I don't know how to love him
What to do, how to move him.
I've been changed, yes really changed
In these past few days
When I've seen myself
I seem like someone else.
~Jesus Christ Superstar, "I Don't Know How to Love Him"
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
Suddenly in Love with a Stranger
Katie's eyes took in Altea, an alien landscape she could have only imagined as a child; a boy, now a man, who she had loved as a girl sitting by her side, his body heat a strange and familiar comfort. They sat at the base of a colossal statue commemorating their lost friend, Allura. At least three stories high, Allura's statue stood on a tall, broad base which afforded a spectacular view of the Vrelfar valley.
Squinting in the bright late morning sun, she missed her glasses, apparently in shattered pieces and locked in an Apollo City Police Department evidence locker. Not only did they provide a degree of vision correction, but the adaptive lenses would have reduced the intensity of bright glints of light emanating from the polished surfaces of many of Vrelfar's buildings.
Altea's capital city erupted in blocks, towers and domes of gleaming, alabaster white and slate gray from the valley's carpet of variegated green and juniberry burgundy. Like bees, skiffs and planetary transports hovered and darted through the city's skyline. The white-noise background tumult of a populous city well into the work day was cut by the nasal buzz of a lawnmower. In the green expanse below the statue, an Altean youth on a riding mower sketched s-curves in the tall grass, obviously having too much fun with the chore.
To the north, faint smudges of pinkish-orange clouds were beginning to crest the blue-grey Trintis mountains. An oort storm, plasma-fused rocky hail and torrential rain, was forecasted to arrive in late afternoon. Now, the air was still, not even a hint of a breeze, and the sun, high in the sky, had shrunk the statue's shade to a narrow dark puddle.
Voltron, Atlas and the entire MFE fleet could easily fly through the gaps in Katie's memory of the previous week. Her mind picked at disorganized images and sound fragments, but the effort was like assembling pieces from several different jigsaw puzzles. The only recognizable bit being Lance's adult face, still handsome but far removed from the boy she'd last seen a decade before.
Three days ago, she had awoken in bed to startling sight. Lance quiznaking McClain! Not the boy, but the man, the expression on his face both one of relief and stunning love. Love. An emotion she inexplicably returned, though the "how" of falling in love escaped her. Her mind only remembered the youth who'd ghosted her, but her body knew he was the missing part of her heart, tucked back where it belonged after so many years.
It's a curious thing, to find yourself in love with a stranger.
Keith's familiar face had appeared at Lance's shoulder, mischief sparkling in his indigo eyes. "There's my girl."
Lance shot him an amused side-eye, and even Katie, with her Swiss cheese memories and terrible people skills knew this was recurring game between the two men.
Seconds later, Hunk had shoved himself between the two, an arm on each of their shoulders, a broad grin splitting his brown face. "She's baaack!"
Bewildered and groggy, the sight of the three men made her heart blossom with joy. "Shiro regretfully sends his love," said Hunk. "Because…the Honerva Lives crazies don't need the temptation of all of us here on Altea." She had nodded, her eyes drawn back to the mystery and wonder that was Lance's face. The feelings he stirred in her were enigmatic: the crushing burden of profound loss and failure, illogical in the reality of his living, breathing presence. Her dreams had been dark, made of landscapes where lakes of blood were surrounded by mountains of bodies. Yet, she'd awaken like Juliet to find her Romeo very much alive.
As the doctor predicted, her memories were returning. Where everything about adult Lance had been a blank, she now had washed-out impressions of their reunion at Sandleman's Station. But very little recollection of what came after. New scars, including two parallel lines and small puckers that looked like Altean script on her left hand were permanent souvenirs of Pidge and Lance adventures she couldn't remember. It would seem that she and Lance still attracted chaos where ever they went.
This morning, bored with convalescence, she wobbled out to the statue with his help and Kosmo supervising. Keith, Hunk, and Yrta had gone to a far settlement on Altea to check on the progress of a new community and medical center that was under construction, funded in part by Blade of Marmora and Hunk's charitable foundation.
