Pidge never considered Lance and Hunk her friends.
Classmates, sure. Maybe even acquaintancesābeing tied to them as a teammate leads them to spend plenty of time outside of the mandatory school hours together. The association is a nuisance at most. Lance is loud, snarky, and bold. He begs for attention that puts Pidgeās plans at risk time and time again. Hunk is the wild opposite. His cowardice and paranoia twinges Pidge with irritation and seeps anxiety into her late night ventures to collect data.
Canāt they stay put? Canāt they function well? Lanceās starry eyes are always fixed on some ridiculous prizeāone day, a girlās attention, another, Keith Koganeās scores. Pidge doesnāt even know Hunk well enough to learn his aspirations. He seems keen on a meticulous line of mechanical engineering that his shaky hands and scattered brain disagree with. It shouldnāt matter to her. So what if Pidge got stuck with a lousy team? They are a means to an end. Once she gets to space, theyāll be long forgotten.
The two idiots Hunk and Lance will be long left behind.
But for now, they tear up Pidgeās free time like unfed, scavenging vultures. Lance keeps dragging her to late night parties and snarking about the stick up her ass every time she slips away. Hunk will peer over her shoulder whenever she monitors the Garrisonās radio transmissions in their shared dormitory. When she shut her laptop in a hurry, Lance cackles that he interrupted her porn. Iverson lashes out at them because of their inadequacy and Pidge ends up on the receiving end of his fiery wrath despite holding up her end of the team.
Itās tiresome. Itās frustrating. She has so much work to do, so much, and now she has been dumped with what? Babysitting two near adults? Entertaining them?
Her brother and father are out there, somewhere in the vast reaches of space, unreachable and untraceable. Dead, maybe. Itās been months since their disappearance. Should they be anywhere near their spacecraft, their rations will have run out by now. The power of several crucial ship components will have died. They, along with Takashi Shirogane, will be left with nothing but their suits and minimal oxygen. Tools that arenāt meant to keep life sustained in outer space.Ā
They must be dead.
Itās very probable.
The paths of different events all vary. Their ship mightāve exploded, leading to an immediate death. There couldāve been a collision or an issue with pressure levels or a fire or a power outage. Or they might be just fine, without signal, and on their way back. They mightāve gotten a disease or entered a warp in space-time. They couldāve made contact with extraterrestrial life. Or, god forbid, the Garrison has abandoned them, leaving them stranded with malicious intent.
No matter what, their chances of survival are low.
It pains Pidge to think of. She doesnāt even have the privacy to cry herself to sleep at night about it. Her eyes remain rubbed raw and hugged by dark circles that grow more sallow and sunken by the day. She ignores the missing posters her mother has put up for her. Have you seen Katelyn Holt? She turns the other way.
Pidge tunes out the whole world. Chatty Lance and nervous Hunk, angry professors and egotistical commanders, worried family members and the suspicious police. Her old dog who mustāve picked up on the emptying house. Her high school that she ditched for good. Her name, gender, and identity.
Pidge tosses it all away. She will get to space. She will find her family.
Itās only when sheās tumbled into the back of a sentient robot lion with her team, a stranger, and pilot Takashi Shirogane does she realize how big of a leap towards her goals sheās taken. This is her chance. Lance dangles a golden ticket in front of her and she snatches it out of his hands. Pidge watches the ground go distant as he pulls the lever in the Blue Lion.
She never wouldāve thought that itād be Lance and Hunk, her idiot teammates, whoād bring her here.
Itād do her some good to be grateful. But here they are, goofing off, andāwhatās this Voltron that everyoneās talking about? Pidge doesnāt have the time for such a large responsibility. If the princess could point a swift finger at her and call her a paladin, then she could find any new pilot for the Green Lion because Pidge is shackled to another commitment.
No one else thinks the same way. Lance and Hunk are staying. Shiro, her main lead, is staying. Keith, who had many angry words for her announcement of departure, is also staying.
Sheās the odd one out.
Sheās going to be searching all by herself in this unknown space.
All aloneā¦
Then, the Castle gets attacked. Sheās staying. Lance gets injured. Sheās staying, guaranteed, but sheās not sure why her heart cries for him; she barely knows him.
Hunkās lips tremble in the aftermath. His hands clench and unclench and he paces with no direction. Pidge pats him on the back while they wait for Lance to wake in the pod. Her sympathy bleeds towards him too.
Itās hard to explaināshe hasnāt had friends before. Matt is her friend, but heās her brother and heās not even here. Heās missing.
Pidge knows thatās what this is: friendship. This is the olive branch, no matter how ridiculous looking and shaped, that sheās been neglecting for the sake of putting work first. She thought thereās no room in her life for friends, not now for certain and not friends who are soā¦distracting.
But Hunk ruffles her hair and gives suggestions for her prison detection program. Lance makes jokes that have actual humorous valueāPidge catches herself laughing at a few, to her dismay and his glee. They watch her back in battle. They vouch for her in discussions and they race around searching for Samuel and Matthew Holt without her having to explain the depth of her desperation. This thing is newāthis lack of loneliness. This genuine camaraderie. Pidge finds herself wondering if the two of them wouldāve given her this much heart and vigor had she opened up to them at the Garrison. She thinks, yes. They wouldāve been there for her the same, whether on ground or in space. And she would do the same for them.
Because they are friends.
For my dear friend elli's (@bluemantics) event. Prompt: Garrison Trio










