Author's Note: This chapter centers on Coran, and takes place early on in Season 3.
Squeak!
"You guys couldn't sleep, either, huh?"
Chuchule, Plachu, and Chulatt manage to scale Hunk's body within ticks, and they promptly begin nuzzling his shoulder. The largest mouse, Platt, meanwhile, plops down on the island in the middle of the castle-ship's kitchen and cocks his head in the direction of the tray of not-petits fours that Hunk is holding.
"Oh," Hunk huffs amusedly. "You're hungry."
He sets the tray down on the island, then plucks a petit four off of it and hands it to Platt. It's almost as big as the mouse's head, and if Hunk were in a better mood, he'd laugh at the way Platt's face disappears behind the treat as he takes a bite out of it.
"So am I."
… and although that's not a lie, it's not the truth, either. He'd woken up around the fourth varga of the quintant, and despite his best efforts, he'd been unable to fall back asleep. The muffled grunts that any awake paladin could usually hear coming from Shiro's room had been absent, and the complete and utter silence had unnerved Hunk and pushed him out of bed.
He'd wandered down to the workshop that he and Pidge share, figuring he might as well see if she fell asleep there again, then carried her to bed after finding her hunched over her laptop, sound asleep. He'd been debating whether or not to try to go back to sleep when he heard a loud gasp from a nearby bedroom. It'd sounded like Keith, and although Hunk had wanted to go knock on his door and make sure he was alright, he knew better than to do so. The first — and last — time Hunk had tried to help Keith recover from a nightmare, the Red Paladin had forcibly shoved him out of his room with little more than "you wanna help? Help me find Shiro!"
Keith hadn't apologized the morning after, but Hunk hadn't minded. They've all been on edge.
He's not the only one who misses Shiro, Hunk thinks, leaning back against the island and popping a petit four into his mouth. He'd seen someone selling them at the mall a while back, but with all that's happened recently, he hadn't had a chance to try his hand at the recipe until now.
… and why not make French pastries before the space equivalent of dawn? While serving the paladins petits fours won't cheer them up or make them forget about what happened to Shiro, it'll let Hunk clear his mind and provide himself some small amount of comfort.
That's not selfish, is it?
Squeak!
Hunk turns his head slightly to get a better view of Platt, who, now that he's finished his first petit four, is making a not-so-silent plea for a second.
Silly mouse, Hunk thinks as he hands the chubby mouse another petit four and shoves two others in his own mouth. There's a cavernous hole in his stomach that, for once, has nothing to do with his almost-insatiable appetite — but he can, and will, pretend it does.
It's a lot easier for him to sate his appetite than to stop being scared, after all.
… and he is scared because all Hunk is, when it comes down to it, is a seventeen-year-old boy who wants to go home.
He hadn't even wanted to go to the Garrison, in all honesty. He'd applied to get everyone who kept telling him that he was "made for bigger and better things" than the lazy life he wanted to live off his back, and he ended up getting accepted. He'd enrolled — or would it be enlisted? he wonders — because it was practical to do so; going to the Garrison allowed him to get out of his underequipped school and be educated for free at one of the world's most prestigious schools.
… and okay, the idea of being able to work on cutting-edge technology as a teenager also contributed to Hunk's accepting his acceptance, but still. He'd signed the forms confirming his enrollment in the Garrison with all the enthusiasm of a man signing his will, and he'd panicked just about every day thereafter — especially the day he was promoted to fighter class. He didn't want to fight anyone, and he really didn't want to go to space — and had he been able to imagine getting caught in the middle of a ten-thousand-year-old intergalactic war against an ancient, evil emperor who harvests individuals' and planets' life forces for his own personal gain, he wouldn't have wanted to get involved. He's never wanted to be a hero.
He's never wanted to be a hero because, contrary to any and every movie ever produced by Disney, heroes aren't meant to survive. Shiro's proof enough of that.
… and okay, Hunk will admit that he doesn't know for sure that Shiro's dead — Keith, for one, is certain he's still alive — but Shiro's already returned from the dead once. It'd be too much to ask that he do it again.
… right?
Hunk sighs, then shoves two more petits fours into his mouth, sinks down onto the floor, and draws his knees as close to his chest as his stomach will allow him to. The mice sleeping on his shoulders don't react to the sudden movement, and all Platt does is walk off the island and onto Hunk's head. Hunk chuckles humorlessly at the mouse's shenanigans before plucking him off his head and depositing him on his lap.
