The engine on the old bus choked and rattled as the vehicle bounced down a road spattered with cracks and potholes.

"Arizona, the land road maintenance forgot." Groaned Lance, lurching sideways in his seat as Hunk steered the bus around yet another curve.

"Or maybe it has something to do with the two and a half years of everyone being dead?" Snarked Pidge from two rows behind him. Keith snorted across the aisle as Lance leapt to his own defense.

"Technically not all of them are dead!"

"So what, you want a zombie road crew to be doing construction in the middle of the apocalypse?"

"I mean," Matt said, popping up from the seat just behind Pidge, "They wouldn't even need the orange vests."

The entire bus hooted with laughter. Even Shiro, tapping his one hand on his knee, was smiling.

It had been six months since the Voltron gang had struck a deal with the Garrison, and now with access to their resources, they had set about the business of spreading the vaccine. This had not been an easy task.

Finding survivors to begin with wasn't easy. Anyone who had survived this long was good at hiding and rightfully suspicious of strangers. Between this, the Z's, and the remaining pockets of Galra out for blood, life was still messy more often than not. Still, they were all together.

Keith leaned his temple against the rattling bus window and stared out. They were in northern Arizona- surrounded by pine trees rather than cacti, and Keith was far from complaining about it. He'd had more than enough of the desert.

Honestly it was kind of miraculous they had all been assigned to the same team, and he had a feeling it had more to do with their own attachments than actual skills.

Matt and Pidge had been trained by Allura on how to administer the vaccine. Normally each team only needed one medic, but Pidge never went anywhere without her brother, especially after what happened with Shiro.

Shiro was the leader, the shotcaller, and he never went anywhere without Keith. Keith was their melee fighter- Hunk and Matt and Pidge could hold their own, but they had other jobs. Keith's only responsibility was to keep Z's off of his friends. He had no problem with this.

Lance was the only one of them good at range. He'd gotten a proper bow at the Garrison and loved it- he'd tried to teach Keith how to use it but that had been a disaster that none of them spoke of.

Hunk was the engineer, in charge of keeping them from breaking down and winding up stranded.

Ok, so maybe they were more balanced than he gave them credit for.

"Hey Pidge." Called Hunk from the driver's seat. "Will you check the map for me again?"

"I told you- just follow the signs to Flagstaff." Pidge answered, absorbed in the book she'd scavenged at their last stop and not wanting to be interrupted.

"Checking the map again wouldn't help anyway." Shiro said. "Allura said the base was in the general vicinity of Flagstaff; not exactly marked on the map."

Hunk grumbled, but didn't say anything else about it.

That was their destination; a Voltron base somewhere around Flagstaff that Allura had lost contact with a few months before the Galra attack on Arus. Keith thought they were probably all dead, but she seemed to think it was worth checking out.

Keith's foot brushed against his backpack when he shifts, and his eyes dart down and then away. He'd scavenged a few things at their last stop too, and they were burning a hole in his pack.

Lost in thought, he didn't notice Lance moving until he was stumbling into Keith's seat and throwing an arm around his shoulders.

"Don't think too hard, Mullet." He crowed, ruffling Keith's hair. "I can smell the smoke from over there."

Keith batted his hand away with feigned irritation. He knew what Lance was doing and normally he would appreciate it, but this time his concern was misplaced.

"Are you sure that's not coming from you?" he shot back, and a satisfied smirk grew on his face when Lance pretended to be wounded. After a year and a half Lance still got on his nerves, but it wasn't bitter the way it had been at first. They understood each other now- even if they still got snippy at the end of a long day.

They went over another bump, and Keith burst into laughter when Lance whacked his head on the seat in front of them.

He worked when he was on watch. He still made sure to watch, of course- paranoia and the dead sleep for no one. But he still made some good progress with those scavenged items, working by firelight and moonlight and hiding the evidence under his gloves. For once the mission wasn't the only thing on his mind. He had something else to think about, something to put effort into that wasn't smashing in skulls. It was nice. Really, really nice.

It had been a long time, and he was rusty. He spent more time starting over than making progress and more than once he went to sleep frustrated. But he refused to give up.

It took an entire month before he was satisfied with what he'd made. The Flagstaff mission had come and gone- so had three or four more. But finally he was almost out of supplies and had no other choice but to do what he planned.

I hope they'll like it.

The mornings were always chilly. All of Lance's muscles were tight with the cold and spending the night sleeping in a bus seat that was way too small for him. He sat up with a groan and stretched, all of his joints popping, and then paused when he felt the wrinkle of paper under his foot.

The sun was barely up so it was hard to make out, but when Lance picked up the paper from the floor he recognized it as a drawing.

His eyebrows rose in surprise.

