I remember tears streaming down your face
When I said I'll never let you go.
When all those shadows almost killed your light.
I remember you said don't leave me here alone
But all that's dead and gone and passed tonight.
~Taylor Swift "Safe and Sound"
CHAPTER TWENTY
Una Paloma Verde
Years ago, confronted with a giant robot in self-destruct mode, team Voltron had used the Lions to drag the robot away from Earth. Their near-lethal sacrifice had saved Earth and landed all the Paladins in the hospital. Which, to date, had been the only time Katie Holt had been seriously hurt. Somehow, in the years that followed, through the many random skirmishes and brawls, she'd evaded any significant injury. The scalding agony in her hand informed every neuron in her body that her lucky stars had gone supernova.
The pain stole her breath, in part because breathing, the act of having a heartbeat, turned her crushed hand into magma hot agony. With Lance in the cockpit, she walked carefully to Athena's medical station. Every step jarred her screaming hand. Setting down the bayard, she looked at her hand.
The damage was impossible to assess with the glove on. She picked at it gingerly, unlatching the wrist snaps. Steeling herself, she prepared to pull off the glove. Make it fast; it'll hurt less. "OW!" Bad idea. The pain devoured her hand and lower arm, black spots blossomed in her vision. The glove still on her hand, all she'd accomplished was a gory splatter of red on the floor. Her bloody, floor artwork broke in the prism of tears and she battled the urge to bawl like an infant.
"Pidge." Lance was immediately at her side. "Where're you hurt?"
"I said, get us out of here." Stubborn pride nudged aside enough pain for her to face him, chin held high, defying her hand's lamentations.
Unperturbed by her tone, he nodded. "It's done. Athena's on autopilot, back on course." Gently, he took her shoulders, his gaze sweeping her from head to toe. "You're bleeding. Just your hand? Did you take fire anywhere else?"
"I'm fine. Pinched my hand in the hatch," she said, noting blast marks all over his suit, especially on his torso. "You took more fire." Way more fire. Something began to come unglued, battle calm overwritten by something more primitive. She let it take her, a distraction from the misery in her glove. Fear, for him, reinforced by her weird vision and impelled by what just happened, drove her next words. "What the Hel did you think you were doing?"
"What?"
"I had higher ground. The advantage." She channeled her pain into speech. "You should have kept on the bots firing on you, on the crates above."
"I was covering you." His eyebrows, always expressive, shot toward his forehead and he rocked back on his heels, pushed by the force of her anger.
"I didn't need covering! The bots had shit for aim."
Frustration tightened the lines around his eyes. He gestured at the marks on his suit. "Didn't look that way from where I was standing."
She staggered back from him, something like hysteria bubbling up. Katie Holt didn't do hysteria, so she let anger expand to burning ire. "Are you trying to get yourself killed?"
"No, I—"
"Because that's what it looks like!" Too late, she realized her impulsive side had taken control—emotions splattering everywhere like her blood.
Muscles in Lance's lean face shifted his expression from frustration to confusion. "Pidge, what's going on?"
"What's going on?" she stammered, furious with herself for the outburst and carrying on, nevertheless, because her damned emotions had gathered too much momentum. "What's going on is I just got you back. Do have any idea what that's like? To get someone back and then lose them all over again?" The image of him mortally wounded flashed before her eyes. The crusted blood on his lip a reminder of horrible possibilities. "I just got you back."
His eyes narrowed, and then widened in realization. She wavered, pain making her woozy, unbalanced by her outburst. She stared down at her hand, every heartbeat sending a painful pulse into her injury. Another blood droplet hit the ground, adding more detail to her inadvertent floor masterpiece in rojo.
"Pidge." His voice was gentle. "You're not the only one who 'just got someone back.'"
Thoughts murky from pain, she stared dully at him, trying to process this.
"We're friends again, aren't we?" He moved to her, setting his hands on her shoulders. "I just got you back too. My battle tactics are tripping over my emotions."
