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In the time since he and his mother found themselves stranded on the space whale in the quantum abyss (however long it’s been, neither can guess), Keith had learned to spot the signs of the rifts and warps in the abyss. Major time storms are always preceded by certain peculiarities in the air, strange lights, or other phenomena. Occasionally things disappear, replaced by what once was, or what is yet to be. Rocks that move in the blink of an eye and still appear as if they had rested in the new location for time untold, their prior beds now seemingly untouched.
The wolf is somehow more attuned to the shifts in the abyss, be it by nature of belonging to the warped afterimages of reality or simply because he is a canine (or close equivalent). Keith doesn’t put too much thought into the how or why of it—that’s Pidge’s domain. It does him no good when learning to heed the wolf’s keen senses is a far more pressing matter, one that often means the difference between remaining in the “normal” flow of time or stumbling into hidden rifts between the leaves and rocks and losing hours, if not days to the abyss.
The wolf can’t sense them all, though. Some are just so strange or ephemeral, or even too small to notice. There are always more of the weird ones when the space whale’s micro-environ is hit with weather. Wind and rain seems to come from every direction, rifts opening up and buffeting them with the elements. He and his mother resolved not to venture out into the forest during weather in an effort to avoid encounters with the rifts more so than the weather itself.
But they can’t account for everything, Keith tells himself, grimacing against the onslaught of rain that had caught him unprepared in the thick of the forest. The wolf’s blue glow is a faint shimmer through the driving rain and thrashing tree limbs. They can’t account for everything, he thinks, blinking furiously to clear the water from his eyes in an attempt to distinguish the light of the wolf from that of the strange bioluminescent plants that dot the forest.
He certainly didn’t account for his turned ankle either, which makes the already tough trek back to the cave he shares with his mother and the wolf riskier.
So when his lame foot twinges painfully and he slips, it really isn’t all that surprising that he does so into a rift wedged between the rocks underfoot and the tree he’d been using for leverage. The lack of any definite time or space inside the rift, however, is. Time storms always show him something; the one rift he’d encountered previously had been a past version of the same spot—easy to back out of.
This one is a void.
The infinite black catches him, suspending him weightlessly in limbo. Simply stepping back out like before is not an option.
No, he’s fallen in this time, and even if there is an exit rift, he can’t see it.
A motionless pull draws him through the oblivion of the rift, and the intangible dark slips like water through his fingers without affording him any resistance.
The sensation is maddening. In an effort to stop the feeling of instantaneous, yet endless motion, to make something from the nothing, Keith lashes out a hand.
Tiny spectral lights burst from the blank murk behind his hand and dance across his vision like the delicate cilia of deep sea creatures, fractals of twirling threads that wind in every direction. They seem almost imagined, but his outstretched hand obscures them with its silhouette as they slowly begin to fade, flickering and sinking away. Faint, indistinct sounds accompany the lights like distant echoes.
Mostly, the sensations are nonsensical.
Even still, the lights are his best shot at finding a way out, so he stirs up some more and begins grabbing at the little strings, their strange sounds muffled and unintelligible.
That is, until he finds some that give off a sense of familiarity that draws him in. Some call his name, some appear to make offers, while others sneer, cry, or laugh, until the whispering lights become too much, and the growing sense of dread drives him to snatch at one, pulling himself toward it.
And finally he can make out some of the whispers.
Voltron.
He blinks, surprised, and grabs another.
—beros.
—lax— Gari—.
T—ashi —gane.
Voltron.
Keith reels back as if stung, more cautiously reaching for the next closest one.
What shou— we — wi— the—?
Dad, —tt.
Miss—n —ilure.
Voltron.
It slips from his hand, flickering, and he flails into the void to stop the rest from fading before going for the next. One pulses in his vision, the shimmering line appearing almost green for an instant, and he grabs at it like a lifeline.
You’re ly—g!
C’—on, please —rk!
Vol—
25105957Wh87.o’s94512754.613065472180.754934Kei5.4th508?265.3813054201.345607
—tron!
An electric shock bolts like fire up his arm from the thread and he cries out into the void as his vision whites, then fades to black.
***
Pidge presses the left pad of her headphones closer with one hand, the other scribbling on her notepad as a garbled stream of sounds clips in and out on her cobbled together long distance radio. The signal is weak, but at this time of night on the Garrison’s roof, it’s the best she’s likely to get. Not that much of it makes any sense. The harsh, guttural foreign sounds seem more like language than code, which rules out any theories she had that the Garrison is sending the signals.
Five months ago, the failure of the Kerberos mission was announced. She broke into the Garrison, got kicked out of the Garrison, cut her hair, changed her name, ran away from home, and hacked herself back into the Garrison. Now she’s hiding from her roommates-slash-teammates on the roof with her hand-built receiver.
Much like the last month that she’s been at the Garrison, all she gets is blips in the static—the occasional burst of indiscernible jargon. It is very possible that she’s simply picking up the low end of a frequency or some distant radiation that becomes distorted when it reaches her equipment. Her device is set up to capture signals all the way to Kerberos, and without government-funded, high-powered sensors, it’s more challenging to sift through the static to find anything distinct. Regardless, it seems to work as intended, which makes her feel just the teeniest bit closer to Dad and Matt, even if it’s nothing concrete.
Which is why the long string of numbers that appears on her screen stills her note-taking hand. That she can work with.
The next two weeks pass in a blur, her laptop running the numbers through different ciphers and codes in the background during her classes, and her attention half on the program, half on the lecture. She leaves the still-recording receiver under her bed during the day to catch signals as more strings of numbers appear, stressing to Hunk and Lance not to touch it under the guise that it’s for an assignment. Many of the sequences are identical, possibly hinting at a repeated message that hovers infuriatingly just out of her reach.
The night Lance and Hunk decide to sneak out to Plaht City gives Pidge an opportunity to slip away to her favorite roof spot early, without worrying about waking her roommates. The clear, starry sky puts a wistful smile on her face as she cracks open her laptop.
“Maybe this time,” she whispers, just as a flash from her screen draws her eyes back down.
Maybe this time, indeed. Her eyes widen at the number of signals the receiver picked up since the previous night, and she sets to work quickly sending them all through to her decryption program. The signals had more than doubled; most are the same string of numbers.
An hour later the cipher program surprises her with a completion message, and her screen is lit up with a text window displaying lines and lines of calls for help.
She skims them all until she reaches the last flurry of messages that simply read “Help me,” over and over again like a mantra. All, but the very last line: a set of interstellar coordinates that she knows in an instant are very, very far away from Earth or even Kerberos.
Then the screen flickers.
Pidge sucks in a breath and hurries to save the file, and as she anxiously watches the bar load across the screen, the text begins to turn red.
Then the whole screen.
Her whole field of vision flashes red. She screws her eyes shut against it, a headache blooming behind her eyes as the red is swallowed up by a void-like darkness of sleep.
