Published February 20, 2017
"He Ain't Heavy, He's My Brother"
There is no reason to sacrifice truth for unity or unity for truth. We can have them both, but it requires love and humility. ~ Marcel Lejeune
Now that it seemed they were going to work as a team for a while, Pidge considered telling the others about her true identity. It was no longer a secret that she was related to the Holts, but she had left out the fact that she was a girl.
Technically, she had never lied to them about her sexual identity; she had simply not corrected them when they perceived it incorrectly. She saved that nuance as ammunition for if they ever got mad at her about it.
Pidge decided against telling them because it was now imperative that they be able to work together, and she did not want them to think of her any differently because she was a girl. It was challenging enough for her to be the smallest and youngest person on the team. The last thing she needed was to give them another reason to think of her as different or more vulnerable.
The hardest test was during the meditation session Coran directed. Would she give herself away? Should she? No, surely not now: the shock would ruin their concentration during the exercise, and the boys' awareness that she was different from them might make it even harder for them to bond. After all, what boy would want to allow a girl access to his thoughts?
Ironically, Pidge thought the person she might have the most in common with was Keith. Like her, he had lost his family and was used to operating alone. But that meant neither of them was really inclined to reach out to each other.
The first time the two of them truly bonded was when they were handcuffed together and had to cooperate in order to throw food at Allura. After all the quiznak the princess had put them through, combining their strength for that action was immensely satisfying.
Pidge wished Matt could have been part of that food fight. It would have been fun to throw food at him, but it also would have been good to have him on her team. The food fight was the first real fun she had experienced since learning of his disappearance.
She felt guilty and wistful when Hunk talked about them having no secrets, called them brothers, and professed his love for them. She had a secret, and a blood brother, and she did not love these paladins in the same way, or to the same degree, as she loved him.
She formed much simpler relationships with the team members that were even smaller than her: Rover and the Altean mice. They reminded Pidge of Bae-Bae. She had missed the dog's quiet companionship while staying at the Galaxy Garrison. Even though Rover could not perceive or respond to human feelings, its constant presence was reassuring. It was also helpful, sparing Pidge from having to ask other people for assistance when she could not reach things. The mice were closer to Allura than to anyone else, but they also liked Pidge, who found them fun to play with, and much nicer to touch than Rover.
Her suspicions of Shiro returned when the freed Galra prisoners revealed how he and Matt were separated. Then he disappointed her personally by pulling her out of the crashed ship before they had finished downloading its prison records. She was about to pull out her bayard to get him off her, when the massive Galra pod crashed where they would have been. He had saved her life, so she forgave him, at least for that second betrayal. But she could not find it in her heart to forgive him for hurting Matt for no reason.
After they defeated the monster, Pidge asked the freed prisoners to keep their eyes open for Sam and Matt, and to find a way to alert her of their location if they ever met again. After that, she was not in the mood to socialize with the other paladins, so she went outside with the mice to watch the Arusian sunset.
She had not been out long before Shiro found her. When he relayed what he now remembered of the last time he saw Matt, gratitude for his selflessness and shame for her mistrust moved Pidge to tears. It had been a while since she had cried by herself, let alone in anyone's company. But that vulnerability seemed utterly insignificant to how vulnerable Shiro had made himself to save Matt. She hugged him without thinking twice about it, babbling her apology and thanks.
She was shocked when Shiro called her by her real name. He knew the truth. He must have figured it out a while ago. Yet he had not treated her any differently when he had that knowledge. He even kept the secret, respecting her right to decide whether or not to tell anyone.
It felt weird to have someone else know. It was risky having to trust someone other than herself. But it was also strangely nice. Pidge no longer felt alone, now that the burden was shared. It did not weigh on Shiro nearly as much, but he was aware that it weighed on her.
She finally got to look closely at his arm when they downloaded the information from the crashed Galra ship. While their friends planned a party with the Arusians, they set up a makeshift laboratory in the Green Lion's hangar. Shiro rested his prosthetic on a table under a bright light while Pidge examined it and transferred the data. It was not as much as she had hoped to obtain, but it was a start.
"I'm sorry we didn't get everything," Shiro said.
Pidge saw through his thinly veiled words. "But you're not sorry for pulling me away."
He smiled briefly at her shrewdness, but his eyes were still somber. "No. I lost two Holts, and that was when I couldn't control what was happening. I couldn't risk losing you, too, when I was able to avoid it."
She bit her lip, wanting to tell him off for thinking he had to protect her, but at the same time understanding how that made sense. "Do you blame yourself at all? For what happened on Kerberos and afterwards?"
His eyes traveled from his hand to her face, and then back to his hand. "I don't know. Sometimes."
"Well, I don't," she informed him. "And neither does my mom. I want you to know that."
She did not ask Shiro what else he now remembered about being a gladiator. She could guess, though now she had enough faith in him to give him credit. He had probably been forced to do other bad things, or things that seemed bad, but she did not think less of him for it.
Pidge wondered if Matt faced situations like that, too.
When she talked to Shiro and the Alteans about the Galra, she gathered that only the strong survived in their society. That worried her somewhat, because strength was not a quality she normally associated with her father and brother. They were physically fit enough to be astronauts, but they were mainly intellectuals. Heck, she could sometimes beat Matt at arm-wrestling. She could not guess how well or poorly they had fared, or were faring now, in the Galra work camp, or wherever they were now.
Her father and brother would have to be strong in order to survive. And she would have to be strong in order to find them, even strong enough to leave her new friends.
