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Earth grew closer with every passing second. The paladins had never felt so alone. The Atlas cast a shadow over the eyes of their Lions. There was the familiar smell of hot metal that always encased them on their space adventures, and the only sound accompanying them was the faint static of their cut communication lines and Lance’s words ringing in their ears:“She did it. She saved us all.” Saturn lazed past, then Jupiter. The Lions navigated their way through the Asteroid belt, Blue in tow. Mars passed in a gleam and the Atlas cut through the atmosphere of Earth, hull ablaze. The Galaxy Garrison became bigger and bigger, and the paws of the Lions came back down to Earth. Lance’s mouth dried when he looked at Blue. Through the eyes of his Lion, he saw Coran race across the landing pad to Blue, one hand clutching his heart and one hand reaching out timidly as if he could reach Allura and pull her back. Romelle followed, nearly tackling Coran with her embrace. He stilled, shoulders quaking. Shiro stepped out of the Atlas, the crew streaming out behind him. Shiro clasped his hands behind his back, watching Coran and Romelle respectfully. Hunk helped Pidge as she limped out of her Lion, tears pooling in their eyes. Keith was the last to approach. He ran a hand through his mullet, trying to tame his wild helmet hair. Hunk was the first to break the circle formed around the two Alteans, smothering Coran and Romelle with a hug. The rest of the Paladins followed. They became a huddled mass of sobs and shaky lungs as Lance watched numbly from Red. He curled his legs to his chest. He stared off into the distance, past the Paladins and the Atlas crew, past Allura’s abandoned lion, past the horizon and into some world that Lance wasn’t sure existed, but he saw it clear as day. She couldn’t really be gone. Movement caught his eye as the hug began to break apart. One by one, the Paladins trailed into the Garrison building. Romelle and Hunk helped Coran up and he limped across the landing pad. Keith was the last. He looked up at Blue. His talked inaudibly for a while before he looked down. He said something else and wiped his face with a gloved hand. Slowly, his eyes moved back up to the lion, then to Red. Lance’s chest twinged. Keith smiled weakly. It was the first time that Lance had ever seen him like that, so wavering, so fragile. So unsure.Lance knew that Keith couldn’t see him, but he smiled back anyways. Keith did a two-finger salute and turned to head inside.Lance felt hollow. He felt like he should be crying.He took his time shutting Red down and when he finally went inside, he didn’t give Blue a second glance. He didn’t know if he had it in him. “Good evening, everyone. Voltron and the Atlas crew have returned, although with one casualty.” Eyes darted towards Allura’s empty seat. Iverson continued, “Ultimately, the universe has been saved from the obliteration of reality as we know it, thanks to our fearless intergalactic crew.” There was a splattering of applause. “I’ll step aside for Black Paladin Keith to give the mission report.” Keith stood, his chair squealing against the floor. “The mission, overall, can be technically considered a success.” He took a breath. “Haggar was defeated and any destruction to the timelines was repaired. However, we lost a very valuable member of our team,” Keith’s gaze stopped before Allura’s seat, meeting Lance’s eyes, “Allura, Voltron’s Blue paladin and a member of our family, lost her life in an interaction with Haggar, giving her entire supply of quintessence to repair the alternate realities destroyed by Haggar.” There was a moment of silence. Most eyes dropped to the floor. Keith picked back up quietly, “Little to no damage to either of the ships and what little damage there is can be easily repaired. Hopefully, with time, both the crews and ships will be ready to take to the skies again.” He sat. “Thank you, Keith. If there’s nothing more to say?” Iverson’s eyes panned the room. “Meeting adjourned.” The only sound that filled the room was the clatter of chairs and solemn footsteps. Lance tried to deflect the sympathetic glances and was the first out the door, trying to find a place to hide from that pity. He walked down the hall, turning down random corridors until he ended up somewhere that stirred memories in some deep part of his head.The halls of the student wing were dust-coated and mostly empty, except for the boxes half-filled with extra parts. Lance’s walk slowly down the halls, not worrying about getting lost, partly because he knew the corridors so well, partly because he didn’t care where he