Archive of Our Own

It’s something that starts after Sendak’s infiltration. It’s difficult to tell how long after, especially when there’s no clock and the only others who could really tell what time it is don’t use the same system, but days, cycles, hours, ticks, or whatever later, the dynamics between the paladins shift from communal to familial. A continuation of a bond formed by necessity and coincidence rather than choice. Though it’s a choice when they all wait outside of Lance’s pod, watching anxiously for any little telltale sign of life, and though no one says anything about it, they all watch, perhaps more, for indications of things going wrong. Even though their bodies all ache with exhaustion and injuries received during the fight that day, no one rests until Lance comes out of the pod. He’s well taken care of by the time everyone decides it’s alright to do anything about the need to take care of themselves. With Arus behind them and the castle in some sort of autopilot mode, Shiro couldn’t agree more that it’s time to rest.

The knock at his door isn’t something that wakes him, it couldn’t have been as he wasn’t sleeping in the first place. He does jump a bit when he pushes himself off of his bed and goes to the door, opening it and finding Pidge on the other side.

“I can’t sleep,” she says before he can ask.

It’s nice that he only has to step to the side for her to come into the room. Shiro lets the door shut behind her, the soft noise that mixes air and metal barely registers in his mind. But what does is the vibrant bruises he can see just under the sleeves and above the collar of her baggy t-shirt. The dark coloring under her eyes isn’t something that goes unnoticed either. It isn’t like he could blame her for not being able to sleep. He’d had his own fair share of sleepless nights after his capture. Dealing with the Galra isn’t exactly a pleasant thing, whether it be captured for a year or lifted into the air and nearly crushed by a massive metal hand. So he understands when she curls herself up on the floor, back against the side of the bed and knees held against her chest.

“Your brother was always better at the comforting thing,” he says, taking the short walk to sit on the floor next to her.

He doesn’t take it personally when she pushes her head further into her knees, glasses forced up to the top of her head. He simply pulls them off and sets them neatly out of the way.

“I was always kind of jealous honestly,” he continues. “I’m a decent fighter and pretty smart but I could never get people to feel the way Matt did. He had this thing where he’d just look at something and know how to figure it out, didn’t matter if it was some piece of equipment or program or someone’s feelings. Whatever it was he wanted, it was done. I’d never seen anyone work that fast before. Not until I met you anyways. It’s something that you and your brother have in common, that ability. And that’s something even the Galra can’t stop. I’ve seen it. He helped so many people who were also taken by the Galra. Everyone who was scared, Matt would just talk to them and help lift their spirits. He used to tell them about you, Katie. He used to talk about you all the time. He’s so proud of you. He said so much about you that by the time I met you I felt like I already knew you. Your dad too. He talked about you all the way to Kerberos. They invited me over for dinner whenever the mission was over. Said your mom was a great cook and that you’d want to hear all about the mission.”

She snorts at this, pulls her head from her knees and rubs at her eyes with the back of her wrists. “It’s not true,” she says, trying to keep the words comprehensible. “Mom’s a terrible cook. My father doesn’t have any sense of taste. He always tells her it’s good but it’s like eating hot rubbery bread. Doesn’t matter what she makes, it’s always terrible.”

Shiro’s shocked when Pidge pretty much falls against him, lets her head slump against his arm, the human one. He shifts and wraps it around her instead, less surprised when she lets herself fall onto his chest this time.

“Worse than the food goo?” Shiro asks and feels Pidge nod against him a few moments later.

“Worse than the food goo,” She whispers.

For a while, a comfortable quiet falls between them. Shiro thinks of more to say about Pidge’s family, not that there isn’t a lot to say, rather there’s just so much that he isn’t really sure where to start. Pidge shuts her eyes and makes herself comfortable against Shiro’s chest. When Shiro does finally find something to say, he’s hesitant to do so, worried that she’s falling asleep, or has already done so, and the last thing he wants to do is wake up someone who needs sleep as much as she does. The choice to say or do anything is taken from him though when it’s Pidge who speaks before he can do much of anything.

“I thought.. I thought I was going to die,” Shiro feels her shift against him ever so slightly. “When Sendak grabbed me, I thought everything was over. I thought that after everything, it was all going to end right there. I didn’t know if slashing the controls worked. I didn’t know if it brought down the shield to let Keith and Allura in. I just left. If it didn’t work, if they were still outside-”

Shiro shushes her and scoots her closer then. “We would never let anything bad happen to you, Katie. Not me or Lance or Hunk. Even Keith would protect you. We’re a team. We look out for each other. Don’t even think about what might have happened. It didn’t. We’re all safe. We’re all okay. And we’re all going to make sure everyone else is okay.”

He doesn’t know if what he’s saying helps at all but she does become silent again afterwards. Shiro counts it as a win and goes onto talk about her family more, saying what he’d wanted to before she spoke. It takes longer for him to realize that she’s fallen asleep on him than it does for her to actually fall asleep. He thinks about moving her. It’d be easy enough to lift her and carry her back to her own bedroom or just onto his own bed right behind them. He even tries to but is barely able to move his shoulders when he can see her waking up, eyes blinking open. Shiro holds his breath until she falls back asleep. He can’t bring himself to move her for the rest of the night or even try to. He simply takes the company for what it’s worth and stays on the floor for the rest of the night. And even though he doesn’t get a wink of sleep that night, he likes it a lot better than the nights he does.

It only takes once for this habit to catch on, Pidge staying in his room instead of her own. Of course Shiro doesn’t expect it from her and he doesn’t say anything about it the next day but he finds himself preparing for another night with her in his room. He cleans up a bit, not that his room isn’t already spotless, but he makes sure there’s extra toilet paper in the attached bathroom and he’s asked Allura for extra blankets and pillows. He stays up in his pajamas even though he is actually tired and waits for a knock on his door, which thankfully comes earlier than the night before.

“I can’t sleep,” she says when he answers it.

He can’t help but to notice she looks better, circles under her eyes as well as the bruising less pronounced. She’s smiling faintly too, in a way that makes Shiro believe she hadn’t really tried to sleep before coming over. The pillow in her hands is another clue. Shiro brings up neither, simply lets her in the room and goes to the floor.

It’s a habit that changes as much as it stays the same. Every night Pidge comes to his room and every night they fall asleep against each other. There are nights where Shiro doesn’t sleep and there are nights when he wakes up from nightmares. They’re much more manageable when he feels Pidge’s heavy weight on him, reminding him where he is and that he’s not alone. Sometimes, he wakes Pidge because of these nightmares, not always intentionally. He calms down quicker than he would have had he been alone.

Shiro tells stories of his crew, Pidge’s family, until she falls asleep on most nights. Other nights Pidge throws in her own stories, tells Shiro things that he claims he’ll have to remember if he ever wants to blackmail Matt. He won’t but it makes Pidge smile.

It takes a few nights for them to sleep on the bed instead of the floor next to it. Pidge starts it, uses some excuse about her back. She clings to him that night, wrapping her tiny body around him in a way that makes Shiro slightly confused but happy. He likes the cuddling and is completely alright with it as long as she is, but he’s seen how short her arms are and the way she’s wrapped around him doesn’t exactly make sense. He doesn’t question, just lets her make herself comfortable.

It isn’t too long after moving onto the bed that they find themselves on the floor again. Lance, who had apparently been searching for Pidge for the better part of ten minutes, knocks then walks into the room, not bothering to wait for Shiro, who is half way off the ground, to open it. He’s got his facemask on, headphones and sleep mask around his neck, robe tied tightly around his waist, and blue lion slippers on his feet.

“Well, you weren’t in your room and you weren’t in the room you claimed for your science stuff so I figured you were spending time with dear old dad,” Lance says when asked by Shiro as to what he’s doing in his room. He continues, pulling a hairbrush out of his pocket and not acknowledging Shiro asking not to be called dad. “Besides, you said you’d let me brush your hair earlier when we were talking and I said it looked like you hadn’t touched a brush since you enrolled in the Garrison.”

