Lance leaned against the wall of the spacecraft, staring out at Pluto's icy surface beyond the thick glass of the viewport. He'd dreamed of coming out here some day, had spent years focusing all his energy into earning one of the coveted spots on man's first attempt to stand at the edge of their solar system and peer out into the void beyond. Advanced degrees, physical conditioning, intense training. All for this, to be able to look out onto another world.
The world where he was going to die.
It was a billion to one chance. A freak accident. Space debris, a meteoroid, hitting the wrong place at the wrong time and the wrong angle and crumpling half the cockpit like tissue paper two-thirds of the way through the landing sequence. Somehow, their pilot, Shiro, had managed to get them down anyway, flying by eye with ruined controls and one arm mangled by metal debris, and even managed to get himself back into the main cabin of the ship before his suit lost pressure completely. He'd passed out after, from blood loss and shock, but he didn't need to be conscious to tell the rest of them what they already knew. This ship wasn't going to be taking off again. They were stranded here, five billion kilometers from home.
They'd all set to work, of course, doing what they could. The mission doctor, Coran, tended to Shiro's injuries while Hunk, the geologist-engineer, went out to assess the damage. Their sysop-chemist, Pidge, ran a full check of the integrity of the rest of the hull and computer systems to make sure nothing else was going to fail. Unfortunately, as the mission's hydrologist-biologist, the most help Lance could offer any of them was an extra pair of hands, so unless there was something they needed him for, he had nothing to do but sit here and think about the messed up situation they'd found themselves in.
A flicker of red drifted into the corner of his gaze as he refolded his arms, and his attention went to it of his own accord. His string of fate, the slim red thread tied tightly around his pinky and visible only to him and to his soulmate on the other end. The entire reason he was here.
It had been known since the days of Yuri Gagarin that the strings behaved differently once you left the Earth behind. In a spacecraft they pointed straight at the center of the Earth, like a compass guiding you home. And on other planets, or if your soulmate left the one you were on, they pointed straight up into the sky no matter where you stood. A signal that you were in the wrong place, one of the Ares astronauts had once called it. A message that the other half of your soul was somewhere out there and you needed to go and find them.
But astronauts always came back to Earth, in the end, and when they did their strings settled to lay across the earth and water between them and their soulmates, just like everyone else's.
For as long as he could remember, though, Lance's string had never touched the ground.
It was what had driven him out towards the stars his entire life, despite his struggles with schooling until he learned to accommodate the way his brain was wired, despite the long hours and crushing stress of earning the scientific degrees, despite the physical and mental endurance it had taken at every step to qualify for any mission to space, let alone this most important one. It was the knowledge that his soulmate was somewhere out there, and he was never going to meet them if he didn't get his feet off the ground. And if he got himself through some of the harder nights by daydreaming about what his alien soulmate might be like, well, that was between him and the glow-in-the-dark stars on his ceiling, dancing around his string where it seemed to vanish through the roof.
Now, though, that string seemed to mock him. He'd come all this way, followed it as far as he could, and for what? To die, his soulmate unmet? In a matter of weeks, or months, or maybe days, depending what failed first, that string would break, and the finger on the other end would be bare for the rest of that person's life, just as it would have ended up if he'd never left Earth at all.
An electronic crackle in his ear distracted him, breaking off the bitter train of thought before it could spiral further downwards. "Lance? Come in, Lance. You there buddy?"
Lance cursed, fumbling for his comm piece where it had slipped out of his ear and into the collar of his shirt. "Sorry, sorry, I'm here, Hunk. What's up?" he said hastily, jamming the earpiece back where it belonged and silently thanking his friend for the distraction.
"Can you suit up and join me out here? Pidge says the forward cargo hold is depressurized and it's gonna stay that way unless we can seal this crack."
"On my way." Lance sighed and pushed himself away from the wall, sending himself sailing down the corridor and away from the viewport without bothering to look back. Until death decided to show up, there was still work to be done.
Half an hour later he was out on the surface, holding a patch plate steady for Hunk to secure it to the hull with the welding tool. It was slow, tedious work, using equipment meant for micrometeoroid punctures instead of gaping cracks caused by very-not-micrometeoroid collisions, but at least the minimal gravity meant the heavy panels were easy to hold up and he could let go once the tack welds were in place. As soon as Hunk gave him the okay, Lance wriggled out from under the shuttle, taking a moment to stretch from the awkward position before turning to the crate of repair materials to grab another panel.
As he did so, a line of red settled across the open crate. Irritated, he went to brush the object aside, only for his movements to send the line rippling through the air as it followed his hand.
He blinked.
The line was connected to his hand. It was his string, seemingly emerging from his suit without regard for matter's normal properties and trailing over the supplies before sweeping down to drape itself across rocks and ice beside it. He stared at it for a long moment, his brain slow to grasp what he was seeing.
His string was on the ground.
Time seemed to stand still around him as he followed the red line with his eyes, somehow never losing sight of it despite the thinness and the distance. It wound its way across the flat plain around their ship, littered with debris kicked up by the clumsiness of their landing, out into the clearer area beyond where Pluto's horizon met the starry sky. A sky being blotted out by the unfamiliar spacecraft settling itself carefully onto the surface, beyond the point where the thread's line was lost in the dim light of the stars.
Lance was faintly aware that there were voices in his ears demanding a response, but all his attention was on the alien ship. He swallowed hard, his gaze never leaving the machine as it settled with a last puff of the bright blue thrusters.
A hatch in the side of the other ship slid open, a humanoid figure in a sleek purple space suit stepping out onto the surface and making its way towards them. In spite of himself, Lance moved closer, closing the distance with his heart beating a wild rhythm against the inside of his ribcage and his thoughts whirling too wildly to have any say over his body's actions. It couldn't be. It couldn't be.
