Chapter twenty-one: The Restoring Of Bonds

The team looked on from a distance, as Shiro rested on a table in one of the exam rooms off away from the cryopods.

"He's so heavily medicated he's barely even human." Lance remarked lowly.

"But it's the only way for him to get any sort of rest from all the chaos of his injuries." Pidge informed him. "It'll probably take time for this to blow over."

"Right." Hunk began slowly. "Ok, but- so this is the second time this has happened with the healing pods. And -well- I don't know, maybe we should, -you know- try and figure out what's going on to make that happen? Just a thought." He shrugged, trying to give the illusion of ease, which quite obviously failed to a "T".

"I agree with Hunk." Allura concurred. Finding a sharp object on the table next to her, she slit a gash into her own arm; and dropped it to try and activate a pod with one hand. The act of slitting her arm alarmed everyone who beheld it.

"Allura?!" Lance shouted, horrified by this act.

"Princess, what were you thinking?!" Coran cried, nudging her aside to finish the action she was attempting and failing to initiate.

"I was thinking.." The Altean girl breathed, holding her hand at the wrist. "This'll prove whether or not what the problem is.."

xxxx

Allura stood inside the pod rather determinedly, her posture erect and her face quite serious; almost as though she were willing it to work perfectly. The shield went down and the Princess came back to them with a deep, cleansing breath.

"Allura! You're back! Thank goodness." Coran sighed with undying relief. The Altean princess lifted her hand to look at it.

"Yes." She said, flexing her hand into a fist. "But we still don't know the reason behind the pod's misfunction with Shiro."

"Why? What do you mean?" Lance asked, fear beginning to creep into the back of his mind. She held out her arm for them to see, showing that the marks she'd cut into her skin had completely healed; no sign of it ever being there at all.

"So if it's not the pods… could it be Shiro?" Pidge guessed, everyone looked to the Black Paladin, still resting on the table where they'd left him; his face turned away from them.

"Something wrong with Shiro?" Lance ventured curiously. "What are saying?"

"I don't know.." The Green Paladin admitted unfortunately. "But maybe it has something to do with that hand tremor on the left side."

"What hand tremor?" Keith asked, losing her train of thought.

"Haven't you guys noticed it?" Pidge wondered rather pointedly. "Both times its happened has been right after he's come out of the pod.. and once more when he stood up next to Keith."

"What does that matter?" Allura wondered. "The cryopod is meant to heal the body of any discrepancies."

"What could be wrong with Shiro, that the healing pod can't fix?" Lance asked openly.

"I.. I don't know. But.. we should at least try to see if we can get some scans on him, like the ones we'd do on earth." Pidge suggested. "Maybe it'd shed some light on all this."

"It's worth a try, but-.. What sort of scans are you referring to?" The Altean Princess wondered, genuinely curious. And Pidge and Hunk exchanged glances knowingly.

XXXX

Shiro's eyes popped wide with the distant sounds that were enough to make his blood run ice cold. The blinding spotlight that shone over him, cut out two hasmatted figures with a purplish hue to their appearance.. becoming the horrifying panic of his heart as he tried to struggle..

xxxx

Shiro's head was the only thing to jerk up.. as though knowing what his physical body was undergoing. The large machine that loomed over him reminded his mind of this fact and he relaxed his head back once more.

"You ok in there, Shiro?" Pidge's voice cracked over the com near his head.

"Been better." The Black Paladin replied lightly.

"Just hang in there." Keith told him, pressing the button to activate the com. "We're almost done."

"So this is how you do things on your planet?" Allura wondered, standing back to watch the whole process unfold. "Earth seems so.. strange."

"These scans won't be exactly like those we do on Earth, they'll actually be slightly more accurate." Pidge explained, turning to glance back at the princess from the corner of her eye.

"And what will they tell us?" Allura wondered, gazing through the glass at Shiro.

"Ideally, they'll hopefully tell us what we wanna know; granted everything goes right." Keith replied, keeping his composed posture of his iconically crossed arms, leaning against the wall just behind Pidge's left side. Getting the scans now." Hunk commentated as the screen panned down to reveal the results. And within moments of seeing them.. Pidge and Hunk released a united sigh.

"Nothing." Pidge vocalized dryly.

"The scans don't show anything out of the ordinary.. least not in Shiro's case." Hunk elaborated sadly.

"So we're back to square one then." Allura implied.

"Basically." Pidge sighed again, looking up to meet her gaze.

"Then what do we do?" Allura wondered bravely. "Where do we go from here?"

"Well whatever I saw.. it doesn't seem to be having any physical effect on him, so there's no real danger from it." Pidge noted slowly. "I guess all we can do is continue to watch it, in order to see if it worsens or changes and try to help him recover naturally; without the pod's ambient energy to help in that."

"Sounds like a plan." Keith decided kinda flatly. "I'll go get Shiro." Then he left without another word, to enter the enclosed space to help Shiro out of it; everyone else standing there solemnly watching. All of them feeling the heavy regret that the Red Paladin, no doubt, still carried from all that had happened since his rocky return via the compromised wormhole.

XXXX

"It's sooo good to see you again, Shiro." Matt raved brightly. "Last time we saw each other we were being sucked up into a bright light off of Kerberos."

"Yeah." Shiro chuckled lightly, his body leaning comfortably to the left in his chair; eyes still a little glassy. "And I was unconscious for most of the rest of it. Then nothing but broken pieces and brief glimpses followed a trail to the day I escaped and after that when I crashed back on Earth."

"Wait.. you actually made it back to Earth?" Matt echoed in disbelief.

"Where do you think we found the Blue Lion of Voltron? And how do you think I got out of Garrison quarantine after they knocked me out?" Shiro responded, the flatness of his demeanor and tone unable to fully mask the playful humor that came with these words.