ended up. Anywhere would be better than out there, with those pitying sighs and pats on the back, halfhearted “I’m sorry”s and “You did good out there”s that Lance knew he didn’t deserve. Eventually, he found his way to his old dorm. The familiar white-grey-orange scheme of the walls was muted now. There were dust-covered candles and flowers outside his door, surrounding a framed copy of his ID picture from three years ago.He nudged the bouquets out of the way with his foot and put his thumb on the print pad to unlock the doors. They swung open and Lance stepped inside.The loft bed had been shaken slightly, and there were two cracks running floor to ceiling in the eastern wall. Lance thought about plastering them over to fix them, even though the place would likely be redone soon anyways. He took off his uniform boots, an old habit, and stepped over piles of blankets and pillows from Lance and Hunk’s impromptu game night before they left.The black stockings were slippery on the metal ladder, but Lance pulled himself up into his old bed. He fell backward into the unmade comforter, not bothering to get under the sheets.Lance’s eyes caught the pictures pinned on the walls. Most of his family—his parents, abuelitos, his siblings and their kids, but one was a picture of team Voltron when they’d made a pit stop on a friendly planet on their way back to Galra-controlled Earth. He’d kept it as his lockscreen for the longest time. It was one of the only pictures he’d taken where everyone was smiling, even Keith and his mom.Lance felt empty. He didn’t remember that time, how happy he was, how big he’d been smiling, only knew how much he missed it.Allura was so happy in that photo. She looked beautiful and...real. Lance had seen her walk away, but there was no way she was truly gone. There was no way.His eyes lingered there, on the picture, until he let himself drift off.His heart was hollow, Lance knew for sure, but it had been years of adventure and fighting and Voltron and confusion and loss, and now, all Lance felt was tired. So goddamn tired.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
It was dark when Lance fully came to.The clock blinked green numbers, 2:36 am. Nearly a full twelve hours after the lions had landed. Lance’s eyes strained against the darkness. The photo was still on the wall, Allura’s happy face grinning down at him. He smiled back, before realizing that she couldn’t see him.Lance’s body felt tethered to the bed. Even after half a day’s sleep, he still felt tired. He sat up, flexing his back muscles. He slid down the ladder, landing softly on the ground. The doors rumbled open and the hallway stretched out in either direction as far as Lance could see until it dissipated into shadow. Lance started walking towards the door, careful to keep his footsteps quiet as he passed the other Paladins’s rooms. His pace picked up as the hall got shorter and he could see the glowing EXIT sign.There wasn’t enough air in this hall for Lance. His lungs seemed to grow and the skin of his chest stretched tight over his rib cage. He heaved in through his nose, out through his mouth. In, out, in, out, until he burst through the doors onto the landing pad.Blue was the only lion sitting up. The lion’s eyes were dull. Lance kept walking, approaching.He fell to his knees. Lance put his hand on the lion’s giant paw.He spoke after what seemed like a decade.“I’m sorry, Blue.” Lance looked up at the lion, fully comprehending the absurdity of what he was doing. “I know you’re probably still mad at me, but I just wanna say I’m sorry. Allura—she got really close to you, and I didn’t stop her from giving herself up. I—I could’ve stopped her. And now…” Lance’s throat felt like it was being rubbed with sandpaper after staying silent for so long. He kept talking because maybe he could rub the numbness away. “She must have been a much better Paladin than me. She sacrificed her life without a second thought, and I couldn’t even try to convince her otherwise. I didn’t deserve her.“It just doesn’t seem real. It’s like there’s—like there’s something in my subconscious that’s just refusing to believe she’s gone. And I want to cry, but...there is something telling me that she’s still out there.“I know that’s not true, buddy, but promise me one thing? Please? If you can find her, bring her back. For me.” At this point, Lance didn’t even know what he was asking of Blue. The more he thought about Allura coming back, the more unlikely it seemed. He saw her go. They all saw her.Maybe it was the reflection of a shooting star, or maybe Lance just imagined it, but Blue’s eyes flashed the way they used to when Lance was the Blue Paladin.Lance heard murmuring behind him. He turned, sitting with his back to Blue, and saw the rest of the Voltron team, including Coran and Shiro, lined up, watching him from a distance. They looked down the line, all eyes on Keith. Keith, without protest, walked to Lance.Lance felt guilty for his dry eyes.Keith stood over him, carrying the moon on his shoulder.