#could be triggering

They all seemed content to remain like that, but Pidge felt like there were bugs crawling under her skin. She didn’t want to relax, she didn’t know if she could.

Her heart pumped erratically in her chest as she felt more and more useless sitting on a couch relaxing when she could be analyzing the data that just might help her find her family.

“Anyone else have—“

“I’m going to go ‘relax’ in my lab,” Pidge announced resolutely.

“Uh, Pidge, you know the whole point of relaxing is ya know, not doing anything, right?”Hunk asked as Keith shifted to allow him to release her from under the weight of his arm where it fell in their semi dog pile onto the couch.

“I need to start my diagnostics on the encrypted files I retrieved before they corrupt,” Pidge’s words were pointed and direct.

“Lone galra cruisers don’t usually have tech guys, it’ll take some time to relay the news of the attack over to hq and even more time for them to properly investigate and figure out what we got away with... you’ve got plenty of time Pidge—“

“Well, we weren’t exactly stealthy and they could have failsafes already initiated ready to go at any moment! It’s crucial that I review and decrypt as much as I can before all of our work goes to hell—“

“I thought we were sorta clean with it...” Keith muttered deep in thought as he reviewed their performance over in his head.

“Woah, slow down,” Lance interjected everyone, “if you’re still mad at me about not catching that last sentry before you were done cleaning out all of the files from the server then, I get that, but you don’t need to be so—“

“Guys, guys! We’ll discuss it later, for now everyone’s only job is to chill out, and Pidge, you can go work in your lab as long as you promise to come to the meeting later with a cooler head, deal?”

“Yeah, whatever. Deal,” she gruffed before taking off towards Green’s hangar to retrieve the usb from today’s mission.

“Jeez,” Hunk sighed as he fixed his headband back into place from where it had slipped down.

“And I thought I could be hot-headed...” Keith mused almost in awe but also worry because why was Pidge this worked up over some data that may or may not even be helpful?

“I was still down from a blast during hand to hand with the second wave of sentries...” Lance stared at the floor, his face full of hurt as he recalled his moment of error in battle that he was certain causing Pidge’s mood.

“...I didn’t see the last one come up and when I did he’d already blasted the control panel to shit.”

“It’s not your fault Lance, the mission couldn’t have gone smoother. We did what we set out to and that’s all we can focus on for now, let’s just give her some space to cool off and wait for the meeting to dole the rest out.”

The boys agreed and stayed in the common room for several more minutes talking about how weird Pidge was being before finally heading off to get cleaned up.

Pidge wished she could get washed up, but she had so much work left to do. She was typing away furiously as she produced line of code after code, determined to not let up before she was done.

Her legs pumped restlessly against the floor while she worked, her entire body practically vibrating with nervous energy.

She just needed to configure a base for her decryption software according to the firewalls in this particular ship’s files so she could finally let it run and—fuck.

The altean computer screen wavered and then sputtered as it began rebooting.

“Nononono, no, NO! You’ve got to be kidding me...”

She could throw up.

The processor had overheated before she could get the last few lines of code typed to initialize her software which meant when it cooled off she would have to start from the beginning and by then... by then there could be nothing left to decrypt.

Panic swelled in her chest, the heat spreading as quickly as it appeared.

This could have been what leads her to her father, to her brother. And if she failed she could be what breaks her family... for good.

She hadn’t realized she’d been holding her breath until the strain in her chest brought her out of her staring competition with the blaring red across the screen in front of her.

Inhaling sharply, she clutched her chest. The initial breath hurt and so she breathed again to see if it would hurt again, and it did.

Shit, why does it hurt? Slower. Breathe slower.

But she couldn’t. She took another. And then another. And then she was breathing so fast none of her heaves seemed to alleviate the tightness that wrapped around her lungs and crawled up into her throat.

“Aha, fuck.”

The panic came on so quickly it almost made her nauseous.

The harder she tried to return her breathing to normal the deeper she seemed to plunge. But she still had work to do. And she had to be cooled off for the meeting or Shiro wouldn’t let her return to her lab.

She needed to, in her own words, calm the fuck down.

She’d done it before, managed to bring herself down from this point. But that was with Lance by her side to gently guide her breathing to something steadier and with Shiro holding her so tightly it was hard to find a good enough reason to remain so tightly wound.

And she was just very rude to both of them so she couldn’t ask for their help after that. Pidge had never done it by herself before, but she would have to at least try to now.

So she closed her eyes and forced herself to take in a large enough breath so she could count her inhale, hold it, and then exhale, but even doing that had hurt and seemed to just make deepen the ache.

“No... why... why isn’t it... working?!”