“I’m not letting you touch my hair, Lance,” she says. “Who knows what you’d do to it anyways.”

“I would brush it,” Lance says like it’s obvious. “And braid it if you wanted me to. Keith won’t let me braid his. I mean, I haven’t asked, but he probably isn’t going to let me braid it or even touch it.”

Pidge fights him for what Shiro estimates to be a solid ten minutes. He’s amused by it until they try to drag him into it. He probably would let Lance braid his hair if it was long enough to braid. Not because he likes his hair braided which is something he’s never had done before, but simply because letting Lance braid his hair would get him to be quiet quicker. He doesn’t say this when Lance brings it up, doesn’t get a chance to because Pidge is already shouting back at lance anyways.

“I bet you don’t even know how to braid hair!” Is one of the arguments Pidge makes. “You’d just tie it together and make a big mess!”

“I’ll have you know, my sisters think I’m a better braider than mom. They always want me to do their hair. So take that!” It takes a second for Lance to look sadden by his own words and another second for him to look smug again. “I don’t have to if you don’t want me to. I just thought it would be nice. But whatever, it’s your hair, I don’t need to be pushy about it. But if you ever want a brush, I have one along with other stuff you might need. ‘Cause you know, we’re in space and they probably have weird space brushes and other weird space things. Anyways, you two have fun doing what you’re doing. I’m gonna go maybe see if Keith wants me to braid his hair. Might not ask at all. Not sure yet. I’ll figure it out.”

“My hair’s too short to braid,” Pidge says as he backs out, the door opening with the whooshing noise all the doors seem to in this place.

Lance isn’t quite out the door yet. “No, it’s plenty long enough. I’ve done short hair braids before. So, think about it, if you ever want one or whatever, I can’t leave this place so I’m around.”

“Get over here and braid my hair, moron,” Pidge huffs, moving away from Shiro so Lance could have some rom. “But you can’t keep looking like that. You could make Zarkon cry with that face.”

The jump that Lance makes to sit behind her is rather incredible. He manages to pull the hair brush from his pocket and get two hairbands around his wrist on the way there. Shiro watches the interaction happen silently, wondering if they were close like this while they were back at the Garrison. He hopes they were, maybe not with each other but with someone. No one’s told him much of their days training to go off into space, he only knows some of Keith’s story, and has filled in Lance as the so called annoying kid who kept pestering him about being his rival or something.

Lance talks in a way that demands attention, not in the way that he’s authoritative but in the way that he says so much so quickly that if you stop listening for a second, you miss half the story. From what Shiro catches and understands, as Lance sometimes easily slips into Spanish but doesn’t seem to notice, Lance is the middle child in out of five with one older brother and three sisters, one being the oldest and the other two younger. His abuelita lives in Cuba, where Lance’s family moved to California from, but visits every year on Christmas along with the rest of the family which seems to include many many aunts, uncles, and cousins. From the way Lance describes it, it’s likely some sort of miracle the holiday goes by with their house intact. Shiro hears about how busy the kitchen gets and how god awful sharing the two bathrooms in his house gets to be. He learns about how one of Lance’s younger sisters cut all her hair off and how the oldest put herself through college by working two jobs. Lance seems to be nearly glowing by the time he finishes with Pidge’s hair but just because he’s finished with the hair doesn’t mean he’s finished talking.

Pidge looks pleasantly surprised as she runs her fingers over the braids. They start at the top of her head and work their way down the sides, not a hair out of place. Shiro gets the chance to touch them when she moves back to his side. They feel tight but Pidge doesn’t seem to be in any pain. They could probably last for quite a while before they get messy enough to take out and redo. Despite that, it’s not something that will probably last for more than the night. Pidge pushes her hand into her hair far too much for them to stay in. She’ll probably undo them come morning. It just gives Lance an opportunity to do them again, which is something the two both realize but don’t say.

He talks about his home back in California, about how it was close enough to the beach to walk. He shuts his eyes when talking about it, lets himself get lost in the waves that crash against his feet which sink into the sand. Lance takes a deep breath in through his nose when talking about the breeze and the sun on his skin. He can hear the galls above him and the tourists that lay back on towels and sleep while they tan themselves red. There’s the feeling of freedom and weightlessness he knows so well from the hours and hours he’s spent on a surfboard, stealing waves from Hunk who lived a few blocks down.

Eventually, Shiro decides it’s time for sleep and pulls Lance into the bed with them. It’s cramped and he’s worried about Pidge being on his right side but Pidge doesn’t seem to mind terribly as she wraps around him just like the nights before. Lance keeps talking even as Shiro does all this. He’s not genuinely upset when he learns that Shiro sleeps with the lights on but he does go on about it a bit, says it’s weird but not too much else. It’s not like it’ll bother him when he’s got his sleep mask and headphones anyways. Lance bids them both a goodnight, something that neither Shiro nor Pidge have done since these sleepovers started. It was just something they hadn’t thought about before this. So after returning Lance’s goodnight they exchange their own with soft smiles and slightly whispered words.

Shiro’s surprised when he wakes up in the middle of the night, not because he was having a nightmare but rather he wakes up because of Lance. The younger pilot managed to push his hands up the front of Shiro’s shirt at some point in the night and they’re a little bit warmer than the surface of Kerberos. He pushes Lance’s freezing body away from him and straightens out his shirt. The efforts are proven fruitless when he’s woken up once again by freezing hands sliding over his bare stomach but at least it’s nearly the simulated morning hours this time. Though he once again pushes Lance off of him and fixes his shirt he makes no move to get out of the bed.

Hunk’s literally dragged into it the next night. Lance pulls at his arm with a strength no one would have guessed he had. Well, maybe Hunk knew but Shiro certainly hadn’t. Lance begs to braid Pidge’s hair again, whining about how she’d taken them out the same morning he did them. He hadn’t cried that morning while he watched her undo his hard work strand by strand. Even as she brushed her hair and even went back to her room to shower in order to get the curls out, Lance didn’t shed a single tear. He came pretty close, grumbled as he ate his breakfast of food goo and pouted enough to get Keith to ask him if something was wrong but he didn’t cry.

They eat some new creation of Hunk’s, something nauseatingly pink but it tastes well enough, almost like cotton candy ice cream but the kind without the pop rocks. It’s slimy and sticky to the touch but melts in their mouths and doesn’t leave any residue on their fingers.

“Don’t eat all of it,” Hunk whines as he helps Pidge set up a rather large screen in Shiro’s room. “Wait until the movie starts. You’re gonna eat all of it before it’s even started.”

“I still think we should watch something cool. Like Repo Man or Eraserhead,” Pidge says as she works with some of the wiring.

“I’ve never even heard of those movies,” Lance says. “No one’s ever heard of those movies!”

“They’re classics, Lance!” Pidge says back louder. “Just because you’re an uneducated fuckcake doesn’t mean no one’s heard of those movies!”

Lance points at him but looks at Shiro with wide eyes. “Did you heard what she just called me, dad?” he shouts. “She’s using those bad words again.”

“Don’t call me that,” Shiro mumbles more out of habit than seriousness.

“But, dad, she called me a fuckcake! That doesn’t even make sense! What is a fuckcake? Nothing! Nothing is a fuckcake!”

Shiro sighs but the corner of his lips pull up into a smile. “Lance, please. Watch your language.”

Pidge sticks her tongue out at him playfully as Lance shouts some more. “Pink Flamingos,” she suggests when things calm down a bit more. “Oh I definitely want to show you guys Pink Flamingos.”

“Nope,” Shiro says quickly. “Seen that one once and I am definitely sure that I repressed it. It’s not happening.”

