A/N: Alternate title for this chapter: Once More, but With Feeling
More warnings for non-permanent suicide attempts.

Just Can't Get Enough

Lance had to put an end to it, but he was so visibly upset that first morning after he'd looped out of the Galran High Command, that it took him a while to argue that they should let him anywhere near the Cruiser. They'd pulled the bare bones of his capture from him, but he knew if he told them everything they'd treat him with kid gloves.

He dodged Keith, who tried to pull him aside and walked to the bay with Pidge.

"I've got information on your brother," Lance said.

"What?" Pidge asked.

"They wanted… It doesn't matter. They brought him in while they had me. I asked him where he'd been. He didn't know specifics, but he's been in a mining camp on a moon orbiting a grey gas giant. They're mining something called Telerium and it was about a week's ride away from the High Command."

"Is he alright?" Pidge asked.

"As alright as he can be," Lance said. "Wasn't thrilled about you being out here."

"What about my Dad?" Pidge asked.

"He said they'd been separated," Lance said, hesitantly putting a hand on her shoulder. The gesture made him nervous for some reason, and looking at her still left him remembering Matt's eyes as he died. He would never tell her about that.

Keith still told him to be careful before they went in. He wished they could ride over in Blue. Haggar was right, his bond with her was stronger. Lance just wished it hadn't cost him so much. He felt her comforting presence in his mind even after they went through the wormhole.

The first time back on the cruiser went horribly. They both died quickly, but Lance was no longer numb to it and he had some sort of episode when he looped back to his quarters. It took him all of the time until Shiro's wakeup call to calm down, and then he didn't bother trying to change the plan. He wrote off that loop and charged in like he had the first time, just waiting for a sentry to get in a few good shots. He didn't bother with his shield.

It took him a few more loops before he got back into the swing of things. It took him several more before he felt like he'd made up for whatever he'd lost when he'd been a prisoner and he was able to get as far as he'd been able to get before. It took him too many loops to realize he was going about things all wrong. He had to remind himself that he had the advantage, and that he just couldn't give the sentries too much to learn from.

"Okay," Lance said, after they'd gotten into the airlock on the cruiser. "I might have lied a bit back there."

"Lied about what?" Hunk asked.

"We aren't stealthing this," Lance said. "I'm pretty sure it's impossible, and besides which, it just leaves a bunch of sentries behind us. Took me way too many loops to figure it out, but I've got a good system now."

"Lance, how many times have you done this?" Hunk asked.

Lance shrugged. He had still been telling them that it had only been nine loops. "I decided to change things up when I hit one hundred."

"Jesus, Lance," Hunk said.

Lance looked at his watch. It had only been thirty times on his new track though, but he'd made a lot of progress. It was like a video game, only the video game adapted to you as you played. Just like a video game though, the game reset back to his save point while Lance learned more and more each time. The first key was to be fast. To give the sentries as little as possible to learn from. The second key was the timing. He had it down for the first couple dozen sentries they came across. The third key was integrating Hunk in a way that Lance could make sure was repeatable each time. Repeatable was predictable. After that, it was memorizing how the sentries adapted each time.

The first few sentries went down super fast. All Hunk had to do was follow him.

"-Three, four, five, turn and…" he was already aimed as he turned the corner, the sentry falling into his sights as he was already pulling the trigger. After that, sentries started making erratic motions, trying to be less predictable. But it was the same erratic motions each loop, so long as Lance kept things the same.

"Left, right, jump, duck, shoot," Lance said.

A few more sentries down, and they started rushing in from all over, and Hunk would announce that the bomb was charging up to explode. That was fine. Plant Hunk with his shield up and aimed down one hall doing sweeping fire. Lance took care of what was coming from in front, turning at the right moments to take the sentries leaping over Hunk's barrage. They couldn't really dodge when they were mid leap. "Back three steps, shield Hunk, two sentries down," Lance muttered to himself, and then grabbed Hunk up and continued on, tossing a plasma grenade around the next corner.

There was always a sense of anxiety that came when he got to a new point, and then that lessened over time as he figured out through a few loops how to get through to the next challenge. Dying hurt; it hurt a lot, and there was something in his brain that always panicked, but he could tell himself that it would be alright, that at least it wasn't permanent that it was better than being in a cell, that Hunk would be alive when he woke up again that morning.

"Lance, how many times have you done this?" Hunk asked.

"Three hundredth time's the charm," Lance said.

"Jesus, Lance," Hunk said. "If you're just going to fight through, why not bring the strike team? You could have ended this already."

"Because no one dies," Lance said. "We get through this and no one dies."

The first time he'd made that declaration, it had been full of vehemence, now it was just a quiet mantra. He'd promised himself that he wouldn't become numb to it again, but he had. This time though, he really thought they might actually get through. They were so close. He thought an even three hundred would be poetic somehow, but it wasn't to be. The transport made it through and that was always a quick game over.

"Three hundred and first time's the charm," Lance said.

"Jesus Lance," Hunk said. But this time it was.

"I need an entry Pidge," Lance said, as Hunk laid down fire behind them.

"Got it," Pidge said, and the blast doors opened. Lance took care of the three sentries and the Galran scientist inside.

"Get to the bomb," Lance said. "I've got the doors."

He shot through the control panel and ducked through the doors as they closed. Once inside with the doors shut behind him he placed a handy device that Coran had given him against the heavy blast doors. This was the first time Lance had actually gotten to use it. It should, theoretically, reinforce them and give them a lot more time if the Galra tried to blast their way through again.

"How much time have we got?" Lance asked.

"Three minutes," Hunk said.

"Plenty of time," Lance said. He laughed. He laughed because they'd done it. They'd gotten through. It was over. "Three hundred and first time's the charm," he said again.

While Hunk tried to manually disable the shield, Lance patched Pidge in, he couldn't stop laughing. The battle outside didn't sound too good though and he sobered up; Pidge was split trying to get through the AI's defenses and dodging fighters. It would all be over soon though. As soon as the bomb was disabled, they could message the princess and the fleet would drop in and clean up the rest. It was almost over.

A couple of minutes in and Lance started to worry.

"How are we doing?" Lance asked.

Hunk definitely looked worried. "Just give me a minute," he said.

"I think we've only got a minute," Lance said. "Pidge?"

"Agh, Keith, cover me!" Pidge said. "I don't know Lance."

"What do you mean you don't know?" Lance asked.

"I don't think I can do this remotely," Pidge said. "I think I need to be in there."

"That's not happening," Lance said. "Hunk!"

"There's a lot of redundancy here," Hunk said.

"It's about to blow," Lance said.

"Tell me to start with the relays next time," Hunk said.

Lance thought it was the first time the bomb actually went off while he was there. He was worried that the chronotons would do something, but no, he just died and woke up again in his bunk. Lance rubbed his face with a sigh.

"The relays," he said.

"Three hundred and second time's the charm," Lance said, sure that it would be.

The damned transport got through.

"Three hundred and third time's the charm," Lance said, a bit worried.

"Tell me to start with the plasma condenser," Hunk said.

"Three hundred and tenth time's the charm," Lance said, warily.

"Tell me to start with the relays," Hunk said.

"You already said that," Lance screamed.

"Three hundred and thirtieth time's the charm," Lance said, feeling defeated.

"I don't think I can do this remotely," Pidge said. "I think I need to be in there."

"Yeah," Lance sobbed. "I think so too."

"We don't think Hunk can deactivate the shield," Lance said. "Not in three minutes. Pidge thinks she can get through the AI, but she needs to be there. My question is, excluding the containment vessel, is there anything in there I can shoot?"

"Absolutely not," Hunk said. "First of all, most of the stuff that's attached to it is Ocaampan, and I won't know what anything does until I can examine it without the shield there. Second of all, most everything there is going to be preventing the containment vessel from breeching while the charge is added, and it's all packed in close together. The sort of energy you'd need to blast through that shield doesn't lend itself to surgical precision in diffusing a bomb."

"So it has to be Pidge," Shiro said.

"I'm down," PIdge said. "Lance'll get me there."

"How many times have you looped?" Shiro asked.

Lance sighed around his chocopop. It was pretty obvious that it was more than nine at this point, so why keep lying.

"This is attempt three hundred and thirty-one," Lance said.

"Jesus, Lance," Hunk said.

"There has to be another way," Shiro said.

"Yeah," Lance said. "We tried them. Can we just… not do this again? We've had this argument before. You don't like it, I get it, but the other options aren't tenable."

"What if it's never over?" Keith asked. "What is this doing to you, Lance?"

Lance had stopped telling them about his capture when it stopped being so obvious how much it had messed him up.

"What it's doing to me is making me a hell of a lot better at being a Paladin," Lance said. "Just wait until the next time we have a mission together."

"And you can stealth your way through with Pidge?" Shiro asked, shutting down what was probably going to be an arguement.

"Yeah," Lance said. "Shouldn't be any different."

Shiro would insist on sending the strike team if Lance admitted that they weren't going to be doing any stealth whatsoever, and that was too many variables, Lance couldn't guarantee that none of them would die. He didn't know what he would do if the bomb were to be diffused and they had won but some of his team wouldn't be there the next time he woke up. Not when he could have prevented it.

