"Hey, Matt?"

"Hm?"

"You have a grave."

Matt, in the back of the Green Lion's cockpit, studying the Lion's mechanics in fascination, froze, turning to look at his sister in shock. She refused to meet his eyes, instead staring stubbornly ahead of her, her gaze locked on the view of the cosmos outside the lion.

It was in the way she said it; the way her voice quivered almost imperceptibly, how it almost broke on that last word, how there was an entire world contained in that single word, how it only barely covered up the sea of emotion she was trying to restrain.

"You…saw that?"

"It's where your transponder code lead." Again, there was a sea of unspoken words in that simple sentence, a story of desperation and heartbreak and tenuous hope.

"Oh, Pidge—"

"I noticed your birthday was wrong," she continued, "and I was able to decode it to find your coordinates. I'm glad I had a copy of the book with me, or otherwise—" Her voice broke.

"Pidge, I am so sorry," he murmured, coming over to stand beside her. He reached out to put a hand on her shoulder, and she relaxed into his touch.

"I'm fine," she insisted, clearly not fine. "It just…really freaked me out." She pulled off her helmet to wipe furiously at her eyes.

He sighed and pulled her into a hug; never mind the fact that she had a Lion to pilot, never mind the instruments and the control panel; never mind how cramped the cockpit was with them both trying to squeeze into the confined space. "You shouldn't have had to see that," he murmured. He held her tight as she buried her face into his chest, one hand cradling the back of her head.

"Why do you have a grave?" she choked. "What the hell happened that made you need to fake your own death?"

"There were people looking for me," he murmured. "It was better that I just…disappear."

"People looking for you," she echoed.

"I kind of garnered a reputation for myself when I joined the rebels," he said with a shrug. "Not to mention the fact that I was technically a 'fugitive prisoner from the empire' or whatever. There was a bounty on my head. I mean, you saw that first hand."

"So you pretended to die?"

He sighed. "Wasn't really my idea, to be honest," he confessed. He pulled back from the hug, looking intently into the damp eyes of his sister. "I'm so sorry, Pidge."

She smiled; it was tenuous, small, strained, and did nothing to mask the obvious pain she was in. "I'm fine," she repeated. "You left coordinates. You left the code on your headstone, with coordinates leading exactly to where you were. I still found you."

"That was a message for Dad," Matt replied. "I mean, I'm glad you had the book to decode it, and I'm glad you found me! But yeah; I left that for Dad…so if he came looking for me, he'd know I wasn't dead, and he'd know where to find me."

She nodded numbly, pursing her lips, trying to steady her breathing.

His expression was pensive, studying her face intently. "How did you find that?"

"I was just following the trail," she replied, pulling her legs up into the seat with her to sit cross-legged. "There was the video footage we found, which lead to that weapons dealer who sold the nanothermite titanium boron, who told me where to find Te-osh, and then she gave me your transponder code, which I followed to…." She paused, as if realizing the had started to ramble, before simply finishing, "…there."

He glanced at her, his voice taking on a hopeful tinge. "You saw Te-osh?"

Pidge gasped, her hands coming up to cover her mouth. "God. Matt…I'm so sorry."

Everything slowed down around him as the meaning of her words sank in. He deflated, and she reached out to wrap her arms around his torso. After a moment, he returned the hug. And for the third or fourth time since finding each other, they melted back into an embrace.

"I was too late to save her," Pidge whimpered, so faint that Matt could barely hear her. "I'm so sorry."

"Not your fault," he insisted hoarsely.

"This is war, Matt. We're in the middle of a war." She paused, hiccuping. "I'm in the middle of a war." His arms tightened around her, holding her close. "I'll be honest, this isn't exactly what I was expecting when I left Earth," she continued, and her hands clenched his cloak. "But here I am."

"You shouldn't have to do this."

"But here I am," she repeated, pulling away just enough so she could see his face. She gently ran her thumb over the scar on his cheek, and he gave her a sad smile.

"Here we are," he agreed.

She sniffled, letting go of him to sit up straight in her chair, wiping at her eyes. "I'm so glad you're okay," she whispered.

"Pidge…."

"Sorry, I—"

"Don't you dare say you're 'fine' again."

She laughed hollowly, tears starting to prickle at her eyes once more. "This is fucked up."

"Yeah," he agreed. "Yeah it really is."

They fell back into silence. Matt leaned up against the console beside her, determined to keep her where he could see, refusing to lose sight of her again.

After a long moment, he asked one of the questions that had been burning in his mind. "Do you have any leads on Dad?"

She hesitated before she answered, taking a deep breath. "It was easier to find you," she confessed. "I had a photograph from before you left, and I was able to run that through a facial recognition program scanning the Galra data servers. I don't even know where to start for Dad." She looked over at her brother, her expression sad-yet-hopeful, asking him silently, yet not daring to say the words out loud.

His eyes were downcast. "I haven't seen him since we were taken," he whispered. "I have no clue where he is now, or if he's okay, or…."

Or if he's even alive.

The words hung unspoken in the air around them.

She steeled herself, deliberately turning her attention back to the starry expanse outside her Lion, tightening her grip on the joysticks of the Lion's controls. "So we keep looking."

"You won't have to do it alone," he promised. "I'm here. And I'm not going to stop looking for him. We'll find him together."

And Shiro.

"I know," she said flatly, and he caught the disheartened tone that tinged her voice.

It struck him then how much she'd grown, both physically and emotionally. She wasn't the same little girl that she'd been when he and their dad had left Earth for Kerberos.

She's too young for all this, he thought hollowly.

And he realized he didn't even really know how old she was. He didn't know how long it had been since he left Earth, how long he'd spent in Galra captivity, how long he'd been with the rebels.

