A Stranger In A Familiar Land

Chapter Three

Green is the Colour of Immortality

"Mom, if you could see anything, what would you do?"

"Learn to close my eyes."

oOo

It had been Matt who had come home with the dog. A puppy that easily fit into his arms with ears too large for her head, a tail that never stopped wagging, and fur that was white enough to disappear into vanilla ice cream. Katie and her brother never expected to be able to keep her, so they named the dog Krypto as a joke and brought her home to their parents.

A Found sign was placed up, their number on the bottom, but no one came around to claim the puppy, and, refusing to take her to a shelter, Krypto became the fourth official member of the Holt family. Tasked with her health, training, and safety, Katie and Matt scoured the internet and pet stores for advice, buying her food, toys, a blue collar that made everyone think she was a boy, and a Superman dog tag with her name, their address, and their dad's phone number on it.

They took her to the drug store, to their dad's work, to the store, to the park. Everywhere that Matt and Katie went, Krypto was close behind with her pink tongue hanging, fluffy tail wagging.

Until, one day, she wasn't.

Fourteen years was the expected lifespan of a White Shepherd. Krypto lived closer to twenty, had become blind in her left eye, couldn't quite hear as well as she used to, but still greeted little Katie and Matt with a doggy smile and a wag of her tail.

Until the arthritis became too much. Until her body simply gave out on her and the vet shook her head at Sam Holt one afternoon and they just knew.

Matt and Katie Holt tasted Earth's mortality, they saw the short life spans, the fact that humans could only live eighty to one hundred years, that they became middle aged before Alteans were even out of childhood. Humanity was so fragile and so beautiful at the same time, but the siblings pulled themselves away from their friends, from the people they had met at the drug store, at the park, and Sam decided it was time to move again.

He found a quiet place in the mountains, a house looking over a wide valley with a clear view of the sky from the porch. It had enough breathing space for Katie and Matt; they could run through the woods without fear of being caught, freeing themselves from the hats and makeup after so many years of wearing them.

Sam found a job at the observatory a couple of miles beyond the mountain pass. It was a forty minute drive, but he said that the view in the mornings was worth it with the sun rising over the peaks and the trees turning purple under the rays. He came home with stories of the people he worked with—a man who was taller than any Altean who looked like a bear but could only talk about how well his garden was doing, a woman who had tattoos of planets and constellations on her arms, a teenager who never stopped asking questions about how the technology worked and often got in a little trouble taking things apart to figure out how to put them back together again.

Just before summer started to cool down into autumn, the entire Holt family went on a five day camping trip into the mountains for some 'fresh air'.

When they came back, an aquarium had been installed into the wall overlooking the dining room. Someone had clearly put a lot of time in it; adding little reefs and hiding places for the three Koi lazily swimming around, exploring their environment. They were colourful and bright and small, but Matt and Katie pressed their noses against the glass to watch them.

Krypto the White Shepherd had died at twenty years of age. She was beloved for much of her short life and loved the kids that had taken care of her with all her might. The Koi couldn't quite follow Matt and Katie places, they didn't sleep in their beds or try to steal their eggs when they weren't looking.

But they were still there when Matt went off to Kerberos.

And maybe, just maybe, they'll be there when he got back.

oOo

There was a torture on Earth called pressing which was used when people accused of witchcraft refused to plead either guilty or not guilty. Because of the system in place at the time, a person who refused to plead could not be tried so the justice system decided to 'push' the answer out of them by laying a wooden board across their naked body and then placing stone after stone upon them. The weight would lead to suffocation, but only after an intense amount of pain for a couple of days.

Giles Corey, charged with witchcraft along with his wife, had refused to plead, well, anything. As per American law at the time, he was brought out to a pit in the open field besides the jail, laid out on the ground, and had rock upon rock placed upon him. Corey did not cry out, let alone make any sort of plea towards either side of guiltiness.

The three times that he was asked, however, Corey broke his silence to simply demand "more weight". They were his last words before he died.

More weight.

Shiro caught up to Pidge before she could make it past the second hallway. She had taken too long pausing at the crossroads, trying to listen for any sign that she was even close to the cellblock only to come up with nothing. The ship was too big to properly find her way around, and the Black Paladin had to simply follow the tracker in her armour to find her.

"Pidge," He said and she turned away, picking a direction at random, not quite looking at him just yet. It wasn't his fault, it wasn't even him, she knew. But that bitterness stung and her losses hurt just a bit too much until they piled on like one rock after another.

Hatred, four rocks. Lies, twenty rocks. Side eyed glances, thirteen.

More weight, she thought bitterly.

Shiro grabbed her elbow, stopping her from fully pulling away. "Pidge, I didn't mean it like that."

