Chapter Text
“Just… just give me a minute.”
Keith steps away from Lance and Kitty Rose to collect himself and to sort through his thoughts. It's already been an awkward several minutes in the hangar bay with the Red Lion standing tall behind both paladins, her eye-lights turned down and her engine growl softening to a purr. Six hours ago the sound might’ve been comforting, but now—with the way it makes the floor shudder—it’s like the ground can fall away at any moment. Or maybe that’s just how it feels to Lance.
The anxiety in the air is unbearable, has been since they cut off communications with the castle to give Keith the time to figure out how he’s going to come out of the alien closet. He’s been going over how best to approach the half-galra reveal for the past half hour, pacing back and forth both in Red’s cockpit, and here on the floor of the loading bay. Lance has heard the same spiel more than five times already, and is getting dizzy watching him.
“Keith. Keith ,” Lance urges. “Come on, it’ll be fine.”
Keith, understandably, looks incredulous. “How? Just yesterday, Allura said no to us going to the Blade because it’s a galra thing, how do you think she’ll react to me being half-galra?”
“It’s not like you knew. It’s not like you lied to anyone." Then for good measure, "It’s not like you were there all those years ago committing war crimes against her people, you’re literally not even twenty.”
Keith stops, crossing his arms as he studies Lance’s laid-back posture. “How are you so calm about this?”
“Huh?”
“Lance, I’m half- galra,” he says, as if that speaks for itself.
Looking Keith up and down, he shrugs. It wasn’t too long ago a friend told him they were half-galra, too. This? Not so different. Sure, it’s weirder since he’s known Keith for longer, but it’s not like it changes who Keith is. It’s not like he’s suddenly evil, or suddenly a stranger. So, Lance says, “Still the same mullet to me.”
Maybe it’s the way he says it—calm, steady, like nothing’s really changed—that loosens Keith’s shoulders. When Keith turns away, Lance almost misses the relieved look on his face.
“You’re unbelievable,” Keith mutters. “I hope everyone else takes it as well as you.”
Sighing, Lance strides over and throws his arm around Keith’s shoulders. The shorter paladin stumbles a bit, but nods at Lance’s reassuring smile. In a tone of promise, Lance says, “If they don’t take it well at first, trust me, they’ll come around.”
And they do. Of course, they’re silent in the beginning, each of them processing the news on their own as they sit comfortably in the lounge with Keith standing stiffly at center stage. Having just made his announcement, he looks ready to take whatever his friends throw at him, be it fake words of acceptance, or rocks. Lance has honestly never seen him so apprehensive.
Feeling protective, he stands by Keith’s side, arms crossed in preparation for any negative reactions. Somehow, in the end, it’s clear there’s no reason to be too worried at all.
Pidge breaks the silence with, “So…is that why your hair acts like that?” And Lance can’t help the surprised burst of laughter coming from his chest.
“ Pidge .” Hunk snickers, face-palming.
Keith stares. “What?”
“Hey, I’m not, not shocked,” Pidge raises her hands, shrugging, “Just, y’know.” Then her head cocks. “Wait, do you know if you have different biological functions because of the… y’know.“
He reddens, sputters, “I don’t know? As far as I know, no?”
She closes her eyes and strokes her chin. “Hmmm.”
From behind Allura, Coran asks, “And you found this out through the activation of your dagger, yes?” He leans forward, studying the new look of Keith’s blade. “Fascinating. I wonder why it didn’t activate before if it was already in your genetic code.”
“Oh, that’s because—“
“Booooring!” Lance interrupts, stretching before slapping Keith across the back. Grinning wide, he says, “I told you it wasn’t gonna be too bad.”
“What?” Hunk puts his hands on his hips, concerned, and almost offended. “What did you think would happen?”
“Are you going to, I don’t know, grow fur?” Pidge asks, adjusting her glasses. Then, in a half-joking tone, “I’ve been meaning to ask you for a while—do you have tendencies that align you with being a furry?”
Keith shakes his head in astonishment, a laugh spilling from him that’s both nervous, and relieved.
“Honestly,” Lance says, puffing up, “I wasn’t even that surprised. Remember when you were able to get through those galra scans before?”
