light. Forget Shiro, I should have talked to her. Of all the Paladins, she was the once he'd missed the most. Sassy and smart, she had never hesitated to call him on his bullshit, not that he'd appreciated it at the time.

Was she seeing anyone? His sister, Veronica, periodically tried to nudge him in Pidge's direction, but he always responded with: "Pidge is out of my league." She had divorced Dr. WhatHisFace five years ago, but Lance doubted a woman with all Pidge Holt had to offer was available.

Cautious, his movements slow, he reached over and untangled the eyeglasses from her fingers, then lifted them to his eyes. "These are amazing. You're amazing."

Her response was an exasperated huff and a slight blush. "Stop flirting."

"I'm not flirting."

Her head sagged against the wall, and she eyed him sideways. "Your mouth is moving. So…flirting."

"Yeah. You're right. I have a problem." That got a small laugh which he added to his "Success" file. He handed back her eyewear. "But you are amazing."

"I am, aren't I?" She smirked at him, brown eyes studying his face. The smile ebbed as she took on her characteristic analytical Pidge face. Gingerly, she touched his face, her fingers leaving a warm path on the blue sigil on his cheek. "Have you felt any effects or changes after…?"

Crossing his arms to keep himself from taking her hand in his, he shook his head. "I haven't had a cold or any infectious illness in years. I'm always hungry and I think some injuries might heal faster. Maybe. But I threw my back out a year ago and it's still not right.

"My mom hates them." He rubbed a finger over the place where brown skin became blue. "She said, 'What right did she have to mark you like this? Did she ask your permission? No? Then she had no right to brand you like livestock.'"

"Your mom's right."

"Moms are always right."

She nodded, staring down at her glasses again. Damn, he thought, I'm an idiot, realization clenching his diaphragm like a powerful gut punch. "Pidge, I'm so sorry. I shouldn't—"

"Shouldn't what? Talk about your mom?" She made a dismissive gesture. "Life goes on, right? I can't expect everyone else to stop talking about their moms because mine's gone."

"But don't you kind of…wish they would? Stop?"

"Yeah," she said her voice rough. Grief hardened her features and carved away any hint of the teenage girl he once knew. Pidge, shatteringly beautiful in her devastation, met his eyes and her sudden vulnerability left him feeling exposed and raw.

"You know what's the worst part?" She turned from him with an abrupt motion. Her fingers clenched and unclenched the glasses. "I had just gotten her back."

She lapsed into silence, and Lance waited, letting her find the words. "I spent so much time trying to be like Matt and Dad, chasing adventures in space, I didn't bother to get to know my own mother. I treated her like an afterthought."

"That's not true," he said softly. Surrendering to impulse, he put his hand over hers, not quite holding, but offering the comfort of touch.

"It is!" Her eyelids fluttered, but she remained composed. "When I left the Legendary Defenders for MIT, when I discovered that living things were every bit as complex as computers and engines, Mom and I started to really bond.

"We were in the process of finding each other again when it happened." A muscle clenched in her jaw and her pain, emanating like fearsome heat from her body, stole his breath. Her chest hitched with a repressed sob and he knew what she was experiencing. The sudden wave of suffocating loss that arrived without warning, struck when you least expected it, pulling all the air from your lungs.

Immobilized by her anguish, he couldn't move more than the fingers in his hand, which he tightened around her hand. He felt a twinning of emotions: shame at witnessing her disassembling, because he knew this Pidge was as strong and proud as the younger version; and grateful that she would open herself to him this much.

Lance McClain of years gone by, gregarious and touchy, might have gathered her up in his arms. Instead, paralyzed by his own guilt, and overwhelmed by the distance between them—distance he had created—he rubbed his thumb over her hand, and they sat in silence until the light faded to black.

And more angst. All kinds of humble thanks for reading my story!