She watched as Lance leaned forward, elbows on knees. Though still possessing the physique of a noodle, the extra muscle he'd put on over the years softened the lines of his shoulders and back, rendering them with grace. He wore a cranberry red shirt, one of Coran's designs, black pants and work boots. Splotches of purpling bruises dusted his face and neck.
A white bandage covered his right forearm where he'd been bitten by Kosmo. Neither Keith nor Lance would tell her why Koz had tried Cuban food, except both agreed that Lance deserved it. Kosmo and Lance were still the best of friends with the enormous wolf often shadowing him even when Keith was somewhere else. As usual, Kosmo plopped himself down at their feet, his keen gaze out over the Altean landscape.
All the Paladins behaved as though Pidge and Lance, the couple, was a foregone conclusion, with Shiro teasing her about an apparent incident of near-public indecency—another memory she couldn't conjure.
Lance, however, had been attentive and touchy but in carefully platonic way. Probably in deference to her memory loss, but it only added to her confusion. He rarely left her side and spend much of the time reading to her using a datapad borrowed from Coran. Their datapens being another casualty of the events no one would speak of that had led to her current debilitated state.
He read her news feeds, terrible romance novels (the sexy bits that made her blush and also demand more), scientific articles where he managed much of the jargon with amazing ease, and messages from his in-box.
"Nadia says, 'Hi.'" He frowned, slightly sullen. "You're her hero."
"I am?"
"Me, I'm just her goofy tio, but she thinks you're the greatest thing since sliced bread."
"Smart girl."
"Yeah, she is," he said with not a little pride. "She's hoping you'll take a look at her project for hydraulic engineering class."
"I'd love to."
Before venturing out to the monument, Katie had taken a real shower with steaming hot water and scrubbed away the crust of ordinary grime and something far worse, by the looks of her new scars, from her hair and skin. Afterward, Lance had combed her hair and put it in two little ponytails. Once, this had been her favorite hair style, but after many people, even her mother, had teased her, calling it childish, she'd abandoned it years ago.
"I look silly," she said to Lance, beginning to pull at the hair ties.
He had stopped her. "No. You look bad-ass."
She had given him her best imperious glare because his opinion didn't matter. He'd thrown her away like a useless, broken component. Yet, a half hour later, here she sat, by his side, hair still bound in twin ponytails.
Tugging absently at one ponytail, she continued to study the mysterious landscape of a face that felt like home. The Altean sunlight brought out the blue marks on high cheekbones, fainter than she remembered, but growing brighter every day. "So…you're my boyfriend?" The word, spoken aloud sounded infantile.
He looked at her over his shoulder. "Pidge, I'm absolutely anything you need me to be."
"I need you to never ghost me again."
He sat up and gently tweaked her nose. "I love you. The only way I'm leaving is if you send me away. And even then, be prepared for some serious stalking."
She laughed. A watery shimmer of light drew her eyes to the sky where the one of Altea's enormous orbital rings bisected blue with pale white-gray. Seconds later a tiny, white-hot spot appeared, a ship entering the atmosphere, no doubt headed for the honeycomb structure of the Vrelfar space port.
I love you. The words tasted like prayer on her tongue, but stayed unspoken, which felt wrong. Three words that she should give him, but her memories of the boy who'd abandoned her versus this stranger who loved her, held them in her mouth.
What came out was a lament: "I hate that I can't remember us."
"Nah. It's awesome." He dropped an arm over her shoulders, the gesture simultaneously flirtatious and totally platonic. "This means we get a second first date and a second first time." He waggled his eyebrows at her. "Maybe in that order."
"Wait? I got lucky and I didn't even have to buy you dinner?"
"Darling, you played my body like a cheap guitar."
"Cool." Then she scowled. "No, not cool. I finally get my teenage fantasy and I can't remember it?" She stiffened, embarrassed by the admission.
He chuckled and gently shook her shoulders. "You told me about your crush."
"I did?" What else had she told him? Although, baring her soul to this stranger seemed perfectly normal.
His face twisted, ruefully. "Based on what you've said, it looks like I've got some work to do with your dad. He thinks I'm an idiot."