“You okay, man?”Lance’s sigh crackled. “Actually...I don’t know.”Keith hummed.“I mean—obviously, I’m not okay. I have no reason to be okay. But I don’t feel...I don’t know how I feel. I’m feeling—I should be feeling sad, and I do, but I’m not crying. I guess—I guess I’m still holding out hope that she’s still out there.” Lance leaned back onto Blue’s paw. “But I know she’s not, and I’m trying to accept that.”Keith sat down next to him. “I know how you feel. I lost my dad when I was, like, nine. He was a firefighter. He ran into a burning building and never came back out.” Keith leaned back too. “When they first told me, I cried for maybe half an hour straight. Then I picked myself up and just stopped crying. I’d just run out of tears or something.“It was at the funeral two weeks later when I cried again. His body was too burned to have an open casket. I broke down again one night at my boarding school, then resolved to never cry like that again after the other kids teased me.” Keith tucked a strand of hair behind his ear, exposing the pale Galra mark on his jaw. “That really fucked me up, not being able to talk about it, but Lance.” Keith turned, looking Lance in the eyes. The look in his eyes reminded Lance of their conversation at sunset just about a month ago, and their moment in the conference room after that, and sparked some shred of a memory, years ago. “You aren’t alone. We’ll help you work through this. And besides, you’re probably one of the most emotionally intelligent people I know. And one of the most determined. But if you don’t feel ready, we’ll help you whenever you are.”Keith stood, brushing off his gray pajama pants. “You’ve always had my back, Lance. And I promise I’ll always have yours.”He held out a hand. “You gonna get some sleep now?”Lance smiled slightly. “Nah. I think I’ll just stay out here a little longer.”Keith smiled back. He retreated into the moonlight.“Keith?” Lance’s voice was dusty.Keith turned.“Thank you.”“It’s no problem.” Keith shrugged. “What are friends for?”Needles dug into the backs of Lance’s neck and arms. He nodded.Keith gathered team Voltron and they headed back inside, shooting worried glances over their shoulders.Lance turned back to Blue’s paw, propping his head up on one hand. His vision blurred, tears clinging to his eyelashes, they rolled silently down his cheeks.
“I promise I’ll always have your back.”
Keith was an amazing person for doing that. All of Voltron promised to take care of Lance, of each other.Lance couldn’t do that for Allura, not even when it really mattered.He put his head down and let his mind de-saturate, staying outside until the cold sunrise washed over him, turning his tears to static.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
Lance woke up in his bed, dressed in pajamas.The lights were off and Lance couldn’t tell what time it was. His eyes were too heavy to look at the clock, but his mind was going a mile a minute.Anything and everything raced through his head. It seemed to Lance like he was just now processing the events of the past week. A dark, dangerous, purple cloud entity, a whirlwind adventure through the mind of the most powerful witch in history, a battle in the collective consciousness of the entire multiverse, ending in the first and only person he’d ever loved giving up her life to save everything that has, does, and ever will exist.Goddammit, Lance missed Allura.And he’d never see her again.Tears pooled in Lance’s eyes and streamed sideways across his nose, his cheeks and onto the gray bed sheets. His brows trembled and he fought the cries building in his throat.Eventually, Lance tired of tears and let himself drift off again, skimming the surface of sleep.When he woke again, Lance was lying on his side, staring at the door. His breaths were slow, but his lungs weren’t filling. He forced his chest to grow and shrink, making sure to inhale so deeply he was sure his lungs would burst.Time seemed to dilute and coil around Lance’s head, seconds ticking irregularly. He had no idea how long he lay there, unmoving. His eyes were fixed on the point where the corner of the door met the door jamb, and his vision started to swirl and tunnel around that point, erasing the edges of his vision, letting him forget the rest of the world.After God knows how long, there was a knock at the door. Lance shifted onto his back and blinked hard, his dry eyes tearing up.He threw one of his many pillows at the door to open it. “Go ahead,” he called weakly.As the pillow flew past the sensor, the doors slid open. Hunk stepped across the threshold. “Can I talk to you for a minute?”Lance coughed quietly, sitting back on his elbows. “I just said...yeah. Go on.”Hunk smiled in that weird way you do when you pass someone in an otherwise empty hallway. “Hey, Lance.”Lance raised his eyebrows at Hunk expectantly. “Hi, Hunk.” Lance regretted how exasperated he sounded.