Pidge looks shocked and for almost a full minute the room goes silent and still. “You’ve seen Pink Flamingos?” She asks, words growing in volume then quieting. “Shiro, for shame. I thought you were so innocent! I wanted to crush it.”

“I had a Garrison teammate who showed it to me, the asshole,” he scoffs, ignoring Lance as he gasps when he swears. “I’m sorry you can’t crush my innocence.”

“Ugh, fine,” Pidge rolls her eyes. “But I call showing you Courage the Cowardly Dog. Not as bad as Pink Flamingos but still pretty messed up sometimes.”

“Nothing is ever going to be as bad as Pink Flamingos,” Shiro says. It sounds almost like mourning.

It’s half an hour, roughly, before they settle on anything, the 1997 version of Batman and Robin to be exact, and settle into each other. Pidge curls against Shiro’s side as she does while Lance is in front of Hunk, leaning back on him with Hunk’s legs on either side. They seem comfortable, like this isn’t the first time they’ve sat like that and like it wouldn’t be the last either. Shiro doesn’t entirely understand. Lance was so cold the previous night and he’s just assumed that the younger pilot just naturally runs cold. How Hunk could put up with basically having a bag of ice on him is simply beyond him.

They’re not even a quarter of the way in when there’s a knock on the door which, naturally, Shiro gets up to get because it is his room, after making Pidge pause it of course. He’s not terribly surprised to find Keith at the other side of the door. He knows the red pilot, knows he would have joined eventually and probably was feeling a little left out. It wasn’t like these sleepovers were a secret, especially not with Lance’s big mouth.

Shiro notices him flush slightly, notices him fiddle with his hands, and glance around the room. He grabs his hand before Keith can make some stupid excuse and leave, pulls him into the room and tells him to sit, pointing to the space between himself and Hunk. Pidge restarts the movie and Lance whines when he realizes they’re going to have to watch the same thing again. Hunk swats him over the head for it.

“You don’t have to start over. I’ll be fine,” Keith says, looking a rather flustered and uncomfortable.

“We just started, don’t worry about it.” Shiro smiles and hands him Hunk’s snack.

“Lance probably needs a recap anyways,” Pidge says, leaning over to poke the blue pilot’s stomach. “Doubt he was paying attention. Too busy pouting that we’re not watching The Notebook or some other cheesy bullshit.”

“¡Oye!” Lance looks terribly offended. “That movie is cinematic excellence. Just because you don’t have a heart doesn’t mean it’s not good.”

“It’s literally the worst!” Pidge argues. “Nicholas Sparks couldn’t write a good story if someone else literally laid one out, already written, in front of it and all he had to do was sign his name on it!”

“¡El burro sabe mas que tu!”

“Can I zap him?” Pidge asks, hand going to where her bayard usually forms. “Never mind, I’m just gonna do it.”

Shiro has to restrain Pidge from leaping at Lance, no bayard thankfully, but still likely more dangerous than what Lance has assumed and prepared for. It takes long enough to get everyone settled down that the movie needs to be restarted once again.

Sleep comes slowly and individually. Shiro’s gotten used to Pidge falling asleep on him, even when the falling part is literal. He moves her up to the bed when he’s sure she’s asleep, stiffens when he feels her move and worries that he’s woken her. She curls into him as he lays with her, laying backwards on the bed so that he could still watch the movie. He’s not quite ready for sleep yet. He watches Hunk’s head repeatedly droop to the side and pop back up, eventually falling and pulling his whole body with him. Somehow he doesn’t wake as he hits the floor. Lance becomes collateral damage in Hunk’s fall, getting knocked around a good bit and pushed down himself. He pushes Hunk off of him and sits back up but still uses his friend as a pillow. Sleep claims Shiro next, eyelids getting heavier and heavier with each blink until he can’t open them anymore.

It’s a broken sleep, one where Shiro wakes repeatedly for various reasons. First, it’s the familiar airy and metallic sound of the door opening and a ghost of a conversation that keeps him awake for a few minutes longer.

“…stay, you know,” is part of a whisper he catches but doesn’t entirely understand.

“No…” the voice goes too quiet for Shiro to hear for a while. “…snore anyways.”

There’s a chuckle, light and airy. “No way,” they say. “You’re probably just embarrassed ‘cause you do.”

“Lance, shut up.”

The voices are quiet for a while, long enough that Shiro falls back asleep. The next time he wakes, it’s from a nightmare, one that leaves him sweaty and sticky, sitting up in bed with wide eyes. It’s the kind of nightmare that makes him panic when he feels something next to him, makes him tense and makes him move too quickly. And the fact that his hand, cold, glowing, and murderous hand, is barely hairs away from the space between Pidge’s eyebrows is much more nightmare worthy than the one he woke up from. The light understanding brown eyes which stare at him only make it that much worse.

“Hey,” she whispers up at him. “Shiro. It’s Pidge. It’s me. You’re safe.” She doesn’t try to move until his hand stops glowing then she entwines her fingers with his metal ones. “You’re safe.”

He looks around the room, finds Lance and Hunk both next to the bed, Lance literally on top of Hunk who’s lying on his back. They both look still, too still, too tense. He doesn’t see Keith but the other three are a good enough reassurance that he’s in the castle, safe and definitely not in danger.

“I,” it occurs to Shiro that he doesn’t exactly know what to say. What do you say to someone very close to you that you just nearly killed? Pidge looks so calm, like he hadn’t just nearly done what he had. “I’m so sorry,” he barely gets out the words clearly, eyes welling with tears that quickly overflow. It turns into a mess very quickly, snot dripping from his nose and face coated with awful sticky wet trails. All of it collects in Pidge’s shirt, his face buried in her stomach. He doesn’t understand how she can lay there under him so easily, or the hand running over his short hair, or the comforting words she gives him, or how she shushes him whenever he’s apologizing or trying to say she should go back to her room and so should the others. His shoulders shake until he passes out, practically falling dead weight onto her.

For the rest of the night, its guilt ridden thoughts that wake him, make his eyes tear up all over. The cycle’s vicious and leaves its mark in the morning. Shiro apologizes profusely in the morning, offers to do whatever it is she wants or needs for him to make up for it but she just brushes it off, telling him it wasn’t his fault and she forgives him for it. Despite the mess on Pidge’s shirt and Shiro’s face, they all pretty much look the same, tired. Because he needs some time to himself, he suggests they all head back to their own rooms to clean up and meet for breakfast at their own time. Pidge looks like she’s about to argue but with a few shared glances with Lance and Hunk, she takes her toothbrush from its recent place next to Shiro’s and leaves the room with them.

It’s awfully tense and awkward when he walks into the common room to all four pilots who fall quiet at his arrival. They look at him long enough for him to know they were talking about what happened last night. The rest of the day goes just about the same, so tense and awkward that they get very little actually done and not even Keith and Lance’s bickering could change the atmosphere. It doesn’t go long enough for it to have the chance anyways.

To his surprise, all of them, even Keith, return to his room that night. They make up a game with something similar to a deck of cards found in the castle by Lance. The blue pilot takes charge, changing rules left and right. He manages to get Keith to take his jacket off but gets a fight whenever he tries to get him to remove his shirt as well. Lance gets hit with the cards Keith held as well as an open palm. It takes a few hours for the atmosphere to finally clear up. Pidge still cuddles up to him whenever they decide it’s a good time to fall asleep, Keith settles himself on the bed as well, more so sitting with his legs stretched out by Shiro’s feet than laying. It takes Shiro all of two days to realize that there’s always someone awake when he is.

Things start to accumulate in Shiro’s room. Lance’s toothbrush, for example, joins the other two in the cup on the side of the sink. And of course, this isn’t the only thing that Lance has stored in the room. There’s an entire drawer of Lance’s junk, shirts, pajamas, robe, oddly colored and named bottles and containers of stuff. His slippers find a permanent residence under the table which once sat in the middle of the room though now has been moved to one of the corners of the room. A few hours pass before Shiro’s able to find every item of his that’s been displaced. But it’s not Lance’s fault, not really.