Her chest felt too heavy to do it, too tight and she couldn’t seem to manage the counts without making it worse. Her lungs would tighten up and ache before she reached the end of the time she was supposed to hold her breath which caused her exhale to be several rapid inhales instead.

Oh god.

She pushed herself away from her desk, in the process pulling the keyboard out as well as knocking over a pile of electronics that fell to the floor with a clank that jarred her now insanely sensitive ears.

There was too much input. Too many things making it impossible to do this on her own.

She scrambled to shut the radio off, but her eyes were blurry with tears and she couldn’t find the correct buttons, increasing the volume and switching it to a station of static instead.

She let out a scream she didn’t know she was holding back as she sank to her knees, clamping hands over her ears to try and block out all the noise that was now overloading her senses.

It was like everything had been dialed to 10.

The whirring of the computer processor as it worked, the cool air being pushed into the room from a vent over her head, the steady beeps and ticks of several different machines and... and the door of the lab opening followed by footsteps.

“Pidge?”

Keith.

“Pidge, hey... what happened?”

His voice was so loud.

“What’s wro—“

“Shh,” she begged, voice barely a whisper over her ragged breathing.

“Okay, okay,” he placated as he closed the distance between them.

“I can be quieter... and maybe if I turn this off, how’s that? Better?”

She nodded, removing her hands from her ears once he’d gotten the radio off. She hadn’t noticed when she’d started shaking but her hands were trembling so badly she had to hold them to keep them remotely still.

“I’m gonna sit with you, is that okay? Alright, do you think you can tell me what’s happening right now?”

She thought about it for a second and concluded that even she didn’t know.

She’d had anxiety attacks before, Shiro had been the first to name it for what it was. They were mostly inattentive ones where she’d dissociate, sometimes she would get worked up and hyperventilate, but it was only ever fleeting, short, over in a couple minutes. And other than that she’d always had some sort of an answer to nearly everything anxiety related. Except now.

Because right now she did not know what was happening, only that even her own heart pumping was so loud it made her want to disappear into a blissful cloud of nothing. She didn’t like not knowing what this was and why she was feeling it, and that realization seemed to break what little progress she had made in containing it.

“Wait no, it’s okay, you’re okay!”

But she wasn’t. She was so far from okay.

“Pidge, you’re safe. You just need to breathe.”

She knew that already and she’s been trying, but the more she tried and failed the more she became aware that there was nothing she could do on her own to stop it.

“This happens to me too sometimes, I know it seems impossible but you can do it. We can do it together, yeah? Okay, I need you to take a really deep breath for me, I’ll go first.”

And he did. He inhaled audibly and urged her to follow. And she tried, but her chest hitched and she choked on the air she tried to bring in.

Keith wanted to soothe her and placed his hand on her arm but she jolted so violently at the touch that he tore his hand away as if he was afraid he’d burned her. She met him with desperate eyes, sincere with frustration and impatience.

“I’m sorry, I don’t think I’m helping much.... do you want me to get someone else? Hunk? Or maybe—“

“Sh-Shiro or Lance, p-please...”

Her hands were in fists on her lap and they were beginning to go numb, a tingle spreading from her wrists up to her shoulders and a similar one moving up her legs. She hated when that happened.

She hated feeling so much emotion when her body felt so stuck, so not there. Because she was there and she was struggling and now was not the time to go ghost on herself.

“I can’t-I can’t stop it, I just want it... to stop.”

“This feeling isn’t permanent, it’s just your body reacting—it’ll stop,” he moved his hand from the floor to her knee and she flinched again but let it remain there.

“I’m going to be right back with someone, is that okay? You’ll be alone for only a minute...”

She nodded through a strangled sob. Her mouth was starting to go dry and so she didn’t feel much like talking anymore.

Keith squeezed her bouncing knee before taking off in a dead sprint. Pidge surrendered to the heaviness of her eyelids and closed them for a moment as she vaguely wondered how he would describe the predicament to their friends and how exactly he’d realized something was awry at all, relishing in the prospect of focusing on something other than her own panic for a moment.

But the relief didn’t last long because when she pried her eyes open to see if someone, anyone was back yet, the world tilted.

She watched in horror as objects seemed to wane out of focus while others seem pulled into hyper detail, the floor stretching out in front of her in an unrelenting wave of movement, the little dots of static that you usually see when you blur your vision or just before you pass out were now moving so quickly she could cry. Correction: she was already crying, but she couldn’t stop full on hysterics now.

She didn’t know when she had scooted herself against the leg of the desk but was thankful for the support, thankful for something to remind her that she was on the ground, in her lab, in... space.