"I love my dad, but I'm adult, free to date whoever I want. If Mom were here, she'd straighten him out. She liked you." And just like that, a dam inside her broke. A dam she'd constructed on a June day when her broken soul lay amongst the shattered remains of a greenhouse at a Martian research facility. A necessary structure to hold back emotions while she did what needed to be done in the wake of her mother's death. Because she had to be the strong one for her father and brother.
"I want my mom," she gulped out.
"I know." He pulled her into his arms.
"I want my mom."
"She's with you, Pidge. Always will be." His fingers massaged the back of her neck.
"I want my mom." And she began to cry. More than cry, she bawled against his chest. Sobs that deprived her brain of oxygen wracked her body. She cried unabashed in the embrace of a stranger she loved. She cried as she would have if he'd come to her mom's memorial. A wet, slobbering mess on his shirt. And he clung to her, surrounding her with support and she finally knew he'd never leave again. She cried until her eyes were dry and then cried until her chest hurt.
Exhausted, she shut her eyes and listened to the thump of his heart, ashamed for her outburst. She'd cried before: at the base of Matt's fake tombstone; then for Ryner and Allura. But nothing like this because small and physically weak Pidge had to be unbreakable, level-headed and cool under the worst circumstances.
But something had changed in her missing week; a shifting paradigm between her and Lance anyway, one where he'd slipped inside her and rewritten code, leaving her comfortably vulnerable in his presence. His fingers pressed into the meat of her shoulder and made deep circles, massaging knotted muscles up to her neck.
She breathed in the scent of Lance and tear-soggy shirt and then demanded, "Tell me what happened. On Titan."
As he and everyone else had done before, he said, "Maybe we should wait—"
"No!" Though every neuron in her body begged to stay there, safe in his embrace, she pushed away, reclaiming a little of unflappable Pidge Holt. "I have to know. Tell me."
"I don't—"
"I killed a lot of people, didn't I?"
"I killed my share, too. They were going to kill us." Misery drew long lines on his face as he looked at her. "Or worse." Ghosts moved in his eyes and in them she got flashes of her lost week, the knowledge that, post-Voltron, he'd been broken and remade by violence. She knew recounting the narrative would damage him, but there was no one else. She had to know. "Please tell me, Lance."
He told her. A tale cobbled together from its beginning when forces conspired to get them on Athena together, destination Titan; through multiple attacks in space, one that drew in Keith; and continuing until Lance had fallen unconscious from a mortal injury; the rest of the narrative expanded with evidence collected by Apollo City Police Department including the audio recording from her datapen.
Evidence suggested that some of the terrorists had turned on each other, the survivors found lost and sulking in the tunnels days after. But her datapen's recording left no doubt that she'd avenged his near-death, killing both his murderer and Tessa, his betrayer.
"Most of the terrorists and mercs were snuck in through the service elevator. You know? The one by the Quintessence refinery?" She nodded and he continued, "They trickled in the day before, a few at a time. Convenient power outages took out any sec cam footage."
"We weren't arrested for the mayhem we caused at the festival because ChemLore wanted us down in Gopher City where we'd be alone and vulnerable," she said.
"Yeah." He laughed bitterly. "Guess I'm out of a job. Talk about being fired the hard way."
The roar of thruster brakes grew and they both watched as a mid-sized passenger cruiser, Martian Albatross class, sailed through blue sky. Ovoid with retractable wings, the type of ship frequently hired to transport bands and other performers. Another memory fragment lodged in her processes and she struggled, trying to shake it free.
"I think Soren, of all people, might have saved our lives," Lance said. "Sort of."
"Who?"
"He was on ChemLore's 'tech recovery' team with me. An 'Allura Lives' cultist and the guy I figured was most likely to stick a knife in my back."
"He was in the tunnel-paths?"
Lance shook his head. "You probably don't remember this, but on the train to Nuñes, there were these two guys: an Olkari and a Galra." His mouth quirked with a sad smile. "That sounds the beginning of a bad joke."