It’s everyone’s.

Everyone has moved at least something of theirs into Shiro’s room. It’s not only Lance’s toothbrush that’s joined his and Pidge’s toothbrush in the bathroom, but literally everyone else’s as well. Shiro has to struggle to put his own toothbrush back into the too full cup. The storage behind the mirror is so full that it doesn’t close properly anymore and the black paladin has to actually check if it’s his eyeliner he’s grabbing instead of Keith or Pidge’s. And the cinnamon toothpaste Lance has brought in, awful. He grabs and uses it once instead of his own mint in a half asleep slump. Fortunately, after that incident he wakes up much more focused. He never uses the cinnamon toothpaste again.

The shower’s become basically unusable. Not a space on the floor or shelves sparred when the bottles of shampoo and whatever else come in. The poor floor gets soaked and they fight over who’s towels belong to who. Well, that’s not entirely true. Everyone understands perfectly fine that their towels match the color of their lions except for Lance and Keith. They go at it every single night when one of their towels is wet before they get a shower. Sometimes it’s before either get a shower that one of their towels is wet, they still fight over it, blaming the other.

“You think they’re ever going to figure out I soak their towels in the shower?” Pidge asks and somehow it isn’t overheard by the two fighting paladins.

Other new habits form just as quickly. Lance sneaking into the bathroom and throwing back the shower curtain cause both Shiro and Keith to lock the door behind themselves. Lance doesn’t learn as quickly. It takes quite a while for him to catch the other paladins sneaking in and turning the cold or hot water on full blast. It’s actually Shiro’s idea but each one of them gets a turn to do it. They cackle as his Spanish songs turn into full on Spanish shouting. The only ones who don’t lock the door are Pidge and Hunk. All other paladins in agreement without saying anything that no one should mess with Pidge while she’s in the shower, both out of fear and respect. Hunk simply seems not to care. Lance walks in the bathroom when it’s already occupied by Hunk without a second thought. Shiro can vaguely hear them making conversation through the door. Even Pidge goes in sometimes, tells Hunk that she needs something, gets it, and leaves.

They develop a routine in the morning. Shiro and Pidge take the bathroom at the same time because both of them can use the mirror at the same time; he does his makeup while she brushes her teeth and sometimes does her makeup on days she feels like it. Lance, Hunk, and Keith get dressed while they can, Lance and Hunk a lot more comfortable being in their underclothes than Keith is. They face away from him and don’t take peeks, let him stay in the corner for as long as he needs to and ask or warn before they do something like turn around or start to get undressed. Keith does the same for them and Shiro or Pidge usually knock before coming out of the bathroom. Pidge is allowed to change in the bathroom before anyone else goes in. Then, usually, it turns into chaos. Lance and Keith fight over the sink and forget Hunk’s there most of the time. They come out one by one, usually with Lance being the last to make an appearance.

Somehow, they function well this way, piled in one room on the mattresses and pillows stolen from their beds. They talk and giggle as they half attempt to fall asleep. Shiro cradles Pidge and Keith against him, trying to stop Keith from swatting at Lance, who’s made himself comfortable splaying over all over them, though mostly Hunk, and sticking his feet in Keith’s face. He scolds the both of them and is pleasantly surprised to hear Keith’s voice instead of Lance’s.

“But, dad, he started it,” the red Paladin says. “I’ve got to end it.”

“Not by breaking his legs you don’t,” Shiro says back, grabbing Lance’s foot before it could make contact with Keith’s cheek again. He gives the younger a stern look before tossing the foot away.

Things are silent for all of five minutes, finally all of them trying to sleep or at least staying quiet so the others could. It’s broken by Keith’s yelp and jump, Shiro groans when he’s elbowed in the chest on the way up.

“Seriously?!” Shiro hears the telltale smack of flesh on flesh. “That’s disgusting! Get your cold ass feet away from me!”

He sighs. He never asked to become the leader of a bunch of large toddlers but here he is. “What happened?” he asks but doesn’t get all the words out.

“He stuck his feet up my shirt! His nasty cold feet!”

“My feet are not nasty! I will have you know that my feet are probably the cleanest feet here! I exfoliate! I moisturize!”

“I don’t care!” Keith snaps. Shiro grabs the back of his shirt as he prepares to leap. “Keep them away from me!”

“I’m cold!” Lance shouts over Hunk’s pleas for them not to fight literally on top of him and warnings that he will vomit. “You’re like a fucking furnace over here! Come on man, gimme some heat!”

“No!” Keith shouts.

When Shiro feels the pull of Keith’s shirt, he finally decides to join in, somehow manages to shout over all of them. “Knock it off or so help me I will stop this castle and leave the both of you on the nearest planet!”

Lance whines loudly. Keith simply huffs, crosses his arms, and stops trying to pull out of Shiro’s grip so much.

“And Lance,” Shiro says as they start to settle once again.

“Yes, Shiro?”

“Watch your language.”

“I still don’t understand how you can sleep with him like you do,” says Keith, hand pointing at Hunk and Lance while stuffed with Hunk’s latest creation. “He’s like ice! Sleeping with a big piece of ice can’t be comfortable.”

“Bee Movie.”

“No, you see that’s exactly why it’s great,” Hunk replies. “I get really hot at night and Lance has always been generally freezing body temperature wise. I guess it makes sense now because you know, ice lasers, but it didn’t when we were kids but that’s not important. Anyways, when we would have sleepovers as kids-”

“Rubber.”

“-we’d just lay on the floor next to each other. I would keep Lance warm and he would keep me cold. Win win.”

“And how did you decide that sleeping on top of each other was the best way to accomplish that?” he asks. “Couldn’t you have just laid next to each other and it would have worked out just the same, right?”

Hunk rubs the back of his neck. “Well, you know, we didn’t mean to, I mean, now we mean to, but it just sort of happened,” he shrugs. “Lance is like really super handsy and cuddly. It just worked out that way. We’d wake up in the morning, he’d be pretty much on top of me, so we thought, why not just go to bed that way if it’s how we wake up in the morning anyways. Clearly it was comfortable if both of us were still sleeping alright. And it was. Well, it took a little getting used to. But it’s okay now. We’re both used to it now.”

“Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!”

“Dammit, Pidge!” Lance shouts, hands shooting out on the mattress. “Why aren’t any of your illegal movies good?!”

There’s a second where they wait silently, and sure enough Shiro calls from the bathroom for Lance to watch his language.

“My movies are good,” she replies, pushing up her glasses just slightly. “Why isn’t your taste any good?”

“My taste is perfect, excuse you!”

“Really, Lance?” It’s possible the room gets colder as her lips split into a grin. “Because that big crush of yours, awful, disgusting.”

Lance’s already dark skin grows much darker and redder than it already is. “You shut up!” he hisses. “They are a wonderful person and you know it!”

“Don’t I ever,” she nods. “But I wasn’t talking about them specifically. I was talking about you and your crush. And how out of proportion it’s gotten. You sure you can handle that by yourself? You might need some help.”

“Don’t you dare,” he bites out. Each word punctuated.

“Hey-”

He’s lucky that Shiro isn’t in the room when he grabs the nearest pillow and goes for it, tackling Pidge back onto the mattress and holding it over her face, definitely not about to keep it there long enough to hurt her. He’s a professional pillow fighter and ready to defend that title, but half of defending it is knowing his limits. She throws kicks and punches, which some of them land and some of them hurt more than others.

“Lance-” she says when she gets a breath of air.

He’s careful to move her computer out of the way and glasses when he gets the opportunity to. Straddles her legs and tickles her mercilessly one he decides to switch his tactics. It’s a wonderful sight to see, Pidge lost to laughter, tears beading in the corners of her eyes, grinning and snorting.

