Whatever Happened To

by TwinEnigma

Warnings/Codes: AU for Season 2, Rebels, Freedom Fighters, How do you take down an empire anyway, Homesick Lance (Voltron), Lance (Voltron) in Denial, Shiro has PTSD, Hunk is secretly a tactical genius, Female Pronouns for Pidge | Katie Holt, BAMF Pidge | Katie Holt, Pidge is smol and will fight you, Oblivious Keith (Voltron), Keith has issues, Alien Worlds, Teenage Dorks, Lance is the BIGGEST NERD, Space Mom Allura (Voltron), BAMF Allura, Alteans are terrifying actually, foster kid Keith, Space Dad Shiro (Voltron), Where the heck is Lotor, Pidge is Lance's competition for BIGGEST NERD, Team as Family, Thace is so Done, Alien Keith (Voltron), Galra Keith (Voltron), Universal Translator is Not Universal, GFY

Crossposting from my A03. : )

Chapter 1:

moving on

The Command Center of the Castle of Lions has, more or less, become an informal meeting hall for the surviving Alteans and the Paladins alike. They sit where they are most comfortable, under the radiant umbrella of projected star charts, and they consider their next move. They've been at it for hours and there's no end in sight.

It sets Keith's teeth on edge, honestly. By now, even Lance has noticed that he's grinding his jaw.

"This is stupid," he complains at last, pushing off the wall. "I'm going to go train."

Shiro looks at him, first in surprise and then in that weird mildly disappointed way that digs right into every part of his brain that is still foster-kid to the core. And he's not alone: Allura's expression is similar, if slightly off in some little way that has nothing to do with her face and everything to do with the little ways in which she doesn't completely understand human nuance. Disappointment is a reminder he's not good at this family interaction crap.

Keith grimaces and clenches his teeth.

Team, he meant team. Family, where the heck did that come from?

"Keith's got a point," Lance pipes up, effectively injecting himself in between Keith and them. He spreads his arms in a wide, dramatic gesture. "Look, you know what? The universe is, like, huge. We keep going at this like we have and we'll never get home. And I, for one, really want to see my family again at some point in my lifetime. Preferably before I'm some old geezer."

It's the elephant in the room.

It's the same elephant that's been dogging them all since they reunited, since they started to get a true inkling of how absolutely insanely huge a mission they'd chosen to undertake. It keeps coming back, like a zero grav bounce maneuver in a corridor – just enough momentum to hit the ceiling, but not enough to stop you from hitting the floor, too.

The Galra Empire has been conquering and draining the universe for ten thousand years. It stretches over a vastness that the scientists of Earth had called unknowable – no, unfathomable in its greatness. And here they are, the five chosen Paladins, their Lions, and the survivors of a once-great civilization, going world to world and system by system, one by one, to liberate them.

Off to the side, Pidge chews her lip and adjusts her glasses, her expression pinched. She's probably run the numbers, no doubt trying to narrow down the search for her family, so she would know best that the odds are not stacked in their favor.

Truth is, at this point, they'll probably die of old age before getting anywhere near the barest fraction of their goal.

Still, no one likes having the obvious pointed out.

Better Lance than me, Keith thinks mulishly. Lance, at least, has a way of softening the blow and burying it beneath his sense of humor which the others find easier to handle.

Keith – well, he knows he can be abrasive, but it's not his fault. They don't get it.

"Maybe we're looking at this wrong," Hunk suggests. He carefully holds up the latest gadget he's been tinkering with. "We're so busy looking at the forest that we can't see the trees."

Both Allura and Coran tilt their heads as they consider the Earth idiom. It's a look the Paladins see all too often when Earth idioms come into play. No doubt, it'll come back to haunt them in a mangled demi-Altean form later.

They try. They do.

Hunk turns the device over in his hands. "Think of this as the Galra Empire. As a whole, it's functional unit, right?"

He tugs gently with both hands and it comes apart, sliding to reveal the intricate guts. "But, if you look underneath the surface, it all depends on its components. Without them…"

Hunk pauses, pulling a small screwdriver from his pocket, and touches it to something Keith can't even see and the whole device sparks with an angry puff. It then sags, completely dead, and Hunk sheepishly gathers it together again. "See?"