***
—dge.
Sound cuts through her silent dreams of a starred black expanse.
Pidge.
“Pidge!”
Pidge sits up with a jolt and glances around to yell at Lance, only to be greeted with the sight of an empty Garrison rooftop and the sun fully over the horizon. She curses, fumbling for her phone in her backpack, and unlocks it to check the time—
“N—nine in the morning!?” she clamps a hand over her mouth to muffle her surprise. She overslept. On the roof.
“Pidge!”
“What!?” she yells, volume concerns forgotten as she whirls around to yell at… nobody. There’s no one behind her. She stares in confusion at the empty space where she could have sworn she heard someone, the dull pangs of a forgotten headache echoing in her skull.
“Great, I’m going insane,” she growls, turning to shuffle her equipment back into her bag and hope she can slip back to her dorm to change in time for second period. The sound of her name in an unknown voice and the feeling that she’s being followed, however, lingers like a cold chill along her spine on the trek back to her room. She drops her bag on her bed and tugs on her uniform before stopping at the sink to wash the sleep off her face. She presses her fingers to her temple and cheeks as she stares into her reflection, the jagged ends of her hair flying away from her face haphazardly.
A bead of water slips off her face and plops into the slowly draining sink basin.
“Gosh, I must be crazy,” she mutters. Despite sleeping well past the usual hour, the hard surface of the roof clearly hadn’t done her any favors.
“You’re not,” says the voice. A man’s voice, and not one that belongs to either of her roommates.
Yet, she can see the room reflected in the mirror. She is alone.
“What, so I’m possessed?” she hisses, “That’s not possible.”
“No.”
Pidge scoffs, “No to what? I’m talking to a voice inside my head, am I not?”
There’s a long enough pause for Pidge to start wondering about her sanity again, until she “hears” an odd sort of rumble, not unlike a growl.
“Pidge, listen—”
“Do I have a choice? How do you know who I am anyway?” she snaps, turning as if there might be someone she could face and direct her irritation at. Her eyes fall on empty air and the post of Lance and Hunk’s bunk.
“I need your help, I’m—”
“You’re…?” Pidge drawls, impatience creeping into her tone.
“I’m— K——ne— ——ron—”
The voice in her head seems, if at all possible, to clip and cut into static as Pidge’s headache returns in full, her vision dimming as she squints through the discomfort.
She blinks, waking to see the ceiling filling her view. She hears the running water from the sink like white noise. Something on the floor is digging into her shoulder.
The floor.
Pidge climbs to her feet in a rush, grabbing the offending object from beneath her as she stands. It’s her toothbrush.
“Weird,” she mutters, dropping it into the cup by the sink. She splashes her face with water to wash the sleep off her face, then turns the faucet off. She presses her fingers to her temple and cheeks as she stares into her reflection, the jagged ends of her hair flying away from her face haphazardly. Her phone buzzes in her pocket as she’s finger-combing the fly-aways into place.
She freezes, reading the time on the screen, barely registering the text from Lance wondering where she is.
Second period starts in five minutes.
She’d woken up on her floor.
…she’d woken up on the roof.
Notebook and laptop in hand, Pidge sprints out the door and across campus to the lecture halls, all the while lamenting the twenty-odd minutes inexplicably spent unconscious on the floor. Lance and Hunk give her curious looks as she slips into her seat beside them in Biology.
“I overslept, it’s nothing,” she whispers. Fortunately, they accept it easily enough, though not without a concerned glance from Hunk. She ignores him and starts copying notes as their instructor begins the lesson, though lingering thoughts of the morning’s events leave her distracted throughout the day.
She’d woken up on her floor with the faucet running and mint on her teeth from brushing, but no memory of having done so. She has a loose recollection of talking to herself—or rather, a voice in her head, but no knowledge of collapsing on the floor. Whether it really happened or she’d been dreaming, or even hallucinating, she isn’t sure. As the day goes on without further disruptions, she begins to fear the latter.
During lunch, she stops by the bathroom and waits for the room to clear before approaching the mirror and whispering questions to it, as if perhaps she might call on the voice at will, but to no avail. She does not hear the voice again until the weekend, when she deems it safe to venture up to the roof again.
The receiver crackles to life on the hairline between one frequency and the one she’s been monitoring as she tunes it in for the night, like some strange radio wave limbo.
Or a private channel, she wonders, as encoded messages begin to appear in the window. All are identical; the very same sequences as the previous calls for help.
Pidge chews the edge of her lip, hesitantly typing out a message of her own. If she’s right about the channel, the Garrison probably won’t know. Hopefully.
Are you the voice?
Her question is a stark contrast to the endless lines of Help Me. It seems to stem the flow of messages. Fear that she’s dipped her fingers in too far, that the Garrison has caught on to her, knots in her stomach.
Are you Pidge? the red letters ask.
She squints suspiciously at her screen.
Maybe.
Of course, is the reply. As if whoever is on the other end knows her. Pidge doesn’t know what to say to that.
A pause.
What do you know about time rifts?
Time rifts. Pidge stares slack-jawed at her screen, feeling like her circuits are fried until the clatter of footsteps on the roof access ladder reaches her ears. There isn’t time to think up a response. She scrambles to shove her equipment into her bag and ducks behind an AC unit as a pair of students hoist themselves up onto the roof and make their way to the railing, laughing and talking in low voices. She takes off her shoes and waits for an escape opportunity that comes quicker than anticipated as the two students soon become… distracted. Pidge tiptoes to the roof access in her socks and stealthily makes her way back to her dorm.
To her relief, Lance and Hunk have yet to turn in for the night, and the room is silent and empty. Her shoeless, out of breath appearance would doubtless draw the boys’ attention, so she gratefully sets to work, cracking open her laptop from the security provided by her lofted bunk.
“Time rifts, huh?” she whispers, navigating to the Garrison library’s database. If there’s anything in scientific journals about it, it’ll be there. Unless it’s top secret like Kerberos, she reminds herself, but the thought is fleeting—it’s still worth a shot. A bigger worry is just who, exactly, is sending her messages.
The only people she can think of that might possibly be sending signals on a unique, long-distance frequency and know her pseudonym are her father and brother, but they would never be so cautious if they thought they’d made contact with her. Matt’s exuberance wouldn’t allow it, and dad is, well, dad. Plus, they have their own code, and they’d use it.
If it’s a student or Garrison personnel, they’d have to know about her radio receiver in the first place, which narrows the suspects to just two: Lance and Hunk.
She immediately disqualifies them, as she’d lied and told them that the device is a school project. If anyone working for the Garrison knew, she’d have been busted and expelled by now.
The natural conclusion is that her mystery correspondent must be someone, or something else. It is this line of thinking that eventually leads her away from the scholarly journals and into the rabbit hole of conspiracy boards and myth wikipedia pages until the wee hours of the morning. Lance and Hunk had already returned and gone to bed by the time drowsiness catches up to her, and she closes the lid of her laptop in a doze.