"Where's Keith?" She looked past his arm to the empty hallway behind him, no Red Paladin in sight, and managed to avoid looking the older teenager in the face so he wouldn't see the redness to her eyes.

"I sent him to find the Red Lion but that's... that's not what's important. Pidge," Shiro urged softly and she finally looked up at him, "I'm sorry."

She was shaking, eyes blurring just slightly around the edges as that itchy feeling before they were about to cry returned. The visor of the helmet made it difficult to reach under and rub stubbornly at her eyelids.

Shiro was a good person; he and Matt had been close even before the Kerberos mission. Her father had even invited him over for dinner a couple of times.

"I should have thought about what I said, about what this entire mission means to you," Shiro took in a deep breath and placed both hands on her shoulders, making sure that she met his gaze. "The people of Earth... we fear what we don't understand. Hell, we can barely accept each other," This time it was the Black Paladin who looked away, "I can't even imagine what it was like for you and your family, how hard it was."

Pidge watched him with wide eyes, her bottom lip trembling, entire body tense like a lifeguard noticing a five year old climbing the ladder to the diving board.

"You've come so far to look for them and we haven't really helped you, have we?"

The tears finally spilled over and Pidge tried to breathe around a gasping sob that ripped through her throat. She curled in on herself, wrapping her arms around her torso and ducking her head. Taking a step away from Shiro, her back hit the wall with a small clang and she almost slid down it to the floor had his arms not circled around her, letting the Altean curl into herself but pulling her body close anyway to lean into him if she needed it.

And Pidge needed it.

The muscles of her neck hurt, her heart felt too big for her chest, pounding against her ribcage, and her mouth was dry, but she needed it. Her head rose up so she could bury her face into his chest, arms unwrapping to curl around him instead. Each tear was her confession as she shuddered and gasped against Shiro, his arms wrapped protectively around her back. Pidge couldn't remember the last time she hugged someone. Really hugged someone.

Bitterly and with a small amount of sarcastic humour, she wondered if they had time for this.

It turned out that they had, but just barely.

Shiro let her pull away in the end, his broad hands dwarfing her shoulders as he held her still enough for their eyes to meet. "I'm sorry," he said again and she reached up, underneath the helmet, to wipe at her face.

"It's okay," She said—perhaps the biggest lie of all. But it's one of the things everyone does. They say something like 'it's okay' not because it is, in fact, okay, but because they're hoping these words will somehow make it okay.

Even though they never, ever do.

Together, they turned to go find the prisoners on the ship.

More weight.

oOo

It was harder and harder to hide themselves from the humans the older they grew. Not because of the longer lifespan—though Katie and Matt looking the same over ten or so years while the rest of their classmates aged was definitely one of the harder ones—but because of how Earth's technology grew. The easiest way to take up a new identity was to steal those who were dead and it was wrong.

But they had to.

Katie and Matt could hear her parents arguing some nights and the louder those arguments grew, the closer they came to moving away again. Farmlands, cities, mountains, beaches, and even a boat house came and went. New countries where they had to learn the languages had even passed by.

And they were tired.

That's how the Garrison caught them.

It was an accident in their new home; Katie was setting up the pond in the back that would be the new home for the koi when Matt splashed her with water and she took off the hat to wipe her face with a towel. A neighbour boy had peeked over the fence, curious about the new kids next door, and saw. That boy did what every young boy would do—he turned, he ran, and he told. In this case, it was his teenaged sister who had access to all those social media websites.

It wasn't long before a video was uploaded and liked and shared and reblogged.

My neighbours are elves! Was the cute, little title.

It wasn't so cute when the officers came to the door.

oOo

Katie Holt lifted three times her weight before a crowd of gaping scientists. Her arms barely shook under the weights, hair tied back into a loose ponytail as she stood absolutely still while wires recorded the pumping of her heart and the intake of her lungs. Barely five feet tall and she could lift more than the average adult human male without breaking a sweat.

The Garrison scientists murmured and whispered, scribbling out data on their pads. Officers watched her with arms crossed over their chests. She was strong, she knew that. Strong because of her species and where they had come from, but weak from their travels on Earth. Without the need for lifting, pulling, or hoisting, Katie's body wasn't as strong as it could be.

That didn't mean she had to tell them that, however.

People feared what they did not understand, and they didn't understand the Alteans at all.

After her 'session' Katie was free to do what she liked whether that be a moderated meal, supplied schooling, or chosen entertainment. Even her walk back 'home' was monitored and she wanted to tell them that she could hear each of their heart beats, that Altean Children's senses were stronger to hear danger and keep them safe from the dangers of their home planet.

Like a baby rattlesnake whose venom was more potent as a defence because they had no rattle. Too young to change her form, Katie practiced listening instead. She tracked the breathing of the guards that walked around the compound, found the shuffled footsteps of people in the school, and followed the flight of a helicopter from the helipad to someplace far away.

