11/19/17: Rewrote the chapter to flesh out Shiro and Mustang's first interaction. Also edited my author's notes to account for goofs I made that I didn't realize until later.

Quick heads up, I will be following Red Rising's writing pattern for distinguishing between different methods of speech, so to clarify:

"Regular character speaking."

"Ragnar talking." (His voice is such a deep baritone that all of his dialogue is written in boldface)

Thinking

"Recorded messages and comm link communications,"

With all that out of the way, on with the show. The "Part 1" bit and accompanying quote come directly from the books, as a reference so that those who've read the books can keep track of when chapters take place relative to major events in Golden Son.

Trigger Warning: Shiro has a panic attack in the new version of this chapter. I used Squirenonny's fic Another Word For Never on AO3 (a scene where Matt has one when the handcuffs from Episode 2 of the show give him flashbacks to his time in the Galra labs) as a reference to get the feel behind it. I didn't go into too much detail because I wasn't sure I could write a scene like that well. If anyone is willing to provide constructive feedback to make the moment more realistic, PM me.

Part I: Bow:

"Hic sunt leones. Here be lions."

-Nero Au Augustus

Chapter 1: Ockham's Razor:

Darkness surrounded him as he came to his senses. The last thing Takashi Shirogane remembered was fighting against Zarkon with his fellow Paladins aboard Voltron. Zarkon had tried to destroy them by crushing Voltron's head, but they'd combined all five of their bayards together to form a Blazing Sword that had completely devastated Zarkon's suit of powered armor in a blinding flash. Evidently, the shockwave of the explosion had knocked him unconscious. As he regained his senses, he felt a blanket draped over his body as he felt a soft form beneath him that he assumed was a mattress. Were the healing pods damaged from the battle? He wondered. Shiro tried to lift his arm and feel the surface beneath him, only to be held back as he realized that something was keeping his arm restrained.

No! he thought desperately, his eyes popping open to take in the sight of both hands and feet secured to a hospital bed. He could feel the dull ache where an IV tube had been inserted into his left arm. A heart monitor stood next to the bed, and his armor was laid out on a chair that sat across the from the table. A large window stretched across the wall to his left. His mind filtered this sensory input through a layer of gauze, however. His breathing was shallow and frantic as memories of being experimented on by the Galra flashed through his mind. His right arm tingled in phantom pain at the memory of the operation to both amputate his original arm and graft the cyborg prosthetic onto his body.

He pressed himself into the mattress as his eyes did another sweep of the room, analyzing everything as he looked for a possible means of escape. He struggled against his bonds in terror when the door hissed open to reveal a woman with golden hair. Shiro panicked as he tried to get as far away from the door as he possibly could while fighting back a scream so as not to reveal to his captors how terrified he was. His vision felt hazy as the woman raced towards the bed, and his ears barely registered a faint beeping noise as the woman pressed something on the side of the bed and his restraints unlocked. Unthinking, Shiro lashed out with his right arm and struck her in the stomach.

He was just about to pull himself out of the bed and make a break for the door when his head turned passed the window and he stopped in his tracks. The sight of Earth looming in the sky cut through the haze of panic as Shiro began to realize the gravity of his situation. He hadn't just been out for a few hours after the battle. Given the size of Earth in the morning sky, there was only one celestial body in the universe where he could be right now. He was on the moon. And judging by the skyscrapers and trees outside the window, he had been out for much longer than a few hours. How long has it been since our battle with Zarkon? He managed to wonder as his breathing returned to normal and his heartbeat slowed.

"Goryhell," the woman cursed. "That stung. What's that gorydamn arm made of anyway? StarShell scrap?" Now that Shiro had gotten his panic under control, he looked her and mentally reassessed his estimation of how long it had been. She was about his height, but even though he'd never seen a human being with that shade of golden hair or matching eyes, he was confident that she was human. A gold crescent moon was emblazoned across the chest of her white uniform, with matching gold trim on the sides. A thin, holographic computer screen glowed softly in the air above her left forearm, while her right clutched at the spot where he'd smacked her.

