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Khhrtzz… tkzzh… kkkzztk… krr-lp uszzzzkt!

“Quiznak.”

Pidge pushed the hair out of her eyes aggressively and adjusted her spectacles, determination etched into the furrowed line of her brow. She gave the dial on the holo in front of her another minute adjustment and held her breath, nodding to Coran to try again.

Khhrtzz… temkztztkh… zh… help us! Plezzzzzzkt!

“It is a distress signal,” Coran cheered. “Well spotted, Number FIve.”

The praise was ignored in favor of more adjustments. Pidge had already guessed it was a distress signal; she needed a location. She took a moment to analyse the frequencies and the distortion still present. It was a chaotic soup of static, but somewhere beneath it was someone in trouble. 

Absently, Pidge noticed that Coran was messaging the other paladins, but she didn’t let it distract her. A few more micro-adjustments of the frequencies helped a bit, but it wasn’t enough. She pulled up a few comm filters on her wrist device and selected a few. Once she copied the files to the UI at her console, she layered the filters and tweaked the output levels in conjunction with the frequency outputs. Nearly… there…

The door to the bridge swished open, and Shiro strode in, along with Hunk, Keith, and Allura. 

“What do you have?”

We tho-hhtzttz… temple of hrrttzzkk… zkktkhhh… rrrr dying! Khhh-on, help us! Pleaszzzzt! 

“What temple?” Allura asked as she stepped up to her console. “Do we have a location?”

“Almost,” Pidge confirmed. She had half of the coordinates, but that was still a lot of space. “Hunk, I’m gonna try to track the incoming signal. I need you to boost the Castle’s receiver by… 23%”

Hunk was already in his chair and moving through his own screens before she’d finished. 

“Anything we can do?” Shiro’s hand gripped the back of her chair tightly, betraying his otherwise calm demeanor. 

Pidge glanced briefly at him and Keith, who both watched her intently. “Find Lance and suit up. We should have a location in a couple doboshes.” 

They nodded and withdrew from the bridge, leaving Pidge to focus on her own job. With Hunk’s improvements to the receiver underway, she crunched the numbers based on what she had and tried to narrow it down to a sector. Thankfully, Hunk was as good at on-the-fly mechanical manipulation as he was with food, and the boosted receiver gave Pidge enough data to finish her calculations. 

With a triumphant cry, she sent the coordinates to Coran and Allura before she and Hunk threw themselves into the access shoots that launched them into the hangar bay and their Lions. 

Green roared to life as Pidge settled into the cockpit and heard the answering call from Red across the hangar. She pulled up the vidcom and shot Keith a grin as he appeared.

“Did you get more than the location?” 

Pidge shook her head. “Not much. Distress calls don’t tend to be descriptive, and that one was badly scrambled.”

“We’ll figure it out.” Shiro’s face appeared as he settled behind Black’s controls, closely followed by Lance and Hunk in their Lions. “Once the wormhole is open, Pidge will scout ahead, cloaked, to make sure there’s no immediate danger.”

Once Shiro had everyone’s clear affirmative, he led the way out of the hangar. They sat in mounting anticipation, waiting for the wormhole to appear against the vast blackness of space. Going in blind was no one’s idea of a good time, but rescue missions were Voltron’s bread and butter. They’d be fine, so long as they worked together. 

The wormhole yawned before them, a swirling blue and purple mathematical wonder. “Alright, Paladins. The coordinates are for the Zagre System, the fourth planet out. Good luck.”

“On your go, Pidge,” Shiro ordered.

Cloak on, Pidge sailed through the wormhole. The system on the other side seemed quiet, but that could be deceptive. The Galra weren’t subtle by any means, but they weren’t the only possible threat in the universe. Pidge ran a few scans and completed an orbital flyby of the fourth planet and its moons to be safe, but she didn’t detect any hostile ships or satellites. The planet, itself, had more than a few major cities based on the energy readings, but she was able to triangulate the distress signal’s origin easily from orbit. It was still distorted, but they could get more information from the locals.

Confident there were no surprises waiting, she sent the go signal to the other lions and decloaked. 

Despite the large city located close to the signal, there was a wide swath of undeveloped land between the city and a nearby ruin where they could settle down without crushing anything. A quick scan pointed to the ruin as the source of the signal but showed no discernible life signs.

“Looks like we missed the excitement. By about a century or two,” Lance pointed out, looking at the ruin in disappointment.

Pidge frowned. The signal was degraded, true, and age could account for that, but there was something about the ruins that bothered her.

“So we leave?” Hunk sounded unsure he was onboard with his own statement. 

Pidge shook her head distractedly, scanning the ruins with everything she had and running comparisons with what Green had picked up on their recon flyby. Something was off… something… 

“We should still check.” 

“Maybe talk to the townsfolk,” Shiro suggested. “See if they know what happened.”

Pidge’s fingers flew over the UI as she went through her readings. The town’s buildings were all old. Very old. Likely built around the same time as the ruins, but kept in better condition. It was odd… there didn’t seem to be any new architecture despite the size of the city.

“Something has Pidgeon’s attention.” Lance’s hip bumped her, and she spared a moment to glare at him. “What is it, Lassie? Timmy’s bones down the barren well?”

“I will electrocute you,” she threatened calmly, otherwise ignoring him in favor of addressing Shiro. “There’s something weird going on. The temple looks abandoned but I’m still getting active readings from it, and the town looks like it was built at the same time. Exclusively. There’s been no development here for centuries.”

“More than the distress signal?” Keith asked.

Pidge nodded. “I’m getting that too, but there’s something else. I think whatever caused the degradation in the message is still active.”

“You think it’s worth taking a look?” Shiro crossed his arms, giving the ruins a speculative once-over. “Probably dangerous, considering the distress call.”

“Maybe whatever happened is done?” Hunk proposed hopefully. 

“Guess we’ll find out.” Shiro strode toward the temple, and the paladins followed easily. 

There were several signs posted along the path up to the ruined temple, but they were in an alien language Pidge didn’t immediately recognize. At a guess, they were probably warnings. Whether that was ‘no trespassing’ or ‘death to all ye who enter’ was unknown. Could be both for all she knew.

She scanned what they found and started an algorithm to translate. No doubt, they’d find more writings closer to the temple and inside. 

Other than the warning signs, the temple itself looked unobtrusive. It was a large pyramid or ziggurat maybe. Impressive in its size, but overgrown with vegetation that had started to eat through the stone facing. 

Thankfully, there was a door at the ground level that opened as they approached. 

“Huh, still has enough power to sense our presence,” Pidge remarked. 

“Or someone’s home.” Keith had his bayard out in a flash. 

Following Keith’s lead, they all drew their bayards and proceeded with caution. Eyes on her scanner, Pidge noticed a spike in energy output as they crossed the threshold. Before she could guess why, the door slammed shut behind them, plunging them into darkness. 

“Quiznak!” Lance shouted. 

They all turned on their helmet lights. The immediate area was much cleaner than the outside appearance of the temple would have suggested. Dust-covered rock-facing gave way to clean lines and smooth metal. It was something she would have expected to see aboard a ship or in a lab, not an abandoned temple. 

“Something isn’t right,” she murmured. 

Whatever the others may have said was lost in a sudden, cacophonous growl. It was almost animalistic, and someone not as familiar with the noise of gears and machines as Pidge might have believed it to be a beast, but she doubted it would be anything so straight forward. Regardless, the paladins formed a ring, back to back, bayards out to get eyes on incoming threats. Shoulders tense, eyes peeled, their stances made instinctual through countless battles. 

They were not so familiar with their enemy.

The only warning they had was a slight shift beneath their feet before the floor was simply no longer there. Hunk, Lance, and Pidge screamed in surprise, but still managed to activate their jump jets in time to fly a few feet away to safety.

Looking over the edge of the pit, Pidge winced at the viciously sharp spikes and the bodies that weren’t as lucky as they were waiting for them at the bottom. At a glance, she could see several different species, and some of them were nothing more than skeletons, they’d been there so long.

“A trap,” Keith spat. 

Shiro checked each of them quickly. “Everyone okay?” 

Other than a racing heart, Pidge was uninjured. She gave Shiro a thumbs up when he looked her way as she came down from the adrenaline. 

Hunk grimaced at the trap, paling a little under his helmet. “Should we leave?” 

“ Can we leave?” Lance dubiously eyed the door, now across the expanse of the pit trap.

Pidge considered the door. She hadn’t had the chance to look at it before they’d nearly dropped to their deaths, so she wasn’t sure if it would be an easy escape route. The lack of a floor definitely made the prospect precarious, but she could probably still try. 

She looked up at the surrounding architecture. If she could find a decent support, it might not be too hard to use her bayard to suspend herself while examining door. The room lacked conveniently-placed support beams, but she could probably wedge the blade at the joint of wall and ceiling. It would last long enough to get a look, anyway.

“Let me get a look. Hold on.” Pidge fired her bayard before the others could object. She gave it a couple experimental tugs to make sure it was secure, then swung her way to the door, bracing her feet against the wall to take at least a little of her weight off her bayard. She appreciated the calls for her to be careful, but tuned them out so she could focus on the door. 

There was no lock or handle, no keypad, and no control panel to give her something to hack into. The only thing she found was more writing in that alien language. She scanned it to add to the algorithm, but otherwise moved on. The door was still visible, at least—she could see the outline—not that she could really do anything with that. The line was too fine to try to get a grip, and wedging something like Keith’s knife in it would probably only result in frustration and a broken blade. She retracted the wire a bit to move up toward the top of the door, looking for a catch or some hint of how the door worked.

Abruptly, the small blade of her bayard pulled free from the wall, and she was once again falling. The way she’d braced against the door meant her center of gravity was not in her favor, and she fell head first toward the spikes.

Pidge had all of a moment to panic before a force slammed into her from her left and sent her flying onto solid ground. She landed in a tangle of limbs with her rescuer. 

“Nice catch,” she huffed.

Shiro chuckled and disentangled himself before helping her to her feet. “You gotta be more careful.”

“Did you even learn anything that could get us out of here?” Lance questioned.

“No. Not yet. Maybe the translation will come back with something, but that could take a while,” Pidge admitted. 

“So, do we stay put and wait then?” Hunk edged just a little further away from the pit.

Shiro sighed. “How long do you think the translation will take?”

Pidge shook her head. “I don’t think I have enough for it to work at all. Besides, the source of my readings is still further in.”

“You still want to find whatever it is?” Lance demanded, incredulous.

“Of course,” she frowned. “This place is… more than it should be. It looks like it’s way more advanced than the rest of the planet would have suggested, and it’s old , like… this is what they accomplished hundreds of years ago. If we could find them now , find who made this place hundreds of years after they did all this? It could help in the war against the Galra.”

“If they’re even still alive,” Lance objected. “Or maybe they don’t want to be found. That wasn’t a welcome mat we stepped on.”

“If it was really about keeping people out or keeping them away, why close the door behind us?” she countered. “Wouldn’t it make more sense to keep the door open so whoever survived that trap could leave?”

“They could just be vindictive,” Keith grunted.

“Enough,” Shiro called for peace. “Regardless of why, we are trapped here. We need to find a way out and if that isn’t here, we have to keep looking. We’ll move carefully, keep sharp, and watch out for each other.”

They didn’t look happy about it, but no one objected to his logic.

From the entrance, there was only one path forward. The hallway was lined with more alien text on the walls, and Pidge scanned everything to add it to the algorithm, but for now, she couldn’t make heads or tails of it. Eyes on her wrist computer as she scanned, Pidge caught the next power fluctuation and shouted an alarm.

The gas that pumped into the hallway obscured their vision, but according to Pidge’s readings, it would have been far worse had they not all been wearing their helmets. “It’s poison. Our suits are keeping us safe, but this would be pretty nasty if we weren’t wearing them.”

They kept moving, a bit slower due to visibility, but by the time Shiro found the door at the end of the hall, the gas had mostly dissipated. 

The next room was large and open, which did not make Pidge feel at ease. The enormous pillars didn’t help either. Almost perfectly square at the bottom, they went up about seven feet before the shape of the pillar began to change. Each pillar—Pidge counted nine of them—was topped with the depiction of an alien with their hands up and heads thrown back. It was the first look they’d had at what the aliens who built the temple probably looked like. With their round bodies, short arms, vaguely animalistic facial structure, they seemed like chubby anthropomorphic rodents to her. 

