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She left the details to her druids. They could punish the guards that permitted themselves to be taken down. They could search for the traitorous Ulaz.

She had bigger things to do.

The second Haggar had removed Champion's ruined hand, she had encased the mangled flesh in a unit designed to measure quintessence. The first step was successful: the wreck of a hand, magically preserved in a still-living state, showed the presence and fluctuations of his mysterious quintessence, allowing her a permanent barometer of Champion's link with the other without having to physically watch him.

It also gave her unlimited access for further analyzing the quintessence. It had taken almost a full lunar cycle, but she was finally able to separate the two halves of the meld, keeping them apart for brief moments before they coalesced again.

And if it were just another experiment, just another study of a random alien's quintessence, she would have scrapped it. One of the two halves showed Galra characteristics.

Somehow Champion's quintessence had been tainted by a Galra. She didn't know how—she was the only one who handled the destroyed limb between the body and the unit and she had shielded everything thoroughly out of habit. While Champion had taken numerous injuries from Galra fighters in the arena—including the nasty head wound that had turned a shock of his hair white—their medical protocol ought to be sound enough for cleansing such wounds. And the second quintessence was very similar to the Galra-corrupted one, suggesting that the other was the same species, in a sector that the Galra had only just begun scouting.

But in spite of the Galra contamination, the device worked as she wished it. She could let Champion perform for Zarkon, who was toying with the idea of turning the alien to the Galra cause and testing him on the Red Lion. There had been a few sessions with Zarkon's team of persuaders. Those had actually been helpful to Haggar, allowing her to see that the quintessence meld responded to mental and emotional attacks at an even stronger level than physical assault.

But for now, her device served a new purpose. The flesh called to itself. The quintessence sought its origin. She would be able to track Champion's location as soon as the pod he was in dropped out of hyperdrive.

The autopilot was driving him crazy.

He was in a spacecraft, in the pilot's seat, for the first time in nearly a year, and he couldn't fly it. It was like being back in early training, next to an instructor, watching but not allowed to touch, not allowed to take control.

But he didn't dare change any of Ulaz's settings. His rescuer had entered the Galra coordinates for Terra and programmed something called a hyperdrive that allowed for incredibly fast interstellar travel. Shiro had to settle for studying the control panels intently, learning the layout of the craft as it compared to a Garrison ship.

But Keith was with him, urging him on.

Shiro leaned back for a few minutes, closing his eyes to try and ward off a headache that was building. And suddenly he was seeing through Keith's eyes as Keith prepared. His soulmate knew he was coming and was doing everything he could to be ready. Shiro was a bit astonished, wondering where the diffident boy from that first combat class had gone. This Keith moved with purpose and surety, focused on his goal. This Keith no longer felt a little too young for him.

He would see this Keith soon.

Sensing his presence, Keith sent back affection and anticipation.

The ship jerked and shifted from hyperdrive into normal space. Shiro instinctively reached for the controls, then looked up through the viewscreen.

His eyes widened as he realized that the ship was already inside Terra's atmosphere and coming in way too fast. He had to try and slow the descent!

His hands flew across the strange controls, searching for any way to decelerate. A screen turned red and he felt a shudder through the transport—it felt like a turbine had stopped, if he were in a jet. Velocity dipped, but now the ship veered sharply to the left, well to the north of the landing coordinates.

And then he hit earth. He got his arms up to protect his face and head as he slammed into the control panel, but was flung back in the whiplash, his head striking the hard side of the pilot's seat. He sent one last frantic call to Keith as he lost consciousness.

Shiro woke and realized two things. The first was that Keith had not found him yet—he was coming but having to improvise for not being the first one there.

The second was that he was strapped down to a table.

The flashbacks overwhelmed him: the pain of the torture sessions, the agony of the procedure that had taken his hand and replaced it with the weapon. He clenched his teeth to hold in the screams.

"He's awake!"

Figures in Terran hazmat suits leaned over him, waving scanners across his body.

Ulaz. Blue Lion. Voltron.

Keith was closer. He had done something that should get everyone's attention soon and was moving in.

Someone moved to put a tourniquet on his left arm.

"Hey! What are you doing?"

"Calm down, Shiro. We just need to keep you quarantined until we run some tests."

"No, you don't understand! Aliens are coming! They're after a weapon that was hidden here! We have to find Voltron!"

One of the medtechs recoiled from his right side. "Look at this! His arm! It's been replaced with a cyborg prosthetic!"

"Put him under! We don't know what that thing can do!"

"No! NO! Don't put me under! You have to listen to me!" Shiro thrashed against the straps in a panic but one of the medtechs seized his head and another pressed an injector to his neck.

Keith! Help me!