They ironed out a few more details. They went and got into their armor, Lance got issued some goodies from Coran, he and Keith checked the Strike Team, and then they were off, traveling in Red with Keith.

"Whatever you do," Lance said. "Get that transport."

"Whatever you do, stay safe," Keith said.

He always told Lance to stay safe. Lance didn't know when Keith had started to care so much about him as a friend, but reliving this day so many times had made him realize that Keith was always advocating for Lance over everything else. It just set him on edge a bit when he did that in front of Shiro. Shiro listened to Keith, and Lance needed to be able to convince Shiro that he had it handled, because Lance was the only one who could come back if he died.

One of Lance's few pleasures was getting to tell Pidge about her brother each loop.

"Don't worry about the spacewalk," Lance said, tethering himself to Pidge. "I've got you."

Pidge took a deep breath as Red opened her jaws and the cruiser got closer and closer. They launched out and Lance kept an eye on the distance.

"By the way," he said. "One of my loops lasted a lot longer than the others. Your brother's mining Telerium on a moon orbiting a grey gas giant about a week's ride from the High Command."

"What?" Pidge asked. "Lance!" She got through the spacewalk a lot easier when she had something else to think about.

"And thrusters now," Lance said.

He got a big hug when they were in the airlock. Lance smiled while he kept an eye on the clock.

"Just so you know," Lance said. "I gave up on stealth a long while ago, but I got Hunk through by blasting all the sentries and I'll get you through too. Just do everything I say, alright?"

"Oh my god you're crazy," Pidge said.

"Crazy good," Lance said.

Only not this time. His perfect run was reliant on Hunk's bayard and Hunk's capabilities. Pidge couldn't lay down rapid fire. Pidge couldn't body check a sentry. Maybe Pidge and Keith could have stealthed their way through the ship together. Not for the first time, Lance thought that the wrong Paladin had been sent into the loop, though he wouldn't wish it on anyone else.

The first dozen sentries went down just fine, but as they adapted, things became different, and Lance couldn't keep up. He would never forget the sound of Pidge calling out his name in pain as she tried to cover the stump of her arm.

"Crazy good," Lance said, and he couldn't quite make himself believe it.

"Crazy good," Lance said, and he couldn't stand the hope in Pidge's eyes.

"Crazy good," Lance said, and he prayed to god he would be able to look her in the eye one day and not hear her begging him to make it better.

The transport docked, and Lance knew it would be over soon. He'd gotten so far though. He heard Pidge scream behind him, and he turned towards her. He always turned towards her, because he couldn't keep his back to her when she was hurt and scared and needed him, even though he could never keep her safe. She wasn't hurt though. Her bayard was on the ground and a sentry had picked her up. A sentry was carrying her away.

"No!" Lance screamed, furious. He would destroy it. He would kill all of them before he let Pidge get captured, before he would let a Galra beat her, before he would let Hagar sear through her mind. Lance wasn't good enough though; his legs were shot out from under him as he raised his blaster to shoot the retreating sentry. He collapsed to the floor. There were so many of them. Pidge was screaming his name. One of them was reaching for his bayard. He couldn't save her. She was going to be captured. Commander Tevis would have her. He couldn't let that happen. Lance fired and Pidge stopped screaming, and Lance sobbed as he pulled back his bayard under his prone body and put the barrel under his chin. He'd always wondered if he could pull the trigger. He had to bring Pidge back. He squeezed the trigger as he was flipped over, the bolt grazing over his face, leaving seared flesh in its wake. His bayard was ripped from his hands.

"No!" Lance said. Reaching for a plasma grenade.

His arms were forced behind his back, and his belt and helmet were removed.

"Stop!" he screamed.

Something was roughly tied around his legs to stop the bleeding, and his comm was removed from his ear.

"Kill me!" Lance begged.

He was picked up.

"No, no, no, no, no…" He couldn't stop. He started hyperventilating. He saw the Commander in front of him with the shuttle.

"No, no, no," Lance said.

The Commander sneered at him.

The trip was the same. It was the same, only Lance found he couldn't pray. He spent a lot of time trying to figure out how he could force himself to loop. His burnt face was agony, but it was less than what he deserved. He tried to make the Commander so angry that he'd kill Lance, but though he got more cruel, he was always careful. He liked to use his hands, but now and then he used the pain stick that they'd first used on him when he was in front of the druid.

Meeting Zarkon was the same.

Meeting the first druid was the same.

Haggar was different, because his bond with Blue was already stronger. She didn't need him to do anything. She just used him to find Blue. There was no Matt. They didn't need him alive after that, but they didn't feel like letting him go.

Tevis still visited. Lance went nearly catatonic a lot sooner than he had the first time.

They captured Voltron. They took Earth. In rare moments of lucidity, Lance wondered if that Galra lady would come for him again. She didn't. Time went on; he had no idea how much.

There was a thump outside his cell door that Lance ignored. He ignored the door opening, just curling up tighter, trying to keep what warmth he could for as long as possible. No Matt had meant no clothes.

"Lance, oh Lance!"

Lance stayed where he was. It wasn't the first time he'd hallucinated. Gentle hands turned him over. Lance silently screamed, waiting for whatever was going to happen. A hand gently touched his cheek.

"I've got you Lance." It was Keith.

"Keith," Lance rasped. Weren't they all dead?

"I'm getting you out of here," Keith said. "Lance I'm so sorry, I'm so sorry I couldn't stop the transport." Lance was just surprised Keith could recognize him.

"You're alive," Lance said. "The others?"

"They're gone," Keith said. "But we have each other again. I'm going to get you out of here. I was scared I would never see you again, not ever. But it's over Lance. It's over. The Galra won, but we'll have each other."

Keith wasn't making any sense, and Lance, who was waking up for the first time in a long time noticed that Keith looked awful. He had scars all over, his armor was cracked and dirty, and there was a hardness to him that Lance had never seen before.

"I killed Pidge," Lance said.

"It wasn't your fault," Keith said.

Yes it was.

"You have to kill me," Lance said.

"No!"

"I have to loop," Lance said. "I have to fix it."

"You don't even know if you can loop that far," Keith said. "I'm not loosing you again."

How long had he been alone?

Keith helped Lance get up and he cut the bindings keeping his arms behind his back. Moving them was torture.

Lance lurched forward, and Keith caught him in his arms. Keith sounded emotional but Lance couldn't make out what he was saying, because all he could focus on was what he felt with his hands. Keith still kept that dagger at the small of his back. Lance pulled it out. He could barely hold it. Keith didn't notice. He guided Lance out of his cell. Even then, Lance didn't know if he could actually cut himself like that. He looked down at the dagger. It looked so familiar. It looked just like the dagger the Galra woman had had.

"Stay back," Keith said, and suddenly he was charging at the Galran officer in front of them. Lance hadn't even noticed. He turned around, hearing something behind him, it was another Galra. He shouted a warning to Keith as he lurched forward, dagger raised. He couldn't let it get Keith from behind.

Keith screamed his name and Lance realized he was on the floor. Keith's head swam over him, he looked desperate.

"I'll fix it," Lance said.

His first impulse was to go to Hunk when he woke up, but he didn't deserve that. He couldn't face Pidge. He didn't want to be alone either. He tapped his comm.

"Keith," he said.

There was a pause.

"Lance?" Keith asked. "Are you alright?"

"Can you come here?" Lance asked, in a small voice.

"Are you hurt?" Keith asked.

"No," Lance said. His body never mirrored the many scars he bore. "Can you just… please?"

It took a while for Keith to get there. He'd been on the training deck. Lance wanted to ask him to hold him, like he had in his cell, but he didn't deserve that. Keith must have seen something on his face though because he walked over and knelt before Lance and Lance couldn't hold it in.

"I killed her," he said. "I killed her, and I was so scarred I wouldn't be able to save her."

"What are you talking about?" Keith asked.

"I'm looping through time," Lance sobbed. "I keep reliving this over and over, and I can't get it right. They were capturing Pidge and I couldn't let her go through that."

Keith didn't accuse him of having a dream. He didn't yell at Lance and tell him what he should have done. Maybe he should have called Shiro. Keith just pulled Lance into a hug and held him as he cried, and maybe he had made the right decision anyway. When Shiro made the morning wakeup call something happened and Lance had another episode. He didn't remember being sedated. He didn't remember the others going on the mission without him. He didn't remember the bomb going off because he hadn't been there. He'd been safe on the Castle ship. There was only one Lion left, and one Paladin.

Every day Lance thought about forcing himself to Loop, and every day he didn't. He was scared to try again, because a part of him thought that Keith was right, and it would never be over. He'd watch Pidge die over and over again. She was still dead. They all were. Every day he felt their absence while he was for some reason sent out again and again to lead battles as the last remaining part of Voltron. The AI was destroyed with everything else, so they had that, but it was still not enough. The Princess never lost hope, but Lance died a month later, still trying to save a galaxy he was no longer sure could be saved, and he had just a moment as he slipped away to be ashamed of the fact that right after he'd been shot he had wished that he wouldn't wake up ever again.

He did wake up though; had his standard conversation with the Princess, and then he waited outside Pidge's door. She was surprised to see him waiting there, and Lance had to try his very best not to break down at the first sight of her since he'd killed her.

"Lance?" Pidge asked, yawning.