“Okay, well—“
“Also your inhuman skills are, frankly, self-explanatory now. You’ve been cheating during our competitions this whole time.”
He laughs again. “I thought you guys would freak out more about me being half-alien I guess, but—“
Pidge sits up, expression stern, “Keith, don’t deflect. Are. You. A. Furr—“
Coran inserts, “I believe we’re all technically aliens to each other—”
“Unless you’re going to turn that blade on us, I don’t think we’d freak out—“ Hunk begins, before Allura says,
“He wouldn’t.”
At her voice, everyone freezes. She’s been sitting so quietly this whole time, they’d almost forgotten she was there, though her presence is one of the reasons the room was so tense to begin with. When she sits up and clears her throat, sensing the shifting mood, everyone else settles down and waits for her.
She looks like she’s had a rough day. After crying the night before about Shiro’s last log, she spent the whole day worried sick about Lance and Keith, and now she’s hearing that one of the members of Voltron is actually half-galra? It’s icing on the cake. This poorly baked mess of a cake.
Her puffy eyes are ringed with dark circles, and her braided hair a tangled mess. She’s still wearing the nightgown she woke up in, even though it’s been vargas since then, etiquette be damned. Even so, she speaks with her characteristic elegance, though her throat is dry and she swallows audibly before repeating, “Keith wouldn’t turn his blade on us.”
And she smiles. It’s a small smile, but a genuine one. “I’m not going to lie—this is a concept that will require adjustment on my part. I’ll admit it likely won’t be pretty, but… it would be unfair of me to direct my grief towards family, and I don’t want that.”
She stands, takes Keith’s hands in her trembling ones, and looks to him and Lance while saying, “Thank you two for looking into Shiro’s lead. Good work.” And that’s the last thing she says before leaving the room without looking back.
Staring after her, Coran says, “Give her time.”
Keith nods, understanding. “Don’t worry. I… it’s a lot to accept.” Then he turns to Pidge, coughs, and says, “About your question—“
“Nooo,” Lance sputters a laugh before stepping away himself, interrupting before he’s stuck in a whirlwind of conversation. “No matter how badly I want to know, talk about this after I leave. I need to get some sleep and I don’t want to be tempted to stick around.”
Pidge is already excitedly pulling her feet onto the couch, turning to Keith with an expression that can only be described as dangerously intrigued as she waves Lance away. “Fine, go, miss out on the news of a lifetime.”
Even Coran says, “I’m curious, what does ‘being a furry’ mean? I’m assuming it doesn’t actually have much to do with a hairy epidermis.”
Hunk wheezes before nodding to Lance. “Good night, bro.”
He waves. “Good night.”
The others surround Keith then, likely wanting to ease his anxiety after confessing his secret. The look on Keith’s face, though typically a bit furrowed, is one of gratitude. Thank God , he must be thinking. Thank God I still have a place here.
And the second Lance is out of the room, his own smile falls. For the first few turns through the castle he makes his usual way, walking at his usual pace, but after he’s far enough from the gathering that no one would notice, he detours immediately. It doesn’t matter where he goes, the castle-ship is massive—he’s bound to find a place where no one will find him. With Keith’s news about who he is being so important, Lance doubts anyone will look for him anyway.
At some point he finds himself at one of their unused airlocks, a decent enough distance away from the inhabited section of the castle that if he screams, no one will hear him, which he unfortunately knows from experience. This time though he doesn’t scream, instead he crouches in the corner of the airlock and breathes in the sterile air, listens to the ache in his chest that’s been sitting cozy and comfortable since he left the Blade’s hideout. He kind of wants to laugh.
“Fuck,” Lance curses to himself, trying not to feel pitiful and pathetic and failing.
Yes, he’s happy for Keith. Self-discovery, new identity, unlocked past—whatever, it’s fantastic. Lance has no reason not to be happy for him. Keith learned more about the origins of his dagger, his dad, and even his mom. On top of all that, Kitty Rose clawed and tore her way through the Blade’s hideout just to get to Keith, to save him like she’s done many times over when his life was at risk.