"I'm sorry," she said as she stood up. Her accent sounded British with vague hints of Scandinavian underneath. "I hadn't considered how you'd react to being restrained. I should have anticipated your reaction better." Now that Shiro had stopped panicking about being captured again, he finally got a good look at the woman keeping him there. Although he didn't fawn over every woman in sight like Lance, even he had to admit that she was beautiful.

"It's not your fault," he replied cautiously. "You had no way of knowing I'd have a panic attack." He took a deep breath to center himself. "I'm sorry for hitting you." She waved him off, gesturing for him not to worry himself over it. Shiro breathed a small sight of relief. Whoever she was, she clearly had no intention of holding him prisoner or torturing him like he'd been afraid of when he first woke up. That didn't necessarily mean she didn't have ulterior motives for him, but it at least meant that her intentions weren't as horrible as what he'd initially feared.

"I've suffered worse injuries at the Institute," the woman responded. "And you were having a panic attack, so your reaction was understandable. Besides, it's not like you could have done more than bruise me, even with that arm of yours. If you don't mind my asking, what exactly happened?" An awkward silence followed as Shiro took another deep breath to steady himself, wrestling with the question of how much to say when he had no idea what had happened or how long he'd been out. Eventually, he settled on non-committal silence.

"I don't want to talk about it," he finally said. The woman frowned slightly. Shiro could see the sympathy in her eyes, but he could tell by the look on her face that he'd have to give her something. Hopefully I don't have to give away too much, he thought to himself as he looked anxiously at the woman who had evidently provided him with medical care while he was unconscious.

"I can understand if what happened is too traumatic to revisit," she began. "But right now, "I don't want to talk about it" isn't good enough. You appeared in the Citadel gardens in a flash of light with no sign of where you'd come from. Your Color is impossible to determine from your features, you have a cyborg arm more advanced than our most up to date mechanical prosthetics, and your armor is unlike anything that has ever been seen in the entirety of human history. Fortunately for you, nobody besides myself and the Yellow are aware of your presence in the Citadel. But you are a mystery, and if you are discovered before I can craft a suitable explanation for your arrival, the Sovereign will have you dissected in order to solve that mystery."

"I don't really know how I ended up here," he finally admitted. "One moment, I was aboard my ship. Then there was a bright flash, and the next thing I know, I'm waking up here. I'm not even sure what year it is." He didn't know what had happened while he was out cold, but he knew that he'd have to trust someone with the truth if he wanted to survive.

"It's the seven hundred fortieth year of the Post-Conquering Era," she answered. This only served to confuse Shiro even further. "If you were wondering what that would be in terms of the Gregorian and Julian calendars of Old Earth, that corresponds to the year twenty-eight-forty. Shiro's face paled. Eight hundred years. It had been over eight hundred years since the battle with Zarkon. Eight hundred years since he'd become a Paladin of Voltron. Eight hundred years since the last time he had set foot on Earth. Did we win? He wondered to himself as he fought to keep himself from hyperventilating, taking deep, slow breaths to keep himself calm. The woman frowned, confused by his reaction.

"What year was it before you woke up here on Luna?" she asked. Shiro breathed, wrestling with the question of whether this woman would believe him if he told her the truth. But as she said, if not her, then someone with a lot less compassion or concern for his wellbeing would be the one asking questions. Given the choice between a peaceful conversation and a merciless interrogation, he'd have to go with the former. I guess I'll be able to tell how trustworthy is by how she reacts when I tell her the truth, he mused as he looked away from the window back to his rescuer.

"It was twenty-thirty-seven," he answered, trying to keep his voice from cracking as he fought to hold back tears at the thought that he may never see his friends again. Calm down, Shirogane, he told himself. The place isn't swarming with Galra aesthetics, which means that Zarkon's army never made it to Earth. That means we won, doesn't it? The woman appeared to be just as stunned as he did. "You probably think I'm crazy," he added.