"I know I can't convince you I've been traveling through time without the Princess, but I just need you to know that I love you and I'm going to get you through this."

"Um…"

"Come on," Lance said. "There's a meeting."

He just wanted to tell her about Matt, to see her smile, but she wouldn't believe him yet. They had their meeting, Lance convinced everyone he had it handled, and then when he went to get his special gear from Coran, after clipping everything to his belt, he pulled him aside so the others couldn't hear him.

"I need a way to force a loop," Lance said.

It took a moment for Coran to understand what he was asking for.

"Absolutely not," Coran said. "Why would you even need that?"

"I've been captured twice. It was moths with the Galra. They… I can't do that again," Lance said. "I don't know if I can do this if I'm…" He wouldn't have thought he could say this to someone he looked up to. "I'm scared. I can't stop thinking about it. I just need to know I won't have to go through that again. I need to know I can force myself to loop if something goes wrong." If something happens to Pidge.

He'd never seen Coran look so upset.

"I don't want to die," Lance said. "I want to get through this, but I need something so I can focus on the mission."

"Finish getting ready," Coran said. "I'll meet you by the Red Lion."

"Thank you," Lance said.

Coran didn't say anything back, but he did meet Lance before they left and handed him a sheath that went under his forearm guard.

"Pull it out of the container and jab it into any part of your flesh," Coran said.

"Thank you," Lance said again.

"Just come back to us," Coran said. "I'll definitely be expecting you to give that back when you do."

"I will," Lance said, feeling comforted to feel it against his arm.

Coran though wasn't feeling reliant on Lance's word, and he told Shiro who commed him as they were getting underway.

"I talked to Coran," Shiro said.

Lance cursed and activated his full visor so Pidge and Keith couldn't hear. "I'm not suicidal," he said.

"Glad to hear it," Shiro said. "You're handing that thing over to me as soon as we rally. Understood?"

"Understood," Lance said.

Pidge was giving him a worried look when he finished the conversation.

"What was that about?" she asked.

"Nothing," Lance said. "Hey, I need to tell you about Matt." That always got a smile, and Lance needed that.

They boarded the cruiser.

"You're crazy," Pidge said.

"Crazy good," Lance promised.

It took him a while to get back into it. It took him a while before he stopped being abjectly terrified for Pidge and could stay in the flow of the battle without constantly looking at her. There was one time he lost his bayard and he could hear her screaming as he tried to get it, and hands grabbed him, and he started screaming, thinking about the pressure against his forearm, but he was able to lunge forward and grab his bayard and they killed him for it and that was alright. It was alright, but he still woke up crying, and the first thing he did was go to wake up Pidge, because even after so many tries, he still needed to know she was alright. Sometimes he called Keith, because Keith always came, and he always believed him, and he was always concerned for Lance; he had fought through the High Command for Lance, and Lance had realized he had barely started to get to know the boy who's validation he'd craved so much back at the Garrison.

So he got better, and he got better, and he figured out how to best utilize Pidge's skills and her bayard, and he cursed the transport, but he got better.

"Crazy good," Lance said.

They were so close, they were so close, they'd gotten through, Lance had gotten Pidge through, he'd reinforced the doors, but Pidge wasn't going to make it. The bomb would go off, and then she would be alright, but for just then she was dying, with a hole gaping in her stomach. It would be over soon, but for just then, Pidge was dying and Lance held her close as she cried through the pain.

"I'm sorry," Lance said. "I'm sorry, I'll get it right next time. I promise, I'll get it right next time, this won't ever happen again, I promise."

Pidge's arms around him had been so desperately tight when he'd first laid her down but they were getting weaker. "Find them," she sobbed. "If I can't, you have to find them. Promise."

"You're going to find them," Lance said. "You'll find them. I'll get it right. You'll find them, and I'll pull them out, I promise."

It would have been a mercy if Pidge could have gone quickly, but she lasted until the bomb went off while Lance was still trying to comfort her.

He called Keith when he woke up and greeted him with a hug when the doors opened. Keith for his part just held him as Lance told him what was going on. Keith always believed him, and Lance wished he'd known that Keith liked hugs as much as Hunk did because he didn't think he was getting enough of them. He greeted Pidge at her door, and smiled to see his grouchy gremlin whole. He went through the usual explanations and then the mission started.

"You're crazy," Pidge said.

"Crazy good," Lance said solemnly, and then the mission started. He'd get it right.

"Forward two meters," Lance muttered. "Drop, Pidge! Plasma grenade, two, three, shield." Three blasts hit his shield. "Whip your tether around the corner," Lance called out. One, two, "and zap em! Now hunker down behind your shield facing the aft," he told her. "Step, dodge, step, aim high, aim right, aim down, turn, and shoot two, three, four." One clear corridor they could dash down uninhibited. "Wait, two, three, four, five, plasma grenade, two, three, lean over and shoot and right, and down, and wait, two, three."

"Transport's down," Keith said.

Lance didn't respond. He just needed to stay focused. He barked out instructions to Pidge, knowing she wouldn't get all of them in time.

"Step to the side, shoot." Another sentry went down. Two shots to his lower back, but that was fine, he was braced for it and the undersuit held, he could keep going with a nasty bruise and he never had figured out how to avoid it. He just needed to turn and aim low, taking out the three sentries, avoiding Pidge's shocked eyes. "Shoot out and tether that vent," Lance said, pointing, pushing through any objections Pidge had for his injury. "Use your thrusters and let it pull you down the corridor." Pidge didn't have the best control over her thrusters, so her Bayard really helped. As the sentries rounding the corner turned to face Pidge, who was zooming by, Lance used his own thrusters to get a higher vantage and shot the sentries in the back.

"Two plasma grenades," he threw them back behind him as he zoomed forward. Only one left. "Behind me," Lance told Pidge. "One more turn, throw a grenade, wait for it, and-" he shot the three sentries that turned the corner to avoid the grenade. The grenade went off and then they were at the blast doors. Pidge got the doors while Lance picked off the sentries coming up from behind, then he turned to shoot through the doors just as they were cracking open to surprise the sentries and the lone Galra inside.

"You are crazy good," Pidge said after the doors were closed and reinforced. Lance could faintly hear plasma bolts impacting outside. "How's your back?"

"It's fine," Lance said. "Focus on the mission."

Lance dragged the lone body off to the side. It was too close to where Pidge was working, and Lance didn't like the sight of her next to it. Pidge, for her part, walked over and plugged into the terminal. This was it, this was it, they were finally there. He started laughing again, but he had to force himself to stop because Pidge was giving him strange looks and he couldn't be distracting her. He couldn't be distracting her, but the longer it took the more he wanted to desperately demand to know if she could actually do it.

"Pidge," he said weakly.

"Sorry Lance," Pidge said. "One more try, I just need you to memorize this code."

Lance was not able to memorize the code. He told her as much after he looped.

"Gotcha," Pidge said. "Don't worry about it."

Another few tries to get her back there.

"Okay, I need you to memorize this text," Pidge said.

"What?" Lance asked.

"I'll be able to convert it into the code I need," Pidge said. "We've got to hurry."

Lance memorized it. It only took him a few tries.

Lance was at her door when she woke up.

"You look like shit," she said.

"Bit of a rough night," Lance said. "You don't look so great yourself."

Pidge took out her caffeine pills and gave the bottle a shake in his face. He didn't react to her double dosing, so Pidge figured he really had had a bad night.

"Do you know why they woke us up early?" Pidge asked. "I didn't get anything on my alerts."

"I told the Princess I've been traveling through time," Lance said.

"That's not possible," Pidge said.

"That's what you always say," Lance said.

Lance refused to argue the matter with her, but he unlocked the junk food cabinet when they got to the meeting so that was alright. Then the Alteans went and sided with Lance on the whole time travel thing. Pidge had just become convinced that Lance wasn't crazy, and maybe he really was traveling through time with his spirit mumbo jumbo… and then he told her that he had a message from past Pidge and it was the most nonsensical paragraph of random words she'd ever heard.

"… and there's a dark place for killing time as the cobra sings a baseball." Lance finished.

"What?" Pidge asked.

"You said you'd know what it meant," Lance exploded, suddenly looking very much like he had in fact relived the same day too many times.

It took her a minute, but then, "Ohh, I've got you, say that again." She typed away at her computer. It was a coding system she already used to remember complex alphanumeric passwords. This one was very long though. "Okay cool. Don't worry about it. I know what I need to do," she said. "I've just got to let this compile, and then we'll be in in no time."

What had happened was that she'd gotten to the AI and realized that she didn't have time to take it over, so she'd pulled out the cipher from the AI's control matrix overlaying the Galran terminal, from which she needed to compile each and every possible quantum permeation derivative before she could finish things. The only thing they'd been lacking was time, and her computer would finish figuring out the bypass codes by the time they left.

"Just need to get me there and I'll take it out," she assured Lance.

Lance sighed. "Five hundredth time's the charm." She still couldn't get over that. Assuming a little under three hours for each loop, that was a little over two months.

"Do you ever sleep between loops?" Pidge asked.

"I loop back into a body that's already slept," Lance said.

Pidge did not think that could be healthy at all. Had he just been running through it over and over again for two months straight?

