Title: Brother, let me be your fortress

Chapter: 1

Rating: K+

Summary: SongFic for Hunk - Brother, let me be your shelter

Ramblers in the wilderness we can't find what we need

We get a little restless from the searching

Get a little worn down in between

Like a bull chasing the matador is the man left to his own schemes

Everybody needs someone beside em' shining like a lighthouse from the sea

Pidge - Season one

It took about a week for Hunk to formulate and implement his plan. He had to wait until he felt comfortable asking for Lance's help and it took awhile for Hunk to really believe Lance was okay. Magic healing pods aside his best bud had been nearly dead for most of a day and it took a little longer than a couple quintants for his mind to accept he was completely healed. It didn't take that long to realize that Pidge was not healed.

He watched her wonder the halls like some weird zombie girl. She groaned, she moaned, she growled. She did not talk, she did not smile, and she did not sleep. Hunk was nearly certain the only time she slept was when she literally passed out and he had caught her screaming awake more than once. The first time, was right after Lance had awakened, he'd been walking by the Green Lion's hanger and her screams had brought him running. She had been curled up around a box of tools. He had caught her sitting up still shaking and wiping the drool from her face. She had an imprint of whatever tool she had been laying on in the side of her face.

"Pidge, you okay?" It had been about 10 in the morning castle time. She stood stiffly and straightened her glasses.

"I'm fine, just was thinking about something and got an idea."

"Pidge, if that's the way you react every time you get an idea I'm going to have a heart attack." Hunk didn't believe her for a minute and she was smart enough to know it, whether she was awake enough to notice was debatable.

"Um, so you got an idea about Rover? You said his name?" Hunk offered. Pidge had not talked with anyone about the little robot other than to say he had saved her and was destroyed. Hunk knew there was more to the story.

"No, well, yes, but I would need his processor." She rubbed a hand across her face, smudging whatever dirt was already there.

"So, can we get it? I mean, where is it?" Hunk tried.

"At the bottom of a shaft, where he dropped that Galra engineer." Pidge grabbed some tools and turned swiftly from Hunk, practically falling over her feet. "I have things to do."

"Oh, okay. Anything I can help with?" Hunk offered uncertainly.

"No." She walked away not looking back.

The second nightmare about two quintants later right after they'd saved the Balmera, she had been screaming she wasn't a child. That time she flipped him off when he asked if he could help or if she wanted to talk.

The last time was just a quintant after that, she still had tears in her eyes when she told him to leave her the flip alone, only she hadn't said flip. That time she had yelled Shiro's name. She was not dealing as well as she liked to pretend. He wasn't entirely sure any of them were.

Lance was pretending he had amnesia, the fact he kept crawling into Hunks bed in the middle of the night shaking from nightmares kinda threw that claim out in Hunk's opinion. Keith was like moodier than usual - which was really saying something cause as far as Hunk could tell he was really moody most of the time. Shiro was like paranoid with a side of PTSD - it was a respectable kind of crazy, but still crazy. Allura was practicing her evil princess attitude, cause it was crazy how mean she was still being with the training. He had kind of thought after they came together as a team, she'd have backed off. Coran, well, Hunk thought he might be regular crazy, or maybe normal for an Altean. He was pretty convinced he was the only sane person in the entire group.

After the last time with Pidge, he had dug up the footage from the castle security of the attack. He'd heard the story, but he hadn't been here and he thought the only way to help was to know exactly what had happened. He cringed, he cried, and he screamed, into his pillow to muffle the sound. Pidge hadn't given them half the story. The scene between her and Haxus was horrifying. He would have killed her and then Sendak would have killed her and that part were he tortured Shiro to get her to do what he wanted. Hunk took a deep breath. They were all adjusting to being Paladins, at war, pretend grown ups. He couldn't make a lot of it better, but he was rather a genius of a mechanic and he knew it. He re-watched the moment Haxus fell. He watched a few times from as many angles as he could. He was pretty sure he knew where he would find what was left of Rover. And he was pretty sure he couldn't get to it on his own, but the image of Pidge crying was burned into his soul.

This is where a week after Lance had been miraculously restored to health, he was dangling from a rope held by Hunk over a height Hunk preferred not to think about picking Rover bits off of a ledge.

"I think I got it all." He had objected briefly until Hunk had explained about Pidge. Then he'd practically swan dived off of the edge. He had been gathering bits and stuffing them in a small pouch for about half a hour…or half a varga.

"So," Hunk said pulling the rope up as Lance walked up the side of the wall. "Anything much to work with."

"No," Lance's voice sounded a little sad, "Not sure but some of the bits might have gotten taken care of with what was left of the body, which wasn't much." Hunk was glad he hadn't helped with that clean up.

"Okay, thanks for your help." Lance handed over the bag and Hunk peered inside. This was going to take a bit of work.

It didn't go as fast as he'd hoped and he watched Pidge continue to struggle. He tried cheering her up, he tried making her sleep, he even tried making her drink a warm team before bed, which he ended up wearing when she spit it out. Once and only once he tried taking her computer. She had shocked him with her bayard. Now he knew why Lance was always so nervous around it.

They had rescued Shay, fought a monster and saved the Balmera. He hadn't a lot of free time. He was worried about Pidge though, so he'd given up his own sleep time to work on the special project. Hunk had to give her credit. She was tough. He would have been weeping going on as little sleep as she was. He knew she was doing everything she could to search for her family in between everything else going on and working on the transfer thing for interrogating Sendak with Coran.