"That's how this all started?!" Matt breathed, instantly awestruck. "That's incredible!"

"Yeah.. well you should've been there." Hunk told him sarcastically. "I almost wish I hadn't been there." His eyes panned up slightly at the group. "Almost." He added quite clearly.

"Man I wish I had been." Matt admitted. "I'd give anything to see that!"

"I barely remember anything from being there." Shiro began again. "I was awake for only a couple of minutes, before Iverson commanded that I be put under until they knew more about how my arm worked."

"Your.. arm?" Matt echoed slowly. Glancing down, he finally realized the vastly different extremity at his right side. His eyes became wide and a gasp caught in his throat. "What happened to you?" The young man questioned lightly, the look of horror glaring off his eyes in a fearful glint of remorse; as he touched a hand to his friend's metallic forearm.

"You mean, what didn't happen?" Lance put in before Shiro could answer. "Shiro's practically seen every angle of the Galra's evil." Matt's wide eyes turned from the Blue Paladin to the Black one.

"The Galra took my arm and replaced it with this." He flexed his prosthetic arm up in saying this, and continued. "They forced me to fight after you were taken away. I defeated the gladiator we were all said to fight that day, when I saved you.. and that's when they decided to change the scenery on me again."

"Speaking.. of which…" Matt recalled thoughtfully dropping his gaze for a moment. "I never did get to thank you for what you did for me. I mean, to many.. it seemed like you'd turned against me. But.. in reality… you were just saving me from embarrassment and probably even death."

"I'd do it again for you anytime." Shiro replied meaningfully. "By the way.. how's the leg? Never thought I'd get the chance to ask you that, but since you're here.."

"Pretty good." Matt answered thankfully, placing a hand to his left knee. "Left a scar.. but otherwise it's been fine."

"Good." Shiro smiled. "Glad to know that my fake attack wasn't too real." This soon faded with a surprised grunt, as he looked down at his left hand; which quivered as if it had a mind of its own.

"Are you ok?" Lance wondered nervously, panning his eyes up to Shiro's face once again.

"Does it hurt?" Pidge asked. Shiro clenched his hand into a fist with a sigh, and it seemed to stop at his command.

"No." He answered the Green Paladin's question flatly. "But something is happening here.. and we need to find out what."

"Maybe it'll go back to normal over time." Hunk suggested.

"We'll keep an eye on it for a while and try to help you get back on your feet again." Pidge told him. "And if it still hasn't gone away.. we'll do something then. Whatever it is.. it's not damaging anything from what I can tell."

"Ok." Shiro complied simply, seeing nothing else he could do or say.

"So.. Shiro.." Matt spoke up cautiously after a short awkward silence. "What can your prosthetic arm do?" Shiro looked to his right arm. He lifted it up to a fist and the purplish glow faded into life. "Woah!" Matt breathed.

"And that's not all it can do." Pidge gushed pleasurefully. Shiro let down the glow and lowered it back down onto the armrest, as Pidge came up beside him. She set her computer on the table next to the chair and took the cable that was connected to it and plugged the other end of it into Shiro's arm. Matt gave her a strange look, as he came to stand over her shoulder; various programs popping up on the screen.

"It has the ability to store information for us to download off of it." Pidge explained, as she began to sift through the information. "It's been a way for us to hack Galra computers within their facilities and ships. It's how we get our intel."

"Well most of it." Hunk corrected thoughtfully.

"That's incredible!" Matt gasped. "Shiro, do you know just how technologically advanced that is?!"

"Decades ahead of people back on Earth.. believe me, I know." Shiro responded.

"You should see him fight with it." Pidge told him.

"What?! You can fight with it too?!" Matt cried, turning his eyes on Shiro once more in utter shock; fireworks practically shooting from his eyes in dumb-founded astonishment.

"What can I say.." Shiro shrugged innocently. "The Galra did incredible work on it… Despite how they did it."

"This might be the most advanced form of technology I've ever seen!" Matt awed.. studying the arm with his eyes and fingers.

"Heh.. it's quite a change.." Shiro admitted lightly. "But I've gotten used to it in the year that I was a prisoner. I must've forgotten some of it when I crashed.. cause only after I became a Paladin, did I start to re-learn how to use it. Sometimes I wonder if there's still things haven't remembered about it yet."

"Awesome!" Matt breathed. "Now I almost wish I had one too." Shiro smiled knowingly finding a bit of humor in this statement. The others gave him an odd look, but seeing Shiro's reaction made them soften up into smiles of their own; thankful to see that Shiro's personality hadn't been completely dulled out by his off state. Shiro then turned to Keith.

"So.. what happened around here while I was gone?" The question caught Keith off guard.. though at the same time he was kind of expecting it;.. at some point anyway.

"You don't need to worry about that now.. you need to rest." The Red Paladin answered rather quickly, after coming out of a 'deer in headlights' stare from the haunting question; which was innocently asked of him by his closest friend.

"I could use the distraction." Shiro responded simply. Keith's haunted expression seemed hollowed out more… his reluctance showing even as they stared at one another.

"Well.. um.. after we recovered you from the wreckage of the Black Lion.." Keith explained slowly. "We found you needed immediate medical attention due to the injuries that our battle with Zarkon inflicted on you."

"Which speaking of which.." Hunk spoke up awkwardly. "Is still missing in space."

"What?!" Matt gasped.

"What are you talking about?" Shiro asked more intentionally, his eyebrows furrowing together in concerned confusion. And the team all exchanged glances, almost like sending silent messages amongst themselves.

Hey guys, how's it going! Another Chapter finished.. Finally! This story is progressing again! I'm trying my best to stay on top of it with everything else that's been going on in my life recently. So hope you enjoy this next chapter and I'll see you guys next time! Thx!