"Don't give me that look young lady," Lance said. "You do not get to be affronted by my sleep habits."

"You don't sleep at all," Pidge said.

Lance hesitated. "There were a few times where things went… differently," he said. "I slept then, not that I think it matters if I sleep in-between loops."

"Differently how?" Pidge asked.

Lance actually started sweating in his seat.

"Differently how?" Shiro asked, in his Dad voice.

"I got captured," Lance said, shrugging but not meeting any of their eyes. "They don't detonate the bomb when I get captured."

"What?" Keith looked horrified, then he looked furious.

"It's fine," Lance reassured them. He didn't look fine.

"How long?" Hunk asked, he'd looked like he was going to cry since Lance had told them that he'd done this hundreds of times.

"Months, I think," Lance said, quietly. "It was hard to tell time. Look, I haven't been captured in a ton of loops. It's ancient history now. We're this close," he said, holding his fingers an inch apart. No one was happy with that answer.

Shiro gave them the go ahead to break and get ready. Pidge tried to stay close to Lance, because she knew he was hurting and wasn't admitting it, but she didn't know how to fix that. Lance went off to talk to Coran though, and Pidge just didn't know what to say to him.

Keith grabbed a hold of Lance when they got into Red and for a moment Pidge thought all of Keith's feelings for Lance were going to come tumbling out of his mouth but they didn't.

"Stay safe," he said.

"This time I will," Lance said.

"You'd better," Keith said, and Lance barked a laugh.

"I know you'd come for me," Lance said fondly.

Lance definitely wasn't her type, but he was her dork of a weird family member, and for the first time she thought she knew what Keith saw in him.

Then they took off, and Lance activated his full visor for a bit and had a conversation with someone. He looked upset, and for the hundredth time that morning, Pidge knew that Lance was very much not all right.

"What was that about?" she asked, when Lance finished his secret conversation.

"Nothing," Lance said. "Hey, I need to tell you about Matt."

Matt.

"What about him?" Pidge asked.

"I met him at the High Command," Lance said.

"He's at the High Command?" Pidge asked distraught, because she had no idea how to get him out of there, even though she knew she'd turn it to ash to get him back.

"No," Lance said. "They brought him in to like, mess with my head, don't worry about it. The thing is, is that he's doing alright, or as alright as he can be, you know, but I asked him where he's been so I could tell you and he's on a moon, orbiting a grey gas giant, mining Telerium, and they're about a week's ride away from High Command."

That narrowed things down considerably.

"Get ready to go," Keith said. He sounded miserable. Pidge, on the other hand, felt such a swell of hope and it was a wild ride for how worried she'd just been for Lance.

"He's really alright?" she asked, as they got into Red's forward airlock.

"Yeah," Lance said, smiling softly at her, probably the first real smile she'd seen from him that morning. "Big prison camp, few actual Galra, mostly sentries, they feed them enough so they can do manual labor."

Pidge might have started crying if Keith wasn't getting them ready to jettison into space. No matter how many times they practiced these maneuvers, she would never get used to it. Lance had her though, and apparently he'd gotten her through this space walk well over a hundred times. He tethered himself to her after the air got sucked out and the gravity shut off. As they shot forward to the Galran cruiser she nervously let Lance take charge of the maneuver, and then she was bypassing the airlock's security and they were in.

She gave Lance one last hug before the mission really started.

"Just so you know," Lance said. "I gave up on stealth a long while ago, but I got you through by blasting all the sentries before and I'll get you through again. Just do everything I say, alright?"

"Oh my god you're crazy," Pidge said.

"Crazy good," Lance said, with a laugh that worried her. Then they were off, and Lance was… If there had been any doubt that the whole time thing was real, it was gone after she saw him take out the first dozen sentries. He was so fast, they were down before they could get a shot off. He kept her behind him for the most part, but as the sentries adapted there were times where he would have his hand on her shoulder so he could physically move her at the right moment. There wasn't anything else for it except that Lance knew what was behind every corner, and what was coming up from behind them. She could hear him muttering every step under his breath over their private channel.

"Duck!" Lance said. "Behind you, sweep its legs, shield up."

She arced her bayard as the end shot out and the tether wrapped around the legs of the sentry that had run up behind them, but as that sentry was going down, three more rounded the corner. One shot impacted her shield as she turned her head to warn Lance. Two more shots hit him in the back below his armor. He barely even staggered, just turned and expertly shot the three sentries. He had been expecting to get shot. It was part of his plan.

He talked over her protest that he was injured, giving her instructions to use her thrusters and her bayard to zip down the corridor. It wasn't a fun ride, but he was right behind her, taking out the sentries that rounded the corner. There was another loud explosion behind her. She landed in a skid at the end of the hall, and Lance landed lightly besides her and helped her up.

"Behind me," he said, tossing another plasma grenade around the corner. Three sentries ran out, away from the explosive and Pidge was pretty sure Lance had already been pulling the trigger before the first one had popped out. They rounded the corner and there were two big blast doors in front of them.

"Get those open," Lance said. She went over and interfaced with the security pad. Lance was right behind her, shielding her. There were more blasters going off behind her. Just as the doors started to slide apart, Lance was next to her, shooting through the crack. There was the clack of three falling sentries and the thud of a body from within the room. Lance shot out the external control panel and Pidge closed and locked the doors from inside while Lance affixed the structural enhancer Coran had pulled up to make the doors stronger.

They must have closed them just in time, because Pidge could already hear the sound of plasma bolts impacting the doors from outside.

"You are crazy good," Pidge said. "How's your back."

"It's fine," Lance said. "Focus on the mission."

Pidge nodded and went and got her first look at the bomb. More importantly she got a look at the AI terminal. She knew it had caused them all sorts of trouble, but she couldn't wait to introduce herself to it. She plugged into the Galran terminal outside of the shield covering everything else, and past Pidge was right, the thing was clearly enhanced by the AI it was connected to. That was just fine though, because Pidge had already decoded the takeover protocols. She tried to not pay attention to Lance dragging the body of a Galra off to the side.

"How long is this going to take?" Lance asked.

"Done," Pidge said, as the forcefield went down.

"What?" Lance asked.

"I just needed time to process that code for a bit," Pidge said. "Gave me the permutations I needed."

"You could have just given those to Hunk!" Lance exclaimed. "You didn't need to come."

Pidge shrugged. Could he have just switched everything up and brought Hunk through all the same after so many loops since he'd started taking her?

"It's done?" Lance asked, sounding disbelieving.

She checked the detector the Ocaampans had given them. "The energy buildup in the containment field is going back down to equilibrium. Hunk could describe it better than I could, the important thing is that it's done."

She could still hear a barrage of plasma bolts on the blast doors, and as far as she knew, Lance had never gotten this far, so she wasn't sure if he knew how long those doors would hold.

"What about the sentries?" Lance asked.

Pidge assessed things for a while. She hadn't actually taken control of the AI. She'd just kicked it off of the Galran terminal. Kicking the AI off of the Galran terminal had been easy enough, and then she'd just gone through the Galran terminal to stop the component that was adding the charge to the containment vessel and deactivated the shield. Separating the two also separated the AI from the sentries. The AI was still connected to the containment vessel, but they needed it to stay that way for just then until the charge inside dissipated.

There was a ton she needed to learn about the AI. The sentries though. They'd been sending the AI their direct observations of the battle, and the AI had been sending them new tactical instructions. It didn't actually control them though. Pidge didn't think she'd be able to send new updates to the sentries without reconnecting the AI, and she would need more time than they probably had to actually properly take over the AI. She'd have time later, of course. She'd be spending a lot of time with her new toy in the near future.

"They can't learn anymore," Pidge said, unfortunately they had already been programed with everything the AI had learned from Lance, she thought it only had access to the sentries on the ship?

"So I can destroy the AI?" Lance asked, raising his bayard towards the best computer Pidge had ever seen.

"No, no, no," Pidge said, panicked as she bodily blocked the terminal from Lance's bayard. Lance swung his bayard away from her.

"Pidge!" He had a bit of a crazed look in his eye for just a moment.

"I want it," Pidge said.

"Oh, my god," Lance said, and he was angry. "You will never, ever, deliberately walk into my line of fire again. Do you understand me?"

"Lance."

"Do you understand me?!"

"Yeah, I understand," Pidge said.

Lance muttered to himself for a bit before taking a deep breath. "Lance to Shiro," he said. "Um, it's done. Bomb's shut off."

"Are you secure?" Shiro asked, coming in on both of their comms.

"I don't know how many are outside," Lance said. "But the door's holding for now."

"We'll bring the rest of the fleet in," Shiro said. "Hunker down for now. Pidge, get the containment vessel ready for transport."

"You've got it," Pidge said.

The pounding from outside sounded louder. Pidge got to work taking all of the extraneous bits off of the containment vessel so it could be separated. Most of the parts were clearly Ocaampan, and Pidge wasn't sure if they wanted to collect all of it or if it should just be destroyed. Hunk actually probably should have been there for this part.

"You alright?" she asked.

Lance didn't answer immediately and then he seemed to shake himself a bit. "Yeah," he said.

"Good," she said. "Shoot this." She tossed one of the parts she'd pulled off the bomb into the air away from them.

Lance seemed to react on instinct and blasted it out of the air. That was pretty well destroyed.

