#and so that's where miab falls for me | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

stuffandnosense · 5 years

Text

Never Ending: Message in a Bottle (Part 4)

So everyone over @altean-plance-au is still doing their thing, and the recent updates have been fantastic (a couple of which I still need to catch up on), and thanks to them and also my friends at the Pidgance Positivity Discord I finally managed to get back to this, and I’m really excited about my plans for it going forward. ;) I hope you enjoy the new chapter!

Never Ending Oneshot | MiaB Part 1 | MiaB Part 2 | MiaB Part 3

***

“Almost every single one of these video files has a name - like a real name, not just a number or something. AND they’re color-coded into topics,” Lance observes, as they flip through the file folder on the screen in his room. “Why does that not surprise me?”

“Because you know me,” Pidge smirks. “Just because the log was your idea doesn’t mean I’d have let you get away with doing it without some basic organization. What are we, animals?”

She’s expecting a laugh at that, but when she glances at him his face has fallen, and she realizes she made a mistake in her attempt to make a joke.

Too soon, she thinks. Too soon to be identifying with the people in these videos completely, even for a joke. Lance has come around enough since earlier to agree to watch these videos with her, but he is still confused. Still scared, even, maybe.

“S-Sorry,” she says. “I didn’t mean…”

Lance blinks and shakes his head. “No, I know; you were just being funny. It’s fine. Ignore me.”

Pidge lets her hand fall away from the screen “We don’t have to do this right now, you know. We could wait a little longer.”

He smiles. “It’s okay, Pidge, really.”

“I don’t want to make you uncomfortable; are you sure—?”

“Pidge!” He grabs her hand and tugs her back to sit facing the huge screen they’d set up in here phoebs ago for the game console they bought at the space mall. “I mean it, come on,” he chuckles. He points the Altean remote-like thing at the display. “I guess we should just start at the beginning? What ARE these categories anyway?”

“One looks like messages to specific people; those we’ll skip. Otherwise, looks like…” Pidge squints at the screen. “General Logs, Altean History & Culture, Nonsense Logs - of course - and oh, neat, what’s Project Window? There’s also a Miscellaneous tag, because you have to have one of those.”

“You’re enjoying this too much already and we haven’t even started.”

She smirks at him, and then he comes to the end of the long list. The last several files aren’t named, or color-coded, and she frowns.

“What is it?” Lance asks.

“Nothing…” She tells herself it doesn’t have to mean anything, and steals the remote from Lance. “Come on, let’s pick up where we left off in the first general log I guess.”

“Hey give it back!”

***

Nonsense Log 2: Or, I knew this would probably devolve into Feed Funniest, and I was right.

“What are you doing?” Pidge turns on the recorder as Lance floats past her upside down - not that direction really matters in here. He’s trying to use bits of unfrozen water to propel himself across the space, but the stream keeps coagulating into clumps.

“Practicing. I’ve never used my powers in zero gravity before; it’s harder to keep it liquid when it otherwise wants to freeze, and it keeps, you know, acting like things in zero gravity do…”

He freezes a large ball of the water to grab onto to stop himself spinning, but with no anchor he just goes spinning away with the ice ball in his grasp.

Pidge giggles at his shriek. “You need to stay tied to the side!”

“That’s not going to help me figure out how to operate somewhere with zero-g that doesn’t have walls…!” Lance and his ball of ice bounce off the inside of the sphere; he unfreezes the water and pushes off from the wall with it to send himself back to her.

Pidge catches his arms as he gets closer; he’s still somewhat out of control, but at least he ended up relatively where he seems to have wanted to go.

“Well that was better,” she gives him, pulling him into the nest with her.

“Of course it was.” He winks and kisses her cheek.

“Since when did you like training?”

Lance feigns offense. “Excuse me; I’ve matured enough to recognize its’ merits, thank you very much. I wouldn’t be the skilled bodyguard or the master of my abilities I am without it.”

Pidge grins wickedly at that, and extends a pair of vines to shove him back out of the nest. “Oh? Show me what you’ve got, then.”

A glob of water hits her in the face as she emerges from the nest; Lance’s laugh echoes off the frozen walls of their life boat.

“You’re on.”

***

On venturing out for food they ask Allura what Feed Funniest would have meant, after seeing it in one of the log titles.

“Oh, the Feed was merely a...network of messaging and content channels, really. Those used by everyone. There were many, but that was the collective name for it. Feed Funniest was a channel used to compile humorous entries.”

Lance blinks at her. “It was social media.”

Pidge shrugs as she pulls a spoon from a drawer. “I mean, people are people everywhere, and Altea was a technologically advanced society. That makes sense; why wouldn’t they have had a way for people to collectively communicate?”

“Altea had social media!”

Allura seems confused. “Social media?”

Pidge smirks as she nudges a shell-shocked Lance out the kitchen door. “Don’t worry about it; he’ll adjust.”

“Pidge, Altea had social media!”

“I heard her, Lance.”

***

Project Window Entry 1: Or, I really hope this doesn’t get us killed.

“So we’ve decided that we can’t just sit here,” Pidge says. Her fingers fly over the projected keypad from the computer as it records them. A vine curls out from the wall of the sphere, wrapped around her waist to hold her in place as she runs her calculations.