“They look… kinda cute,” Hunk said, and silently Pidge agreed. 

Upon closer inspection, each pillar held more writing, which Pidge added to the algorithm. With this much reference material, she might actually be able to get a working translation. 

Everyone breathed a little easier once they were on to the next room without encountering another trap, but it was a short lived moment. 

A signal surge preceded the next six traps, giving them just enough warning to duck, dodge, and jump over various murderous obstacles, mostly without injury. Hunk and Shiro both acquired bruises when their height put them closer to falling stones that tried to bury them; Keith got a cut on his shoulder protecting Pidge from a swinging blade trap, but so far Lance and Pidge remained unharmed. 

Given they'd been avoiding trap after trap for nearly three vargas, though, Pidge would say that wasn’t a bad record. Despite some very close calls, they were still alive; most of the traps had clearly claimed victims from other adventurers, after all.

Everyone was tired and frustrated by the time they reached what Pidge believed was the source of the signal. It was in a room by itself. No writings like the ones they’d found in every room up to this point. No markings that indicated how it worked or what it did. She supposed it controlled the whole ziggurat like the computer aboard the Castle of Lions. 

Well, if it was a computer, she could interface with it. She had a basic translation from the algorithm, probably only good enough for simple functions, so it would be a bit like a toddler talking to someone about quantum physics, but she had to do something. Besides, this was the last room. No offshoots, no doors unexplored, it had all been one path leading here, and there was no other door that she could see.

The weight of getting them all out of here settled on Pidge’s shoulders as she approached the device. It was more of the same clean lines and smooth metal they’d seen everywhere, but there was also a glass tube atop the base. Inside were many floating, shifting, amorphous blobs of some substance she couldn’t immediately identify. She wondered at their purpose, but hooked herself into the main console. She was ready to be away from this place.

As soon as she was plugged in, the console emitted a surge of power, and Pidge shouted a warning to the others, but couldn’t tear her eyes away from the objects within the tube. They’d moved together to form a twisting, continuous loop and were pulsing with power. 

“What–”

“Pidge!” 

At Lance’s cry, she turned away from the machine just in time to see Lance tackle her to the ground, knocking the breath from her lungs as they hit the ground. She shook her head to clear the stars from her vision and forced air through her protesting lungs. Ugh, that hurt.

She looked up to see Lance’s face through their helmets. He looked like he was in pain too, but he was grinning.

“Gotta…  look out… Katie.” He sounded strained, but he was still smiling.

Pidge frowned at him. He never called her Katie. For all she knew, he didn’t even know Pidge wasn’t her real name. She was about to shove him off and berate him for giving her a concussion, but as she moved, pain shot up from her shoulder and Lance keened in pain.

Surprised, she looked up at him and was about to ask what was wrong when she saw it. 

Blood. 

She could see it at the corner of his mouth. Worry replaced agitation and she started to try to get out from beneath him so she could get a look at the damage. 

Strong hands kept her firmly in place. “Don’t. Move,” Shiro ordered, though she could tell he was trying very hard not to, he was crying. Shiro was crying .

Then she could hear the others. Hunk was just a continuous stream of “No” and “Lance” and tears, and Keith was trying to remain stoic, but she still caught his curses through the helmet mic. 

“Lance, how are you feeling?” Shiro kept his hands firmly on Pidge’s shoulders to keep her from jostling Lance.

“Not–” He coughed and Pidge cried out in shock as blood splattered the inside of his helmet. “Not great. Is it…” He took a shuddering breath. “How bad is it… in her?”

In her? Carefully, Pidge reached up to where the pain was the worst and felt a metal rod piercing her shoulder, just an inch or so under Shiro’s hand. Now that she’d found it, she could feel the throbbing pain that told her she’d been stabbed. She didn’t feel like anything was broken though, so it missed her collarbone and scapula, if just barely. 

With growing dread, she followed the intrusion up from her shoulder to where it came out of Lance. More specifically, out of chest. As she touched his armor, she sobbed when her fingers slipped through Lance’s blood and she felt the tenuous beat of his heart.

“Lance…” She could do nothing but gasp his name as the full situation slowly revealed itself to her.

“It’s got her pinned to the floor, ” Shiro assessed. “But it didn’t hit anything vital.” 

“Good.” Lance shuddered out a wet cough, and Pidge hated that all she could see was the blood covering the faceplate of his helmet.

Keith knelt next to her and she turned to him, pleading with her eyes. He had to help somehow. He was the strategist; he had to have a plan.

“We have to get them to the Castle, get them in the healing pods,” he said, and Pidge wanted to scream. That was a goal, not a plan!

“I don’t–” Lance gasped. For five agonizing ticks all they heard was wet coughing and ragged breathing before he got enough air back to continue. “I’m not going to make it to the Castle.”

“No!” Pidge cried. “Don’t talk like that. Don’t give up!”

The silence from the others was shattering. Why weren’t they backing her up? She craned her head back as far as she could to look at Shiro—surely Shiro would be telling Lance to knock it off with the quitter talk—but the tears pouring down his face were very telling. 

“Pidgeon…” she turned to Lance again but she couldn’t see him through the blood absolutely covering the inside of his helmet. “I’m sorry… for everything I sh-should apologize for, but not f-for this. You ha-have more to offer the universe than I do. This. Me for you. Worth it, okay? Wor-worth it.”

She couldn’t stop her tears even if she wanted to. She made an effort to keep the wracking sobs in so she didn’t jostle him, but she could feel them building. 

“Lance… Please…” Pidge reached for his mask. She couldn’t look at the bloody glass any more. 

He turned his head as soon as her fingers started working, keeping her from her goal. “Shiro. Cut her loose. Don’t… make her watch.”

The hands on her shoulders were replaced by Keith’s as Shiro stood. She wanted to struggle but the idea of hurting Lance even more kept her in place. To her side, Hunk took Keith’s original place, and he immediately took Lance’s hand. Pidge heard the beginnings of Hunk telling Lance goodbye before her helmet was removed. Keith set his own helmet next to hers before returning his hands to her shoulders, effectively giving Hunk and Lance privacy for their farewell. 

“Don’t look, okay?” Keith seemed to be the most composed of them all at the moment. A part of her, a petty and angry voice, wanted to shake him and yell and tear into him for his apparent apathy, wanted to make him hurt the way she did.

But he wasn’t unaffected. She saw the sheen of unshed tears in his violet eyes, she felt the trembling in his hands as they held her down, she heard the quiver in his voice. He was just as upset as the rest of them, and she was ashamed of herself for thinking otherwise. He was her friend, her partner arm of Voltron, she knew him better than that.

“Tell Shiro to stop,” she begged quietly. “If we move him now, it could kill him.”

Keith put his forehead against her own, the fringe of his hair blocked out the rest of the room so it seemed like it was just the two of them. He slowly moved his head and she didn’t know if he was shaking his head no or if he was just… nuzzling, for want of a better word. 

“He’s going to die; we can’t stop that.” Keith’s voice hitched a bit, but he soldiered on. “The trap has you pinned. We have to cut you loose or we will lose you both.”

“I’m going to cut these others first to give us some more room.” She heard the hum of Shiro’s arm as he heated the metal to melt through the trap. He went through three rods that she could hear before kneeling by Pidge on her other side.

Keith moved just enough that she could see past the fringe of his hair. Shiro had a hand on Lance’s shoulder and his helmet pressed to the other paladin’s. His helmet was still on, but the breather was retracted, so she could see his lips move, but he was too quiet for her to pick up without the comm in her helmet. When he was done talking to Lance, he turned to the rest of them. 

“I’m going to cut through the rod between them first. Hunk, you and I are going to keep Lance in place as best we can while I cut the main piece. Once I’m through, we’ll set Lance to the side so we can get Pidge out of the floor. Everyone ready?”

“No!” Pidge shouted. They were going to kill him! 

Lance nodded though, so Shiro continued. He braced himself so his shoulder was pressed against Lance’s chest as best as he could. Keith moved again, blocking her view once more and he whispered encouragement and apologies to her as Shiro severed the rod connecting her to Lance. Pidge found Lance’s hand and gripped it tightly in one of her own as Shiro shifted to the next step. She took comfort in his returned grip, as weak as it was. 

Once the last rod was cut, Shiro and Hunk began to lift Lance out of the way. His hand in hers spasmed tightly for a moment as the pain no doubt tore through him then went completely slack.

“No.” Pidge clutched his hand. “No, no, no Lance, please wake up!”

“Katie…” Hunk placed his hand over hers and Lance’s. “He’s gone.”

The heaving, torrential sobs that she’d been holding back crashed through her frame and she screamed her loss and failure to the cosmos. Her friend, one of the first real friends in her entire life, her fellow paladin, her brother in all but blood, was dead. 

And she hadn’t gotten to say goodbye.

The pain of being lifted free of the rod pinning her to the ground choked the scream off in an involuntary gasp. 

“We have to stop the bleeding. I’m really sorry about this,” Shiro apologized to her, but before she could ask what he meant, she caught sight of the device that started this whole damned nightmare. 

The ring inside the glass was pulsing faster and faster, sending wave after wave along its length and in a flash of comprehension, she recognized what it was. 

A breath later, Shiro’s heated metal hand pressed against her shoulder, cauterizing the wound.

The world went white and she knew no more.

When Pidge regained consciousness, she immediately knew that something was very, very wrong.

Instead of the chilled glass of a healing pod, or the clean white walls of the medbay in the Castle of Lions, or even the inside of Green, Pidge saw the smooth gray metal walls of the interior of the ziggurat.

And she was standing, bayard in her clean, non-bloody hand.

“Quiznak!” 

Pidge’s heart clenched and she shut her eyes. She was hallucinating or dreaming or… something. That voice, Lance’s voice , was impossible. He was dead.

Wasn’t he?

She turned to Lance and found him already looking at her with something very close to terror in his eyes. But she could see his eyes. His helmet wasn’t coated in his blood, he didn’t have a metal rod through his chest, and he was very much alive .

“Lance…” She reached for him, afraid he wasn’t real.

Lance grabbed her hand and pulled her into a bone-crushing hug.

The other paladins were looking at the two of them like they’d gone completely crazy, which didn’t make any sense to her. Lance was alive. They should be as ecstatic as she was, but instead they just looked confused. 

“You’re okay, I’m… not dead. Okay. What—?”

Before Lance could finish his question, the loud growling of machinery echoed through the halls, Pidge and Lance shot each other a look, and then shouted together, “Move!”

The paladins were definitely confused, but they listened to the panicked order and followed Lance and Pidge as they jumped clear of the trapped floor moments before it would have dropped them into the pit of spikes.

“What—?”

“How did you two know—?”

“What is happening?” Lance flailed, eyes wide in panic. 

“I don’t… “ Pidge shook her head and then remembered. The device! Just before she’d lost consciousness, she’d seen it. “A mobius loop…”

“Pidge?” Shiro looked between her and Lance. “What’s going on?”

“Time travel. It sent us back, but why… here?” Pidge frowned.

“What are you talking about? We just got here?” Hunk said. “I think we’d remember if we’d been here before.”

“Hunk, bud, come on. You telling me you don’t remember?” Lance squawked. “I died! We had a heartfelt goodbye! You really don’t remember any of it?”

Wide eyed, Hunk shook his head. “No, I think I would definitely remember you dying. Also. You’re not… ya know. Dead.”

“I got better. Apparently,” he huffed. 

He wasn’t the only one either. The cut on Keith’s shoulder was gone, and Pidge definitely didn’t have a metal rod in her shoulder. She wasn’t even sore. It was like it had never happened. 

“Shiro, Keith? Come on, you guys gotta remember. It was tragic!”

Pidge hit him for that, but neither Shiro nor Keith admitted to having any idea what he was talking about. 

“Why do none of them remember?” Lance asked, rubbing his shoulder where she’d punched him.

She shook her head. “I don’t know, but I think we should take the opportunity to get the hell out of here while we still can.”

“The door closed behind us,” Keith reminded her. “Do you think you can hack it?”

“I couldn’t last time,” she admitted. Of course, she’d been interrupted by falling before, so maybe this time she could. If she could avoid falling again, she might be able to figure out the door. “Maybe if we can get the floor back? Or find some way for me to safely stand…”

She and Hunk inspected the mechanism. When Pidge pulled up her computer, she noticed a couple things. First, her translation algorithm was still running with all the progress it had made before, and second, the clock was wrong. Instead of showing the time it would have been at the start of their exploration, it reflected the time it should have been if they hadn’t just gone back in time. 