“You just know everybody’s secrets, don’t you?” he says loudly. “Well now you’re gonna face the consequences of all that snooping.”

He’s shocked when a pillow solidly makes contact with the back of his head, so much so that he stops his tickling and allows Pidge to escape. It’s not because he’s hit with the pillow, he expected that, was trying to get that to happen really so everything would collapse into a pillow fight, it’s because the pillow’s in Shiro’s hands, not Hunk’s or even Keith’s like he’d expected.

It makes him grin, eyes gleaming wickedly. “Oh, it’s on old man,” he says before diving for his pillow.

It’s not so much a pillow fight as it is an all-out pillow war. A serious all for one, leave no survivors pillow war. One that spills out into the hallways of the castle. They dart around like it were a real battle, lay out ambushes and hide where they can. Shiro and Keith end up forming an alliance so Hunk and Pidge do too. Lance can’t help but to feel a little targeted when the four all gang up on him, trapping him and coming from both sides to pin him in the middle. It ends in a collision and a pile on the floor, laughter all around.

“You know,” Shiro starts on his way back, “I’m not that much older than you. I’m only nineteen. Or, well, I was when we left earth.”

Lance and Hunk look a little shocked. “No way, I thought you were like, at least twenty-five!” Lance exclaims.

“No, it’s true,” Keith confirms. “He’s nineteen.”

“And what, now you’re going to tell us Pidge is like, nineteen too?” Hunk says animatedly. “You’re like, fourteen, right?”

“I’m sixteen Hunk,” She says. “There’s no way I could be on the same team as you back in the Garrison if I was only fourteen.”

“But you lied about your name and gender,” Hunk says, trying to put it all together. “Why’d you keep your age right?”

“What good is it going to do me if I put myself at a lower age group? I don’t want to be with all those immature kids.”

They make their way back to the room at their own pace, not so much talking as simply savoring the moment. It never lasts long though. Lance cracks a grin and snorts, drawing attention to himself.

“I was just thinking,” he clarifies when they all look at him. “Shiro’s already dad but now he could be daddy too.”

They groan and roll their eyes, shoving at him and moving a little quicker.

“Does the age really matter?” Keith asks, honestly innocent in this whole situation. “Couldn’t he still be daddy even if he was actually twenty-five? It’s just another word for dad, right?”

Lance screams. The others hold tight to their claim that they didn’t hear Keith’s comment.

Hate is a word that Shiro doesn’t use very often. It’s never felt right on his tongue or in his thoughts, left sour tar like residue that took weeks to get rid of. He doesn’t hate that he’s light years away from the planet he was born on, even though he knows the chances of going back any time soon, or maybe even any time at all, aren’t in his favor. He doesn’t hate that Keith and Lance fight, even when it escalates to kicks and punches. Shiro doesn’t hate that his own arm’s been ripped from him and tossed away to who knows where, the new robotic one has actually been incredibly useful since this whole thing started. He doesn’t hate the Galra, who move through space like locusts, destroying and consuming al they can, who tortured him for a year, forced him to fight and kill, took his crew members away and tortured them, and whatever else he doesn’t remember. He can’t remember anything, but he doesn’t hate that. Not the white in his hair or the way the food on the ship is just completely awful unless Hunk gets his hands on it.

He’s not fond of any of these things, but he certainly doesn’t hate them.

It takes a long time but eventually, Shiro does find something he hates.

It isn’t the first time that Shiro’s woken up in the midmorning hours and everyone knows it won’t be the last. He’s grateful to the paladins that they’ve got a system worked out for it, know all of his little ticks and what to do to help him feel safe. They’ve done so much for him even though they didn’t have to. They lose sleep over him, taking shifts of staying awake just to make sure everyone’s safe and sleeping alright. It isn’t like he doesn’t pitch in but when he takes the shifts it’s usually because he’s awake anyways or isn’t going to be able to sleep. It isn’t his choice to do it that way. If he had it his way he’d just not sleep at all and they know it, so they make sure it doesn’t happen. They know not to touch him until he’s fully come back from the awful nightmare world he goes into and stay cautious on his right side even then. They know what to say to him when he’s in these states and how to calm him down as quickly as possible. They know how to protect each other and that that is what Shiro wants more than anything, for them all to be safe.

So they know what to do this time when Shiro wakes up screaming. Do what you can to protect each other and that includes Shiro.

It’s on Hunk’s shift, not that Shiro realizes it at the time, but his screaming wakes everyone else anyways. Keith, who’s switched sides with Pidge for the night because Lance was whining about how he never got to sleep next to the green paladin, barely weighs anything to Shiro as he picks the younger up and tosses him clear across the room, the solid thud unnoticed as well as whatever noises Keith made on the way over, if he made any that is. It’s barely seconds after Keith left his hand that things turn to the weight on his other arm, Pidge. He lashes out once, twice, but only hits shield, Hunk’s shield. He’s grabbed the smallest paladin from the spot where she was sleeping, but hasn’t had enough time to make it off of the floor and move before Shiro’s arm swung for them. He barely had time to put his shield up.

It’s terrible that nothing processes. He can see what he’s doing, attacking his teammates relentlessly, the shield bound to be close to breaking now. He can hear what they’re saying, but it sounds like they’re underwater. None of the words make any sense and probably wouldn’t even if he could make them out. Even as Lance shouts something and charges for Shiro, it doesn’t sound like anything. He doesn’t even catch it. He does catch a whole lot of Lance though, the man tackling him and pushing him to the ground. He’d scold Lance for such a stupid move if they were sparring, letting himself get in range of his enemy and becoming a massive target. All he has to do is make one quick jab and his arm would so easily sink into Lance’s stomach and burst from his back. Fortunately for all of them, he doesn’t get that chance.

Shiro screams and spasms again when electricity hits his metal arm and courses through him. He gasps for air and desperately searches for whatever it is causing him this pain. As soon as his hand hits something, he tightens his grip, feels whatever it is give under his grip. The electricity, which has stopped by the point he’s crushed whatever was in his grip, isn’t the thing that brings him back, rather, it’s the following pain filled scream.

The familiarity of it makes him nauseous but less so than the weight of what he’s done when it hits him. He clenches his eyes shut and barely shifts his fingers to take his hand away. The whimper Pidge makes causes bile to rise in his throat. He’s going to be sick but he can’t. He can’t bear to give his friends one more mess to clean up. So he takes his hand away as gently but as quickly as he can before darting to the bathroom. It’s scarring to know that the food goo looks the same coming up that it does going down. He wishes he could focus on that instead. It’s much less disgusting than what he’s done. Shiro does his best to clean up his mess, flushes the toilet and splashes water over his face, rinses out his mouth a bit, even wipes the toilet off. He probably shouldn’t have. The sight he comes back to only wants to make him vomit more.

It’s nothing less than the aftermath of battle. Pidge is cradling her arm, tears in her eyes and a few spilling over. Hunk’s trying to help her somehow, Shiro doesn’t entirely pay attention to how. Keith is on the ground by the wall, a visible and bleeding injury on his forehead. Lance doesn’t try to hide it from him, he’s too busy using those mandatory first aid class skills he got from the Garrison. He’s already put Keith into position, one hand under his head and a knee bent out in front of him. He watches carefully his friend carefully as he presses a cloth against the injury. Lance doesn’t look entirely unharmed and Hunk just looks exhausted.

It’s his fault that this happened. Shiro’s the one who caused all of this to happen and all he could do is stand at the bathroom door, shocked and nauseous.

And he hates himself for it.

“I-I’m sorry,” Shiro whispers, voice breaking. He hates it.