She nodded and a light tremor moved through her body. Adrenaline waving goodbye to her body, leaving only shock.
He gestured at her bed. "Sit down. I need to have a look at that hand."
Feet leaden, and more than a lot embarrassed, she complied. Eyes on the floor, she put aside her mortifying outburst by focusing on the pain. Bad idea. There was something horribly wrong with her hand.
Maths. Calculate the approximate force created by the hatch's hydraulics. She shivered again. Another bad idea, as the rough number she calculated was enough to do horrible things to the small, calcium phosphate- and collagen-based parts of an endoskeleton.
"You've never been in this kind of pain before, have you?" Lance went down on his knees before her.
She shook her head and let herself enjoy his face. In all the time she'd known him, the study of Lance's face was an exercise usually conducted covertly.
Occupied with the med kit, however, he wasn't aware of her scrutiny. And if he caught her now, well, what did it matter? It was a really nice face. Probably the result of an interesting mix of ethnicities. His straight, thin nose, and the long lines of his face suggested something European, probably western European. Also, those big, baby blues. His cheekbones, however, were kind of sharp and high…like some of the indigenous people of the Caribbean or Central America. His eye shape, elongated and dramatic…she couldn't figure that out.
"Why are you wearing my glasses?" she said.
"Because," he said, removing her right glove and clipping a medical monitor to her wrist, "they talk to the Athena's med station."
"Right."
"Pidge, I can give you shot of Narvinal here," he tapped her neck, "but it'll work faster on the arm, near your hand."
Her teeth were starting to chatter. "You j-just want to get my clothes off."
He actually blushed at that. "The things I'll do to get a girl naked." Her mouth twitched in feeble humor and she nodded, giving him permission. Under the suit, she wore a sports bra and boy shorts. Not that it mattered; she was in too much pain to be embarrassed even if she were stark naked beneath the suit. Not like he hadn't seen a zillion, naked women, anyway.
He unsnapped the hardened vest portion of her tacsuit, then the underlayer, opening it to her waist. She shrugged the sleeve off her right arm, as he worked the left sleeve down her arm, but not completely off. "Sorry. This is a terrible first date. I'm getting to third base and I never even bought you dinner."
"Or tuh-took me to a m-movie," she wheezed in pain. A second later the syringe hissed and numbness began spreading up and down her arm. "You know, I've actually had a worst date?"
"Yeah? Who with? I'll find him and kick his ass for you."
"It was a 'she.'"
"Screw chivalry. Gimme a name. I'll kick her ass."
She laughed and then moaned as the motion sent pain roiling up from her hand. "Stop being funny."
"Don't flirt. Don't be funny. You're not giving me much to work with, Holt."
He bent his neck, attention on her feet. MagBuckles made a sigh-snap noise as they opened and he pulled off her boots. Fondness and something deeper welled up in her throat at his posture, kneeling like a knight before her. She knew he'd do this for anyone; it was his nature. There was a tenderness in his touch, however, that felt inexplicably hers. She swallowed down emotion, telling herself it was just the pain speaking.
That done, he met her eyes and said grimly, "Here we go." Although his movements were slow, hot daggers of agony stabbed her hand when he peeled the glove back just a little.
"Ow! No!"
"Sorry." He held up another syringe. "I don't think Narvinal's gonna cut it alone. I gave you the maximum dosage. Any more would be unsafe."
"Wh-what's that then?"
"Becalm, the sedative. Chase the Narvinal with B and the combo is nearly as potent as a Zero chaser. Just not…addictive."
She shook her head. "No."
"You're going into shock and there's no way I can get that glove off with you feeling this much pain. I won't force you, but…"
All her life, Katie had avoided losing control, determined to manage her poor impulse control. Which was why, even her earlier outburst was so mortifying. She sometimes had a glass of wine to chase away the day's stresses, but never drank to intoxication. Never did any drugs.
Her gaze fell to her hand. Swelling was spreading up her wrist; the glove's fabric making the pain all the more miserable.
