The good news: Have another chapter!

The bad news: I have now caught up with what I had already written and updates will be more erratic as I try to wrap up "Scattered" and pay attention to some fics in other fandoms that have been neglected for far too long. But there will be more of this!

In the cabin, the trio quickly grew bored. Katie pulled out her laptop and opened the program she was using to try and decipher more of the alien code. After she slapped his hand away from her keyboard yet again, Hunk leaned over her shoulder to watch as she dug out the diary she used to record the terms she had defined. He frowned, looking at a series of numbers on one page.

"Do those numbers really repeat like that, the way you wrote them?"

She looked up at him. "Yeah. So?"

He looked around the room and saw a few large sheets of paper on the makeshift coffee table. He grabbed one and a pen and quickly marked off a graph. "Read them to me?"

She did and watched as Hunk plotted the numbers and then linked them, showing a line moving up and down. "I think this could be a Fraunhofer line, don't you?"

Katie tilted her head, trying to place the term. "Um, I suppose?"

"You know, the number describing the emission spectrum of an element, only, I don't think this element exists on Terra."

Her eyes widened and she sat up. "Holy shit! Maybe it's the Voltron thing!"

"Could be…and I think can build a machine to look for it, like a Voltron Geiger counter."

Lance had been pacing back and forth, barely following the conversation, but stopped at that. "Hunk, I always knew you were a genius!"

Katie set her laptop aside and looked around the cabin. "Can you do it with the stuff that's here?"

"Maybe, let's see."

Lance scowled at that. "Why don't we just go ask Keith?"

"Lance, we are not interrupting them!" she snapped. "You can fangirl over Shiro all you want later, after two soulmates who have been separated by light-years for almost eighteen months have had the chance to at least say hello!"

He pouted, but stayed silent.

Hunk seemed to know what to do in order to distract him. "Lance, look in that box over there. I think I see a regular Geiger counter. If we start there maybe I can convert it and have it ready by morning."

Lance started for the box in question, but reeled and dropped to his knees when the earth around them began shaking. Hunk cowered next to Katie. "Earthquake?!"

Katie's fingers flew across her keyboard as she brought up a government tracker. "Nothing's showing up on the seismic monitors." The three of them crouched, waiting as their surroundings continued to shake, building and cresting and finally fading. Lance's head jerked and he looked around in confusion. Katie frowned at him. "What is it?"

"Uh, nothing, I guess. For a minute I thought I heard something…like an animal. Are there wolves or coyotes around here?"

"Maybe, but I didn't hear it."

"Must be imagining things. It sounded more like a lion roaring anyway."

Hunk snorted at that. "Yeah, no. No lions around here."

As their bond slowly calmed down into a state where they could think again, Keith pushed himself up from where he had fallen across Shiro's chest. Shiro reached up and pushed a lock of Keith's hair out of his face, tucking it behind his ear. "No time for a barber, I take it?" he joked lightly.

Keith blushed slightly and shook his head.

"I like it. It suits you."

The blush deepened, but Keith smiled. Shiro pushed himself to sitting so he could wrap his arms around his soulmate again. The bond shuddered but stayed at its new, just-tolerable level.

Keith hid his face in Shiro's shoulder. "I missed you so much. Knowing what was happening to you and not being able to help—"

Shiro pulled back a little at that, putting his right hand under Keith's chin to tilt his face up and meet his eyes. "You did help! I can't count how many times the fact that you were there kept me going. You kept me focused! You… You shared the pain, the fear…everything! I would have killed myself or gone insane without you."

Tears gathered in Keith's eyes as Shiro shifted to stroke his cheek with one thumb. Then he noticed what he was using to touch Keith and started to pull away. His awareness spread to the scars riddling his face and body, the shock of white hair, all prematurely aging him.

Keith sensed the change in his thoughts and clapped his hand over Shiro's prosthetic and held it in place. "This is not going to make me regret being bonded to you. Scars aren't going to make me regret it. The only thing I regret is how much you suffered and how much time we've lost." He leaned forward and pressed a kiss to Shiro's nose, where the mark cut across it, and then moved down to his lips.

