Chapter Text
When they returned to the castle, the air was stale between them. Thace had given them each their stuffed lions to return to Lance. They were such small things, with their mismatched swatches of fabric and uneven stitching and threadbare patches. Hard to believe such small things had almost killed them ten times over.
(Something? No, someone.)
Pidge was clutching the green lion too tightly, twisting its arm and letting it go. Hunk’s fingers were kneading into the yellow lion's belly while Coran was lightly tugging at his lion’s mustache. Shiro thumbed over the puncture wound in the black lion’s heart. They had asked about it when they first saw a bit of fluff spilling out of the lion’s chest, asked if this blue paladin had some sort of aggression towards the black.
Thace had told them Zarkon left that mark when Lance told him Shiro was the black paladin.
The realization still buzzed in Keith’s head. Lance must have been within reaching distance of Zarkon. So close to their enemy, so close to the one responsible for the death encroaching upon the universe.
In some ways, he understood. They had left Lance, abandoned him. Keith understood resentment.
It did not feel like resentment.
Thace had said that Lance didn’t understand right and wrong the way the rest of them did, but Keith looked down at the angry red lion in his hands and wondered how someone could pour so much into these representations of the paladins only to sell them out again and again. If Lance felt any kind of connection to them, why would he betray them like that?
He tried to swallow the feelings crawling up his throat, the anger and frustration, the confusion and unease. He glanced at the other paladins again but no one was there to meet his eyes. He couldn’t get a read on them. Not even Shiro.
X
The Blue Lion’s shields were up when they entered the hanger. Allura swallowed. “The Blue Lion is protecting him. I don’t think it trusts us.” A trace of a scowl marred her face. “How absurd. I doubt he even knows how to operate the Blue Lion, so he’s hardly safer cooped up in—”
“Allura,” Shiro chastised gently. “Remember what Thace told us.”
Pidge finished, “Wait for him to come to us.” She nodded, but Keith watched as she twisted the green lion’s arm again, hands as jerky as when she typed on her keyboard.
“So we’re just going to wait here? Hang around until he dignifies us with his presence and then what? A debriefing meeting?” Keith scoffed.
“He was a war prisoner, Keith—” Shiro began.
“And we’re all soldiers! We were putting our lives on the line while he got a bed to sleep in and food to eat, and at what price? Telling them whatever they wanted while he daydreamed the days away? Give me a break. He didn’t even— His family was safe, he got to talk to them everyday while we were being hunted across the galaxy. While he hunted us across the galaxy.”
“You don’t understand what—” growled Shiro.
“I don’t understand? I don’t understand? Where’s my dad, Shiro?” Keith knew it was too far, dug too deep. It hurt too much. But he had kept his mouth shut while Thace told them about Lance and he thought he could hold it in, but he couldn’t. He couldn't, not while they stared at the Blue Lion’s barrier put in place to protect Lance from them. Who needed to be protected from who?
Shiro blinked at him, startled. “I— I don’t know—”
“No, no, you don’t, because he’s gone!” Keith felt his composure leaving him as his tone slipped into juvenile, like just another petty whining teenager. He heard the telltale tremor in his voice. Quiznak, he knew he was losing it. “Because Zarkon knew I was the red paladin and he came for my dad. He—he had stayed on Earth so it was easier me and mom to escape. And in his last message to us, he told us the Galra were coming for him, that somehow they knew who he was. But really, they didn’t know, did they? Lance knew, and Lance told them, sent them, and Lance was probably having more sweet dreams while they dragged my dad away.” Keith was breathing hard, his whole chest tight as he stared down Shiro.
“Jesus…” Hunk whispered. His eyes were closed.
“He didn’t know,” Pidge whispered but she didn’t sound sure. “Right? If—if he had known, he wouldn’t have—”
“It doesn’t matter if he didn’t know, he still—”
“Keith.” Allura’s hands were twitching at her sides. “I need you to understand something. This is about more than just you. It’s about more than any of us. It’s about the whole universe. It doesn’t matter what Lance did or why he did it. He’s the blue paladin. The Blue Lion answers to him. We need the Blue Lion. We need Voltron. So if you have to mourn in private, that’s fine. But while we’re acting as a team, you need to forget all the pain Lance might have caused you. I don’t care how deep it hurt you, how personal it was. It doesn’t matter. Making sure we can fight Zarkon is the only thing that matters. Do you understand?”