Pidge decided she would try to determine the speed at which the Galra had expanded their empire, and estimate, if possible, how long it would take to liberate the same area. She examined the numbers that Allura and Coran were able to obtain from the castle's computers, keeping that the expansion might continue in some places even as they liberated others.
She came to only one definite conclusion: it would take too long to keep her family waiting. It might take longer than her lifetime. It would make sense to find her family first, and help Team Voltron later. But she did not want them to count on her returning, because she could not be certain that she would.
After decoding the data from Shiro's arm, Pidge thought about simply taking the Green Lion to begin her search at Sam and Matt's last known location. After all, it belonged to her, in that mystical way Allura had described. But it seemed wrong to take it away from the set. If she left it, they could find someone to replace her as its pilot.
Pidge knew her family might be disappointed that she had not done more to fight the Galra, but even if they were noble enough to prolong their own suffering, they would probably agree that returning to Colleen was a priority. She did not deserve to be left waiting for so long.
When Pidge told the others that she was leaving, Keith's fury and choice of words bewildered her. He didn't have a family. Perhaps that was the point, that he did not want other people in the universe to lose their lives the way his parents had, or lose their families the way he had. But then, he should have understood what Pidge herself was going through, and how important it was for her to find and save her family.
She appreciated Shiro's defense of her. In fact, Shiro was the biggest cause of any reluctance she felt. He understood her more than anyone else on the team, perhaps better than anyone besides her immediate family members at this point in her life. Yet having his permission to leave was like having her mother's blessing: she had to leave behind the loved ones she was with in order to find the ones she had lost.
Yet when the castle was attacked, just as she was about to depart, she had to go back and see if they were all right.
They were not.
As always, she was quick to reassess and alter her priorities. Lance's life and health were in immediate jeopardy, so Pidge let go of her goal for the present, and offered her pod as a vehicle to find and transport a new crystal. It was not until after they accepted her offer that she thought pragmatically about how she would probably be able to take it or another pod after they came back.
All her thoughts regarding that vanished when she saw Sendak and Haxus capture Shiro and the unconscious Lance.
She was relieved that she could still communicate with Allura and Keith through her comm unit, but the tasks they gave her were, to say the least, intimidating. She was not used to having people count on her. Well, perhaps that was not true: Lance and Hunk had counted on her to be their communications officer during their training, but she had never really come through for them in that role.
Rover was the only witness of her vow to help her team. She would save them and make up for all the times she had let them down in the past.
When she left her hiding place to face Haxus, she finally owned up to the title and role that Allura had given her. "I'm a paladin of Voltron!"
Pidge did not want to kill an intelligent sentient being, but since Haxus made it clear that he would fight until either victory or death, she understood that it might be necessary to save herself and her friends.
She thought fleetingly of David and Goliath, in the first book that bore her father's name. It seemed a good time to believe that story was true.
She did not realize how attached she had become to Rover, or how complex it was, until she saw Haxus pull Rover down with him. Rover was strong enough to carry a person; it had carried her weight just moments ago. Haxus was bigger than her, but he still had one foot on the edge, so Rover was not holding his entire weight.
Rover somehow made a conscious choice to power down. Pidge was stunned, and wondered whether it had done that out of loyalty to her or some kind of inherent programming meant to emulate the Galra creed, "victory or death". Either way, since she had reprogrammed Rover to help her, Haxus's death was her fault.
Pidge wondered what her family would think of her, now that she had killed a Galra. Her mother would be horrified, might pity her, think her a stranger or a monster. Her father and brother might be sympathetic, since they had suffered so much in the hands of the Galra Empire. They might even be glad about it, proud of her for besting a soldier.
The loss of Rover and the realization that she had ended an intelligent being's life hardened her somewhat, prompted her to shout defiantly into Sendak's communication channel. She meant what she said when she told him he was next: if she could defeat one Galra, she could do it again.
The sound of Shiro's feeble, frustrated voice made her freeze, remembering the other lives at stake. When he heard her say his name, his tone became desperate; then his warning was cut off by sounds of electrical sizzling and Shiro's incoherent exclamations of agony.
Pidge found she could not bear the possibility of Shiro in pain or dying any more than she could bear her father or brother in such a situation. That was when she realized the people she had been living with lately were more than just allies or friends: they had become like family, just as her father said always happened to him and his crewmembers.
She would not give in to Sendak's demands, but she would not let her friends suffer because of her either.
As she approached her friends and her enemy, she heard Sendak gloating and musing about the possibility of invading Earth. Pidge thought of her mother and all that she and the paladins loved on their home planet, and her determination redoubled. There was no way she would let the Galra get there.
At the moment when it mattered most, every member of the team that was present on Arus came through to help each other. They had come a long way from failing to protect each other in the training room simulation. This time they had each other's backs, and they managed to defeat Sendak by working together.
Allura, Shiro, and Keith recognized that they were indebted to Pidge, after everything she had done to save them. Shiro went so far as to say it seemed like she was meant to be part of their team, implying that he believed what Allura had professed about all of them being bonded by destiny.
Pidge was not sure she believed in destiny, but she did believe in her friends, and their cause, and the bonds they had formed with each other. She was not ready to call them brothers, as Hunk had, but she did love them, as if they were an extended family. She could see, too, that fighting the Galra was the best way to protect Earth and all those who were threatened by the regime.
She could not give up on her father and brother, but neither would she abandon her fellow paladins and Altean mentors.
Hearing Keith, of all people, express appreciation for her presence and commitment brought her more happiness than she had felt since discovering the Green Lion. It was all the confirmation she needed to know that she was making the right decision.
Music: "He Ain't Heavy, He's My Brother"
