All alone and in the dark of the Blue Lion's hangar, Lance let loose. Tears flowed down his cheeks as his thoughts overwhelmed him. It should have been me. Hunk doesn't deserve this! Why couldn't it have been me?! He curled up into a ball right next to Blue's particle barrier, his arms wrapped around his knees. Hunk made a mistake by being my friend.

Lance remembered his first time meeting Hunk at the Garrison and how Hunk was the one who came up to him and began a conversation instead of the other way around, despite his initially shy nature.

He had seen how hesitant Lance was, seeing as he had just emigrated from Cuba and only spoke a few words in English. Hunk had been so friendly and kind and encouraging to Lance as his first friend at the Garrison, teaching him English and also listening as Lance tought him Spanish in return.

And what had he done to pay Hunk back for his kindness?

Allowed him to fall into the hands of the enemy.

He's worth way more than me! Why wasn't it me?!

That continued for hours until gradually, an idea started to take shape in his head. His crying slowly dried up as he looked toward the ceiling.

I'll go find him. Lance jumped to his feet. I'll find him and bring him back here, and if I die while doing it, it won't matter. I don't matter, so it wouldn't make a difference.

With a new-found determination, he knocked his hand against the blue particle barrier, and Blue bent her head down for him to climb into, powered by a source separate from the castle's, something more unexplainable.

As he was about to retract the walkway that led into the Blue Lion, a voice shouted to him, "Lance!"

Since the light from Blue's force field was illuminating the area around her, he was able to make out Pidge's face as she yelled at him, "What are you doing?"

He shrugged, trying to hide his anxiousness to get moving. "Oh, I'm just planning to take Blue out for a spin," he lied. "You know, extra training."

Pidge's eyes narrowed, clearly suspicious. "Don't lie to me," she said. "I know you were going to sneak out and find Hunk."

Lance sighed, knowing he had been found out.

"But that's exactly what I was planning to do too."

"Wh - what?" Lance stuttered, suprised. He had been waiting for her to reprimand him, but her admitting that she thought the exact same as he did took him aback.

"Honestly, I'm pretty frustrated with our situation right now." She waved her hand around in a sweeping gesture. "The castle's crystal is depleted of energy and because of that, we can't track the Galra ship's coordinates or move anywhere. The Voltron lions are the only things that are working, and everyone else can't get into theirs because without power, they can't open the doors to their hangars. So in the end, I figured, what do we have to lose?"

Lance blinked. After he had recovered from his suprise, he asked, "Well, which lion should we take, yours or mine?"

"Mine," Pidge said immediately. "The doors to an exit large enough for your Lion to go through are closed, while mine aren't. Also, it has an invisibility feature. Oh, right, and mine can actually track the coordinates."

After Lance agreed to leave in her lion instead of his, Pidge led him to the Green Lion's hangar. She sat in the pilot's seat while she plugged her coordinates into the lion's system. "Hey, Lance, I forgot to ask you this, but. . . . are you doing any better now?" She looked over at him, trying not to reveal that she could see the dried tear-tracks on his cheeks. "You kind of blew up back there. So, just tell me if anything's wrong, okay?"

Lance nodded, even though he secretly knew that he would never tell her anything about his true feelings. Why would he? They weren't important enough to warrant her notice, let alone her complete attention.

. . . .

It took them three days of straight travel, even with the Green Lion's boosters on, to find the Galra ship.

It was out in the middle of space, situated in between two planets that hid them from any normal vessel's scans of the area. Unfortunately for them, however, the Green Lion was no ordinary vessel. The Galra had planned ahead, but not far enough.

Pidge angled Green to fly under the belly of the main ship, landing on its surface. After the paladins exited the mechanical cat, Pidge used her bayard to cut a small circle into the metal and they slipped inside of it.

They came out into a dark grey hallway that was lined with purple lights. It was dimly-lit and completely made of metal, like the castleship, but it - of course - didn't have the same sort of warm, inviting air.

"Hey, look over here," Lance whispered. He was pointing to a groove in the wall where they could hide. He and Pidge squeezed into it, hiding there to bide their time. "Gloomy, huh," he joked quietly so his voice wouldn't echo through the space around them and alert the Galra troops to their presence.

Pidge nodded but put a finger to her lips to silence him completely. She didn't want the slightest chance of one of them talking too loudly, so she figured it was best if they didn't talk at all.

Lance started forward, paying attention to the sentries' patrol patterns. He tapped his finger three times on the wall behind him, counting how long it took for a sentry to pass their little alcove before it was replaced by another. He was really greatful that, number one, the Galra hadn't rewritten the sentries' code, and number two, that Shiro had taught him that little trick in the first place, because it was finally coming in handy.

As soon as they spotted an opening, they rushed across to the other side of the hallway, waiting until they spotted another.

They continued this process until they found a large metal door with a caption in Galran characters that Pidge bent down to read. She squinted a little, as if that would help her read the foreign language.

"I think it says 'control station'. Well, either that or 'contamination station', but I don't think that's it," She whispered, frowning. "Wait, this is the Galra we're talking about, so I wouldn't put it past them, but. . . . let's take the chance. But first" - She stood up - "let's take a robot down so we can get in."

"I didn't know that you could read Galran," Lance murmured, completely off-topic.

Pidge shrugged. "I figured it would come in handy, so I used a translator to learn. Anyway, Lance, do your thing."

"Of course." His bayard turned into a blue gun, and he immediately shot a nearby sentry in the chest with a lazer from it.

The sentry short-circuited and fell onto its knees, deactivated. Pidge grinned and dragged it in front of the door before ripping an arm off of it. She pressed the hand onto the palm-recognition pad on the outside of the door and it opened, startling its fellows who were manning the holographic panel. They barely had time to raise a metal hand to either of them before they were shot by Lance.