"There's an old Samoan proverb," he says once he finishes chewing. "'Amuia le masina, e alu ma toe sau.'"
The mouse cocks his head at Hunk, a curious expression on his face.
"How's it feel to be clueless as to what I'm saying?" Hunk asks, and his voice cracks at the end — although whether it's from crying or laughing, he doesn't know. "I'm guessing not very good — but don't worry, Platt. I'll translate. It basically means 'blessed is the moon, which can go and then return.'" He sighs. "I wish people could come back… but no, when someone dies, they're just… gone. Forever."
The mouse squeaks in response, but before Hunk can figure out what he's trying to say, he hears some suspicious noises coming from what sounds like just outside the kitchen.
What's going on now? Hunk wonders as he sets the mice down on the floor, stands up, balls his hands into fists, and braces himself for the worst. He knows, rationally, that it can't be anything serious, considering the Castle's alarms haven't gone off, but he's not about to take any chances.
"Speaking of things that are gone forever…"
Coran?
"… did I ever tell you about the time I sold a kidney for a couple of runacs?"
"I, uh…" Hunk stops to seriously consider the question, even though, if the way Coran's currently slumped against the doorframe is any indication of his blood-alcohol concentration, he won't know the difference between an honest answer and a lie. "I don't think so."
"Really? Well, now, that's a shame! It's quite a riveting tale, even if I do say so myself!" Coran exclaims. "It all started when King Alfor told me that he needed to get his hands on some runacs, which are very rare pinkish-red gems that can only be found on the planet Runamyr. The Runamyran King had ceased all mining of the gems several deca-phoebs prior, though, due to the seismic activity that mining the runacs usually instigates. You see, the gems are located—."
"Coran," Hunk interrupts pointedly. "What does the gems' location have to do with your selling your kidney?"
"Oh! Well, when I arrived at Runamyr, I learned that the Princess had sirenomelia — a congenital deformity which caused her legs to be fused together much like a mermaid's, which I suspect was due to the fact that her mother was, in fact, a Mer from that frozen planet you and Number Three crash-landed on a few movements ago," Coran explains, and Hunk has to bite his tongue to stop himself from asking what that has to do with his kidney. "Anyway," Coran adds, "the Princess was in dire need of a kidney, so I offered one of mine in exchange for a handful of runacs, which I presented to Alfor with a great ta-da and—."
"Coran?"
"Yes, Number Two?"
"How much nunvill did you drink tonight?"
"Hmm… enough to kill a krevel, probably — although I don't suppose that's saying much, given the fact that, despite their large size, they're actually extremely fragile creatures, what with their paper-thin skin and weak immune systems! A heat wave or a—oh! Speaking of heat," Coran chuckles, "did you know nunvill is flammable? I didn't know that until after I'd been captured by Glardaxian insurgents and tied to a chair in a cave along the side of the tallest mountain on the planet, and they poured nunvill around the chair and lit it on fire in the hope that it would cause a landslide big enough to crush the nearby royal palace! It was quite a precarious situation, but I managed to convince one of the bird-like creatures flying near the cave to get King Alfor, who was talking to the Glardaxian King, trying to clear the name of a good friend of ours who had been wrongfully charged with the murder of half a dozen men…"
"… and I thought Lance dragged me into ridiculous situations," Hunk muses as he walks over to Coran and drapes his arm over his shoulders, letting the drunk Altean lean against him. "You should be a writer for The Twilight Zone," he adds, temporarily forgetting that Coran won't get the reference. "Anyway… shouldn't you be sleeping, Coran?"
"Shouldn't you?" Coran retorts.
"Touché," Hunk concedes. He glances at Coran and, noticing that the Altean currently reeks of nunvill, bites back a grimace. "Why were you getting drunk when everyone's supposed to be sleeping, though?" he asks.
"Well, I was trying to convince Princess Allura to drink some nunvill, as she was having trouble falling asleep and nunvill, in small doses and when mixed with a particular herb, can be a wonderful sleep aid!"
"Oh," Hunk replies, the flatness of his voice conveying his disbelief in Coran's assertion that nunvill can be taken like Ambien®.
"You don't believe me, do you?" Coran asks. He glances at Hunk, then, shifting his gaze to the floor, mumbles something so incoherent the Castle's built-in translators don't pick it up and turns to leave. He stumbles, though, and Hunk has to wrap his arm around Coran's waist to steady him.