His hand cupped her face, lifting it to meet his eyes. "It's about losing control, right?" She said nothing, unnerved by his insight. Must be nice to be able to read people.
"I promise, anything you say or do, if you get floaty, stays between us. I won't make fun of you. Okay?"
Lance. If she had to be reduced to this state of vulnerability, it may as well be with him. "Do it," she said hoarsely.
Cold shivers chased up and down her spine as the sedative entered her bloodstream. Shock, but also dread. Lance slicked off his gloves and took her right hand in his. "I'm here. You're safe. It'll be fine."
After a minute, he released her hand and began to gently pick at the glove on her left hand. "That hurt?"
She could see why they called it floating. Her thoughts started to detach from her brain. That's not possible, Katie. Well, that's what it feels like. Shut up, brain!
"Ow," she said as the glove material dragged over torn flesh.
"Shit! Sorry. Sorry. Sorry."
"It's not that bad." Her eyes slid to her pillow. "I'm gonna lie down. Do…it, it's not that bad."
She flopped over sideways, wincing, but biting back her whimpers as he pulled off the glove. His hiss of horror cut a short path through the tar in her brain. "What?"
"Good thing Rinconada is just a day out. And they have a good med center."
"That bad?"
"Yeah."
She closed her eyes—or were they already closed?—and drifted.
Katie's mother was speaking, clear as a bell: "So…, Lance is cute, isn't he?"
Pidge was in her room, working on a decloaking algorithm. Mom, as usual, with no sense of when Pidge need Pidge time, had plopped herself down and started chatting.
"He's okay, I guess."
"It's his eyes. They're striking, aren't they?" Mom said. "Blue against his dark complexion. And their shape; they're sort of long. Makes him seem more intense."
The topic, Lance, immediately put Pidge on guard, made her snappish. Of course, she knew what his eyes looked like. Surreptitiously watching Lance had become part of her coding. Except lately, that program had become Pidge watching Lance watching Allura. For a time, it had seemed he'd moved past his irritating infatuation, but now he was mooning over the princess again. And now the princess was mooning back.
"Aren't you a little old to be noticing his eyes?" Pidge said, wishing her mother would just go away.
"I'm older, not old," Mom said huffily. "And I was once sixteen and in love with a boy who didn't love me back."
"Huh. I wouldn't know. Not in love with anyone." What she felt for Lance lately, whenever he got that moronic, mopey expression on his face, was more akin to hate. And worse yet, some of the others, Romelle and his sister Veronica, for instance, acted like his crush on Allura was acceptable, encouraging it, no less. Pidge, well, she just wanted to take her bayard and zap that stupid, dopey look right off his face.
"That's wise. Because boys like that may look like men, but maturity is years away."
"Yeah, he's an idiot."
Mom chuckled. "I wouldn't go that far. In some ways, he reminds me of your father."
"Dad?" Pidge snorted. "Dad is brilliant. Lance…Lance is a dumb flyboy."
"Don't be cruel, Katie. That's not you."
"Sorry."
"You know, I've had quite a few conversations with him?"
"You've talked to Lance?" This got her attention. Lifting her gaze from the screen, she looked at her mother, seeing her through the eyes of a snotty teen and simultaneously through the adult lens of loss and longing. Her mom, exasperating and the most beautiful woman in the universe.
"What about?" said sullen teen Pidge.
"His family's farm, mostly. He's really quite bright. I don't think anyone's ever given him a chance. And his acting out all the time doesn't help."
Her mom fell silent. Pidge moved a variable block around the screen without really seeing it. There was a part of her that yearned to talk about this with Mom. It all made sense in her head, but in the same way a dream makes sense until you wake up. Talking about her anger and…whatever she felt toward Lance was impossible.
"He's a very kind boy, but painfully young. Don't hate him. You all are going to need each other in the days to come."
The scene collapsed, the imagery turning to liquid and dropping like a colorful waterfall composed of the beautiful hues of Mom's face and voice. In its place, she saw Lance's dying face, all the obnoxious, flirty charm fading from those striking eyes.