But that’s what’s haunting Lance right now. He can’t get it out of his head, the grand show of it all. Her roar. Her fire. Whatever connection that tethers Lance to her is fraying and fracturing at the edges while something inside him goes cold and quiet and empty. She arcs away from him, a stunning firework that bursts in an array of beautiful sparks to chase Keith’s shadows away, and Lance’s heart stops in his chest in the dark wake of her fiery tail.
He’s never been so envious in his entire life. The Red Lion’s quick response, her blazing protectiveness—it passed over Lance like a shadow. It confirmed his suspicions about her bond to him.
Never, not in the last few months, has he ever felt so alone. Surrounded by galran strangers in an unfamiliar and isolated secret base, he realized in that moment, as time slowed and the walls tore down, that him being there meant nothing. Sure, looking at himself now, he knows that he was there because he’s a paladin and because Allura asked him to, but when he steps back a little further, enough to see the whole picture? Does it matter that he was there at all? If you swapped out his likeness in this painting, would it change the story?
It’s like someone is running to him with open arms, a broad smile on their face, and in response he reaches out for the hug surely meant for him. But instead of them hugging him, they hug the person behind him and go along their merry way, either not knowing he’s there, or knowing and just pretending they don’t see. It’s awkward and embarrassing and makes him want to disintegrate immediately.
“Idiot,” he calls himself, muffled by his own hands. To be so riled up because Keith’s bond with the Red Lion is stronger, is he stupid? Did he not expect this already, or is he humoring denial simply out of outrageous hope, when by now he should know better?
On the flight back from the Blade of Marmora to the castle-ship, Lance let Kitty Rose go auto-pilot, refusing to touch her controls in hopes the lack of contact will keep him from sensing her mood. It’s futile in the end, because her fiery hurricane of concern engulfs him, while its calm centers squarely on Keith. Oh, how nice it must be to not feel it, how much the cockpit has turned into a furnace. Lance sits in the turbulent winds of Kitty Rose’s storm to be battered unnoticed, sweating under his armour and pretending he isn’t uncomfortable, and he’s pretty sure Red can’t help herself about it, can’t help the vibrating worry that stings Lance with a touch. But it still sucks.
She doesn’t hide her worry towards Keith from Lance, and he doesn’t think she’d try to either. For all their failure to synchronize, they’ve never once lied to each other. Keith and Red’s bond is still there, still strong, and Lance is tangled up in it. Keith can’t sense it at all, comfy as he is in the eye of her storm.
Is Lance going crazy?
Bracing his hands against the wall of the airlock, he stares out past the window into the void of space, then focuses his gaze down to the pristine gate dividing the safety of the airlock room from the cold outside.
First, he feels like throwing up, seeing the distance between the stars and knowing how much nothingness fills them. Then the nausea fades away and he’s staring, blank, empty to the core, at the vacuum-sealed door.
The sudden intruding thought that enters his mind is minuscule, but louder than the hum of the castle. It whispers tiny instructions that are easy enough to follow. If he doesn’t think too hard about it, its demands are pretty simple, and—if he didn’t know better—maybe he’d listen.
Unlock it.
Maybe.
So he turns away from the outer gate and faces the one that separates him from the inner comfort of the castle. With a hiss, the door slides open, the room equalizing pressure and popping his ears. Before he makes it through, he looks over his shoulder towards the freckles of steady starlight behind him and pauses to think.
A small voice inside him begs, Close the inner door and release the outer airlock door. It’ll be quick.
Lance shakes his head, biting his lip against the sing of his thoughts. How easy it would be to just close the door, bypass the controls of the inner security pad like he secretly knows how to do, and release the airlock’s outer gate. Just a few steps really. A few taps on a screen at most. Whatever happens after? Beyond his control, just like everything else, but at least he gets to choose what he loses control to.
Swallowing, Lance glances down the hallway, straining his ears to listen for approaching footsteps or someone calling his name. All he hears is his own breathing and the thud of his heartbeat, so he turns back to the airlock, one foot in, one foot out, his vision warping to focus on that tiny window of black night.
The room seems to shrink before him, becoming smaller, less intimidating. More claustrophobic. It’s the size of his bathroom, then his closet, and then a casket. Not a casket decorated in badges, ribbons, or wreaths, but a plain, white box with enough space for the width of his shoulders.
