So she kneeled on both knees
And this is what she said.
"I may not be wise
And I won't save the day.
But look in my eyes
And know I'll always stay
And I won't run away."
~Ben Platt "Run Away"
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
...I Have Love All Along
A few ships, hoppers and high-atmo skiffs had cruised overhead as Katie awaited Lance's return to the McClain farm beneath the big tree. But her practiced ear knew the sound of a Troika. She knew this one in particular, its mechanical harmonics singing a familiar melody. She'd spent two days tweaking the engine, adding a second adaptive AI and fixing the faulty environmental controls, and now knew it nearly as well as Athena.
After all, Science Wiz Pidge couldn't have her Loverboy Lance flying around the universe in a hunk of junk.
Her timing was intentional. He told her he'd be making a run to Miami on Monday morning for a therapist's appointment and to pick up supplies. So, she'd arrived at the McClain farm after he'd left, giving her time to have the talk with his parents.
The growl of landing thrusters sent her pulse pounding in her ears. Blowback from the thrusters drove a stiff breeze through the tree's limbs, its leaves clapping in applause. Attempting to look cool, difficult in the late afternoon Cuban heat, she sipped the hibiscus iced tea made by Lance's mom. Even sitting in the shade on a bench beneath the big tree, she could feel the tropical August heat pressing against her skin. The Voltron uniform didn't help. Neither did Nestor the fat, orange barn cat who sat purring in her lap. The metallic grunt and sigh of hydraulics in the landing gear and happy yalps of the dogs were her signal to set down the tea and face what came next. Gently settling Nestor on the ground, she stood.
The Troika's hatch opened with a hiss and Kaltenecker mooed enthusiastically at the return of her favorite person. Nena and Shaggy rushed to Lance in a blur of tan and black. Seeing Katie, Lance's handsome face split with a huge grin, eyes hidden behind aviator glasses. He wore gray pants, work boots, and a chocolate brown shirt that echoed the color of his hair. The sleeves were rolled up revealing a red underlining. He gave each dog an affectionate head scratch and then his long legs devoured the distance between him and Katie with fluid ease.
He swept her into a bone-crushing hug. "Paloma. Missed you so much!" It had been four days since they'd last seen each other in person.
"Human being. Need oxygen. Leggo!"
He set her down, but denied her breath with a sound kiss. Sunglasses ground against glasses and they both laughed, then removed the offending eyewear.
"Did I get the date wrong?" he said. "It must be me, because you don't do…wrong?"
The plan was for her to do the meet-the-family thing next week. "No. I changed the plan."
Bewildered, he looked over at the main house, its door shut, windows shuttered. Turning back to her, his face had the same nascent worry she'd seen his mother's face.
He tugged her collar. "I love a girl in uniform, but what's the occasion? Is everything okay?"
"I wanted your parents to take me seriously."
"Why?"
"I needed to know they were okay with this."
"Huh?" Lance's Pidge-Is-Talking-Too-Much-Science expression stretched his face to comical proportions.
She patted her pocket, checking its contents. Then she took his hands in hers. For a few heartbeats, she froze, taking in the contrast of his dusky skin to her paler tones, big hands to small. Both their left hands were now marked with livid scars. Her hand was healed and fully functional, but she'd left the scars, souvenirs of a crazy adventure that ended in love.
It still fluttered in her chest, the feathery menace of premonition, the fear that she'd be his end. Her trepidation was countered by the conviction that she was made to protect him, augmented by Allura's alchemy, and meant to be his.
"I'm not good at talking about emotions." Her thumb's tip followed the ragged furrow of the scar on his hand, his gaze warm and patient on her skin. "I know I've waited too long to say this." Nestor, annoyed at losing his lap, brushed against her legs and she watched the cat, her lips struggling to turn emotion into language.
"Pidge, it's okay. I know—"
"It's not okay." She met his eyes. "I love you. I think I've always loved you which is ridiculous because I know I moved on after you ghosted me and no one really loves unconditionally, except dogs, and…." Argh! Stop rambling. "It's like the function that loved Lance was switched off, but never completely uninstalled."
The smile that broke over his face was like dawn over the sea. He bent to kiss her. She shifted in his grasp, accepting the kiss, but keeping it brief.
