Archive of Our Own

i.

For a few good, long moments, the only thing Lance could hear was the painful ringing of his own ears. And then his brain rebooted and started processing the yelling.

"-Oh man, oh man, oh kriff-"

“Is he okay?”

"Is he moving?"

"Is he breathing? "

“I don’t think he’s breathing.”

“Someone poke him and check!”

"-Oh man, oh kriff, we killed a paladin of Voltron!"

"What do you mean we killed a paladin? Drkti did it."

"What? I did not!"

"Yes, you did! I saw you! Plus, you're the only one here who has bad enough kriffin' aim to-"

" I have bad aim? You throw like you've got a carkfa over your eyes!"

Whenever Lance entertained the thought that he might die in space, he always figured that if it did happen, he'd at least go out in a cool way. Like, final battle against the Galra, blaze of glory, Hunk-swearing-vengeance-for-me cool. Like, Ancient Altean Medal of Honor cool. Like, they'll-give-me-one-of-those-cool-viking-funerals-but-in-space cool.

So, he had to say: of the assassination attempts, this had to be lamest. Not only was he nowhere near a battle or his teammates (Hunk, at the very least, had to be around when he died to swear vengeance), but his murderers were apparently so bad at their jobs that they were arguing right over his body. Where was the professionalism? The finesse? You would think that killing a paladin of Voltron would involve a little more planning.

Lance groaned, picking his head up and cracking an eye open. Forty yellow eyes blinked back at him, the twenty feathered bodies they were attached to frozen stiff. Merunans, then, not Galra. Even lamer, the tallest of the bunch looked like they maybe came up to Lance’s chest.

Well, that at least explained the poor execution of this murder. Kids made horrible assassins.

Lance let his head drop back, took a second to gather himself, and then slowly peeled himself up off the ground, clutching his stomach. “What hit me?” He groaned.

The flock of Merunans apparently took that as their cue to designate a scapegoat, snapping into action. They shoved a little boy with purple feathers and shaky knees forward and started shouting.

“Drkti did it!”

“Wh- I didn’t!”

“We were playing Barthak, y’see, and-“

“-and since Drkti can’t aim for his life -“

“Can, too!”

“You got hit by a tetra, right in the stomach!“

“We thought you died,” one of the kids added helpfully.

"So, if you have to throw anyone in the dungeon," a little girl concluded, "It should be Drkti, since he's the one who hit you."

"I did not!" Drkti cried again in protest. Then, he whirled back to Lance, little feathered knees knocking together. “I'm really sorry, Mr. Paladin. Um. Sir. That I- we -" His friends immediately started complaining behind him. "-hurt you. But I- we didn't mean to! We were just playing! And I guess someone threw a piece and hit you-“

There was a roar of disapproval. “’Someone’?”  

“You mean you! ”

Drkti stubbornly ignored the mutiny behind him to look at Lance with big, watery eyes. “ Please don't throw me in the dungeons."

Lance paused for a second, processing. "Wait, I almost got killed by a toy? "

One of the kids shuffled forward a bit, cradling the murder weapon in their arm-wing-things. It was a pyramid about the size of Lance's head that reminded Lance of Pidge's old robot Rover, right down to the whole trying to kill him thing. And it looked like it was made of solid metal. If Lance hadn't chosen to wear his armor tonight, he'd probably have a hole in his stomach.

"It's a very tough toy," one of the kids said consolingly.

He rose to his feet, torn between being angry about the whole 'accidental murder' thing and being offended by the whole 'accidental murder' thing. Seriously, his space tombstone almost read 'Here Lies Lance, paladin of Voltron, he was killed by a bunch of 10 year olds.' Hunk couldn't even swear proper vengeance over a death like that! The guy teared up if a little kid so much as looked upset in his general direction!

His eyes caught on the 'tetra' again. Anger won out. "I know it's a tough toy," he snapped at the group. "It almost killed me! You should know better than to play with stuff like that in the street! You're lucky it was me walking by, and that I was wearing my armor. You could have really hurt someone! "

The kids all glanced down at the ground, ashamed. Drkti seemed about two seconds away from tears, and Lance-- man, Lance sounded exactly like his mom did that time he broke Tía Dani's window while playing with Miguel. The thought made him feel very uncool and very old and also a little sad.

"We're really sorry," Drkti whispered.

"Yeah, well," Lance sighed, rubbing the back of his neck. Maybe this was partly his fault, a little bit. When he had noticed the kids playing in the street, zipping around in the air chasing after floating balls and cubes and knock-off Rovers, he'd been so distracted by how cool it looked that he wasn't really paying attention to where he was going. He'd probably wandered right onto their court before Drkti nailed him. "No one's getting thrown in the dungeons," he assured him. The kids all drooped in relief, Drkti's legs practically gave out, and Lance... Lance figured he had a little free time before Allura needed him back at the castle. "Because I'm getting my revenge by kicking your butt in this game."

There was a pause. Lance let them process that for a second, grinning big and wide. "Well? Is anyone gonna tell me the rules?"

A dozen little voices rushed to explain all at once. From the bits and pieces Lance could understand, Lance gathered that what he was working with here was basically a weird, convoluted version of dodge ball with three different types of flying pieces: quadras (cubes), tetras (murder-y pyramids), and aras (balls). Instead of just throwing the balls to get the other team out, the main goal was to make the biggest stack of quadras you could and try to knock the other team's stack down with the tetras. You could hit the other team with aras, which were apparently not made of metal, thank goodness, to get them out. The team with the biggest stack when time ran out won.