Lance gulps again. He stares for a long time, only the toes of his shoes breaching the threshold. In a quiet voice he wonders, will Red come? Will Blue?
Stupid question.
Taking a step back, he seals the door and releases the airlock’s outer gate. From the safety of the corridor, he listens to the air in the room ahead get sucked away, but it barely lasts a second. It’s loud, though. He imagines he probably wouldn’t hear it if he was out there, but the opposite could be true, too, since he’s not an expert on sound physics. He figures he’d be too distracted by trying to breathe to think about what he’s hearing anyway.
But what does it matter? What matters is that Red wouldn’t come to Lance’s rescue, and Blue wouldn’t either, he’s sure of it. He feels the threads connecting himself to them, and they are weak, loose bonds. They barely hold him up. They may love him, but it’s not the same.
Lance smiles bitterly, before he catches sight of himself in the reflection of the window. He quickly looks away.
He can’t believe he’s jealous of Keith again. Falling back into old habits? Classic. Turning on his heel, away from the unused, dustless airlock, he decides that he might as well get some sleep. No one will know what crossed his mind today, that much he can promise. What’s the point in being a downer when Keith’s just got good news, and Allura’s got a lot on her own plate to think about? A party pooper? Making himself the center of attention? Couldn’t be Lance McClain.
He snorts.
As he steels himself to pretend nothing’s wrong, something glints at the corner of his eye and he looks down to his wrist, sees the shine of familiar, cold silver. For a moment he forgot the bracelet was there. Didn’t even feel it.
He tries to remember—did Torvald call? Did he try?
Should Lance try?
With a pause, he realizes he doesn’t want to bring Torvald down with this, too. Furthermore, he’s not even sure how to explain it to him. ‘Hey, I know we just had a great time, but I’m jealous of my teammate who seems to have a deeper connection with my spaceship than I do—but it has nothing to do with quintessence or anything like that—and everyone else is celebrating him because he’s discovered more about who he is, but I’m somewhere else sulking because I feel inadequate and inconsequential. Am I valid in feeling this frustrated, am I even allowed to be, or am I as pathetic as I suspect and possibly overthinking everything?’
Torvald would never call Lance pathetic, though. He’d probably say Lance’s feelings are valid, say something sweet that makes Lance’s exploded pieces settle down right where they belong, and remind him that he is enough. That would be nice.
Lance wishes he could roll back time, go back to that green field by the lake while the stars climbed above him. Sitting down in the cold corridor of the castle, he hugs his knees and remembers Torvald’s hands and how they laced their fingers together. The fluttering warmth of the oobar in their bellies, the coolness of the lake as they dipped their toes in. There and gone. A fleeting moment in space and time.
Closing his eyes, he slides the bracelet one way, then the other, but doesn’t spin it. He’ll call later, when he’s calmed down. For now he focuses on his breathing, lets the world around him go quiet, and pretends that he’s not offended that no one’s really asked him about his friend-date.
It’s a couple spicolian movements before they’re running minor missions again, which is a good distraction. For the first few days after their visit to the Blade of Marmora, Allura doesn’t show herself around the others, though sometimes Lance finds her standing in the observation deck staring at the stars. At the start she ignored him, probably wanting to be alone, but one night she suddenly asked him to join her. He would’ve been content to just leave her some cookies, but this was fine, too.
Allura asks long after the small talk ends, “How’s Keith?”
“Keith?” Lance shrugs and pretends that thinking about the pilot of the Black Lion doesn’t make the back of his mind prickle just a bit. “He’s fine. Same as always.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. More comfortable in his skin, I guess. No one’s treating him any different, if that’s why you’re asking.” She tenses at that, but says nothing. “And you? How're you?”
She shrugs. “I’m not sure.”
And they sit in silence on opposite ends of the couch, staring up into the galaxy until they’re both too tired to keep their eyes open anymore. For a few nights, this is how Lance keeps the recluse princess company.
Then one morning, before breakfast and to everyone's surprise, Allura walks into the dining room and asks to have a word alone with Keith. The others are too nosy not to eavesdrop, and they strain their ears to overhear her apologize about her behaviour. Afterwards, a little awkwardly, Keith apologizes, too, for making things difficult in his own way.