There is a pause and a wry smile breaks on Shiro's face. "Yeah, I think I do."

"Disrupt the infrastructure and let it collapse under its own weight," Allura states in approval, visibly perking up. "Excellent suggestion, Hunk."

"Helloooooo," Lance calls out from his seat, leaning forward. "How do we know what targets to hit? In case you haven't noticed, we're kinda lacking on intel here."

"And we've already tried hacking their ships," Keith adds, hoping his tone carries exactly how strongly he feels about that last utter disaster that almost got them all killed by Zarkon. They'd spent weeks picking themselves up after that mess and he'd almost lost...

"Perhaps that was a bit premature," Allura cedes and her smile turns that cross between cruel and mischievous that honestly gives Keith the creeps. "Maybe it's time we tried something a little more… discreet."

This time, it's Shiro's expression that grows stormy and every muscle in his body goes rigid. "Princess, you're not going undercover again."

Allura rises, challenge in her eyes. She's not afraid to sacrifice herself for the universe, Voltron, or even for them. She's already proven that and she'll fight him on this, Keith knows it. But Shiro's not wrong either, even if his reasoning is probably not what anyone might think it is.

"Maybe she doesn't have to," Pidge says and, just like that, the air of confrontation is broken.

Nice save, Pidge, Keith thinks. And it would be Pidge, too, who gets Shiro. She's like him, after all, and Keith, too, after a fashion, even if they are coming from different places with it. And they, at least, remember when they lost the people they cared about the first time. He doesn't – can't. He was too young or too traumatized or maybe both.

He remembers Shiro though.

"I've been thinking," Pidge explains, folding her hands into a steeple. The light of stars glints off her glasses, obscuring her eyes, but her lips are pressed thin. "It was awfully convenient for Zarkon's shield to shut down when it did, don't you think?"

"Shut down?" Allura's brows knot in question. She's not the only one: things had happened so fast and honestly it was still a bit of a blur.

Zarkon's taunt - you fight like a Galra soldier - burns in his ears and Keith swallows hard, gripping his knife.

"Wait what," Lance manages. "What're you saying? Someone shut it off?"

"Precisely," Pidge responds, pushing up her glasses on her nose. "I've finally finished analyzing the feed from our lions. That shield was still oscillating at a stable rate. There's no way it went down on its own. Which means…"

"...There's a traitor in Zarkon's ranks," Shiro concludes. He rubs his chin thoughtfully, narrowing his eyes. "Someone pretty well placed, too. I doubt just anyone could get to the shield controls. We need to find them."

Coran blinks, drawing back in his chair. His mustache twitches as he stops and actually thinks about it. "My word!"

Allura sits, gathering the long sleeves of her dress, and presses her lips in a thin, concerned frown. "I don't like this. What would one of Zarkon's own High Command have to gain by letting us go?"

She's right, of course, and therein lays the rub.

"We're not going to find out just by sitting around," Pidge admonishes them, standing and gathering up her laptop. "And, who knows, maybe whoever this is isn't operating alone."

"So, what? Like there's a Rebel Alliance?" Lance asks. He almost rolls out of his chair, this loping, easy movement forward that puts him easily on the balls of his feet, and he's grinning real stupidly. Pidge gives him a look and snorts, turning up her nose at him, while Hunk grins.

"I wouldn't go that far," Keith states. "We don't even know if there's more than one person involved."

Lance gives him an odd look, the same sort of odd look that he gave him when he needled him about a team cheer, and Keith feels like he missed something again.

He misses a lot of things, he knows that. It's not his fault, not really. He's just missing more than most. He'd probably lost it all with the memories about everything before foster.

At least, for now, he's not missing them.

Notes:

Please be aware that certain phrases in other languages in this story are not always translated, due to having an idiomatic meaning which doesn't translate exactly. This is lampshaded in the story pretty heavily.

Also, I'm annoyed I can't backdate this story to when I started posting it on Ao3 like I can do with my older fics from here when I post them there.