He turned to watch the transport as it dropped lower toward Vrelfar. "They got off at Gopher City, same as us. Sec cam footage shows them having an argument and then the Galra storms off in a huff. An hour and a half later, he pops up on a cam in The Burrows and shapeshifts into a blond Altean: Soren. A while later, Apollo City PD gets a call from a guy with an Altean accent who tells them that Xiphoid has penetrated Gopher City's security and is planning to assassinate Lance McClain and take Pidge Holt hostage."
Her brain wasn't processing data as efficiently as usual, but she put two and two together. "He's why first responders got to us in time."
"He's also why we were attacked in the first place. If he'd acted on his conscience sooner, a lot of lives might have been saved." Lance combed his hair back off his face, baring more scars at his hairline. "If it weren't for him eventually calling, though, we'd be dead. I guess in the end, he kind of liked me."
"You're annoyingly likable." She elbowed him and he elbowed back and kissed her forehead.
She leaned on him, feeling the weight of the dead between them: friends, family, enemies. She felt no more guilt for killing the mercs than she would for swatting a fly, a mark against her, no doubt. She did feel sorry for any family and friends who mourned them as she mourned Ryner, Allura and her mom. As she would have mourned Lance if…. If?
With easy boldness, she reached to his waist and pulled up the hem of his shirt, baring flesh. She traced the fresh scars on his side and abdomen. Her fingers knew they were lovers even if her mind couldn't remember.
"How?" she asked.
He tapped the Altean marks on his face. "Coran has a theory about these and the thing you call 'the flow.' Somehow, you used it and my marks to heal me. He thinks Allura figured I'd be me, keep throwing myself on grenades, literally and metaphorically. And she hoped you'd be around when I did that. This was her way of protecting me.
"She probably didn't realize how it would change you." Guilt twisted his face. "Or that you would have already used too much Quintessence fighting those mercs. Saving me almost killed you."
"I didn't do anything you wouldn't do for me." And she knew it was true. "Why didn't she put marks on my face too?"
He answered with one word. "Olkarion."
"Olkarion?"
"For a woman of science, you've got a surprising knack for space magic." He fell silent, a self-satisfied grin on his face, clearly expecting her to work it out.
Not an unreasonable expectation, usually. Now, with sections of her brain misfiring, it took a minute for her to collate the data. "Oh," she said. He meant the way she'd effortlessly mastered the Olkaris' fusion of technology with the power of nature and later, her ability to tap into the remnants of dead Olkarion's ephemeral energy and relive the planet's dire fate.
"You already had an, uh, affinity for Altean alchemy. All you needed was a little push." He rubbed fingertips over a blue sigil. "Me, I needed more, a way to contain a 'kernel of power,' as Coran described it."
Katie narrowed her eyes at the marks. "So, Allura put batteries on your face?" They both laughed at that.
"I wish she'd put them somewhere less visible, like my shoulders," he admitted.
"Or your ass," offered Katie. "Ass batteries."
He waggled his eyebrows at her. "Hola hermosa. Wanna see my ass batteries?"
"Ugh! Lance." She punched him lightly. "Worst pickup line ever."
"Honestly, Pidge, it really isn't my worst."
"It's a wonder you ever get laid."
He threw back his head and laughed, giving her shoulders an affectionate squeeze. "There's my feisty girl." His blue eyes, languid with lust, swept a long look over her. Her body, often slow to arousal, hummed in anticipation. His mouth caught her attention and she scrolled through lines of fractured subroutines and broken loops, searching for the memory of his lips on hers, certain that he must be a great kisser.
The lightest feather of a breeze tickled her skin and the weight of history, notably an Altean princesses, his first love, moved between them. Katie looked over her shoulder up at Allura's monument. A cold, stone statue seemed a poor memorial for a warm and wonderful young woman. "Do you think she'd be okay? With us?"
Lance's laugh rang out. "She gave you the ability to heal me, hoping, no, not just hoping, but knowing we'd be together. I think, if she can see us, she's saying, 'What took you so long?'" His mouth curved in a broad, closed-mouth smile, and he lifted his gaze skyward. "And I pray she's happy too. Maybe with Lotor. With a couple of beautiful, pointy-eared kids."