All the other paladins stared at Allura. Hunk tried to damage control, waving his hands and asking, “Allura, that’s—that’s kind of heartless, don’t you think?” But Keith understood. He could see it in Allura’s eyes. Grow up.
So he swallowed the ache back down his throat and wiped the heartbreak from his face. “No, she’s right. I’ll handle it.”
“Good. And I expect that from all of you. Voltron comes first, your individual needs come second. Right now that means making sure Lance can fight as the blue paladin.”
Shiro’s brow furrowed, displeased with this turn of events, but he didn’t say anything to contradict Allura. They all grew quiet. Shiro’s gaze drifted away from the group, and he stepped up to the glowing barrier. Delicately, he brushed a finger over the curve of blue.
And just like that, the shield fell away.
The hatch opened, and if Keith squinted, he could make out the vague shape of someone with a hand held to their ear as if talking into a comm.
X
“You’re not here.” Lance peered out at the paladins, keeping his body shrouded in shadow. He shrunk further back into the darkness.
“No, I’m not.” Thace sounded worried. Angry? No, worried, Lance was almost certain. “I had thought you didn’t want me there when you met them for the first time. I will come—”
“No.” Lance’s eyes widened. He interrupted, he interrupted someone— No, it’s okay. Thace told him it’s okay. He just needed to finish what he wanted to say. “I—I thought it would be— I thought they would like it more if I was alone. But I think they’re angry.”’
“Did they hurt you?” Thace’s voice hardened. “Stay in your lion. I’ll come to get you.”
There was rustling in the background, buzzing static. Lance raised his voice to make sure he was heard, and he felt the scratch in his throat that never quite healed, not after the Blue Lion spoke through him, not after that month of— “You shouldn’t come. Not yet. They didn’t hurt me. I did bad things so they’re mad—”
“It wasn’t your fault, Lance,” Thace cut in, and Lance felt his knees lock against desire to kneel. Thace said he shouldn't kneel anymore, even if he knew he did something wrong. Kneeling was bad, being bad was okay.
“Sorry,” slipped out.
“Lance, nothing that happened to you was your fault. You don’t have to apologize.”
“Okay.” His voice dropped in volume again, so low that he thought the comm might not have picked up the sound. Apologizing was bad, kneeling was bad, being bad was okay.
“Do you want me to come get you?” There was a pause in Thace’s movement, silence on the other side of the speaker.
“No.” Lance tried to control the breath shaking in his lungs. His fingertips skimmed over different textures in an effort to distract himself, buttons and levers and rivets and the tiny blue lion sitting on the pilot’s chair. “This is where I’m supposed to be. That’s… That’s why all of this happened. Because I was supposed to be here.”
“You don't have to stay for them. For anyone. What do you want to do?”
Lance echoed Allura's words, feeling them bubble up his throat as he was conditioned to let them. “This is about more than just me. It’s about more than any of us. It’s about the whole universe.”
“You don't owe this universe anything.”
Lance closed his eyes, bringing the heel of his palm up to rub at his temple. “She expects that from all of us.”
“She? You mean Princess Allura?” A trace of worry infected Thace’s voice.
“I'll handle it.” The Blue Lion whined like it wanted him to stop, but Lance couldn't keep the words from crawling out of his throat. His intonation was off, repressed and angry and not his.
“Lance, are those your words?” Lance shook his head. He tried to speak, Thace liked it when he spoke, but he felt the lash of a whip between every knob of his spine and he was not allowed to speak, he was not allowed to speak. If he were allowed to make a sound, a whimper would have escaped him.
“It’s okay, Lance,” Thace soothed. “It’s alright. No one’s mad. No one’s going to hurt you. You can speak. You don’t have to do that anymore. You can use your own words.”
“...hurts to use my own words.” Lance’s teeth dug into his knuckles.
“No one will hurt you. I promise.” Something in Thace’s voice cracked. “I won’t let anyone hurt you again.”
The Blue Lion rumbled around him. Impressions of protection and safety flitted along the borders of his mind. Outside the window, Lance saw the shield pulse.
“I…” His murmur was near silent, but it was his voice, no one else’s. “I want to meet them.”
“Okay,” Thace breathed.
Outside, the black paladin’s hand traced the shield. Lance nodded and the Blue Lion let the defense dissolve into light.