When it suddenly goes quiet, Lance then peeks around the corner to see Keith standing stiffly in Allura’s hug, stunned and speechless. It takes a second, but Keith finally hugs her back, and that’s when everyone above Lance leans forward—unbalancing the precarious stack of Coran, Pidge, Hunk, and Lance—and sends them tumbling into the hall.
When Keith narrows his eyes at them, Lance—upside down against the wall—says to everyone else, “I didn’t see anything, did you!?”
Breakfast that day, for the first time in a while, felt complete. Kind of. A semblance of the normal left behind by Shiro.
Somehow, Lance never finds a window to talk about Torvald or their ‘friend’ date. Once, he visits Coran in the war room and briefly breaches the topic of starmates, but the castle’s alarms go off and they have to run a small rescue mission to save a bunch of alien scientists doing research on an imploding moon. One of the aliens there is an avid collector of odd trinkets, and that catches Coran’s attention immediately, leading to him disappearing into a treasure trove of tchotchkes.
Coran had said, “Hold that thought, number three,” while the sirens were blaring, and Lance still holds it a few quintants later.
He supposes the friend date with Torvald isn’t that interesting, at least to everyone else. Lance has been on other dates before, romantic ones at that, and no one really wanted to hear about them then. Thankfully Hunk does listen for a bit about Torvald during a period of quiet, but Lance doesn’t say anything about Torvald being galra, considering he’s describing him as ‘high-ranking,’ and a ‘son of a large company.’ It probably wouldn’t go over well to say that he’s also on the opposite side of the war and not of the Blade. Lance suspects that Torvald is the head of a weapon manufacturing company at the very least, and even that isn’t something he can casually say to his friends.
To everyone else, Torvald is just a story. None of them have heard his voice or seen his face, they’ve only heard what Lance tells them, and there’s only so much Lance can say without sounding like someone gushing over a fictional character on repeat.
So he eventually stops. They smile for him, happy he’s found someone, but there’s something else there, too. Something unfocused.
Pidge doesn’t seem to really believe in the soulmate thing, which is fine, but when Lance talks about how important Torvald has become to him, she turns her head a bit as if to give him a partial side-eye.
“How long have you known him?” She asks, leaning back in her chair. They’re sitting together at one of the work tables with tiny wires spread out amidst small, indiscernible, mechanical parts. Lance volunteered to help Pidge fix their comms units just so he could hang out away from Keith—the threat of another serious conversation simmering behind the black paladin’s gaze—but he isn’t too sure how much of a help he’s being. She hasn’t kicked him out yet, though now the possibility hangs in the air.
To her question, Lance shrugs, trying to remember when it was he first spun his silver. “I don’t know, bit more than two phoebs now?”
“Ahh,” Pidge nods slowly, and clearly loses interest as she gets back to detangling the wires Lance attached in one of the earpieces.
“What?” He smiles nervously, shifting his weight and fiddling with the miniscule screwdriver in his hand.
She purses her lips before speaking again. “Just, like, about two months or so? I don’t know, man.” When he stares at her, she sighs. “The longest any of these have ever lasted is like two and half, maybe three months, Lance.”
“Any of these? Okay, wait, but this is totally different,” he says, crossing his arms, trying to protect the fluttery warmth in his chest. He doesn't want to emphasize the soulmate thing, so he tries to go another route. “I promise that—”
Before he continues the thought, she interrupts with, “Okay, but you say that every time.” And she squints at him. She’s not wrong, he supposes. He definitely has a track record. Still, he honestly wasn’t ready for this reaction.
Has he always acted this enthusiastically when talking about the people he’s interested in? Or does he not seem especially sincere now? How does he say that it feels different this time around, and sound like he means it at a level that’s believable? While he’s trying to figure out what to say, she stops him with,
“Ugh , Lance, you know I’m not really the type to talk about dating stuff. I’m happy for you, but this Torvald guy? You’ve only known him so long, and seen him in person once. What if he's a mass-murderer? Or just not into you like that? If this ends like every other time…” To that, Lance winces. “Just, I don’t know. It’s distracting, and these parts are hella small and I need to focus.” With a click she fits two halves of one of the earpieces’ casing and moves on to the next one. “And if you’re, like, not gonna help, I heard Coran was cleaning out the sleep pods again.”