“That’s weird.” She showed Hunk her computer, but his computer’s clock was correct. He shrugged, stumped.

Curious, Pidge went to Lance and looked at his clock. It matched Hunk’s. She wondered if being connected to the device caused her computer to remember like she did, but she didn’t like that Lance’s clock didn’t.

Ignoring it for now, Pidge and Hunk spent the next fifteen doboshes trying to figure out the floor mechanism while Shiro grilled Lance on what had happened before they’d been sent back. She only half listened as Lance described their first trip through the ziggurat to the other paladins. 

“So,” Hunk hedged, continuing to help Pidge try to get the floor to reappear. “Sounds like you, uh, had a pretty bad time.”

Pidge scoffed. “That’s putting it mildly.”

“Sorry, yeah.” Hunk frowned, but he pressed on. “Any idea what sent you back?”

She sighed heavily. “I think it was the device that runs this place. When we found it, I activated it, and it showed me a mobius loop just before I passed out and wound up back here.”

“Oh.” He nodded along, then asked, “What’s a mobius loop?”

At the question, and the fuller realization of the situation, Pidge couldn’t stop the sharp laugh that forced its way out of her chest. In a way, if she ignored everything else about what had happened, this should be one of the greatest moments of her life. She’d actually traveled through time! The events leading up to it were horrific, but the scientist in her… was practically bouncing in wonder at the prospect of doing the impossible. Lance was alive. She told herself that she could afford to look at the good. She could put aside the trauma and enjoy the marvel. 

“Here, let me borrow your headband, and I’ll show you.”  

Curious, Hunk removed his helmet, pulled his ever-present headband off, and handed it over. Pidge smiled as Hunk fought to keep his hair out of his face. Pidge untied the knot with only a little difficulty. Once done, she held the two ends together with her fingers so it formed a complete circle and held it up for Hunk and the others to see.

“This represents a normal loop. It has two sides. In and out, yes? If you run your finger over one side, you stay on that side. Now, watch.” She separated the two ends and gave one a single twist before reconnecting them. “Now you have a mobius loop, a pathway with only one side. Start on the outside and by time your finger gets back to the starting point, you’re on the inside. Complete the loop again and you’re back on the outside.” She handed Hunk his headband back, having completed her demonstration. 

While he tied it around his head, she concluded her explanation. “The interesting thing about mobius loops is that they function outside of normal euclidean space, and there’s been a few theories in the scientific community that believe they’re the key to time travel. If we can master a method of navigation that allows us to bend or ignore linear travel the way a mobius loop does, we could—theoretically—go in any direction, including backwards or forwards in time.”

“And you think whoever built this place managed to do that?’ Shiro asked.

Pidge shrugged and gestured to the area around them. “I don’t really see another explanation. I know that we’ve done this before. We went through this ziggurat, avoiding more traps and near death experiences than I really want to think about, until we got to the end and found a mobius loop just before coming back here. I don’t know why only Lance and I remember, or why it happened at all, but I’m good with not finding out as long as it means we all get to leave here alive.”

“Okay,” Shiro stated. “If you say we’ve gone back in time, I believe you. You both certainly sound like you’ve been through something awful. Let’s figure out a way out of here.”

Pidge and Hunk worked tirelessly on the mechanism, but after a couple vargas, they had to admit defeat. There was no getting the floor back. If Pidge wanted to get a look at the door, she’d have to do something else. 

“Could we just… blast it open? And then use the jets to cross?” Hunk suggested. 

Pidge doubted the door would be susceptible to that, but maybe with enough concentrated fire. “Worth a try.”

Ricochet was a real concern, so Pidge had the others brace behind their shields, and Hunk modified his bayard so he could mount it from his shoulder and fire from cover. Once everyone was ready, Hunk fired one shot as a test. The shot rebounded like they’d worried it might, and struck Shiro’s shield. He grunted with the impact, but the shield took most of the hit. 

Unfortunately, the door remained undamaged other than a scorch mark. 

“Well. Plan C?” Lance suggested as the ringing of the metal door being stuck faded.

“Do we have a Plan C?” Keith asked.

“Technically, that was Plan C. Plan A was what I tried the first time we came through,” Pidge commented. “Okay. Hunk can do it, Lance has done it before… Keith, how much can you modify your bayard?”

“I haven’t tried,” he confessed slowly. “Why?”

“If you can make the blade longer and wider, I could use it as a bridge and stand on the blade while I get a look at the door.” 

“That would be a stupidly long sword,” Lance remarked. “Like… three times bigger than his normal sword. That would never work as a weapon, he wouldn’t be able to lift.”

“I don’t need to lift it,” Keith reminded him.

Lance rolled his eyes. “The bayards are weapons. Smart weapons, sure, but they’re still weapons. No matter how much you want it to, it probably wouldn’t form into something you couldn’t use as a weapon.”

Before Keith could snap his rebuttal, Shiro placed a hand on his shoulder. “Lance is right. I don’t think it would work.”

“So what do we do?” Hunk asked, looking to Pidge.

Pidge crossed her arms and glared balefully at the door. They hadn’t seen any other exits on their way through the ziggurat, but they also hadn’t traveled a space equivalent to the possible volume of the temple, even accounting for room needed to house traps within the walls. There had to be more they hadn’t seen.

She was not inclined to explore this place, though. Even the idea of getting back to the room with the computer made her stomach churn unpleasantly. 

“Maybe we can call the lions?” Keith placed a hand on the wall next to the door, a thoughtful look on his face. “They’re probably better equipped to break down this wall than we are.”

It wasn’t a bad idea actually. The lions definitely had more firepower than they did.

“Worth a try,” Pidge agreed.

Shiro gave Keith an approving nod and ordered everyone away from the wall. If the Lions did break through, they’d need to be as far from the wall itself as possible. The entrance room did not have a lot in the way of space, though. To be safe, they stepped into the hallway just beyond the entrance.

Calling to the lions could take a while sometimes and required meditation, so Pidge and the other paladins sat in an effort to get comfortable. It didn’t take long for Pidge to realize that clearing her mind to reach Green was going to be difficult. She was still reeling from what had happened only a few vargas ago, still giddy over the idea of successfully time traveling, still terrified that they’d have to make their way through all those traps again if this didn’t work. Her mind was very chaotic right now.

If it hadn’t been for the relative silence of people meditating, Pidge probably wouldn’t have heard it, but as it was, the faint hiss that began to fill the hall derailed her attempts to focus completely, and she threw her eyes open, frustrated.

That frustration was quickly replaced with a spike of fear as she noticed the hall filling with gas as it had before. Then she relaxed. They’d all been fine last time this happened, the gas made ineffectual due to their helmets.

A cough to her left made Pidge’s fear skyrocket back up as she remembered Hunk had taken his helmet off when she’d asked for his headband! Whipping her head around, she saw Hunk begin to crumple in on himself as he coughed and wheezed, inhaling more and more gas as he tried to breathe.

“Hunk!” Pidge cried out, snapping everyone else out of their meditative states.

“The gas! I completely forgot!” Lance clutched Hunk and pulled him up. Shiro helped him, taking Hunk’s other arm and slinging it over his shoulder. Together they dragged Hunk out of the hallway, back into the entrance room.

“Set him down over there,” Keith pointed to the far end of the room and raced for Hunk’s helmet. 

Pidge followed meekly as they all tried to help, but Hunk was turning a sickly gray-green and the veins in his eyes were a stark red, nearly swallowing the white. Even when Keith jammed his helmet over his head, Hunk did not breathe any easier. 

Keith yanked Hunk’s wrist to get at his friend’s suit computer and frantically upped the oxygen output, but the yellow paladin still ineffectually choked and gasped for air. After half a dobosh, long enough to determine that Keith’s trick hadn’t worked, Lance removed Hunk’s helmet again and tossed it to the ground before sealing his mouth over his friend’s lips. He forced air into Hunk’s deprived lungs with three slow, deep breaths. It still wasn’t enough, and Pidge made note of the blue tinge around Hunk’s lips with growing dread.

Lance and Keith shouted for Hunk to keep breathing, their angry, fearful voices echoed off the walls uselessly. Finally, drained and shattered, Lance dropped his head onto Hunk’s chest and sobbed, clutching the yellow paladin’s hands with a bone crushing grip.

It was agonizing. Nothing they tried made any difference. All they could do was watch as Hunk slowly suffocated in front of them until he stilled, the fight and life completely gone from his body.

When it was over, and Lance's tears were the only noise left, Pidge came to a haunting realization.

“I did this,” she whispered. 

The others turned to her, objections flying from their lips, but she brushed them aside. 

“I asked him to take his helmet off. I should have remembered the gas in the hallway. I’m the one who decided to come to this death trap,” Pidge intoned, weary and heartsick. Watching two of her friends die, time travel or no… she was aching .

“Pidge…” Shiro placed his hands on her shoulders. “You can’t blame yourself.”

She took a step back, breaking his hold. “Keep your platitudes. I did this.” She lifted her eyes from Hunk briefly to look Shiro in the eye. “But I’m going to fix it.”

“The moby loop,” Lance guessed, making an effort to get himself back under control.

“It’s too dangerous—”

She cut him off. “I don’t care how dangerous it is, Shiro! I killed Hunk! I have to undo it, and the computer at the center of this ziggurat will let me do that, so I’m going whether you agree or not.”

“Let us come with you.” Keith stepped up next to her. “Don’t go alone.”

“And if you die on the way there?” she snapped.

He just shrugged. “As long as you make it, then it won’t matter. We’ll make sure you get there, then you can get all of us out.”

She wanted to rage at him, wanted to scream that she didn’t want to watch anyone else die—especially not protecting her—but he wasn’t wrong. He was a damn level-headed strategist, and she knew he was right, even if she hated he was so willing to sacrifice everything to achieve the goal.

“Right.” She took a steadying breath, then another. When she opened her eyes, three sets of tear-red but determined eyes were on her, waiting. “Right, here’s what to expect—”

Then everything went white.

Being across the room from one breath to the next was not supposed to happen without movement of some kind. Pidge’s brain took half a tick to reorient itself.

“Quiznak!”

She felt her heart skip a beat. That was Lance’s call again, and she was… yes she was back at the door, just after it had slammed shut behind them, but before the floor had dropped. 

Time had reset. But she hadn’t done anything to the computer, hadn’t even reached it. 

Frantically, she turned and—yes! Hunk stood just to her right like he had both times before. This time though, she saw him looking around with wide, panicked eyes, taking huge heaving breaths like he’d just run a marathon.

“What’s up with you, bud?” Lance pat Hunk’s shoulder. “It was just the door closing.”

“No– what? No! I was… do you not remember? Pidge! I’m not crazy, right? I was dead! Like really, actually dead… right?”

Lance scoffed and leaned casually against Hunk’s shoulder. “Please, Hunk. You’re totally fine.”

“He’s not fine,” Pidge snapped. Why was Lance acting like nothing had happened? “You’re not crazy Hunk; you were d—–” A loud groaning grind interrupted her attempt to reassure Hunk, and Pidge cursed herself quietly. “Move!” 

They were a bit slower than last time, but nothing the jets couldn’t compensate for. Once they were all safely on the floor again, Pidge fell to her knees. Heaving frustrated breaths, she groaned and slammed her fist in the ground. What was going on?!

Concerned, Shiro guided her up with gentle hands on her shoulders. “Pidge, what—”

Pidge roughly pulled herself from his grip once again. She couldn’t take his comfort, not right then. The guilt and fear and failure still threatened to claw its way out of her throat and she didn’t know if it would emerge as tears or a scream. Best to keep it behind her teeth for now. 

“What happened?” Keith demanded.

Pidge forced herself to refocus her mind and think .

They hadn’t just time traveled, she concluded; they were stuck in a time loop! One completely out of her control, it seemed. The ziggurat’s computer had initiated it both times so it made sense only the computer could stop it, which meant they were going to have to get to it. She looked at her computer. Algorithm, check. Clock off, check. She did some quick math, and to be sure, she compared her clock to Hunk’s since he’d wandered over.

Three vargas and three doboshes.

She set a countdown on her clock and turned to the others who were looking at her with curiosity and concern. For the moment, she ignored them and turned to Hunk. 

“You’re not crazy,” she told him again, and gave him a hug. “I’m so sorry. I should have remembered the gas.”

