"So, you gonna spill the beans or what?"

Shiro glanced up from his breakfast bowl of flavorless green stuff. "Exactly what beans are you referring to, Pidge?"

"Come on," Pidge slid onto the mess hall bench beside Shiro. "Spill 'em!"

"I honestly have no idea what you're talking about," Shiro shoveled another spoonful into his mouth. Grimaced. Swallowed. He hadn't been entirely honest with Allura last night. He did miss Earth. But mostly because of the food. Even the Kerberos mission food cubes were better than Altean cuisine.

"Come on!" Pidge's face lit up. "You and Allura left the holo chamber together last night."

Shiro laughed. "That's an interesting rumor."

"Fact. Not rumor," Pidge held up a single finger.

"Yeah, the mice told them," a cheerful voice added as Hunk joined them at the mess hall table.

"Well, they didn't really tell me per say," Pidge went on, gesturing with their spoon as they spoke. Shiro's stomach lurched a little as green goo slid down the spoon handle. "I overheard them talking about it."

Shiro gave Pidge a quizzical look.

Pidge shrugged. "I developed a translator."

"Don't tell Coran that," Shiro chuckled. "He'll be asking them to make sandwiches all day."

"I wouldn't mind a sandwich right about now," Pidge sighed, watching the green Altean goo continue its slow, lugubrious slide to the handle of their spoon.

"Same," added Hunk, though his spoon clattered loudly on the rim of an empty bowl.

"Don't change the subject, Shiro," Pidge said, scraping half of their green goo into Hunk's bowl. "What were you doing with Allura in the holo chamber last night?"

"Nothing!" Shiro laughed. "Did you tell everyone about this?" he gave Pidge a look.

"Don't blame me!" Pidge cried. "It was the mice – "

"Yeah, man," Hunk's eyes narrowed incredulously. "Didn't I tell you to keep on eye on those mice? They're always. Watching."

"You two are ridiculous," Shiro sighed.

"But – " Pidge began.

Shiro gave them the look again. "Where are Keith and Lance?"

"I think Keith's already wailing on some of those training bots," Hunk replied between mouthfuls of Pidge's unwanted breakfast. "Lance is probably still in the showers."

Pidge shrugged, nonplussed.

Lance was the sort of cadet who took showers before and after drills. At first this had struck Shiro as incredibly wasteful, until he remembered that Coran's saying something about how all of the water made and used on the Castle of Lions was recycled. All of the water. He wondered if anyone had told Lance yet.

"If he's late you are all doing warmups until he gets to the training hall. Understood?"

Pidge and Hunk groaned in harmony.

"I'm serious," Shiro said. He pointed to Pidge. "Eat your breakfast."

Pidge glowered at him.

"I mean it," Shiro smiled his most paternal smile. "You'll need your strength."

"You are insufferable," Pidge mumbled as Shiro swung his leg over the bench.

"Aw, come on Pidge, don't say that about Shiro," Hunk finished off his second bowl of breakfast. "We love Shiro."

Pidge sighed, but Shiro was too far from the mess hall table to hear it.

As the doors slid open, Shiro glanced back over his shoulder. Hunk was attempting to fly a spoon full of green goo into Pidge's mouth like a small spacecraft. Pidge's mouth remained closed. The edges of Shiro's mouth crept up into a small smile. Guess I'm not the only one who misses Earth food, he unsavory as Altean food was, Shiro was glad Pidge and Hunk were sharing the experience together. That they had each other. None of them were going to make it through this alone.

The doors closed automatically behind him as he stepped into the corridor.

The Castle of Lions was preternaturally quiet when he wasn't with the rest of the team. Sometimes it made his skin prickle and turn to gooseflesh. Sometimes it was nice, just to be alone, and feel the silence wash over him, like the tide at night, it was easy to imagine that it went on forever. Until one of the doors opened and the cadets came spilling out. Shiro picked up his pace down the hall.

A pair of mice skittered along the baseboards in the opposite direction. His eyes narrowed as they passed. Probably on their way to the mess, he thought. If Pidge and Hunk kept up their antics, he was sure there would be a veritable minefield of green goo for the mice to chow down on when they arrived. Shiro's face settled into a frown. If what the mice had seen really had been nothing, why hadn't he just said so?

"I did say so," he muttered to no one but himself.

Pidge just didn't believe me, he thought, sighing. They're way too smart for their own damn good. He wondered if they would be reading his and Allura's com logs next. It was a public messaging system on the ship, but still. Shiro shook his head. Nothing is going on between you and Allura.

"Nothing," he muttered, hoping there were no mice within earshot.

He didn't need them thinking he was crazy, too.

His thoughts drifted to the night his stolen Galra craft had crashed on Earth. How those troops had strapped him to a table. Told him to calm down. He took a deep breath. Shiro had learned something critical that night. He had learned that telling anyone on the edge to calm down only ever pushes them over that edge. His chest tightened at the thought of those restraints, the feeling of their eyes on him, lingering on the Galra prosthetic he had never wanted; the Galra tech he had needed to survive.