The other being closed the gap in slow, easy bounds. As they came closer, Lance could see more details. The glowing purple indicator lights marking their equipment and signalling their location. The long, whip-like tail encased in its own sleeve. The clear dome of a helmet offering 360 a degree view.
Closer. Yellow eyes that seemed to glow in the darkness. Wide ears, not unlike those of a cat or a bat, protruding from a mane of dark hair that almost blended with the darkness behind. Purple skin, or was it fur? Much lighter, though, than the dark shade of their spacesuit, with markings in another shade entirely that nearly verged on pink. And a smile that hinted at sharp teeth behind the lips, although somehow Lance had never felt less afraid.
The alien stopped, halfway between their ships, arms resting loosely at their sides. Waiting. Non-threatening. Letting the humans be the ones to set the terms of the encounter.
Lance didn't hesitate. He closed the gap, nearly colliding with the stranger when he misjudged his momentum and stumbled to a halt in front of them before lifting his head to meet that intense yellow stare. There was a brief pause in which neither moved a muscle, both frozen as they waited for the other to make the first move.
Then the alien's hand came up between them, palm towards Lance, empty and open. And from the smallest of the five fingers, emerging seemingly through the material of their suit, a single red thread.
Lance's breath caught in his throat, his eyes riveted on that single red line, trailing down the edge of the alien's hand towards the ground, towards Lance's own hand below theirs. Slowly, scarcely daring to believe it, he lifted his hand and pressed it palm to palm with the other, the red thread seeming to wind around and around where their hands met, around them both where they stood, two halves of one soul.
"It's you." A giddy laugh slipped out of Lance's throat as he looked between their joined hands and the alien's beaming smile. "It's you. You came."
His soulmate couldn't possibly have understood him, but they nodded anyway, eyes bright with joy. They gestured to the threads with their free hand, making a pulling-no, a gathering-in motion-before walking their fingers over in an oddly human gesture to where their hands were still pressed palm to palm. "You followed the thread. Of course." Lance realized. Of course. It made sense. On planets, the thread pointed up, but in space they pointed to where you had to go.
They must have seen his comprehension because their smile broadened before they pulled their hand away with what Lance was pretty sure was reluctance since he felt just the same. They made no move to leave, though, instead gesturing at them both and pointing to the human's ship with a questioning tilt of their head.
Lance nodded, starting towards the ship and gesturing for them to follow. The comms had gone quiet, leaving him alone with the sound of his breathing and his own racing heart as they picked their way carefully back over the rocks and broken ice. This was actually happening, he realized. His soulmate was really an alien, and they'd come here to find him. He glanced back over his shoulder as he reached the airlock, wanting to refresh the sight in his mind, and paused.
The alien had stopped a short distance back, looking up at the ship. Following their gaze, his smile fell as he realized they were looking up at the mangled cockpit, the ruined console and Shiro's chair visible through the cracked glass and twisted metal. It was a blunt reminder that despite the unexpected joy, they were still stuck here. Still going to die.
His soulmate's brow furrowed and they glanced back over at Lance. Then, expression unreadable, they bounced over to join him.
Hunk and Pidge were waiting just inside the ship, their thunderous expressions showing just what they thought of him wandering off across the ice to visit a potentially hostile alien while refusing to answer either of them on the comms, but before either of them could do more than open their mouths to chew him out, their eyes went wide as said alien stepped out of the airlock behind him and pulled off their helmet, flicking their ears several times, the way a human might shake their head.
"Uh...Lance?" Hunk whispered in a slightly panicky tone, edging slightly over towards his crewmate while not taking his eyes off the alien, who was now tapping at a computer built into the wrist of their suit.
"It's okay, guys." Lance offered him a grin that was somewhere between strained and sheepish. "They're, uh...they're my soulmate." He held up his hand, even though he knew that Hunk wouldn't be able to see the thread hanging in the air across the short distance between Lance and their alien visitor.
Pidge peeled her eyes away long enough to gape in disbelief. "You gotta be shitting me. Your soulmate is an alien? Since when?!"
"Since always."
All three of them jumped, whirling to look at the alien, who simply smirked. "I always knew my soulmate was somewhere out there. Took a while to get permission to come look for them, but I'm here now. My name's Keith." His attention turned fully onto Lance, and his smile softened into something sweet and a little shy that made Lance's heart skip a beat. "It's nice to finally be able to meet you."
"You...uh, you too." Lance floundered for a moment before he decided not to question how Keith was speaking English. Aliens with interstellar travel could presumably create instantaneous translators easily enough, and anyways it was hard to form a coherent thought with Keith looking at him like that. "I'm, uh, Lance."
"And I'm Pidge and this is Hunk. We're all very happy to meet each other." Pidge interrupted, drawing both their attention back to her and making Lance shuffle in embarrassment at her scowl before she directed it at Keith. "You're an alien."
"Yes." Keith raised an eyebrow.
"Got a ship?"
"Of course."
"Can it fit five more?"
A shake of the head. "No, but I can get a hold of one that can. You guys look like you could use some help."
"Just a little." Hunk admitted with a sigh.
Keith nodded, lifting his arm to tap more commands into his computer. "It'll take them a couple days to get here. When they do, we'll take you wherever you need to go."
Lance watched him type, drinking in the sight of his soulmate as happiness and relief warmed him from the inside out. Everything was going to be okay. Ruined mission or not, they would live, and he could spend the rest of that life getting to know Keith now that he'd found him.
This was what he'd come out here for anyway.