You were wrong, Mom. It's not his eyes. Never was. I love his hands; his big, stupid, gentle hands with those long graceful fingers.
Doesn't matter now. Lance is dead. Like you.
Wait, what? No!
Her eyes fluttered open and set on Lance's back, currently shirtless.
Lance only had rudimentary first aid training. He had, however, an extensive background in being seriously injured. During his tenure as a Paladin, he'd been busted up so often, it was a wonder Coran hadn't charged him rent for a cryo pod. He'd watched enough medics and docs patch him up to have a solid handle on battlefield medicine. And, he had Athena's med station, monitoring Pidge's vitals, suggesting a course of action, as a backup.
Pidge's fingers were undamaged. The delicate architecture of her hand—the metacarpals?—was a crushed ruin. Three bones stabbed through the skin of her hand and blood started running in rivulets the instant he removed the glove. He covered her hand in cauterizing goop, then mopped up the blood with a towel, waiting for the wound to clot. Next, he wiped that goop away and followed with an antiseptic, then a topical anesthetic. He didn't dare try moving the shattered bones; the plasters and gel cast would have to do for now.
With her injury stabilized, he could remove the rest of her tacsuit. In that process, he learned that undressing an unconscious, fully grown adult was like trying to dress a squirming toddler. Possibly harder. He scrounged around in her clothes locker, finding her sleepwear and with more awkward wrangling got her dressed.
That done, he stood and stripped off his own tacsuit. Behind him, Pidge muttered something mournful. Glancing down at her, he saw her eyes were partially open. "No, don't," she said. "Please don't."
Eh? Thinking his state of undress might be giving her the wrong impression, he fumbled for the shirt and shorts he'd left on his bed. "Get some rest." He dressed quickly and started to go.
"Please. Don't…go."
"I'm just—"
"Just got you back…don't…run away…alone…" Her tone, very un-Pidge-like, almost a whimper, tore a raw fissure through his heart. He studied the glasses' HUD, conflicted. He really needed to….
It could wait—maybe. He hoped.
Snagging pillows from his bunk, he arranged them on her bed. He eased onto her bed, his head and shoulders propped up on the pillows, then gently pulled her onto him, her head pillowed on his chest. "Aquí estoy, paloma. Aquí estoy. Te prometo no volver a dejarte. Nunca."
Katie awoke to the dull throb of her hand, the pain radiating up her arm. Cabin lights dark, in night mode, Athena was silent save for the expected sounds of life support and engines. Lance. A jolt of anxiety at his absence. Her left arm had been cushioned carefully with a couple of pillows.
She wobbled up and shuffled to the lavatory. Next, she gave herself another shot of Narvinal, noting that her bloody artwork had been cleaned from the floor. As the Narvinal sent tendrils of dulling chemistry through her body, she entered the cockpit. Lance sat in the chair, wearing her glasses, sound asleep. Why was he still out here and not in bed? A quick check showed she'd been out at least eight hours.
Katie hated the idea of anyone watching her sleep and she granted others the courtesy of not gawping while they slept. Nevertheless, she stood for a moment, her eyes remapping the topography of his adult face, committing each angle, the play of shadows on his olive skin, to memory. Even in the instrument panel's wan light, the Altean marks on his cheekbones stood out on his skin. Their presence emanated a wrongness and she frowned, agreeing with his mother.
Allura had been Katie's friend and surrogate big sister. She had loved and respected her. But if the princess were here now, Katie would take her by the shoulders, shake her so hard her teeth would rattle, and say, "What the Hel were you thinking? He was your boyfriend. You, more than any of us, should have known he was emotionally fragile. How was tattooing your memory on his face ever going to be a good idea?"
Feeling acrimony toward her dead friend made her feel like shit, though. Dizzy, she leaned her good hand on the control panel's wood surface and stared into space where Jupiter and its moons loomed large. With a little imagination, her mind scribed in the location of Rinconada station. Behind her, Lance muttered something in his sleep. Turning, she took in the glasses on his face, the dark shadows under his eyes, and pondered his presence in the pilot's chair.