She learned how to recognize people by the sound of their car engines.

Then, Kate Holt heard about her father and brother, how they crashed and were gone, lost out in space.

All she could hear after that was the trembling heartbeat of a man who was lying.

oOo

The little pyramid droid beeped helpfully as they ran down the hallways. Pidge watched it out of the corner of her eye, making sure that the lights on the edges stayed Altean blue rather than transitioning back to purple. She didn't call it Krypto after the dog Matt and her had loved and lost, but Rover instead after humanity's attempts to explore Mars and the rest of deep space.

It circled her like that old white shepherd used to and she fought the urge to pat it.

"This way," Shiro urged and Pidge shook the thoughts out of her head and followed, their footsteps echoing loudly as they tried—tried—to sneak down the corridor and came to another hallway that ended theirs, creating a place was darker than the others, the lights on the wall few and far between leaving just a dim glow to light their path. It was enough, though, to see.

Doors with a thin, rectangular window at the Black Paladin's eye height lined the next hallway.

Something shuffled; a quiet sound that was there and gone in an instant, lost within the rumbling of the ship that it was nothing more than background noise.

Pidge froze, foot stopping mid air as she listened.

"What is it?"

She gritted her teeth, not being able to clearly hear whatever it was through her helmet so, despite Shiro's protests, Pidge pulled it off and frowned, closing her eyes. Left, then right, then left again she tilted her head, shifting the position of her ears. The lights didn't buzz, not like they did on Earth, but she was left sorting through other noises—the breathing of human lungs and beating of a human heart, the groaning of metal as it went through temperature changes, the whirling of Rover's machinery.

A door opened and closed in the distance.

"Pidge?"

"Shhh," she murmured.

Her ear twitched.

The shuffle came again, followed by a soft groan and Pidge's eyes snapped open as she spun on her heel, hand pointing down the corridor like a hound on a chase. "There," she said, "that way."

Shiro didn't ask if she was sure, something the Green Paladin was incredibly grateful about, and they both headed towards the door she had pointed to. It looked like all the others—dark, blank, with no sign that there was anything inside except for the occasional shuffling about. Rover tweeted after them and Pidge frowned.

"Open up," she told the droid and it twittered at the order than swooped in towards the door, doing something to the control panel that forced the whole thing to beep and groan as the motors worked to raise it up.

"Excellent, Pidge," Shiro smiled at her and she grinned back—all teeth and nervous energy as the door rose high enough that she could slip in underneath it.

"Dad?"

But neither Sam nor Matt Holt were in the group of aliens currently cowering within the cell. The disappointment that shot through Pidge was less of a lightning bolt and more like a snowball that had hit her in the back of the neck and was melting down her spine. She pulled her helmet back over her head to hide the look upon her face from everyone else, clearing away the frown and shimmering eyes until her expression had hardened.

"Don't be afraid," Shiro said behind her, his voice strong and steady so Pidge latched on to that and took a deep breath, "we're here to help you escape."

"It's you... it's you, the Champion," a grey alien with four arms spoke up and Pidge turned away, his voice droning on like a fly buzzing around her head, trying to get through her own thoughts so she ignored his words and focused on something else. "

Rover was hovering back and forth like a pacing watchdog so the Green Paladin didn't quite hear Shiro's response. A door opened down the hallway, feet swarming and vibrating up through the metal. Pidge turned back to the Black Paladin and the prisoners. "We don't have much time," she said, sending a butchered repeat of his words from earlier back at him, "let's get to the escape pods."

There was nothing for her here.

oOo

"Show them possibilities," Katie heard her father say once, "But never choose their path. They must advance on their own, find their own way, make their own mistakes." His eyes were shining with some emotion she couldn't quite identify at the time. "Help them conquer their own fears and hatreds, but let them create their own history."

Planet Earth was not Altea. Earth recovered from mistakes faster without the long memories that haunted the Alteans.

Katie watched as commanders came and went. The world became routine so she and Matt found ways to break it.

But she remembered before, when they travelled and were free.

That was never something she every, truly, forgot.

oOo

The Green Lion groaned underneath her, trembling from the force of the ray from the Galra ship currently pulling them up into the sky. Pidge gripped the steering bars and gritted her teeth, unable to move the ship beneath her and yet hearing—no, feeling—it it fight back. Above her was soldiers of the empire that destroyed her people, her home world. Beneath her was Allura and the Castle; the remains of planet Altea.

"We have to fight," She hissed to the metal and the Lion snarled in agreement both in the engines and her head. Inside her helmet, she could hear the others yelling, screaming, apologizing, and thanking. "It can't end here!"