Pidge ran up to the holographic panel, kicking a sentry's body out of the way to get to it, ready to begin the search for the cell where Hunk was being held. "They should have a catalog of every prisoner in this ship," she said. "All we need to do is find the right one."

Information already was spread out over the three screens, all in red, and the sign of the Galran empire took up a majority of the center one.

"Okay," She said, taking a deep breath. She laid her hand on the panel, ready to begin decoding the password to the prisoners' database, but she was rejected. "Huh?" She took her hand off of it, confused. "Why can't I use it - ?" Her gaze fell to the floor as she realized what was missing. "We need either Keith or Shiro's arm for this to work," she breathed, her eyes wide as she realized her mistake.

"Why?"

"Regular humans or aliens can't use their technology," Pidge reminded Lance. "That was their way to try and make it harder to bypass. Shiro's prosthetic was made by the Galra, so he can use it to interact with their system, and Keith has Galra blood flowing through his veins, so he can do the same thing. But we don't have either of them here right now, and we can't get into contact with them because the castle's out of power. . . . without them, this plan won't work."

She groaned. "I can't believe I forgot that part! I let my emotions overpower my logical side and look what happened!" She was so worked up that her voice rose to a yell. "Why did I have the idea to come here in the first place?! This has been nothing but trouble!"

"So. . . . you want to go back," Lance said. He stood there, hands clenched into fists by his side. "You'd leave Hunk here just because of some stupid mistake."

"N - no I wouldn't," Pidge replied defensively. "I - I'm just not used to making stupid mistakes, that's all."

Lance smiled bitterly. "Well then, listen to someone who is used to making stupid mistakes, as the rest of the team is fond of pointing out. Just learn from them and move on, okay?"

Why are you giving her advice that you can't seem to follow yourself?

Lance swallowed, ignoring this thought and continued with, "It's not that hard. So, we can just wander around until we find him."

Pidge gaped at him. "Lance, that's honestly the dumbest idea I've ever heard! Do you know how long that could take?! Just imagine how many prisoners could be kept here! Besides, we'd be testing the fate of eventual capture even more than we already have!"

I don't care anymore. "I'll do what I have to do for a friend," Lance said, determined. "Go ahead, fly back to the castleship in your Green Lion. When I find Hunk, we'll discover another way out."

"God, Lance, why are you so hard-headed?" After a minute, Pidge sighed. "Okay, fine. I'll go with you, but if we get captured, it's your fault."

"Got it. I'll take responsibility." He turned away from her, exiting the control station, and quietly whispered under his breath: "This is nothing new - everything's already my fault anyways."

. . . .

Pidge and Lance wandered almost aimlessly around the ship's dark hallways for what seemed to be hours on end, trying to avoid patrols. Since all of the passageways looked the same, they lost track of what direction they were going. It was a puzzle that they couldn't seem to figure out.

Lance was still in the lead, using Shiro's trick to time the sentries so they could cross in their path safely. As time wore on, however, he was getting more sloppy, unfocused and agitated.

One, two, three - He counted in his head, hidden behind a wall. He couldn't peek out from behind it because then they would see him. Wait, was I supposed to count one more? He paused. Ah, screw it.

He ran out in front of a sentry on accident, and it raised its gun, ready to fire, but Lance was quicker. He shot it in the head with his bayard, but another sentry rounded the corner, noticing him.

"Alert, alert," it said robotically. "Intruders, alert. All personell to coordinates (2, 6) immediately - " It never finished its sentence as it crumpled over, a victim of Lance's bullet.

Pidge sliced another sentry in half, silently fuming at Lance. She had a whole rant on her head that was just itching to be spoken, but she held back, since a battle was not the right time for it.

Together, the paladins took down one after another of the robot soldiers, but they noticed that their numbers were only seeming to grow. For every two that they cut down, more seemed to arrive out of nowhere. There seemed to be no end to them.

Lance noticed how his gun grew heavy in his hands, and how exhausted he was getting. He had been weilding his bayard and functioning at his best for too long, and that - coupled with not enough sleep and a mountain of stress - was not helping. He was getting slower, and his shots were starting to miss their targets.

After a while of back and forth fighting, he and Pidge were completely surrounded, backed up against the wall as they were closed in upon. They hid behind their shields, firing and slashing when they could, but they had nowhere to go.

Then one of the sentries managed to find a weakness in Lance's defenses and landed a hit on his right arm. He dropped his bayard, swearing profusely as he held a hand to his wound on instinct. He let go of his arm and grabbed his gun off of the ground, switching it to his left hand, but he couldn't seem to make a dent in their ranks whatsoever.

"Lance! Grab on!"

He looked over to see Pidge using her bayard as a grappling hook. He grabbed her outstretched hand with his injured arm - because he couldn't afford to drop his bayard - as she swung by him over the heads of the ocean of sentries.

Even though it was a brilliant idea in theory, Pidge couldn't hold all of Lance's weight on one arm and Lance couldn't hold on to her hand because his arm wasn't working properly, so as she was trying to hurl the hook over to the next section of ceiling, it slipped, sending them smashing into a few of the robot soldiers. Before they could even get up, they were immediately surrounded again, and this time, there was no escape.

The last thing Pidge was able to think before she was knocked out was, "Good job for getting us stuck in this predicament, Lance", and then everything went black for both of them.

(A/N): Is this not enough langst or general suffering for you? Well, you're lucky, cause there's more coming your way. *whispers* I'm not sorry (that should honestly become one of my catchphrases)

Anyway, I hope that you're enjoying this. Until next update :)