“This one computer we have does have limited comm and scanning abilities, but the scanners won’t reach outside the sphere, and the comms barely will. We might be able to detect signals from ships close enough, but we definitely wouldn’t be able to tell what kinds of ships they were. If we want to have a chance of detecting and reaching out to a friendly ship and being rescued rather than captured or killed...we need a way to know for sure.”

Lance is floating over her shoulder, examining a section of the wall.

“Lance?”

“What?” He glances down at her and the computer. “Oh, right. What should I…?”

“Just tell the log what you told me.” Pidge grins, teasing but anxious. “You’re the one who wanted to record things.”

“Right…” He sighs. “We need to open a section of this wall so we can see out, but seeing as we’re floating in space we can’t just...do that. But there are several layers of plants, and I think if we replace them one by one with ice in this one spot, we can get all the way through. And even though it’ll be several layers, and they’ll need to be thick, I think with my powers I can make them clear enough for us to still be able to see enough for it to make a difference.”

Pidge is nodding. “It’ll end up acting like a magnifying glass, but at least we’ll be able to tell the difference between a Galra ship and one that might actually want to rescue us. And the magnification might actually help in some cases, too.”

“We have to be sure everything stays sealed while we do this, though. Quiznak, why did I even have this thought…?”

“It was a good thought! We can do it. I can make sure we don’t decompress; the plants will warn me if we’re in danger. We just have to treat it like an airlock.” The computer pulls away from her as she asks a vine to reach out and take it while they work.

Pidge offers Lance a reassuring smile. “Detail work is what you do.”

“Usually the life or death involved isn’t quite so direct…”

She tugs him to her and kisses him. “How’s that for motivation?”

Lance smiles back softly as he holds her against him for a moment. “I guess I did tell you we weren’t done, didn’t I?”

“We’re not,” she whispers into his cheek. Around them the glowing plants that light their lifeboat shine off the ice that seals it; the beauty still surprises her every morning she wakes. “If we made this place, we can do anything. We’re not dying in here.”

Log 5: I was going to delete, but Lance said not to; people need to understand what Zarkon did.

Pidge affixes the wrist computer to some vines beside the fruit basket woven into the sphere’s side, making it easier to begin recording as she pokes Lance’s resting form under the moss blankets in their nest bed.

“Lance? You awake?” Nothing, at first, but his breathing isn’t even in sleep. “Lance?”

“...I’m awake.”

“We need to work on this window; if we take too long, our allies could give up looking for survivors. If they’re even doing that, but anyway.”

His shoulders tense, and he still doesn’t turn over to face her. “Not right now, Pidge...”

“Are you okay? I’m still a little tired, too. Maybe you’re right; we could just record today. Maybe go over whatever we can remember from our history classes or something...whatever we can do, you know? You weren’t wrong; I guess it is a good idea to get down as much as we can about Altea somehow…”

Lance shifts under his blankets and pulls them up around his ears. “Not right now,” he repeats hollowly. Drops of liquid float over his shoulder, glinting in the glow of the bioluminescent plants, and Pidge’s chest clenches.

“Lance…” She gets a quiet sob in answer, and her own throat clogs. “I’m...I’m sorry.”

Having only just woken up herself, she doesn’t know how long he’s been awake. She does know there have been moments she’s woken up in the night, too, paralyzed. Moments when all she could do was miss her family. And Lance was there.

She leans over him and wraps her arms around him, slipping back under the moss to pull him close and let his tears soak her shoulder rather than floating away. Lance clings to her like a lifeline. They are each others’ lifelines. They are all they have left.

“It’s okay...we don’t have to do anything today,” she whispers. With a flick of her wrist, she turns the computer off with the tip of a vine.

***

Lance pauses the computer’s playback before the next log can start. His arms are wrapped tightly around his chest in the dim castle bedroom.

“Lance…?”

He swallows. “I...I still don’t know if there’s a whole other family I should be mourning, or…”

Pidge loops an arm around his shoulders and rests her head against his arm, because she isn’t sure what else she can do. He lets her, for a moment or two, but in the end he extracts himself gently from her grip and gets shakily to his feet.

“You want to take a break?” she asks.

“Yeah…”

The break lasts longer than either of them planned; Voltron is dispatched on a rescue mission almost immediately after returning to Galra headquarters.

***

“Lance…? Lance, are you okay?”

The cool castle wall presses into his forehead where he’s leaned into it. They must have returned from the shield station half a varga ago or more, but he hasn’t even made it out of Red’s hangar.

Hunk is hovering over him and Pidge is kneeling beside him, clutching at his arms and looking up at him with so much concern and…

When did he end up on his knees?

“I...I don’t...know…”

Lance…! LANCE! Pidge is screaming in his memory, but it isn’t HIS memory.

Hunk gets down on his knees with them, a hand rubbing at Lance’s back. He can’t feel it much through his armor, but the weight is welcome.

“What...what happened out there?” he asks. “I know I didn’t have time to ask before; everything was kind of going nuts. I’m sorry, man…”

“I-it’s okay, I know, I…” He shakes his head, trying to clear the buzzing from it. He was fine, he was fine, but then it hit him all over again.

“I know you saved Allura,” Hunk says, somewhat in awe. “That was...that was…”

“Stupid,” Pidge swallows.

“I was gonna say BRAVE…”

Lance snorts quietly. “Pidge is probably more right, but i-if I hadn’t…”

Allura would be dead. With no one to bring her back.

Like he’d been dead.