"We call Lance!" cried one of the team captains, grabbing onto his arm.

The other team let out an immediate roar of disapproval, and Lance suddenly had dozens of little purple hands tugging at him and trying to pull him this way and that.

"Hey!" He said when one got a little too close to clawing his eye out. "Guys, guys, relax! I can play two rounds with you, one for each team. That way you can all have a piece of the Lancey-Lance."

Because Lance needed to get his revenge against Drkti first ("I already said I didn't do it!"), he was on the opposite team as him during the first round. All of the kids on Lance's team were exchanging giddy smiles. Lance winked at them, rolling his shoulders and doing big, exaggerated stretches. "Let's do this thing!"

"Alright," called the other team's captain. "Turn on the pieces!"

All the blocks flickered and shot right into the air, and the kids got ready to shoot into the air after them. Merunans couldn't fly -fly, but they could sort of use their wings to boost themselves up, kinda like chickens. This put Lance at a definite disadvantage, but luckily for him, he was tall enough that he’d probably at least be able to reach some of the low flying ones when he jumped.

"Ready?"

"Ready!" Lance and the kids all shouted back.

"Um," said a voice. Lance's eyes flicked to Drkti, whose knees were a little less shaky now that he wasn't at risk of being thrown in a dungeon. "Make sure to dodge this time."

Lance's mouth dropped open. Someone went "ooooooooooh" and someone else yelled "I knew you hit him, you liar!" and Drkti took off into the air half-laughing and looking half-horrified by his own nerve and oh, it was on .

ii.

If there was one nice thing about being on a planet full of stuffy jerks, it was that everyone was too worried about being rude to the Great Paladins of Voltron to question them about anything they did. Which meant that no one said a word to Lance as he strolled down the palace halls wheeling a servant's cart. Not even when he leaned down to talk to it.

"Alright, which way next?" He asked in a whisper. There was a pause, before a little clawed finger popped out from under the white cloth. Lance straightened back up and turned the cart in that direction, making stubbornly casual eye contact with anyone giving him a weird look. They all dropped their heads and hurried along.

The palace was beautiful, all high archways and glittery tiled floors, but stepping outside of it felt a lot like busting out of a high-surveillance prison. A really pretty, clean, expensive-looking prison with a stuck-up king instead of a warden. Lance had gotten so used to having eyes on him all the time in there that he could practically feel the weight of them drop off his shoulders the farther away he got from it. He could only imagine how his little prisoners felt.

Walking past the palace guards was surprisingly just as easy as walking past the servants had been. They shared a look but did nothing as Lance whistled his way out of the gates, hung a left, and sauntered right into a row of bushes. As soon as he was hidden from view, he lifted the cloth on the side of the cart. "Come on out, guys. We made it!"

A cautious, fuzzy snout poked out into the dying sunlight. Then, a toe poked the grass before retreating back into the cart. Lance rolled his eyes, biting his lip to keep the corner of it from quirking up. "Seriously, come on, or all the bugs'll be gone before we get there."

The kids who slowly, slowly emerged out from under the cart looked, for all intents and purposes, like fuzzy, four-armed dragons. They didn't have wings, but they had thick, orange-brown scales that covered their forearms and tails and two golden horns poking out of the thick, orange-brown fur covering their foreheads. Apparently looks were where the similarities between the two species ended, though. The two of them looked less inclined to breathe fire and more inclined to throw up as they stepped out into the twilight.

Aw, first breakout jitters. Lance remembered those like it was just yesterday.

He stashed their cart between the bushes, poked his head out to make sure the coast was clear of guards, and herded his two little wards towards the jungle. They jumped at every other sound and were honestly really terrible at acting natural (which was, like, Breakout 101), but as they got further and further away from the palace, they slowly relaxed, tails dropping and faces smoothing out into wide-eyed curiosity. By the time they spotted their first photin, they were so busy staring up at the sky that Lance had to keep them from crashing into everything.

Photin bugs were a staple of summertime life on Larcon. They migrated into the area at the start of the season and everyone spent the week they were around going into the jungle and 'ooh'ing and 'aah'ing over them. Pidge explained earlier that they were sort of like fireflies, but they glowed during the daytime and "the frequency of the light they emit changes depending on their energy level." Which, in normal people speak, courtesy of Hunk, basically just meant that they started off glowing purple in the morning and went through the rest of the rainbow throughout the day until, when they were ready to sleep, their light was red. When they reached the clearing where most of the rest of the city had set up shop, which was full of food vendors and music and crowds of couples on blankets, the sky was a sea of yellows and oranges.

Lance brought the kids over to a cart that was selling nets for five GAC, smiling at the way their little mouths were dropped open as they stared up. "Two nets, please," he said to the saleswoman, an old Larconian with deep wrinkles under her eyes.

Those eyes drifted slowly over to the two kids, who were too busy goggling the photins to notice her. For the most part they blended into the large crowd, but now that Lance was really looking, their clothes were just a little fancier than everyone else's, their horns a little more shiny. He tensed, clearing his throat to get the woman's attention back on him. "So, um, what are the best spots to do this whole catching thing? It's my first time planetside, so do you have any recommendations?"

Those old eyes thankfully flicked away from the kids, crinkling in amusement as they wandered back to Lance's face. The old woman handed him two nets with a shaky hand, and jabbed a claw in the direction of a small, less populated part of the jungle. "That's a good spot right there, if you're looking to avoid being recognized."