From what he could see in the twilight it was a pencil sketch, a little messy with smeared graphite tinting the area around the drawing grey, but the image was still clear. It was a drawing of him- one hand on his hip, the other leaning his elbow on Hunk's shoulder while the other boy smiled a little ruefully. It only showed them from the waist up and if he angled the paper right he could see remnants of lines that had been erased, but there were little details here and there that made it seem exceedingly realistic. The little crinkles around Hunk's eyes, the fold of Lance's jacket over his shoulders, the way his hair stuck up on the back of his head.

Suddenly realizing exactly what he was holding, he loosened his grip on it and shuffled his fingers away from the lines, not wanting to smear the lines any further. Not taking his eyes off of the sketch, Lance reached over the back of his seat to where Hunk was sleeping, leaning up against the bus window, and prodded his best friend on the shoulder.

"Hunk. Hunk, wake up."

Back before everything had gone to hell, Hunk had been impossible to wake up before he wanted to. It was easier now, but his eyes were still bleary when they blinked open.

"Lance?" He asked groggily, sitting up straighter and reaching up with one hand to rub his eyes. "What's going on?"

"Chill out bud, nothing's wrong, just look at this." Lance carefully held out the drawing, waiting patiently for Hunk to wake himself up enough to comprehend what he was looking at.

"Woah." Hunk breathed several blinks later. "Who drew this?"

"Dunno. I found it on my seat when I woke up."

The other members of the team were beginning to wake up around them, and the crinkling of more paper joined the usual yawns and early morning grumbles.

"Matt!" Pidge was more awake than any of them, excitedly shaking her brother into wakefulness to show him the drawing she had in her hand. "Matt, check this out!"

Lance handed his own sketch off to Hunk to inspect while he moved out of his seat, wanting to see Pidge's drawing. He wound up in the seat behind Matt, peering over the siblings' shoulders.

The Holt siblings' sketch showed Pidge perched atop her brothers shoulders, beaming and pointing at something off of the page. Matt had his head tipped back at little to grin at her.

Looking up at their real life counterparts, Lance wasn't surprised to see almost the exact same expressions on their faces. Pidge was squinting at the paper, having forgotten to put her glasses on in her rush, but judging by her smile she could still see it well enough.

"This is really good." Murmured Matt. He glanced up and raised his eyebrows. "You got one too, Shiro?"

Lance turned, and sure enough Shiro also had his own piece of paper held in his hand, which he regarded with a soft, affectionate smile.

"I wanna see!" Lance exclaimed, clambering out of his seat and across the bus. Shiro shook his head at Lance's eagerness, but just handed it over with a chuckle when Lance held out his hand.

Two people per drawing seemed to be the pattern; this one contained Shiro and Keith. Sketch-Shiro had his head thrown back in laughter, hand braced on Sketch-Keith's shoulder. Sketch-Keith was watching him with a soft expression Lance was pretty sure Real-Keith would be incapable of making. This drawing had a lot more eraser marks on it, especially around Shiro- someone had spent a lot of time getting it exactly right.

"Hey guys!" Called Hunk from the front of the bus, attracting everyone's attention. He was standing by the driver's seat, still rubbing his eyes with one hand while the other held yet another piece of paper. "There's another one up here."

It took a little bit of doing for them all to get past each other in the narrow aisle, but after a few fumbling moments they were all crowded around Hunk to get a look at the new drawing.

It wasn't a snippet of life like the others had been. This time it was all six of them, posed and staring straight ahead as though someone was taking their picture. Shiro was in the center (the same eraser marks all around him) with his arm wrapped around Keith. Behind him was Hunk with Lance on his shoulders, striking a stupid pose, while Matt and Pidge copied him on the other side. They were all smiling and grinning, screwing around like the young twenty-somethings they all were. Something caught in Lance's chest, and he had to look away lest he start crying in front of everyone.

"Who drew these?" He found himself asking, voice raspy. "I know for sure it wasn't Hunk, he can't even draw a stick figure."

Hunk looked offended, but Pidge spoke up before he could.

"Gee, maybe it's the one person who's not on the bus right now?"

Lance turned his head to peer out the windshield, and sure enough there was Keith, up before everyone else as usual. He had his back turned to them, head bowed as he bent over a pile of firewood and attempted to build a fire for them to make breakfast over.

"I didn't know Keith could draw." He didn't even realize he had spoken aloud until Shiro answered him.

"He used to. Before." The look on his face was soft and nostalgic. "I'd forgotten, honestly."

Hunk was the first one off of the bus, rushing around the front to snatch Keith up in a hug before he could escape. The others followed and it soon became a group affair, all of them forming a circle around Keith and smothering him in affection and compliments.

"This is so sweet!"

"I had no idea you could draw like this."

"You're the best!"

"Thank you."

Keith had no idea how to respond. His face turned redder than his jacket and he stuttered and stumbled over his words while he tried to tell them that it was no big deal, that he'd found some stuff and wanted to do something nice, that the drawings weren't as good as he wanted them to be. Shiro smiled and ruffled his hair, which only made him blush more and bat his hand away.

But he was smiling while he did it.