***
“And here I thought you were a night owl.”
Pidge’s eyes fly open, only to be met with an inky black. She cannot move. Focusing on a response stops the panic from bubbling up.
“Am I?” she asks, “You sound rather confident.”
“Between, Shiro, Lance, Hunk, and myself, you’ve been carried back to your room at 3am more times than I can count,” he says flatly.
Pidge hesitates, confused. Shiro? And Lance and Hunk? “What, are you from some kind of alternate reality?”
“Close. I’m from the future, I think.”
“You think?”
“What year is it?”
“2056, why?”
“And the Garrison declared the Kerberos mission a failure due to pilot error in 2055, correct?”
“Yes,” she says, the words bitter on her tongue.
“Then it’s been about two years. Maybe more…” the voice muses. “But yes, I am from the future.”
“Time travel? You’re kidding.”
“Time rift. They connect past, present, and future.”
“I did some research,” Pidge admits, “Didn’t find much.”
“I’m not surprised. Listen—”
“Do I have a choice?”
The voice scoffs a laugh, “Admittedly, no. But neither do I.”
“Explain.”
“Thank you. I fell into a time rift in the future, and inside I followed a thread to this point in time. I’m stuck in a void, but I’m able to contact you. I think you’re the key to getting me back to my own time.”
If Pidge could frown, she would. “Sounds like some kind of fairy tale.”
“But will you help me?”
“You mentioned the Kerberos mission, and Shiro. You know about what happened?”
His tone turns sharp, “I know plenty.”
She gives a mental nod, “I’ll see what I can do, and you tell me what you know.”
“Deal.”
“And your name?”
“Keith,” he says it without emphasis. “See you later, Katie.”
Pidge sits up with a gasp, eyes wide in the semi-dark of her dorm. The subtle blue glow of Lance’s night-light dims as he moves to lift his eye mask and peek across the room at her questioningly. Hunk snores on from the bottom bunk.
“It’s nothing,” she mumbles, staring at the wall. “Just a weird dream.”
***
Pidge spends the next week poring through scholarly databases and whatever books she can find at the library that might be even slightly relevant. She brings the books with her to the roof on nights she sneaks out to monitor her radio receiver, skimming through lines of text that for once aren’t encoded into a frequency. The distressed messages from Keith stop, replaced by occasional questions that lead her to think he must be bored out of his mind.
What are you doing?
Reading.
And much later: Reading what?
Myths.
Interesting.
She stares at the latest red letters, sent last night. Myths probably seem to him as if she’s not taking it seriously, though the irony is that they seem to hold the best clues thus far. Stories of vampires, fae and otherworldy beings often require some action or invitation. She drums her fingers on the desk in her dorm, once again thankful for the quiet time provided by the difference between Lance and Hunk’s schedules and her own.
It provides her the opportunity to do something possibly very, very foolish, or perhaps just a waste of effort. It’s on a whim, really. She wants to believe her mysterious psychic pen pal is real, if only to ward off concerns about her sanity. So she takes a deep breath and does it anyway.
“Keith?” she asks, “Would you like to visit?”
She waits. Long enough for her to realize she’d been holding her breath when suddenly a crackle of black lightning appears in the air beside her desk. It flickers and writhes as it grows, like a claw tearing into a canvas as the black begins to bleed out. Little bolts of red fester around the edges of the jagged inky disc, blurring the edge between reality and whatever this… rift is.
A hand clothed in a dark, purple-grey emerges, grasping desperately for purchase on this side of the void. Under its touch the black seemingly solidifies. Red sparks jump from the fingertips and from the center of the black mass as a shadow-wreathed figure surfaces and steps through. The rift (if that is what it is) fades quickly, appearing to absorb into itself until suddenly there isn’t a trace of its presence, save the figure in the room.
The figure’s hands move to lower its hood, and the shadows clinging fall away to reveal a young man in a dark, futuristic suit. Padding and armored plates add bulk to his otherwise lean form, and violet lights from within the armor hint at functionality beyond defense that she’s sure the Garrison would love to pick apart. He looks to be around the same age as the recently graduated cadets, with dark hair and eyes like blued gunmetal. His eyes lack the light that people tend to have, and instead almost appear to have the dull glow of a distant flame within them. There is a faint transparency at the tips of his fingers, and a gradation fades from his shins down to his feet, which would blend with a shadow—if he had one.
Unless she’s upgraded to visual hallucinations now too, her mysterious psychic pen pal is quite real—or as real as one can be when one’s body is trapped in a time rift. Real enough.
“I admit, I wasn’t expecting that to work,” Pidge rests her chin in her hand, “I take it you must be Keith?”
He nods, glancing around the room warily before gesturing at the miniature couch tucked beneath her lofted bunk, “Is here okay?”
“Be my guest,” she shrugs, eyeing him curiously. He seems familiar.
Keith takes a seat on the couch soundlessly, easing himself onto it as if afraid he might pass right through. It supports him, and the relieved drop in his shoulders makes Pidge wonder if she should be taking notes.
He leans back with his eyes closed, “You have no idea how nice it is to actually see and feel something right now.”
Pidge wordlessly hooks a finger into her desk drawer and extracts a notepad. Definitely should be taking notes. She has a few lines scribbled when Keith cracks an eye open and peeks over at her.
“You have a long distance radio, right?”
Her pen slows. His knowledge of her is… unnerving. It’s forcing her to come to terms with the fact that he knows her in the future—that her future self has some reason to tell him about it. To trust him.
She glances over at Keith and gestures to its place under the couch, “Built it myself.” There is no pride in the statement.
He bends down to look, “That must be how I was able to contact you.”
Pidge chews her lip, her eyes now on the device as well, “It was.”
His gaze slides up to meet hers, brows angled curiously.
“If you’re thinking we can use it in the reverse, I don’t know,” she caps her pen and sets it aside.
“No.”
“No?”
“There’s a different connecting factor. The radio wouldn’t matter without it,” Keith pauses, rubbing his thumbs together. “You’ve been listening to transmissions out by Kerberos?”
“I have,” she frowns, wondering where this is going.
Keith’s gaze hardens, “Have you heard the term Voltron?”
Voltron? This is getting suspicious.
Pidge narrows her eyes, “It’s about the only distinct thing I can make out on the frequency, why?”
“Two reasons,” Keith starts. “First, that transmission is radio chatter from an alien empire. They have a ship at the edge of our solar system because they are looking for Voltron. Second,” he adds, splaying a hand across his knee, “Voltron is a giant robot made up of five smaller craft, and each has a pilot it bonds with known as a Paladin. I was one of them,” he pauses, face firm, “and you will become one.”