He hugged her back. “Can’t be mad, you’re the reason I’m alive too.”

She shook her head. “It wasn’t me.”

“What is going on?” Lance shouted. “Why are you two all…. Weepy and huggy?”

“You don’t remember?” Pidge asked, frowning. 

Lance flailed in confusion. “What? What am I supposed to have remembered?”

“But… He remembered last time.” Hunk turned to Pidge.

“I know…” Pidge had a horrible, sinking feeling and started running through the facts. It didn’t take her long to piece the most likely cause together.

“Pidge, Hunk. What has you two so tense?” Shiro asked, much calmer than Keith or Lance had, but she could see that he was worried.

Taking a step back from Hunk, she turned to Shiro and the others. “We’re caught in a time loop.”

“I’m sorry, what? That’s impossible,” Lance objected, crossing his arms, defiant. “Time travel is impossible science-fiction nonsense. Even you aren’t smart enough to invent a time machine.”

“I didn’t. Whoever built this place did, and it’s not impossible, just… really hard, but it is happening.”

“The Mobius Loop, right? They found a way to manipulate travel like you did with my headband,” Hunk said.

The others looked more confused at that, but Pidge did not feel the need to go through it again. “Look, I know it’s hard to swallow, but trust me. We are stuck repeating the same three-ish vargas again and again until I can get to the computer again to turn it off.”

“Why do only you and Hunk remember?” Keith asked.

“Last time it was Pidge and Lance.” Hunk shrugged, unsure.

“I think I would remember if I had traveled in time,” Lance objected hotly.

Pidge shook her head, unable to muster even a shred of levity. “You can’t reset a brain that isn’t active.”

“What the quiznak is that supposed to mean?!” Lance shot back.

“The first time we made our way through this ziggurat, you died.” She ignored the cracking in her voice and powered on. “Then when time reset, you were alive and remembered what had happened. Then Hunk died, and time reset again, and he’s alive and remembers, but you don’t.” Pidge’s frustration and anger grew as she explained. “When you die, there’s no more brain activity. A dead brain is like a dead computer. There’s nothing to reset, so when you come back at the start of the loop, you still have the memories from before.”

This whole situation was fucked up.

“Does… does that mean you’ve died every time?” Hunk asked, voice tight with concern.

“No. I haven’t died, but I activated the device. My computer remembers everything too, look.” She showed them how her clock was off, and the progress her translation algorithm had made. “It was plugged into the device when time reset, and it hasn’t reset like yours have. Just like my memory hasn’t reset.”

“So, we have to get to the device at the center of the ziggurat to turn off the loop,” Shiro surmised. 

“Without dying,” Hunk added.

“Easier said than done.” Pidge squeezed the side of her helmet, wishing briefly that she could rub her temples. She could feel a headache coming. “Ok, follow my lead, do as I say—without argument—and we’ll get through this.”

The paladins nodded, and she checked her timer. Hopefully with advanced knowledge of what was ahead, they could get to the center with enough time for her to figure out the controls to turn the damn thing off, otherwise…

Pidge didn’t want to think about it.

“Gas chamber in the hallway. Keep your helmets on and we’ll be fine.” Pidge said and started forward. 

They were a few steps into the hallway before the gas appeared, just like she’d expected, but something… was off. Before, the gas had been an opaque white, like a heavy fog, but this time the gas was bright green. It threw Pidge off enough that she didn’t immediately notice the burning.

Shouts of pain from her fellow paladins drew her attention away from the color to focus on the fact it was eating their suits ! 

“Acid! Move!” Shiro shouted from the lead and set an accelerated pace through the hallway. 

By the time they’d made it through the hallway, they all had patches on their suits that were damaged or outright gone. Those patches that revealed skin showed angry red burns that lingered even after they exited the chamber. At Hunk’s insistence, they emptied their canteens over the aggravated skin to cleanse the remaining acid away. 

Pidge followed his order mechanically, but her mind was reeling. 

What had just happened? That wasn’t the same gas that she’d seen previously. If time was looping, everything should be the same! She glanced at her computer again. It wasn’t resetting like the others’ because it had been connected to the device—her running theory anyway. What if… She looked to the metal walls again with new focus. Lines so clean, so smooth. She’d thought the inside of the ziggurat looked too advanced… What if… 

“Pidge!” Keith’s shout snapped her back to her friends. They were all looking at her with varying degrees of concern and agitation. 

“Back with us?” Lance demanded. At her nod, he exploded, “What the hell was that!? You said we’d be fine!” 

“It changed!” she shouted back.

Shiro placed one hand on each of their shoulders, putting a firm end to the brewing argument. “Pidge, I don’t understand. You said time was looping. Shouldn’t everything stay the same?”

“Yes, but…” Pidge looked at her computer again. “I think it’s like my computer. It hasn’t reset. It’s still working on the translation algorithm I started on our first trip through. The time is accurate based on how long we’ve actually been here…” She trailed off, biting worriedly at her lower lip as the weight of their situation sank down heavy on her shoulders.

“What’s going on, Pidge?” Keith asked. Pidge knew from the tone of his voice he could tell she was working through the problem. Thankfully, he waited for her to give him the factors rather than try to rush her.

“I think the whole ziggurat is connected to the device the same way my computer was,” Pidge admitted.

They looked at her blankly for a moment before Hunk tentatively asked, “So… what does that mean for us?”

“It means any of the traps could be different than I expect them to be. We’ll be going in practically blind again and again until a pattern emerges or I figure out how to turn it off.” 

“And every time the loop resets, you’ll have to bring us all up to speed.” Shiro added with a heavy sigh. 

“Unless we die.” Keith shrugged, nonchalant despite the morbid assessment.

“I’d like to avoid that if we can.” Shiro gave Keith an unimpressed look. “We don’t know for sure how long the time loop will go on, we shouldn’t get careless and assume dying means we’ll wake up again.”

“Yeah, besides, remembering your own death is not fun.” Hunk swallowed thickly, looking a little green.

Pidge did not want to see anyone else die. Even knowing the high probability they’d wake up when time reset, it still wasn’t something she wanted to go through. 

“We’ll be careful,” Shiro decided, turning to Pidge. He looked her in the eye and gave her an encouraging nod. “We’ll follow your lead.”

“No pressure,” Pidge huffed. Still, they wouldn’t get anywhere just standing around. She checked her timer and then led on, hoping she could end this before she was forced to watch anyone else die.

Her timer reached zero before they were halfway there. As her vision faded to white, she sighed. Her cautiousness had been her downfall. They weren’t getting anywhere like this. At least no one had died this time.

Loop 5

She started tracking the number of loops when it became clear she wasn’t getting anywhere near the kind of progress she hoped for. She took notes as she explained the situation to the others at the start of each loop: which traps had changed, which arguments and explanations worked better, how far they’d gotten. 

She hesitated at first, but eventually forced herself to document how often the others died as well. Who knew what kind of side effects repeatedly dying could have on the body and mind, even if they didn’t seem injured… better safe than sorry.

Lance 1, Hunk 1, Keith 1 

Loop 10

Pidge hadn’t slept yet. Thirty vargas of looped time, and she hadn’t slept, which wasn’t her record by any means, but she also wasn’t tired . The exhaustion she expected to feel after so long awake was missing, and her body didn’t feel like it was going through sleep deprivation.

She supposed that was a good thing, though. She didn’t want to know what kind of effect this whole staying-awake-thing was going to have on her psychologically, especially compounded with witnessing her friends die. There were only so many vargas the brain was meant to stay active before it needed a break. Even her brain.

Maybe especially her brain.

Lance 2, Hunk 1, Keith 2

Loop 15

Pidge needed to get out of here. She was ready to try to break down the wall again. After sitting and meditating for over a varga in the hallway—no acid this time thankfully—without any luck with reaching the lions, Pidge decided it was futile. For all she knew, they were completely out of sync with the rest of the universe, cut off from anyone and everyone, until they broke the damn loop. 

Safely getting to the device in the center was proving exceedingly difficult within their timeframe, nevermind finding a way to shut it off, and they definitely weren’t getting there in the time they had left this loop. 

Time for drastic measures. 

Determined, she stormed back into the entrance, the others following her cautiously. 

“If we can’t get to the door, we’ll make our own,” Pidge growled. “Our first trip through, Shiro was able to cut through spikes that had me and Lance pinned. The wall is probably made of similar stuff.”

“Worth a try,” Shiro agreed, heating his artificial hand and stepping up to the wall between them and the outside.

He got maybe an inch into the wall before there was an shower of fried circuitry and Shiro seized. When he fell, Pidge knew he was dead before Keith confirmed it with a hoarse cry of objection.

Hands clenched in angry fists, Pidge punched the wall as she screamed her own frustration and grief. “Fuck!” 

There was no escape, no way out but through.

Lance 2, Hunk 1, Keith 2, Shiro 1

Loop 18

She discovered a pattern in the traps for the first two rooms.

“There is a pattern! If I can figure out the rest of the traps, too, we can breeze through this nightmare in no time!” Pidge bounced happily, a huge weight off her chest.

“That’s great. How many other traps are there?” Lance leaned against one of the pillars as he caught his breath. Sprinting through the acid trap in the hallway was the only way to keep the damage to their suits and themselves to a minimum.

“There were nine rooms with traps, and if it follows the same pattern as the first two rooms, each room has two trap variations. It’s just going to be a matter of determining each room’s pattern,” Pidge deduced. 

“Oh, is that all?” Lance grumbled under his breath.

Undeterred, Pidge led them through the next room. They normally made it to this room as well as the first two traps were not hard to dodge. Knowing there was a pattern was a relief and put a bounce in her step. Maybe they could get out of here before she went completely insane after all.

Lance 3; Hunk 1; Keith 2; Shiro 1

Loop 24

Pidge hated this room. She’d hated it the first time, and she hated it more and more every time she had to make her way through it. If it weren’t for this room, getting through this damn ziggurat would be so much faster.

Tiles on the floor attached to sensors released jets of searing flame or caustic acid, depending on which version of the trap they were on. There was one safe path through, but the path was also different depending on which version of the trap they were on. 

Flying over it was out because the sensors were too sensitive. That had been how Keith had died the first time. It was easier to dodge the jets of fire and acid from the ground, so they walked it. 

Learning the trap’s pattern on top of the safe path for each… 

Pidge hated this room. A lot.

Lance 4, Hunk 2, Keith 2, Shiro 1

Loop 40

“ What is the point of this ?! ” Pidge raged at the pillars. Once cute, now the images of the creators who built this hellscape invoked only anger and fear and grief and she’d had enough .

“Why build a trapped temple that throws people into a time loop? Why set off trap after trap after trap! What sick game are you playing?! Is it for your own sadistic pleasure? Are you watching? Are you happy?! 

“There has to be a reason, right?” Her voice broke and her throat burned from screaming and crying, but she didn’t care. “You’re guarding something? Is it a test? If I turn off the loop will I pass, or is the loop the punishment for failure?

“How many times am I supposed to watch them die?” she sobbed.

The silence that echoed through the room offered no answers. Pidge hadn’t expected one, but the blood on her hands clamored relentlessly in her head. 

As she stood, she braced herself against the pillar and ignored the crimson stain left on the metal as she walked away. 

Lance 7, Hunk 4, Keith 9, Shiro 4

Loop 56

Pidge jetted away from the floor trap before Lance even finished his startled cry of ‘Quiznak.’

The others followed her, some curious, some confused, but none of them stopped her as she settled into a seated position against the wall. 

“Pidge?” Shiro reached out to her, but withdrew his hand as the grinding gears of the ziggurat made all of them jump in surprise.

All but Pidge.

“The floor in front of the door’s gone!” Hunk called.

“Yup.” When they all turned to her again, she shook her head. The stress of so much failure was starting to get to her. Reaching the last room only to have time reach zero or to have already lost someone, watching them die… She needed a break. “I’m taking this loop off. Anyone got a deck of cards?”

Lance 10, Hunk 5, Keith 11, Shiro 6

Loop 71

The fight with the mechanical beast never went the same way twice and it was pissing Pidge off. The machine was connected to the computer, same as the rest of the ziggurat, which meant it remembered every time it faced the paladins in previous loops. It learned how they moved, how they fought, and it was damn hard to take down. 

They never got through this fight without injury of some kind, and someone had died of those injuries more than once. 