He’d been dead.

He died.

There are arms around him now. Hunk and Pidge pressing into him from both sides, wrapped around him. He’s shaking and he doesn’t know when that started.

“Lance? Buddy!”

“Lance!”

“I died,” he gasps. “I...just for a minute. Allura brought m-me back. Re...st-started my heart and healed me, I guess, I...I mean I guess it’s not really that different than like a defibrillator or something bringing me back, it wasn’t that long b-b-but I still…”

Pidge’s breath puffs against his neck. “What!”

“Oh man…” Hunk trails.

Their arms tighten around him but Lance doesn’t mind. He needs the touch. He needs to feel like he’s still here when his mind won’t stop racing.

“It’s okay,” Pidge is saying. “It’s okay. You’re okay.” It sounds like she’s saying it as much for herself as for him.

“I know,” he breathes. “I know.”

Over and over he feels the charge hit him. It HURT...so much. And maybe it was while he was screaming and maybe it was...after...but…

She was reaching for him. The vision. The...memory. It was a memory. Pidge screaming his name. Reaching. Or clinging to him? So much like she is now but...not this Pidge. And she was...

“Older,” he says aloud.

“What?” Hunk asks.

Lance sits up straighter. “She was older.”

“Who was?” Pidge asks.

He gets to his feet, maybe too quickly, reaching out for the wall for balance as his head spins. “You. I think. When what happened out there happened, I...saw something. Like we did in your hanger. Sort of. When we touched that energy.”

Where is Allura?

“I think she and Coran are still with Shiro; they wanted to make sure he was okay after whatever happened to him out there,” Pidge says.

“I asked that out loud?”

“Yeah...” Hunk says warily.

“Sorry, I’m just...ugh.” Lance winces as he finds Pidge’s hand and squeezes it. “I need to see something. Come on. Hunk, can you uh...can you find Allura and Coran? Get them to meet us in my room? If they’re done checking up on Shiro I mean.”

“Sure?”

“Thanks, man.”

Pidge follows him as he tugs her from the hangar, but her fingers are rubbing his worryingly as she clutches his hand in return. “Lance, what’s going on?”

He still feels...unsteady. And not because Allura didn’t heal him well enough. Physically he’s fine; it’s only the mental and emotional toll of what happened that’s making him shaky, he’s almost sure. But even through the fading tremors he has a purpose as he pulls her through the corridors.

“You’ll see.” He turns on the large screen when they reach his room, and starts scrolling through the log files to get to the end.

Pidge reaches out to still his hands. “What are you doing? I thought we weren’t skipping.”

She says it as the door opens again, Allura, Coran, and Shiro on Hunk’s heels.

“What? What’s going on?” the princess asks, echoing Pidge from moments ago. “Lance? Are you all right?”

He looks back at her and smiles. “I think so. Now. I...look, Allura, I know you and Coran have been watching these logs too, and...I know you haven’t wanted to get to the end, and I know why. But...I don’t think we have to be afraid of it anymore.”

Allura swallows. “How do you know?”

Lance winces. “What happened out there...I saw something. It was a memory; I know it was. And...I mean it wasn’t exactly the greatest kind. I don’t know what happened to them later. But what I saw, Pidge was older. Maybe ten or twenty years older, Allura. I don’t think they died in that sphere.”

“How can you be sure?”

“The last couple of files are so aren’t named,” Pidge says, her voice cracking.

He knows they don’t want to question him just to question him. Allura and Pidge are both looking at him, and they’re just afraid, and he understands. What if something went wrong finishing the window? What if they finished it, but no one came? He’d been thinking the same things. But...

“I know what I saw. I know it was a memory.” He looks from Allura to Pidge. “Can you trust me?”

***

Log 6: Or, We may be crazy but that’s okay

Lance is already recording when Pidge wakes up. She squints up at the light from the wrist computer’s projected screen.

“Why are you recording me sleeping?” She seems to be trying to sound disgruntled, but she can’t hide her smile.

“Because you’re beautiful in the light in here.”

“It’s still weird,” she smirks.

Lance leans down to nuzzle her cheek. “Hush. I only just turned it on.”

She yawns, stretching, and settles her arms around his neck as he floats just above her in the lack of gravity. “All right...what are you up to?”

He flips through the files. “You didn’t tell me you had music on this thing.”

“Not much...just some instrumental stuff I use when I’m working sometimes.”

Lance pushes himself back, hanging the computer on a vine and pressing play on a file before he floats away from the nest. A soft ballad drifts through the chill air.

“Come on,” he says. He holds out a hand, smiling. “Dance with me.”

Pidge laughs. “In zero gravity?”

“Hey, I can’t trip on your feet.”

She huffs in amusement as she pushes back the moss blankets and drifts to the edge of the nest. Lance wiggles his fingers at her to beckon, and her expression softens as she reaches out to take his hand.

Lance pulls her close, sending them into a gentle spin in the center of the sphere as the music plays from the computer.

“Sorry I kind of put the kibosh on yesterday,” he says quietly.

Pidge shakes her head. “It won’t be the last time one of us needs to do that.” She rests her head against his chest. “We lost...our planet. Everyone…” Her voice catches.

Lance strokes her hair, his face settling into a determined stare at nothing in particular. “We are going to get out of here. We’re going to finish that window, and someone is going to find us.”

