Author's Note: This chapter's a little on the long side by my standards, but it needed to be, because things are starting to come together. You'll see what I mean after you finish reading.

A big "Thank you!" to everyone who's reading. You guys are the best. And since I haven't mentioned it in a while, the only things I own in this sordid tale are my characters.

To Emie Mac - Believe it or not, Len & Morgan (and Jeff & Chris) totally trust Jon with the food. As for everything else in the wedding? Um...maybe not.

To bknbu - Just wait 'til you get a load of Allura's date-night outfit...that alone should be something!

To Sally On - Depressed and clueless is exactly the way to describe Sven. I'm pretty sure it's still the Haggarium lurking in his system. Oh, and you should definitely be worried about dinner. Don't forget that the Russian Tea Room made an earlier appearance in Chapter 12.

Title Song: "Let's Go" by Calvin Harris ft. Ne-Yo

Ginger laid in the bottom portion of the bunk beds she once shared with Lisa, trying to convince herself to get out of bed and start the day. It was already past noon, and she should have at least been out of her pajamas by now. She just didn't feel like it, though. And after everything that had gone on in the past week, she didn't know if she could ever get out of bed again. Not even for a cupcake from Magnolia Bakery.

She thought she was past Lance. Well, maybe not exactly past him, but far enough removed from him that he wouldn't matter anymore. Far enough that he wouldn't influence her romantic decisions anymore. Now he was back in her life, and he seemed to miss her as much as she'd missed him.

Except for the small detail that she was on Earth while he was on Arus, things were pretty much perfect between them.

Sighing, she finally climbed out of the bed. The only reason she did so was because her bladder was full. Otherwise, she would have been content to wallow in her misery for much longer.

After she flushed the toilet and was washing her hands, she heard her phone ring.

"Always when I'm in the bathroom," she grumbled, drying her hands quickly and rushing over to her phone. Quietly, she thanked the caller. Since Lisa had more or less moved out of their apartment and into Aidan's, Ginger was by herself for most of the time the Explorer was docked, and she hated it. She always did better with people around.

It was Cinda. Uh-oh. This can't be anything good. "Hello?"

"GINGER!" she heard Cinda half-shriek, half-sob into the phone.

"Oh, good God. Cin? What's wrong? Are you hurt? Did somebody die?" She paused. "Do you need alcohol?" At least it was past noon.

Cinda sniffled. "No," she sobbed. "I found out that the lease on my apartment ran out and I'm homeless."

"What?" Ginger cried out. "You're homeless? How the heck did that happen?"

She heard Cinda blow her nose on the other end of the line. "With all of our missions on the Explorer, I guess I wasn't paying close enough attention to the lease notices," she explained. She sounded embarrassed. "When I got back to my apartment last night, the locks had been changed. So I knocked, and someone else was living there." She paused, hiccupping. "I went to go see the manager, and he said that since I hadn't renewed my lease, he had no choice but to empty my apartment and rent it out to somebody else."

"Do you still have your stuff?"

"Yeah. It's in an off-site storage unit. I ran around all morning, trying to come up with the money to bail it out."

"Oh my God. Where did you stay last night?"

"Cliff's couch."

"Ugh." Ginger remembered how both Cinda and Cliff had gotten apartments in New Jersey to save on rent. "What do you need me to do, Cin? You know I'll help you out the best I can."

There was an awkward pause, and for a moment, Ginger thought that Cinda might have hung up the phone. "Um..." she stated awkwardly, "I need you to help me find someplace to stay. Someplace cheap. I don't need much space, and I don't have a lot of stuff."

Ginger wasn't sure if Cinda was asking if she could move in, but that was okay by her. "Come by my place," she offered. "Bring your stuff. I'm gonna call Lisa."

"Huh?"

"Just come," Ginger assured her. "I'll see you soon." Then she hung up the phone and dialled Lisa's number. She knew Lisa was staying with Aidan, just like she always did when the Explorer was grounded. She knew how to fix this...and further her old roommate's relationship along at the same time.

Aidan had just stepped out of the shower when Lisa called to him, "Hey, Sweetheart? There's a situation going on with Cinda and I need your help solving it. It's pretty urgent."

"Hmm. Okay." He wrapped a towel around his muscular waist and tied his long hair back in a haphazard ponytail. "Though I'm not sure why you'd want my help. I'm usually the cause of the problem, not the solution."

She rolled her eyes. "Cinda's lease ran out. She's homeless."

"Wow. That stinks." He turned his face to the bathroom mirror. "So what do you want me to do about it, Lis? I can't magically make an apartment appear out of thin air. Especially not in a city like New York."

"Can I move in?"

"Huh?"

She batted her eyelashes flirtatiously at him. "Can I move in with you?"