"Not at all," the woman replied. "There's no rational explanation for your inexplicable appearance in the gardens. There were no signs of gravBoots or a ship crash to explain your arrival, and nothing to account for your armor. Since the only explanations that were remotely plausible fell into the realm of science fiction, time travel is a rather mundane explanation compared to some of the possibilities I've been thinking of while you were unconscious."

"Fair enough," Shiro admitted with a morbid chuckle. He'd seen enough things previously thought impossible during his time as a Paladin that time travel didn't seem outside the realm of possibility anymore. And it's more likely than the team putting me in a cryopod only to lose me for eight centuries, he commented mentally.

"I'll tell the Yellow you're awake and have them bring you some food," the woman added before gesturing towards a large bathtub on the opposite side of the private hospital room. A pile of clothes sat stacked on the countertop next to the bath. "In the meantime, feel free to use the bath if you'd like some variety after lying in bed for two days. The Yellow took your measurements while you were unconscious, and I had one of the Browns in the laundry room send up some clothes in your size, so that you don't have to wear your armor all the time."

"Thank you," Shiro replied, holding out his hand. "I haven't had a chance to introduce myself, have I? My name's Takashi Shirogane. Most people I know call me Shiro." The woman paused for a moment, as if his named sounded familiar to her. Then her look of confusion vanished, before she reached forward and shook his outstretched hand, a conspiratorial smile on her face.

"Virginia au Augustus," she answered. "Welcome to Luna." After that, she left to go take care of getting him some food and assembling the resources to develop his cover story, leaving him alone with his thoughts. Eight-hundred-and-three years. That was how long it had been since he'd lost consciousness in the cockpit of the Black Lion. All of his teammates, his friends, were long dead. What had happened to them after he blacked out? Had Zarkon been destroyed? Had Allura and Coran survived when Zarkon went after the Castle? A million unanswered questions raced around in the quiet of his own mind like a hurricane.

Take a deep breath, Shiro, he reminded himself, tears welling up at the thought of never seeing his friends again. If you're lucky, maybe Augustus can help you hide and find out what happened. He didn't dare allow himself to hold onto hope of ever returning to his own time. If he got his hopes up, it was more likely that he'd be demoralized at being stuck in the future forever. The lesson he'd learned in the gladiator pits of the empire applied to his new situation now. Hope would get him killed. If he was going to survive, he had to assume that he would never be able to get back to the past.

Yes, fellow Red Rising fans, Shiro is going to be on Luna during The Summit, so you'll know where that's going to go. ;)

And yes, the chapter title comes from the Voltron season 2 finale. Since that episode is what started this whole idea, I thought it would be fitting.

Red Rising background info time!:

Accents: While most of the Red Rising characters speak English, each of the Colors has their own dialect and culture. Reds speak with Irish accents, Obsidian speech is compared to Maori, etc. From my research into the series lore after becoming obsessed with it, Gold dialogue in the audiobook versions is described by fans as sounding Scandinavian, but the way it's written in the books and Pierce Brown talking about his inspirations for different parts of the series are more suggestive of British accents. So I had Shiro describe Mustang's HighLingo as a blend of the two.

Prefixes: All colors on the pyramid from Gray upwards have a 2-letter prefix before their last names, derived from either the periodic table abbreviation for that element (Au for Gold, Ag for Silver, Cu for Copper), or for an element associated with that color (Blue has Xe for Xenon, Gray has Ti for Titanium). The prefixes for Green, Yellow, Violet, Orange, and White are unknown as of October 2017, while Red, Brown, Obsidian, and Pink don't have prefixes (or even last names in the case of Pinks and Reds), because Golds see them as objects rather than people.

HighLingo: Speech patterns, vocabulary, and slang of the metallic Colors.

MidLingo: Lingo of the middle tiers

LowLingo: Lingo of the Reds and other low colors

GravBoots: exactly what they sound like. Hover boots.

PulseArmor: Think Iron Man armor, only a little bulkier, like War Machine's suit. The arm blaster portion is a separate item called a PulseFist.