Carefully, as much as was possible with hands trembling from drug residue, she reclaimed her glasses from his face. The tagged ship leapt out immediately. It was staying just out of the range of proximity alarms, but appeared to be on their tail.
His face turned to the left, mouth slightly open, he slept the sleep of the exhausted. A faint haze of five o'clock shadow darkened his lower face. Ignoring her immediate, probably obnoxious, impulse to wake him, she gently kneed his long legs apart, and sat between them, on the edge of the chair.
Pulling up the chair's holoscreen, she instantly saw what he'd done. It had to be him; who else? Her nose wrinkled at the sight. It was ugly, a total kludge, like drawing a mustache on the Mona Lisa. But it worked. He'd folded the simulacrum into her existing decloaking program, revealing their follower, the tagged ship.
Head still heavy, and growing more so with the latest hit of Narvinal, she moved things around on the screen, editing, streamlining. Her sense of self wouldn't let his messy patch stand—it was making her eyes bleed—but she had to admit, this latest evidence of the brain inside Lance McClain's pretty head was giving her a lady boner.
"Hey," he said, groggily. "Why're you up?"
"I had to pee."
"We've got a tail. The Shrike again. Maybe."
"I see that. Good catch. Go to bed. I got this."
His arms slipped around her waist and he leaned against her back. "I did code."
The casual intimacy of his touch made her hand stutter on the screen. "You did. And it's—"
"Horrible?"
"—Not bad for a noob."
"A high compliment coming from Pidge Holt, PhD."
"Where'd you learn to do this? College?"
"Yeah. But, honestly?" He yawned, and she felt his lungs expand against her back. "That weird code thing—?"
"Simulacrum."
"—it sort of does its own thing. Point it at the problem and off it goes. Zoom."
"It was a smart call. If they could hide the sec bots, they could hide a ship."
"I think they're using a fire cloak, augmented with the code thingy. I saw a heat signature just as I undocked Athena."
Pidge nodded. Fire cloaks offered the widest spectrum of defense against all levels of scan, but were energy intensive. They often cut out for a second, when a ship's drive engines came online. "I'm surprised they didn't set off the proximity alarms."
"Uh…."
"What?"
"Don't hit me, but I turned off audible alarms as soon as I saw the heat signature."
Katie glared at him over her shoulder. Cute, smart, but still infuriating. "You were hiding it from me."
"You'd get obsessed. I'd never get your hand stabilized." He gave her what she knew he hoped was a winning smile, white teeth against brown skin. She elbowed him anyway, and then turned the audible signal back on. "The Shrike." He said the word both as a question and a fact.
"Whoever they are, they could have hit us while were in the Ox, vulnerable. Instead, they were counting on the Aural bomb disabling us and the bots doing the rest. That suggests they don't have the capabilities to take us on directly."
"Because I shot the shit out of their ship."
"Maybe." Her thoughts plodded through tar, sticky and slow. "But they would've had to make repairs and then burn Q like Hel to get ahead of us and set the trap."
He leaned into her and sighed. "'Member when you were a kid and you thought space was just stars and more space?"
"Honestly?" She looked back at him. "No. I feel like it's always been like this. Fun. And scary."
Remorse drew out the long panes of his face, making him look more exhausted. "I'm sorry."
"What for?" Her elbow nudged him again. "What'd you steal now?" Feeling silly but not brave, she turned away and spoke to his reflection in the cockpit's glass. "My underwear?"
Lance's features were smudged in the watery reflection, but even so when his eyes met hers, they twinkled with dangerous duende, not his usual artless flirting, but enthralling fey charm. "The thought never entered my mind, but now that you've put it there…."
A little unnerved, she said, "You're so weird." Their bodies shook together with laughter.
"I'm sorry I pushed you into a situation that was obviously a trap," he said. "Sorry about your hand."