"Don't you practically live here already?"

"Stop joking around. I'm serious."

"Oh, I see where this is going." Aidan broke out his razor to shave his face. "Cinda wants to move in with Ginger, but she can't do that unless you've officially moved out. And the only logical place for you to move would be in with me." He paused, turning his face away from his reflection to look at her. "You know what, Lis? I like it. It's a good idea. I want you to move in."

A giddy, overjoyed expression came over her face. "Really? You mean it?"

"Yup. Welcome home, Sweetheart." He turned back to the mirror and began to lather his face up with shaving cream.

"Don't bother." She grabbed his face with her hands and drew him in for a celebratory kiss. Shaving cream covered her face and hands, and when she finally let go, Aidan laughed at the messiness. Removing the towel from around his waist, he wiped both of their faces clean, then kissed her again, moving back into the bedroom. Right then, he decided that the two of them definitely weren't going anywhere for the rest of the day.

Jeff and Christiane watched in awe as Jon was greeted lovingly by an older blond woman at Per Se. She introduced herself to the engaged couple only as Isabel, which signalled to them that she had spent enough time with Jon to feel comfortable dropping all surnames and titles with him. She briefly congratulated them and informed them of her position as the special events manager. "But please," she reiterated, "call me Isabel."

"Okay," Jeff offered, unsure of himself. "My name is Jeff, and this is my fiancée Christiane. But everyone calls her Chris."

"Jeff and Chris," Isabel cooed, looking over them fondly for a moment. She then placed a hand on Jon's shoulder. "We're doing this reception off-site, correct?"

"Yes," he answered. "The reception will be on the terrace of my triplex on Fifth Avenue."

Isabel clapped with delight. "I have been absolutely dying to see your Fifth Avenue triplex, Jon. What a wonderful opportunity for me! Now, let's get started on the planning - you're not giving me much time to work with."

Jeff and Christiane exchanged glances as they watched the woman pull out binders and calendars. There were binders filled with photos, binders filled with menus, binders filled with schedules, and one particularly scary-looking binder filled with prices. Jeff swallowed. He felt incredibly guilty about the commander paying for the food at this wedding. It was just too much money.

Then again, he had said something about Jeff needing to 'man up' and have a wedding. It was his own fault.

To his surprise, Christiane really got into it. As Isabel pored over menu choices with Jon and Christiane, Jeff noticed his fiancée grinning and actively participating in the conversation. It was as though it was finally occurring to her that she was getting married, and she wanted to help host a good party for her friends and family. Even if that party was on the commander's dime.

Jeff felt terrible about it. Even though the commander had offered to host the reception, he still felt like that was an expense too great to ask of him. Not only that, he felt ashamed that he couldn't afford to give his bride an engagement ring or a wedding reception. He could barely afford a place for the two of them to live after they got married.

As the feelings of inadequacy tore through him, he felt his phone vibrate. Glancing down at the screen, he saw it was Morgan. "Excuse me," he said quietly, looking up, "I need to take this call. If you'll all pardon me."

"Go ahead, Jeff," Christiane told him. "Just don't take too long, otherwise I'll pick out the entire menu without you."

"Don't worry, I'll be right back."

Stepping out through the restaurant's blue doors, Jeff answered the phone. "What's up, Morganza? Don't you have a class to teach in, like, five minutes?"

"Yeah, so I'll make this short. What are you doing tonight?"

"I think we're doing more wedding-related stuff. Sheesh." Jeff rolled his eyes, imagining how much of his life for the next twenty-six days would revolve around the wedding. They had just gotten the marriage license and chosen the officiant that morning; they would officially be married in twenty-six days. "Why? You got something in mind?"

"Yeah. Actually, I do. I'll meet you at home after work and we'll go from there. If you're available, that is."

He smiled. "For you? Anything."

"Thanks, Amigo. See you then."

After hanging up, Jeff sighed and returned to the room with Christiane, Isabel and Jon. This wedding planning business was crazy. And crazy expensive. He was glad that he knew that Chris was The One and he would only have to do this once. Any more than that seemed like a waste.

Yet he couldn't help the fond smile that crawled onto his lips as he watched the radiant glow coming off Christiane's face. She looked so happy as she discussed appetizers and cocktails. Shrugging to himself, he figured that maybe it was all worth it. He would just have to relax and enjoy the here and now.

Lance knew she had to be getting ready for her date. He'd known Allura for a long time, and he knew how long it took for her to get ready to go out to Heaven Bar. Even if she was only throwing on jeans and a T-shirt, it still seemed to take four hours for all the primping and preening.

When it had been just the two of them, that was all she wore.