“Uh...how’re you doing?” Hunk’s tone was annoyingly cautious.“I’m fine.”That wasn’t the answer Hunk wanted. “Oh, and, uh…I made you these cookies, since you haven’t eaten since we got back.”The backs of Lance’s arms prickled with joy, but the happiness he felt from Hunk’s gesture was drowned out by his growling stomach.“Thanks, man.”Lance still felt too heavy to move, so Hunk awkwardly set the tray down on the desk in the space beneath the loft bed.“So, uh…” Hunk stuck his hands into the pockets of his jeans. “I just came by to let you know that, so, they—apparently, Altea, um, uh, reformed after the, uh, thing with Haggar.”Lance was quiet for a minute. “Is…”Hunk shook his head slowly. “No.” His voice dropped to barely above a whisper. “I’m so sorry, man. There are other Alteans, pulled from another timeline, I guess, but she’s not there.” He looked up at Lance from beneath his dark lashes. “Are—are you okay, Lance? You...Keith wouldn’t say anything about what happened last night, but...I just wanna check—”“Drop it, Hunk. I’m fine.”Both boys were taken aback by Lance’s abruptness. Lance sighed and ran a hand through his hair. “Just…” He turned his eyes down, to his hands, to his lap, anywhere but the pitying look in Hunk’s eyes. “I don’t need...this right now, Hunk. I’m fine.”“If you say so.” Hunk stepped back towards the door and smiled lightly. “Whatever you need, I’m here for you.” He sighed. “We miss you out there, buddy. All of us.”When Lance still wouldn’t meet his gaze, Hunk left.As soon as Lance couldn’t hear the echo of Hunk’s footsteps anymore, he groggily climbed down the ladder of the bunk. The sheet of cookies sat on the desk, along with a tall glass of milk, just how Lance liked it.He ate all the cookies, slowly and neatly. The glass of milk left a ring on the dark coaster. Lance wiped his mouth with the hem of his T-shirt and climbed back into bed.He rolled onto his back, sticking his legs up in the air and propping his hips up with his hands. He stretched, shifting onto his shoulders, to touch the ceiling with his toes. His toes brushed the smooth drywall and Lance grunted, struggling to balance himself on his back. He lost balance and let his legs collapse onto the bed. The bed groaned in response. Lance didn’t want to stay holed up in his room, but he didn’t want to face his team either.Lance tried to lull himself into sleep, but the bed was too hot. He felt like his shirt, even though it was at least two sizes too big, was clinging to him. Fitfully, he peeled it off, draping it over the headboard. He tossed and turned for God knows how long. When he found himself hanging his head backwards over the ladder, he mumbled, “Dios santos, fuck it.” And climbed out of bed. He trudged to the doors, which slid open softly. His shoulders ached, probably from lying down for so long, so he let them slump forward. He stepped out into the dim hallway, only lit by small bulbs hidden in the ceiling. Lance knew that meant it was early evening, and the Garrison system would be winding down for curfew.The walls were lined with orange and gray stripes that Lance traced his fingers over. He walked as slowly as possible, making his way deeper into the student wing, fully trusting his unwavering knowledge of the Garrison.After a few minutes of walking, the lights flickered and shut off, leaving Lance in near-complete darkness. He kept walking and eventually felt his fingers start picking up dust on the walls. He made it to a dead end, recognizing the doors on either side of him as hardly used bathrooms. Lance walked into one of them, pristine tiles cold under his toes and spots dancing in his eyes from the sterile lights above the mirrors.He walked up to one and closely inspected his face. Honestly, he looked like shit. His hair was a bird’s nest and his eyes were red-rimmed and baggy. He was breaking out in multiple spots, on his chin, above his left eyebrow, along his hairline. And there was something else on his cheekbones, right below each of his eyes…Holy shit.Gingerly, Lance reached up to his own face and felt his skin. It felt no different than before, if a little pimply. Then he reached out to the mirror, making sure they weren’t smudges on the glass. He looked in another mirror, then the other.