A/N: I am mostly happy with how The Imitation Game turned out, but there was a scene in there that I initially planned, but eventually cut out and reduced to a small comment. Just before Pidge uses the personality replicator she thinks about how Shiro came to her one night and they talked about Matt. So I decided to write that scene and post it as a separate chapter. I hope you like it. I might write other part later, with the other paladins and how they reacted to the events of the prison raid.
Small amounts of yellow gas escaped from the closed cell door. Shiro leaned closer to examine it. A whiff of it entered his mouth, and suddenly his throat was burning. He recoiled just as Pidge's hacking device bleeped, and the door opened. In a flash he realized what the gas was, and reacted immediately.
"Masks on! Now!" he shouted as he pressed the button on the underside of his helmet, making it airtight, and activated the build-in oxygen tank. The filtered air was dank, but it was better than the poison gas now pouring out of the opened door.
Then the screaming started.
Pidge screamed first, then Keith, as they clutched their throats. Then the other paladins joined in, falling to the ground and gasping for air as blood poured out of their mouths. They writhed and struggled like they were drowning in the sea of yellow gas. Shiro was frozen in horror as he watched his friends die.
"You let them die. As you let me die," a voice said, and Shiro looked up to see Matt stumble out of the cell. His skin was rotting, his eyes were white, and his face was covered in blood and foam.
"No! I tried to save them! Tried to save you!" Shiro managed to say, but then more bodies appeared behind Matt. Some were prisoners dead from poison gas, but others were aliens he killed in the arena, and even the two little Balmerians they found dead after saving the Balmera. Killed by a missed blast from one of the Voltron lions.
"No, you let us die. You killed us. And we want vengeance," the aliens said as one. Shiro stumbled back, but the dead were faster. They grabbed him and pulled him back into the cell, still filled with yellow gas, and pried his helmet off. Shiro tried to scream, tried to beg for help, but he was drowning, the gas suffocating him.
And then his eyes opened. He was panting, bathed in sweat, tangled in his bedsheets. It took a minute for his brain to catch up to what happened. Adrenaline raced through his veins, and his right arm tingled, even though he couldn't feel anything in it. He groaned and rubbed his bloodshot eyes. Fifth nightmare so far since the prison raid.
There was no way he would be able to go to sleep after that, so Shiro threw the sheets off and stood up. Maybe a walk would calm him.
He didn't bother to put on his regular clothes, keeping his shorts and nightshirt on. The cold tile floor gave a nice cool sensation to his bare feet.
The castle was dark and deserted, since it was still the middle of the night. Well, there was no night or day in space, but the castle still used a 22 hour rhythm with lights and heating simulating the sun rising and falling in the sky. But even now, at a time he might have called 3 AM back on Earth, the red emergency lights still marked the edges of the corridors.
He started walking, sometimes slow, sometimes jogging, as he tried to banish the dream's images. The screams and accusations wouldn't go away. If he couldn't save Matt, then who could he save?
After a while Shiro saw a bright light in the distance. Alerted, he moved closer, seeing the white light came from a half-open door. He reached it without making a sound, and peeked inside.
It was one of the computer labs. Various screens were turned on, displaying programming code and rows of numbers. The walls of the room were lined with holographic blackboards. The blackboards were covered in writing: long formulas composed of Greek letters and other symbols, large schematics of small dots and arrows connecting them, a diagram of many circles overlapping and intersecting each other. Little numbers and symbols annotated everything. In the center was a drawing of something that looked like a brain, little lines and arrows pointing from notes and text to various parts of the drawing.
Shiro didn't understand any of it. He recognized enough of it to know they were mathematical formulas and constructs, but he had never been good at math. The math and computer systems had been Matt's job on the Kerberos mission. But even his youngest crew member had never written anything as extensive as this.
He had an inkling who had, though, and his suspicions were confirmed when Pidge appeared from behind a large machine near the far wall. The girl removed her glasses for a moment to rub at her bloodshot eyes. Thankfully she didn't look at the door, instead bending over to look at one of the screens.
Then she stepped on a little cart, pressed a few buttons, and the machine extended its legs and moved its wheels, allowing the short paladin to reach the top part of the blackboard, where she crossed out a formula and replaced it with a different one. Even from this distance Shiro could see she was tired and frustrated.
Shiro had barely seen Pidge lately. He had tried to give her space, to let her grieve for her brother. He needed some space himself as well.