Lance had a feeling she wasn't just talking about him. He paid her, thanked her, and got the heck away from her as quickly as possible, dragging the kids towards the secluded tree line.

"Alright," He said once they were in the clear. "Here you go."

The two kids stared at the nets he was trying to give them the same way they had been staring out of the palace windows when Lance had first met them. Like they really wanted to reach out and touch but weren't sure if they were allowed to. So, Lance pulled the same card he had used to get them into the cart. "Oh, sorry," he said sadly. "I just really wanted to catch some bugs, but I don't know how and I was hoping you two could show me since I'm, you know, a guest and all-"

The kids snatched the nets out of his hands as politely as possible. They seemed a little confused by the whole concept of bug catching at first and, man, these two really didn't get out much, did they? But the older of the two started copying the people around them and, after a few minutes of struggling, finally managed to snag a photin. The three of them gathered around it to stare. It was even prettier up close, glittering a nice orange that was quickly warming into red.

"I think you should let it go now," Lance said, glancing around at the people nearby. No one had any jars or anything to catch the bugs. They were just catching them and releasing them.

The kid pouted down at the net, which was the most childlike thing Lance had seen him do all day. Still, he flipped the net back over and nudged the bug out, watching it fly away with big, happy eyes for a few moments before going back to catching more.

The younger brother seemed to be having a little more trouble-- the beetles were flying to high for him. He seemed to be having fun just trying to catch them, but kept shooting his brother jealous little looks whenever he managed to snag another in his net.

And, well, that didn't seem very fair at all.

Lance grabbed the kid under his armpits and hoisted him up onto his shoulders, laughing at the loud squeal he got in response. "Hold on tight!" He said, not that he had to. The kid's arms and tail immediately clamped down on his neck, the handle of the net digging right into his throat. He shifted a bit and plucked the net out of the kid's claws before he could choke him with it.

"Alright," he announced. "We're tag-teaming this! I'll be the brawn to your brains. You point to the bugs, and I'll catch 'em. It’s a contest now. First team to catch five bugs wins!"

The tutor at the palace was probably just now realizing that the princes were a whole two minutes late to their princely politeness lessons. By the time they got back, there was going to be a city-wide manhunt going on, and Allura was totally going to murder him for kidnapping their new ally’s sons. But, honestly? The way the two of them grinned at his challenge, big and wide and like they were tasting freedom, made it all seem kind of worth it.

iii.

Lance woke to the sound of crying.

"Ay," He groaned into his pillow. "Cálmate, chica, ya voy, ya voy."

The rest of his senses came back piece by piece, and Lance began to realize that a few things were... off. His pillow was harder than he remembered. His room, when he managed to force his eyes open, was pitch black in a way it never was, because he had glow-in-the-dark stars on his wall. The voice of the kid who was crying was too high to be his niece's.

And he hadn't seen his niece in almost a year.

He slowly, painfully peeled himself off the floor enough to prop himself up against the nearest pile of rocks. The girl's crying hitched at the sound of the rubble shifting before continuing on quietly.

"Hi," said Lance, as softly as he could. "What's your name?"

The girl didn't answer, and as his vision adjusted, he could just barely make her out curled up across from him. She had six arms and two pairs of legs, one of pair crossed underneath her and the other hugged tightly between her arms. On her forehead, which was tucked into her knees, she had six bright blue eyes that were leaking glowing tears. She looked like she was crying out liquid stars.

"Lance?" The sound of his name startled Lance into noticing the voice that had been, up until that point, just background noise to his sleepy brain. "Lance, report!"

"Right here, bossman," Lance said, pressing the button on his comm. There was a beat before the other end exploded into sound.

"Lance!"

"Oh, thank god, all we heard was you yelling and then you stopped answering and-"

"I'm triangulating your location now, don't worry, we're coming to get you-"

"What happened?" Keith demanded, voice cutting through everyone else's.

Lance's lips, which had been pulling up at the sound of his teammates' voices, dropped down in concentration as he tried to piece together how he had gotten here. He remembered running, hand clamped down on the girl's wrist. The mines were a maze and far, far underground to keep the prisoners - most of whom had really good vision and could see natural light from really far away - confused and unable to escape. Pidge had been shouting directions at him, but between the battle going on above and Lance's own scraps with the guards, he hadn't really been able to hear her that well, and they'd run into a dead end. Just as they had turned around to double back, there was a flash of purple and a rumble and-- and then he woke up. "The tunnels caved in on us at a dead end. We're trapped right now."

"Okay," said Keith, taking a deep, measuring breath. And aw, look at him. Working on his breathing and junk. Lance was so proud. "Are you and the kid okay?"

Lance eyed his little friend, who was just barely peeking up at him over her knees. Gently, he asked, "Are you hurt?"

She sniffed loudly, but shook her head.

"The kid's fine," Lance said.

"What about you?"

There wasn't really enough light to get a good look at his side, but he could pretty much guess at its state. He pressed a hand down on it softly, hissing at the blood that dripped through his fingers. "I got into a scrap with a sentry, and I think I got grazed by a plasma blast." The girl's eyes snapped up to him in terror. Lance made sure to keep his voice as steady and nonchalant as possible. "A couple of ticks in the healing pod and I'll be alright, though."

"I'll have one ready for you," Coran said.

"And I'll come get your right now," Keith said. "Pidge, get a lock on his location."