Kosmo's ears pricked and he sat up, staring at distant figures who stood below on newly mowed lawn watching them, probably wondering if they were interrupting something.
"Hunk, Keith and Yrta are back," said Katie, waving. The trio waved, the gesture joined by three other people with them: a tall brunette woman in orange and white Garrison colors, a man with hair the same color as Katie's and an older man, bearded and the senior version of the younger. "Look, it's Veronica."
The arm over Katie's shoulder lifted and left her bereft. Lance stared at the approaching group, rubbing his hands together, looking very much like his anxious teenage self. "And Sam and Matt."
"Oh, grow a pair, McClain." She reclaimed his arm, putting it over her shoulders where it belonged.
"I have a pair. They're perfectly proportioned, magnificent and currently climbing up into my body cavity in terror."
"Huh. Maybe Allura should've put those marks on your balls."
He gave her a cross-eyed look. "Hmmm. Talk about sexual healing."
Heat rose in her cheeks, but she winked anyway. He took this as an invitation, his lips on hers in a soft kiss. When he drew back, she huffed, indignant, and said, "That's it?"
"No, but I'd rather not meet your dad and brother with a boner."
Together they stood, his arm around her shoulders, hers around his waist, leaning into him because she wasn't steady on her feet and was still more than a little amazed that Lance wanted her that way. His touch had always made her a little stupid, but never before had she felt her stupidity reflected back, their bodies attracted like two magnets.
Her gaze followed his jawline and up to his mouth with its tight, nervous smile. She grinned, amused that something as mundane as a conversation with her dad disassembled him so. Amused and foolishly happy because of all that implied regarding his feelings for her.
Her lips parted, prepared to say, "Calm down, Goofball, I'll protect you from the big, bad dad monster," but the joke died on her lips, giddy joy suddenly dimmed by a bleak shard of memory.
"Your love is death." The new scars on his body, a consequence of just a week spent in her presence.
"It's not over." Another whisp of memory, a pale watermark on the messy manuscript of her mind. Disorienting foreboding, her vision going watery.
"Pidge." Lines deepening around his eyes, her approaching brother and father obviously forgotten, he gazed at her like she was all that mattered. "You look tired. I think you need to get back to the castle."
"I'm okay."
"Alright. We'll just stand here until you fall down and then I can be the hero and carry you back." He wiggled his eyebrows and served up his obnoxious, over-cooked flirty grin.
"Fine." He was right, but she growled anyway. "Back to the castle. No carrying."
Voices rose and fell as she, Lance and their family and friends walked back to the Castle of Lions. Laughter and cheer, the sound of safety and love. And also groveling as Lance interjected an unhealthy amount of "Yes, sirs" into any exchange with her father.
Her lungs expanded, breathing in the scent of freshly mowed grass, a decision buffeting her emotions.
Could this—Pidge and Lance—truly be their future? She felt like Sleeping Beauty: down for a short nap one second; years later awoken to find that she now belonged to a handsome stranger, and he, to her. Part of her balked at the idea, disoriented and feeling like any agency had been taken from her. A larger part, however, struggled with disbelief that Lance, who had ignored her existence for years, was now in love with her. To make sense of it, she tried to formulate equations that would turn herself and the man at her side into manageable data. Precise arithmetic and discrete mathematics that explained why someone like Lance would want her.
Most important of all, quantitative proof that he wouldn't destroy her, or worse yet, she him.
"Your love is death." Could she risk it? How could she best protect him? By his side? Or was he safer without her? Even more so than teen Lance, this Lance, though larger and outwardly stronger, stirred powerful protective instincts in her. As snippets of memory returned, she knew protecting him had been her goal, a target that she would have missed all together if not for Allura's intervention.
The Castle of Lions' five towers, snow white against blue sky, blurred with the recollection of light dying in blue eyes. Her legs wobbled, she swayed and Lance steadied her.
"You sure you don't want me to carry you, stubborn girl?"
Everyone's eyes were on her and she lifted her chin, feigning strength. "Nope."
She knew what needed to be done. Now, if only she could find the courage.
Translation-
Tio - Uncle
