Work Text
Lance was familiar with the moods. They weren’t new, but rather long term companions in his life.But that didn’t mean he liked them.He often longed for the simpler times, when he was a child back home in Cuba. He was always what his mama had called “precocious,” but essentially a happy, carefree child. Lance had followed his older siblings like a baby chick, chattering away endlessly. Miraculously, they never seemed to mind the small boy following in their wake. Lance had danced with his mama to the songs on the radio. He had admired his papa. He had baked with his abuela.Through it all, Lance was surrounded by a wealth of love and acceptance. If he talked a little too much, or too fast, no one ever pointed it out. If there were times he got frustrated and lashed out, there was always a patient family member ready to help him calm down. If he cried a little too easily, it was dismissed as evidence of his tender nature.Sensitive, his abuela had called him. It had been a compliment.He had loved his family with the pure heart of a child who has never known pain or loss.Not that Lance remembered times when he cried, or yelled, or lost control. At the ripe old age of 17, it was easy to look back on childhood through rose tinted glasses. Instead, what he remembered was the love. He remembered the songs on the radio and the smell of cinnamon. He remembered siblings who had always taken him along on their adventures.He remembered a childhood that stood in stark contrast to the Garrison.When Lance arrived at the Galaxy Garrison, aged twelve, tiny and wide-eyed and loud, he hadn’t been prepared. There were some things he had known to expect, of course. He’d expected the hard schoolwork that forced him to work harder than he’d ever done. He’d expected the food that didn’t begin to compare to his mama’s and having to share a dorm with a stranger, far different than sharing with Marco.He hadn’t expected the loneliness.At home, Lance was never alone. A big family in a small house guaranteed that. He’d always been surrounded by the hustle and bustle of three generations going about their business. The concept of being alone was more foreign than anything else he’d experienced in this new country.And he was so lonely.And with the loneliness came the moods. The emotions that had always run heightened at home now emerged in full force, with no safety net to help Lance regain his balance. He could call home, of course. But he thought it was just homesickness, at first. He didn’t want to be a baby, and calling his mama because he was homesick seemed like the kind of things babies did.He was twelve now. It was time to grow up.But twelve passed to thirteen and the ache of loneliness didn’t pass. Instead, it grew. He felt so isolated, even though his bunkmate, a gentle boy named Hunk, tried to befriend him. But though Lance wanted to make friends, he couldn’t do it.He felt so tired.It was as if all the energy that had characterized his childhood had been left behind in Cuba, leaving instead a drained, lethargic boy that Lance had a hard time recognizing. The lethargy didn’t leave him enough energy to do anything. He started doing worse in his classes. His attention drifted. He became short tempered, arguing with other students. He was deeply, unceasingly sad. He’d never felt more alone in his life, and he’d never felt more useless. It was like he was trapped, unable to break free of the ache, but knowing it wasn’t what he wanted to be, who he wanted to be.Sometimes, the ache would leave. Lance would feel almost normal again. He did better in his classes, leading his instructors to wonder why he ever struggled so much. He befriended Hunk, who was the nicest person Lance had ever met, aside from his mama. He danced. He ate. He laughed. He felt better. He laughed at the thought of how tired he’d been.Rarely, he felt better than better. On those occasions, quick and fleeting, he felt like he was on top of the world. He felt like he’d never had more energy than on those occasions. He convinced Hunk to sneak out to the nearby town for an adventure. He flew wildly in his simulations, leading to either stunning successes or spectacular failure. Sometimes, it was a little scary. His thoughts would go a little too fast, he felt like he couldn’t sit still. Sometimes he felt restless, as if he needed to be doing something right that instant, but didn’t know what. But even so, it was nice to have energy, even if it was a little more than he’d like.But always, always, always, it would end. And Lance would fall again. Fall back into the lethargy, the sadness, the unrelenting ache.Ups and downs. Highs and lows. An endless cycle that controlled Lance more than he controlled it. He worried that it would control his whole life. Resigned himself to that fact.But when Lance was fourteen, Hunk had enough. After more than two years of being roommates with the small boy, Hunk put his foot down. He wouldn’t listen to Lance cry himself to sleep one more night.Lance had never seen Hunk stand his ground. But stand his ground he did. He demanded that Lance go to the infirmary. Something was wrong, Hunk said. It wasn’t normal to feel the way Lance felt. Maybe they could fix it.So, to appease his best friend (and the secret hope that maybe, just maybe, Hunk was right and this could be fixed), Lance dragged himself off to talk to the doctors.A chemical imbalance, they said.Lance listened in shock as a woman named Dr. Harris explained it to him. It wasn’t his fault, she said. He wasn’t weak or a baby for feeling the way he felt. His brain just didn’t produce the right chemicals at the right times. It was simple.It was anything but simple.Depression, Dr. Harris said. The ache, the loneliness, the sadness, the lethargy, the uselessness. The lows were depression. But that wasn’t all. Mania, Dr. Harris said. The energy, the restlessness, the recklessness. The highs were mania.The cycle was a disorder. Bipolar disorder, Dr. Harris explained. It was a cycle of ups and downs, depression and mania. The in-betweens were normal, but something would upset the balance and he would go one way or the other. Sometimes he’d go both ways. She explained it all in a gentle, kind voice, as the scared boy realized that there was an answer.Labeling the cycle meant that he knew what he was up against. And he knew that it was treatable.Dr. Harris explained that there were medications that could work to combat the chemical imbalance, but that his youth made her hesitant to try them. Instead, she said, they would work to manage it with a support team. His family, she explained, had been his support group when he was a child. Their love and unquestioning acceptance had helped him weather any ups and downs, to the point