He takes a step towards Pidge and Hunk, wanting to see just what he’s done and maybe do something about it but Pidge flinches and lets out a pained noise. He catches a glimpse of her arm, sees part of the lower half turning dark. It looks broken if not completely crushed. Hunk glares at him, though no so much glares, because Hunk could never really glare, as just looks emotional and not in the good way. Shiro is sure he’s angry with him, fed up and tired and scared. All of it, Shiro caused. He hates that too.

Lance won’t even look at him. He’s far too busy making sure Keith doesn’t bleed out from his injury or stops breathing, Shiro understands and is pleased that he’s looking out for his friend, but there’s not even a glance out of the corner of his eyes. Lance hates him now, even though Shiro knows he doesn’t.

“I’m so sorry.”

He can’t find it in him to blame Lance for hating him now or any of the others as he darts from the room. After waking Coran to get two pods ready and letting him know where the others are as well as a brief summary of who’s injured and how, because he would never ever leave his friends hurt and without help no matter what he’s done, he finds the deepest darkest corner in the most desolate darkest distance wing he can and curls up in it. He hides there for the rest of the night, what he’s done replaying over and over again in his mind. He’s hurt his teammates, his friends. Hurt them so badly that he almost wants to encourage them hating him. But he knows they won’t. Knows they’ll welcome him back with open forgiving arms whenever he’s ready. And he hates them for it, though not really. After all, Shiro hates himself so much more than he could ever hate any of his friends.

Pidge throws her helmet when she comes out of her lion, lets it crash into her desk and scatter her work. It’s what Shiro walks in on, the helmet rolling to his feet and gently knocking against his boots. He picks it up, runs his hand over the cracked visor and sets it to the side. It’ll have to get fixed later. He wanted to apologize, for a lot of things, but now that he’s in the same room as her, he’s not sure it was the right choice.

It’s his fault that she was acting like this. He woke her up last night and broke her arm because of a stupid nightmare. It’s his fault for not holding off the mission for another day and letting them all get some rest first. But just how do you deny someone the possibility of finding their family? Shiro knew very well that tomorrow isn’t an option that Pidge’s family has. It wasn’t an option when he was held captive by the Galra and it probably wasn’t something that changed. So he’d gone ahead with it, with some insistence from Pidge and a bad feeling in his gut. It’d all gone terribly. All of them were on edge because of how tired they were and from the events of last night. As if forming Voltron wasn’t impossible enough, Pidge went off on their own and Lance had followed. Their fighting ripped away focus throughout the entire thing and, in the end, attracted sentries and forced a retreat which had quickly turned into a rescue when Pidge ran further into the place, leaving Lance alone.

And it’d all been for nothing. There wasn’t a single clue on the Galra base which held information on where Pidge’s family could be. In fact, from what Pidge had gotten it didn’t look like the base had held a single bit of good information. None of it was even bothered to be encrypted it was so unimportant. Shiro was just lucky that no one had gotten hurt or killed because of stupid mistakes. For as badly as it went, no one had even had to go into a pod for an hour.

Before he could get the words he wanted to say in order, Pidge pushed him out of her way, leaving the hanger with tightly clenched fists and a sour attitude. Shiro sighed and followed her out, if only because there wasn’t anything left in the hanger for him to do and though he wasn’t following her, it seemed like everyone had the same idea to be in the communal area at the same time. Shiro tried to keep his distance, still feeling guilty for the previous night, but he could easily hear and see what was going on and it’s all just another testament to just how tired everyone is.

Hunk’s dozing on the couch, not quite sleep, not quite seeing the ceiling he continuously blinks up at. Keith sits on the couch with his legs pulled up tight against him, settled between Lance’s legs, which are probably the only things keeping him upwards. He doesn’t say anything even though Lance is sitting on top of the couch behind him, his fingers in Keith’s hair, probably brushing and braiding as he does. And it’s not too surprising, because Shiro knows Lance and knows that he hates silence though whether that means he hates being silent himself or just hates silence in general Shiro is still unsure of, that Lance chatters away through the whole thing. It seems that not even physical exhaustion could stop the blue paladin’s awful but familiar habit.

Shiro puts on a big pot of space coffee for all of them and leans against the counter to listen, waiting for what he hopes will save him for another few hours. Lance is too animated, Shiro decides at some point in the story, something about how Lance didn’t even know his grandmother could speak English until his youngest sister was ten because she wanted them all to know Spanish so she refused to speak to them unless it was in Spanish. Even though he’s not moving too much, it’s all in his eyes and face. There’s so much within him, Shiro wonders just how he holds it all in and how many different faces he could make. Lance manages to switch topics twice more, something about his mother’s paella, some kind of food that makes Shiro’s mouth water just from hearing Lance talk about it, and the annual family sports tournaments held every Christmas, before things start to go downhill.

“Could you stop talking about your family?” Pidge snaps.

Shiro isn’t sure of the expression on Lance’s face. It’s negative to say the least but he’s not sure what exactly. Anger maybe? He’s never seen Lance angry before. Honestly, the idea sounds dangerous.

“Don’t,” Shiro pleas, maybe warns, pushing both of his hands into his hair and letting his elbows rest on the counter. Whatever it was, it goes uncared for.

“What?” Lance says, a pout on his face that’s simply too perfectly sculpted for this moment. “I’m not allowed to talk about my family? That’s odd because you don’t ever shut up about yours and I don’t say a single god damn thing about it.”

“Excuse me?”

“You heard me. All you do is talk about your family.” Keith swats Lance and moves away, the red paladin is forgotten about rather easily in this instance. “You and your family almost got every killed today! Or did you forget about your little stunt of running away while I was under heavy fire?”

Pidge stands from her place on the couch, computer clattering from her lap and shutting itself. “My family is not causing you to be a shitty shot,” she growls. “You never had to come with me. I didn’t ask you to. I never asked you to do anything! If you remember, I wanted to leave. I was going to be perfectly fine to find them on my own. It was you all who insisted I stay!”

Lance screams, tearing his shoe from his foot and throwing it at her head as she starts to leave, simply because there isn’t anything else to throw and he desperately needed to. He seems to deflate as it hits her, regret in his eyes and slumped posture.

“Go fuck yourself,” she spits when he tries to apologize, storming out the door only to not make it very far.

“It’s never going to matter if you find your family or not!” Lance shouts. It makes Pidge return, looking even more angry than before.

“Yes,” she says, determination filling her eyes. “Yes it will.”

“It won’t!” Lance shouts again, “Because we’re never going back home!”

It’s the second time Lance says it, shaking and looking like he’s going to be sick, that really hits every single one of them.

“We are never ever going to be home again.”

Pidge stands there, frozen in the doorway. Shiro has to agree, it sounds so much different when said out loud than by the quiet whisper in your head.

“Hey,” Lance says softly, looking back at Hunk with eyes that are red and overwhelmed by tears. “What do you think they said about us?”

Hunk slouches in his spot, letting his head hang. Shiro can’t see from the angle he’s at but he wonders if Hunk’s even meeting his eyes. He thinks about it before deciding he couldn’t if he were in Hunk’s position.

“On the announcement,” Lance prompts. “What do you think they said? They had to of had one. You can’t just keep that three students up and vanished to yourself. They had to of said something.”

Shiro wants to say something, stop Lance in his tracks and say something helpful but just as before he can’t find the right words to say. What would anyone ever say to this anyways? For the so-called leader of the group, Shiro hasn’t exactly been doing very well recently.

“I bet they didn’t even use a good picture of me,” Lance hiccups and Shiro feels his heart crumbling in his chest. Because part of knowing Lance is knowing how the kid copes. Through humor and horrible jokes even as his mask is slipping through his fingers. “How are all the girls going to miss me if they used a bad picture? No girl is going to regret not asking me out when they had the chance if I look.. I had a folder of pictures on my computer. It was even labelled ‘pictures to use if I ever go missing.’ I made it so easy.”