He shoved his prosthetic hand into his trouser pocket as he walked. He never would have made it off the Galra ship without it. He knew that. He had fought tooth and artificial claw to get off that ship, and when he had finally managed to make it home – the welcome wagon had just thought he was crazy.

Shiro frowned. Maybe he was. Maybe he was paranoid, thinking that Pidge would be trolling the comm logs for something juicy. Of course you're being paranoid, he thought. There were a thousand more infinitely interesting things for Pidge to occupy themselves with on the ship. His comm exchanges with Allura probably hadn't even come up. Yet, his brow furrowed. Pidge was just as curious as they were intelligent. But even if their curiosity led to the comm logs between him and Allura, Pidge wouldn't find anything. There was nothing to find.

Because there was nothing going on between him and Allura.

Right?

He tried to recall the last thing they had chatted about before last night. If he could even call it that. He and Allura clogged the comm relays from time to time, but never with anything personal. Their messaging typically pertained to scheduling. Sometimes strategy, though that was rare in the event that the Castle of Lions was boarded. Though he had tried to contact her last night, before the system crashed. When he couldn't locate her whereabouts, he had been skewered by a spike of panic.

The first message had been perfectly innocuous, something about the the art grav experiencing failures across multiple levels. But when he hadn't heard back from her, he had sent her a message, almost without thinking.

Allura. Where are you?

He wondered what Pidge would make of that.

Nothing. Because there was nothing to make of it. Shiro nodded to no one as he rounded the last corner down the hall. The training hall doors slid open before him and he stepped through them.

Each step he took echoed loudly in the vast chamber, but he was not alone. An armored figure was sparring with one of the castle drones in the entered unnoticed. Keith was clad in head to toe black armor. If he looked away from the fight upon Shiro's entry, the black visor on the helmet masked the movement of his eyes. Shiro pressed a finger against wall touch panel to select his weapon. The written Altean was over his head, but thankfully there were visual aids. Shiro selected a short sword.

The wall ejected his weapon like a vending machine relieving itself of a candy bar. Shiro turned the hilt in his hand, let his eyes wander along the spine of the deadly blade. Apparently Alteans didn't believe in practice weapons. Only practice. In the arena, Keith was grappling with the drone.

Keith parried with a short sword similar to the one in Shiro's hand. Shiro cocked a brow. Why wasn't Keith using his bayard? His arm fell to his side, almost aching for the bayard that had never been there.

"Keith!" Shiro shouted, raising the short sword above his head. "Ready to step it up?"

Keith gracefully sidestepped the drone, not skipping a beat. The drone did not stop. It lunged forward, blade drawn. But with a snap of Keith's fingers, the drone collapsed on the floor. Shiro blinked in surprise. He had never seen them do that before, but the fail safe made sense. Keith had spent hours sparring with the drones. He would know. Shiro took a step closer and realized, Keith wasn't Keith. The armored figure pulled off their helmet, and Allura's silver hair spilled over her shoulders.

"Was that a challenge?" she returned his smirk and cocked a hip.

"Ah – " he tried to say her name, but his mouth refused to make words as his eyes watched her,

Roll her helmet down her side, resting it between her arm and her hip.

She tapped the flat of her short short blade against her thigh. "Think you can do better, Paladin?"

"Princess," Shiro stammered, as he slid the short sword into a holster strapped around his thigh and nearly missed.

"Good morning, Shiro," she smiled.

She looked at him with those bright blue eyes and his hand was instantly clammy in his gloves. "Good morning," he replied. Afterwards, he was not sure he had actually said the words aloud.

He had never seen her in black before. Allura was a light in the dark; she wore white. Black was a Galra color. He instinctively clenched his prosthetic fingers into a fist.

Standing beside her, Shiro was hardly surprised he had mistaken her for Keith from across the room. The black armor concealed her hourglass shape, and the paladin and the Princess had a surprisingly similar combat style. They both moved with a fierce elegance, fueled by a fire inside that would never go out. But while Keith was prone to lashing out with his bayard blade, Allura responded to pressure like a diamond - it only made her brighter.

"What?" Allura laughed.

If Shiro had known better, he might have thought she was nervous.

She shifted her weight. "You're staring."

"Black suits you," he replied.

"It's a prototype of Coran's kinetic armor," Allura cleared her throat. "Hence it only comes in one color, I'm afraid. But it does track movement, highlight areas of improvement, that sort of thing."

Shiro almost had to laugh. As if Allura had any areas that needed improvement. "Does it come in Pidge to Hunk sizes?"

She answered him with a shake of her head. It was all fun and games until she casually pointed her short sword in Shiro's direction. "So."

"So what?"

"Are you going to answer my question?" She tilted her head to the side, just so. When people made that motion, it usually made Shiro think of birds. When Allura did it, it was almost predatory. "Was that a challenge?"

Shiro opened his mouth to speak, but instead of making words his lips barely parted, unable to move as he watched a single bead of sweat roll down her throat and disappear beneath the neck of her underarmor.