"Woah, woah, woah," Lance sat up in alarm, groaning when his vision swam. "Cool your jets, hotshot! Clear the skies first. If you come running in here to get us and the Galra follow you, the fight'll bring down the entire tunnel system." On us , Lance thought but didn't say. "Handle stuff up there first, and then you can come crashing in to cradle me in your arms or whatever."

He could perfectly picture the frustrated knit of Keith's eyebrows. "But-" He cut himself off with an irritated noise. "Alright. Fine. Hang tight. We'll come for you as soon as we can."

"Not like we've got anywhere to go, anyway," Lance said, shooting the girl an eye roll as if to say 'this guy, am I right?' She stared at him miserably for a few moments before ducking her head back down. Jeez, tough crowd.

Well, that was okay. Lance was friends with Keith, who he sometimes suspected was raised by wolves. He could keep up a conversation for hours without the other person having to talk once, so that was exactly what he tried to do. He talked all about Voltron, about the Red Lion and about his old baby Blue, about how cool his team was, about how they would totally be coming to rescue them soon, the moment the coast was clear. He didn't know if it was helping all that much but, with it being so dark, he figured the girl might like the reminder that there was someone with her. Plus, Lance had a feeling that if he didn't keep himself occupied, he would pass out and leave her all alone in the dark with a dead-looking body, which. Yeah.

"Talk to me," Lance said the third time he trailed off in the middle of a sentence, his thoughts slipping away from him like fish down a stream.

The girl blinked at him in the dark, glowing eyes still bright with tears.

"Do you know any stories?" Lance prompted when she didn't respond. "I'm a great storyteller, you know, and I can tell you're a really good one, too. It's like, storyteller's intuition."

There was a long minute of silence, which was probably what he should have expected. But, surprisingly, she actually opened her mouth.

Instead of talking, though, she sang... something. It didn't have lyrics, but it was clear and beautiful, her voice flying up in their little makeshift cave and bouncing around the walls, echoing and harmonizing with itself.

It was short, though. Criminally short. Lance wanted to hear it again the second it ended. "Holy crow," he breathed. "That was awesome ."

The girl didn't react to the praise. She just sniffled again. "Your turn," she said glumly, and Lance was so surprised to actually hear her talk that it took him a second to process what she said.

"Wait, what?"

The girl gave another loud sniff. "Your turn."

"Yeah, but, my turn to do what?"

The girl seemed like she was now torn between what to find more miserable: their situation or Lance's questions. "Copy."

"Copy you?"

"Copy me."

Okay, so apparently they were playing a game. Lance supposed that was as good a way as any to keep himself awake. He opened his mouth and tried his best to repeat her pattern, and once he was finished, she solemnly announced that she had won the round and that it was his turn now. The goal seemed to be to make a pattern that was too hard for the other person to copy.

The girl was, predictably, kicking Lance's butt. Whatever planet she was from, it was clear that the people there were all born with crazy vocal ranges. She could make sounds Lance didn't even know existed. Trying to imitate her made him feel like he was going through puberty again.

He didn't feel too bad about losing, though. Around the third voice crack, the girl stopped shaking. Around the seventh, her eyes started to get drier. The ninth almost made her smile.

"Are you making fun of me?" Lance made a show of huffing. "I'll have you know I'm the... best singer on my team."

Or, at least, he was pretty sure he was. He'd never actually heard the others sing before, besides Hunk, and he and Hunk could never agree who was better (it was totally Lance, though). They should have a competition sometime soon. He wondered if Alteans had some sort of equivalent of karaoke. Or if maybe Pidge could rig up her own. Coran had shown him Altean music once and it was... something. Lance didn't think his throat could survive all that yelling.

There was a tug on his arm. Lance blinked to find himself staring into glowing blue eyes that were a lot closer than they were before. He hadn't noticed the girl coming to his side. "Oh, sorry," He said, and his voice sounded strangely far away. "Can you... sing it..."

Again? he meant to ask, but the rest of the thought faded away before he could wrap his tongue around it. He frowned, struggling to remember what he had been saying. His little friend made a nervous sound and put a tiny hand on Lance's knee. Lance lifted his head. When did it droop? "Wassup?"

The girl wasn't exactly the talkative type, so Lance wasn't altogether that surprised when she didn't respond with words. She just started singing again and, man. Not for the first time, Lance was blown away by just how pretty her voice was. She could be, like, an opera singer or something. Though, he supposed that if everyone on her planet sounded like this, maybe it wasn't really seen as a talent over there. She should go sing on Earth, then. Lance would buy, like, all of her CDs.

The girl was saying something. "What?"

"It's your turn," she repeated, and her voice sounded urgent. Nervous. Scared. Lance immediately felt bad. Guy bleeding from his side and getting quieter? She probably thought he was dying.

Lance hummed the tune she had sung absently. He was about ninety percent sure he wasn't dying. The blast had just grazed him, and his dizziness was probably because of the concussion he most likely had, not blood loss. But he doubted that would be really reassuring to hear. The girl was still hovering next to him nervously, wound up like a spring again. Mentioning even the possibility of death probably wouldn't help calm her down, even if they odds were stacked in Lance's favor.

Luckily, though, Lance managed to stay awake just long enough to hear muffled shouting on the other side of their rocky prison and see a hole open in the darkness. He smiled at the girl, slurred out something like "Told you they'd come," and then very deliberately passed out before he and Keith could have another bonding moment.

iv.

