"Hey, Shiro?" The Green Paladin asked hesitantly, eyes fixated on the control panel before her as she inconspicuously muted her comm system.

"What is it, Pidge?" Shiro wondered, his voice soft and reassuring.

"I'm...worried about Lance. I mean, he's been sad ever since we rescued him, but ever since we left that Space Hub, he's barely said anything."

"So, you noticed too, huh?" Shiro sighed behind her, and she could practically hear him leaning against the far wall of the Green Lion's cockpit.

"And not just that...he hasn't been playing his guitar either," she declared, the statement evoking a keen sadness in her heart.

Shiro walked to the pilot's seat, positioning himself at her right shoulder.

"I hadn't noticed that."

"Really?" Pidge looked at him, her eyes as wide as the brim of her glasses.

To her, the change had been blaringly obvious. Without the soothing music of guitar chords strumming through her speakers, every noise had become ten times louder. And, in the still moments of the day, an abyss of condemning silence affronted her ears without remorse.

"I suppose I should have," Shiro shook his head, "After all, he's been playing that thing almost every moment since he got it."

"Yeah," Pidge agreed, an unsettling feeling casting itself over her body.

Lance hadn't seemed to let go of the guitar for weeks, and now, he didn't seem to even look at it. Something had to be wrong, but Pidge had no clue what it was. And she hated that.

"Lance has been...troubled for a while now," Shiro contemplated his next words carefully, "And I think this is just another stage in his healing process."

"Healing?" Pidge sputtered on the word. "He doesn't seem to be healing to me."

Shiro chuckled soberly, "That's because it takes a very long time to heal from this sort of thing."

"So, he has been healing?" A wisp of hope blossomed in Pidge's chest, and she looked at Shiro expectantly.

"In little things, yes. But he's still trying to figure everything out," Shiro admitted.

"Do you think he'll ever be back to the way he was?" Pidge voiced.

Surprising Pidge with his certainty, Shiro instantly replied, "No. He'll never be the same."

He liked to compare his moments of crushing depression like dreams, appearing sporadically, never lasting for too long. Only haunting him randomly, the spells used to seep into his thoughts and burden him for a time, but somehow, he managed to pull himself out of their oppressing mire eventually. But, now, he felt trapped in an infinite nightmare, one that weighed on his body and drugged his mind. One that sapped every ounce of energy from his body, that terrorized him mind, never let him sleep, but never let him be truly awake either. When he did sleep, it was far too long, which annoyed his teammates to no end. Or at least, that's what he told himself. He relapsed into awful habits, ones that should never see the light, and he found himself lacking the ability to think clearly. His mind was a bog so thick with fog that it was impossible to see mere feet in front of him, and when he took a wrong turn, he began to sink into the murky, parasytic depths that consumed his soul. They swallowed his feet first, then crawled up his shins, and entrapped his knees. Lance couldn't focus on anything, and his days blurred together in a slideshow of grays. Whenever he attempted to encourage himself, to remind himself of everything that hinged on him and his teammates and all the things that he should be excited about, like finally reaching Earth or seeing his family, his thoughts only made him heavier. He couldn't imagine doing anything. What was the point of it all anyway? He was supposed to be fighting a war. The war that had lasted for 10,000 years, that war? How could a bundle of misfits that might never have met if a series of coincidences hadn't aligned, how could they stop such a war? And how was he even contributing to this team? They didn't need him. Why was he here? And say that they did put an end to this eternal war. How long would that take? Years? How many years? Two? Five? Thirty? Lance didn't see the point. He didn't feel the same conviction that he'd originally held at the beginning of all this. But, then again, he wasn't the same person who had piloted the Blue Lion from Earth's atmosphere, who had left his family behind without a moment's pause, who had craved adventure in every inch of his fiber. There wasn't a point. How could he carry on? He was too exhausted, too drained. Sleep tugged on his eyelids, static crackled through his brain, and hunger twisted his intestines, but the motivation to sleep, to eat, to even breathe, had left him. He could only lay in a pitiful state of existence on his bed, his limbs refusing to function and his heart barely beating. At one point, he remembered hearing someone's voice talking to him. But he had been unable to understand it, much less recognize it. Then, he'd heard a number of voices, but the way they'd talked all at once had confused him, and he let himself sink, the murk in his mind reaching his hips. Soon, new voices began to whisper to him, but these were different from the previous ones. These he could understand, and to these he even listened. They crept along the banks, their sources unseeable through the mist that clouded his vision, but their words all too clear. With tones of lush temptation and murmuring each phrase like a soft lullaby, they coaxed him into a state of almost relaxation.

Let it rise, don't fight it.

Stay still, everything will be better if you don't move.

Nothing matters anymore, there's no reason to struggle.

Lance let the voices slide into his mind and heart like the sludge that continued to immerse him.

Further and further he submerged.

At first, his descent was slow, without rush. Almost soothing. But suddenly, he felt himself falling faster. The mire engulfed inches of skin at once, devouring his torso before he could truly grasp what was happening. His arms floundered in panic, as claustrophobia overtook him, but all too soon, his shoulders had disappeared. Only his neck and head remained above the surface, and Lance could only stare in terror at the depths, in a quick rush he realized what he had allowed to happen, and his horror paralyzed him as he gazed at the unknown. He watched in shock and gruesome fascination as his neck submersed under the opaque sludge. He could still feel his body, but he couldn't move, and in the end, he lacked the strength to even try. As his chin tingled from the touch of the depths, he prepared himself for the inevitable.

The unavoidable.

With a final breath, Lance felt the waters enclose over his head, and he kept falling, until he couldn't see or feel anything at all.