Pidge grinned; she could make a game out of it. Lance clearly needed cheering up. She kept throwing parts into the air when she pulled them off, and Lance kept vaporizing them.

Shiro came back on over the comms. "We're finished up out here. Keith and I are docking with the strike teams," he said. "We'll be there before you know it."

"Be careful," Lance said. "I've trained those sentries pretty well."

"I think you've trained them to fight a very specific type of threat," Pidge said. "And they won't be able to adapt past that."

"Huh," Lance said.

"Pidge, there's another thing," Shiro said. "Lance has a device hidden inside his left forearm guard. I need you to take custody of it."

"It's not over," Lance said. "I get to keep it until this is over."

"It's over Lance," Shiro said. "Whatever happens from here on out, it's over."

Lance looked mutinous, but he said. "Copy that."

Pidge looked at him, not sure what she was worried about, but knowing she should definitely be worried. Lance sighed. He pulled some sort of sheath out from his forearm guard and handed it to her. He looked at it like it was something precious. She could feel his eyes as she went back over to the bomb and continued working. She thought he was looking at whatever it was.

"Be careful with that," Lance said.

"What is it?" Pidge asked, really not wanting to know.

Lance probably didn't want her to know either, because he hesitated a moment and said, "Don't worry about it."

"So I should take it out and figure it out for myself?" Pidge asked.

"No!" Lance said. "Look it's just an emergency thing, if I have to force myself to loop."

"It's for suicide?" Pidge shouted, holding it closer as if Lance was suddenly going to lunge for it.

"No," Lance said. "Because I wouldn't really be dead."

"Lance," Pidge said. "That's… this whole thing's messed up." This whole thing, reliving the battle so many times, getting captured, dying.

"I know," Lance said. "Just, come on, there's still work to do."

There was still the pounding outside the door.

Pidge tossed some more things for him to shoot, and she knew he was focused on the game so she grabbed the sheath and threw it in the air. Lance vaporized it.

"Was that just…?" Lance asked.

"Yep," Pidge said.

"I might still need it," Lance said, and that was the most worrying thing he'd said yet.

"Not on my watch," Pidge said.

That was when the doors buckled. Lance grabbed Pidge and pulled her behind the containment vessel. They probably wouldn't shoot it.

Some Galran Commander walked in with ten sentries flanking him. He sneered at the partially disassembled bomb.

"I suppose you Paladins will have to be my consolation prize," he said, his eyes zeroing in on Pidge, making her skin crawl. "I did not think one of you would be so small, I simply must learn what it is that makes you one of the Paladins that has been causing so much trouble for the Empire."

Lance screamed, activating his thrusters and rising above the fray. He fired at the commander, only to be blocked by a sentry jumping in the way. He dove down to get closer, his shield forward to batter through the sentries in front of the Galra. None of this was part of his plan though; he couldn't be predicting anything. He fought messily, he'd lost the cool calm he'd had going through the ship, and he was brutal, and he got hurt, and Pidge didn't know what would happen next, but she wasn't going to let Lance die and have to redo it all over again.

Pidge charged out and lassoed two sentries, zapping them and pulling them off balance so they crashed into another. Two of them started shooting at her but she kept her shield up, even as Lance dropped one of them. The other one of them charged at her though and Pidge activated her thrusters to get out of its reach, but it grabbed her by the ankle and slammed her into the ground next to the Commander. She hit the ground with a violent thud and all of the breath was knocked out of her; she could see the sentry looming over her through the stars in her eyes, and then Lance bellowed, and then the sentry was crashing to the ground, and then the commander was reaching for her, a long Galran dagger in his hand, and Lance was yelling inarticulately and then the Galra stopped advancing on her because his head had been vaporized, and Lance was screaming now and he fell to his knees staring at the headless corpse that had fallen to the ground next to her.

"Lance?" she asked him.

He looked over at Pidge a wild look in his eyes and he lunged at her, there was a panicked look on his face. "Where are you hurt?" he asked.

"You're hurt," Pidge said. "I'm fine." Lance was bleeding. He was bleeding all over.

It took a moment for Lance to look down at himself, a moment for him to stop searching her for injuries, a moment to care about his own.

"Oh," Lance said. She wanted to cry, there was so much blood. "Tevis never lets me die," he said, smiling at Pidge, and then she really did start to cry. She started binding his arm, while Lance shoved some coagulant into his side. It would hold for just then. Lance kept looking at his arm as Pidge wrapped it like he was expecting something bad, when the wound in his side was so much worse.

"Lance to Shiro," he said, breathing fast and shallow but sounding blank. "Be advised, the blast doors are… well they aren't doors anymore."

"What's your status?" Shiro asked.

"We're okay," Lance said.

"Pull security while Pidge finishes," Shiro said. "We're almost there. There's hardly any resistance. This was a stealth mission?"

"I might have had to change tactics," Lance said, shooing a very worried Pidge back to the bomb while he posted himself in front of the door and hunkered down behind his shield, his rifle pointed down the hall at the ready.

"How long ago was that?" Shiro asked.

"A few hundred loops ago," Lance said. Pidge was sure that Shiro could hear the strain in his voice.

Shiro sighed.

"Better warn me when you get here," Lance said. Pidge supposed he was going to shoot whatever came around the corridor next.

"Of course," Shiro said.

Keith led Alpha team. He didn't know why he'd asked Shiro to let him take Alpha, but he thought it had something to do with Lance's fondness for them. His HUD told him Lance was just around the corner.

"Keith to Lance," he said. "I'm coming in."

"Roger," Lance said, and Keith couldn't tell how Lance was doing just from the sound of his voice. He rounded the corner and there was Lance, posted behind his shield, his bayard lowered so they could approach. Even with his armor colored black, his blood stood out starkly against it. He rushed forward towards Lance, and Lance looked so tired. Katolliss must have taken over for him, because Alpha went about their business securing the area, while Keith latched onto Lance's shoulders and searched him for injuries. His arm was wrapped up, and there was something horrible on his side that was covered in coagulants. Lance practically collapsed into him.

"I need to take care of that," Keith said. The gaping wound was still weeping blood and it really needed a compression bandage.

"'m fine," Lance said. His breathing was rapid but shallow.

"No you're not!" Pidge hollered.

"You won the bet," Lance said.

"What?" Keith asked.

"We made a bet, the very first time," Lance said, staring him in the eyes with a desperate need Keith couldn't fathom how to answer. "I lost it a long time ago."

Keith wanted to hold onto Lance and never let go. So he did, for a bit.

"I think I met your mom," Lance said.

Katolliss interrupted before Keith could even process that.

"Area's secure," he reported. "Did those sentries give you trouble? They didn't give us any bother at all." It was formulaic for the Antedian, and even Keith could hear the barely concealed awe in his voice.

Lance laughed in a way that didn't sound like Lance, and Keith told Katolliss to double up on security. Nothing was getting to Lance. Keith looked around the room, at the doors blasted inwards, at the fallen sentries and a headless Galra.

"Come sit down over here," Keith said. "I'm going to check you over."

The area secure though, it was the medic who came to check Lance over. Lance allowed Keith to sit him down and Keith was layering another compression bandage around Lance's middle while the medic tried to talk him into taking a pain killer.

"Need to stay alert," Lance said.

"That's what we're here for," Keith said.

"Pidge took a rough fall," Lance said.

That was when Shiro got in with Bravo team and suddenly something overcame him and Lance started crying. Keith held him, and work happened around them as they got the bits of stollen Ocaampan technology ready to go.

"You're a good friend," Lance said quietly, his head in the crook of Keith's shoulder.

"Always," Keith said, even though he wanted more. Even though he'd failed his soulmate so horribly, had let so many terrible things happen to him. Then Keith found out about Lance's 'Way Out,' and his heart broke again. Shiro wasn't happy that there wasn't any proof that the thing had actually been destroyed.

"Did you actually see that it was still in the sheath?" he asked Pidge.

"No, but…"

Shiro brokered no buts, which was fine with Keith, because he wasn't taking any chances, though against Keith's objections Shiro insisted Lance ride back to the castle with him so he could be under Shiro's watchful eye until he could get his armor off and prove he wasn't hiding it anywhere. Keith was the one who should be keeping Lance under a watchful eye. Lance kept insisting he wasn't suicidal, which Keith desperately wanted to believe.

"What if I get captured next mission?" Lance asked quietly, and Keith thought he was the only one to hear, so he was probably the only one who spent the entire ride back to the castle raging over what the Galra had done to his soulmate.

Shiro didn't need to worry about keeping a watchful eye on Lance though; nothing happened. Keith and Alpha escorted Lance and Shiro to the Black Lion along with the Ocaampan tech. The whole while, the Antedians ribbed Lance for having so much trouble from a few lousy sentries. Shiro confiscated Lance's bayard when they got to Black. Once they were off, Keith took both Alpha and Bravo to Red, destroying the two straggling sentries that crossed his path with extreme prejudice. He had to squeeze a handful of Antedians into the cockpit with him in order to fit the entire strike team into Red.

Red growled along to the anger in his mind and he kept Keith focused as he detached from the Galran cruiser and joined the fleet. Debris from the destroyed Galran ships littered the battlefield, the Cruiser that had escaped from the Tartan system just the day prior the only one left mostly intact.