Shiro responded immediately, hungry for more of the first warm and kind contact he'd felt in ages. He had been careful not to push Keith very far physically in the first months of their union, knowing that some people would disapprove of their relationship, soul bond or no. But now, with the reality of Keith being restored to him in spite of the odds, Shiro wasn't going to hold back any more. He licked at Keith's mouth, asking him to open to him, and Keith did so eagerly, his own tongue meeting Shiro's as they deepened the kiss. Their bond hummed with energy, strong but manageable.

As they paused to catch their breath, Shiro slid over and held up the blanket in invitation. Keith pulled off his jacket, belt, and boots before sliding into the bed to lie beside him.

The familiar purr sounded in Keith's mind, very content with the situation. Shiro hesitated, looking around. "Do you…have a cat?"

Keith snorted and shook his head. "No, I think I've got a guardian angel."

She had done her part. Zarkon had sent the nearest warship, scouting for the Blue Lion, in pursuit of Champion. She had deceived her lord, carefully implying that Champion might be after the Lion himself, to get him to divert resources away from his obsession. Zarkon didn't think chasing after one escaped prisoner was worth it, even a prisoner as renowned as Champion. But to find another piece of Voltron…

Haggar retreated into her lab as soon as she was able and gathered every last shard of the shattered containment unit. The flesh from Champion was gone, vaporized by the sudden overload of energy, but the bits of the unit retained the tiniest impressions of the quintessence. With this as her guide, she could go into deep meditation and continue her search.

Katie went back to her efforts with the alien transmissions while Hunk worked on altering the Geiger counter. With nothing better to do, Lance spread out on the futon and soon his snores echoed in the cabin. Katie glanced over as Hunk deftly rebuilt his device with the array of tools he had found by poking around the room.

"How do you stand it, sleeping in the same room as him?"

"He usually doesn't snore like that, actually. And we both have noise-canceling headphones since our sleep patterns don't always sync up."

"Really? Didn't think those were allowed, in case you miss a Garrison alarm."

"They also flash the lights in the rooms if one goes off. Kind of impossible to miss one way or the other."

Something pinged on her laptop and Katie sat up. It was a message alert from her mother. Her mother knew not to contact her directly unless it was an absolute emergency. She opened the message and read it.

"Oh, fuck no."

Hunk looked up from his work. "What is it?"

"One of Mom's friends who's a journalist on the science beat just contacted her. He keeps her in the loop because of Dad and Matt. He got wind that the Garrison is planning to announce the three of us as dead due to a training accident!"

"What the hell? I need to contact my moms!"

"So will Lance! And we need to let the Shiroganes know he's alive, too!" She typed furiously back for a few minutes and then held out her laptop to Hunk. "Okay, I've let my mom know the basics and asked her to contact Shiro's family. Here, I've got an anonymous video caller and a messenger up. Use whichever will get you through to your folks. I hate to do this, but we better get Keith and Shiro."

They had progressed to trailing kisses across each other's necks and Shiro's hands were working their way under Keith's shirt when a knock sounded at the door.

"Keith? It's Katie, I'm so sorry, but is Shiro awake? We've got trouble coming from the Garrison!"

Shiro paused. Should I know who she is? Before he could chase the thought down, he realized that Keith's pulse rate had skyrocketed as the skin under his lips trembled. But his soulmate responded instantly, "What kind of trouble? Do we need to clear out of here?"

"No, we need to get Shiro in touch with his parents. The Garrison's going to announce that Lance, Hunk, and I were killed in a training accident and it looks like they're burying the fact that Shiro returned."

Shiro felt chills down his spine at the implications of that news. It had been mere hours—wasn't the Garrison going to try and search for them first? How long did they think they could keep the existence of aliens a secret?

"Okay, give us a minute." Keith climbed out of the bed and moved across to a footlocker against the far wall. He dug around inside it and pulled out a very familiar black vest.

Shiro pushed himself up, his voice drawling in a slightly disbelieving "Whaaat?"

