Lance grinned as an awed hush fell over the cockpit, Blue's amusement in his head echoing his own as his family gaped out the viewscreens at the alien spaceships. Not that he could blame them. The nearby black threads of the Garrison's runways were dwarfed into insignificance beside the incredible bulk of the Icebringer ships and the smaller Castle of Lions. It was an awesome sight, and they hadn't even landed yet.
He took Blue down in a slowly descending spiral, passing close enough to one of the ships to clearly see the teams of aliens hard at work installing layers of metal plates to close a gash in the hull. One of them looked up and waved as the lion went by, and Lance chuckled as Lur excitedly waved back. "They can't see you, sweetness. They're just waving at the lion."
Lur pouted, and Fernan bounced excitedly on the spot. "How do they stay up? I don't see any ropes!"
"Anti-gravity platforms. See where they're standing?" Lance grinned and made another slow pass, pointing out the sturdy maintenance platforms supporting the workers. "We have some on the Castle too. Use them for doing maintenance on the lions."
"I guess you'd have to, they're so big." Leandro commented. He shook his head admiringly. "Is everything in space huge?"
Lance burst out laughing. "To hear Pidge tell it? Absolutely. But she's a tiny little gremlin. Always will be I think." He heard a choked laugh from Alejandro in the back and grinned. "But no, not everything. Some of the aliens we've met are pretty small, like the Arusians and the Tirmants. And just wait until you meet the space mice!"
"Can't wait, sweetheart." His mom squeezed his shoulder and looked out at the Castle of Lions gleaming in the afternoon sun as Blue swooped in toward her hangar.
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The hallways of the Castle were a riot of noise and movement, busier than they'd been in ten thousand years. Hunk's little sister and Lance and Alejandro's younger siblings played tag and chased the space mice up and down the halls while parents and older siblings were guided around the ship on an energetic tour and compared notes on who'd been told what by who and four mothers fussed over any space traveller they could get their hand on, regardless of age or species.
Watching a blushing Lance and Alejandro glowing under the praise as La'ei and Fetuilelagi Garret thanked them effusively for taking good care of their respective versions of Hunk, while Rosa McClain-Martinez agreed enthusiastically about her sons' kind hearts, Kurogane abruptly decided it was all too much for him to endure another moment of and slipped away.
He managed to find an emptier section of the ship and heaved a sigh of relief at the quiet. Being around so many other Human beings, ones who weren't the familiar faces that he'd spent the last several years surrounded by, felt strange and left an uncomfortable weight in his chest. It hadn't been so bad the night before, in the crowded house at Varadero Beach with all of Lance and Alejandro's cousins and aunts and uncles and siblings. But now they were back on the Castle with Lance's family talking to Hunk's parents and to Pidge's mom, and the urge to get away had become inescapable.
Pushing the memory of the scene aside, Kurogane continued down the hall, hoping that walking would burn off some of his restless energy. He paused as he glimpsed Coran leaving a room up ahead, giving him time to move further away before resuming his walk. Approaching the door the Altean had exited, he was surprised to hear Shiro's voice and peered around the doorframe.
Shiro was seated on the edge of a bed, Ryou beside him and leaning on his younger cousin's shoulder to grin at the tablet clutched in the younger's shaking hands. As Kurogane watched the black paladin sniffed and rubbed at suspiciously bright eyes with the back of his hand. A muffled voice issued from the tablet's speaker and Shiro cracked a watery grin. "No, aunt Minako, I'm okay. It's just…" He let out a slow breath, his smile becoming something softer and sadder. "...it's just really good to talk to you again. I missed you."
His family. Shiro was talking to Ryou's parents, the ones who had raised Shiro for much of his life and were, along with Ryou himself, the closest blood family he had.
Something in Kurogane's gut twisted painfully and he slipped past the door before he could hear anything else. His hands shook and he wrapped his arms around himself, resisting the urge to punch a wall. Alejandro would worry if he showed up later with bloody knuckles.
Pacing aimlessly through the less-travelled areas of the ship, he found himself in one of the outer corridors, looking down over the desert. This window faced south, past the Icebringer ships and out toward the open, barren land beyond. His old home wasn't visible from here, obscured by rock spires and the slow rolling swells of the land, but it was out there. Strange to think about, that everything he'd seen destroyed years ago was here again, right under his feet.
More muffled voices up ahead. Approaching cautiously, he stopped outside the doors of another of the multi-purpose lounges that littered the Castle. Inside he could hear Keith, asking a question. "So how exactly did you and dad meet?"