Lance threw himself on the ground with a huff. Jordu, showing the most interest in Lance she had all morning, blinked her three little eyes at him for a few moments before going back to chewing her foot.

"Man," Lance complained, "What's with you?"

When Lance had offered to watch Jordu for her parent, he had been under the impression that the kid was a troublemaker. Her parent - Lorun - was the castle's main caterer, and had been running around the castle grounds all morning with Jordu in their arms, directing people holding plates of food and pieces of decor, all while valiantly ignoring Jordu pulling at their hair and babbling in their ear. Lance had offered to watch her for a bit while Lorun did their job (the party they were setting up was for team Voltron, after all), and Lorun had only made a couple of token protests before practically shoving Jordu into his arms.

"Alright, Jordu," they had said sternly. "You be a good little girl for the paladin, okay, kalion?"

"Ah," Jordu had said in response, like a true rebel.

But, as it turned out, Jordu barely needed a babysitter at all. She seemed infinitely more interested in her own toes than anything Lance did. He had been trying to get her involved in a game of peek-a-boo for the past hour, but it was nowhere near as big a hit with her as it was with her sister's kids back home. She just stared at him lazily, only breaking her weirdly intense eye contact when she got a little too into the whole chewing thing and lost her balance, flopping onto her back like a squishy pink turtle. He hadn't gotten her to crack a smile once, and it was starting to drive him a little bit crazy.

"I'm great with kids, you know," He announced, sitting Jordu back up. Jordu stared at him dispassionately, foot already back in mouth. Lance frowned. "I am. I'm a champion at peek-a-boo. Everyone loves playing peek-a-boo with me. You're just weird."

Jordu gurgled at him.

"Well, whatever. What do you want to play, then?" Lance asked. "Besides 'chew my foot off.'"

Jordu blinked at him again in that slow way of hers. Then, strangely, as if she had understood what he asked, she let her ankle go, her foot dropping back onto the ground.

And then she started holding her breath.

"Um," said Lance, watching as her cheeks puffed up bigger than any baby's cheeks should be able to. It sort of looked like she had cheek pouches, like a chipmunk, but instead of nuts or acorns or whatever chipmunks kept in cheek pouches, she just had air. The pouches kept growing until they were each about size of her head. She flapped her arms a bit, apparently pleased with herself.

At which point she started floating.

" Um ," said Lance, a little more urgently.

Jordu got a good three feet into the air before Lance's brain finally caught up to him. He lunged forward, snatching up her ankle and yanking her down into his lap. She stared up at him with big, beady eyes and big, puffy cheeks for a long moment before bursting into giggles, hitting Lance in the face with a hurricane-like wind as she released the breath she was holding.

Okay.

"Are you... supposed to do that?" Lance asked.

Jordu puffed out her cheeks again in reply. "Woah, woah, woah, uh-" Lance made the executive decision to take this party somewhere with more roof coverage, just in case. He scrambled to his feet, keeping a good, tight hold on Jordu, and jogged over to the gazebo that sat a little bit away, in the center of the castle's bright pink lawn.

Jordu found float-around-and-give-Lance-a-heart-attack significantly more fun than peek-a-boo. Lance spent the next half an hour grabbing her ankles and tugging her down to the ground, all the while praying that this was just a normal things kids on this planet did. Thankfully, Jordu was too heavy to float very far, so he didn't have too much trouble catching her before she got too high off the ground.

"Man, you are.. really weird," He said, holding her up under her armpits. She blew another burst of air right in his face, laughing. He found himself smiling despite himself. "Aw, man, you're a cute weirdo, though. The cutest little weirdo in the universe!"

By the time Lorun came back to get her, Lance and Jordu had become very good friends. So good that she even made a noise of complaint when she was scooped up and taken away from Lance.

"Thank you so much for watching her," Lorun said, looking a lot less frazzled than they had been when he'd last seen them. "The preparations for the feast have been really stressful-- not that I mind preparing a feast for you all! We're so grateful for all that you've done for Rorex, but-"

Lance shot them an easy smile. "No, no, I totally get it. And, don't worry, Jordu was awesome. Just. Uh," Lance watched Lorun's face very carefully. "She was kind of... floating? A little bit?"

"Oh, yes, she's getting to be about that age, isn't she?" Lorun replied, completely unphased. Which... raised more questions than it answered, honestly.

But, whatever.

"Bye, Jordu!" He said, leaning over to press a kiss to her forehead. Lorun gave him a confused smile, but didn't say anything about his weird earth customs. Jordu was nowhere near as polite. She lifted a hand and smacked his nose, babbling. Lorun said " Jordu " in a scandalized tone, but Lance just waved them off with a laugh.

As they left, Jordu puffed her cheeks out at him over her parent's shoulder. He puffed his out right back in goodbye.

v.

Lance had something of a talent for spotting people alone at parties. No matter how big the room or how thick the crowd, he seemed to always be able to find a loner. Lance called the skill another part of his whole sharpshooting package, Pidge called it his "introvert radar," and everyone on the team called it useful when Keith wandered off and they needed to find him.

"I'm not his babysitter!" Lance yelled in protest as the team walked away from him.

"We'll meet you in the city square for the ceremony!" Allura called back over her shoulder, blatantly ignoring his complaints.