“Aliens?” Pidge had entertained the possibility but never had any substantial evidence. The Garrison seemed a more likely culprit anyway.
“They’re called the Galra, don’t get hung up on it just yet,” Keith warns, “The Paladins of Voltron have a bond with their ships, Voltron, and each other. I have a hunch that’s what allowed me to reach you from the rift, even though you haven’t even seen Voltron and I’m an ex-Paladin. The bond is still there.”
“And somehow that bond allows me to pull you out of this rift?”
“Right.”
Pidge hums in thought. They’ll have to circle back around to the whole aliens and paladins stuff later, loathe as she is to admit it. The bond, however… “I think this bond thing is probably the key to getting you back. Question is, how?”
Keith blinks owlishly, “I uh… hadn’t thought of that.”
“Then that’s where we need to start,” Pidge concludes, drawing a quick circle around the word “bond” in her notebook.
Keith opens his mouth to respond but stops as footsteps and voices in the hallway sound nearby, and he grimaces at the door.
“Hide,” Pidge hisses under her breath, hurriedly switching tabs on her computer and shuffling her notebook into the desk drawer. She hadn’t anticipated her talk with Keith would go past her roommates’ classes.
The door opens with a click, and she spins halfway around in her chair to watch Lance wave goodbye to a pair of girls before slipping inside.
He pauses upon seeing her staring at him. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost, what’s got you so spooked?” he asks, chuckling lightheartedly as he casts his gaze around the room playfully, “Is there a girl here, hm?”
If only you knew, Pidge frowns, watching him rifle through his dresser. “Very funny Lance, leave me alone so I can study.”
“Sheesh, alright alright,” Lance waves her off before changing into his gym clothes. Pidge quickly turns back to her computer, freezing as she sees Keith half-transparent and partway up the ladder to her bunk, his eyes blown wide open.
“I’ve got P.T. so I’ll get out of your hair and you can get back to your nerd stuff. Hunk’s at the mess hall,” Lance continues, voice muffled slightly through his shirt. “See you later man!”
Pidge listens to the door shut behind her and stares back at Keith, whose eyes upon closer inspection seem to have a slight yellowish tint, his pupils far narrower than is natural.
She waits until Lance’s footsteps are out of earshot, her face drawn thin in irritation, “I told you to hide!”
Keith’s pupils seem to flicker and he blinks, but his eyes never leave the door.
“He looked right through me…” he whispers, stunned.
“He… what?” Pidge leans back in her chair, “are you saying you’re invisible to him?”
“Pidge he looked straight at me and didn’t react at all.”
“You’re not trying to tell me you actually are a ghost, are you?”
“No I—” Keith steps off the ladder, but not down, prompting him to look down at his feet floating above the floor. “This isn’t helping my case,” he grumbles, “I haven’t died. At least I don’t think so. It wouldn’t make sense.”
“Then it must be a side effect of being in a time that’s not your own. You aren’t meant to be here, and so you aren’t—not really. Perhaps this bond thing is what allows me to see you?”
“No that… no. That’s not the case. Both Lance and Hunk are involved in Voltron.”
Pidge raises a brow at that comment, but keeps her curiosities to herself. For now. “What makes me so special then, hm?”
“I don’t know,” Keith frowns. He’s fading faster now, his face faint around the glow of his now normal-er eyes. He holds his hands, almost completely gone, in front of his face. He looks through his palms at her, brows knit, “But I’m glad it’s you.”
The black rift reopens behind him, and what remains visible of him is absorbed into it. Then it’s gone.
Keith’s gone.
Whoever he is.
***
When Pidge next “invites” Keith out of the rift, it’s much better planned. She spends more time researching outside of class, even delving back into her scant few copies of the Kerberos files. She comes away with more questions than answers. Hopefully Keith holds the key to some of them.
It’s this thinking that finally brings her back to the roof of the Garrison.
“You’re welcome to join me, Keith,” she says, talking to the cool night air.
The same black rift.
The same red bolts.
The same shadowed hand.
He emerges from the void with more ease than before, stepping out into the air above the roof. He sits, cross-legged, a foot or two above the surface.
Pidge raises a brow at this, but makes no comment as she pulls her laptop onto her knees.
“Figured it wouldn’t make sense to fight it,” Keith mutters. “What’s up?”
“Fight what? Floating?” Pidge asks. He nods, and she makes a quick note of it. Interesting. “You mentioned Shiro and my roommates. I want to discuss that.”
“Kerberos?” Keith prompts.
“Yes,” she drawls, pulling up a photo on her screen and turning it to face him. “But first, take a look at this. You know them?”
He stills, staring at an image from the Kerberos launch. “Yeah.”
“And?” Pidge prompts, after a pause.
“That’s Shiro,” Keith whispers, “and me.”
She lets that admission settle for a bit, then swipes the screen for the next image. “And them?”
“Matt and you.”
“You saw me?”
Keith turns his gaze on her, “You saw me?”
“I thought you seemed familiar,” she explains, “Matt and Shiro talked about you sometimes.”
Somehow the color seems to drain from his face, “Oh.”
Pidge rolls her eyes, “It was nothing terrible. Not enough to know you very well.”
He looks away, “I see.”
“And you knew what I looked like back then.”
“Yes.” A hint of a smirk tugs at his lips, “And Matt talked about you.”
“Of course,” Pidge grimaces. She navigates to her Kerberos folder, “That aside, I noticed you didn’t sound pleased when you brought up Kerberos a while back,” she steeples her fingers, peering up at him, “Tell me about it.”
“Well,” he draws a knee to his chest, “Let’s start with the fact that all three of the Kerberos mission crew members are alive,” Keith looks away, “technically.”
Pidge raises a brow, unsure how to take that.
“By the time I’m from, you’ve found both Matt and your dad,” Keith assures. “Shiro… Shiro came to us, first. Then we lost him for a bit, but he came back again. Things have been… a little strange, but he’s okay. I think he’s okay.”
“You think?”
Keith runs a hand through his hair, “I… things were… weird, when I left.”
Pidge gives him a dubious look, but it’s short lived, quickly turning to a mischievous grin, “I knew they were alive! There’s no way a mission with those three could go wrong.”
Keith’s expression turns dark, “And Shiro would never crash.”
“You didn’t believe it either, did you?”
“Not in a million years,” he grumbles. “Got myself kicked out over it.”
Pidge looks at him, impressed, “Seriously?”
“Yeah, seriously. Punched Iverson in the jaw and spent a year in the desert because of it,” Keith smiles, “Worth it though.”
“He deserved it,” she scoffs. “Why the desert?”
Keith looks out over the dark rock formations silhouetted against the stars, his gaze distant. “Voltron,” he says quietly, “but I didn’t know at the time.”