She supposed it was really only a matter of time before something like this happened. Honestly, it was a little surprising it hadn’t happened sooner.

That last hit from the mech had connected with the small of her back and sent her flying. She knew the damage as soon as she landed, watching her leg break on impact and yet unable to feel the pain. Her upper body hurt like a bitch and her back was on fire, but her legs were completely numb.

She’d never make it through the trap in the final room like this.

“Pidge!” Keith and Hunk were the first to her side.

“We were making such good time too,” she complained through gritted teeth. 

“Don’t move,” Hunk ordered, hands hovering over her, trying to decide what to do first.

Pidge batted his hands away gently. There was nothing he could do. “I’m not going anywhere like this. I can’t feel my legs, and everything else hurts.”

“If we can get to the computer, turn off the loop, and get her to the Castle of Lions, a healing pod should heal her. Right?” Hunk asked.

“Easier said than done,” Keith murmured, but he started trying to find the best way to hoist her up.

“Stop!” she gasped out around the pain. Immediately, Keith stopped trying to move her, though neither he nor Hunk were pleased. “That isn’t going to work. We don’t know how to turn off the loop.”

“What do you need us to do?” Keith asked.

She was in so much pain, it was hard to concentrate. The timer on her computer still showed a varga and a half before time was going to reset. She was never going to make it to the computer like this, and even if she somehow did, she didn’t have faith she could find how to turn it off before time reset.

“I need…” Her eyes fell to Keith and she knew what she needed to happen. “Keith, I need your knife, and a really big favor.”

He had his knife out in a flash. “What do I do with it?”

“Kill me.”

Lance and Shiro joined them finally, and all four paladins cried out their refusals.

“Enough!” she shouted and then fought to get her breath back as the pain stole what she had away. Eventually, she was able to plead, “My spine is broken. I can’t walk, and you can’t carry me through the last trap. I’m in so much pain it’s hard to see straight, and the loop isn’t going to reset for another 87 dobashes. Please , kill me so the loop will reset now and we can try again.”

“You don’t know the loop will reset,” Shiro refuted. “Your mind is linked to the computer, if you die—”

“Wouldn’t be the first time.” Pidge cut him off. It was a lie, of course, but he didn’t know that. She was in too much pain, she’d been awake for too long, and her patience was spent; she didn’t want to argue about this.

Either time would reset and she could try again, or it wouldn’t and her friends would be free and she could fucking rest . 

“Sh-shiro. I have spent the last nine quintants repeating the same three vargas over and over and over again. I’ve seen each of you die, horrifically and repeatedly. The loop will reset.” She forced her hand up to wrap around Keith’s where he clutched the knife and looked him in the eye. “I’m begging you, please. Trust me .”

No one moved until, finally, Keith gave her the smallest nod, took a shuddering breath, and plunged his knife into her heart.

Lance 16, Hunk 5, Keith 16, Shiro 9, Pidge 1

Loop 81

Pidge believed she finally had the whole pattern memorized. Each of the nine traps had only two variations, and after jumping, dodging, running, fighting, and even occasionally swimming her way through them, she was confident she knew exactly which life-threatening contraption she’s going to see in the next room. 

Successfully memorizing the pattern had reduced the frequency of injuries and no one had died recently. Pidge breathed a sigh of relief as she once again successfully got all five paladins to the final room.

Not that she’d been able to turn the damn thing off. 

The translation algorithm was almost finished. One or two more loops and she expected to have a workable lexicon, but for now, she plugged away at the ziggurat’s computer and hoped to find an obvious off button. 

Lance 18, Hunk 5, Keith 16, Shiro 10, Pidge 1

Loop 85

The translation was finally done. She’d spent the last two loops just reading everything she’d scanned on her way through the ziggurat. A lot of it was a warning about the time loop masquerading as mysticism and spiritualism and challenges of faith. 

If she understood it all correctly, the acolytes of the temple were scientists and the ziggurat was their lab. They kept the so-called unworthy out by trapping the place to oblivion. It explained the size of the ziggurat, at least. There was more to it, if she could get past the time loop.

Honestly, at this point, she didn’t care. The damn acolytes could keep their secrets. She just wanted to get her boys out.

Turning the loop off was more than just entering a sequence in the computer, as she’d first assumed. The section in question detailed something called the “Trial of Nine” used to ‘appease the gods’ and reach enlightenment. Considering the context of the rest of the translated text, she figured the Trial of Nine was the way to turn off the loop and access the rest of the lab. 

“Would anyone object if we blew this place up on our way out?” Pidge muttered, only half joking. 

“No destroying ancient temples.” Shiro gave her a disapproving frown.

She shrugged. He might change his mind once they’d actually gotten out. 

It would not be easy.

Lance 18, Hunk 5, Keith 16, Shiro 10, Pidge 1

Loop 88

Timing was going to be everything. 

The Trial of Nine required—as the name implied—nine people, so they were four short, but Pidge still believed it would be possible. They just had to be quick. 

The idea was simple in theory. Each paladin would take two rooms. The shutdown command words were hidden in the text etched into the walls of each room and had to be hit in a specific order. Once the first eight commands were done, the final input would be from the computer itself. 

That one would be Pidge’s job.

Explaining the plan took much longer than Pidge was comfortable with, but she had faith it could still work. Pidge drilled the sequence into their heads and sent each of them an image of the text they would need to hit just in case, which silenced most of the grumbling. They were so close to ending this time loop crap she could taste it . She tried not to let the ever-decreasing countdown get to her as she walked the others through what they needed to do, but it was hard. Every interruption, objection, and question ate at her nerves until she was ready to electrocute them—Lance in particular. 

Getting through the traps to the final room had become fairly easy, for the most part. Some traps were time-consuming regardless of how well she’d memorized everything, but there was no helping that. More problematic, she’d discovered, was the placement of the text in some rooms. Some traps would put the paladins in direct danger if they simply waited by the command word. They’d have to maneuver around the traps while they looked for the correct symbol and then hit it in the correct sequence. 

At this point in the pattern, the first room in the shutdown sequence was filled with rushing, frigid water that tried its best to push victims into powerful vacuum-drains. Getting caught in the vacuum was excruciatingly painful and ultimately fatal as the victim was eventually pulled through a hole only a few inches wide. Both Hunk and Shiro had fallen victim to it before and it was definitely one of the worst things Pidge had ever seen.

“This is impossible!” Lance screeched into the comm. They’d all taken up their positions, waiting for Pidge’s “Go.” The blue paladin’s room was one of the most dangerous, unfortunately, but, as the best swimmer, he was the best suited for it.

“You can do it, Lance!” Shiro encouraged, swiftly followed by Hunk and Keith’s own words of support. 

They could hear him breathing heavily as he fought the current, but eventually his hoarse cry of success came across the comms. “Got it,” he panted. “And the current’s stopped. Making my way to the next room.”

The next two commands were quick to follow, but they were running out of time. Lance had taken longer than Pidge had expected to find his command word. In her mounting anxiety, she encouraged Keith to hurry to his command word, but his room was also dangerous. The sound of crashing metal on metal could be heard over the comms as he navigated through the  mechanisms that pummeled the floor again and again. The section of wall that Keith had to get to was not safe, and he would have to repeatedly dodge as he looked for his symbol. 

Unfortunately, he wouldn’t have a lot of time to find it before the sequence reset and they’d have to start over.

The paladins waited with baited breath. When Keith shouted in pain, Pidge felt her heart drop to her stomach.

“Keith, you okay?” Shiro asked.

The red paladin grunted. “Clipped my shoulder.”

“How bad is it?” 

“Not fatal,” Keith assessed. “I can—”

A power spike on Pidge’s computer signaled the sequence reset, so she cut him off. “Reset. I’m sorry, guys. We have to try again.”

Lance groaned deeply. “Fiiiine. Shiro, Hunk let me know when you’re in position. Looks like the current’s back on. You better get it this time, Mullet, I do not want to do this a third time.”

“You wanna switch?” Keith snapped. 

“We don’t have time for this!” Pidge scolded harshly.

They grumbled apologies and gave her their ready signals. Hunk and Shiro followed suit, and then Lance dove into the rapidly moving water. He struggled, panting and straining over the comm, but he knew where to look this time. 

Pidge breathed a sigh of relief when he hit the command word in only half the time it took before. Shiro and Hunk signalled their completion in rapid succession, and then it was Keith’s turn.

“Ah!” Another cry of pain.

“Keith!?”

“I’m fine! I see it. One sec…” 

They all collectively held their breaths, but the next tick did not bring a confirmation of success. 

“Keith?” Shiro tried. 

Silence.

The sequence was about to reset again, but Pidge had a sinking feeling that it wouldn’t matter.

“Keith!” Shiro shouted, more urgently.

Silence.

“Shiro… go check.” Pidge called this attempt a wash, but if Keith was alive, they could make another attempt—assuming he wasn’t too injured.

Over the comm, they heard the sound of metal slamming into metal as Shiro made his way to Keith’s room. Compared to the clanging of the trap, Shiro’s broken sob was quiet, but it still rang in Pidge’s ears and she closed her eyes.

Dead then.

“I’m sorry Shiro,” Pidge whispered. “I swear, I’ll get it right next time.”

Lance 18, Hunk 5, Keith 17, Shiro 10, Pidge 1

Loop 89

Pidge apologized to Keith as soon as the loop reset, but he shook his head. “The plan is good; I messed up. Don’t apologize.”

“What did you mess up this time, Mullet?”

Rather than rise to the bait like he normally would, Keith just jetted away from the floor trap with a contemplative look on his face. Pidge had the others follow his lead as the grinding, growling noise began, easily keeping ahead of the first trap.

Before the others could start asking their litany of questions, Pidge held up a hand for silence and began her standard spiel to bring them up to speed.

“You have that memorized don’t you?” Keith’s lip twitched up in a grin. 

She rolled her eyes. “Only said it a few dozen times, so…” 

“Okay, okay, but time loops? ” Lance asked incredulously. “I mean… come on.”

“It’s true.” Keith leveled the other paladins with a stern glare. “I don’t know how many Pidge has gone through, but I remember the last one.”

“Why?” Hunk inquired.

“I died.” Keith frowned. “Upside, though: I remember where the damn symbol is.”

An idea sparked in Pidge’s head. It was… an awful idea. 

Even considering it made her feel like she’d maybe slipped into the realm of the desperate and crazy, but… it would definitely save time.

She turned to Keith. He was in a hot debate about their current situation with Lance while Hunk and Shiro stood back. This part of the loop was always a little different when someone else remembered too, but it took the longest whenever it was Lance or Keith, just because the two argued so much.

For once, Pidge didn’t shut them down. Instead, she thought carefully about the potential alteration to her original plan. In order to pull it off, she’d have to be quick, and having Keith on her side would definitely help. Whether or not he agreed to help was another matter. 

She would be asking a lot, after all.

It was, however, the most practical solution. Tactically speaking, it might be the only solution, and if anyone was going to see that, it would probably be Keith.

Regardless, Pidge was running out of time. Three vargas went faster than she’d like—especially since the damn exposition already ate up half a varga—so if she was going to get everything done that she needed to, she had to get started.

“Keith.” The others stopped and looked at her. “Can I have a word?”

He nodded and followed her. She switched their comms to a private channel so the others wouldn’t overhear anything.

“What’s wrong?” he asked once she gave him the okay to talk.

“The Trial of Nine is the only way to turn off the loop, but you saw how complicated it is. We only got the first three done, and, even if you hadn’t died, we were almost out of time.”

“You have an idea?” Keith guessed. “Something we can do differently?”

“By the time I’ve explained what we have to do enough times that everyone has it down, we don’t have enough time to actually do it. Between learning the plan, getting into place, finding the correct symbols, and hitting them in order within the time limit…” Pidge huffed, frustrated. “We need to cut down on time somewhere, and… I think I know how.”

“Tell me.”

“They need to know the plan from the start of the loop. If we can cut out the time loop explanation and how to break it, we can save vargas, giving us plenty of time to turn the loop off, even if we have to start over a few times.”

“To remember, we’d have to die.”

“Yes,” Pidge confirmed quietly. “Once they know the plan and we’re sure they have it, we have to kill them.”

Keith exhaled harshly and crossed his arms, considering her proposal. She let him work through the variables on his own for a bit, anxious, but confident he’d come to the same conclusion she had.

After about a dobosh of silence, he met her eyes, grim determination etched into his features. “If we do this, they may never forgive us.”