“Holy shit.”He ducked back into the first mirror and stared.The marks of Altea stared back.“What the…”He brushed the knuckles of his index fingers against the marks.They shone softly.Lance gasped.He put his face a little closer, feeling his hip bones press into the cold marble sink.“Holy shit.”He stepped back.The bathroom door slid open, but Lance didn’t turn around. Instead, he sat down with his back against the wall.A pair of feet in green socks swayed side to side. “Lance?”Lance turned his face away. He could feel tears coming.“Lance...are you okay?”Lance sniffled. The glowing blue shapes burned into his eyes, faintly outlined by Allura’s face.The feet stepped slightly closer, then backed away again. “Do you want me to go?”“No, stay.” Lance looked up at Pidge. “Please?” His voice was wet.Pidge nodded and sat down next to him. Her eyes were wide.“Are those…?”Lance touched the marks. “Yeah.”Pidge touched them too, her small fingers brushing Lance’s.“That’s incredible.” She murmured to herself. “I thought I saw them on you in the universal consciousness, but...I thought that must—or they were temporary…” Pidge crawled in front of Lance, cupping his face in her hands, glasses flashing. Her mutterings trailed off, and she kept staring in awe at the marks.Lance uncrossed his legs, putting his knees on either side of Pidge’s ribs to let her get closer. Had it been anyone else, it would have made Lance uncomfortable, or at the very least, be kind of awkward. But Pidge...Lance didn’t know what it was, but something made Pidge very easy to be platonic big spoon to. Emphasis on platonic.“I think...yeah, I think she transferred you some of her quintessence. There must have been something in that place that let her do that, before she…” Pidge’s eyes dropped from his face, blinking.Lance took a shuddering breath and a tear leaked out of his eye.Pidge looked back at Lance. “Oh my god, Lance, I’m sorry.” She started to take her hands away from Lance’s face, but he held them there.“It’s okay.” Lance took a deep breath. Then more tears started running down his face. Soon, he was completely sobbing. Pidge quietly wrapped her arms around Lance’s torso, leaning her head on his bare chest.They stayed like that for a while. Lance tried to slow his breaths, and he could feel the weight of Pidge’s head rising and falling on his chest and her warm breaths on his stomach. “It’s okay,” Lance said. “I’m okay now.”Pidge chewed the inside of her cheek. “Are you sure?”“Yeah.”Lance could see wheels turning in Pidge’s head. She looked like she wanted to say something and opened her mouth slightly, but swallowed and decided against it.Slowly, she took her arms from around Lance. “So…I guess I can go now. Unless you need me to stay?”Lance wiped his hands down his face. “No, it’s fine. I’ll be fine. Go ahead.”Pidge stood up and walked toward the door, feet slapping the tiles.“Pidge?”She turned. “Yeah?”He was tempted to ask her what she wanted to say, but trusted that if it was important, she would tell him. Besides, there was another thing that had been picking away at him for a while.“Can you, um, just, tell Hunk that I’m sorry for being so, like...snappy with him before. I was in a bad mood and hungry, I guess, and...I’m just...sorry.”Pidge gave him a sympathetic look that, for some reason, Lance didn’t like. “I’ll tell him. He’ll understand.”“Thanks.” Lance said quietly.Pidge walked out the door, waiting for it to close before going down the hall.Lance leaned his head back on the wall and sighed. Everyone was acting so different around him. Like he was delicate. Like if they breathed on him the wrong way, he’d fall apart. Like if they said the wrong thing, he’d melt into a puddle of tears. Well, they were wrong. Lance could keep from melting. He could pull himself together, and be just as functional as the rest of them, if not more. Just because he’d lost someone didn’t mean that he couldn’t keep going. If anything, he should keep going. For Allura. It’s what she’d want.Lance got choked up thinking about her, but he swallowed hard and stood up. He and Pidge had made a warm spot on the floor, and his lower back ached from slouching against the wall. He looked his ragged self in the mirror again.Seemed like a good enough place to start.He went back to his room, turning corners without needing to think. When he got back, he grabbed his bag of toiletries—toothbrush, toothpaste, whitening strips, Invisalign