He gives her a brief summary of what drew him out there, up to an event that loosely sounds like a crash of some kind, and then begins to explain the Galra empire, and a little more about Voltron, even if Pidge can tell he’s omitting quite a bit. She understands it’s likely because he knows better than to tell her everything—sharing only what she needs to know. As frustrating as it is, she can respect that. The rest will come to her in time, that much is certain.
With a clearer picture of Keith’s situation, she’s able to focus her research better. She slows their progress to catch up on the coursework she’d fallen behind on in her efforts to extract Keith from the rift, but regularly invites him to join her on the roof or in her dorm if only to give him a reprieve from the void of the rift.
He’s a quiet companion, and she finds herself enjoying his company as the weeks pass.
Plus, having someone to talk to who knows her secret is comforting. She doesn’t have to maintain her charade with him. She can talk about her family with him.
In exchange, he tells her a little about his past, and eventually opens up a bit more about his time as a Paladin. They’re little hints that sound like grains of sand compared to the bigger picture, but she’s sure that given his laconic disposition, he wouldn’t tell her without reason.
His family life was nonexistent, but is getting better. What does that mean?
Changes and revelations he had no control over, and the reactions of his team. Does that include her?
Accepting and taking on something he felt he wasn’t ready for. Did he have support he could fall back on?
Pidge files away the information in her brain. Chances are, he wants her to know this.
They also make progress towards learning Keith’s capabilities while present. Emboldened by Lance’s inability to see Keith, Pidge begins to invite him from the rift when she knows her roommates will be back soon. Keith is content to mill around the room or relax on the couch, and the most Hunk or Lance ever notice is an occasional cold chill should they pass by him too closely. Lance even chalks it up to a drafty window.
Ironically, Pidge always finds Keith to be a warm presence, a feature she appreciates as the fall semester progresses and the heat of the desert begins to ebb.
Gradually, she and Keith make progress. With Lance and Hunk as successful test subjects, she feels confident inviting him to tag along with her around campus.
He keeps pace with her, feet ever so slightly off the ground, even though he could hover over her shoulder if he wanted, and she learns to keep her cool as she watches her classmates walk right through him, unfazed.
Sometimes when she hits a roadblock in her work she’ll ask him to come, to have someone to talk to, or at. He’s all too glad to let her ramble her way out of problems if it means less time trapped in the void. Even still, he has to go back eventually. She’s learned that he can only be outside the rift for about two hours at a time before he begins to fade and the rift opens to take him in again.
It’s during one of these sessions that they get onto the topic of the Kerberos mission, for real this time. She rants about her attempts to find the truth, questioning any officers she met and hacking into the system once that proved futile. She tells him about how she got caught, the look of fury on Iverson’s face.
She learns that was around the same time Keith got himself kicked out of the Garrison.
“Small world,” she murmurs, digging into her bag of pretzels for the last broken pieces. She wishes not for the first time that she could share some with Keith.
He rests his arms across his knees and leans forward, saying, “You could try again.”
Her hand stills, and she balks, “Are you insane? I can’t get kicked out again! They’ll throw me in jail!” she hisses, keeping her voice low.
Keith shakes his head, “Not you you. We know that you’re the only one who can see or hear me, and that I can interact with some of the physical world,” he states, picking up her now-empty coffee mug to demonstrate. “Send me. Give me instructions, walk me through it. We can talk in here,” he points to his head, then to hers.
He keeps his gaze locked on her, and she leans back, away from the hollow flames of his eyes. He looks almost as if he wants to add something more, but lets it go and sits upright again.
“Let me help you,” he says quietly. Tense. There’s something behind that she won’t delve into.
“I can’t hang around his office while you’re in there,” she argues.
She’d love to finally find out what’s on Iverson’s computer. She truly would. But she’s already been kicked out once; she can’t afford to take risks.
“There’s a bathroom near his office that should be in range,” Keith suggests, referencing their experiments testing how far from her he can go before the rift takes him. The leash is short, but not terribly so.
Pidge blinks, “I’ll be honest, I’m never around there enough to know that.”
Keith chuffs, “I was. I also know there’s no cameras inside the office because of his security clearance.”
Pidge pauses to consider this, then narrows her eyes at him, “Okay, but how will you get in?” They can’t afford for a door opening by itself to be caught on a hall camera.
“Unless it’s changed, when he leaves for lunch,” Keith answers, “Just before noon.”
“You really have been there a lot,” she grimaces.
He shrugs, looking at her expectantly.
“Alright,” she relents, “I have open blocks on my Tuesday schedule around noon. If I stop by the library on my way back from my morning classes I’ll have good reason to pass that way heading back to my room. I’ll duck into the bathroom and call on you.”
“Until then, show me the basics. It’ll go smoother.”
She regards him for a moment, but agrees. The thought of finally getting the rest of the Kerberos files restores a bit of excitement she hasn’t felt in quite some time.
***
Her call this time is quiet in the murk of the void. Her voice echoes less, a distant rumble through the black. He spots the crack quickly despite it, and claws his way through, fingers the first thing to experience the sensation of the outside—the dull room temperature of the Garrison hallways. If he weren’t half-corporeal outside the rift it would be hard on his eyes emerging into the bright lights, but since he is, and his eyes are not quite real, there is no adjustment period. He’s ready to go the moment the rift closes, turning to spot Pidge standing behind the door.
“Good luck,” she tells him, mouth shut tight, her voice in his head once more. He offers a silent salute, taking the data drive she presses into his palm as he steps through the door she holds open for him.
Without needing to worry about stealth or encountering anyone, he makes his way to Iverson’s office with ease. The man is still right on schedule, and Keith slips through the closing door without issue.
“I’m in,” he reports, moving to the computer. He taps a random key to test, watching the key depress under his finger. “Tell me what to do.”
“You’re going to hold down the following keys in order for fifteen seconds…” she starts to walk him through booting the machine in a way that will bypass the login so there’s no record of him accessing the interface. With her feeding him instructions directly, he makes progress quickly. It reminds him of a time when their roles were reversed, and she was alone on the castleship with Sendak and his crew. She’d wanted to leave that day. He wonders if she’ll still try now that he’s here. If he’s already screwed everything up.
But maybe not. Pidge has always been consistent in her actions. She’ll never pass up an opportunity to make progress; she’ll always defend what’s hers. It’s admirable.
When he finds the files for the Kerberos mission and pops the data drive in, he lets out a breath at the sight of the transfer speed.
“It’s copying fast,” he tells her.
“Good.” He can hear the smugness in her tone. “Since we have a time limit I rigged that drive to be extra fast. It sacrifices some stability though so I’ll transfer it to something with a better storage structure later.”
He hums in acknowledgment, though whether she hears or not he doesn’t know. He grabs the drive when the transfer is complete, and Pidge walks him through the steps to leave the computer as he found it, and then moves to wait out the last few minutes by the door. Iverson returns as expected, and Keith steps through the doorway, passing through his former superior officer. Pidge is already making her way down the hall to rejoin him and head back to her dorm.