where he didn’t even notice them. But moving to the Garrison had taken away his support. She also explained that the hormonal changes that came along with puberty exacerbated the problem, and that it wasn’t uncommon for these disorders to manifest in the teenage years. The bad timing had put him through a rough time, but they could work to fix things.And so, a fourteen-year-old Lance went to see the Garrison’s school counselor, a young man named Micah who had kind eyes and a friendly smile.It wasn’t easy, at first. Lance was nervous. He still felt sad. He wasn’t sure how just talking would help. But it wasn’t soon before Lance’s natural talkativeness won out. Micah let him talk, never telling him to be quiet. He didn’t ignore Lance, though, asking questions and responding.After a few weeks of meetings, Micah told Lance about something called Cognitive Behavioral Therapy. CBT, he explained, might help Lance. It was a strategy of learning coping skills so that when the moods hit, he was better able to handle them. If Lance was willing to give it a shot, they could meet once a month to go over skills, as well as to give Lance a safe spot to talk about the things in his life.And so they did. Once a month, Lance would go visit Micah’s office. They always started by letting Lance talk. He talked about things that were bothering him. He talked about things that made him happy. They covered it all, the good and the bad. Nothing was off limits. And then they would work on exercises to train Lance in the kind of coping skills that would help him weather the storm. Lance joked with Hunk that if he’d known going to the doctor would mean extra homework, he might’ve thought twice. But he knew that it was the right decision, and thanked Hunk for giving him the push he needed. The larger boy gave Lance a hug and said he was just happy that he’d been able to help.Slowly but surely, Lance learned. He learned about mindfulness and guided meditation. He learned about grounding techniques. When Micah talked about anxiety, he confessed that he had been feeling that way. Feelings of insecurity and inferiority had plagued him since he’d joined the Garrison, made worse when the depression lowered his grades enough to bump him into cargo pilot status. Micah explained that this was okay, and that it could be managed, too.When Lance was fifteen, Micah recommended to Dr. Harris that medication might help Lance. Despite all the progress they made in therapy, Lance still struggled with the mood swings. He managed them as best as he could, using the techniques that Micah taught him, but it would be easier if he could avoid them as much as possible. Dr. Harris was still hesitant, but relented. Lance could try the medications, but under strict supervision. And so at the age of fifteen Lance experienced mood stabilizers. He experienced side effects that were worse than the mood swings. Side effects that made the mood swings worse. But eventually, they found a medicine that worked. Lance still had mood swings, but they were less intense. Things got better. He made new friends, though he never forgot who was there through the worst. His grades improved, enough to get into the fighter pilot class. Between the medication and the therapy with Micah, he began to feel, at last, as though he could control the disorder, rather than letting the disorder control him.When Lance was sixteen, he was proven wrong. Micah left the Garrison to move back home to his family. He told Lance that he would be fine, that the new counselor would help him, that he’d made so much progress.But Lance felt adrift. Micah had been an anchor, like his family had been his anchor. These people anchored him where he needed to be, kept him from being swept away by the tide of his emotions. Now, he was cut loose. For the second time, he’d lost his anchor.The new counselor, Karen, was nice enough, even if she was much older than Micah. But Lance couldn’t connect to her. He started to feel overwhelmed again, though he hid it to avoid making Hunk worry. He kept taking his medication, meeting with Dr. Harris as scheduled, but it wasn’t working as well without the therapy that had so long kept him grounded.As the ache started to steal over him again, he wasn’t so sure he’d weather the storm this time. How could he survive without an anchor? He was so very alone, just a small speck in a great sea of swirling emotions that he couldn’t possibly control.He felt like he’d always be alone.Unanchored.But when he was seventeen, he was proven wrong yet again.When Lance was seventeen, a boy named Keith, a boy who’d been a focus of Lance’s insecurity and anxiety, returned after being missing for a year. Lance, reckless as ever, had burst in on Keith’s rescue attempt, where they’d bickered over who could save Shiro, an instructor who had always been kind to Lance. He’d dragged along Hunk and the new kid, Pidge, who seemed just as insistent on the rescue.When Lance was seventeen, he wandered into a cave in a desert. Keith insisted that there was a mystical energy out there that they needed to find, so they went to find it. As much as Lance wanted to make fun of Keith for his mystical mumbo-jumbo, he felt it too. An energy, a feeling, drew him to the cave. The cave was large and intimidating, but then there were glowing blue lights and they dropped through the floor.When Lance was seventeen, he saw a giant blue robot, in the shape of a cat, sitting in the dark.When Lance was seventeen, he touched a force field and saw yellow eyes flare to life.When Lance was seventeen, he found his anchor.As the force field collapsed, Lance suddenly felt a presence. Warmth flooded his mind as he connected to the lion -- Blue -- and suddenly, he felt sure he’d never be alone again.Through all that happened next, as they fled the desert, desperate to escape an alien aggressor, disappeared through a wormhole, emerged so far from home, met a princess, fought a battle… Through it all, Lance wasn’t alone.Through it all, Blue anchored Lance, keeping him grounded even as she brought him to new heights. He’d never been so connected to another individual, and the love and acceptance he felt through Blue was more than he could even comprehend.It wasn’t easy, in the months and years that followed. Lance didn’t have any medication, and he was reluctant to try any Altean remedies that could potentially turn him bright blue or something. Coran, kind as he was, wasn’t exactly what Lance needed in a therapist, though he certainly gave it his best shot. Lance was in a war, never further from his family, facing death every day, with the weight of the galaxy on his shoulders. It definitely wasn’t easy.But he was never alone.And with Blue as his anchor, he weathered all the storms.