Lance grumbled and went off to find their wayward leader, scanning the festival-goers for any signs of his mullet. Luckily for Lance, the Rarians looked much more like foxes than humans, with thick fur meant to keep them warm on their planet's cool surface and sharp eyes to help them see in the dark of its pole to pole forests, so spotting a fleshy human wouldn’t be too hard. Doubly luckily for Lance, the team had stopped by during Rari’s annual lantern festival, so Lance could actually, you know, see.

And what he saw looked a lot like a fairy tale book come to life. Kids in colorful robes ran around with colorful kites that they wove expertly through the tree branches. Crowds snaked out from game booths and food carts. The main attraction, though - and the least likely place Keith would be - were the tables of lantern makers, who were crafting beautiful paper lanterns that would line Rari's dark paths for the rest of the year.

Rari was going to let them light the first of the lanterns at a ceremony to honor their alliance with Voltron. It was all going to be super cool and pretty and Lance refused to miss it just because Keith was off being a weirdo again and—

And Lance’s eyes caught on something. Sitting tucked up on a stair, far away from everyone else, was a kid holding a small, shimmery piece of paper in their hands. At first glance it didn't look all that different from a piece of printer paper back home, but then it shifted a certain way and it was like... the surface of the ocean. The light from the lanterns seemed to dance on top of it, the paper going liquid in their hands.

"Oh, woah." Lance wandered over and dropped down next to them to get a better look. The kid jumped away from him instinctively, curling their hands, and the pretty paper, towards their chest. "What's that?"

All he got in response were several rapid blinks. There was one hopeful moment where they opened their mouth, but it didn't seem like it was on purpose, because they never bothered closing it.

Lance tried again. "What's your name?"

Shut. Open. Shut. Open. They seemed shocked that Lance was talking to them, but less in a “oh wow you’re a paladin of Voltron” way and more in a “oh wow a living breathing person is interacting with me” way.  Which was… sad.

The kid seemed to realize that Lance wasn’t going away without an answer, so, in a very tiny voice, they forced themselves to blurt out a little “Liline.”

“Liline? I’m Lance! We’re like first-letter twins! Liline and Lance!” He said, leaning a little into their space to get a better view of what they were doing. Something crinkled under his leg as he did, and Lance became aware of the fact that he was sitting in the middle of what looked like a little paper zoo. There were several white animals sitting on the steps around them, all expertly and carefully folded.

He scooped up the one he almost crushed. “Woah.” He didn’t know what it was, but it probably took them hundreds of folds to do it. They’d somehow managed to create dozens of spikes on its back out of a single, thin sheet of paper. “This is awesome!”

The face Liline made in response reminded him of the face Keith sometimes made when he had something to say but didn’t know how to interact with people. But with less frustration and more terror.  When they replied “thanks” in that tiny, tiny voice, they sounded like they didn’t really believe him.

Lance glanced in the direction of the city square. He probably had some time before the lantern ceremony. And finding Keith wouldn’t take too long, anyway—he could spot that mullet a mile away, so-- “Hey, can you show me how to make one?"

Liline blinked at him. "You... want to?"

Lance was sad that they sounded so surprised. "Yeah! It looks like fun! Besides, my friend Allura - she's the blue paladin, you know - she loves shiny things. I wanna give her one of these as a present."

Liline stared at him like they suspected he was lying and was also about to stab them. Lance didn't really know what to do with that, so he did what he usually did when Keith was being weird: ignored the weird looks and did what he wanted to anyway. He plucked a piece off of the pile next to Liline and stared at them expectantly.

"Oh! Um- I-" Liline ducked their head, fingers shaking as they creased their paper. "First, you- you fold it like this."

Liline wasn't actually that great a teacher, mostly because their idea of explaining things was whispering them to the air a centimeter away from their face. But, they went slower so Lance could follow them and their fingers steadied out the longer he stayed. By the time they deemed their animals done, they almost looked comfortable with him.

"Ta-da!" Lance draped himself across the stairs and shoved his creation in Liline's face. "Behold! The student has surpassed the master!"

Liline's ears twitched in the way that Rarians' sometimes did when they thought something was funny. "That's a Garik," they said, and Lance could hear an actual smile in their voice. "We were making Garlucks."

Lance sat up and frowned down at his paper. Then, at Liline's. His was definitely sloppier than theirs, but they were pretty much the same. "This isn't a Garluck?"

Liline seemed to find that question even funnier. Their ears trembled with suppressed laughter. They put their Garluck- Garik? whichever - next to Lance's and pointed to a section on each. "No, see? You added antennae to yours."

"I thought those were legs." When Liline's ears twitched so much that they almost smacked Lance in the face, he shot them a dirty look. "I just want to remind you that I've never seen these animals before in my life."

He wadded up his failed attempt and demanded that Liline show him again. He had originally just sat down to keep them company for a while, but now he was determined to make a Garluck. They were about halfway through his second attempt - and Lance had a feeling he'd already messed up again - when a kid with a kite wandered over to them, drawn to Lance's armor like a moth to a flame.

"Are you the blue paladin?" They asked, bouncing on their toes.

"No, I'm the red one," Lance said. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Liline's fingers begin to shake again.

"But you're wearing blue." They stopped bouncing, one floppy ear twisting in a way that seemed to be the Rarian equivalent of a head tilt. "Why are you wearing the wrong color?"

"Listen, kid, I don't make the rules, I just follow them."

"That's dumb," They said. Which- rude. "What are you doing?"

The new kid's eyes flicked over to Liline in askance, and that second of eye contact was enough to make Liline retreat back into their shell completely. They ducked their head and curled into themself like they were trying their very hardest to disappear. Lance frowned and opened his mouth to get new kid's eyes back on him. "We're making paper... uh... Garlucks?"