They don’t get a chance to view the files until the weekend, when she invites him to the roof as she combs through it all.
He knew some of the details. Figured out some of it on his own. He’s seen some of the videos from what Pidge showed him back in the shack, and a few other occasions.
But nothing like this. There’s so much more, he’s surprised his Pidge never sat the team down for a marathon-lecture. If this is really his timeline, he’s impressed she was able to keep it all to herself until Shiro’s return.
The look on her face as she scours the files for evidence, piecing together the events of that fateful mission, is pain. He settles down next to her on the ground, a silent companion through the unpleasant revelations.
Eventually she cries. There’s still hundreds of files left untouched, and his time out of the rift is drawing to a close. He reaches over and pauses the video she’d been playing on repeat, then folds her into a hug as best he can. He’s not sure she can feel it, but he hopes so.
“They’re okay Katie,” he whispers, “You’ll find them, I promise.”
“Keith…” she mumbles, voice choked with pain.
“Hm?”
“Make them… this Galra Empire… make them pay,” she grits her teeth, tears rolling down her cheeks.
“Already on it,” he grins, “but you’ll get your chance soon, too.”
“Okay,” she breathes, looking up at him as he feels the pull of the rift opening again. “Okay.”
***
Their next major excursion is during the Thanksgiving holiday. Most everyone has gone home, leaving Pidge and a few other long-distance students, plus a handful of staff to keep the lights on and feed the stragglers. Pidge takes her food back to her dorm, and does what she can to include Keith in her little celebration. He tells her it’s one of his best Thanksgivings with a smile that doesn’t fully hide the sadness in that statement. She’s thankful he’s here.
The day after he accompanies her on the way to the student labs, left unlocked over break so the lingering students can get work done if need be. He puts a hand out as they round a corner, stopping her suddenly. Her pencil bag falls to the floor and spills.
“What’d you do that for?” she hisses quietly, stooping to grab the pencils.
“The door to the simulator room is unlocked,” Keith replies, tearing his attention away from the door, “Sorry.”
“What, are you planning to go in there?” she almost rolls her eyes, but a glance in his direction tells her he’s dead serious. “Don’t do anything stupid,” she warns.
“It’ll be fine. The labs are across the hall and the sims themselves aren’t locked, unless that’s changed?”
“No,” she says, standing up. She keeps her head down, “looking” for any missed pencils as she talks. “Just be careful. It might be the janitors, and you could get stuck if they leave.”
Keith shrugs, “If so I’ll just let the rift get me.”
“Alright,” she acquiesces, passing by the door left ajar. She doesn’t watch as he slips inside, her feet taking her to the labs, where she settles in for a few hours of studying. She doesn’t think about it again until she calls on him a few days later after whispers among the student body drive her to investigate the pilot rankings board, where a K. Kogane, already among the top student records, now appears twice.
The newest score is leagues above the rest.
Shiro never scored that high.
It seems beyond impossible.
Keith has the gall to be totally unapologetic when she grills him about it from the roof of the Garrison.
“Did I not tell you don’t do anything stupid?” she scowls.
“You did,” Keith crosses his arms, “but it was an opportunity to get back at them, so I took it.”
“Ugh,” she groans, “I can’t blame you.”
“See? No big deal.”
“Yes, big deal though!” she exclaims, “That could alter your timeline!”
“I’m still here, aren’t I?” he says, folding his legs up crossways, suspended two feet above the floor.
“Yes, but— urgh…” Pidge presses a hand to her temple, “There are rumors, Keith. People think you died in the desert and are haunting the campus. It’s insane but can have lasting effects.”
Keith simply shrugs, “I’m here in the past and interacting with you—couldn’t that be a significant change? The information I’ve given you access to potentially early? Even if this is a part of my original timeline, I wouldn’t know, you never talked about it.”
“Maybe because I knew-know? better than to talk about it!” she chides. Gosh it feels weird to be talking about herself in past tense.
“Wisely, most likely,” Keith comments. “Besides, younger me is so far off-grid they’ll never find him. Me. Whatever.”
“Whatever,” Pidge huffs impatiently. “How’d you score so high anyway?”
“I’d have done better if I had my own ship, or Red…” Keith grumbles, as if his score wasn’t already off the charts. “But to answer your question, the ships I’ve been flying and the situations I’ve flown in have been up here,” he holds a hand at arm’s reach over his head, “and the best challenge the Garrison can offer is here,” he adds, lowering the hand to chest height.
“Meaning… what, exactly?”
“Wormholes, asteroid cannons, alien ships, planetary storms, giant space worms… crazy stuff.”
Pidge rests her chin in her hand, “You’ve probably been itching to fly for a while, then?”
Keith snorts a laugh, “Oh, you have no idea. I’d been stuck in a quantum abyss for about a year when I fell into the rift that brought me here.”
“A quantum abyss?” Pidge asks, eyebrow raised.
“Not something I’m qualified to explain,” Keith shakes his head, “You’ll figure it out eventually.”
“Tease,” Pidge snarks.
“If you remind me when I get out of it for real, I’ll tell you all about my time there,” he offers.
“Guess that’s one way to confirm what timeline you’re in,” she smiles.
“Yeah,” Keith tilts his head back, looking up at the night sky, “You’re probably right.”
***
“We’re really gonna miss you!” Pidge’s voice is warped, as if underwater, reverberating in the black of the rift.
Keith turns away from the thread he’d been looking at, of a younger version of himself riding his hoverbike alongside Shiro in the desert. An electric green sliver flickers some distance away. He moves to it without perception of the motion, reaching to cup the writhing strand in his hands.
“Pidge…” he whispers. His Pidge. The last time he saw her.
Had he known he would end up stuck in the quantum abyss, he would have talked to her.
Being stuck in the past with mini-Pidge seems at times to be taunting him. Her, but not her, not yet. It grants him more knowledge of the Pidge he knows. The Pidge who is a liberator and a shield, so that others do not feel the loss she once did. The Pidge he thinks, maybe, he loves.
The same person, but very different.
Mini-Pidge’s raw hurt is an open wound. It consumes her now even more than it did as fledgling Paladins, with the chance to find them at her fingertips. Right now the ends of her hair are still frayed and jagged from cutting it over her bathroom sink. Sometimes, when she invites him to join her on the roof, he arrives to the sight of smeared, half dried tear stains on her cheeks, as if she’d suddenly remembered them and hastily wiped them away. He feels guilty putting another task on her shoulders, but he doesn’t have much of a choice himself.
Time in the rifts is different, anyway. If it takes a year for him to get back to the quantum abyss, then so be it. He’s not going to put any more pressure on her.
Patience yields focus.
He lets the thread go and leans back into the darkness that suspends him, settling into a sort of sleep that helps the time to pass. He can wait.