The Superman keychain burned against her leg and Pidge reached down to pull it out of the pocket, hanging it up on the consol in front of her. That red, blue, and yellow shield that had been with her for so long. It turned, and the green light from inside the lion made the words engraved into the metal shine.

You're much stronger than you think you are. Trust me.

A different voice rose up from the depths of her memory and Matt stood on his bed, a foam sword in his hand, red blanket tied around his neck like a cape, holding her off with careful pushes and taps as she tried to storm his own, imaginary castle.

"Only the weak succumb to brutality!" He cried and wrestled her, giggling and laughing, to the floor. His wiggling fingers roamed up her ribs and sent her retreating with a squeal, bumping back against his desk and sending Superman comics falling off the edge.

Truth, Justice, and Liberty.

Above her, the Galra ship charged its canon.

Pidge gripped the handles and bared her teeth. "NO!" She roared and the sentiment was echoed by her Lion. The word tore through everyone's speakers from Keith and Lance and Hunk down to Allura and Coran. "Until my dream of a world where dignity, honour, and justice becomes the reality we all share," The Green Paladin quoted to herself, the words whispered through all their headsets as she pulled at the controls, twisted dials, tugged on levers, "I'll never stop fighting. Ever."

Her own heartbeat thundered in her ears and the Green Lion's tail whipped back and forth like a snake.

Shiro's voice cut through Pidge's thoughts and fury and she focused on him, the head, the leader, "We can do this!" He cried and both her and her Lion stilled to listen. "We have to believe in ourselves! We can't give up; we're the universe's only hope."

Beneath her, around her, came a wild purr that rumbled through her chest.

"Everyone is relying on us, we can't fail!"

Her brother, her father, still out there somewhere in the universe. She was breathing down their necks, hot on a trail she thought would have gone cold long ago.

"We won't fail!"

Pidge watched the light glint off the edges of the shield and then turned her gaze to the screens in front of her.

"If we work together, we'll win together!"

It wasn't the best, nor the most inspirational, but that Superman keychain swung dangerously as Pidge cried out her own 'Yeah!' with the others and her Lion raised its head to roar. With a surge of power, they broke free of the beam and the Green Paladin lurched in her seat as they were suddenly able to move. Her hands worked with the aid of the beast in her head, guiding her fingers and movements to join to the left of the Black Lion.

An arm, Pidge realized. She and Keith were an arm of Voltron. They both worked in tandem to push the cannon so the blast it had been charging flew by the Castle and struck the mountains harmlessly. They tore the ship apart; ripping away metal and weapons, blasting through wires and machinery until the Galra were forced to flee from the exploding carcass they left behind.

oOo

Pidge leaned over her knees, breathing in carefully through her mouth, blinking away the tiredness that had settled on her mind. It was exhausting, having her mind bonded with a war machine. She groaned softly and rubbed at her forehead, feeling a headache blooming just above her nose. Everyone else was talking around her and she fished for the glasses she didn't really need and carefully slid them over her ears.

The wind brushed them and she closed her eyes, revelling in being able to hear everything without a bundle of wool and leather in the way.

A heavy hand rested on her shoulder and Pidge glanced up to the warm, kind eyes of Shiro. "We'll never stop searching until we find your brother and father," he told her softly and her heart warmed at his words. She knew that, logically, he was younger than her in years, but that didn't stop her from being grateful, nor from looking up to him. "Wherever they are, I know they'd be proud of you."

She believed him. Out here, millions of light years away from the planet that had become her family's home, Pidge believed him.

That was just the kind of person Shiro was.

oOo

It would be months before she found another sign, a breadcrumb to jumpstart the trail.

Beta Traz; the prison of Slav.

Inside the control room, hooked up to thousands of Galra systems, one buzz for attention tore Pidge away from the prison escape she was stringing along to watch a video.

A door exploded, forcing the recording to fizzle before coming back online and Pidge watched rebels pull her brother from the cloud of smoke and debris, and Matt, who she hadn't seen in nearly two years, coughing into his arm. The pale purple lines on his cheeks gave him away, along with the unmistakable pointed ears and she stared—she couldn't help it.

All this time searching, looking, and there it was; visual confirmation that he was still out there, still alive.

After all this time, hope hadn't failed her.

"Matt?" She breathed.

Lance shouted for her attention and Pidge turned back to him, but that video played again and again as she downloaded the information.

The Green Paladin held that hope in her hand until it burned.

I'm coming for you, she swore even as she flew out an open hanger door to the vacuum of space. I promise.

oOo

"You're right when you say we all come out of high school thinking we're going to save the world. And sometimes we do. And sometimes — sometimes we don't. So you don't think about saving the world. You think about saving just one person. Because sometimes, that's enough. All I know is that we have to try."

Superman: Grounded

The End