The kid peeked at the half-folded animal Lance was holding. "That's not a Garluck. That's a Garik. Man, you must be really bad at this if you managed to mix those two up."

Liline's ears perked up and gave a little flick. Lance glanced at them and then back at New Kid. And. Huh.

"Liline," He complained loudly. "Said the exact same thing!"

New Kid's attention shifted to the left again and Liline's ears flew back down. But New Kid, as Lance predicted, leaned right into Liline's space to get a better look at the paper in their hands without a care. " Yours looks right. If he's copying you, how come he's got antennae on his?"

Liline's ear twitched again, and they reached a self-conscious little hand up to smooth it down. "Um. I don't know," they said, more to their knees than New Kid. "He… He keeps doing that."

Satisfied, Lance planted his chin in his palm and watched the two of them chatter on to each other about the obvious differences between two animals Lance had never seen in his life. Or, more accurately, watched New Kid - "Malinku," they had informed them cheerfully - chatter on and Liline stare at them like they were validating their whole existence.

Man, Lance should start a friendship matchmaking service. The kid was rude as heck, but Liline was so shy that they almost balanced each other out.

“You’re really good at that,” Malinku said, plucking Liline’s paper out of their hands and ignoring their sputtered denials. “Can you teach me how to make one? Then, we can race kites. I’m the best at it.”

“Oh, I’ve never raced kites before,” Liline said, looking sad. Lance didn’t have to be a super genius like Pidge or Hunk to guess that the reason for that was because racing would require someone to race against . “I don’t think I’ll be good at it.”

Malinku shrugged. “That’s okay. I’ll show you how. It doesn’t even matter if you’re bad, since I like winning.”

While Liline caught Malinku up on Garluck-making, Lance started going through the folds he remembered from his last attempt, which was surprisingly most of them. All the while, he listened with half an ear to the two kids, smiling and feeling all sorts of warm, fuzzy friendship feelings that made him want to hug Hunk later.

"Alright!" He said, thrusting his newly completed creation at his little audience. "How's this one?"

The two kids stared at it for a while.

"That's a Landar," Liline finally said.

Malinku burst into laughter, clutching Liline's shoulder to steady themself. "How could you mess up a Garik so badly you got a Landar?"

Wow, never mind. Fuzzy feelings gone.

Lance groaned, throwing himself backwards on the stairs. “Good question!”

vi.

Lance returned just in time to see Allura shove two shrieking kids apart.

"Woah, what's going on?" He asked Hunk, tearing his eyes away from the fight just long enough to drop his last bag of supplies into the pile.

In front of them, the two kids were still yelling at each other, and now it seemed like others were joining in. Some backed up one kid or the other, but some seemed to be trying to enter the argument as independent arguers. Allura stood in the middle of it all, trying her hardest to get them to calm down in a diplomatic way, but that was working just about as well as you'd expect. He could see the vein throbbing in her forehead from all the way across the makeshift square.

"I don't really know," Hunk said, helping one of the volunteers open a new box of rations. "Everything seemed fine, but right before they started playing, they all just exploded on each other."

Lance frowned. Allura was trying to pull the two sluggers apart again and Lance noticed the adults, who were too busy trying to sift through supplies to calm their kids down right now, stirring anxiously. The mood of the camp was already pretty fragile, and this was really bringing it down.

"I'm gonna go help Allura out," he told Hunk. "That's the last box, anyway. You good to hold down the fort over here, big guy?"

"Sure, dude, I've got it. Go ahead."

Lance strolled over to where Allura was, weaving through the hoard of kids. "Children, please!" She was saying when he reached her. Lance could tell that she was trying really hard not to yell, but as a result, none of the kids could even hear her. "There's really no need to argue!"

"Hey there, Princess," Lance said, stopping at her side. "What seems to be the problem over here?"

"They cannot agree on a game to play." Allura looked even more frazzled up close. While she was a champ at handling queens and presidents and leaders, kids were definitely not her forte. "However, I do not understand why that resulted in a fist-fight."

The two kids who started it all were still trying to get up in each others' faces, despite the hands Allura had planted on each of their chests. One had a nasty looking orange bruise blooming on their left cheek and the other had claw marks on their arms and they both looked like they were out for more blood. At first glance the situation just seemed like a weirdly intense playground fight, but one look at the genuine rage in their eyes told Lance all he needed to know. These were a bunch of kids who had just been torn away from their galaxies and dumped in a refugee camp across the universe with a bunch of strangers. They hadn't been able to fight to protect their planets, so they felt like they had to fight to protect the little bits of them they had left.

They weren't just arguing about what game to play. They were homesick kids arguing over whose home was more important.

Luckily, if there was one thing Lance knew a little something about, it was being a homesick kid.

"Hey!" Lance hollered over the clamor. The crowd of kids went silent. "Are you guys done fighting, yet? Oh, you are? Good, good. Because I'm gonna teach you a game right now. Free of charge."

Allura shot him a look. "Lance-"

"Don't worry, Princess, I've got this," Lance said with a cheeky grin. He turned back to the crowd of kids, who were staring up at him in confusion. "Does anybody have a ball?"

"Um, I do," said a voice from the back of the pack. A kid with six arms hefted a ball the size of Lance's torso over their head to show him.

"That's... awesome, but does anybody have a smaller ball?"