A soft laugh, and Kurogane's heart seemed to stop in his chest. "Oh god. Determined to ruin my dignity right off the bat, aren't you, kit? It's a bit of a story, and rather embarrassing for me, considering all my training. I'm just lucky it was Thomas who found me and not someone else." A fond sigh, and a brief pause. "Basically, a lot of my supplies were ruined when I crashed, so I was getting desperate for food. After some searching, I managed to locate an isolated dwelling with a large cage of what I later learned were called chickens…"
Kurogane found himself frozen against the wall. A part of himself wanted to rip himself away from the hard surface at his back, sprint down the hallways until he was as far away from this room as he could possibly get, run until he was too exhausted to even think. But another part of him was captivated, unable to do anything but focus on Kovirak's words as she recounted things he'd never known, things he'd always wondered about but never had anyone to ask.
Only once she wrapped up her story with Thomas Kogane guiding her into his home and tending her injuries after cutting her clothes free of a barbed wire fence, the first encounter that would lead to a long, loving relationship and a mixed-species son, did he realize he'd slid down the wall to sit on the floor outside the lounge. His chest ached painfully, his vision was blurred. When he touched his face he found his fingertips came away wet.
Why was he crying?
Muffled laughter inside the room, Keith asking another question that he couldn't quite make out over the buzzing in his ears. And yet Kovirak's voice came through clearly. "No, I didn't have a working translator. We made do with a lot of charades at first, until we started picking up more of each other's languages. He picked up Galran surprisingly well…"
Outside, Kurogane remained where he sat, closing his eyes and listening to his mother's voice as tears slid down his cheeks.
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"Oh my god. This food is fucking incredible. La'ei, Fetuilelagi, I'm stealing your son so he can come cook for me forever."
"Not if I get him first, Colleen."
"Rosa, I will fucking fight you for him. If he hadn't told me one of the main ingredients was that goo we ate yesterday, I'd never have guessed. Hell, I still don't know if I believe it."
Hunk blushed, rubbing the back of his neck. "Guys, come on. Mom and Mama helped too."
Fetuilelagi snorted around a forkful of food. "Hardly. We just followed directions. You're the one who devised the recipes for all those alien ingredients." She looked distinctly pleased at the praise her son was receiving.
"Mom…" Hunk looked even more flustered and busied himself with his dinner, while Rosa and Colleen engaged in a mock swordfight with their forks and Leandro and Matt exchanged mortified glances down the table.
Lance chuckled and savoured another bite of his own dinner, something flavourful he didn't know the name of. Hunk had apparently brought his entire spice rack with him when he came back, and oh god, did it show. His and Pidge's moms weren't the only one heaping praise on the flustered teen. Plenty of aliens used spices, but the taste was never 100% the same, so the familiarity was as welcome as the taste. This time they'd make sure they brought plenty with them when they left, although he didn't doubt Hunk had already thought of that.
The buzz of chatter in the crowded dining room was also a reassuring similarity to home, a dozen different conversations at once going on on every side of him over the clatter of cutlery. Usually he'd have been in the thick of it himself, talking around his food until his mama scolded him, but right now he was content to just eat and listen. Having both of his families around him...he couldn't remember the last time he'd felt this happy, this at peace.
Too bad it couldn't last. Lance knew all too well their time here would be limited. They still had to stop Zarkon, Haggar, and Lotor and end the Galra Empire's reign of tyranny. They would only stay on Earth long enough to repair the main Icebringer ships and set up some defenses on Earth and the moon that would buy a little time if the Galra came back, and then they'd be off into space again for who-knew-how-long. He sighed, some of his mood deflating.
As if to underscore his line of thought, Coran rose to his feet and cleared his throat as they were wrapping up dessert. "My apologies, Ms. McClain, I know it's getting late, but I was wondering if I might borrow Lance and Alejandro for half a varga or so."
Rosa simply raised a curious eyebrow and nodded, while Lance exchanged uncertain looks across the table with his older counterpart. What could Coran need to talk about with just the two of them? Some of the other paladins were directing confused looks at the three of them as well, and Lance gave them a helpless shrug to tell them he had no idea either.
At a gesture from the Altean they followed him silently out of the room and down the corridor. To their surprise, though, he didn't lead them to the bridge, or to any of the lounges. Instead he guided them deeper into the Castle, until they found themselves unexpectedly outside a familiar set of metal doors.
"The holoprojection chamber?" Alejandro blurted out, looking as confused as Lance felt. As far as he knew, none of them had been down here since the destruction of King Alfor's uploaded AI.