But as he watched Pidge get down from the robot to check another computer screen, before shrinking one blackboard and bringing up an empty one which she quickly began to fill with another diagram, he worried. She clearly needed sleep, and he wondered how long ago it was since she ate. She hadn't been at dinner in the past few days, saying she was busy and that she'd eat by herself.
"Can't sleep?" Shiro said as he opened the door. Pidge jumped back, tripping over the cart. Shiro winced when she hit the floor with an audible thud.
"You okay? Sorry, I didn't mean to scare you," he said as he ran over and grabbed her arm.
"I'm fine. And you didn't scare me! I just thought I was the only one still awake," Pidge said defensively as he pulled her to her feet. Shiro looked closer at her face. She was trembling slightly, though from nerves or exhaustion he couldn't tell.
"I sometimes walk around when I can't sleep. I'm guessing you're working?" he asked as he sat down in a nearby chair. Pidge rubbed her eyes again, looking at the computer she had been working on.
"Yeah, I have to finish this…" she mumbled, clearly not interested in him. Shiro didn't like this new Pidge at all. He understood she was grieving, but… this was a very weird way to go about it.
"What are you working on?" he asked, trying to sound as sincere and curious as possible.
"It's an AI personality repl-" Pidge stopped abruptly, making him frown. "It's just something I was playing with. The Alteans have some new techniques for machine learning, so I'm adapting our AI tricks to improve them. Neural networks, decision trees, evolutionary algorithms, that kind of stuff," she said as she moved around the room, pointing at different parts of the blackboards. Shiro had no idea what she was talking about, but he couldn't help but feel like she was hiding something.
"I barely understood half the words you just said," and Pidge made a sound almost like a giggle.
"Pidge… Is this important enough to skip sleep for? And when is the last time you ate?" he asked, noting how unfocused her eyes were.
"It's… It's… revolutionary. If I bring this stuff to Earth I'll advance science by decades. And I ate… yesterday, I think? Or was it the day before that? I'm not really hungry," she said, and Shiro's suspicions were spiked more. Pidge had always been interested in Altean tech, but she had never been this… obsessed before the prison raid.
"Maybe, but you still need to eat and sleep. It can wait-" he said, but Pidge interrupted him.
"It can't wait!" she shouted, before covering her mouth with her hands, apparently shocked by her own outburst.
"Why can't it wait? What is this? What are you doing?" he asked clearly. He hated confronting her like this, but she was acting irrational.
"It's… It's…" Pidge stuttered for a long time, apparently frozen in indecision.
"Pidge…" he started to say, but then she suddenly spoke up.
"It's… I have to work, okay?! It keeps me from thinking. When I stop to eat or sleep or rest I keep seeing him, and I don't see him when I'm working on numbers and formulas and networks, okay?! It's… I'm so tired, but I can't sleep," she rambled, as she leaned back against a blackboard and Shiro didn't really know what to say.
"This isn't the way. Matt is gone. You need to accept that. You need to grieve. I'm grieving. I miss him too. He was my friend. And I couldn't save him-" he said, but then Pidge spoke up again, as slid down to sit on the floor.
"It's my fault he's dead! I could have shut off the gas! I came out of the vents right next to the control room, remember? I was supposed to turn off the cameras, but when we were spotted I ran to the cell instead! I could have shut it off! I could have saved him!" she blurted out, and Shiro saw that she was crying underneath her hands covering her face. Her glasses fell off and landed in her lap, but she didn't seem to notice.
"It's not y-" he started to say, but she wasn't done.
"And now I don't know what to do anymore! He was my best friend! My only friend! He believed in me when no one else did! And I just… I killed him! It's my fault!" she shouted before dissolving into tears. Shiro was frozen as Pidge seemed to completely collapse, everything pouring out. She looked very small as she pulled her knees up against her chest and rocked back and forth. She looked like a little kid.
For the first time Shiro realized how young Pidge was. Somewhere in the back of his mind he had known that she was the youngest. He was 25, and the other paladins were 18. All adults. But Pidge was… She was four years younger than Matt, so she had to be 14. Just a kid. A little kid who should never have had to go through so much.
A girl like her shouldn't have to think about death or war. Her biggest responsibility should be school and homework. Her biggest fear should be that her crush didn't like her back. Her biggest anger should come from high school gossip or an unfair grade. Her biggest complaint should be how boring English or history class are.
She should be convincing her parents to let her go to her first party. She should be baking brownies and seeing bad movies on Saturday nights with her friends. She should be having sleepovers and hushed giggling discussions about boys and makeup and whatever else girls talked about. She should be fantasizing about what kissing boys would be like. What kissing girls would be like. She should be rebelling and shouting and slamming doors for reasons only hormonal teenagers could understand. She should have her mom and dad to comfort her when she was sad.