retainers, face washes, face moisturizers, body moisturizers, body wash, face masks, dry shampoo, leave-in conditioner, a mini loofah—the whole nine yards. He went to the closest bathroom and let himself fall back into his old routine.The showers were surprisingly clean—from years of disuse or from a recent disinfecting, Lance wasn’t sure. He undressed and folded his clothes, neatly leaving them on the towel rack. He stepped inside a shower and turned it on, letting himself get soaked in cold water before it heated up. Eventually, steam started rising and Lance went to work, scrubbing every inch of his body, feeling the grime and dried sweat scraping off him.When he finally got out of the shower, the mirrors had steamed up. He got into a bathrobe that he found in the closet and wrapped his hair in a towel. The fabric was like steel wool compared to the Altean fabric on the Castle of Lions, but he could work with what he was given.He treated the few small cuts he’d gotten from their last battle, most of which he hadn’t noticed before. He carefully tiptoed around the memories of how the battle had ended.He got out all his special creams, lining them up on the sink counter chronologically, in the order he’d use them. He slowly made his way down the line, careful to not splash any water onto the floor. He rubbed moisturizer onto his face, arms, shoulders, chest, back, and eventually his legs, balancing precariously on one leg at a time.Lance spritzed leave-in conditioner in his hair and combed it out. He peeled off the face mask after a few minutes. It felt like he had just washed away pounds of disgustingness that had coated his body.The mirrors were still steamy. He drew a little smiley face in one, and felt a smile of his own tugging at his lips. Then, in the clarity of one of the eyes of the smiley, he saw the familiar glimpse of glowing blue.His smile dropped.He felt the weight of what he’d lost crawling on his skin—something he’d never be able to wash down the drain, no matter how hard he’d scrubbed.Maybe everyone else was right. Maybe he couldn’t function properly, and maybe he was going to fall apart at any mention of Allura. Maybe, if someone slipped up around him and said the wrong thing, it wouldn’t matter how much they and everyone else scrambled to pick up the pieces. Lance would melt, and keep melting.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
It was an entire week before Lance joined the rest of the Garrison for dinner in the dining hall.In those four days, there was always someone dropping off food for him, three times a day with breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Sometimes, he’d be sleeping when they came and wouldn’t have to talk to anyone. But most of the time, he was wide awake and only pretended to sleep. He wanted to keep himself away from others, afraid that he would hurt or inconvenience them in one of his emotional outbursts.The only time someone had seen him awake was once when Hunk came to drop off breakfast. Lance had been sitting at his desk, under the loft bed, reading one of the books that Shiro had left with his meal. The door slid open, and Hunk stood there, holding a tray of food. Lance braced himself, trying to rein in his emotions before Hunk was dragged into that spiral of feelings along with him. But Hunk just set the tray down inside the room, smiled at Lance sadly, and left.Lance had knit his eyebrows and matched Hunk’s smile, half of him wanting to follow Hunk and apologize for everything, and the other half was afraid to make things worse.In the end, Lance picked up the tray and ate alone.The rest of the time, Lance only left his room for hygienic purposes, at midday or one, when he knew everyone would be in other parts of the Garrison, working, eating, or relaxing. He could almost always hear voices floating down the hallway, mostly a rotation of the same voices he didn’t recognize. He couldn’t distinguish what they were saying to each other and didn’t try to.Lance finally decided to join everyone else for dinner when he couldn’t stand being alone with his thoughts anymore.He knew that it happened. It had many times before. Without conversation to engage in or music to get lost with, voices that sounded too much like his own swirled around in his head. They’d bring to light all the things Lance thought about subconsciously, like how everybody found him annoying and he couldn’t contribute anything and that he was useless and unneeded. But as soon as he was listening to voices outside his head, they retreated to the back of his mind again.So he sought out others’s voices in any way he could. He became the life of the