***
Pidge stares at the small, no more than an eight-year-old boy curled in on himself on the floor of her dorm room. His body is translucent, and the pattern of Lance’s rug is visible through him. He is sobbing very quietly, shivers running down his back.
She shuts the door behind her and sets the snacks she’d brought onto her desk gently.
She’d invited Keith out of the rift for company while working on homework and gotten hungry in the middle of a coding project. Rather than brave the trek across campus to the mess hall in the dreary January cold, she stepped out to grab something from the vending machine in the hallway. She wasn’t gone very long. She’s not sure how to handle it, this time.
There have been a few occasions where Keith’s appearance changes, as if the rift he’s stuck in has a glitch. He gets sent to another time, another memory, while still outside the rift, and as close as she can guess, he’s reliving those moments. Mostly he appears slightly younger, in a red leather jacket so different from his usual purple-black that it surprised her the first time—or a bit younger than that, bruised and wearing the Garrison cadet uniform. He becomes unresponsive, frozen in whatever position the memory chooses for him, usually standing with his arms crossed, or at his sides, stiff like his spine. A few times she’s seen motion; a creased brow twitching in frustration, or the rhythmic clench-and-release of his fists.
Once or twice she’s even seen him in a bright red and white suit of armor, as well as his signature purple-black. These always have combative poses that make her wonder where he is, and what he’s fighting that would put such an intense look on his face.
These alternate-Keiths last for different lengths of time, and afterwards she often asks him if he remembers any of it. His answers are a mixed bag, and it’s evident he chooses to omit some details when he does claim to remember. Once, his only response had been a single word, foreign to her ears and broken on his tongue—Naxela.
Despite all this, she’s never seen him look so young. She’s never seen so much tangible pain in one of his memories, much less heard one.
His quiet sobs are interspersed with cries for his dad.
Standing there watching him, pieces of the puzzle that is Keith fit together in her head. Her heart aches for him, and she wishes she could hug his young form and commiserate their loss together, but she fears what may happen to Keith if she did. She’d asked him about the possibility of it once and he’d warned her against it, unsure of the possible consequences himself.
So instead she sets herself down at her desk and opens up the files where she keeps all her notes on trying to get Keith back to his own time. She’d started recording readings from her receiver and another device she’d built special for the purpose of noting whatever’s happening when the rift opens and allows Keith to join her. She feeds it to a program to look for anything that might give her a clue.
It’s cruel, she thinks, for him to be stuck here with her. For her to prolong that is unfair. It’s true that she enjoys his company, and it isn’t as if she’s been intentionally putting it off to keep him around, but it would be wise to finish the job.
After all, Keith has been hinting at some major event coming up. He won’t tell her how soon, but each time is a little more frequent than the last.
She has a hunch that by tracking the path of the early messages from Keith, she might be able to reverse the rift’s connection to her time, and send him to future-Pidge’s time by tethering that end of the connection to the bond Keith told her about. She just hopes she has enough time to figure it out.
She casts a glance behind her, eyeing Keith’s small form on the floor. He doesn’t deserve to keep reliving moments like these. Donning her headphones, she delves into the program, sorting through anything and everything that might be promising. When she spots the flickering that accompanies Keith’s return to his “present” body, she takes the blanket on the back of her chair and tosses it to him.
They’d discovered sometime before winter break that if he sleeps, the rift will take him sooner. She’s not sure what the benefit is, but at the very least it seems to help when the memories get bad.
Pidge watches him fold the blanket haphazardly into a sort of pillow before settling onto the couch, as has become routine. She notes the way his shoulders curl in further, but doesn’t question him and turns back to her computer.
After some time the rift comes to collect and the couch is left empty, her roommates return from their trip to town, shuffling in noisily, and Pidge finds herself feeling lonelier than she has been in many months.
***
Keith stands at the edge of the Garrison rooftop overlooking the familiar rock formations silhouetted by the setting sun. It’s a privilege he’s enjoyed for the past six months. “Drink it in,” he’d told her, “you’ll miss it.”
Tonight he says something different.
Pidge dials in the right settings for her device, carefully tuning it to the correct frequency, one that time and again has proved useful in her Kerberos research. If anything will connect to the bond Keith described, it’s this. She hangs her headphones around her neck when Keith turns his back to the setting sun, hair untouched by the evening breeze.
“Are you ready?” he asks.
No, she thinks. Don’t go, she thinks. I’ll miss you, she thinks.
“I… believe so, yes. Just waiting for it to connect.”
She’s finally done it. She cracked the code on how to send Keith back to his proper time a few weeks ago, and spent all of her free time since adjusting her equipment to reverse the signal and reach through to the other end of the rift, where his original signal came from, where the bond unites them. It’s a huge achievement, yet it comes with loss.
“I’m not saying goodbye,” Keith crouches beside her, “You’ll see me again a lot sooner than you think,” he adds, looking up towards the sky. The first stars of the night are just visible, like fine glitter.
She steels herself with a breath, then gets up to move the rift device into position.
“Are you… excited?” she asks, allowing her tongue to be nervous so her hands don’t falter.
“Admittedly, no,” Keith replies, watching from where she’d left him. “The things I’m going back to… no one should have to. But it’s where I’m meant to be.”
Kneeling, Pidge taps startup codes into the device, “Meant to be, huh?”
She looks up at him, and he jerks his head in a solemn nod.
“Alright then,” she pauses, heart pounding, finger over the start button, “Are you ready?”
“Go for it,” Keith grins, rising to his feet.
She starts the device and slips her headphones back on, hurrying over to her computer to keep tabs on the rift. The air begins to crackle, and a bright white fracture of light appears in the air, little red bolts jumping around the edges. She checks the connection to the frequency once more before giving Keith the go ahead. He shoots her a smile before turning to face the rift, and walks right in.
She holds it open long enough to be sure he made it in. Long enough to be sure the connection is strong. Long enough to feel certain that it worked, before finally letting the connection drop. She cuts the power to the rift device and tucks it away in her bag, then sits herself in front of her laptop to monitor the receiver again. The sun sets, and the radio chatter picks up, more than ever before. She distracts herself from worst-case scenario thoughts by taking notes of anything she can make out from the signals.
She doesn’t hear the roof access hatch open, too focused on the garbled words talking about Voltron as the right cup of her headphones lifts away—
“You come up here to rock out?”
***
The fateful night of Shiro’s crash landing, Pidge feigns her surprise and exclaims “Who’s Keith!?” as Lance spots him in the desert, incredulous to the fact that the wayward cadet is, in fact, alive. Pretending she hadn’t been speaking with him hours earlier while technically meeting him for the first time is challenging, but Keith is reserved and a little disconnected from the rest of their generation, a trait that’s more evident now than in future-Keith. All this to say, if she’s acting strangely, he doesn’t seem to notice, and Lance and Hunk are familiar enough with her behavior by now that they don’t bat an eye.