"I was in a rush when I packed some stuff, in case I needed to leave in a hurry. Got some of your clothes mixed in. There's a bathroom, you can shower and get out of those rags." He held out the vest.

Shiro stood and accepted it, along with the black jeans and a gray tee. He shifted the clothing into his metal arm and reached out with the other to pull Keith close. He paused for a second, blinking in surprise. Before the mission, Keith had barely reached his chin in height—now the top of his head was up to Shiro's nose.

He dipped his head and gave Keith one more kiss before the two of them exited the bunker and entered the house.

Lance was grumpy due to being woken up after a too-short nap at three in the morning and to the fact that Shiro had disappeared immediately into the bathroom before he had a chance to even introduce himself. He watched as this guy Keith worked to assemble some kind of meal from his stash.

He didn't get it. He was aware of the whole soulmate thing, but had very little first-hand experience with it other than the creepy Halloween connection and one of his cousins meeting and marrying hers. He didn't see why a legendary pilot like Shiro would have some mystical bond with this kid. He was scrawny, his hair was a goddamn mess, and he had weird eyes.

He vaguely remembered the guy's name from the Garrison: a workaholic type that never spared time for any kind of socializing, top of the fighter class until something happened and he disappeared. And then, as Commander Iverson loved to point out, Lance got promoted to fighter class only because a better candidate had flunked out over discipline issues.

Oh, shit.

Keith hadn't left due to discipline issues. He'd run away because the Garrison had tried to break the soul bond. If Keith hadn't run, Lance would still be stuck in cargo class, not good enough.

Because of this skinny mullet-head who was bonded with Shiro.

Lance leaned against the table and poked a dismissive finger at the open box of powdered milk. Keith was stirring a pitcher vigorously, adding powder to the water from a measuring cup. "What's the matter, real food not good enough for you?"

Keith glared at him. "No, I cut the perishables out so there wouldn't be anything left behind to rot."

"Left behind?" Pidge's head perked up at that.

"Yeah. I didn't know who or what was coming tonight, but my plan was to intercept them and try to hitch a ride when they left."

Hunk looked up from his almost-reassembled Voltron detector. "Dude, why would you do that?"

Keith shrugged. "It was the only way I could think of to find Shiro."

Pidge looked impressed at the plan while Hunk was slightly awed. Lance frowned. "Seriously? You'd throw your lot in with a set of totally unknown aliens who might think you were food or something just to try and get to Shiro? With an entire galaxy to search?"

"Lance!" Pidge's voice cracked like a whip.

Keith held up a hand to stop her. He stared at Lance with those strange purple-looking eyes and suddenly looked a lot older than he was.

"Given what you said earlier and what you said just now, I take it you have no real knowledge of soulmates."

"I have a cousin who said some guy was her soulmate. But he was some rando she met while traveling. My dad said she lied just so her parents wouldn't argue when they pushed to get married."

Keith swallowed, visibly trying to control himself. "You have no knowledge. The soul bond is a real thing and at times it can be almost unbearable. You saw that Shiro's hand is missing? I felt it when it happened. I was driving. The pain was so bad I nearly wrecked my hoverbike. Every injury he's had, every time they tortured him just to study what it did to him, I felt it. And yes, I was going to find a way to get to him, because I couldn't see any way he was going to survive and return to me."

Unable to give him the last word, Lance snarled, "What makes you so special, that you end up bonded with someone like Shiro?"

Keith reached into a cabinet drawer and pulled out a pair of scissors. "I'm not special. But that something in me that makes a soul bond possible, that something that you and everyone else in this world has? It makes me special to him and him special to me in a way that nothing else can replace." He walked over to the bathroom door and tapped on it, ignoring Lance's scowl.

Shiro cleaned up and began dressing, then paused in jeans and sleeveless black undershirt, looking at the long sleeves on the gray shirt. He wasn't sure about having the sleeve cover the cybernetic prosthetic – after the implantation, the slave uniforms he received had a short sleeve on one side, designed to tuck into the edges of the unit.

He opened the tiny medicine chest, looking for scissors. Don't look in the mirror…don't look in the mirror…

There was a tap at the door. "Come in, Keith."