Pidge finished throwing laptops and equipment into his backpack and slid down the hill after Lance and Hunk. The minute he'd pointed out the person coming in on the hoverbike, Lance had gone competitive and insisted that he would be the one to rescue his idol.

Pidge would never understand Lance. Did it really matter who got credit for the rescue as long as they got a chance to speak to Shirogane?

His emotions swung from hope that Shirogane might actually be able to share what had happened to the rest of the crew to anger that Iverson's people hadn't even considered asking about them before knocking the pilot out. He was obviously trying to communicate a warning, a major one, and they ignored it. All Iverson cared about was keeping his lies going.

Good thing Pidge Gunderson wasn't interested in the Garrison as a career.

In three swift moves, the medtechs went down. Keith leaped over the third as he fell and ran to the gurney. White hair spilled across the captive's forehead and for one instant he felt crippling despair. This was supposed to be Shiro…

Keith reached out to the man's face and turned it toward him.

Their bond surged at his touch, making him stagger. It was Shiro.

Shiro with a patch of white hair and a deep scar across his face. Shiro with a body hardened by months of being forced to fight for his life. Shiro with a smooth metal limb replacing his right hand.

But it was Shiro.

Keith sliced the straps with his dagger and heaved his soulmate up. The bond throbbed everywhere their skin touched and Keith's knees almost buckled. Shiro had always been tall and broad-shouldered, but the added muscle mass made him heavy. He was starting to worry that they wouldn't be able to move fast enough when a voice interrupted.

"No, no, no you don't! I'm saving Shiro!"

A boy that looked to be Keith's age stalked through the door and took Shiro's other arm, sharing his weight. Two others who would have fit perfectly on a flashcard teaching big and small stood in the doorway, watching with wide eyes.

Keith didn't bother to reply. They were a godsend—they could help get Shiro to the hoverbike and then he and his soulmate would be off.

Except that the Garrison team was coming back much sooner than he had hoped and they all boarded a hoverbike that wasn't designed to hold five.

One harrowing chase and one successful cliff dive later, they made it to the cabin. The big guy helped Keith move Shiro onto the bed in the bunker. Keith checked Shiro's pulse and pupils while the short kid described how the medtechs had sedated him—he would be out for a while yet. Keith tucked a blanket around him and firmly told himself that he could leave for a few minutes. There was nowhere else for the other three to go and he needed to settle them in the cabin.

He directed the others into the main room, waving at the futon in indifferent invitation. He grabbed a bottle of cold water from the fridge and drank, getting the dust from the trip out of his throat. He tried to focus – the bond had not settled down at all from the first instant of him touching Shiro.

The three of them looked at him and he looked back. Obviously there were questions that they all had, but no one was sure where to start. Then the big guy's stomach growled loudly.

The other two broke into giggles and Keith snorted a little. He waved to the corner that served as a kitchen. "Help yourselves."

The big guy moved toward him first, holding out a hand. "Thanks, man. My name's Hunk."

He shook. "Keith."

That got the short one's attention. "Wait a minute, that's how you knew to come after Shiro! You're Keith Kogane!"

"Uh…yeah?"

"My mom and the Shiroganes, we've been worried sick!"

"Okay…"

"Sorry, sorry. I'm Katie Holt, Matt's sister."

That put a couple of puzzle pieces in place, but the reaction of the other two kept Keith off balance.

"Wait, what? Pidge? You're a girl?" The thin one was clearly stunned.

"Huh. Okay, that explains a few things. Why were you in the Garrison under another name?" Hunk asked.

"Long story. Short version is I got banned from the Garrison for hacking into Iverson's computer and had to find another way in."

Keith grinned at that. "Good for you."

The thin one was clearly still at sea. "Okay, Pidge is a girl and you two know each other. Any more surprises?"

Pidge…Katie…adjusted her glasses. "Oh, no. Not like that, Lance. I just know who he is. He's Shiro's soulmate."

Hunk had his mouth full of granola bar but his expression showed interest as Lance began talking again.

"Soulmate, huh? Yeah, I remember that getting mentioned a few times around campus. Wacky shit. We had a case in our neighborhood, some woman who lived alone and must have been forty and one year at Halloween she was giving out candy like everyone else but when she handed some M&Ms to this one kid who had moved to the neighborhood that summer…wham! He was like, eight. Awk-ward! They got that shit broken by Christmas, you'd better believe it!"

He paused, clearly expecting someone to reply. He was not expecting to see Keith's face drain of color or the concerned reactions of the other two.

Katie moved forward. "Keith, are you all right?"

Hunk also stepped up. "Dude, you're not gonna pass out, are you?"

Keith swallowed hard. "No…no, I'm fine."