“You can’t know that,” she whispers. “But thank you for saying it anyway.”

“We will,” he says again. He nudges her chin until she looks at him. “Because I want to have a life with you. I know it can’t be the same as it would have been on Altea...but I want it.”

“Zarkon will be looking for us. For any Alteans left. Anyone who was off-planet.”

“So we find them before he does.”

“More than that,” she says suddenly. “If we get out of this, we have to fight back.”

Lance is quiet for a moment, but at the certainty in her eyes, he nods. All he wants is for her to live, for anyone left to be safe, but…

“If that’s what you want, I’ll be by your side.”

***

Lance pulls up the last log file, from what must have been weeks after the last one they watched, and Pidge’s face fills the screen. The Altean version of her face.

It’s still so strange to see it, even though they’ve been watching these logs for a couple of days now. It still sends a strange shock through her stomach, sometimes. But Lance slips an arm around her shoulders, and it grounds her.

This time only the soft glow from the screen illuminates Pidge’s doppelganger; behind her the sphere is nearly dark. The plants are dying.

She looks so tired, her breath visible in the air, but her eyes are alight.

“Trigel’s people have found us! Not a moment too soon...another few quintants and…” She shakes her head. “They’re going to fire an escape capsule into the side of the sphere to get us out safely. We’ve weakened the wall just enough; they should be able to lodge the hatch end inside without decompressing our atmosphere.”

Her excitement fades. “They’ve told us the Paladins are gone...all of them. Even without the lions they fought to save Altea, but...and-and no one knows where the castle is, or who was still on it when it left.”

The Pidge on the screen swallows. Over her shoulder Lance floats into view, and he looks just as weak and exhausted, but he’s smiling tiredly as he holds onto her.

“Allura, if you’re out there…” The Pidge on the screen smiles, too. “I hope we find each other, but if we don’t, if you find this at least…”

“We lived, Allura. And we did everything we could.”

#plance #altean plance au #altean lance #altean pidge #altean plance #voltron legendary defender

121 notes · View notes

stuffandnosense · 6 years

Text

Never Ending: Message in a Bottle (Part 3)

** Much longer update this time! I hope you all enjoy it. Thank you so much for the interest in this story; I’ve been having a lot of fun writing it! And it wouldn’t be possible without everyone over at @altean-plance-au. Keep up the awesome work ya’ll! Loving it! **

** Additional Note: This is the story that may have suddenly turned into an epic monster in my head that I may or may not write all of after what I had originally planned for Message in a Bottle (which is almost done with)? I don’t know. We’ll see? If ya’ll are interested? **

Never Ending Oneshot | MiaB Part 1 | MiaB Part 2

-------------------------

Pidge isn’t really sure what she’s expecting when Allura asks them all to sit. She knows there’s something she’s missing. That they’re all missing.

Allura waits until Shiro joins them, asking as soon as he walks in if something is wrong.

Lance doesn’t even answer. He just sticks his hand in Pidge’s face and she rolls her eyes at him and grabs it to show Shiro the strange glow that happens when they touch.

“What the…?” Shiro trails.

Hunk tells him about the vial they shattered and the way the energy absorbed into just the two of them. “And they spaced out for like a really, really long minute and they were staring at each other and not exactly acting like themselves and it was weird.”

“That,” Allura says, “is what I am going to attempt to explain.”

“Are you all right?” Shiro asks, glancing back and forth between Lance and Pidge.

Lance nods, Pidge shrugs, and then she feels a prodding at her face and realizes Lance is also poking her in the cheek.

“What are you doing!”

“Running tests, Pidge. For science. Look, this works too!” He holds a finger pressed into her face, and she can only see the edge of a faint glow out of the corner of her eye, but she can tell, at least, that he isn’t kidding.

“Is that really necessary?” she sighs.

She isn’t really angry. She knows what he’s doing. He’s anxious; he doesn’t know what Allura is going to tell them and he’s distracting himself by being slightly more ridiculous than usual. As if to prove her point Pidge turns to look at him, to shake his finger from her cheek, but when she’s facing him Lance plants the same fingertip right on her nose.

“Hey look! Pidge is Rudolph,” Lance crows. “I mean it’s teal, not red, but still. Space rudolph.”

“Okay already!” But she can’t help that her cheeks are going warm, and she’d like to kid herself but she’s pretty sure it’s not embarrassment.

“Lance,” Shiro says.

Allura, for once, already seems hesitant to continue. It isn’t something they’re used to seeing from her.

“It’s okay, Allura,” Hunk says as they all look her way again. “What’s up? What is it?”

She seems to take a deep breath and let it out to steady herself. “I scarcely know where to begin,” she says. “But Coran and I have recovered the data from a small personal computer found in the sphere, and it only seems right to share what we’ve found. However, it will require an explanation that might also help you to understand the behavior of the energy that is now affecting Pidge and Lance, as well as the dreams that some of you have been having.”

So much? In one explanation?

“Shiro,” Allura says. “When you were gone...we were eventually faced with the possibility of having to find a new paladin…”

Shiro nods. “Of course; you had to be able to form Voltron.”

“Yes...and the others asked how I had known which of you would pilot which lions when all of you first arrived here. I answered that I had simply...known, at the time. That I recognized the qualities within each of you, and how those corresponded to what I knew of each of the lions and their personalities.”