"Shiro?"

Shiro exhaled and his breath became a gentle chuckle.

"What?" Allura demanded, voice sharp.

He raised his Galra prosthetic arm. "I think I've got a bit of an unfair advantage."

"You didn't seem to think you had an unfair advantage when you thought I was Keith." Allura crossed her arms over her chest indignantly.

Shiro nodded and hung his head. "You're right."

"If you'd like to level the playing field…" she paused. "Here - give me your sword!"

Shiro unsheathed the short sword at his thigh and handed it to Allura hilt first, careful not to touch her. She left him standing at the edge of the ring, scratching his head with a robotic finger. When she returned, she held up two pairs of black boxing gloves and a roll of tape. She offered him a pair before she began to wrap her hands in the stuff.

"So I can't use my Galra hand," Shiro noddedd. "Very clever, Princess."

"Now we're even. If there was ever any doubt." Allura gestured to the ring with the thumb of one of her gloves. "Shall we?"

Shiro extended his arm before her. "After you."

Allura smacked her gloves together officiously and the floor of the ring opened, swallowing the recumbent drone. Shiro met her in the middle of the ring. She turned to him, eyes blazing brightly. He threw on his most confident smirk before they bowed curtly to one another.

Their gloves met, and Shiro's smirk vanished from his face. Allura threw the first blow with a quick low body kick, striking him in the side. Shiro lunged back at her, gloves first, but she evaded him easily, eyes still shining. She knew he hadn't tried to hit her, just knock her off balance.

"Don't hold back, Takahashi."

The way she said his name send a shiver down his spine, like a cold compress after a long, hard fight.

"As you wish, Princess."

He threw a kick and she caught his foot in between her gloves, pushing him back. He found his balance again and smirked at her, hoping she would not realize how woefully out of practice he was. He had spent a year in the Galra coliseum as a gladiator; he had strength and speed on his side, but his technique was a mess. In the ring champions did what it took to survive, not keep up best practices. And it was allowing Allura to predict his every move. He pitched forward towards her, faking an uppercut. Allura threw her gloves up to block him and he threw another low body kick that connected with her hip, hard.

"That's more like it," she grinned at him.

It made him feel like he was on fire.

And they were just getting started. She kicked him hard in the gut and he tightened his core to keep from keeling backwards. He sidestepped her next kick, and they began to dance, gloves up, shielding their faces. For each step Shiro took, Allura took two. He leaned left, she leaned right, like a shadow, always mirroring his movements. His heart began to race.

Allura threw a high kick, striking his ribs. He grimaced and fell back. She advanced without hesitation. Without apology. Her gloves were in his face again in an instant, but Shiro blocked. He felt his Galra hand burning under his glove. Though his armor stifled its purple light, he could feel it, burning bright and aching to strike. If his prosthetic could tear through Galra sentry bots like they were made of paper, the padded fabric of his glove would prove no obstacle. And neither would Allura. He took a deep breath and brought his arms back in, gloves close. He had to control it.

His defensive position only spurred Allura on. Shiro took a few sharp steps backwards and she followed as quickly and easily as if they were dancing. But if this was a dance, Allura was leading. She always was. So much so that it made it easy to forget how young she was. The burden of leadership weighed heavily on her shoulders. He could see it written in her features, in the sadness in her face, and the diamond hardness of her beautiful eyes. She had already lost so much.

And failure was no longer an option.

Her glove slammed into his ear and suddenly he was seeing double. He swore as they both fell back. Shiro squinted as two Alluras raised four black gloves in front of their faces. He felt something hot and wet dripping down his neck. He squeezed one eye shut and two Alluras became one. He took a deep breath. Using his height to his advantage, he struck her in the neck with a swift kick. As Allura gasped Shiro felt his stomach lurch.

But her words echoed at the back of his mind. Don't hold back, Takahashi.

Shiro seized his opening and threw another hard kick, but Allura righted herself and came back grinning. He didn't even have time to squeeze out another swear before realizing he had made a critical error. It was too late. His body was already in motion, careening towards her. Right before his leg made contact with her side, she caught his calf with one gloved hand, and pushed his torso back with the other. Shiro's back hit the floor with a thunderous clap.

Shiro groaned.

Allura stood over him, smiling. He tried to smile. He wanted to smile back, but his face contorted as he tried to breathe. She wiped the sweat from her brow with the back of her forearm, still but she was still gleaming - beaming from her victory. Shiro's heart rate refused to slow. It would have helped if he could breathe. But Allura was still standing over him, and she had never been more beautiful.

Her silver hair clung to the sweat on her brow and flushed cheeks. As her shoulders heaved with every breath, Shiro wondered what readings her kinetic armor was generating, now. Was her heart rate as high as his was? Her breathing just as shallow? He smiled and wondered if her heart rate was spiking, too, despite being completely still. Would this moment be fixed in time in numbers, unnaturally high and utterly inexplicable to anyone but the two of them?

"Oh snap," came a familiar voice.

Or the entire team.