Chapter Text
Pov Lance
The sirens of the castle went off and Alluras voice echoed through the altran speakers:
"Paladins, there's a unidentifiable ship attacking us. Please get to your lions immediately. We must form Voltron to protect the castle!"
Oh great. Why do they always attack in the most inconvenient situations?
I let out a frustrated groan before pealing myself out of the warm blanket and jumping out of my bed. I opened the door, hectically sprinting down the hallway towards the entry leading to the red lion.
As I took a sharp turn to the right, I almost crushed into Keith, my rival. I gazed at him. His hair was messy, black strains falling down his forehead and his mullet rested uncombed on his shoulders as he gave me an annoyed look.
"What are you doing here, Lance?"
What am I doing here? He can't be serious!
"The question is, what are YOU doing here, Mullet?"
I raised an eyebrow, looking him up and down as he shook his head in confusion.
"That's the entry to the red lion."
"Right."
"I'm the red Paladin. So what are YOU doing here?"
"You left to join the blade of marmora. Now Allura pilots the blue lion and I'm red."
"Well, now I'm back."
"You're the one who decided to leave in the first place. Now don't assume that I'll give up my place just because you changed your mind, Keith."
His eyes widened in shook.
Shit, maybe I took it too far.
I opened my mouth to say something that would loosen up the situation but I was interrupted by the deafening noise of the speakers:
"Keith, Lance, where are you? The team needs you to form Voltron. Hurry up!"
Shiro's voice thunderd through the radio system of our helmets.
"We can fight about this later! Come on, Lance!"
Keith already started running towards the entry and ran after him struggling to catch up.
Since when can this boy run so fast? Actually, I'm not even surprised.
He's good at everything. And i mean literally everything!
Back at the garrison he beat me in every little challange. And the thing is, he didn't even know I was trying to conquer him in these made-up competitions. But there I was, trying my best and still loosing against a guy who didn't even try.
I had been obsessed with being better than him, or so I always told myself. I guess, deep down I knew, I had always admired Keith.
Maybe my competitive behavior was just a cover-up of why I really followed him around in the halls and secretly watched him train.
I told myself that I wanted to be better than him. Just once. Make him stand in my shadow.
But the problem that was keeping me from becoming a version of myself, I was pleased with, wasn't Keith. It was me. It had always been me. So technically there was no point in blaming him for my failures but it was easier for me to accept it that way. And maybe I did it because it was the only way of getting his attention.
The doors opened and I followed Keith inside the red lion. I opened my mouth in protest as he sat himself down infront of the control panel but quickly closed it as rough fighting noises pierced through the speakers again.
Keith is right, there is no time to fight over this right now.
I stood behind the pilot chair Keith was sitting on to have a view on the screens locating the enemy's position. Red lights flickered up as the lion lifted himself up into free space.
"Finally you're there. Now form Voltron!"
Gosh, Pidge really needs to work on the volume of the speakers inside our helmets. My ears won't survive another mission exposed to this high frequency.
All of a sudden, my, or rather Keith's lion started to tremble and i almost fell over the chairback onto Keith's lap.
"You're doing it wrong!"
I slapped his hand away from the control panel and grabbed the handle while pushing some buttons with my other hand.
"Stop telling me what to do and let me do my work!"
He almost janked me over as he tried to reach around me to the control panel.
"Your work?"
I leaned my body a little bit more forward, blocking his view with my back.
All my attention was on the screen. My hands moved rapidly over the board with different buttons and colorful lights. Suddenly I jerked the handle around and the trembling stopped. I gave Keith a challenging look over my shoulder. He just rolled his eyes.
"Yeah, yeah great job. Now, MOVE!"
Keith grabbed me by my waist and pushed me to the side. I landed unlucky on the floor and hit my head on the wall.
"Hey, what was that for?"
I looked at him with anger but Keith just ignored me completely focused on the red lion.
Stupid emo boy, stupid lion, stupid wall!
I brought my hand up to the back of my head. I wasn't injured. The helmet protected my head so well that it couldn't be worse than a small bruise. But still.
I decided to just keep sitting in the corner pressing my back against the wall as Keith guided the lion through space. I heard the deep sound of explosions outside, suffocated by the wide space of nothing. From time to time red started to shake but the moment I wanted to stand up and intervene, Keith got her under control again.
There was a loud silence between us even though it wasn't silent at all: Fighting sounds filled the stuffy air. I felt so useless, sitting there in the corner of the lion having nothing better to do that watch Keith take over the situation. Again.
"Uhm... Lance?"
Keith's voice snapped me back to reality. His voice was filled with worry and uncertainty as I stood up and walked to the cockpit.
"What?"
I followed his gaze to the monitor showing the surrounding space. Voltron was encircled by a fleet of galra ships. Explosions coming from every possible direction made the lions stumble. Fuck. My eyes widened in terror as I caught Keith's stare.
"We need to make a retraction. Now!"
Pidge screamed against the hight noise level caused by the drive of combat ships.
"Coran, you must form a wormhole immediately for us to escape! There is no other way out!"
Allura ordered to the castle. Keith turned away locking his stare at the screens infront of us. His eyebrows were drawn together with concentration, showing no signs of fear.
Oh how I envy his fighting skills.
"Lance, i need you to keep your eye on the location of the galra fleet. Inform me, if they change course. I'll shoot them down if they block our track into the wormhole as soon as it appears."
"Who says you have control over the steering system AND the defense?"
"Just do as I say!"
"But I'm the sharpshooter-"
"Lance!"
Keith interrupted me with an annoyed groan.
"That so unfair! Why can't I take over the defense? Why don't you trust me?"
Strange blue light fell through the front window into the control room of the red lion.
Coran formed the wormhole right in front of us, preventing any detour that would take us more time. As I watched the bright blue portal grow, I grabbed the handle which controlled the laser guns as my eyes drifted to the location screen.
"I told you to stay away, Lance! You're like a child!"
"Shut it, Keith!"
"I'm trying to save us here. So just do as I say for once! Now shut up and let me lead the lion into the wormhole!"
"I'll stick you in a wormhole!"
"Is that so?"
By now Keith had already taken course to the portal while trying to hold me back from the cockpit with his other arm.
"Let go, Mullet!"
"You let go!"
"You wish-!"
The wormhole grew bigger and bigger the closer we got. Just a little more and gravity would suck us inside by itself. All of a sudden purple lights started to lighten up at the location monitor. The galra ships changed course.
Hectically I started to press the button to fire but Keith pushed me back again so that I wasn't able to reach the control panel anymore.
"Keith they're going to shoot us down!"
I started to fight against his arm blocking me.
"I got it under control!"
"No you don't!"
I reached for the handle one more time and tore it to the side the same second Keith pushed the button to fire. And then everything happened to fast:
A fireball shot out of the weapon straight towards the wormhole. I saw Shiro, Allura, Pidge and Hunk getting sucked inside of the portal followed by the castle. Then the fireball hit the wormhole and the red lion flew straight into the mess.
The last thing I heard was Keith gasping for air as the blast wave made the lion shake before I lost consciousness.