"Anything left on that cruiser?" Keith asked.

"No signs of life," Pidge said. "I don't think we left anything behind, but I didn't have a chance to go through their databanks."

"I'm going to destroy it," Keith said.

"Go ahead," Shiro said.

He took his time. It was a meaningless gesture, but it made him feel better. It had been an exhausting battle for all of them, and an emotional battle for Keith. Watching the ship that had been the center of everything Lance had gone through blow up was cathartic.

They got back to the castle and Keith almost lost it when he got sent out immediately after he dropped off the Strike Team. Several ships in the fleet had taken damage, and without knowing if any other cruisers had been redirected towards them, they weren't taking chances while they got the damaged ships prepped to go through a wormhole. Pidge was being assessed for a concussion, since her helmet had registered a strong blow, so it was just the Black, Yellow, and Red lions patrolling while Sif and Nang'ok repair crews got dispatched to the damaged ships. Of course, the Black, Yellow, and Red lions had all taken significant damage during the fight, but Coran assured them that spending time with them would speed up the 'healing' process.

"How is he?" Keith asked for the third time.

"He's in a healing pod, number four," Coran told him over the comm.

"And?" Keith asked.

"And everything's going as it should," Coran said.

"How long?" Keith asked.

"He should be out tomorrow afternoon if we don't transfer him to an Ocaampan facility sooner," Coran said.

Keith sighed.

"Keith, I want you further out," Shiro told him.

He was supposed to be patrolling on the perimeter of the fleet, but he'd found himself getting closer and closer to the castle (towards Lance). "Correcting course," Keith said.

"I know you're worried about Lance," Shiro said. "But the healing pod will take care of him, and if it doesn't we have some new friends who'll take care of it."

"I'm not worried about the healing pod," Keith said. He'd seen it take care of worse than a hole in someone's gut.

"He's been through a lot," Shiro said.

"They had him," Keith growled. "For months."

"I know," Shiro said.

"Then you know what they did to him," Keith said.

Shiro didn't say anything.

"Sorry," Keith mumbled. "I know you don't really remember."

"I remember enough," Shiro said. "I also don't think… Keith, I was a random alien they picked up, I spent the whole time in their arenas. Lance was captured as a Paladin of Voltron."

Keith didn't need to imagine what could have happened to Lance. He had enough encounters with the Galra in past lives to have a decent idea of how the Empire treated their enemies. Of course, the only thing he needed to know was that Lance had asked for a way to kill himself so he could avoid it happening again. He knew his soulmate well enough to know that he couldn't just go up to him and suggest that he'd done enough, that it was okay to find somewhere safe and let someone else take up the mantle. No matter how bad it had gotten, Lance wouldn't quit.

Keith finally got to head to the infirmary when the fleet was ready to move out; everyone did. He knew he wasn't the only one worried about Lance, but he didn't really feel like being surrounded by everyone else. Pidge was on her laptop on one of the treatment beds while some Altean device attached to her head did it's thing, while a handful of the more critically injured among the fleet had been brought in and were sitting through treatments or in healing pods of their own. Shiro went over to Pidge while Keith and Hunk went over to Lance's healing pod. Lance looked peaceful; he always looked peaceful.

"Are we moving him to an Ocaampan facility?" Keith asked.

"The healing pod will heal him just fine for now," Shiro said. "There's no need to interrupt the healing process and we don't want to be anywhere predictable until all repairs are made to the fleet. Besides, he needs his rest."

Lance would already be healed if the Ocaampans saw him.

Eventually, Shiro got them changed out of their armor and fed and then it was just Keith back in the infirmary waiting with Lance and the other's in the healing pods. The pods emptied one by one as people got better. There was an Antedian woman who came in time for each of her people when they were scheduled to get out, but it was just Keith there waiting for Lance when the two Nang'ok came out and he made himself useful helping them off to the side where there was food for them while they regained their equilibrium.

"I guess you'll have me at a disadvantage now," Keith said when it was finally just the two of them. "You probably remember plenty of things that I've forgotten."

He blamed his fatigue for the fact that he hadn't heard the princess come in.

"He knows he's a Wanderer now; he knows you are too," the princess said. "Have you considered telling him the rest of it?"

"He knows about me?" Keith asked.

"When he woke me up this morning, he didn't just tell me that I'd told him he was a Wanderer. He told me that you had revealed yourself as well, that you remembered your past lives. You could tell him the rest."

"You're too invested in our bond," Keith said.

"I want one pair of soulmates to have a happy ending," the princess said, checking the readout on Lance's healing pod. "You have him, here with you. You'll have him in your next life. You'll always have each other, but each life matters, and shouldn't you have what happiness you can get while you can?"

"And what if this day is always the place he will go when he dies?" Keith asked.

"Then the consequences would be far greater than the troubles of two Wanderers," the princess said. "If that were the case then our timeline would never advance past Lance's own lifespan. Though I suspect the effect would fade given enough iterations, I can't be certain. Fortunately, I am confident Alchemy can correct this when Lance is healed at the very least."

Keith wasn't dumb. He often missed things when he was talking to people, because people often didn't say what they meant, but he knew there was something the princess had been keeping from him. "Were you ever going to tell me that you're a Wanderer too?" he asked.

The princess frowned. "It wasn't a situation I wanted to discuss," she said.

"Even as you meddle in my own?" Keith asked.

"My soulmate died ten thousand phoebes ago on Altea," the princess said severely. "And for all my knowledge of the Wanderers, for everything I know about alchemy, I have no idea what's happened to her since. I don't know if she's been reborn countless times, with memories of a soulmate she would never meet, or if her soul will have moved on without mine, or if she's just been drifting out among the stars, waiting for me to wake up. I don't know, Keith, and I may never know until I've gone on to my next life to find if she'll be there, if she'll still recognize me, or if she's forgotten me under the weight of all the intervening lifetimes we've spent apart."

Keith didn't have any words to make it better. "I'm sorry," he said.

The princess sighed, looking over Lance's peaceful body in the pod. "I cannot blame you for asking," she said.

"You must hate them," Keith said.

"My soulmate?"

"The Galra," Keith said. "I think I hate them more than I've hated anything in my entire existence."

"I suppose I do," the princess said. "Even though I know it's wrong."

"Wrong?" Keith asked. "They tortured him. They had him for months and they tortured him and when he laughed today it was a stranger's laugh, and I don't know how to fix any of this, but I know who to blame."

"You can certainly blame them," the princess said. "You can certainly hate them, but something we discuss often in council meetings is the endpoint. What does the Voltron Alliance consider the endpoint to be?"

Keith had never been convinced that there could ever be an endpoint.

"Is there some demarcation point where we will draw the line? Content to allow the Galra so many star systems, as long as hostilities cease? One single planet for them to call home? This all started when they lost their homeworld. How will we seek justice? Can justice be sacrificed for peace? It hasn't come up yet, but it will eventually; we'll add a people to the Alliance who have bled heavily fighting the Galra, and they will demand the blood of their enemy in payment. They might demand all of it, and I can't allow that, Keith. If I am to carry out the legacy of my people, then I cannot avenge my people, and I cannot allow Voltron to be a part of that. I can't afford to hate them, because I swore a long time ago to uphold my people's values."

"So what?" Keith asked. "You think the Galra are just going to stop being the Galra?"

"They were a different people once before," the princess said. "The Galra had been friends of Altea. I grew up with Galran friends, the Galra went into battle besides us, and until Zarkon betrayed us, I would never have had reason to think that they could ever be our enemies."

"You think they're redeemable?" Keith asked.

"I don't know," the princess said.

"They killed your soulmate," Keith said.

"And she stood for peace," the princess said. "The destruction of an entire people damages everyone involved. The Galra themselves are a prime example. I will not stain Altea's legacy, nor will I lead all of the peoples of this alliance to that fate."

"I wasn't saying we should kill all of them," Keith said.

"So what does peace look like?" the princess asked.

Keith didn't know what it looked like. He'd seen war and destruction in so many of his lifetimes. "There has to be justice," he said.

"I thought you just wanted the Galaxy to be a safe place for your soulmate," the princess said.

Keith cast his gaze over to Lance.

"When are you going to admit you would be in this fight even if you'd never had a soulmate?" the princess asked.

"I would have always fallen in love with Lance," Keith said. "And he would always have fought."

"And yet?"

Keith scowled. "I don't know," he said. "Yes, if I didn't have my memories, and if I'd never met Lance and I'd just found myself out here, yeah, I'd have agreed to fight the Galra, but I do have my memories, and I have Lance, and you know where my priorities lie."

"You're welcome here, whatever brought you," the princess said.

"So what if it was a Galra who came here and said they wanted to fight the empire, you'd be fine with that?" Keith asked.

The princess was silent for a moment. "I don't know what peace looks like yet," she said. "But I don't think I want to know what it looks like if no Galra ever takes the opportunity of the Alliance to step away from the Empire." He didn't miss that she hadn't answered his question. People often didn't say what they meant.

"Right," Keith said. "I guess they've just been waiting for someone to tell them it was okay to do the right thing."

"Do you think we'd know if any of them did? I've learned the histories of many worlds, Keith," the princess said. "I don't know Earth's, but can you tell me there have been no genocides in your history, and did no one stand against it?"