“Yeah,” Pidge says. “You said it just kind of...worked out. But that you wouldn’t know how to go searching the universe for a new paladin. It wasn’t like that.”

Allura nods. “Precisely. And…” She sighs. “While all of that is true, it is not the whole truth. There is a reason I knew what qualities each of you possessed. I do consider myself a decent judge of character, but I doubt anyone could have learned enough about all of you in the few minutes’ time I had talked to you to be able to make all of those judgments correctly.”

Lance shrugs. “Why not? I mean...I guess we all just kind of assumed it had to do with your...Altean...whatever. I don’t know.”

“What are you saying?” Shiro asks.

Allura sets her shoulders, looking at all of them for a long moment before she says anything else. Pidge thinks she looks almost...apologetic? But...why?

“The truth is that I knew what each of you were like because...because I recognized you. All of you. I knew you. I...I’d known you. On Altea, ten thousand years ago.”

They all blink at her, quiet, until Hunk breaks the silence. “Wait, what?”

Allura is already shaking her head at the perceived rest of the question. “I cannot tell you how it’s possible. That, really, is one reason why Coran and I said nothing before now. We didn’t understand it either, and we still do not. But...all of you...you’re not just similar to friends and family we once knew before Altea was destroyed. You are the same, right down to your names and personalities, strengths and, for the most part, abilities...all of it.”

“You asked me what was wrong with my ears…” Lance says. He isn’t really looking at anything. He’s studying the floor instead, not Allura.

“What?” Allura says.

“W-when you first woke up. When we found you.” He looks up then, his eyebrows high. “One of the first things you said. You asked me what was wrong with my ears. But...now we know you were already used to interacting with multiple species. You’d been around plenty of people who didn’t have ears like yours. Why would you ask that question?”

Pidge remembers it too, now. Allura had asked who they were before she’d focused on Lance’s face, and then...the ear question was the first thing she said after that.

But…

“Reincarnation?” Pidge asks. “But that doesn’t make any sense. Even after everything we’ve seen out here. I mean Earth has legends of it…”

“As does Altea,” Allura says. “It was never something taken seriously by the time period I lived in, but it was a part of Altea’s religious history. A story. Like Oriande.”

“Wait wait wait,” Hunk says. “I mean past lives sound cool and all but what the cheese? Who are you saying we were?”

“Yourselves,” Allura says. “But Altean. Hunk, I didn’t know you as well, but from what I remember you were an engineer at the castle - who was also quite well known for your culinary skills even then.”

“Nice!”

Coran looks wistful. “I can recall those juniberry pastries now. Your cooking is still as superb as it ever was, Number Two.”

Hunk doesn’t seem to be having as much trouble with this as the rest of them are. Shiro hasn’t said a word and Lance is staring wide-eyed at the floor again. Pidge isn’t sure what to do with herself.

“What about the rest of us, Princess?” Shiro asks quietly. He doesn’t seem sure he wants to know the answer.

She smiles softly, reassuringly - or at least, it’s clear that’s what she’s going for. Pidge’s stomach is roiling, but she isn’t sure why, and for some reason all she wants to do is reach out to Lance; she has to sit on her hands to keep from doing it. He’s straddling the chair he’s in, arms draped over the back, but his fingers are digging into the fabric covering it.

“You, Shiro...the last captain of the royal guard. The youngest in Altea’s history - not much older than you are now, and one of the best captains my father had.” She winces. “You were meant to be aboard the castle, in fact, when we launched that last day, but...I-I don’t remember what happened.”

Coran takes a small step forward, his hands clasped behind his back. “Your father rendered you unconscious and secured you in a pod, Princess. Captain Shirogane and the last of the guard left at the castle covered the entrance to protect you inside when the king went out to face Zarkon. However, Zarkon’s forces overran them, and then your father was and...I was forced to launch before they made it inside.”

Allura swallows. “That’s right...the last I remember, Zarkon was almost upon us.” She reaches to touch her advisor’s arm briefly. “Oh Coran, I’m sorry. I didn’t know you were the one who had to make that decision.”

“My orders were to keep you safe.”

None of them want to interrupt the moment between the two Alteans, but Pidge can almost feel the tension in the room. If that’s what happened to Shiro, what about the rest of them?

Allura clears her throat and refocuses. “In any case, Pidge...I knew you the most. And not only you, either. When you found Matthew, and then your father...I recognized them as well.”

“M-My whole family…?” How? Just...how? It isn’t reasonable, not at all, and she has always had a problem with things that don’t fall within the realm of science. That has been changing since she left earth, and since she learned to bond with her lion among other things, but this?

“I have not seen a picture of your mother, but I can only assume. But your father was once my father’s brother...a prince of Altea, Pidge. And you and your brother also shared royal titles.”

Hunk leans in incredulously. “Pidge was a princess?!”

Shiro manages a weak smirk. “Matt was a prince?” Pidge can’t image what he’s feeling right now, processing news of his own former self’s supposed death, but at least he’s making a joke. She, meanwhile…

But it makes so much sense. She sees all of them in her dreams. Shiro in Altean armor, Hunk with Altean features holding a steaming pan of pastries in the castle’s kitchen, her father at King Alfor’s side. Matt and Shiro laughing…

“Were Matt and Shiro friends then too?” she asks. Just to know if, maybe, she’s really not crazy.