party, always cracking jokes, always trying to keep the conversation going. He convinced Pidge to give him her unused headphones. He called friends at absurd hours of the night. But sitting in his room, left with no music, no laughter, no friends, trapped here by his own fear, with nothing but himself, the voice in his head, and the gaping hole in his heart…Well, it sucked.The doors slid open as Lance pulled on a clean shirt. He walked down the hall, Converse slapping the smooth floor.It didn’t take long to get to the dining hall. The last of the latecomers were walking in, but Lance paused by the threshold. Was he ready in case someone brought up Allura? Was he composed enough? He decided it didn’t matter. What happened would happen, and Lance would roll with it.He walked into the dining hall.All the different voices bombarded him, overlapping and grappling to be heard. Lance welcomed the sound. He let it fill him up as he walked to the serving line. He grabbed a tray and slid it along the rails and it was slowly filled with food. A large bowl of chicken soup and a fruit cup, with a glass of Sprite and a brownie as dessert.Lance walked to his friends' table. Their familiar voices washed over him, and he smiled. Shiro was the first to notice him. “Lance?”Everyone else turned.They all greeted him enthusiastically, telling how much they’d missed him. Then there was a silence like someone was supposed to jump up and hug him, but nobody did. It didn’t bother Lance, so he sat down.“So? What’s been happening?” Lance asked in his lightest tone. “What’s the 411?”Pidge jumps into an explanation of how they found Altea, and the censuses they’ve performed to find out where these people came from. It turned out that most were from the Altean camp Haggar had established, and some were the descendants of Alteans who’d barely escaped the destruction of their planet with nothing but the clothes on their backs. The population was diminutive and the land they lived on was a microscopic area of Altea, but Pidge said they had high hopes for the future of the Alteans.“We’re going to send a team over to scope out the land,” Shiro added. Lance was already three-quarters of the way through his chicken soup and was eyeing the brownie.Shiro went on, “I’ll be going, along with a couple of others from the Atlas and some Garrison trainees. Anyone of you are welcome to join if you’d want.”For some reason, everyone looked at Lance.“I’m good, thanks. I’d…I’d rather stay and help from here.” The truth was that Lance didn’t know if he could stand seeing Altea without being reminded of Allura every minute that passed.Shiro seemed to understand that. “Alright.” He went back to his food, then looked back at Lance. “And, ah, Lance?”Lance looked up.“They’ll...be planning a funeral on Altea. In Altean tradition. So they chose one person to lead the ceremony, and…” Shiro looked at Coran, who sat up attentively.Lance smiled. “Coran is a great choice. I know this sounds asshole-ish, ‘cause you don’t need my blessing or anything, but he’ll…” lance turned to Coran. “You’ll be great.”Shiro nodded. Coran said, “Thank you, Lance. It’s greatly appreciated.” His eyes darkened. “I loved her like a daughter.”Lance poked at his fruit cup. “Yeah. I loved her too.”The table went silent. Hunk’s hand found Lance’s knee. Lance looked up at him and he smiled.Soon, the conversation returned, with Keith, Shiro, and Pidge talking about what they would do once the team was finished at the Garrison. Lance murmured to Hunk, “I’m sorry. I was a dickhead to you before and it was wrong of me. I’m—”Hunk smiled. “It’s fine. I can’t blame you.”Lance felt his eyes tear up for a second but blinked hard. He didn’t want to go to that dark place, not right now, not in front of everyone.He sniffled and returned to the watermelon.For the rest of the dinner, Lance barely said a word, but felt happiness swell inside him listening to the overlapping voices. He laughed when it was appropriate and hummed in agreement or recognition, but never vocalized his thoughts. He and his teammates had developed a well-practiced flow to their conversation while spending so much time together. Lance had just fallen out of rhythm.And he was okay with that. One day, he’d get back on the horse and find his bearings again. But for now, for the next half hour, Lance was happy letting the others carry on without him. The words flowed past him and through him, and he didn’t feel the need to put words out.Yeah, for now, Lance was contented sitting back, listening to the jokes and laughs and stories others threw around, letting the company of these people who he held so close fill the cavity in him.