He blinks, lowering his tools. “I… sorry. My bad, Pidge.”
There’s an awkward silence before, "I know what I just said was harsh. You didn't do anything bad ," she says. "Just. I don’t have the energy right now to listen to stuff about love." The last word she says with a bit of a grimace.
That makes sense. It’s true that Pidge is one of the least enthusiastic people here when it comes to dating, especially when it comes to Lance rambling about his love life in particular (unless she's teasing him about how dumb he’s acting). Even so, he still comes around here to talk about it, mostly because he's giddy and needs an ear, but of course at some point Pidge’s patience would run out. If Lance really thinks about it, didn’t he basically set himself up for this? Not the boy who cried wolf, but the boy who cried, ‘I have a massive crush on someone!’ instead?
“Sorry,” Lance says again before gesturing to the wiring in front of him. “I’m almost done with this one, then I’ll be out of here.”
Then there's Keith who doesn't even try to hide how disinterested he is in Lance’s love life, so Lance doesn’t bother with letting him know about Torvald. And there's Allura, but she has so many other things on her mind that she only says, “That’s nice, Lance,” as if she’s just saying that to be kind, not because she’s actually listening.
To top it all off, Torvald has gotten so busy lately that they can’t call as much, or for as long. Quick check-ins are all they really manage most of the time, and each time Torvald sounds more tired than the last.
“I guess the holiday was just a calm before the storm, huh,” Lance whispers, staring into the floating silver bracelet in front of him. It bobs in the air, spinning fast enough to look like a glowing sphere of pale, blue light.
There’s a yawn on the other end of the call, and the groan from a stretch. Lance swears he almost hears Torvald’s spine crack. “If only I could show you, Leo. The amount of paperwork on my desk is frightening.”
“Should I throw them into the incinerator?”
At that, Torvald laughs, and it’s nice to hear after so long without it. “If you could, I’d love to watch.”
“And I’m assuming you can’t tell me about it?”
A pause, before an apologetic, “No, I can’t.”
The bracelet flickers, and Lance is reminded again that they’re technically working against each other outside of their friendship.
“Not even a hint?” Lance pleads jokingly.
Torvald laughs again. “Truly, Leo, I wish I could tell you everything.” The sincerity in his voice is not missed.
Lance decides to mercifully change the topic. “How are your sisters?”
“Oh, just as busy as me, if not moreso.”
“Are you overworking them?”
“If they didn’t insist on doing this one tracking mission, I’d say I’m working them just the appropriate amount. They finally got a lead, now they’re adamant on a hunt.”
Lance tilts his head. This is the first Torvald’s ever mentioned any context about the mission his sisters are working on. To admit that much, he must be exhausted.
“Good luck to their targets,” Lance says. He knows he shouldn’t ask, but deep down he really wants to, so, “is it a mission to kill, or is it like, take them dead-or-alive?”
Another yawn through the static. “I left that up to their discretion.”
From the muffled way Torvald’s voice sounds, Lance asks, “Are you lying down now?”
“… Maybe.”
He laughs. “Go to sleep, Torvald.”
There’s a dissatisfied grumble, a desire to stay, but his exhaustion is stronger. Sleepily, Torvald says, “Leo, my schedule tomorrow is tight, I’m not sure if I’ll be able to call you. Maybe not for a few quintants, if I’m being honest.”
Hearing that, Lance tries to hide his disappointment and puffs up his chest. “That’s fine, I know you’re busy.”
“Yes, but…” and a silence before a soft, “I find myself missing you.”
Butterflies fill Lance’s chest, a gentle heat flooding his cheeks. Through a small smile, he says, “I miss you, too. But I get it, Torvald. I might have something to do tomorrow as well, but not too sure. I’ll signal you, and you just let me know.”
“Mmm.”
Lance laughs again. “Goodnight.”
“Goodnight, Leo.”
And Lance tries not to focus too hard on how Torvald said, ‘I miss you,’ even when his dreams betray him and bring him back to that clear lake, the lush grass, and the effortlessly blue sky.