#void-tiger

:D aaahh there ARE so many!! wildflowers make me so so happy haha

okay so these are pretty much all Forest Wildflowers bc well. Feral Woodland Child R Us but:

(under cut bc this got so long lmao)

They watched Coran leave and then the questions came at the same time:

“Does this place even accept Altean currency?” “Who even is this?” 

Ryou peered at the bills Coran had insisted upon him.

“We have some GAC,” Romelle assured him. “But I’m pretty sure no one around here takes Altean currency anymore.”

Shiro folded his stack of Altean bills and stowed it away. “Well, we can at least window shop.”

It was Allura’s turn to ask a question. “Why do we need windows?”

“No, it means we can just look at things but not really buy anything.”

“Well, what’s the point of shopping if you’re not going to buy something?” Allura asked in genuine confusion. 

“Sometimes it’s just nice to look and daydream,” Romelle said.

“But if you don’t need anything or can’t buy something, then why would you...?”

“Maybe we should split up,” Ryou suggested quickly. “Meet back at the food court in a varga?”

“Does this place have a food court?” Shiro asked.

“It’s a mall; food courts are required.”

“I’m sure there is somewhere to eat,” Romelle agreed. “And appropriate signage to direct us. Let’s go!” And she grabbed Ryou’s hand and hauled him off towards a store that had caught her eye.

“I’m still confused,” Allura protested.

Shiro slung an arm over her shoulders. “Let’s just enjoy the time together away from the ship.”

She smiled. “I think I can do that.”

----------

Ryou and Romelle were already seated at the food court when Shiro and Allura got there. They found them by Romelle’s waving from her seat. Judging by the trays in front of them, they’d already found some lunch.

“Oh my Goddess,” she breathed when Allura set down four bags of shopping. “We didn’t have that much GAC, did we?”

“Don’t tell me you opened a credit account at all these places,” Ryou said, sounding horrified.

“No, no, nothing like that,” Shiro told him. “It turns out there’s a store that, among other things, buys old currency. And the Altean bills Coran gave us are extremely rare and valuable collector’s items.”

Ryou’s eyebrows went up. “I need the name of this store immediately and for you guys to stay here with Romelle.”

She pouted. “Why can’t I come with?”

He blushed. “Because it’s a surprise.”

Shiro chuckled. “Swynwyck’s Surprises, that way, on the left.”

“Thank you!” And Ryou was off like a shot.

“Let me show you what I bought,” Allura said, dutifully falling into distraction mode. 

“I’ll get us some food,” Shiro volunteered.

“I want some of whatever they’re selling,” Allura told him, nodding at the busiest of the food vendors. The line was long, but seemed to be moving quickly. 

“Coming up, Princess.” He kissed her cheek and went to queue.

Allura pulled out a cute dress and some shoes that went with it, but Romelle noticed she was watching Shiro as she did so. Satisfied at last that he was busy, the lost princess of Altea sidled up to her cousin and whispered, “I also managed to make a few purchases when Shiro wasn’t watching.” She pulled up a bag and opened a smaller bag hiding under a light sweater, letting Romelle peer in.

She whistled quietly. “Oh, he’s going to like you wearing that.”

“Who said I was going to be wearing it?”

They both laughed as Allura hid the purchase away again.

“You really have no idea what it is Ryou’s so intent on buying for you?”

“None. I mean, there were a lot of cute clothes I saw, but I can’t think of anything I was especially fond of. Though there was one store where he was acting kind of... weird. Maybe he found something he wanted to buy for me there?”

“Maybe. I’m very curious myself as to what it might be, so hopefully it’s not anything like...” She nodded towards the bag with its hidden surprise.

Romelle giggled and blushed. “I don’t think he’d let me open it here if that’s the case. What else did you get?”

Allura continued showing off her new acquisitions - mostly clothes, but also a new comtab (for Pidge), an old comtab (for Hunk to take apart and play with, in the hopes that he’d stop taking apart various pieces of the Castle), a new video game for the console that Pidge and Lance had bought on their last trip, and a boot knife for Keith.

“Are you sure it’s a good idea to give him more knives?”

“A Paladin must always be prepared,” she said.

“Level with me: You just make up that ‘Paladin Code’ stuff as you need to, don’t you?”

Allura opened her mouth to protest but Shiro had returned with two trays of food and drink, sliding one in front of Allura grandly. “For my princess.” 

“Thank you, my paladin,” she replied, patting the chair next to her. “Please do join us.”

He took the proffered seat and closed his eyes to inhale the scent of the food. “Man, this smells almost as good as the stuff Hunk makes.” He dug in with gusto. 

Ryou came running back up with a small bag in hand. He all but fell into the chair next to Romelle, but offered her the bag gently. "For you.”