He'd almost been ready before the castle went nuts and tried to kill them, but it wasn't until a quintant after that when he'd finally completed the masterpiece. He was an engineer by trade so the software potion had really taken him longer than he would have liked, but he wanted to be sure it was right. He tracked Pidge down to Green's hanger, she liked to work there a lot.

"Pidge?"

"Over here." She waved from a panel on the Green Lion's left flank.

"Hey, what are you working on?" He peered over her shoulder.

"Eh, just checking some repairs I made after the Balmera, want to be sure everything is holding up." She had dark circles under her eyes and dirt smudged across her face. Her hair was limp and she was moving and speaking so much slower than usual. Hunk looked over and saw her computer running a search on the table nearby.

"Still running searches on the data we collected?" He knew the answer.

"Yeah, I've compiled some of the stuff we got from Sendak and I'm trying some searches through it, but it's really hard to define the parameters, and I keep feeling I'm missing something. If I just have the search off by a pinch it won't give me what I want." Her shoulders were slumped. She looked beat.

"Pidge, when is the last time you slept."

"Last night."

"No I mean, like slept in a bed for more than three hours." Hunk looked her over, no way she slept last night.

"The night before the Kerboros launch." Pidge snapped.

Hunk was a bit taken back, he thought she was probably aiming for sarcasm, but it was probably true. She was letting things slip from her sleep deprived brain.

"That's a long time Pidge, you can't keep going like this. You're going to make yourself sick or get hurt or screw something up." Hunk needed to get his point across. His gift was not so she could work more, it was so she could sleep.

"I am doing everything I can. I don't need sleep I need to get work done. I need to find my family. I need to stop Zarkon. I need to not be having this conversation with you!" She was shaking and her fists were clenched at her sides.

"I think you do need to have this conversation. No one doubts you are doing everything you can. I think you are doing things you shouldn't. Zarkon has been in power for thousands of years, you can't stay awake until we defeat him." Hunk reached out to her.

She swatted his hand and turned away. "I am not a child, Hunk!"

"I know that Pidge, a child I would have scolded and sent to bed. I am here talking to you as a friend. This needs to end. You just told me being off even just a little could screw up your search. Tell me, honestly, that you are on top of your game right now." Hunk crossed his arms and glared, daring her to lie.

"I'm fine. I can handle this. I've gone without sleep before." she looked away not meeting his eyes.

"Sure, in school, writing a paper, studying for a test. Not out in space in the middle of a war, almost getting killed, watching your friends get hurt, fighting for your life - I think that takes a little more out of you. I know it does me. And you are like insanely awesome, the things you've done and how well you are handling everything, I am super impressed, but you have to sleep. You can't keep this up, no one could." He touched her arm and she flinched away.

"Handling it?" Her voice was bitter, "I'm not handling anything. I'm not sleeping because I can't. Every time I close my eyes I see…everything. I see Shiro screaming, Lance laying there not moving, I see Matt in some horrible prison, I see Dad lying dead on some planet I'll never find, or Mom sitting all alone in our house, or that Galra Haxus laughing at me and calling me a child and then trying to kill me, I see Rover's light blinking out and Haxus falling, but sometimes in my dreams he grabs me and we both fall, I see…" She might have kept going, but Hunk couldn't take anymore. He wrapped his arms around her and she sobbed into his shoulder.

"This is handling it, Pidge. You have to stop trying to do everything on your own. You aren't alone out here, we are a team and we want to help you. You think you are the only one having trouble sleeping? Coran gave me something to help me sleep the second night here." Hunk gave her a watery smile, his own tears falling with hers.

She turned up and looked at him and gave him a brave smile back.

"Now I came here with something for you. I know, that you are working a lot of hours and your search is talking a lot of time, and I know you were really upset about Rover, so here." He held out what looked like a laptop computer with a glowing lights at the top, marked and colored like Rover.

Pidge took it and ran her hands over the design.

"Lance and I got what was left of Rover and I pieced together what I could, but it wasn't enough to make him back again, like I wanted. I did find a lot more than I thought I would and I was able to piece together most of his AI. I put it into that computer and then filled in the missing bits. I turned him into like a smart search engine. I think he'll be able to help you dig through all of the data you have." Hunk was getting nervous, she hadn't said anything at all yet.

Pidge stared at the image of Rover on the top of the computer. It seemed like forever to Hunk before she finally spoke.

"I didn't think anyone would understand why it upset me so much. He was just a robot." She traced the lighted patterns.

"He wasn't just a robot, he was yours and he saved your life." Hunk defended.

She looked up and met his warm gaze. He meant it all. He understood and he totally cared.

"Thank you. I don't know how to thank you." She sniffled again and held the new Rover tight.

"Well, you can start thanking me by getting to bed at a decent hour and trying to sleep, and then if you have a nightmare, either come sack out in my room like Lance does or do what I did and get something from Coran." Hunk ruffled her hair and stood to go.

"Hunk, I'm glad you're here with me." Her eyes gleamed behind her glasses and he felt a lump in his throat.

"I'm glad too, Pidge, you're my friend and I wouldn't ever want you to need me and not be there to help."

She latched onto him, computer clutched in one hand and the other wrapped around his waist. He walked half supporting her to her room. He tucked her into bed and she giggled a little. As he closed the door the light from Rover lit her face, already relaxed into sleep.

"Sleep well, Pidge."