"My ship. My call. And we couldn't just ignore it. That's not who we are."
"Nope. The universe isn't going to save itself."
Her eyelids drooped, heavy as lead weights. "You need to get more rest," he said in her ear. Stubbornly, she shook her head. Her body, remembering the comfort of falling asleep on his chest, impelled her to slump against him. He leaned back as well, pulling her gently onto him.
She was floating again, though not as bad. "I hated it. Floating. That drug combo gave me dark thoughts." More like dangerous. The desire to sink into oblivion and find the place where her mother's face and voice existed with perfect clarity still pulled at her soul.
He nuzzled the back of her head. "Yeah. Floating isn't always a fun."
"You were an addict. Zero?"
She felt his sigh. "Yeah, but only for a few months. Zero made me feel really good. Fortunately, or unfortunately, depending on your perspective, my mom caught me shooting up. That was my rock bottom. I got help. For everything, the PTSD, the depression, the Z. I've been clean for years. Never touch anything harder than a beer once in a while."
"You were in rehab when Mom died. That's why you weren't at the memorial." Her drug-addled mind managed to grab the memory of the photo of him and Veronica; his tired, gaunt face.
"I'm a coward, Pidge. But I would have gone to her memorial. Te juro que es la verdad." His arms tightened around her waist. "Quitting Z is never easy, but it hit me hard. My heart stopped twice and I forgot who I was. The docs think it's because of something to do with Voltron, maybe the marks on my face. As soon as Greg slipped me that dose of Z, I was hooked. It dug into my body like a tick."
She closed her eyes, picturing the blond merc's face. "If I ever see that Greg person, I'm gonna kill him."
His quiet laugh shook her body. "I appreciate it, but he's not worth the trouble. Trust me."
He's not worth the trouble, but you are.
He pointed at the St. Elmo santo sitting on her shelf of mementos. "That doesn't seem very Pidge-like."
To her floaty brain, the santo appeared haloed in blue. "It isn't. Guess who gave me that?"
"Keith?"
"No, your sister. Veronica."
He laughed. "I should have known. She gave me one just like it for the Troika."
She pointed at the desk name plague. "Mom gave me that after my doctoral dissertation."
"Yeah, about that. 'Katie Holt PhD.' Should I be calling you 'Katie?' Seems like everyone else does."
"They do." With her good hand, she squeezed his arm. "My brother and people from my Voltron days call me Pidge. With you, I'm Pidge."
She felt him exhale against the top of her head. "Cool."
"Paloma." Speaking the word invoked her previous stupid vulnerability, but she said it anyway. "You called me Paloma."
"Uh, yeah. Are you going to hit me for that?"
"No. I like it. A lot." Maybe it was the drugs, but she liked all of this, a lot. He'd taken her right hand in his left and was meticulously exploring the shape of each of her fingers, pausing to roll her knuckles in a slow massage.
Her lungs expanded with a deep breath and she knew she'd lost the battle. A few pockets of resistance remained, but he routed her armies, obliterated her walls. His touch was gentle, nonsexual and somehow a million light years away from platonic. "Why do you have to be so…?"
His breath tickled her ear. "So…?"
"Quiznaking…adorable."
"'Adorable'?" His laugh shook her body. "Paloma is floating higher than a skyscraper."
He shifted in the seat, rearranging her so that her right arm was over his shoulder and neck. With a bit more shifting he gathered her into his arms and stood. "Back to bed."
"The ship," she protested.
"I'll keep watch."
Lance's body heat surrounded her, and her few functioning nerves sang a happy song. She closed her eyes and spoke to the stardust that was her mom: You were right, Mom. Guys like Lance, they're so much better…older.
Translations-
Una Paloma Verde: a green pigeon (dove)
rojo: red
Aquí estoy, paloma. Aquí estoy. Te prometo no volver a dejarte. Nunca.: I'm here, pigeon. I'm here. I promise I'll never leave you again.
Te juro que es la verdad.: I swear that's the truth.