This was no Lance-and-Allura-tossing-back-drinks-at-Heaven night out. Allura was going on a date with Keith, her boyfriend who had - no pun intended - royally messed up their relationship. And the fact that she was bringing him to Heaven, of all places, concerned him. He had to talk to her.

He laughed to himself as he approached her door. She hadn't changed the code on the keypad outside, and Lance punched the quick numbers in. He heard the door unlock and he pushed it open.

He and Allura had exchanged codes after Keith went on the hunt for Black. For some reason, every time Lance came back to Arus for a visit, both he and the princess were plagued by nightmares. One particularly bad night, she ran in tears to Lance's room. He admitted to having nightmares as well, and they'd exchanged key codes so that they could freely enter the other's room in the middle of the night. It was never for anything more than that. Lance truly felt for Allura the same way that he reasoned Jeff must have felt for Morgan. Their love for each other was strictly platonic.

But Keith...Lance was as close to Keith as he was to Allura. For that reason, he could not let her do what he figured she was going to do.

When Allura entered the bedroom, she was dressed in her bathrobe, her long blond hair damp from the shower. She hardly seemed surprised to see Lance sitting on her bed, waiting for her. "I was sure you'd show up," she told him, seating herself in front of her vanity.

"I figured you'd be waiting for me." Lance moved behind her, speaking to her reflection in the mirror. "Listen, what you do in your relationship with Keith is your business. But when it impinges on my relationship with Keith, I have to speak up."

"How, exactly, does my date with Keith tonight impinge on your relationship with him?"

Lance's brows furrowed. "Because if he gets hurt, he'll come to me to talk him down from the ledge. And if you think I'm as eloquent as the great Clifford Jack, well, think again."

"How am I going to hurt him?"

"You're going to Heaven."

She shrugged, reaching forward to pick up a bottle of face primer and her eyelash curler. "Do you still think of Heaven as my place with -"

"Yes." Lance shot her an icy look. It wasn't as good as Sven's, but it would do.

"Ah. I thought so." Allura leaned in closer to the mirror to curl her lashes. "Well, just so you know, that is part of the reason why I'm taking Keith there tonight. I want him to see how I felt the entire time he was pining over Morgan. I don't want to hurt him, but I do want him to understand how much I must love him if I came back to him after feeling so worthless."

Lance shook his head disapprovingly. "So I can't stop you, then."

"No."

"Okay, then. Good luck tonight."

"Thanks."

As Lance left her room, he was thoroughly grateful that he had Ginger back in his life. It was a whole lot easier for him to be with his former classmate and fellow pilot than it ever would have been with his Arusian princess.

He was so angry when he left the Space Marshal's office. He hadn't wanted to get into a fight with Kelly; that was the last thing he had planned on doing. It just seemed to happen. The worst part was that he knew it was the Haggarium in his system. Pidge and Vince hadn't been able to defeat it, after all.

Yet another reason he needed his elskede back. He needed something to make him forget about this infection that he would probably carry with him for life.

It was a long walk from Garrison Island to the Space Academy. It wasn't unmanageable, though, and Sven was grateful for the distraction. It was nice to be reminded of his Academy days. Pleasant times. Times before Voltron and Arus, times before Haggar and her robeast and a certain planet called Ebb.

Without even realizing it, he'd found his way back to the quad. Things looked different - it had been half his lifetime ago that he'd started here - but the basics were still the same. There were more buildings now, but the originals still stood as valiantly as ever, though not as imposing as they had when he was still a student. Briefly, he wondered if the navigation department was still in the same building.

Only one way to find out.

Though his footsteps were sure, he didn't know where he was going in life. It didn't matter where he had been; the only thing that mattered now was where he was going.

Climbing to the third floor of the old building, he was pleasantly surprised to discover that navigation hadn't moved. That made sense, considering how inflexible navigators were. As he headed towards an open door, one attached to a room that he had spent plenty of time in, he heard a familiar voice wafting through.

"Now, cadets, you're only ten weeks removed from graduation. There's nothing worse than getting your first job on a ship and blowing it, which is why I continue to hammer these drills into your head. And if you think it's bad enough to have to calculate a flight path in fifty minutes, try doing it in real life when it takes sixty hours."

He propped himself up against the wall opposite the open door. Morgan stood at the head of the class wearing a traditional officer's uniform instead of her blue-and-white Albegas uniform. Her black hair was pulled off her face. Sven couldn't believe that at such a young age, she had taken over Instructor Bailey's position teaching NAV503.

Somehow, she knew he was there. Her violet eyes darted out to the hallway and locked with his. With one hand, she motioned for him to come into the classroom. He did so, reluctantly.

"Cadets," she interrupted them, "I know that you're all in the middle of your flight plan, but I wanted to introduce someone. This man is a very dear friend of mine, one who sat next to me and spent as much time in this classroom as I did. I'd like to introduce Sven Holgersson, original Blue Lion pilot of Planet Arus' Lion Voltron."