“You didn’t have to get me anything,” she told him as she took the bag. “I’m happy just spending time with you.”

“I know, but... I wanted to. To get you this, anyway. It just... well, open it.”

The bag’s contents were wrapped in tissue paper (or something very like it), and Romelle had to pull that away before she gasped and pulled out a large wrap the color of sunlit grass and hemmed with beautiful butterfly-esque creatures. The whole thing shimmered faintly, but the material, though light, was soft to touch.

“Y-you’ve said before that you get a little chilly some mornings, especially in the spring and autumn, and this just... it reminded me of you.”

Romelle threw her arms around him. “It’s lovely! Thank you so much!” When she released him, she draped it around herself immediately. “It’s so soft!”

“It’s gorgeous, just like you,” Allura told her.

“I think that was supposed to be your line,” Shiro told his brother around a mouthful of food.

“Don’t talk while you’re eating,” Ryou scolded him.

“I want to buy you something, too,” Romelle said. “Maybe something from the Earth store that Allura mentioned.”

“Just don’t get him a cow,” Shiro suggested. 

“What’s a cow?”

“You don’t want to know,” Allura said immediately, shoving some food into her mouth as if doing so would wipe the memory from her mind.

“I don’t need anything but more of your smiles,” Ryou told her.

“That’s better,” Shiro said approvingly.

“Shut it or I tell them about the last time you were at a mall.”

Shiro gasped in betrayed outrage. “You wouldn’t.”

“Well, now I want to know,” Allura pouted.

“No, you don’t,” he shot back immediately. “Not if you want me to wear that thing you think I didn’t notice you buying.”

“YOU SAW?”

“I think I don’t want to know now,” Ryou said, but Romelle just giggled.

“Come on, let’s go to the Earth store and leave them to pretend to fight,” she suggested, rising from her seat still wearing the wrap. “You can pick out whatever will make you happiest.”

He was on his feet immediately. “You make me happiest.”

“I’m not for sale.”

“Of course not, you’re priceless.”

She blushed again. “Stop.”

lol, it would either be the most Over the Top WTF design ever -

or the sleekest ‘how is this even going to move’ bot -

Oh they totally continued it!

After the attack on Haggar’s ritual and re-sealing Zarkon, there were several weeks of recovery where the primary focus was just healing up, since so many people got hurt. And for those who weren’t super badly injured, there was a lot of cleanup to do. 

But, once characters were safely past the point of “medical emergency” but still stuck in the “you’re still recovering take it easy” stage of healing, a lot of them were bored. Especially Shiro, who was bored, paranoid, and twitchy about being on forced bedrest. 

So they spent weeks gathering in Shiro’s Sanctuary-hospital room playing more Monsters & Mana. Coran found a way to insert Matt, and then later Sam and Colleen, into the game, so they have a huge party on an epic quest. It was something that Shiro could do without needing too much coordination since his left arm was in a cast, his right arm was super weak, and he was on bedrest, and also it kept him entertained and calmer about being on constant bedrest when all his friends were there. 

Shiro’s paladin has died at least thirty more times. No one has any explanation for why his luck is so atrocious on every single one of his rolls. They’ve just accepted that his paladin is probably gonna kick the bucket every other battle and have planned contingencies for it. They’re glad it’s just the M&M character that dies constantly, if it means their Shiro pulls through every time.

yep, I get the same thing. Especially anything regarding my hands. And reading/watching anything relating to neurological movement disorders (like dystonia, parkinsons, etc) will often cause my own "bs undiagnosed" tremors to flare back up again. Brains are weird.

takaalive replied to your post “does anyone ever get weirdly specific sympathy pain?  Like a lot of...”

This is a symptom of high functioning empaths! I get it a lot as well

Well Parallel by Proxy is an entire series, but I’ll name the That Scenes that got it going.

The first (sort of) was for Mirror Image, back when there wasn’t supposed to be a series and it was just a one-fic entry for a Halloween event. It was inspired by those creepy posts on tumblr that imply you’re in a coma and the doctors are using a technique to insert messages to you in your internal world. So there wasn’t one particular That Scene so much as a lot of little That Images of Shiro finding post it notes and slips of paper in his book telling him to wake up. Bear in mind that when I first created this idea, Kuron wasn’t even a thing, and the clone half of the plot was added very late stage. (Wild, right?)

What really got Parallel by Proxy off the ground was Failsafe, and that did have a That Scene. Specifically, the scene towards the end of chapter three, where Ryou is about to get put into cryostorage for his own safety, but he’s so sick and mentally not there anymore that he’s convinced he’s being put into storage so he can be dissected and decommissioned, since he can’t really tell the difference between his Galra-based memories and his Voltron-based ones. I even mentioned it in the chapter note. That idea was just a perfect storm of hurt and comfort and everything else about the fic was designed around it.