The way her chest contracted as her mind continued to do its own whirring, continued to think about all of the things she couldn’t possibly control but felt compelled to try to caused her a whole new type of distress.

It was too much.

She squirmed as she tried to get away from herself, from this feeling, throwing her head back hard enough to hurt as she wailed, but it didn’t because she couldn’t feel anything. It was like her entire body had shut off an entire sense and the others were thrown completely out of wack because of it.

And she didn’t know why she was crying exactly, there seemed to be too many reasons and not any all at once, but she gathered that it was one of those instances where now that she’d started it was going to be really hard to stop.

Those were really the only circumstances under which she cried, especially now that she was in space with a ship full of teenage-ish males and two very parent-like aliens, after going so long without crying at all only to lose it over absolutely nothing and somehow end up crying about everything.

But this was sort of different. Because she felt so much more wrong than just an overdue cry.

She didn’t have much more time to deliberate this because there were voices pulling her out of her daze. Shiro was knelt in front of her and Keith was back.

“There you are.”

Shiro moved one hand to her shoulder and she shrunk under it, her eyes wild and fearful as she could feel the weight of it, but nothing more.

“Hey, it’s alright. It’s just me,” he said as he moved to sit beside her against the drawers of the desk.

“Keith said you were getting really overwhelmed, so I’m here if you want—oh!” Pidge had rushed forward to bury her head in Shiro’s chest and his arms closed around her securely.

“I’ve got you, i’ve got you...” he gushed as he held her trembling frame, the tears still flowing freely and her chest still struggling under the immense pressure that had built in it.

She tried to ignore how trapped she felt, yearning for the usual ease that his tight embrace brought instead of this suffocating strain. She felt another scream bubble at the back of her throat as she let the weight of his arms take her somewhere almost worse, somewhere she wasn’t just struggling to breathe anymore, but now felt like she had absolutely no air to even try.

“Pidge?! Hey, talk to me, where you at?”

She pulled away from Shiro, his voice piercing her ears like a small explosion. He immediately retracted and searched her face for an explanation but it was just filled with fear as she drew her knees up to her chest, clutched her hands over her ears and tried not to give into the sobs until she had enough air to support such heavy crying.

But it soon became blatantly clear that she couldn’t get enough air in when her face had gone slack and her sobs had all but stopped except for the croak of her tired throat as she desperately tried to pull in air, the strong arms around her releasing completely now, more hands finding her back and tapping her shoulder.

“Pidge, you need to take a breath, the air is there. You’re—damnit it, you’re going to pass out if you don’t try. Is Lance on his way over? Okay, can you go get water and a...”

The rest was lost on her as black continued to impede her vision, Shiro’s usually warm and calming voice now just as sharp as the sting in her lungs and cut with worry. Tears still flowed down her cheeks to meet under her chin and continue down her neck, but they came silently, the hollow rasp from her throat as she struggled through irregular and rapid breaths barely audible anymore. She almost wished that she would just pass out already, let her body’s self preservation instincts break the unbearable cycle of panic it tortured her with.

But Shiro wouldn’t let her, he was just about ready to administer rescue breaths with how pale she had gotten before Lance arrived.

“Shit, Pidge, what the hell? You usually do so well with the breathing excercise I showed you... but it’s okay, this happens.”

Lance settled himself next to Pidge on the other side of Shiro and began to work one of her fists open, her hand was now lax for the most part, so it wasn’t hard and did the same with the other before putting his hand on her back while the other corded through her hair.

“I’m going to stretch your arm out so you can— damnit you’re really tensed up, do you think you can relax your arm a bit?” He questioned tenderly as he began gently easing her arm away from her chest, holding her hand while rubbing at the clenched up muscles as they released their tension.

“Yeah, just like that... you’re doing so good,” he murmured as he took her shaking hand up to his chest and pressed her pliant fingers down. After a minute she looked around lazily, her body still racked with trembling sobs before soft fingers were tipping her chin to meet a warm smile mouthing ‘hey’.

Shiro watched in a mix of awe and confusion as Lance handled Pidge’s crisis, ignoring the hesitation in his eyes because his voice was so steady and his so hands sure that it didn’t matter that he didn’t know in the slightest of what he was doing. He was just being him, this was his nature, to be able to read someone so well and provide them with such tenderness.

“Want to try and listen to how I breathe?”

She parted her lips as if to speak but a particularly pointed sob prevented it, Lance seemed to get the point though and shifted his legs around.

“I’ll let you settle in and you tell me when you’re ready for me to return the hug...”

Lance tugged on her other sleeve and guided into a cautionary embrace, his touch light and his hands remaining on her arms as she found the spot on his chest where she could practically hear his heart moving against his ribs, but... not quite.