The silence that hangs between them is uneasy, thick and heavy and constricting. Why doesn’t anyone do something? Keith and Hunk, they’re both right there. It’d be so easy to just reach out and pull Lance close and hold him like he needs. The kid just needs someone to tell him it’s going to be alright, like a kid after a nightmare. Shiro doesn’t even try to do what he knows Lance needs at that moment. And he doesn’t even know why he doesn’t, only hates himself more for it.

“Do you think they told our families we were dead?” he barely whispers. “They told us Shiro was dead when he didn’t come back from the Kerberos mission. They said everyone was dead.”

“They’re not dead!” Pidge declares. “My family isn’t dead and I will find them!”

Lance shakes his head. It’s not at her but she looks like she’s taken it that way anyways. “We are though,” he says. “We’re all dead. They might have pronounced us missing but no one’s ever going to find us. And hell, for all we know, we might die out here anyways. We’ve been lucky so far but who knows when that luck’s going to run out.”

“My family’s not dead,” Pidge says, doesn’t yell this time. “I can’t deal with that. I already thought they were dead once. I don’t even know what I was doing when I went to the Garrison. What was I supposed to do? Graduate and fly off into space on my own to look for my family? I wouldn’t have even known where to begin. I probably wouldn’t have even made it out to Kerberos. I’m no good as a pilot. I’m no good on my own.”

Finally, Shiro decides that whether he’s got something to say or not, he needs to. He doesn’t get very far, only manages to walk over to her and breathe out her name before she’s smacking his hands away from her and screeching again.

“What?” her voice cracks. “What Shiro? Are you going to tell me that what I’m saying isn’t true? How would you know? You don’t know if my family is still alive or not! You don’t even remember anything half the time! Where are you? Huh? Do you know where you are? How about me? Do you remember me? You certainly didn’t last night when you attacked me!”

She didn’t mean it but he draws back in shame and hurt all the same. He should have offered help to Lance instead. He’s not sure why he didn’t. Lance would have accepted his comfort so easily. But then again, Shiro’s such a liar. He knows very well why he went to offer Pidge comfort and not Lance, just isn’t sure how to put all of the quick paced knowledge together to really understand it well. His emotions are for another time and another place.

“Can’t even say anything,” she says, voice bitter and defeated. Shiro can’t stop her as he walks out the door without another word.

He turns to Lance slowly, his apologetic look meeting Lance’s hysteric pleading one. The poor kid’s grasping his hair with white knuckles, pulling and pulling as he blabbers on and on, no foreseeable end in sight. Shiro’s about to jump over the couch and remember all those classes from the Garrison about dealing with panic attacks when Keith stands, knocks Lance to the ground with a hard slap. It gets Lance to stop talking, if nothing else, but Keith, Shiro’s never seen such an expression on his friend, so enraged and frustrated. Sure, Keith’s always been hot headed and quick to anger but this is just terrifyingly cold and wrong.

“Disgusting,” Keith spits. “You’re a paladin of Voltron. Must have been real desperate to choose you. You can’t even hold yourself together. How could you ever think you’d be capable of saving anyone?”

Keith storms out of the room, moves with his head held high and his eyes locked forward, shoulders straight and each movement purposeful. Shiro looks at Hunk for some sort of help only to find himself face to face with the shell of a man who buried deep inside himself. There aren’t any tears or any words, his knuckles aren’t white as he grips the couch. It’s probably the breakdown that frightens Shiro most.

And because everything’s gathered on top of him, his thoughts, his failure to be a leader, the broken memories of his time spent in the Galra’s clutches that emerge in awful nightmares, how he hurts the people around him even though he cares so damn much, his failure to protect his friends and teammates from themselves or each other, the enemy weapon forced so brutally into his very being, his self-loathing, and constant exhaustion, Shiro crumbles. Lets everything collapse with him behind the couch. He curls up there and screams out his agonies as he’s crushed by his own landslide.

It’s difficult to tell how long after, especially when there aren’t any earth clocks in space and the only others who could really tell what time it is aren’t really people that Shiro wants to talk to at the moment, but days, cycles, hours, ticks, or whatever later, the black paladin stops screaming and solidly paces his hand on the floor underneath him. He pushes himself up so that he stands, shaky all the way up and a few steps after. The hand he holds out to Lance, still on the floor where Keith left him, is flesh and bone, warm and warmer still when Lance grabs ahold of it, even though Lance has never been anything but cold to the touch. He slouches, look like he’s ready to come apart at the seams again at any second. Shiro takes a deep breath and hugs the blue paladin like he should have done in the first place, rubs his back and whispers out promises that everything’s going to be okay. When he’s done with that and Lance has some color back in his face, Shiro does the same for Hunk.

“Don’t let go,” he says, moving Hunk’s and Lance’s hands together. “We stay together.”

He grabs Hunks’s free hand with his human one, hesitates a little and thinks about grabbing Lance’s too, but ends up deciding against it. He’s not ready just yet. He will be someday, but for today, he’s just not ready to accept it. He moves slowly out of the common room and through the rest of the ship. It’s Keith they come across next, working himself away in the training room, not that it seems it’s helped much. He still looks angry, shoulders heaving from the exertion of it all. His bayard clatters to the floor when Shiro wraps his arms around his friend, probably makes a little noise that lets everyone know it’s changed its form too. Keith turns when he pulls away from the hug and Shiro pretends not to notice how he rubs his eyes with the inside of his wrist. Lance doesn’t need prompted to take Keith’s hand this time. And if he squeezes it and gives Keith a smile that’s barely more than an upwards tug on one of the corners of his lips, well, Shiro pretends not to notice that too. He takes Hunk’s hand again and continues at the slow pace he’d set before.

It’s a little more difficult to get to Pidge, who’s locked herself in her lab. It takes time and effort to get her to even open the door, along with a whole lot of patience. She won’t meet Shiro’s eyes when she finally opens the door and comes out, looking as if she’s not sure whether to be guilty or sad or angry. He hugs her all the same, hates the feeling when she doesn’t hug him back but doesn’t voice it. It’s worth it in the end, when he’s about to pull back from the hug and get Pidge in line with the others only to have her short arms wrap around him and pull him close for a bit longer. Keith’s gentle when he takes her hand and pulls her after the rest of them.

They end up in one of the castle’s many observation decks, not the biggest or the best but it allows them to see the stars clearly, watch the universe pass by as they sail through it.

“I hate myself.”

Because it’s clear that no one else is going to start this but him. No one else can, no one else wants to, not that Shiro particularly does. It’s something that needs done though, that much Shiro understands. He hopes the others do too.

“I hate this. All of this. I hate that I went on the Kerberos mission and the people who chose me to do it. I hate that we got captured and what I did there. I hate that I can’t remember any of it. And this stupid arm. It’s the worst. It’s a weapon, an enemy weapon, and because it’s attached to me, I feel like it’s made me into an enemy weapon. That’s not something I want to be. I never thought that I’d turn into.. that I’d see myself as this monster.”

He jumps at the feeling of something touching his arm, the metal one he never wanted. He can feel the small fingers moving on his bicep, tracing over the area hidden by his sleeve where he stops and it begins. It’s a friendly touch but that doesn’t mean it feels like one.

“You’re not a monster,” Pidge says. She means well but it doesn’t help anything right now. “No one thinks that you are.”

His hand shakes as he removes hers, setting it on his knee. He feels better now that nothing’s touching what he doesn’t want touched.

“I know that,” he says, patting her hand with his flesh one, letting it rest on top of hers. “I know I’m not a monster and that you guys would never see me as one. And I’m grateful to you all for it. But, I need to get this stuff off of my chest. I think it’ll help me, us. I can’t remember much of anything. Not only stuff from when I was captured by the Galra. I can’t remember my home or my parents. I know I had them, that only makes sense for me to have a home and parents but they’re just not there. I can’t remember anything about me. It’s horrible and it makes me feel horrible. All I know for sure is that I was captured by the Galra and I did some bad things. I had bad things happen to me. I know what’s been filled in for me, but nothing else. I feel like I’m something bad because all I can remember is the bad. I’m worried that once I get everything back, if I ever get anything back, if we go back, the good stuff about me won’t be enough to overcome all the bad.”