“Yes,” Allura nods. “And Lance and Keith were both students of Shiro’s - at different times, though. But Lance…”

“Spent a lot of time around...me. The other me. For some reason,” Pidge fills in. Lance’s head comes up halfway at that.

“Yes. He was part of the royal guard - your bodyguard.”

Lance pulls his head up the rest of the way, but he’s still not quite looking at any of them. “They had those powers, didn’t they? The ones we were dreaming about.”

“They did.” Allura lets out a quiet breath. “Perhaps it would make more sense if I showed you what we’ve found from the computer we rescued from the sphere.” She turns back to the console and pulls up a video that she quickly rewinds to the beginning before they can really see what’s there. Pidge finds herself holding her breath before the princess even presses play.

The video is dim, but the blue glow from the computer screen on the face is more than enough to make in unmistakable.

The Altean boy from her dreams. Lance. Different, hair, ears...exactly the way she sees them there. But it’s Lance. And the voice coming from off-screen in hers. Her voice. Saying words she has never remembered, like she thought she heard while looking through the images of the inside of the sphere back in the hangar.

I don’t know why I did this…

“ -ou don’t! Give it back!” the same voice is saying.

“Pidge, come on; what if there’s still somebody out there who could find this?”

And that is Lance’s voice. The same as it has always been. She can’t help looking at him now, beside her, as he watches their other selves on the screen - these people that, somehow, they once were. Again, she wants to reach out, but he looks so shaken she doesn’t know how he would take it.

Pidge looks back at the screen in time to see the Altean young man’s face soften as he looks offscreen at what must be her. And...that face. It’s not the face of a bodyguard. It’s the face of someone much closer to who they’re talking to. MUCH closer.

“What about Allura? If anything survived, the castle did; I’m sure of it. The king would have seen to that.”

When he tugs her into view Pidge gasps quietly and gets to her feet. It really is her, too. Somehow it doesn’t all feel real until that moment. Until she’s looking at her own face on the screen.

“Is it already recording?” her other self asks, squinting at the screen.

“No, of course n—” The other Lance stops and looks at it himself. “Oh wait…”

“It is,” his companion deadpans.

It’s so much like a conversation she and Lance might have any day even now, that Pidge almost feels dizzy.

On the screen Lance is brightening, showing off for the camera. “Hello, and welcome to our log! Surprise! We’re not dead. For now.”

Allura stops the video, leaving it frozen on the two of them - Lance, grinning, Pidge in the middle of facepalming. “We haven’t even watched more ourselves yet; I won’t force any of the rest of you to now, either. I don’t know what the rest of the logs will reveal, but there are a good number of them.”

“So...they really made that thing out there?” Hunk asks.

“The Avengers of Altea were real,” Pidge breathes. She looks at Lance, but he won’t meet her gaze for more than a moment before he looks away. “They were...us…”

And it seems relatively clear that they were...close. Somehow. Even if Allura won’t come out and say it yet.

Pidge’s heart sinks for a minute, wondering if that’s why Lance won’t look at her - if he has some sort of problem with the idea of it, even in another life.

Another life...It’s absurd. And why should it bother her if such an idea bothers him?

But it becomes clear that isn’t what it is when Lance gets up, fumbling in his jacket until he pulls something from an inside pocket. He approaches Allura almost hesitantly, and holds out what Pidge finally realizes is a worn picture. She can’t quite make it out from here, but she can see the dense grouping of faces.

“What about my family?” Lance asks. “Was my family the same?” It sounds almost desperate.

“Oh...I...I’m so sorry, Lance,” Allura says gently. “I didn’t know them then. I wouldn’t be able to tell you, I’m afraid.”

“Oh…”

“Lance? You okay man?” Hunk asks. He moves closer, but Lance backs toward the door before his friend can get to him.

“I um...I just…”

“It’s all right, Lance,” Shiro says. Pidge isn’t sure whether he’s trying to tell him all of this is all right, or if it’s all right to be upset by it. She supposes both are true, in any case.

But Lance is shaking his head, still backing away. “Is it?”

“Lance, wait!” Pidge calls. But he turns and is gone, she thinks, before he can even hear her.

She moves to go after him, but everyone else seems to have some instinct to do it too. She waves them off and Shiro seems to pick up the message first; he manages to keep the others at bay for her.

She doesn’t have to go far. Lance has stopped two corridor turns away in the direction of his room. She finds him leaning heavily into the wall.

“Lance…?”

She can only see his back, but his shoulders tense when she speaks up. “I thought I said don’t follow me?”

“You didn’t, actually.”

He lets out a breath and presses his back into the wall rather than his shoulder. So he isn’t facing her, but at least he isn’t facing away from her anymore. “Well, I thought it. Aggressively.”

“You could always run away again.”

Lance smirks briefly, but he doesn’t move. The smirk fades and his face crumples as if he’s in pain. Pidge waits for him to say something, because she’s pretty sure he’s going to if she waits and she doesn’t know what to say anyway. All she knows is that she needs to be here.

“Haven’t we had to deal with enough?” he asks after a moment or two.

“What do you mean? I mean...I know this is a lot to take in...I’m kind of reeling too...”

“I mean…” Lance makes a frustrated sound. “I mean, we left Earth, we left our families and most of our friends - everybody we care about except each other; everything we knew at home - to come out here and get in the middle of a war we didn’t even know existed before...and-and now we’re not even who we think we are?”

