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          “Hey, Pidge?”  He’s mentally marked the questionable figures before he’s turning his eyes to his sister, pushing his chair to roll in her direction ; there’s a comfort and familiarity in this, in being able ask and trust her judgment just as easily as breathing.  Even if his momentum across the floor near comically inching to a creep.  “Is it just me or do these numbers look off to you, too?  They seem kinda high.                                                                                     I think I’m gonna run them again.”

          The surety of returning home’s as unattainable as the stars dotting the sky, their only companions as panic’s buzzing over the comm units. ; there’s no one to protect them here ( what’s this?  what’s happening?  this is impossible ).  Still, they try to reach ; the terrain’s different beneath his feet, it moves differently ——–  he moves differently.  And it’s between the infinitely high ceiling of the sky and the ever rebounding floor that he feels trapped, crushed, and it’ll be the stars that win.                            They’re supposed to be alone out there, billions of kilometers from home,                                                                                    and somehow that’s scarier.          But they’re not alone anymore.  There’s a dull roar bleeding into the small room, faces that’ll become nothing but blurs crowded in ( how many are there?  he’s not sure, he can’t bring himself to care through the fear and dread, and he’ll become less when he decompartmentalizes this memory ).  He swallows when a voice bass underlines the cacophony, and it’s an action that gives him little chance to process the shouting, the pain, the ground.                            His first thought is that he isn’t going to see the stars again.                                                      His second is that he just might —-  thanks to an old friend.          And he does see them again when he’d been ushered into shuttle and catapulted from the halls that will surely revisit him ; they aren’t the same, though.  The revelation tastes bitter, though he of anyone should’ve known better ( but what’s left if that notion’s gone? ), but he’ll keep looking to them as if they can guide him home.                                                                                                                He’s so lost.          But they don’t, not yet at least ; he stays with them, the rebels as he learns.  He’s come to learn all too intimately the Galra Empire’s cruelty, its relentlessness and ever subsuming expansion.  And if there’s a circle he’s drawn that the Galra can never touch, not on his life, then so be it ; he can accept not returning home for that, and he’ll become stronger for that.  He can come to terms with never seeing his mom, his sister, so long as it means Earth remains untouched and they stay safe ( god knows they’ve gotten too close once before ).                                                                                                                And so he dies.          Not literally, of course, but for all intents and purposes ; it’s a convenient configuration, bittersweetly fallen on his lap with a botched mission.  A base buried well beneath the surface of an inhospitable planet, he deprecatingly jokes to himself that it’s his coffin.  Vaguely he wonders how much truth there may be to it, and with a shudder in his chest and fire in his movements he refuses to let it be so.  Not when a stranger donned in white and green all but explodes through his door like a supernova.                                           “-----------  Pidge?”                                                                He hadn’t accounted for the stars finding him.

          And when the questions are much too demanding to be put off any longer and he parts just enough so his hands can perch on Shiro’s shoulders, a steadying force ( a contact that reassures him still that, yes, he’s still tangible before him ).  “You died?  Shit, Shiro you’re the one who died, and you’re amazed I’m here?  How does that even work?                                                                                          How are you even here?”

                    “Just finished up, so stand back.  Just in case, y’know?  Safety first.”                                                         He isn’t about to mention the irony here.

          “Pluto.” Of all Hunk’s said, it’s what he fixates on and nearly laughs, not unkindly ; there’s a layer of amazement in his voice.  Not too long ago he’d embarked on a doomed mission to one of its satellites, and now they’ve well surpassed what had been considered conceivable ( but he isn’t wrong ).  “You’re right : it’d be no problem at all.  We’d be in the intergalactic sphere  ----  with enough time of course ---              And its implications beyond space exploration.  Botany?  Medicine?  For example ---”

                                     “Y’ready to go?  ‘Cause we’ve gotta go, and we’ve gotta go now.                                                                   Unless you want company.”

          “You got me, detective.  Looks like I’m going to liar’s jail.”  It’s said with something of mock seriousness, with a solemness exaggerated ----- and he’s to hold a mirrored expression longer than what’s likely necessary.  And yet it cracks, an upturn to lips peaking through, a glimmer of humor dancing in his look.

          “I’ve gotta say : this is way cooler than I’d ever though possible.”  Sure, he’d had a thorough tour not too long earlier, but there’s always something new capturing his attention ---  something to investigate and fawn over.  “Not just the conception, but the implementation.  Can you imagine what this would do with Earth tech?  It’d revolutionize ----  everything!”

          “I still can’t believe you’re alive.”  It’s said blankly, just is, just a statement of fact, but he’s going to blink the other ---  as if somehow still this can’t be so ( but it is ).  “You haven’t been seen since ------  Do you know how unlikely it is that you wouldn’t been alive this time, too?  Infinitesimal.  Impossible.  But ------  Maybe I was looking at this wrong.                                              Maybe the constant has something to do with you.”

          “Well ----  that’s good to know!”  He’s unperturbed, choosing instead to take this as an opportunity to shrug and return to his work with a contrasting upturn tracing his lips.  Matt’s nearly done, nigh upon success, and it feels as though his breath’s suspended upon it’s completion ; still, it’s not to hinder something of a chuckle, of a response borrowing a bit of that air.  “I can’t tell if you’re suggesting that my reputation precedes me or that I’m the Obi Wan to your Leia, but honestly I don’t think I’d be disappointed with either.”

          matt’s biggest motivator in the time between galra capture and reuniting with pidge is his family: 1) in that their dad is still out there somewhere, and they need to find him; and 2) in that doing whatever he can to help keep zarkon and the galra empire as far away from earth as possible is more important than making it home.  a galra empire away from earth means a galra empire away from pidge and their mom.

matt is absolutely an animal person.