Everything sounded muffled now, like she was under water but wasn’t prepared to take a deep enough breath before being shoved beneath the surface.

Except she was comepltely aware that she wasn’t actually under water. Like it was all a cruel joke where she was tortured while she watched everyone else around her breathe easily. Her mind still able to rationalize that even though she felt like she was, she wasn’t actually dying.

But Lance wasn’t flaunting the fact that he could breathe, he was trying to remind her how she could too. He squeezed her arms each time her hands tightened around the material of his sweatshirt, reminding her that she should be thinking about how his chest was working, pushing all the other junk in her mind away for now.

“Feel how my voice carries when I talk... how controlled each breath is... think about what you can feel and hear and touch... they’re things you can perceive... things you can control, don’t focus on what you can’t...”

Okay, he’s right. I can do that. Try to do that.

She shuddered through a round of hitches in her sobbing and pressed her face further into Lance’s chest, not even having the mind to worry about how wet it was getting with her tears.

Think about what you can feel...

She could feel the thumping of his heart even if she wasn’t quite hearing it at that moment, her mind making up the difference and leading her to imagine the sound it must be making each time it does... and how the air being pushed out through his nose must be whistling... and how the constant reverberations must mean he was... humming.

But then it stopped as he took a big breath and let Pidge rise with his chest as it expanded, sure to let it out just as steadily.

Her chest seemed to loosen then, her body rushing to take in as much air as it could before the panic spiked again.

“I’m going to hug back now, you let me know if you—oh, okay, I’m here, Shiro’s here too. You’re okay,” he ran his hands through her hair and pressed her tightly to his chest, his legs coming up to plant his feet firmly on either side of her as he began slowly rocking them back and forth.

It felt nice. He moved them carefully, slow enough that she could have been asleep in his arms and she wouldn’t have been disturbed, but also so securely that her mind couldn’t disappear the presence of his hands bracing her back and circling through her hair.

But the lull didn’t last long.

It wasn’t his fault, this is just how it went. When she got bad like this, the panic came and went in waves. If her body still had nervous energy left, it didn’t matter how much she managed to calm down, she would have to start from square one until there was nothing left in her to continue.

No!

Shiro was just as surprised as Lance when her voice cracked, the soothing sounds she was murmuring to herself as she worked her breaths closer and closer to normal broken by a wail.

Fuck!

Fuck you, fuck this, fuck—everything.

“-dge? Pidge?!”

“We’re still here, you’re still alright.”

“Give me a sec... there ya go, better?”

He’d turned her around so that her back was against his stomach and then held his hand up in front of her to show her before he closed it and lowered it to her chest, she knew what he was going to do and melted into him further as he began to rub gentle but firm circles over her sternum.

“Ahh... ahah, f-fuck,” she sobbed beneath him, she shuddered under the touch, her hands searching for something else, anything else to ground her and stumbling upon Shiro’s on one side and her thigh on the other.

She squeezed tight on both as she fought desperately not to slip again, feeling the way her body wanted to become light again.

Nope, we are just not doing that shit again.

She was so mentally done with this, but her body seemed to be losing energy too. She could feel it tiring, losing the warewithal to continue its draining overreaction. Turns out not having rested at all after their mission just to drop like this was a blessing in way, she was scared of how long she’d have been able to go if she wasn’t already worn out.

She forced her eyes shut and focused on Lance’s fingers, his knuckles pressing hard, but not hard enough to hurt. She’d almost wish he was. The rhythmic motion was heavenly because she couldnt ignore it as he kept the pressure there above her heart.

She gasped when she started coming back to herself, feeling the sudden shift when she seemed to be given the reigns back on her own breathing, sucking in huge gulps when she finally could control it.

“That’s it, you’re doing so good... listen to how I do it.”

Shiro was massaging the residual tremors out of her hand as he held it, the additional release of tension aiding in grounding her further.

She was faintly aware of the lab door opening but was too focused on not losing her pace, her breaths still manual and unsteady but a hell of a lot better than before.

“Oh...” it was Keith, he sounded worried.

She was confused for a moment before a hand was on her thigh.

“Hey,” Lance’s hand was at her wrist now. “Oh Pidge, don’t-don’t do that.”

Keith was trying to lift her fingers up but stopped when he saw that pearls of blood were starting to form beneath them and didn’t want his struggle with her to make it worse.

“Crap.”

“Pidge let—Pidge you gotta let go.”

The hurt in Lance’s voice stung. She wasn’t even aware she’d been doing that, but she couldn’t bring herself to break the iron grip, this peace was so tenuous and she couldn’t afford fucking it up.