He couldn't. "So is that universal?" he asked. He didn't really need to ask. He had memories spanning countless planets.

"Not universal," she said. "I wish you could have met the Pemalites, but they were perhaps the exception. The Ocaampans were not always pacifists, and I won't tell you there were never dark corners in Altea's history."

"I'm betting you never destroyed a planet," Keith said.

"Not on purpose," she said sadly. "It's getting late. Were you planning on sleeping here?"

He didn't like sleeping in a room he couldn't lock. He didn't like leaving Lance alone. One option was to just not sleep, but Shiro would probably be by to check in on him. He only needed four hours of sleep at the most. He only ever needed four hours of sleep, because he wasn't human, and Lance had met his mother when he'd been a Galran prisoner. He wondered what she'd done to him and he felt sick. He wondered what the princess would have said if she knew what he was, though that wouldn't really matter. People often didn't say what they meant.

He got up from the floor where he'd been leaning against Lance's healing pod and said good night to the princess. When he got to his quarters his eyes immediately fell on the pad that the Ocaampans had given him. Tapping it on, he selected the tab for 'Species.' A moment later he dashed the tablet against the wall.

The next morning found Keith waiting in the medical bay. People came to visit. Shiro, first thing in the morning, then Hunk brought him food, and Coran stopped by periodically to check the healing pod. Pidge joined him and camped out on one of the treatment beds. Everyone wanted to strike up a conversation that Keith didn't want to have. Lance probably would have wanted him to be friendly, but Keith didn't have it in him. Keith started to really watch the clock after lunch.

"Your boyfriend was pretty awesome," Pidge said, during a moment that had previously had Keith wondering what horrible things his mom had done to his soulmate. "Don't tell him I said that. I already complimented him once yesterday and I don't want it to go to his head."

"He's not my boyfriend," Keith said.

"Does he know you like him?" Pidge asked.

"Why does everyone care about this," Keith asked.

"Small ship," Pidge said.

It wasn't really, it was just a small crew.

The Alteans and the rest for the team walked in then. It really was close.

"How's he doing?" Shiro asked.

Keith wasn't sure what answer he was expected to give, but then the healing pod beeped and opened with a hiss of air. Keith was there to steady Lance.

"You're okay," Keith said. "We're all here. It's over."

"It's over," Lance echoed.

"You saved everyone," Hunk said.

"You got me through without a scratch," Pidge lied.

"The feat of a true Paladin," the princess said.

"Good work, Lance," Coran said.

"Oh, just wait," Lance said. "Next time I won't even get hurt."

"There's no next time," Keith said. "It's over."

"Yeah," Lance said. He didn't sound right. Lance had his arm around Keith for support and Keith got him propped up on one of the exam beds.

"Lance," the princess said. "I'm going to examine your quintessence now. I should be able to separate you from the time loop."

"No," Lance said, immediately.

"You won Lance," Pidge said. "You don't need to go back again."

"But what if something goes wrong in a future mission?" Lance asked.

"How many times are you going to relive this war, Lance?" Keith asked.

"As many times as I have to," Lance said.

"That's not an option," Shiro said.

"Well why not?" Lance asked. "If I can make it better, then why not?"

"Because there is a risk that our universe will never age past your lifespan," the princess said. "Lance, there are very few alchemists out there who will be able to do this for you. I cannot allow this to go on any further."

"I don't know what's going to happen next," Lance said.

"None of us do," Shiro said. "You'll get used to it again."

It might have been that simple if one of the Sif delegates hadn't walked in then.

"Ambassador Tuv'ek is asking about a return wormhole for the dead," they said. "Nang'ok funeral rights must be completed within one of their days, and they would prefer to perform them on their home world if possible."

"What?" Lance asked.

"Just one dobosh," the princess told them. "I'm almost done here."

"No one was supposed to die," Lance said when the delegate left.

"It wasn't your fault," Hunk said.

"I can fix it," Lance said. "Tell me what happened, I can go back and warn them, I can fix it."

"And if you can't get it done then?" Shiro asked. "How many more times will you do this."

"Until it's perfect," Lance said. "I can stop them from dying, I can stop everyone from dying."

"No," Keith said. "You'll save them, and then things will be different and someone else will die; it won't stop Lance. It was a battle. It was a large battle. You can't control every aspect of it. Ships took damage, they'll always take damage, and people are going to get hurt."

"Just one more try," Lance said.

"For all I know we've already had this conversation," Shiro said.

"We haven't," Lance said.

"When did you start lying to me?" Shiro asked.

"When I realized that people would die if I didn't," Lance shot back. "You would have sent the Strike Team. Every single one of them died the first time. There were too many variables. They didn't need to die, because I could do it without them."

"It's not happening Lance," Shiro said. "And we're not leaving you by yourself until you can't loop anymore." He didn't have to explain the significance of that to any of them.

Lance shook his head. "I said no one has to die," he said.

"That's not really up to you," Shiro said.

"Dude," Hunk said. "Maybe your body is fine every time you do this, but it's wearing on you all the same. You can't do this forever."

"You think I don't know I was the wrong Paladin for this to happen to?!" Lance asked.

"That's not what I meant," Hunk said.

"Then you don't get it; it took me five hundred times because I failed four hundred and ninety-nine times. I saw you die over three hundred times, because I couldn't get it right, I saw Pidge die well over a hundred because I couldn't get it right, but I did eventually because this has made me stronger, saving you made me stronger, and I can do it again, even if someone else could have done it faster, I can do it again as many times as it takes."

Lance sounded angry, but he was also crying and when Keith put his hand on Lance's shoulder Lance hugged him, surprising him. Then Hunk was hugging the both of them for some reason. Keith didn't know if he could have done what Lance had, and he didn't know how to make him feel better, but there was one important thing they needed to get Lance to accept.

"It's over," Keith said. "It's over."

"You saved us," Hunk said. "You saved so many people."

Lance kept crying, and Keith kept holding him.

"I'm sorry Lance, but it's time," Shiro said.

Lance nodded, and Keith moved over just enough for the Princess to approach.

"I could save them," Lance said, one more time, quietly, looking down at his lap.

"I know," the princess said, causing Lance to look up. "But right now we need to save you, because the Galaxy needs you to be whole." She was looking at the both of them when she said it. Keith barely avoided the urge to roll his eyes.

The princess took Lance's head into her hands and though he flinched he didn't resist her.

"Yes," the princess said after a while. "I will need a circle."

They'd seen enough alchemy in the past to know what to do. Keith took hold of Lance's right hand, and Pidge took hold of his left. Shiro and Hunk closed the circle, the five Paladins surrounding the princess who still held onto Lance. Pidge wasn't even grumbling about alchemy not making sense.

Keith felt something. He wasn't sure if it was his connection to Lance, or if it was the circle, but something in him seemed to flare and then it was over. The princess went to go open a wormhole with Coran supporting her. Whatever she had done it had taken a lot out of her, and of course opening another wormhole wouldn't exactly make her feel any better.

Lance insisted he go to the service. No one argued this point at least. Shiro ran to get him his formalwear. Hunk packed up some food for Lance to eat on the way, since he hadn't even had anything at all since he'd come out, and Keith walked him to Red, because Lance was definitely not going alone.

They'd attended ceremonies before for the dead among the fleet, but this was the first time they'd accompanied the dead back to their home. Keith stayed by Lance's side. He was surprised to see a Kormian delegation until he remembered Kormia had been in the blast radius of the bomb. Keith had, for the most part, considered it a battle to save his soulmate, but of course the Kormians would honor those who had died in a battle that saved their planet.

It was on the ride back to the fleet when Keith finally asked. "Did she hurt you?"

"It felt weird," Lance said. "But it didn't hurt." It was the first thing he'd said since they'd left the Nang'ok homeworld.

"My mom," Keith said.

"Oh," Lance said. "No, she tried to free me. It didn't work, but she did try."

She tried to free him? Why? And how had it even occurred to Lance that Keith's mother could be an alien?

"How could you tell?" Keith asked.

"Same dagger," Lance said. "Also the resemblance is pretty uncanny considering you look completely human."

"But how did you even know?"

"Oh. It came up in one of the loops," Lance said. "I don't know why she left you, but I think it's because she had to fight the Galra."

"She is Galra," Keith said, because he wasn't sure yet that Lance actually knew, and hadn't seen someone else who just happened to share a resemblance.

"Yeah," Lance said. "She's part of their secret resistance. So that's cool."

They had mandatory downtime when they got back to the castle. The whole fleet was still finishing repairs and Lance figured everyone was still worried about him since he'd had to go and throw a fit in front of his team. Everyone was super nice to him, but Lance kept wondering if they were planning to replace him. Lance lost the right to be alone when Keith caught him trying to pocket one of the poisonous polletos from the kitchen. No one understood that it was just a precaution.

Things felt a bit more normal the next day, regardless of how poorly he'd slept. They started out with a debriefing. They wanted to know everything, but they were most interested in what he'd seen at the Galran High Command. He wished there was more he could give them. He wished it was just the team there, but it was the full council as well as the Alpha and Bravo team leaders.