“If we don’t do this, we’ll all die here over and over and over again, and I will lose what little is left of my sanity.” Pidge fought the burning behind her eyes, clenching her teeth until they creaked. 

Keith gently took her arms and pulled her into a hug, bumping their helmets together softly. “I can do it, if you don’t think you can. Better just one of us, right?”

The self-sacrificing idiot was willing to let the others hate him if it meant she didn’t have to get her hands dirty. She should have seen that coming, and she appreciated the offer, but she would never let him do that. “No, it’s my plan, I have to take responsibility for it. Besides, you’re good, but you’re not that good.”

“Shows what you know,” he teased, standing straight again. More seriously, he asked, “Do you have a plan?”

“Sneak attack. I can disable Shiro’s arm and, without it, I can take him down. While I have him distracted, you take Hunk and Lance. If you’re fast enough, you can probably take one down before the other has a chance to stop you.”

He clenched his hands unconsciously, and a deep furrow appeared between his brows. The plan was fine in theory, but it was another thing to think of it—really think of it—in terms of their friends. In Keith’s case, Shiro might as well have been his brother, and Pidge had grown close to both Lance and Hunk from their time in the Garrison. Maybe it would be better to switch, Lance in particular would probably forgive her more easily than Keith, but she really was better equipped to take Shiro, and Keith could take Hunk and Lance simultaneously if it came down to it.

“And after… I’ll throw myself down that pit. You don’t have to do it,” Keith promised.

“That’s—Keith, none of the traps are pleasant, but that one might not kill you instantly and I won’t be able to help you end it if it doesn’t.” Pidge shuddered at the thought of watching him die slowly while she couldn’t do anything. “But if you let me do it—”

“Pidge, it’s shitty enough that we have to… do what we’re about to. You don’t need to add killing me to your conscience.”

“I proposed killing our friends. I don’t think I have a conscience left, Keith.” She felt unclean, like her soul would never wash free of the repugnant stain that this plan left behind.

“There’s a difference. It is the right call tactically; we have to do it. You don’t have to kill me, though. I can do it myself.”

“So could they! We haven’t even considered asking them. Instead of just attacking them, we could try to convince them it’s necessary—”

“I considered it,” Keith interrupted, “but it’s not an easy thing to ask. I know the loop will reset and I’ll be okay. I’ve seen it happen. They haven’t.”

“We’re paladins of Voltron. We trust each other with our lives—”

“To keep each other alive. It’s not quite the same to ask them to trust that dying means they’ll wake up,” Keith reasoned.

“You did,” she said.

Keith didn’t look surprised, necessarily. More curious and somewhat concerned. He silently asked for her to elaborate by raising a single eyebrow and cocking his head slightly to the side.

They didn’t have time for her to go into it in depth, but she told him the basics. “I got hurt. Bad but not fatal. I asked you to… and you did. You didn’t remember that time around, but you still trusted me when I said I’d wake up when the loop reset.”

Now Keith looked surprised. His eyes were wide and made a sweep over her—checking her for injuries that had long since disappeared. When he met her eyes again, the tightness at the corner of his eyes relaxed slightly, and he sighed.

There wasn’t really anything to be said about it, though. Pidge wasn’t going to force him to talk about it; it was enough that she knew he had that kind of trust in her. He hadn’t given her reason to think otherwise since almost the beginning of their time as paladins, but he’d been right. It went a level beyond simply trusting someone with your life.

“Trust me to make it quick and painless, Keith. The trap will be neither.”

Violet eyes glanced briefly to the pit by the door before landing back on her. “I do trust you. I just don’t want you to have to do more than you need to.”

“I need to make sure it’s done right. I don’t want you to remember dying in that much pain.” She begged.

He relented with a sigh and a nod. The other paladins were probably getting antsy anyway, so they had to cut their discussion short. 

“We’ll go through the plan until they have it down, and then we’ll do what we have to. Even if they spend the first varga arguing with us afterwards, it’ll still save time,” Pidge stated, and Keith nodded in agreement. 

Together, they faced the others, and Pidge switched them back to the common channel. She didn’t give them time to ask what they’d been talking about, launching straight into what they had to know for the Trial of Nine. Keeping in mind that they wouldn’t be doing anything this loop, she used her notes for what the pattern promised for the next loop to assign rooms and give tips for the traps in those rooms. With what she knew from their previous attempt, she was more accurately able to pin down how long between each command word they had to hit the next in the sequence and just how hard some of the rooms were going to be.

It was grueling, hammering the bare bones and then the finer details of the plan into all of their heads.

Hunk picked up his part fairly well, but his own anxiety got in his way. Pidge wanted him to know it well enough that there was no room for that anymore. His rooms were the easiest though, so she wasn’t overly worried. The only hiccup was that the gas-room trap would be the acid variation next loop, which meant he’d have to be a bit faster in order to stay mostly unharmed. With the sequence memorized, she had him find the command words in both the first and second rooms so that he wouldn’t have to waste time hunting them down. Once he’d found both of them, Keith worked with him on practice runs until he could go from one symbol to the next in half the time he’d actually have.

Lance, on the other hand, had the last two rooms before the computer. He needed to know how to get through all the traps safely in order to stand a chance at being whole and hale enough to turn off his assigned rooms, and it took a lot longer to get it all in his head. If that weren’t enough, his rooms were also extremely dangerous, especially in the next loop. The water trap was bad enough, but he’d also have to contend with the mech. Like the water trap, though, Lance had an advantage over the rest of them in this room as well. He was a sharpshooter, well on his way to being a sniper; if he could get in the air and out of the mech’s range, he could shoot the symbol without ever having to engage in direct combat. The downside was that he didn’t know where the correct symbol was precisely, so he’d still have to find it in the moment. Pidge would be by his side for this, since she’d have to get through the mech herself to get to the computer. If she needed to, she’d buy him time as a distraction. Once Lance also had the sequence down, he spent the rest of his time looking at the images of the rooms Pidge’s scans had taken. They weren’t great, but they were better than nothing.

Shiro was the best of the three of them, no surprise. He picked up the sequence with ease and his rooms, while dangerous, weren’t as bad as Lance’s. The swinging axes would be the worst, but Pidge had their timing down after all this time, so she went over that with him again and again. The symbol he had to hit was within range of the axe blades, so his timing would need to be exact. 

With how quickly he picked up on things, she shouldn’t have been surprised when he switched their comms to a private channel.

“How many times have you done this?” he asked quietly.

“This is only our second attempt at the Trial—”

“No, I mean, all of it. How many times have we looped?”

She didn’t answer right away, debating the merits of lying. The earnest, concerned look in his eyes convinced her to tell the truth. It wasn’t that bad of a question, after all.

“Almost ninety.” 

“And they’ve all been three vargas?” 

“Just over,” Pidge confirmed.

Shiro gave her a searching look, worried eyes bored into wary ones. “When was the last time you slept?”

Unable to stop herself, Pidge scoffed out a hollow laugh. “I died halfway through loop seventy-one. Does that count?”

“No.”

“Then I haven’t slept since we were at the Castle. Physically, we all reset every time the loop does, regardless of what condition we were in at the end of it. Death, injury, hunger, thirst, exhaustion… it all gets reset to what we were like when that door closed behind us.”

God , Pidge hadn’t slept, hadn’t eaten, hadn’t had anything to drink in over eleven quintants. Hadn’t showered, hadn’t gone to the fucking bathroom, hadn’t even taken off her paladin armor in eleven quintants . 

Suddenly, the suit was so restrictive she couldn’t breathe. Pidge fought for control of her lungs while Shiro took her hands in his much larger ones, keeping her grounded to something tangible so she couldn’t claw at her armor. Choking back a gasping sob and the tears at the corner of her eyes, she forced the panic down. 

It would be over soon, she reminded herself. Just a few more vargas and she would be away from this place and back on the Castle of Lions, where she would be free to do nothing but sleep and eat in just her skin if she felt the need. 

Once she’d regained control, Shiro gave her hands one more gentle squeeze before letting her go. “I’m sorry you had to do this alone.”

“I’m not alone,” Pidge refuted softly. “Even if you guys don’t always remember what’s happening, you’re still with me. You’ve all saved me at least once and died for your trouble. It’s not easy… but it could be worse.”

“We’re paladins of Voltron. Family. We have your back, always,” Shiro promised. 

Pidge bit the inside of her cheek to keep herself from saying anything rash. Shiro was always so earnest and wholeheartedly supportive, and she was about to take that trust and throw it in his face. It was for them all, it had to be done, but it still ached deep down in her chest. 

When she finally unclenched her jaw, Pidge steadied her breathing and said, “I know, just like I have yours. Everything that’s happened, everything that we’ve been through, everything I’ve done… it’s meaningless unless I can get you all out of here.” 

She switched their comms back to the main channel and picked up their planning before Shiro could reply. Thankfully, he took the hint that she didn’t want to talk about it.

Half a varga before reset, she was comfortable enough that they had the plan down. Hunk, Lance, and Shiro were getting impatient as well and started asking if they shouldn’t get the show on the road since they were running out of time.

Stretching as she stood, Pidge tried to act as calm as she could and subtly caught Keith’s eye. He gave her just the barest hint of a nod. He was ready.

“I’m sorry that took so long, you guys.“

Lance stood as well, groaning. “I haven’t had a cram session like that since the Garrison. My brain hurts.”

“It’s really important that you remember everything.” Pidge brought her computer up, ostensibly to check the time. In truth, she readied a program she had created even before this time loop bullshit—a just-in-case file she never wanted to have to use—and gave them all one last apologetic grimace. “Hopefully, you can forgive me once we’re out of here.”

Activating the code rendered Shiro’s artificial arm completely inert. It fell uselessly to his side, and she caught his shocked gaze with her own regretful one before he seemed to realize exactly what she had done. And why.

Rather than attempt to fight back, as she expected, Shiro let her get in close and sink her bayard into his chest. As she followed him to the floor, he used what little strength he had to put his flesh and blood arm around her shoulders and pulled her to him. 

He was too weak and she was shaking too much to stop the almost violent collision of helmets, but he gave her a strained smile through blood-stained lips as he shook his head. “Katie…”

“I’m so s-sorry, Shiro. W-we had to do this. We n-need more t-time. You all h-have to r-remember, th-this was the only w-way,” she stuttered through her tears. She had to keep her eyes on him, if she looked down and saw her bayard in his chest, she would completely break.

“Shh…” he comforted her. How could he possibly be so understanding about this?

Vaguely, she registered the sound of fighting and yelling off to her right, but she couldn’t look to see how Keith was doing.

“I get it,” he twitched a bit in pain, but continued. “I forgive you, but next time… talk to us first?”

“There won’t be a next time, I swear; this will work.” Pidge recoiled at the thought of having to do this again.

He smiled ruefully. “It had better.”

Pidge fell when Shiro finally collapsed, his sudden weight too much for her to catch in her distraught state. She crawled away slowly and finally pulled her eyes away from Shiro. Keith was making his way over to her, and knelt down, effectively blocking her line of sight to the other two behind him. 

“You hurt?” he asked.

Pidge shook her head. “He didn’t fight me.”

“Must have realized what we were doing,” he guessed. “Pidge.”

She hadn’t even noticed her eyes straying back to Shiro until Keith called her name, snapping her focus back on him.

“They’re going to be okay, remember. Half a varga and they’ll be back and yelling at us.”

“I know.” Taking a deep breath, Pidge tried to relax, but it was so, so hard to get the feeling of stabbing Shiro out of her mind. “Fuck! Even when all this is done and I can finally just sleep, I probably won’t be able to because of the nightmares.”

“Probably, yeah,” Keith agreed carefully.

When he didn’t say anything else, she gave him a sad, watery laugh. “Aren’t you supposed to say something about how it’ll get better?”

“I don’t know when or if it will get better, Pidge. Truthfully, if nightmares are the only thing you walk away from this with, I’d be really surprised.”

“Quiznak, Keith. You’re bad at this comforting thing.” 

“Sorry. I just… I don’t want to dismiss or downplay what you’ve been through. This whole thing—even what little of it I actually remember—is fucked up . It’s okay to not be okay after this, but I’ll be here to help. Maybe I should have said that first.”

“Might have helped,” Pidge admitted, too tired emotionally to put much ire behind it. 

“Sorry,” he said again.