As the door opened, revealing Keith with a pair of scissors in his hand, a voice came floating in. "Okay, that was just creepy! Don't do that!"

Shiro chuckled at that and Keith's mouth twisted up in a smirk. He whispered, "Oh, we're going to do that as often as possible in his presence."

Shiro raised his eyebrows at that. While Keith had been quiet and introverted away from Shiro, he hadn't been actively antagonistic to others…

…unless provoked. He resolved to keep an eye on the situation.

Shiro heard a familiar voice coming from a speaker and looked around. He froze when he got a good look at the person sitting with a laptop. "Matt?"

They looked up and Shiro realized immediately that this wasn't Matt. This was someone younger and smaller, but the hair, eyes, and shape of the face were the same. Something teased at Shiro's memory.

"That's Katie Holt, Matt's sister," Keith murmured in his ear. "She knew that things were wrong with the Garrison's cover story over the loss of the Kerberos mission. She disguised herself as a boy and enrolled under a false identity to try and learn more."

Shiro blinked at that. Matt was a dedicated student and scientist, but he had never shown that kind of steel. On the other hand, he wasn't the one searching for his missing family.

Keith continued, "The skinny one is Lance, who seems to worship the ground you walk on and thinks I've somehow tricked you into a relationship. The big guy is Hunk. They turned up just as I was trying to get you out of the quarantine area."

Shiro nodded. Katie looked up from her laptop. "Shiro, come here!"

He went over and sat as Katie tugged his arm down. She pushed the laptop over so he would be in the view of the webcam. He saw Colleen Holt's face on the screen and she gasped, putting her hand to her mouth. "Oh, Shiro! What happened to you?"

He looked down, feeling the weight of the missing Holts sink in. "I…it's a long story. I should tell you what I know about Sam and Matt instead."

She swallowed, clearly steeling herself for the worst.

"The three of us were taken together, alive. The Galra, the aliens, separated Sam from us in just a few days because of his age. All I could get was that he was sent to some kind of work camp—the Galra use the weaker members of the races they subjugate as slave labor." Shiro looked down, ashamed that he couldn't tell her anything more than that.

"And Matt?"

"He and I were sent to the gladiator rings."

Colleen and Katie both looked at him in horror, realizing why Shiro carried scars and assuming that Matt had not survived.

"For a while we were on the same team, fighting to bring down large animals for their entertainment. But one day they changed it and were going to send us in one by one against a famous fighter. They chose Matt to go first.

"He was about to panic—there was no way he was going to survive that fight. I…I faked a bloodlust and injured him so they would send me instead. They usually sent the fighters who got injured enough off to the work camps. I hoped they would send him to Sam. I was never able to find more information about either of them."

He had made it through the recitation without breaking down, but as tears spilled down Colleen's cheeks and Katie curled into him, he felt the first sob rise in his throat.

"I'm so sorry…I should have done something, anything, to try and save them."

He felt Keith's hand on his shoulder and his love through the bond. Katie tightened her arms around him. Colleen's voice was rough as she spoke through her tears. "Honestly, Shiro, what could you have done differently? When you were able to do something to protect Matt, you did it. And you paid a huge price for it. We don't blame you."

She wiped her face. "We just have to keep pushing for a way to get out there and search for them. Shiro, your parents are in Osaka with your grandmother. She developed pneumonia about a month ago but she's recovering. Katie has their contact info."

Shiro nodded and got his voice working again. "Thank you."

"Katie, keep me informed. I'll pass it all on to Greg—he's the reporter who let me know what the Garrison was going to do. I think the McClains and Garretts are going to make a joint statement denying it if the Garrison does go through with their announcement."

"Will do, Mom."

Katie closed the connection and opened a new window. "Ready to talk to your folks?"

"I…" Shiro looked down at his arm, still exposed for all to see.

Keith's hand left his shoulder and ran through his hair. "It'll be all right. They'll just be glad to see you alive. Trust me."

Never a question about that.

Shiro drew a deep breath and nodded at Katie. "Okay, I'm ready."

Thank you as always for reading!