Coran nodded, palming the door open. "Yes. I need to speak with you both, and also show you something." As the door slid open, he gestured for them to precede him in to the empty chamber.
The vast, dimly-lit room felt eerie and cold, and Lance shivered. It made him think of a tomb, especially given what had happened last time they were here. Alejandro seemed less bothered, but then the memory was even longer ago for him, not to mention he'd seen far, far worse. Lance folded his arms across his chest, shifting from foot to foot. "So, what's all this about?"
The old Altean sighed, leaning back against the console and folding his hands in front of him. He looked troubled, and sad, an unusual expression to see on the man's usually cheerful face. "My boys...I owe you both my deepest apologies." There was a pause, as he seemed to try to collect his thoughts. "I had...some suspicions...about the nature of the personality trait aspect of blue quintessence, but I did not tell you. I should have. And for that I am sorry."
Lance gaped at Coran. "You knew?! You knew that the blue aspect was this...this messed up mind control ability and you didn't tell us?!" The Altean had always tried to make sure they all had whatever information they needed to cope with the situations they found themselves in, so to hear him admit to hiding something like that from them was a sudden stinging betrayal.
"No. I said I had suspicions, that the blue aspect was some sort of ability that you both would likely find unsavoury." Coran explained firmly. Holding up a hand to forestall further questions, he turned and touched a button on the console. All around them, a projection shimmered to life, solidifying into one of the Castle's hallways with a younger Coran caught mid-stride with an armload of papers.
Their own Coran, seeing the puzzled frowns Lance exchanged with Alejandro, gestured to the projection. "After you all began working on unlocking the aspects, I extracted a copy of my memories and began searching them, in the hopes of finding useful information about the aspects that Alfor or one of the other paladins may have made mention of in my presence that I do not consciously recall. It's slow going, and rest assured, if I'd uncovered anything specific I would have informed you all." He sighed. "In this case, however, I had only an overheard conversation to go by, the meaning of which has only become clear to me after the fact. I wish to show that memory to you now, as I should have done much earlier." With that, he pressed another button on the console and the younger Coran in the projection began to move.
Lance watched him walk down the corridor and hesitate outside the closed lounge doors at the sound of raised voices within. He recognized Alfor's voice, and the lower, booming voice must be Zarkon. The female voice was oddly familiar, although he wasn't sure why. It was sharp and cold and made him feel oddly afraid, even before she callously dismissed the importance of other lives against that of the paladins. He shuddered and hugged himself. How could she be so...so...uncaring?
When the playback ended, it left a heavy silence echoing in the empty chamber. After several seconds Alejandro ducked his head and exhaled slowly. "Yeah. Okay. There's no way you could have known from that."
Coran's lips quirked in a faint, wry smile. "Regardless, I should have shown you both sooner. Even knowing that the ability could potentially be an unpleasant one, or be capable of being used in an unpleasant manner, would have cushioned the shock. Again, I apologize."
"It's fine. You're forgiven." Alejandro waved off the apology. "Hindsight is...what was the saying again?" He flushed, looking at Lance with a desperate expression.
"20/20." Lance supplied, lost in thought and not paying attention as his older self thanked him and started explaining the saying to Coran. His brow furrowed in a frown. Why did he feel like he knew that woman's voice, with all its cold indifference to forcing someone to die?
"Finish him."
His head snapped up with a sharp inhalation, dread sitting like a lump of ice in his stomach. "Coran." He interrupted. "In that memory, whose voices were those?"
"Hmm?" The Altean looked over at him in mild surprise. "Alfor, of course, Zarkon, and Acalli."
Alejandro hissed at the name. "The first blue paladin." He clarified. "And King Alfor's sister. I was told she sided with Zarkon."
"I know her voice." Lance whispered, drawing a stunned silence from the other two. "I don't know how, but I swear I've heard her voice before." He thought for a moment, then grimaced. "Coran, can you show us what she looked like?" Maybe he would recognize her once he saw her face. As the Altean nodded and turned away to the console again, he steeled himself, feeling Blue's anxious touch in his mind. Somehow, he had a feeling he wouldn't like the answer.
A moment later, a new hologram activated, an Altean woman standing in front of them. The same tanned skin and straight white hair as Alfor, but with red facial markings and a cold, haughty expression very unlike her brother.
Her eyes seemed to bore into Lance, the hologram sneering down at him. Disgusted by the small, fragile alien who had taken her place as the blue paladin.
His stomach lurched, the memory slamming back to the forefront of his mind. Orange light. Shiro's blue-covered eyes. Haggar staring down at him. "Pathetic. To think the blue lion had the temerity to consider you a worthy successor to me."