“Don’t worry about it.” When she reached for a hand up, he obliged easily. “It’s time to finish this.”

Keith growled quietly, frustrated. He kept her hand, keeping her from walking away, but she still couldn’t bring herself to look at him. She knew he’d been trying to help, but it hadn’t really lifted her spirits. Comforting others wasn’t one of Keith’s strengths, and she knew that. He was just a little too blunt and honest for delicate social interaction, but she wasn’t stable enough mentally or emotionally to be able to appreciate that like she normally did.

Keith’s voice took on a slightly pleading tone as he tried again. “All of this… I think it would have destroyed any one of us. I’m not saying I’m glad you’ve had to go through all this—because I’m not —but I think you’re the only one of us who could have done this. You’re a pragmatist, a phenomenal genius, tenacious, resourceful, and so much stronger than you think. I rely on that—on you—almost as much as I rely on Shiro.”

Maybe he wasn’t so bad at this comfort thing. Pidge felt a little of the tension holding her shoulders release, and she gave his hand in hers a little squeeze. “Yeah, well, if I didn’t know it before this whole catastrofuck of a situation, I do now: I rely on you too, Keith. We’re a team, even within Voltron. Sword and shield, right? Thank you, though, for telling me. It means a lot to hear it.”

They dropped their hands at the same time. It was time to get on with the plan.

Keith removed his helmet and shook out his hair, exhaling in a gust. His gaze shot over to her bayard, still buried in Shiro’s chest, and he quickly looked away. Rather than let her fetch her weapon, he held out the knife he always carried—the one that had belonged to his mother—and handed it to her hilt first.

“Fastest way is the back of the neck,” he said, sinking to his knees.

Pidge took the knife and stood behind Keith. “You sure about this?”

“Make sure you get between the C1 and C2 vertebra or all you’re going to do is paralyze me.”

She nodded, though he couldn’t see it, and ran her thumb firmly over the vertebra of his neck until she found the right spot. The knife was wicked sharp, so as long as she didn’t nick the bone itself, it should be quick and painless.

As she placed the tip of the blade to his skin, he couldn’t help but tense up a little. Millennia of survival instincts aren’t easily overridden, after all, but he relaxed as her other hand found his shoulder to brace herself.

“See you in a dobosh,” he said.

Pidge forced her hands to steady—she had to be precise—took a deep breath, and slipped the blade into Keith’s neck with terrifying ease.

He collapsed immediately, but Pidge caught him and lowered him slowly to the ground. She checked his pulse and held her breath. 

Nothing.

She hadn’t missed.

Alone in a room filled with her dead team members, she crumpled over Keith’s chest and wept, releasing wracking sobs into the cold halls of the ziggurat until, at last, white consumed her vision.

Lance 19, Hunk 6, Keith 18, Shiro 11, Pidge 1

Loop 90

The first thing Pidge did once the reset had settled was put her bayard away. She had no idea if the others would try to keep fighting, but at this point, she didn’t have the will to hold her weapons against them even in self defense. 

It was painfully silent.

Resets were never silent and for a heart-stopping moment, Pidge worried that something had gone horribly wrong and the others hadn’t reset with her. Unable to quell that insidious voice, she turned to check that the others were there. 

Lance stood firmly between Hunk and Keith while the yellow paladin took a knee, braced in preparation for his bayard’s recoil and to see just enough around Lance to get an eye on the red paladin. Both had their bayards aimed at Keith, but they weren’t firing. Keith had his hands up, eyes shifting between the two of them warily. Shiro looked caught between telling the others off and confronting Pidge, but he stood in rigid silence.

She could feel the weight of unsaid words and hurt from the others. It was suffocating. She couldn’t take it anymore.

“It was my idea.”

Breaking the silence seemed to snap everyone out of their indecision. All at once, there was an eruption of words and movement. Lance actually did fire at Keith as he screamed at him for betraying and killing them, but the shots went a little wide and the red paladin dodged easily, shooting back clipped apologies as he jumped away. Hunk lowered his bayard and stood to keep Lance from firing again, dragging him from the entrance as he reminded him of the trap at their feet.

Pidge also moved away from the trap and closer to Keith, who was still eyeing the blue paladin like he expected to be attacked again. This was a more extreme reaction than she’d been expecting, and she could feel the panic beginning to claw at her throat as the others advanced on them.

Shiro sighed, and joined Lance and Hunk, his metal arm on Lance’s bayard to keep it lowered. “Give them a chance to explain.”

“It better be one hell of an explanation!” Lance seethed, glowering at Pidge and Keith, once again stepping in front of Hunk.

“You had to remember!” Pidge shouted. “We needed more time to complete the Trial of Nine, and the only way to do that was if you all knew the plan from reset.”

“So you launch a sneak attack?! Kill us without warning?” Lance wasn’t appeased, was still gripping his bayard in what was likely a white-knuckle hold. “How could you do that to us? We’re your teammates! Friends! And you literally put a knife in our backs!”

“What else were we supposed to do?” Keith demanded.

Lance shrugged off Shiro’s hold and Hunk’s protests as he aimed his bayard at Keith’s face, eyes shining behind his visor in anger and hurt. “I didn’t ask you,” he hissed slowly. Lance’s eyes were the only things that moved as he addressed Pidge. “ You. Why?”

“I told you. You had to remember. The Trial is complicated and dangerous, but it’s the only way to make all of this stop .” She felt the hitch in her breathing as she tried to make him understand. “I j-just want it all t-to st-stop.”

“So why not tell us?” Hunk asked.

“Would you have believed us?” Keith asked right back.

Lance shoved the muzzle of his bayard against Keith’s head, forcing him to look at Lance once more. Pidge moved to get between them, but Keith held her back, pushing her behind him.

“Lance, put it down,” Shiro ordered, but Lance didn’t move.  

“Look at what you’re doing, man,” Hunk tried to reason with his friend. “I get that you’re pissed, so am I, but I think you’re taking it a bit far.”

“Do you remember what his blade felt like? It went right through your neck. You died in an instant, and I couldn’t do anything.” Lance’s aim didn’t waiver, but he nervously flexed the fingers on the trigger before tightening his grip again. “Too shocked to stop him, too slow to kill him back. You went down so fast, you didn’t have to watch as these two killed everyone. Do you have any idea what it’s like to watch that and be completely powerless to stop it?!”

“Yes,” Pidge whispered, unable to make herself any louder over the knot of emotions in her throat.

Silence reigned once again as Lance, Hunk, and Shiro looked to her. Keith still couldn’t move away from Lance’s gun, but he reached out and took Pidge’s hand in support. The movement wasn’t lost on Lance, and the agitated paladin narrowed his eyes at their joined hands. 

Finally, Shiro put his hand on Lance’s arm and put more steel behind his command. “Lower your weapon, and let them explain.”

Reluctantly, Lance lowered his bayard.

“I chose not to tell you because I couldn’t risk you not believing me.” Pidge disclosed as firmly as she could. “I’m sorry, but if I told you and you resisted then there was a chance some or all of you wouldn’t remember when time reset, and then we’d have to go over all of it again. ”

“So what?” Lance asked. “Really, Pidge, what is so wrong with just trying again? It’s not like we don’t have time.”

“Because there’s only so many times I can watch you all die, completely powerless to stop it, before I decide to just let that first trap kill me instead.” 

The other paladins stared at her, shocked at her confession. Hunk and Shiro both looked ready to wrap her up in a hug and never let go, but Lance… his eyes scanned her, looking for injuries maybe, and the pinch of his brow shifted from fury to worry as his shoulders tilted just a bit more towards her. Despite his concern for her, however, he still held on to his anger. Even if it was no longer pointed at Keith, his bayard was still in his hands, and Pidge had no idea if he’d use it again.

Lance shook his head with a conflicted growl. “You two killed us—”

“To save you,” Keith snapped.

“Why should I trust you? For all I know, this is just another trap.” 

“Lance, come on.” Hunk put a hand on the blue paladin’s shoulder. “This is Pidge and Keith, man… listen to them.”

“They killed us to save us,” he scoffed. “We should have just done the Trial after we knew the plan. This was unnecessary.”

“We did try,” Keith reminded him. “It failed so we had to come up with a better plan.”

“Killing us without warning was better?” Lance shouted. ”You couldn’t have asked?”

“We had half a varga before the loop reset by the time you all had the plan memorized.” Pidge stepped in front of Keith before Lance could threaten him again. “That wasn’t enough time to attempt the Trial, but now we have almost three vargas to get it right. I’m sorry we couldn’t tell you before, but we really did do it to save you.”

Lance took a deep breath and exhaled slowly before he spoke. “I can’t believe you didn’t trust us; you didn’t even try.”

“Would you have let me do it?” she challenged him tiredly. “Really. Before this loop started, you had no proof beyond my word that you would wake up again if you died. Tell me, with absolutely no hesitation, that my say-so would have been enough to convince you—that you would have been willing to die at my request—and I will throw myself in that vat of acid and start us over so I can ask you instead.”

Lance clenched his fists. “Obviously I don’t want you to kill yourself, so why would I say that?”

“Why not? I’ll wake up and you won’t know any different, remember?” Pidge said. “We’ve got time, like you said, right? What’s another six vargas after the two-hundred-and-seventy-one straight vargas that I’ve already gone through this?”

Hunk let out a soft “Quiznak,” at her admission, and Shiro and Keith looked ready to block her path to the floor trap in front of the door if she so much as twitched in its direction.

“You can’t, can you? Even knowing from experience that the loop would reset, you still hesitate,” Pidge explained gently when Lance looked torn. “It’s not that I don’t trust you, Lance, or that I think you don’t trust me. It’s too much to ask from anyone.”

Lance sighed and finally dismissed his bayard, crossing his arms defensively. “Apparently not, considering Keith went along with it.”

“If you really want to have that discussion, can it wait until we’re back at the Castle?” Keith requested. 

Lance glowered but agreed. “Fine. Let’s get out of here.”

Shiro had them all run through the plan one more time to make sure everyone still understood it, and once they got confirmation, they moved. Hunk stayed behind, as his task was in the first two rooms, but he wished them luck as they set out.

The dead sprint through the acid mist ended with no suit ruptures, and they took a moment to catch their breath in the next room. After a stern look at both Lance and Keith to behave and his own wish for good luck, Shiro let Lance, Keith, and Pidge continue through the next two rooms. 

As they left Keith in the doorway—which was just large enough to be safe—he held Pidge’s gaze until the last moment as she was forced to turn away in order to lead Lance through the crushing pillar trap. 

Pidge knew the safe path through the pattern in the next room, and she made sure to remind Lance to walk where she did. He grunted in acknowledgement and followed her steps carefully. He was still understandably mad, but he was also listening to her instructions, which Pidge was grateful for. 

When they reached the end of the maze, they had to switch places so Lance could go through the door first. The path was too narrow to simply walk around each other, however, so she crouched down as Lance jumped over her head, stepping back into the previously occupied space. There was no safe way for Pidge to continue on her own; she’d have to wait to move forward with Lance once he’d disabled the trap. Thankfully, she’d be fine in the maze as long as she didn’t move off the safe path. 

The next room hadn’t begun to fill with rushing water yet, but it would as soon as Lance moved in an attempt to push him off the narrow walkway. Pidge had a strategy for this as well, though. Since the symbol to turn off the trap couldn’t be reached until the room was mostly submerged anyway, Lance would step in to trigger the trap and then step back into the maze room—very carefully—and wait for the water level to rise. The water would stay in the room, unable to pass through the doorway, so they’d both be safe until it was time to move. 

Once Lance gave her the signal that the water level was where he needed it, she messaged everyone. It was time to try the Trial.

“In position. Final ready checks.”

“Shiro is go.”

“I’m ready.” Hunk said.

“Keith is go.”

Lance finished his last stretch and exhaled slowly. “Ready.”

“On my mark.” Pidge set up her program to track the Trial’s progress. “Three… two… one… Mark!”

Lance dove into the water and used his boosters to combat the surging current until he could match pace on his own. It was risky to ignite the boosters under water, but short bursts were usually safe for Lance. Pidge theorized it was part of his suit since the Blue Lion’s element was water. Regardless, he still couldn’t use it exclusively. 

She could hear him breathing in exertion over the comm, but he didn’t complain like he had the first time. He was focused. 

Pidge waited anxiously for him to reach and locate the correct symbol, shoulders stiff, jaw clenched painfully. This was so incredibly dangerous, even with Lance’s affinity with water and expert swimming skills, and it was only going to get worse in the next room. 