A girl like her should never have to be whisked away from home to fight in life-or-death situations. She shouldn't have to learn how to fight and shoot and stab and fly. She shouldn't have to kill. She shouldn't have to fear death or injury. She shouldn't have to find her missing family.
She shouldn't have to see little dead alien children, killed by a stray bullet she might have fired. She should never have found her brother dead in a scene so gory and twisted when, back on Earth, she wasn't even allowed to watch a movie with such images. No kid should ever have to see those piles of dead bodies, twisted by poison gas like Holocaust victims or soldiers in the Great War.
Pidge was so smart, so mature sometimes that to see her reduced to the child she really was shook Shiro to his core, and he didn't know what to do. He remembered seeing documentaries about child soldiers in Africa. He had felt nothing but disgust at the men who kidnapped children, put a gun in their hands and told them to kill people.
Had he done the same thing? The blue lion had brought them all here, including her, and the entire universe depended on them, but he had never stopped to think if it was right. If they could deal with it.
"Pidge, listen to me. Are you listening? Please nod your head if you're listening," Shiro asked as he moved to sit down next to her. Slowly she nodded, her face still covered by her hands.
"I'm… I'm not going to say it's gonna be alright. I can't even imagine what you're going through. Matt was my friend too, but I know he meant way more to you. But I'm sad too. And I'm having nightmares and I feel scared and tired and I keep thinking what I could have done to save him," he said, gently moving his left arm around her shoulders, relieved when she didn't flinch away. She was still sobbing, but he could tell she was listening
"And I'm sorry. For… For not looking out for you. I promised Matt I'd do so if I made it out. But… But you want to know a secret? Matt missed you a lot too. Maybe even more than you missed him. And you know what he said to me? He said 'Katie is the smartest, bravest, best sister I could ever have imagined, and I'm sure she's doing great down there. She's probably being the modern Newton and revolutionizing science and solving world hunger or planning a Mars colony. And I think she thinks she relies on me, but I rely on her just as much. Because I can always count on her to have my back.'"
"That's what he said, Pidge. Honest to God. And after we were captured, and put in a dark cell, he admitted he was scared. He was so scared, but he said that he was happy it was him in there, and not you. He said 'Katie's gonna do great things. She'll travel the world and meet scientists and astronauts and presidents. Because she's strong enough to do it without me. And I always knew that would happen. Even before all this space stuff happened. She'd make some great invention and become famous and she wouldn't have time for her dumb big brother anymore. She's gonna do so much more than I could ever have done. She's gonna change the world, I'm sure of it. Even if I'm not there to see it.'"
Pidge started crying harder, and when he nudged her gently with his good arm she suddenly grabbed him and buried her face in his chest.
They sat there for a very long time, with Pidge drenching his shirt with tears while Shiro awkwardly patted her back and rubbed her messy, unwashed hair. He was glad she couldn't see the tears falling from his own eyes. Eventually her sobbing stopped, and she pulled out of his embrace.
"I'm sorry for being such a mess," she whispered, and Shiro shook his head.
"Don't apologize. You don't have to say anything. Just… Look, I don't know what you're working on in here, and you don't have to tell me if you don't want to. But if you ever want to talk or play or… or just want a hug, you can always come to me, okay? If there's anything I can do to help, you come to me. I'm not Matt, but maybe I can be a replacement big brother, okay? Does that sound good?" he asked, and she nodded.
"Okay. Thanks, Shiro. I'm… There's something…" Pidge seemed very conflicted all of a sudden, and she quickly glanced at the blackboards and machines. Shiro frowned. There was something more going on here, this wasn't just a project she did to stop thinking. But he wouldn't press her.
"Never mind. But maybe… Can you tell me some more stories of Matt? From training together, and when you went on the Kerberos mission?" she softly asked, making Shiro smile.
"Sure. If we trade. I tell a story, then you tell a story. And so on. And when it's light again we'll go to breakfast, and you're going to eat, and then you're going to sleep for the rest of the day. I'll deal with Allura," he stated. It looked like Pidge was going to argue, but then she sighed deeply and snuggled against his chest again.
"Fine. But only if you tell good stories," she said as she sat on his lap, looking like a little girl again.
Shiro started to tell the story of Matt's first bathroom visit in space, but a small part of his mind still wondered what she was planning. But maybe it was something that she had to do. Pidge might be young, but she was smart. And Matt believed in her. So he would believe in her too.