Nobody has ever accused the Holt siblings of acting like twins.
If Pidge is cold rationality, Matt is warm curiosity. From a young age, every game they’d play would go similarly: Pidge learning eagerly from Matt as he crafted some brilliant story, a winding, tragic, and humorous tale that always ended with them saving the day. Whether they were knights or superheroes, the end refrain would always be the same.
“See, Pidgey? Holts always win!”
As much as she rolled her eyes or shoved him away, there was no person on all of Earth that Pidge loved more than her brother. In fact, the more people she met, the more she was certain that he was always going to be her best friend. Matt was the person who hugged her tight after their mom lectured her. Matt was the person who brought her laughter between advanced exams and classes. Matt was the person who brought her coffee when she stayed up frantically filling out the Garrison application.
“You’ll get in, Pidge. Holts always win.”
Even when her logic bordered on callousness, he never once doubted her desire to make the world better. He saw her in a way none of her teachers or peers even tried. Matt balanced Pidge; he was pure sunshine, thawing her icy edges.
Then, he was taken. The dark, subzero reaches of space reached out with shadowy claws and tugged him into a void beyond her eyeline. Just as she was about to catch up to him.
Pidge could have broken down. She could’ve sank to her knees and cried, shaking as her mother sobbed the next room over. It was well within her rights to despair.
Instead, she laid out the facts. Matt was gone. Pidge was still smart. If anyone could find him, it would surely be her, and not because she thought she was better than the Garrison— no, she just cared more. The most.
That was her secret, and one no one would suspect of robotic, unemotional, brainiac Katie.
Placing Matt’s glasses over her eyes left a bitter and ironic feeling in her chest. It felt like a cheat code, trying to become more like her brother and still falling short, even with shorter hair. She looked away from her reflection quickly, expression flat.
Pidge would never be as good as Matt, but she could be good enough to save him.
Space did not just claim her brother. As Pidge would learn over the coming years with Voltron, the darkest reaches of the universe claimed all. Families, friendships, planets and communities, none were safe in the eyes of the Galra. At the young age of 15, Pidge would discover terrible things. Unspeakable horrors. Her visions cried in bloody tears, her memories whispered in broken hisses, the sound of shattering chased at her heels. Despite it all, Pidge pushed forward. She shoved blinders over her eyes, stayed her course, and determinedly hunted for breadcrumbs.
Then, her trail ran dry. Or, rather, emerged in front of something worse than silence, than not-knowing.
How could a scrap of metal ever seek to capture the essence of Matt Holt?
Alone, yet surrounded by strangers’ names, in a planet so far from all he loved. No sunshine smoothed out the harsh lines and blinking lights. This wasn’t fair. It wasn’t fair. Pidge was the one who was sharp, unfeeling, and distant. Pidge was the one who committed awful crimes, supposedly for the universe, but in reality, for her own selfish reasons. She was the one meant to end up as a headstone in a field of headstones, a name in a sea of names, a warning and a forgotten memory. Matt was meant for open fields and flowers and beautiful, cloudless days.
This image did not fit with her reality.
But Pidge was so, so tired.
Head bowed in her hands, eyes watering with foreign tears, Pidge opened her mouth and let out an unrestrained scream.
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