“I know…” It’s like the world has shifted. Nothing is quite what she thought it was. But...she still has her friends. Her team. Her family. It’s dizzying, but Pidge realizes, in that moment, that she isn’t actually upset. Confused? Yes. In need of some serious processing time? Definitely. Upset? No.

So what is Lance saying? The look on his face when Allura couldn’t tell him about his family comes back to her, and she places a hand tentatively on his chest, over the side of his jacket that holds the picture he pulled out back there.

“You’re still you, Lance. I know this is crazy, but—”

“What if I’m not?” He crosses his arms over his chest, dislodging her hand. “What if my family wasn’t the same like yours? M-My family wasn’t royalty or whatever like yours was—and the whole you being a princess thing is weird enough—”

“Gee thanks.”

“But if the family the...other me, or whatever, had wasn’t that important, why would they have been born again now? What would be the point? And I-If I’m just some person from ten thousand years ago who was dropped here to...I don’t know, be part of Voltron or whatever, is my family here even my family?” His voice breaks at that bit, and his eyes are filling with tears.

“Do I even really belong to my parents? Are my brothers and sisters even really mine?”

Lance’s shoulders are shaking now, and even though he hasn’t uncrossed his arms Pidge goes in to hug him anyway, before she can overthink it, because she can’t stand seeing him like this and he needs to stop this ridiculous line of thinking.

“Stop it. Lance. Stop,” she says insistently. “Of course they’re yours. Of course you belong.”

It takes a moment, but he un-crosses his arms from between them and returns the embrace loosely. “How do you know…?”

“I’m not saying I know the real answer...this is kind of uncharted territory...but from everything I’ve heard about them, I know they love you, Lance. A lot. So you belong. The rest doesn’t matter, okay?”

His grip on her tightens, but it doesn’t seem like agreement. The way his breathing picks up, it seems like fear.

“Lance?”

He lets go and pulls her back by her shoulders so he can look at her. “I know they love me, but what if I’m not me by the time we get back to Earth?”

“We’ve all changed, Lance - and we’ll probably change more. That isn’t going to change how your family feels about you.”

“No, I mean...look, back in the hangar, did I say anything? While we were...under, or whatever?”

Pidge squints at him. “Just my name...why?”

But she remembers the way it sounded. Not like this Lance. It was so much more than that. Now, at least, she knows she didn’t imagine it.

“Because I didn’t decide to say that! It wasn’t me. I remember saying it but it wasn’t me, Pidge. It was like someone else was there, in my body with me, trying to get out. I don’t want to become someone else that’s hiding in here! I don’t want to lose...ME. That’s not fair! That’s not what I signed up for!”

He’s trembling now, and Pidge rubs her hands up and down his arms, trying to help. “Lance, hey, calm down; nobody’s trying to take over your body.”

“You can’t know that. Uncharted territory, remember?”

“That is not what’s going on, Lance.”

“It didn’t feel like that for you?”

“No. Not exactly...it was just like I was remembering things I’d forgotten for a really long time. It was weird, sure, but...I think we’re just interpreting similar experiences differently. That’s not what’s going on. It’s okay.”

Lance takes an uneven breath. “You think?”

“I really do. It’s okay.”

He doesn’t look entirely convinced, but he has calmed down. “Sure...maybe.” He extracts himself from between Pidge and the wall, angling in the direction of his room. “I just...this still isn't something I’m gonna just be spontaneously completely okay with.”

“That’s okay.”

He shrugs. “Yeah. I um...I’m just gonna...something. Thanks, Pidge.”

“Yeah...”

She lets him go this time, because he looks like he needs some time to himself to think, and she can understand that. She’s pretty sure she’s going to need the same thing. Allura and the others come around the corner in time to see Lance disappear around the next one.

Allura looks from where he went to Pidge. “Should I…?”

“No,” Pidge says. “Not right now. I think he’ll be okay; he’s just kind of overwhelmed right now. I guess we all need time to process...” She glances back at Hunk and Shiro. “How are you guys?”

“Well,” Hunk says. “This is simultaneously the most epic and the most terrifying thing that’s ever happened to me, and I’m already a paladin of Voltron. Soooo...I’m gonna stick with awesome because that’s more fun? I mean really. It is kind of awesome.”

“Shiro?” Allura asks.

He shrugs. “I’m...not sure.” But he smiles at her reassuringly, which is at least better than how things have kind of been going between those two lately, so...that’s something, Pidge thinks.

“I am sorry,” Allura says. “I never meant to cause this much confusion. Perhaps I made the wrong call in telling you.”

“If you did it is my fault, Princess,” Coran says. “I’m the one who thought we should tell them.”

“But I made the decision to do it. You’re not to blame, Coran.”

“No one is to blame,” Shiro says. “And it’s all right, Princess. Thank you for being honest with us; we really do appreciate it. Or I do, anyway.”

Pidge nods, as does Hunk.

Allura sighs. “Thank you, Shiro...all of you.”

When the others go their own ways to tend to their own thoughts, Pidge is left in the corridor with Allura. She can’t seem to leave yet, and Allura isn’t moving either. The princess seems lost in her own head, too.

“Hey...Allura?”

“Hmm?”

“The dreams...I guess they’re memories, aren’t they?”

“A majority of them, I suppose. I can’t see them, but from what you and Lance have told me, they are consistent with my own.”