"Oh! You can make it smaller!" said the kid, pressing a button on the side. The ball shrunk in their hands until it was about the size of Lance's head. Lance made grabby hands for it, catching it when it was tossed at him. It was a little heavier than what he wanted, but about the right size now.

Which was a little. Too convenient now that he thought about it. He eyed it distrustfully. "This isn't gonna do anything weird, right?"

The kid looked at him funny. "What do you mean?"

"Like, it won't blow up or anything, right?"

Now all the kids were looking at him funny. "Why would it do that?"

"I'm just making sure," Lance said defensively. He'd played a lot of weird games, okay?

Deciding to trust it, though, he spun the ball in his hands a few times, testing its give and bounce. Then, he lobbed it in the air and caught it with his foot, juggling it a few times and grinning at the kids' little gasps of awe.

"This'll work," Lance said, catching the ball in his hands casually. Man, he was cool . "Hey, guys!" Pidge, Keith, and Hunk's heads popped up from where they were buried in supplies. "Take a break and come play football with us!"

Pidge shot a look at the ball in his hands. "That's not a football."

Lance made a sound of affront. "That is literally the worst thing I've ever heard come out of your mouth."

"Oh, man," said Hunk, jogging over. Pidge and Keith followed cautiously. "Are you thinking what I think you're thinking?"

"Um, duh!"

"Perhaps you should explain to everyone else what you are thinking," Allura suggested, looking as lost as the kids.

"Oh, right!" Lance said. "We're going to play football!"

"Soccer," Pidge coughed. Lance stepped on her foot and ignored the elbow she jabbed at his ribs.

"It's a game from our planet, Earth!" The kids eyed each other uneasily, still a little sore from their previous argument. None of them seemed too willing to play a game from a planet other than their own, but none of them seemed too willing to argue with a paladin, either. Which was pretty much what Lance had been banking on. "It's super easy. You play with two teams. We'll go from one end of the square to the other. One goal can be, uh..." Lance glanced around. "The space between that cart and that box, and the other one can be the space between those two bags of food right there. Basically, the goal is to use your feet to pass the ball to your teammates and steal the ball from the other team so that you can kick it into the other team's goal and-" The six armed kid's hand shot up. "Yeah?"

"What if you don't have any legs?"

He gestured down at himself. Sure enough, where a human might have had legs, his body stopped at the hip. His weight was supported by two of his arms.

"Huh," said Lance. "Wait, does anyone else not have legs?"

A few of the kids raised their hands. One, who didn't have arms or legs and looked sort of like a fluffy cloud, wiggled around to get his attention.

“Okay, if you don't have legs, you can use your arms or tails to hit the ball. But you can't grab or hold on to it, okay? Or you can be the goalie. Goalies stand in front of the goals and they can use their arms to catch balls. If you don't have any of those body parts, you can use your head to move the ball. You cool with that?" He said to cloud kid. They bobbed up and down in a nod. "Alright, let's get this party started, then!" He pointed to the two kids who had started the fight. "You guys are the team captains."

They blinked at him. "Wait, really?"

"Yeah, really. Figure out who gets first pick! Without punching anyone this time."

Clawmarks kid ducked their head. "Uh, you can go first," they said, and it sounded like an apology. Guess that answered the question of who had started the fight in the first place.

Orange bruise kid rubbed her cheek, looking embarrassed. "Um, okay."

She straightened up and got ready to choose. Before she could, though, Lance remembered to dive forward and loop his arm through Hunk's. "Hunk and I are a package deal!"

"What?" Pidge complained. "No package deals!"

"But we can't be separated!" Lance cried. "Hunk and I are a team! Soccer twins, separated at birth! He's the D to my O!"

"New rule: you two have to be on separate teams since you're the only ones who really know what you're doing," Pidge said, shoving them apart. To Orangey, she said, "Pick one of them first, to get the dramatics out of the way early."

Orangey picked him, probably after seeing him show off earlier. Lance made a big show at being taken away from Hunk, throwing himself on the ground and wailing that he would never forget him. Hunk laughed and stepped over him to join the other team, looking completely unbothered, the traitor.

Allura, Hunk, and Pidge all ended up together, while Lance ended up with Keith, who stood in the line uncomfortably. Lance couldn't tell if it was because the kids were noisy and kept bumping into him as they shouted for the team captains to choose their friends next, or if it was because he wasn't sure how to do a physical activity besides fight someone. He eyed him. "Have you ever played football before?"

Keith frowned a little defensively. "In gym class."

Lance could work with that. He patted Keith on the shoulder. "Well, just follow my lead, then! We're gonna take this team to victory! You hear that Hunk? You're going down!"

"Oh, really?" said Hunk, crossing his arms and looking all smug. "Because I think you guys are the ones that're going down!"

The two teams started jeering at each other playfully, even Allura, who was taking a verbal smackdown from a kid half her height. Lance noticed, with a flush of satisfaction, the adults on the sidelines biting back smiles.

“Are we going to start or what?” Keith said, and though he tried his hardest to look casual, Lance could tell he really wanted to play. He bumped him with his hip.

“Hunk’s team gets to kick off,” Lance hollered. “We don’t have a referee so I’m just gonna yell ‘go.’  Ready… set-go!”

He took off and stole the ball from the panicked offender. Yelling and shrieks of laughter followed him down the pitch, but they were going to have to work a little to catch up to him. If there was one game in the entire universe he could win, it was this one, and it was going to be nice playing on his home turf for once.