Shiro just hopes that he’s making some sort of sense with all of this. If no one understands what he’s trying to do then this could have just all been for nothing. He’s not even sure that talking about his issues is going to help or if talking about anyone else’s issues are going to help any of the others.

“I’m sorry for hurting you all last night. I need to work on controlling myself better after the nightmares. I am aware that I am not completely in control of my actions when the nightmares happen but that doesn’t mean I can’t get there. The Galra held me for a whole year, I can’t let them continue to have a hold on me like that.”

And before anyone can accept his words or do anything else, it’s Keith who speaks up. His fists clenched tightly and face pale, eyes not about to meet anyone else’s.

“I hate when you all talk about your families,” he says, words quick and heated. “Especially you, Lance. Whenever you open your stupid mouth it’s always always about your family. When am I going to get home to see my family? I wonder how my family’s doing. I promised to be home for my sister’s quinceañera, do you think we’ll be back in time for it? You love your family so much and it makes me sick! And I hate it! And what makes it even worse is that if they’re anything like you then they’re probably just as bad. Your family probably hasn’t shut up about you since the day your stupid face went missing. I bet they tore about wherever the fuck you live and got the whole damn town looking for you. And I’d be so upset with them if they didn’t because if I was in their place and I lost someone like you I would tear apart the entire universe just to get you back. Your family sounds so good. They sound like everything I ever wanted growing up. I’ve never had a family. I remember I had a mom but nothing else than that. I don’t remember her voice or what she looked like. I moved from one foster home to the next my entire life. No one ever wanted to keep me. I got to the point where I wouldn’t even unpack because I knew I’d go back to the orphanage and foster homes. I always did. No one ever wanted me. There isn’t anyone searching for me back on Earth. No one’s worried about me. There isn’t anyone I can miss either so I guess that’s great but I really wish that someone would miss me sometimes.”

Lance, who’s been sitting in shocked silence while Keith was speaking, is rather quick to react. He reaches across the little circle they’ve formed, grabbing Keith’s wrist and pulling him close, ignoring the weak protests and halfhearted attempts to dislodge the hand holding him.

“I won’t talk about my family anymore,” Lance says once he’s got Keith held as tightly as could be in his lap.

Poor Keith gets even paler at those words, seeming to freeze up for a moment before pushing frantically at Lance’s chest. “No,” he whines. “No, I want you to talk about your family. You’re so happy when you talk about them. I want you to be happy. I’m just, I’m jealous. You've had everything I’ve ever wanted and when you speak about it, it’s everything I thought it would be. Please don’t stop talking about your family, Lance. Please don’t ever stop.”

“I don’t exist,” Pidge says when Keith and Lance stop using their words and just settle for clinging onto each other. “Katie Holt doesn’t exist anymore. Nothing happened to her. She went to the Garrison and never came back. She didn’t even go missing. Pidge Gunderson is missing. I never told my mom what I was doing. I didn’t think there was going to be a day where I just might never see Earth again. She’ll call me like she does every weekend, it won’t be weird when I don’t answer but she’ll get worried eventually when I just never answer again. She’s had to of noticed that something’s wrong by now. She’ll call the Garrison and get told that Katie Holt got kicked out. She’ll look for me but she’ll never find me. There won’t even be a trace of me.”

Pidge looks sick, a hand covering their mouth which she speaks through. Her next words come out shaky and whispered as if she doesn’t really want to hear them herself. “What was I even thinking? My brother and father, they’re dead, mom thinks they’re dead. She could barely get herself out of bed the day I left. There’s no one.. No one’s going to be there for her. What if I get home and she’s dead? What if I’ve come all this way to find my brother and my father and they’re not even alive? I can’t..” Tears spill over as her breathing quickens. “I can’t deal with that. I don’t want to be alone. I came all this way and the chance that I find them alive and my mom’s still alive when we get there. It’s.. It’s so small. I didn’t think about any of this. I want my mom back. I should have never left her. She needed me. Why did I leave her when she needed me?”

Shiro watches as Lance holds out an arm to her, pulls her close as soon as she takes it. It’s good to know that even when he can’t provide the comfort anyone needs at that moment, his paladins are still going to be taken care of by someone. Even if that someone is each other. He smiles faintly at the scene despite wishing he felt good enough about himself at the moment that he’d be able to do what Lance was doing. They’re being taken care of, and that makes Shiro happy.

“I’m my parents’ only child,” says Hunk, eyes overflowing with tears. “They don’t have anyone else but me and my grandparents, but my grandparents are all the way in Hawaii. I just left them. I mean, I got swept up into space, but I could have called more often or anything. They love me so much, I know they’d do just about anything for me. I haven’t even asked if there was a chance we could go back to Earth. I haven’t even really thought about Earth since we left. I like it out here a lot. I feel like I’ve finally got a purpose, that I’m finally good for something. But I’m not sure what that means for my life back home. I’m not sure what any of this means for me.”

The sight of Hunk flopping onto the pile and knocking everyone over makes Shiro almost laugh. With the way the rest of the team reacts, it’s almost like things are back to normal. It’s different though, in the best ways. They’re more comfortable with one another, if the way Keith is curled up on Lance’s chest is any indication of that. If not, then it’s how Pidge so easily fills in the empty spaces and how they all press up against Hunk in some way or the way they talk, the faces Lance makes, the way Keith seems to actually be enjoying talking with the others. Shiro moves to lay a little closer, not comfortable with joining in on the pile just yet but he’s confident that he will be someday.

“I used to come up to the observation decks, whichever one I could find,” Lace says once they’ve all settled into half-asleep states, “and I used to stare out at the stars for hours. I wouldn’t get any sleep. I didn’t care that I was tired, I was just more than happy to look out into the universe and know that somewhere my family could see the same things I was. But I stopped, not too long before I started sleeping in Shiro’s room. Space just reminded me how far away from home I was and even though my family might be looking at the same stars, they probably weren’t thinking of the same things I was. They’re wondering where I could possibly be and when I’m coming home. Looking at the stars made me worry about them too. It made me worry about a lot of things.” Lance sighs, shifts a hand from behind his head downwards to somewhere Shiro can’t really see.

“There’s so much out there in the universe, so much we didn’t know before and still don’t know. So much we’re never going to get to see,” Lance continues after a short pause. “I worry about dying out here a lot. We’re fighting a war after all. Just five kids fighting a war against an entire empire. How could we ever possibly hope to win this? Every ship we shoot down makes me feel sick. The Galra, they’re alive just like we are, have thoughts and feelings like we do, they think they’re right, just like how we think we’re right. I bet a lot of them didn’t ask for this. I bet a lot of them have families who worry about them. I bet a lot of them are scared. I stopped coming up to watch the stars, thought these thoughts would stop but they haven’t. I’m scared. We’re just a bunch of kids.”

Keith rolls, turns to look at Lance after it’s all sunk in for everyone. “We’re just a bunch of kids,” he repeats, sounds choked up but not as much as before. “We’re a bunch of kids who are expected to fight an entire empire and save the entire universe. I don’t know how we’re possibly going to be able to do it or if we will at all, but it doesn’t matter. No matter how many of us make it out of this alive and even if none of us do, I’m really happy that it happened. I’ve got a family now. I’ll do whatever it takes to protect it, you’d all do the same for me. I couldn’t ever ask for more than what I have now.”

“Yeah,” Shiro breaths out, eyes scanning over his family, intent on committing every little detail of them to his memory and never ever forgetting. “We’re a family.”

And because there isn’t anything else left to say, no one does. They’re a family. And there isn’t anything more or less to it than that.