“They know about you. I told them about you on our ship.”
The Blue Lion’s hatch slid open. “I know,” Lance whispered.
X
The big things were different. The paladins were, of course, not small lions. They didn’t have paws or fur or skin in shades of red and green and blue. Their limbs weren’t sewn together; their veins weren’t filled with white fluff. They weren’t covered in Lance’s fingerprints, imbued with his ragged breaths, marked with crescent nail indents, like the stuffed lions were.
Still, Lance recognized them.
The small things were the same. The crease of an easy smile on the yellow paladin’s face. The discolored scar over the black paladin's nose. The green paladin's glasses, so much bigger than her eyes, so similar to the ones threaded into the green lion's fur. The angry downwards tilt of the red paladin’s eyebrows.
They were familiar in ways Lance didn’t want to think about. He had some of their mannerisms, habits he’d picked up and lost. Twitching fingers like the green paladin. Nervous hair-fiddling like the red paladin. The same gnaw of constant hunger as the yellow paladin. He shared scars with the black paladin, but those weren’t the remnants of channeling. Quirks that he had thought were his but were never his.
He recognized all the parts that made up their voices, intonation and tone, the deep breathes and latent pauses, words that became fragmented or got rushed. He knew their voices as well he knew his own voice. Better than he knew his own voice.
The paladins each holding their own little lion helped Lance weave all the details together. It was easy for him to associate different voices and habits to lions, and then lions to paladins. Thace had probably done that on purpose.
Seeing them face to face was harder than Lance had thought it would be. He had dreamed of them as humans, but their features had been hazy and their forms insubstantial. Their words had been garbled and soft no matter how they yelled, their eyes unfocused and distant. They had never seen him once in all those years.
They saw him now.
X
He was much smaller than Keith thought he would be. The way he stepped spoke of dance, the delicate footfalls and the silent movement of limbs. It spoke of dance or, Keith realized, it spoke of fear, like the retreating treads of prey. The boy clung to a stuffed animal. It looked childish in the jaws of that great Blue Lion, its threads a weak substitute for ropes of steel. But there was something about the eyes of this small lion and this monstrous one that were similar, a hint of mercy and kindness that his lion never had. No, it was nothing like the predatory glint in the Red Lion’s retinas, nothing like the vengeful spirit swelling in his chest.
Keith held the tiny red lion Lance had sewn so long ago. The angry tilt of the eyebrows and the faithful dagger stitched unmoving to his lion’s paw had not escaped him. He thought Lance must know precisely how he felt, even if Keith couldn't say the same about the other boy.
Lance stopped before them. There was a peculiar mournfulness behind the eyes that stared back at the paladins. It was the same kind of ache that was etched into Shiro’s face.
“Hello. I’m…Lance.” The rasp of Lance’s voice made a few of the paladins wince. Lance seemed to notice, and his gaze darted to the floor. “I wanted… I wanted to meet you. I… The Blue Lion… We have been connected. We are connected. And I… I know you from my dreams… The lions I made…” His eyes flicked up. “You… you helped me survive when I was…when I was with Zarkon. Thank you.”
In the pause of following silence, Lance bit his lip and shrunk back from them. He threw a furtive look back at the Blue Lion, who purred encouragingly.
Allura stepped forward. Lance hesitated before taking her outstretched hand. “It’s good to have you on team Voltron, Lance. We’re glad you were able to find us.” Keith held back a scoff. As if Lance hadn’t been able to find them. “I look forward to working with you as the Blue Paladin.”
Shiro approached next, a soft smile on his face. His palms were open and facing up, a gesture Keith had used himself to seem unthreatening when he was trying to soothe Shiro from a panic attack. “Thank you for coming to us,” he said. “We all want to help you heal and recover. If you ever need anything, know you can come to any of us. You’re part of the team now.”
Hunk began with a fist bump which Lance stared at for a beat too long before he gently brought up his hand to meet Hunk’s. “Welcome to the team.” Hunk smiled broadly.
Pidge raised her eyebrows at Keith before going up to Lance next, her handshake quick and firm. “You’re very brave,” was all she said.
And then it was only Keith left. He swallowed his pride, his hurt, his fear that they were letting in someone who would betray them, someone who didn’t understand that war was a killer, and what was done could not be undone. He steeled his heart and repeated, “Welcome to the team.”
(He did not shake Lance’s hand.)