Sooner than she expected, but later than she would have liked, Lance’s voice crackled over the comm. “Got it!”

When the current died, Pidge stood and sprinted forward through the invisible barrier keeping the water at bay and began swimming to the other side.

“Moving in,” Shiro stated on the heels of Lance’s confirmation. He had one dobosh to hit the next symbol, and Pidge counted silently. Forty-two ticks later, Shiro’s comm activated again. “Good here.”

Lance reached for her as soon as she was in range and pulled her the rest of the way to the far door. Just in case they were forced to reset, she buried her bayard into the wall next to the door to keep herself from being swept away by the sudden current. 

“Entrance room done,” Hunk announced quickly.

Pidge braced her feet against the edge of the walkway and clung to her bayard, while Lance clutched the doorframe, waiting for Keith’s signal.

The clock counted down steadily, each tick increasing Pidge’s anxiety as the timer neared zero. Finally, at fourteen ticks left, Keith shouted, “Got it!”

Pidge and Lance didn’t have time to relax or celebrate as much as they wanted to. They threw themselves into the next room and Lance took off into the air, leaving Pidge on the ground with the mech.

Sixty ticks.

She faced the intimidating machine as it surged to life and charged it with a snarling war cry, dragging its attention away from Lance. She wrapped her bayard’s line around the gun arm as she slid under its legs, forcing the arm down in time to make it miss Lance.

“Is everyone ready for their next rooms?” Pidge huffed as she played a futile tug-o-war with the mech.

“Ready,” Shiro affirmed.

Fifty ticks.

Pidge let go of her bayard rather than be sent flying as the mech yanked hard. She jumped up and kicked the thing in its exhaust vent, damaging it, before spinning away again.

“Making my way through the maze, but I can see my target,” Keith reported.

The mech grabbed for her with both hands. Pidge managed to dodge one, but the second slammed her to the ground with a pained groan.

“Pidge!” 

“I’m fine,” she growled. 

Forty ticks. 

“Are you in position?”

“Yeah, I mean. I can’t see anything through the acid death fog, but I know where I’m going,” Hunk replied. 

While Pidge struggled to her feet, the mech aimed for Lance. Pidge shouted a warning and the blue paladin managed to dodge the blast, returning fire. She reached for her bayard—thankfully within reach—and sent the small blade into the mech’s eye before retracting the line, pulling herself closer. 

With the mech distracted once more, Lance could resume his hunt for the symbol.

Thirty ticks.

Lance was still looking for his target, and Pidge’s internal clock and stamina were reaching zero far too quickly; she may have cracked a rib with that hit before.

Ignoring the pain, Pidge began to tear at the exposed wiring in the mech’s neck joint, hoping to disable something. She endured the occasional light shock, used to it after years of tinkering, but when the mech jerked suddenly, she lost her balance and fell to the ground again.

Twenty ticks.

Getting back up was hard . She had no breath in her lungs, and she was pretty sure she sprained her wrist—at least—when she landed on it. The floor vibrated with the mech’s footsteps as it came toward her, so she couldn’t just stay down. A shadow fell over her, spurring her into a desperate roll to avoid the mechanical foot as it slammed down where she used to be.

Fifteen ticks.

Pidge ignited her booster, streaking toward the closest wall. When she was close enough, she cut the boosters and pushed up off the ground with her good hand, kicking out hard, so her feet met the wall first instead of her head. Less than a heartbeat after her feet planted against the wall, she kicked off and reignited her boosters, sending her at high speed to the mech. 

She tackled it around one of its legs, unbalancing it, and taking it down in a clamorous crash. Pidge wound up pinned with the leg across her chest. It was heavy and her rib protested vehemently, but she didn’t think she’d injured herself too badly. She was, however, trapped.

Ten ticks.

“Lance!” 

“I’m looking, I’m looking!”

Nine ticks.

The mech creaked as it tried to right itself, pressing more and more against Pidge’s chest. 

“Are you sure you gave me the right symbol?”

She wheezed. “Positive.”

Eight ticks.

“It’s not on this wall, Pidge,” Lance proclaimed.

No, no, no. This couldn’t be happening. She knew it was the right symbol, it had to be there.

“Keep looking.”

Seven ticks.

“I’ve looked! It isn’t on this quiznaking wall!” 

Six ticks.

The mech didn’t bother to get up fully, electing to keep Pidge pinned as it aimed for Lance.

“No…”

Pinned to the ground, Pidge viewed the room from a new angle as she craned her neck to look at Lance, which was the only reason she saw it. More symbols. 

“Lance! It's on the ceiling!”

Five ticks.

Lance shot straight up, successfully avoiding the mech’s blast by a hair, and slammed into the ceiling. He didn’t let the collision slow him down though, and he started running his hands over the symbols quickly.

Four ticks.

The mech took aim.

“Lance!” Pidge cried in warning.

Three ticks.

“Aha!” 

The blue paladin slammed his hand down on the symbol in triumph, cut his boosters, and dropped as gravity took over and dragged him out of the way of the mech’s final blast. The damn thing collapsed, inert at last, and Pidge grunted as its weight shifted on top of her again.

“Go if you haven’t,” Lance ordered into the comms, slowing his descent at the last tick and making his way over to Pidge.

He hefted the mech’s limb up as much as he could, and it was enough for Pidge to wriggle her way free. As soon as she was on her feet, she threw her arms around Lance in a desperate hug.

“That was too close,” she whispered.

Lance returned her hug briefly, body stiff, before pulling away. “Not done yet. Come on, Pidge.”

A few ticks later, Hunk shouted his success and relief as the acid dissipated. 

Shiro was also quick, coming over the comm in less than half his allotted time. 

Just Keith left and then the computer itself. Pidge was grinding her teeth so hard she was developing a tension headache, her breaths coming in short, too-shallow huffs, but they were so close to finishing this. Only a few more ticks… a dobosh at the most… 

Pidge screamed internally, begging for Keith to hurry but also to be careful. The symbol was off the safe path, and the only way he was getting to it was by directing the jets of flame away as best he could with his shield. His status as the red paladin made him the most suited for the task—which was why she’d chosen him for it—but that only went so far. He was resistant to fire, not immune.

Lance’s hand on her shoulder actually made her jump, she was so wound up. Pidge looked up at him. He gave her a faint smile, maybe trying to reassure her, but he still looked a little uncomfortable. No one spoke, unwilling to risk distracting Keith, but she appreciated the small gesture anyway. As tense as Lance had been since the loop reset, he seemed more relaxed now. Maybe not quite normal, but getting there. She wondered what had changed. 

At fifty doboshes, Keith finally came back over the comm. “That’s it. Go!”

With one last determined smile at Lance, Pidge took off for the computer in the next room. Skidding to a halt in front of the console, her fingers flew over the holographic interface and began the final shutdown commands. She had to be fast, had to be exact. 

There was no room for mistakes in the final stretch. 

As she raced against the clock, Pidge tried to keep her mind focused. So close, almost done, just a few more ticks and she would end it, save them all, and be free from this hell.

Just one more command… 

The sharp, cold spike of reality very nearly made her hit the wrong symbol as the final trap triggered. She’d been too slow. Throbbing agony tore through her, and for a few precious ticks, all Pidge could do was try to breathe around the metal rod piercing her torso. Everything hurt, and she couldn’t look, she couldn’t… she had to finish… just one more symbol…

With all the strength in her being, she reached out, ignoring the fire sent searing through her veins with every move, and tapped the final command on the glowing interface that was starting to swim before her.

The mobius loop suspended in the glass container dissolved, scattering into tiny amorphous blobs and Pidge had one shining, euphoric moment of complete relief. All her worry, all her stress, all of the tension she’d carried for the last however many quintants finally, finally evaporated, leaving her feeling a strange kinship to the floating blobs that danced lazily in front of her.

Pidge had time for one last coherent thought as the pain became too much and the darkness consumed her.

They're finally safe… 

Lance 19, Hunk 6, Keith 18, Shiro 11, Pidge 2

White light flooded her vision, and she felt no pain.

Had she miscalculated? Did something go wrong? Why, why, why had the loop reset again?

They were supposed to be safe ; this was supposed to be over!

Pidge felt herself falling forward but she made no attempt to catch herself. It was all for naught. They’d completed the Trial of Nine! It was supposed to end the loops, set them free. If there was something else—something she’d missed—she’d gone through all of that, all the planning, all the stress, killing her friends and for what?!  

Tears poured from her closed eyes; she couldn’t open them, she couldn’t see the dark soulless walls of the ziggurat again, she couldn’t… She might as well wait for the floor to disappear and give in to the arms of death waiting below. Maybe if she did it consistently enough, the damn loop would give up on her and let her stay dead.

Suddenly, warm hands gripped her arms and the sensation of skin on skin contact drove the air from her lungs and forced her eyes open.

Keith, Shiro, Hunk, and Lance stood in front of her in their civilian clothes, illuminated clearly by the bright light of the room. She cautiously looked down and found Shiro’s hand on her arm— her bare arm! — keeping her upright, with gentle strength. Another look at the room beyond was familiar but not something from the ziggurat.

The med bay. 

She… they … were on the Castle.

“Is… is it really over?” Pidge couldn’t bring herself to hope, but… she had to know… 

“You did it,” Shiro confirmed. “The Trial broke the loop and opened the ziggurat like you said it would.”

“Lance found you at the console.” Hunk looked ready to cry. “We thought you were dead at first.”

“So did I,” Pidge admitted quietly. 

“Keith and Red were able to get you back here in time for Coran and the Castle healing pods to save you, but it was close,” Shiro explained.

“Too close,” Keith muttered darkly. She gave him a watery, apologetic smile.

“You’ve been in the healing pod for about a week,” Hunk added.

Pidge blinked in surprise. The longest any of them had spent in the pods up to that point was a couple quintants. Objectively, she had known it was bad. While the trap hadn’t pierced her heart, it had most certainly gotten a lung or two and possibly a few other organs, not to mention all the bones in its path. Pidge had been fairly certain she wasn’t regaining consciousness when she’d passed out, but she wasn’t going to complain.

As she stepped out of the healing pod, with a little help from Shiro, she felt something she hadn’t in a while. A bone deep weariness that slowed her mind and dragged her limbs down with heaviness.

Tired, her brain finally supplied. She was actually, physically tired . Faintly, she felt the grumblings of hunger as well. It had been so long… had those always been so annoying?

Pidge couldn’t stop the faint giggle that slipped past her lips, but she clamped her jaw shut and shook her head before she dissolved into hysterics. As relieved as she was to finally be free of the loop, she wasn’t free of the consequences.

“I think I’m going to eat and then pass out for another phase, but first…” She glanced nervously at the others from behind her bangs, too ashamed to look them in the eye like they deserved, but determined to try to make up for what she’d done. “Lance, Hunk, Shiro… I- I am so sorry—”

“No,” Shiro interrupted, “Pidge, don’t—”

“I killed you.” She ignored his protests. “I can’t not apologize for that—”

“You saved our lives,” Hunk reminded her. “You broke the loop and got us out.”

“We did it on the first try . Wh-what if we’d just tried it after you all had the plan? You s-shouldn’t have had to die .”

“No,” Lance said. “You were right.”

Shocked, Pidge stopped and looked to Lance. It was the first time he’d spoken, and she was not expecting him to say that . 

He sighed and looked a little ashamed, but he forced himself to look her in the eye. “I… overreacted. I threatened you and Keith and let my anger and hurt cloud my ability to listen. I’m sorry.” Before she could speak, he held up a hand to let him finish. “What you went through was so much worse than I could imagine, and it wasn’t until after, when I talked with Keith and Shiro about how bad it was, that I started to understand. You weren’t wrong. You weren’t. We had half a varga before the loop reset; we would have tried to rush, gotten careless or sloppy. By starting the loop with the plan in our heads, we could take our time, do it right without having to worry about running out of time. It was the right call, and I should have trusted you to have our backs, like you always do. I’m sorry.”

Speechless, Pidge threw her arms around Lance’s neck and he lifted her briefly off her feet with the strength of his responding hug. Hunk gave them all of two ticks before joining in, wrapping his arms around the both of them. Soon after, Shiro and Keith also joined, turning it into a group hug. Pidge sobbed and sank into the hug gratefully.

It was over, they were all safe, and, at last , she could move forward.