Lance described the route through the facility, but left out being presented before Zarkon naked. He described the druids but left out the pain sticks. He told them about the prison block but left out specifics of what had happened in his cell. He told them about Matt, but he didn't tell them what Haggar had done to finally strengthen the bond. He told them about Keith's mom, but left out the fact that she was Keith's mom.

"You're sure she was trying to free you?" Shiro asked.

"They didn't know I was looping," Lance said. "I made sure of that, and besides, they had already won, I saw that they had Blue at least. If they knew that killing me would send me back so I could do it all over again, they would have tried to stop me from looping or put me in a stasis pod or something."

"Whatever reason they oppose Zarkon, we cannot assume that they fight for anyone's interest but their, own," one of the Sif technocrats said.

"She talked about hope," Lance said. It was the only real advocacy he could give for all that he'd spent so little time with her.

"Was your second capture the same?" an Antedian Admiral asked.

"They'd already deepened my bond to Blue," Lance said. "They didn't need to do it a second time. Everything happened faster, but I… I lost track of time a lot faster the second time. Keith came to free me the second time. He said everyone else was dead, that the Galra had won."

"Did he have his lion?" someone asked.

"I don't think so," Lance said. "It was, um, a very short reunion."

"You mentioned a third prolonged timeline," Princess Allura said.

"Yeah," Lance said. He knew the Kormians were probably bristling at how informally the briefing was being conducted, but he couldn't bring himself to care. "The loop right after that, I was… It was sort of obvious that it had affected me, and I was grounded from the mission. The bomb went off. We lost three lions and four paladins. I lasted about a month in that loop."

Lance had to then explain how poorly the war had progressed with only him for a paladin. Everyone kept interjecting to get information on different people's they'd come across and planets that they'd discovered were important to the Galra. Everyone acted like he'd done great (except the Antedians of course), which was to be expected considering they all thought he was suicidal.

There were questions about his observations of how the sentries had adapted. In the timeline where the rest of Voltron had been killed along with the AI, Lance hadn't observed any indication that the upgraded commands for the sentries had left the cruiser, but no one wanted to be surprised during their next engagement.

It lasted forever and they wanted other people to give their observations of how the AI had enhanced the sentries, so Pidge spoke, and so did Shiro and Keith, and then Katollis spoke and they actually needed Lance to leave at that point, because Katollis couldn't say anything that could be seen as bolstering Lance's ordeal while Lance was there to hear it. Even after that it wasn't done and Lance went back so they could discuss everything but no decisions for future operations were made. Eventually the Paladins got released and Pidge dragged Lance off so they could look through planetary cartography. Lance was pretty sure he wasn't going to be left alone any time soon, which was fine, he didn't want to be alone. He'd had enough of being alone for all of his lifetimes. Also he'd promised Pidge that they'd find Matt. Unfortunately there were a lot of moons orbiting grey gas giants throughout the galaxy, even within their estimate for how close Matt was to the High Command, but it was a start. Lance didn't really have anything to do, but he let Pidge talk him through what she was doing while she worked.

After dinner that night they threw him at a Plynthion psychiatrist, but it became apparent pretty quickly that the two species were not very compatible when it came to psychiatry. It took a couple of days for him to convince everyone that he wasn't suicidal, and then they went back to work. It was Lance's first time back in Blue since the whole thing had begun, and she welcomed him as though he had been gone from her as long as she had been gone from him. The hub that had supplied all of the cruisers for the ambush was hit first, since it was mostly unguarded; they destroyed it completely. They hit a sentry factory and a shipyard that same day. Lance spent that night alone in his quarters, and somewhere in the middle of his sleepless night his quarters turned into his cell, and it wasn't until the wakeup call the next morning that Lance had realized the difference. It took him a while to admit that he wasn't okay.

Ostensibly, Keith knew the princess had to train sometimes. He'd fought besides her when the Galra had taken the castle, he knew she could fight and that hadn't come from nowhere, but it was still strange to wake up and get to the training deck and find her there already, kicking a training droid's ass. He didn't comment on it though, he just joined her wordlessly and attacked at her side. They worked at it for a time, but Keith kept glancing at his watch, knowing that Shiro would be up after a while.

"Lance didn't tell you everything yesterday," he said. "He thinks it was my mother who tried to free him from the High Command."

The princess didn't stop fighting the droid for a moment, and neither did Keith.

"Did you know?" she asked.

"I figured she wasn't human," he'd already told her as much when they'd first met. "I'd suspected, but I didn't know what she was until I looked at the tablet the Ocaampans gave me."

"Perhaps it was fate," the princess said.

"You put too much faith in fate," Keith said.

"By all rights, Lance should have died when he first breeched the containment vessel and began the time loop. I don't think anyone could have predicted what happened to him. Moreover, the odds that a Wanderer would be the one to be exposed when all of the Chronotons were released are infinitesimally small. I have little else to go on but faith."

"And me?" Keith asked.

"I don't see my enemy when I look at you," the princess said.

"Because I'm not purple?"

"Because you are my friend, and you have proven yourself to me," she said.

"I thought the Galra were your friends," Keith said.

"The point was that it could have been anyone. Any species; there wasn't anything separating the Galra before it happened. That's why I must be careful of where this alliance goes, because I will not allow one empire to be replaced by another."

"You'd trust me, knowing I'm Galra?" Keith asked.

"You're Keith," the princess said. "You're a Paladin of Voltron, and even if you weren't, I'd know whose side you were on because you couldn't be anywhere besides at Lance's side."

Keith went back to attacking the droid.

"You aren't the one who hurt him, Keith," the princess said. "And I think I'd like to meet your mother someday."

"That makes one of us," Keith said.

It didn't take everyone long to realize that Lance had stopped sleeping in his quarters. It was just that he knew that Pidge stayed up late and she usually just passed out at her desk, so if Lance went to visit and just happened to pass out somewhere around 0100 in the morning, then that didn't bother anyone. Somewhere along the way she'd put a blanket over him. If he took Blue out in the early hours of the morning to patrol around the fleet, then that was just a benefit to everyone, he could never be alone when he was with Blue. They were so much closer, he could feel her in his mind, he could extend his senses through her, he could feel her love through the bond.

Hunk and Coran probably noticed him tagging along whenever they went to do maintenance on the castle, and they always found something for him to do. Keith, of course, would always show up the moment he ever felt lonely, always having some challenge for him, if he wasn't sitting next to him on a couch in the common area, letting Lance ramble on about anything that didn't have to do with the war. The war was all Shiro ever knew to talk about, he never took a break from fighting it or planning for it, but it felt nice when he'd take Lance aside during morning workouts and talk about his progress on the team while they did pushups, and how much his dedication had gotten him through all five hundred loops, even though Shiro was exaggerating a lot.

They tried round two of therapy with the Ocaampans. Lance hadn't thought they would be compatible at all, but their computers understood fundamentally how his brain worked and using a device that monitored his brainwaves, he could have a remote chat with an Ocaampan who could help him work through things. It helped. It might have been better if they didn't approach every conversation in a completely detached fashion. It was less therapy with them and more of them giving him assignments and then checking his progress.

"You know," Pidge said. "We're the reason their planet even exists. That bomb would have taken them out too."

"Still biter you had to give up your toy?" Lance teased. They had taken their two lions for a quick look at a Galran outpost on a moon surrounding a grey gas giant.

"Do you know what I could have done if I had more time?" Pidge asked.

"Probably taken over the galaxy," Lance said.

"Exactly," Pidge said.

"Just remember me when you're empress of the galaxy," Lance said.

Pidge snorted. "So, you fell in love with my brother."

"What?" Lance squawked. "I didn't fall in love. It was like, you know, purely platonic love."

"And here was me getting ready to play matchmaker," Pidge said.

When they got close enough Lance gave her a moment to do her thing.

"What have we got," Lance asked.

"Definitely not a mining colony," Pidge said. "No traces of Telerium either."

"Any idea what they're doing down there?" Lance asked.

"Looks like weapons testing," Pidge said.

"Lets blow it up," Lance said.

No reason to let the Galra know they were looking for something. Keith and Hunk were running a similar operation at a randomly selected small base.

"Next one will be the one," Lance said.

"It better be," Pidge said.

They turned and headed back for the wormhole.

"Hey, Lance?"

"What's up?"

"Thanks," Pidge said.

"I just sort of lucked into it," Lance said. "It wasn't anything I did to get them to bring Matt in."

"No," Pidge said. "Everything else."

"Oh," Lance said. "You're family," he said, because that meant everything.

"Yeah," Pidge said. "I know."

"You're going to meet my parents some day and I'm going to say, 'this is my tiny baby, she is very smol.'"

"And the moment's over," Pidge said.

A/N: Hey, so, the next story in this series is going to closely follow this story, so I know I left Lance and others with a bunch of issues, but we'll be dealing with some of the fallout in the next story. That being said, if there's something you think should be addressed in the next installment, please let me know.
Alternate title for the next part of the series: Whiskey Tango Foxtrot
As always, please review, it feeds me. (Please send Con/Crit as a PM)
Lastly, as I mentioned in the first chapter, this fic was inspired by another Voltron fic I read a long while ago with a very similar plot, it was never finished I don't think and I haven't been able to find it. If anyone know's what I'm talking about, please let me know because I'd like to link it.