Lance staggered back, barely aware of Alejandro putting out a hand to steady him, his breath coming in panicked gasps. Not her. Anyone but her. Bad enough she had the same colour of quintessence as him, could and had used the same abilities he possessed to hurt the people he cared about. But for that...that monster to have been Blue's paladin before him, that he followed where she had once walked…
He felt sick. He couldn't breathe. Alejandro and Coran were talking to him, but he couldn't hear over the blood rushing in his ears, touching him, but his skin was numb and tingling. Even Blue's alarm seemed to come from a great distance, as though the bond were stretched and thinned by this sickening revelation.
A hand on his cheek, another on his back. Coran and Alejandro, trying to figure out what he'd realized, why acid was clawing at his throat and his lungs had turned to stone.
"Haggar." he choked out, the name tasting like ashes on his tongue. "She's Haggar."
Then he wrenched himself free from their suddenly-slackened hands and fled.
Hours later, Lance lay staring at the darkened ceiling of his room. The lights had dimmed automatically to nighttime levels earlier, and he hadn't bothered to get up and turn them back up, despite the fact that he knew he wouldn't be sleeping anytime soon. The dark felt safer, anyway, like hiding. From his shame, from his guilt. From the truth.
He lifted his hands, holding them in front of his face and gazing at them in the faint aqua glow of the emergency light marking the door. These hands had gripped the same control columns as Haggar once had, had been clothed in the same armor she had once worn. The thought turned his stomach and he rolled onto his side, closing his eyes and trying to control his breathing. But the thought kept rolling over in his head. Haggar was the first blue paladin. And he, Lance, was her successor. He felt dirty just thinking about it, tainted.
A knock at the door jerked him from his thoughts and he pushed himself up on one elbow, frowning. Who could be wanting to see him at this hour? Unless it was Coran or Alejandro, seeking him out to get him to talk now that he'd had some time to calm himself down at least a little. "Come in?" He called uncertainly.
A pause, then the door slid open, and Lance blinked. "Keith?" He rolled back over and sat up, surreptitiously checking to make sure no trace of his earlier crying remained. The low light probably would have hid it anyway, but…
The red paladin was hovering in the doorway, looking oddly nervous with his arms folded defensively across his chest. "Lance." He greeted. "I'm sorry if I woke you, I just…" He hesitated, fidgeting with the fabric of his sleeve. "Um, can I talk to you?"
"It's fine, Keith. I wasn't asleep anyway." Shifting over toward the head of the bed, Lance gestured to the open space in front of him. "Come on in. Make yourself at home." He couldn't for the life of him figure out what Keith would want to talk to him about at this hour, but a distraction, any distraction, was more than welcome right now. He saw the other teen still hesitating in the doorway and waved him in. "What's up?"
Biting his lip, Keith crossed the room and sat on the edge of the bed, unfolding his arms to tug at his gloves. "We, uh, never got to finish our talk the other day."
"Talk?" Frowning, Lance searched his memory, trying to figure out what talk Keith was referring to that they hadn't finished. The two of them hadn't really had a proper conversation at all the last couple days, since Lance had been busy with his family, first in Cuba and then here on the Castle.
Keith nodded. "Before the battle?" He reminded him. "We got cut off when the alarms went off?"
His breath caught for a moment and his stomach did a flip. Oh. That talk. Bits of the conversation from three days earlier flashed through his mind. Keith's nervousness, his talk about taking chances while you still could, and then finally, although Lance had tried so hard not to get his hopes up that maybe, just maybe his feelings were mutual after all, it had sounded like he was about to confess. "Right, I remember now." He forced himself to nod, adopting a deceptively casual posture and leaning back on his hands. "Sorry, guess it slipped my mind. It's been a hectic couple of days since then."
"Tell me about it." Keith huffed out a breath of laughter, relaxing just a little. He looked down at his hands again. "...I thought I should probably talk to you again sooner than later, though."
"Usually a good idea." Lance hummed in agreement.
Sighing, Keith nodded again. "Like I was saying when we talked before, I've been thinking a lot lately about taking chances on the things that are important to you while you have the chance. Especially now, after that last fight…" He shuddered and wrapped his arms around himself. "If Shiro hadn't been able to…" he trailed off, swallowing hard. Concerned, Lance straightened, putting a reassuring hand on the other teen's shoulder, and was rewarded with a shaky smile, just barely visible in the low light. "Sorry."
"Don't be." Lance smiled back, trying not to let his face show the way that shy smile sent warmth blossoming in his chest. "I know how important Shiro is to you."