When she didn’t respond Lance exchanged a knowing look with Keith who moved his hand under the palm of hers before both boys wrenched her hand up, surpressing how sharply he breathed when he saw the trail of red with sheaths of skin uprooted and purple crescents dotted about.

They sort of just stared, lost for a second, neither of them quite sure how to proceed.

“I got it,” Shiro offered as he took the offending hand from them, Pidge’s gaze still somewhere else.

There was a moment of silence before anyone talked or moved again.

“Pidge, hey. Keith brought water for when you feel up to it.”

Keith was kneeling next to them now, pouring cold water onto a rag and wringing it out before showing it to Lance.

“He’s got something cold to put on your face, maybe over your eyes? They must hurt...”

She blinked absently, silent tears making their way down her cheeks.

“This should help, ready?”

It took a second but she finally nodded and then the rag was descending on her swollen and bloodshot eyes. She jumped at first but he continued and once it was fully laid on it was bliss. The coolness calmed the angry puffiness and the pressure kept new tears from falling.

“I’m... gonna put something on your leg. It might sting, but it’s also cold so it’ll feel nice,” Keith said wiping up the small drops of blood that escaped the scratch wounds before pressing whatever it was down on top for a beat.

They weren’t bleeding much, the skin torn literally just enough to bleed. She also couldn’t really feel it, the area just felt numb and stiff. She hadn’t meant to draw blood, she just needed something that felt real to bring her back.

A spark of shame lit deep in her gut as realization dawned on her, she had hurt herself. Sure it was subconscious, but she still did, literally with Lance and Shiro right there trying to help. But she pushed those thoughts away.

She was far from perfectly fine, still working through the after shocks and residual anxiousness that followed. She sort of felt sick to her stomach and couldn’t stop swaying her leg back and forth as she lay against Lance, his grip as tight as ever, with Shiro still caging her unsteady hands in his.

Keith had gotten a blanket at some point to drape over her and kept removing the rag to re wet it with the cold water that she didn’t quite trust herself to drink yet.

“How ya feeling?” Lance murmured into her hair.

She hummed in response.

“Gonna take that as better, right?”

She nodded and then grimaced when Keith took the rag away once more and opened her eyes only to realize how much pressure had built behind them.

“What’s up?” Shiro asked when he noticed her face twisting up.

“My head hurts.”

“Hm, Coran has some sort of aspirin equivalent somewhere and... you could lie down, try going to sleep until dinner—oh! Hunk is making your favorite, he figured everyone needs a good meal after today.”

“Sounds nice,” she almost slurred, her head snuggling into the crook of Lance’s arm. She still shook as if she were cold, even with the blanket.

The three of them discussed something for several minutes but she tuned the conversation out, too busy relishing in how she could breathe again, only a small part of her worried about relapsing back into hysteria as the waves of panic returned smaller and smaller.

“Pidge? You awake?” Lance asked, trying not to eat her hair.

“Soooo, we were thinking of having dinner in the common room tonight, we think you should eat something before you turn in and we don’t want you to be alone just yet, also so you can be snuggled at all times... what do ya think?”

She smiled and scrunched her nose up with and enthusiastic ‘sure’.

“How bout I give you a lift?” Shiro smirked fondly as he squatted down and motioned for her to hop on his back.

They all had a good laugh at that, Keith and Lance joking about how they’ll never receive the same star treatment.

“I think it’s safe to say the meeting is rescheduled for the morning, sorry Lance!”

“Whateverrrr! The things I do for you, Pidge,” he laughed as they settled in on the couch, Hunk almost suffocating her when he was done serving their meal.

“I’m never letting go, I hope you are aware of that.”

“Not complaining, just... can I have my arm back? Thanks.”

“What was even on the drive—“

“We do not speak of... of that, Princess.”

“Pidge can run her diagnostics again before tomorrow’s meeting and then after that she’s on an electronic hiatus. Also everyone’s going to their rooms at curfew from now on, no exceptions. You people are humans and you need sleep!”

“But Shiro!”

“At curfew? Like at exactly curfew?”

“Yes Keith.”

“Space...“

“Lance. Lance, do not say it.”

I'm finally ready to really try to move on. I have many flaws but I do not deserve certain words or treatmants. Especially if i m good faith. And I do not deserve to have my heart always broken or cry or feel ad in general. And i just don't deserve to continue to suffer. Especially for something that doesnt deserve anything at all. I was wrong for a long time, I realize it. But this was helpful to understand that I can be wrong about persons and facts too. It happens. The important thing is to realize to have been wrong and try to fix it someway. And time will help to understand how to .. have fun someway.