There weren't many cadets in the class, under twenty at best, and each one paused to look up. Sven didn't know how much of an impression he made on them, as each one looked eager to finish his or her flight path. He acknowledged all of them, then stepped out into the hallway, with Morgan following.

"I can't believe you're teaching NAV503," he said proudly. "You're the greatest navigator in the Alliance."

She shot him an aw-shucks expression. "Yeah, tell me something I don't know," she retorted teasingly. "Hey, what are you doing tonight? Jeff and I are going out, and I think it's only fitting if you came with us."

Sven shook his head. "I'd like to, but I can't. I'm having dinner with Lenora at the Russian Tea Room. Thank you for the offer, though."

He could tell from the look on her face that her heart had dropped to her knees. "Oh, Sven," she lamented. "Why are you torturing yourself? She's married and unavailable. You're married and unavailable. I know you two still love each other, but dragging her to the Tea Room is a low blow." She pursed her lips. "Come out with me and Jeff instead. It'll make you laugh, I promise."

"I'd really like to, Morgan. But right now, I'd like nothing other than spending the night with Lenora."

Morgan blew out an exaggerated sigh. "Fine. But don't get upset when she doesn't go home with you, Holgersson. She can't, and she won't." She shrugged. "Well, I've gotta get back to these cadets. If you change your mind about tonight, you know how to get in touch with me, okay?"

"Okay," he replied, all the while thinking that he couldn't wait to get to dinner.

"Moran, you're a genius."

Lenora wiped her greasy hands on a rag as the genius technical scientist known only as Moran ran a clean scan on Red. She hadn't felt confident about anyone else getting into Red's computer and mechanical systems, so she had done the work herself. She did feel good about Moran running the scans on her behalf, so the work had been more efficient.

"Well," he offered jokingly, "you were the one who got in there and got dirty."

She'd immediately liked the man when she first met. He was twenty-five years older than she was; literally old enough to be her father. He made her wonder what her own father would have been like had he not been murdered so many years ago. In any case, Moran was a comforting presence, and his unmatched intelligence was on par with his superb technical skills.

"True enough."

"So that was it," he murmured, checking the readout. "The fuel crystallized in the hardware nexus. I suppose that could only happen on Crydor."

"I suppose."

"Here. There's no need for you to stick around here, Space Marshal," Moran saluted. "I'll reboot Red, and I'll fortify and reboot Black and Blue in the process. You should go back to your office."

She nodded. "I think I'll do that. Thank you, Moran."

He smiled. "My pleasure."

She left the hangar, feeling much better now that the problem with the red mecha had been pinpointed. Of course, she always felt better after being in Moran's comforting presence. Sometimes she felt like a child around him, but in a good way. She felt safe and protected, as though her father was watching over her.

She felt warm and fuzzy throughout her walk from the hangar back to her office. With her hair pulled back into a ponytail, smelling of grease and sweat, she had never felt freer or more important - or closer to her father - than she did at that moment.

As soon as she walked back into her office and her eyes met Kelly's, all of those good feelings vanished.

"Uh-oh. What's wrong, Kell?"

"Len." She stood up from the desk and exhaled angrily. "You had a visitor earlier."

"Who?"

"Sven."

"Oh." Lenora shrugged. "I had a feeling he'd come looking for me. What did he want?"

"Dinner. Tonight. With you. 1800 hours." Kelly paused. "Russian Tea Room."

The Space Marshal inhaled. "I should've known," she mumbled, almost too ashamed to look at her first officer just then. "I suppose he deserves a reward, but my God...the Tea Room? What is he trying to do, kill me?"

"He's trying to win you back."

"I think you're right." She sighed.

"Len, please tell me you're not gonna leave your husband." Kelly's plea was bright and shining in her eyes. "Please. I know how much you loved Sven, and I know that you still love Sven, but my God, think about your marriage vows. Think about how much Jon loves you. Don't go to the Tea Room tonight. Leave Sven hanging. He's not worth ruining your marriage over."

Lenora agreed with her. "I have to go. He's earned it." She shot an intense look back at Kelly. "But believe me when I say that he won't get the ultimate reward he wants. He wants me to go back to him, and I can't. That just won't happen."

"Good," Kelly replied, looking relieved.

"So I suppose, if you've got nothing else to report, I'll go home and get ready for dinner. Can you handle the workload for the rest of the day?"

"Of course." Kelly looked back at her friend with a ferocity Lenora had barely seen before. "Please don't go back to Sven, Len. Please."

"I won't."

As Lenora made that promise, she knew in her heart she would stick to it. But she was worried about what might happen when she told him no.