Then Shiro wakes, their adventure begins, and she doesn’t have time to think about it much. Allura puts the team to work immediately, and it isn’t long before the Galra reach them. Pidge finds herself fighting alongside Keith as the arms of Voltron. She feels a bit more at ease revealing her true identity to the team, knowing that Keith knows—has always known. She seizes the opportunity to search for her family, takes it by the reins, and gets into a fight with him. She tries to leave, yet he helps her when she’s stuck by herself in the castleship, surrounded by hostiles.
They’re drawn into the bigger picture, the war creeps into every facet of life, and the lesser problems don’t matter so much.
From time to time she remembers some of what future-Keith told her. His once-cryptic hints make more sense as events unfold, becoming subtle clues that she uses to piece together a better understanding of everything going on. The actions of her Keith show her who he is, from his initially closed off demeanor down to how desperately he’ll run into a fight for his team.
She smiles upon emerging from a wormhole to rescue Keith and Shiro, overjoyed at the sight of their faces. Keith leaps to his feet to greet her, the relief in his face mixed with a warm smile of his own.
The revelation of Keith’s heritage creates new ground for the two of them to connect. Pidge knows the feeling of lost family all too well, commiserating with him when it becomes too much. He often joins her during her long nights spent searching, and becomes a quiet companion in a new way.
Then he leaves to join the Blades, an ironic reflection of her own actions.
“We’re really gonna miss you,” she tells him, swallowing the “I” in her heart. Pidge hugs him tight that day, hoping that it’s enough. It doesn’t feel like enough.
She befriended him all over again, despite the setbacks.
The events of Naxela call to mind a memory of an occasion when future-Keith had frozen, mind lost in another time. Adrenaline floods her veins as she runs from her Lion to call Kolivan, demanding to see Keith. Whatever happened, it’s enough to impact him in the future, which sends her metaphorically banging on his door to check on him. When she finally gets a hold of him he looks fragile and hollow, as impossible as that seems. So opposite to everything she’s come to know and love about him.
By the time she’s called away to debrief with the other Paladins, she’s managed to coax a warm smile to Keith’s face. It makes her heart flutter as she closes the lid on her laptop to go. She hopes this is what future-Keith was referring to, and that her precognition hasn’t altered events, because somewhere along the way she’s developed a crush on him. She keeps her heart and the fragmented bits of future things she knows a secret, tucked away carefully like that picture of her and Matt. It does mean she’s hiding useful information from her team, but sharing would bring questions she cannot safely answer.
So, when Allura warms to Lotor and allows him into their team, Pidge knows to trust her suspicions, and becomes wary of Lotor after watching Keith fight so hard to go after him. Perhaps it’s because Keith’s drive to keep going pairs well with her urge to protect. Together they were the arms of Voltron, and when he was the head, she was his voice of reason. She trusts his judgment more than the pretty words of a mysterious prince, and draws up her defenses accordingly.
When Keith returns, she’s ready. With the whirlwind of his arrival and the prince’s actions brought to light, Pidge jumps into action. She may not be able to bring herself to attack Shiro. She may not have made a dent in Lotor’s plan. She may not have been able to change things, regardless of what she knows. But now she turns around, meeting Keith’s gaze.
He’s here, and he knows. She can tell by the tiny little smile he sends her way as she helps him to his feet.
He’s here, older, more so than when he’d gone back in time (but so is she), with his mother (his mother!), a wolf, and a strange new Altean. The attack from
Lotor’s escape leaves the smell of burnt metal in the air, and Keith sags against her for support. Now is far from the right time to have a heart-to-heart. Down one Paladin with a new threat over their heads, a hug between them is a silent agreement to revisit at a later time.
That day comes in the aftermath of Keith’s fight with the clone. Pidge slips away to the Black Lion, a meager first aid kit in her hands to dress the wound on Keith’s face. She finds him standing near the chair of the cockpit, looking through the Lion’s eyes at Allura tending to Shiro’s body below.
“I’m not here to make you talk,” she starts, announcing her presence, “but if you need to, I’ll listen.”
He turns to face her slowly, one hand lingering on the back of the chair. There’s a distance in his gaze that’s reminiscent of the hollowness she’d seen in him once before, but it fades a little when he sees her, a ghost of a smile on his lips.
She smiles and waggles the kit in her hands cheerfully, “Let’s get you fixed up, hm?”
“Sounds good,” Keith’s voice is a little hoarse, but carries a warmth she hasn’t heard in a while. She grins and drags him to sit down so she can tend to his face.
“We had to grab what we could from the castle, so this might sting,” she warns, unscrewing the lid from a small jar. Gingerly, she dabs the paste along his cheek, careful to keep her touch light and her attention focused on the task and not his eyes, which follow her hands as she works. He hisses through his teeth at the sting, but endures until she covers it with a bandage. She smooths out the adhesive with her fingers, and he catches her hand as she pulls away. She stills.
“I do want to talk,” Keith says, meeting her gaze with clarity in his eyes. Resolve. “Just… not about this,” he gestures to his face with his free hand, “is that okay?”
Pidge stares at their hands and swallows thickly. She wraps her fingers around his palm, “…this?”
Keith nods.
“Yes.”
“First,” Keith takes a breath, releasing her hand from his grip, “that was… real, right? Everything with the time rifts?”
“Every bit of it. I wondered that myself, for a while,” she admits, “but all the clues lined up, everything made sense. It had to be real.”
A sigh of relief escapes him, and his shoulders drop their stiffness, “I spent another year in the rift with my mother before we found a way out. And then with everything that’s happened… I’m sorry we haven’t had the chance to talk sooner.”
“We’ve all been busy, I don’t blame you.”
“Yes, but… all that time I couldn’t get you out of my head. The you I’d come to know through Voltron, before I went through the rift. I’d developed a crush on you before I ever left for the Blade, and then being so far apart and unable to tell you ached. I can only guess that’s why the rift brought me to you, but it made the whole experience very strange. You were Pidge, but not my Pidge. It was like seeing a memory. Surreal.”
“I think I understand,” Pidge nods. “Meeting you for the second time was different. Future-you was a mystery, barely tangible, but getting to know you for real, from the beginning... it felt right. Before I knew it I had a crush on you, too,” she finishes, a blush coloring her cheeks.
“I’ve missed you,” Keith whispers.
“Me too.”
“I’m sorry we couldn’t talk sooner. I know it was torture for me,” he adds, getting to his feet.
Pidge huffs a laugh, “Tell me about it.” She smiles, looking up at his face, so transformed from how he looked when she arrived with the first aid kit. A lopsided smile so he doesn’t pull at the bandages she so diligently applied, and eyes so much brighter. She wraps her arms around him and buries her face in his chest.
“I think I love you,” she mumbles into his shirt as he returns the hug.
“Beat me to the punch,” Keith murmurs, pressing a kiss to her hair.