He remembered when he first started hearing rumors of Voltron. They'd started as fairytales, an old legend that the prisoners had told. But then they'd gotten more tangible. Confirmed sightings, photographic and videographic evidence (however blurry and unfocused), planets he'd visited that had been liberated, refugees he'd met with who had seen them.

His rebel group had been wanting to establish contact with Voltron for a while now, hoping to forge an alliance. They'd just never been sure how to reach the Paladins. They'd always been a distant intangible ray of hope, that maybe someday….

And now his baby sister was a Paladin.

"We have so much to talk about," he said with a strained laugh. "But I can think of absolutely nothing to say."

It was too painful. There were too many wounds they could jostle, too many things they'd locked away, too much that they weren't sure if they were ready to ask about yet.

"How…." He paused. "How long has it been?"

Pidge hesitated, her fingers jittering against the joysticks. "I don't know exactly," she eventually replied. "We have a calendar at the castle that's synced with Earth; we can check that when we get there."

"But roughly?"

Another pause, as she counted back the months in her head. "It's been about a year-and-a-half since you left for Kerberos," she said. "Maybe closer to two years? I turned fifteen not too long ago."

She had been thirteen when he and their father had left Earth.

He was a silent for a while. "Two years," he echoed numbly.

"Yeah."

Matt offered her a hesitant smile. "Happy birthday?"

She laughed dryly. "Thanks."

Fifteen. That answered that. She's too young for all this, he thought again. She was too young to even enroll at the Garrison, let alone go out to space. Which still begged the question: how had she even gotten out here in the first place? She'd brushed off the question earlier, saying something about how it was a long story, and that she'd explain everything once they'd gotten "back to the castle."

She'd also brushed aside anything regarding the other Paladins, merely telling him that they were from Earth too, and that he'd be meeting them soon enough. The prospect of seeing other humans excited him; he hadn't seen any since he'd been separated from Shiro and his dad—which, from what Pidge told him, had to have been over a year ago.

And the last time before that had been before he left Earth, back at the Kerberos launch, when he'd hugged his sister and mother goodbye.

Matt looked up, looking at his sister now, taking in again how much she'd changed since he last saw her. "How's Mom?"

"I…." Pidge took a shaky breath. "I don't know. I haven't seen her since we left Earth, and that was months ago…."

"What did you tell her?"

She almost laughed. "Nothing?"

His expression fell. "What?" he demanded.

"I think about her a lot," she said, her voice trembling. "I mean. I just left. I didn't really get a chance to explain anything to her. We found the Lion and then we just…weren't on Earth anymore. She's…she's all alone now. What has she been doing?"

He looked at her in shock, letting her words sink in. "So she has no clue what happened?" he asked. "To me, and to Dad. To you? You didn't tell her anything?"

She shook her head. "Didn't exactly have a whole lot of time to prepare before we left."

He frowned. "Why's that?"

"It was all just really. Sudden," she said simply. "I mean, it started off as just another normal day. But then we were on the roof, and the alien radio chatter was going crazy—"

"Whoa, whoa, whoa. Hold on. I'm gonna need you to back up." Matt blinked, his eyebrows furrowing. "The what now?"

"Alien radio chatter," she repeated. "After…well, after Kerberos, I started scanning the cosmos, looking for any signs as to what might have happened to you."

He shook his head, an awed smile snaking its way onto his face. "How the hell did you manage that?"

"I used some old tech of yours as a base," she replied. "Remember, the thing you had that'd let us contact Dad when he was off-planet? I used that as a starting point and just jumped off from there." She shrugged, as if this was no big deal. "And I started picking up on stuff that definitely wasn't from humans."

"And you were getting this from Earth?" He was shocked, mildly appalled. If Pidge had been able to pick up on that stuff from Earth, then the Garrison must have been able to as well. Had they known that there was alien life out there? Alien life that was potentially hostile?

How long might the Garrison have known about the Galra?

Pidge had a grave expression on her face, and Matt realized that she was no stranger to these thoughts. "Yep."

He closed his eyes, pinching at the bridge of his nose. "Jesus."

"I swear, I'm gonna punch Iverson in the face," she muttered.

And despite everything, he laughed. "I would not stop you," he said. "In fact, I'd probably help you."

"I can see the headlines now," she said with a grin. "'Holt Siblings, Presumed Dead, Beat Up Garrison Commander'."

He laughed again, and she joined in, the two of them dissolving in a fit of giggles. "We could take him," Matt said.

"Oh, we so could," Pidge agreed. She sobered, her laughter tapering out. "It's good to have you back, Matt."

He smiled at her fondly. "Good to be back."

The mood in the cockpit of the Lion had brightened considerably, and Matt relaxed in the comfortable silence.

Something in the Lion shifted, almost as if it were purring, and Pidge sat up a bit straighter. She tapped at her console, pulling up a window showing a starmap with a plotted trajectory course. "We'll be reaching Olkarion soon," she announced. She turned to look at him over her shoulder, smiling, and he saw that some of the sparkle had returned to her eyes. "I can't wait for you to meet everyone."

AN:

Title comes from 'La Lune' by Madeon (since Madeon's music makes up the bulk of my VLD writing playlist, and damn does La Lune fit this story)

Platonic VLD Week may be done but I'm sure as hell not

This is. Very self-indulgent.
I just have a lot of thoughts about what went down in the trip from Matt's rebel listening outpost back to Olkarion. Cuz like, there's a lot of things that weren't directly addressed in the show that you know they had to have talked about.
I just. aaaaaaaaaaa

I love these two so much. My precious children. Just let them be happy.

Thank you for reading! As always, you're more than welcome to come scream at/with me on Tumblr (this-book-has-been-loved)!

~Brigit