"I'm still scared, Lance, but I know one thing." She took a deep breath, a well-prepared monologue, honed and practiced on her journey from Earth's moon to Cuba, ready for delivery. As usual, however, she glitched and all that emerged was, "I need to come home to you."
Though it hardly seemed possible, the smile on his face broadened, his features swimming with many Lances—teenage, twenty, thirty, middle age, old, scarred and unscarred. She swayed, steadied by his hands, drunk with happiness because her wonderful and exasperating friend loved her as she loved him.
Should I kneel? No, I'm short enough already. Speak Katie, just speak. "Lance McClain, will you marry me?"
His broad smile shrank to something subtler, and he glanced back at the house, blue eyes dark and unreadable. Blood thrummed in her ears, nearly drowning out the sounds of insects droning in the tree. His silence left her breathless, hollowed by dread, the possibility that once again, she'd read a situation wrong.
Then he drawled. "Took you long enough."
"What?"
"I'm just a farm boy from Cuba, waiting for my girl genius to propose."
Nascent relief began to sweep through her. Her fingers twitched with the usual reflex to hit him. "And…she just proposed. What's your answer, Goofball?"
"Yes." His shoulders shook with soft laughter and his face lifted skyward, long throat bared to her, eyes closed. Strong fingers tightened gentle and firm around hers and he dropped his gaze, catching her eyes. "Yes. And 'Si.' Porque te amo. Te adoro. Te adoro hasta que el sol caiga del cielo. Hasta que la luna se convierte en óxido. Te amo por siempre."
In the house, cheers erupted.
Lance leaned over, bending her backwards at the waist, and kissed her. As they broke the kiss, Lance's family—which had grown over the past few hours from just his parents and Nadia, to grandparents, his sister Rachel, brother Marco, and several cousins and most the neighborhood—hurried over to the couple. Immediately after giving Pidge their blessing to marry their son, his parents began calling everyone they knew. And it seemed they knew all of Cuba.
Katie had been more than a little disconcerted by the arrival of more family. "What if he says 'No'?"
"We'll beat him until he says, 'Yes,'" said Marco, who had already taken to calling her "Sis."
"I don't think that's how it's supposed to work."
It was an archaic custom, logically pointless, but Lance's family was everything to him, and Katie with her mind made of ordered sequences of code, needed the reassurance that they would accept her, in all her brittle, peculiar glory, into their world. Only then, knowing that variable was in place, could she find the courage to ask Lance to be her forever.
In seconds, Katie and Lance were surrounded by a small crowd under the tree. "Did you say, 'Yes?'" asked Marco, cracking his knuckles. "Because, otherwise, you're getting a serious beat-down, little bro."
"Do I look stupid?" said Lance. "Wait, no-no-no, don't answer that."
She joined in the laughter, head awhirl with what had just happened and a bit unnerved by the noisy chatter of his family and neighbors. Allowing herself the luxury of weakness, she shrank into him a little, casting a shy glance up at his face.
Marriage, like the practice of asking for parents' blessing was quaint and possibly unnecessary, but she and Lance had both grown up happily in its structure and Lance, she knew, needed the trappings of tradition. Seeing the happiness radiating from his face, she knew this had been the right choice.
The dull menace of a prescient memory still lost lingered, dancing away from her grasp, refusing to be caught. She was still afraid, but after weighing the costs, it was worth the risk. They were worth the risk.
"We have to do this right." Katie pulled two engagement bracelets from her pocket. She'd had them made by a jeweler at Sandleman Station as that was where their story had begun anew. It was a Martian tradition, but common on Earth now. And besides, they were Paladins of Voltron; they belonged to the universe.
His was green with a leaf pattern; hers, blue with a water motif.
"Awesome." Lance took hers and they snapped the bracelets on each other in an awkward tangle of hands and wrists. His left hand wrapped around her lower left arm as he pulled her, her back to his chest, against him. He raised both their left hands, showing off the engagement bracelets.
"Who's up for a wedding?" he said.
"Yes. Because I love you. I adore you. I adore you until the sun falls from the sky. Until the moon turns to rust. I love you forever." Lance was working up the nerve to propose, but Pidge beat him to it. That was part of the speech he'd worked up.
Inspired by Fisher's lushly romantic song, "I Will Love You."
One more chapter!