Keith shook his head, the smile replaced now with a small frown. "Not just Shiro, Lance." He took a deep breath as though steeling his courage for his next words. "...you're really important to me, too."
Wow, if his chest had been feeling warm a moment ago, it was definitely boiling now. Lance coughed and hoped desperately that the darkness hid the burning of his cheeks. "That, uh, that goes both ways, buddy." He stammered out, pressing his bandaged hand to his chest and silently willing his racing heart to calm down. He needed to stop reading so much into this. Just because he was important to Keith didn't mean the red paladin cared about him as more than a friend or even a sibling. Given the other teen's rocky past, as well as more recent incidents, he should just be grateful that the other was willing to be this open with him. "You're important to me too." He added quickly, because god, wasn't that the truth.
"I know. That means a lot to me." Another quick flash of a smile before that dark gaze was directed downwards again. "But I don't think you know just how important you are to me. How much I trust you-"
Keith was still talking, but his words had set off a buzz of static in Lance's ears, a cold weight in his chest burning away the warmth that had been there before. Trust. That one word sent his thoughts lurching right back to the grim, painful revelation from earlier that evening. He didn't deserve Keith's trust. After everything Haggar had done, directly or indirectly, from attacking the Blades to hurting Shiro, Lance was pretty sure the only reason Keith could stand to even be in the same room with him was because he didn't know yet that Lance was her successor. But he'd find out, they all would, because that was too important a piece of information to keep hidden. Too dangerous to keep hidden, even if it ended up causing problems for the team and kept them from trusting one of their own. Not that he could blame them.
He managed to catch the last few words out of Keith's mouth. "...I know you might not feel the same way, but…" A soft sigh. "I think I'm in love with you, Lance."
"You shouldn't be." His gut twisted painfully, and he just barely managed to keep a bitter laugh from slipping out, because Keith was gazing at him with wide, anxious eyes and he didn't want to hurt him more than he had to. God, how many times had he fantasized about the other boy saying those exact words to him, and now that he finally did it was at a time like this, when Lance had only just realized that he didn't deserve it? Realizing the silence was stretching too long and he needed to say something more, he shook his head and ran anxious fingers through his hair. "You shouldn't be." He repeated. "I'm no good for you."
"But...you…" Keith was curling in on himself now, confusion and hurt written plainly across his face and making a sick feeling curl in Lance's stomach with the knowledge that he was the one who'd put it there. "I don't understand."
Lance desperately wished he could just reach out and pull Keith into his arms, tell him that he meant the world to him, that he loved him too and always would and would never, ever hurt him, because it was true. But instead he forced himself to pull his knees to his chest, wrapping his arms around his legs and refusing to look into those beautiful dark eyes. "You will." He whispered. "Not tonight. Tomorrow. Don't want to have to talk about it twice, and everyone needs to know." He couldn't quite keep the bitter edge out of his tone, imagining the disgusted, mistrustful looks on their faces. But seeing it on Keith's, here and now, would be even worse than the pained expression he had now. "But I can't return your feelings, Keith. I'm sorry." No matter how much it tore at his heart.
A harsh silence stretched out between them as for several long heartbeats neither of them spoke. Finally, though, Keith nodded, a single sharp jerk of his head. "Fine. Okay."
Lance's chest ached at the flatness of his tone, so much like how it had been when they first came to the Castle. But this was for Keith's own good, he reprimanded the part of him that was twisting with grief and sorrow. He ducked his head, hiding his face in his knees as Keith pushed himself to his feet and strode out of the room without a word or a backwards glance.
Only once the door had whirred shut and Keith's footsteps faded down the hall did he allow himself to cry.
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Keith hugged himself tightly, striding quickly down the hall without bothering to keep his footsteps quiet despite the hour.
Stupid. Stupid. I'm so stupid.
What had he been thinking, telling Lance how he felt? Of course he didn't return his feelings. Idiot. Why would he want to?
'I'm no good for you.' Trying to spare his feelings, despite the skyrocketing awkwardness in the room. That was just like Lance. But that didn't make telling him any less of a mistake. He shouldn't have said anything. Should have just kept his mouth shut. Then maybe it wouldn't hurt so much.
He fumbled with blurry vision to palm the lock on his door, a whine of frustration slipping out as he missed twice before managing to get it open and stumble into his room. His back collided with the metal of the door and he slid down it, burying his face in shaking hands.
Who would want a messed-up freak like you?
The only sound in the room was Keith's ragged breathing as he tried to rebuild his walls out of the rubble of his heart.