"You are not fine! You look like you saw a ghost!" Lance flapped his arms, unsettled at Keith's reaction.

"Sorry. It's just that…they tried, at the Garrison. They tried to break the soul bond between Shiro and me."

Katie's eyes widened. "That was you! That night in the faculty building!"

"What?"

"Three men were dragging you somewhere, and then you started yelling. That was the night I broke into Iverson's computer. I set off the security alarms to give you a chance to get away. You were screaming at them."

Keith ran a hand over his face, fighting the memories. "Yeah, that was me. Thank you."

"And thank you! They were so busy going after you that I was able to pull the video files that proved Shiro didn't crash. That's when my mom and I decided I needed to infiltrate the Garrison as Pidge Gunderson." She stepped up to Keith and wrapped her arms around him. "Seriously, I'm glad they didn't catch you. I've read about broken soul bonds…it's not pretty."

Lance shifted from one foot to the other. "Sorry I brought it up."

Keith shrugged, returning Katie's hug awkwardly. It had been a very long time since anyone—Shiro—had touched him in a caring way. "It's okay. You didn't know." He moved away as Katie loosened her grip. "I'm going to sit with Shiro until he wakes up. You guys can hang out here."

Where am I?

The first thing Shiro noticed as his awareness returned was that he was warm. It had never been warm enough on the ships or in the cells or in the arena.

The second thing was that his bond with Keith was practically vibrating, it was so intense. His first impulse was to worry. The Garrison had found him. Are they going to try and break the bond again? Is Keith safe?

The third thing was someone holding his left hand.

He tightened his grip instinctively and heard someone draw in an anxious breath as the bond increased in force.

"Shiro?"

He squeezed his eyes shut. If he kept his eyes shut, he could stay in this dream where he was warm and Keith was holding his hand.

It got better. Keith was smoothing his hair back with the other hand, sending sizzles across his skin.

"Shiro?"

The dream wasn't fading. It was getting more tangible, more real. His essence hummed at every touch.

"Keith?"

The weight in his flesh hand shifted and he heard someone move, sitting next to him. The fingers interlocked with his and a second hand wrapped around their joined hands. Their bond pulsed, verging on painful.

"I'm here, Shiro. You're home."

Shiro drew a deep, shuddering breath, steeling himself for the disappointment, and opened his eyes.

Soft yellow light illuminated the room. Not the never-ending purple of the Galra and not the harsh white of the Garrison containment unit. He blinked and focused, seeing the person sitting beside him.

The dark hair that used to just brush his collar now spilled down onto his shoulders. The graceful jawline and cheekbones were sharper, as if he had lost weight. But the eyes were the same deep indigo that had caught his attention as they took their first hesitant steps into the bond.

"Keith…" Shiro breathed, his voice barely audible.

Keith leaned forward and pressed his lips to Shiro's forehead. The bond intensified further, stronger than anything they had felt before. Shiro pulled his hand from Keith's grip so he could embrace him fully, pressing his face into Keith's neck.

And found himself clinging desperately to Keith who clutched back as their bond flared again. They were tossed around in each other's memories of the time apart, drowning in flashbacks of pain and terror, isolation and misery. The bond had responded to the extreme distance by growing stronger and now there was nowhere to put the excess, no way to cram the genie back into its bottle. The power of the connection was about to engulf them until they would no longer be able to tell which was which…

Then Keith heard the lion's roar, giving him focus.

Shiro heard the second roar.

Half a universe away, a glass case exploded, failing to contain the surging quintessence inside. Haggar shrieked, unable to stop the destruction of Champion's hand as it disintegrated. She flew around the lab, scanning readouts from various instruments frantically.

Then she found what she needed.

"Tell Zarkon that the escaped prisoner is in Sector X-9-Y!"

The two halves were whole once more, together in body now as well as spirit. As she had anticipated, the intensity of the quintessence-meld threatened to overwhelm them. Her little one reached out blindly for help and she answered. She sent forth her own energy, the soothing, life-giving essence of water, to wash away the worst of the surging forces and sustain the two of them.

Together they rode the wave until it crested and retreated into a more manageable state. Her efforts were causing a ripple effect—anyone nearby was going to feel a groundswell of the energy through their quintessence—but she kept up the effort. Gradually the worst of the excess dissipated into the ambient energies of their surroundings as she siphoned it away from the pair. The bodies of the two small ones relaxed, still entwined with one another. She sent out one more flow of energy to calm the area around them like the surf smoothing out sand.

And stopped in shock when her quintessence touched a new presence near them. It sparkled with azure light, calling to her like no other had for thousands of years.

This was her new paladin. It had to be.

Thank you as always for reading!