"It's the truth," Coran insists. "When I was younger, my grandfather used to let me take a sip of his nunvill whenever I couldn't sleep. However, I… well, I also figured a couple of drinks would, ah, take the edge off? We've all been so… ornery… since Shiro disappeared — and yes, I said 'we.' Allura and I miss Shiro, too.
"We know that none of you asked for this, and that you're all homesick — but you have to understand that Allura and I didn't ask for this, either," he continues, and his voice seems too solemn to be his own. "We don't even have a home to which we can return anymore. We have no one and nothing but the family we've found in you five and the promise of an Empire-free future." He sighs, then looks up at Hunk — and his gaze is surprisingly precise, given the fact that he's probably seeing double of the Yellow Paladin right now. "We acknowledged and accepted the risks of our endeavor long ago, and we knew that this was a possibility… but that doesn't mean that losing a member of our new family was any easier for us than it was for any of you. You're quite literally all we have now, and… well, we're hurting, too."
There are tears gathering in Coran's eyes as he speaks, but before Hunk can even think about commenting on them or, even better, wiping them away, the Altean blinks them away and adds, "at the same time, we understand that our mission is bigger than any one individual. We didn't get to grieve for Altea, and we don't have time to mourn Shiro. We all wish we could stop and take a moment to process the lives that have been lost over the millennia, but we can't. We cannot chance giving the Galra time to regroup — because if we do, not only will the entire universe fall to tyranny, but everything Allura and I have lost will have been for naught."
Hunk doesn't react for a couple of ticks, but once he's sure Coran's done speaking, he turns his head to look at him. He looks exhausted and sad, and Hunk's heart breaks for him. He wonders what other angsty feelings the Altean man hides behind goofy grins and hyperbolic declarations, as well as whether Coran's rant is the consequence of his nunvill-induced abandon or simply being fed up with his grief being overlooked — because he's right, after all. As far as Hunk knows, no one on Team Voltron has ever stopped to consider the possibility that maybe — just maybe — Coran's been grieving, too.
"I'm sorry, Coran," Hunk apologizes, even though "I'm sorry" doesn't even cover the tip of what he wants to say. "You're right. We've been too preoccupied with our own grief to think about yours and Allura's, even though it should've been obvious to us that Shiro was important to you guys, too.
"I… I can't promise that we'll find Shiro, or that no one else will… disappear," Hunk continues, substituting the word "die" with the slightly less unpleasant disappear, "but I can assure you that Allura, Keith, Lance, Pidge, and I are all here right now, and that we all consider you family. Yes, Altea's gone, but you'll always, always have a home with us — and we're gonna be here for a while, Coran. I don't know how we'll form Voltron without Shiro, but we'll figure something out. We're brave and we're smart and we're strong. We'll be okay."
"You know what, Num—uh, Hunk?" Coran responds, smiling softly. "I believe you."
Hunk shoots Coran a smile of his own, then, as Coran's chin falls to his chest and Hunk realizes that the Altean's falling asleep standing up, frowns. He snaps his fingers beside Coran's ear to wake him up.
"You should drink some water," Hunk suggests, leading Coran over to the fridge as he does so. He retrieves a water pouch from one of the shelves in the fridge, stabs the straw into the plastic, and raises the pouch to Coran's lips. He quickly sucks it dry, but he rejects Hunk's offer to get him another.
"Okay, let's get you to bed," Hunk says. He grabs another water pouch (to put at Coran's bedside), then, with his arm wrapped around Coran's waist, starts for the Altean's bedroom. It's difficult to navigate the dimly-lit, unfamiliar halls, but Hunk manages to interpret Coran's half-conscious grunts as either positive or negative, and soon enough, they're walking into his room.
Oh, wow, Hunk thinks as he lowers the now-sleeping Coran onto the bed and, chuckling slightly at the sight of the teddy bear-like thing at the corner of the bed, tucks him in. He's really made this place his home.
… as much a home as it can be, given the circumstances, that is, he amends, averting his gaze from the framed photograph of King Alfor and Coran that's hanging above Coran's pillow.
Allura and I didn't ask for this, either.
Hunk sighs.
I guess I should be grateful that I still have a planet to return to when this is all over… so long as the Galra haven't conquered Earth, that is.
Hunk grimaces, then, ridding himself of the macabre thought with a shake of his head, crouches down to set the water pouch he'd snagged from the kitchen on the floor beside Coran's bed. "Goodnight, Coran," he whispers as he turns to leave.
"G'night… an' 'ank you, Hunk."
Hunk stops in his tracks, surprised to have gotten a response [albeit one obstructed by a yawn], then smiles softly.
"You're welcome."