“Right…” Pidge looks up at her, and lets a hand rest on her arm. “So I was your cousin, huh?”

Allura smiles wistfully. “Yes. Though I promise that I have done my best since the beginning to to keep all of you separate in my mind from the versions of you I knew on Altea. There are differences, and all of you deserve to be considered in your own right in any case. I...I care about each of you independently of my memories. I hope you understand that.”

Pidge nods quickly. “Of course…but I wanted to ask...when you’re in them it seems like we’re close. Were the two of you close? You and your cousin?”

Allura opens her mouth like she wants to answer that, but she doesn’t get there. She only nods, and tears begin running down her cheeks.

Pidge hugs her, and just holds on for a while. “I’m sorry...I think sometimes the rest of us forget how much you and Coran lost. I know we’re here, but it can’t be the same for you. I’m so sorry…”

***

Lance isn’t sure how long he stays huddled under the blankets in his bed, homesickness gnawing at his stomach and just trying to get enough air. Where is the air?

Even when he can breathe, he can’t move. He just wants to be home; he wants his mother to hold him and tell him everything is fine, he’s still her son, it’s all right. He wants his brothers to tease him and he wants his niece and nephew to crawl all over him and ask where he’s been.

Pidge is probably right. He shouldn’t worry about what Allura told them changing anything. But he wants to feel it. He can’t feel it.

Maybe that’s his problem. He feels too much...it’s always getting him into trouble. And...if the dreams are real, Lance is pretty sure that was always the case before, too. On Altea, ten thousand years ago.

Ten thousand years later and he’s still an idiot. How is that fair?

He laughs darkly at himself, one rough bark. Keith would probably love that. But If Shiro weren’t being so….not Shiro, lately, he’d tell him to stop it. That he isn’t an idiot. Feeling isn’t the problem; letting him control it is. Part of him knows that, maybe, but putting it into practice? Another story entirely. But anyway, Keith isn’t here, and Shiro is still being weird most of the time, and...yeah.

And why can’t he get the Altean girl’s face out of his head? Pidge. It really is Pidge. Was Pidge.

Lance drifts off for a while, and he dreams of her again. This time there’s more. Not just her smile, her laugh, that determined look on her face...the plants responding to her powers and a familiar green glow. This time there is the soft touch of her fingers in his hair and the gentle press of lips against his. Tenderness contrasted by a faint panicked cry of his name.

Lance? Lance!...No no no...come back. Come back!

He isn’t sure how long he sleeps, but he thinks it’s ship’s night by the time the chime at his door rings. He doesn’t answer it, but the door slides open anyway. He can’t see who is it; he’s facing the wall.

What is that smell though?

“Hey, Hunk made cookies.” Pidge. “You awake?”

Lance hesitates, debating whether to answer, but finally he turns over and finds her look at him. “I guess,” he sighs.

Pidge steps inside far enough to let the door close behind her. She hovers there for a moment, and when he doesn’t say anything she comes to the bed with the plate of cookies she brought in and perches on the edge, setting the plate on the mattress between them.

Lance takes one, but he doesn’t bother sitting up; he isn’t sure he has the energy for that yet.

“How are you doing?” she asks.

“I don’t know,” he admits.

She nods, like she understands, and reaches into her pocket to pull out a data chip with one hand as she grabs a cookie with the other. “Coran copied the logs for me. He and Allura kind of wanted to watch them on their own, since it’s kind of a personal thing for them, but they wanted us to be able to see them if we wanted and I uh...I thought...maybe we should.”

Lance groans. “I really don’t know if I want to do that.”

“Just hear me out. I think it might help.”

“How?”

“Really, Lance? Did you see how much they were like us, just in the minute or two of video we saw back there? If it’s all like that, it might make you feel better. Or both us, I guess. Like...I really think it’s gonna be okay, Lance. We may start to remember more about what happened back then, but if we do it’s not going to change who we are. They’re not other people trying to take us over, or anything like that. They’re just us. It’s just our past.”

Lance drags himself up finally, taking a few more bites of the cookie in his hand so he doesn’t have to answer right away.

“I almost don’t know if that’s better or worse though, you know?”

Pidge laughs a little, uneasily. “I know what you mean.” She glances down at the chip in her hand. “I guess that’s why I don’t want to watch this stuff alone. I don’t know what we’ll find out.”

“Yeah.” He polishes off the cookie and swallows, not quite able to look at her. “Well...I think I know one thing. I uh…I think they were together, weren’t they?”

He isn’t sure if he expects her to know, too, but from the corner of his eyes he sees her nod tentatively. “I think so...” she says.

Lance can feel himself blushing, and when he looks up Pidge’s cheeks are red, too.

“The dreams?” he asks.

“Not exactly...not there yet. Just a feeling,” she says, flushing brighter.

He sits forward, reaching out to cup the hand holding the data chip in his own. The teal glow happens again, just like he thought it would - dimmer than before, he thinks, but still there. They both just kind of stare at it for a moment as it lights the bed alcove around them.

“Well...I guess if you think watching that stuff is a good idea...let’s do it. Together.”

Read Part 4 >>

** Thank you so much for reading! I look forward to hearing what you think! :) **

#altean plance au #plance #pidgeance #pance #flirtyrobot #altean lance #altean pidge #vld #voltron #voltron legendary defender #vld pidge #vld lance #pidge #plance au

186 notes · View notes