Work Text:
Pidge wasn’t surprised when she entered the lounge room, only to find all six of the others already there. After a whole day of training, all she had wanted to do was collapse into bed, but Coran insisted that they watch some show together. No one had wanted to, but he’d gone into a lecture of the importance of leisurely bonding time and how insightful the Altean documentary-whatevers were until Shiro finally cracked.
One hour-long shower later, and Pidge still felt like death. But at least the sweat was washed off and she was back in her casual clothes.
“Ah, Number Five is here! We can begin!” Coran said. He pushed a button on a circular device, and a holoscreen popped up.
“Joy," Lance grumbled. He was flopped over the back of the couch as if he’d just let himself fall from the upper floor onto the sunken couch, legs still in the air and head in Hunk’s lap.
Pidge plopped herself in the empty spot on Hunk’s other side. Her aching muscles sighed in delight. Altean cushions felt like clouds, better than even the most expensive memory foam. Mom would’ve killed for the secret behind their design.
She shoved that thought away.
“I like documentaries,” Hunk said. “It’ll be interesting to see an alien one.”
Allura coughed. “Yes. Interesting is an... apt description of Altean video memoirs.”
Ignoring the clear sarcasm in her voice, Coran continued excitedly, “I think we should begin with Gregory the Infirm! His early days are truly fascinating, what with how he secured an alliance with Noc Riaa at the tender age of 76 decapheobs. And that will give you a good background for...”
Coran went on about more alien historical events, but Pidge was more interested in how Allura’s princess-y demeanor cracked the longer he talked. Her lip curled in distaste. She sank further into the couch as if trying to escape a boring lecture from a teacher. Pidge held back a snort.
“Oh my god!” Lance’s exclamation made everyone jump. “You have a Tether?”
Pidge tensed. She glanced at him to double check, and yes, he was definitely staring directly at her shoulder. Shifting her gaze to herself, she saw that with all her slumping, her shirt had bunched up enough to reveal the bottom lines of her Tether.
She jumped off the couch, instinctively putting distance between his face and her unprotected skin. Her hand belatedly came up to cover it. “I. Um, yeah, I do.”
No sense in lying about it after Lance had practically announced it to the world. And there wasn’t a need to lie about it either, she reminded herself. Tethers at her age were uncommon, but still normal. It wasn’t something she needed to hide.
The Green Lion pawed at Pidge’s attention. Her anxiety trickled away. It was fine. She’d gotten so used to hiding everything about her identity that it was only natural for her to be cautious. But she was safe now. People could know things about her.
Hunk’s eyebrows shot up. “Really? Can we see?” He stood up, causing Lance to flail to catch his balance and almost kick Keith in the face.
“It’s okay to say no, Pidge.” Shiro said. He remained sitting in his spot between Keith and the Princess, but she could see the curiosity in his eyes.
She was thankful for the option to opt out, but— “No.” Pidge forced her muscles to relax. “It’s fine. I trust you guys.”
A voice in her head sneered at her for still keeping her gender guarded. Pidge ignored it. One secret at a time. Taking a small breath to steel herself, she pushed up her sleeve.
Hunk and Lance leaned in to look. Even Keith stood up to take a peak. As they admired her soulmark, she couldn’t help the pride from swirling in her chest.
“What is a... ‘ Tether ?’” She heard Allura ask. The way her mouth slowly and carefully formed the word revealed that it didn’t translate.
“Do Alteans not have Tethers?!” Hunk rounded on the Alteans, aghast. At Coran and Allura’s confused looks, he gasped. “Wow. That’s just. Wow. I mean—it’s not bad! I just never thought of aliens not having Tethers, you know?”
Shiro took mercy on them. “A Tether is a mark that signifies who your soulmate is. It’s a physical manifestation of the connection two people share. People get a Tether when they share a special moment with their soulmate.”
His explanation led to a follow-up question of what a soulmate was, and a follow-up to the follow-up of what a soul was. Shiro patiently answered each one, with minimal interjections from Pidge and the other three.
“Oh, that sounds similar to our concept of starborns!” Allura said, face bright now that the concept finally clicked. “When two Alteans are born of the same star, it is said that their fates will be forever entwined.”
Coran nodded, his video long forgotten. “Of course, it’s only a myth. Alchemists debunked the idea when they discovered that we are made of quintessence, not stars.”
“So, who is your ‘soulmate,’ Pidge?” Allura asked.
“Well, it might sound weird, but,” Pidge paused, trying not to make eye contact with the other humans in the room. “My soulmate is the Green Lion.”
The entire room stared at her. She couldn’t tell if it was an ‘are you crazy?’ stare or if they were just processing it. It had to be weird to hear from the outside. A human having a sentient robot lion as their Tethered? Anyone would have to be crazy to believe that. But that had never really occurred to her before. The bond between them felt natural. The thought of her soulmate being anyone else just sounded wrong.
“Your soulmate is your lion?” Keith repeated.
She nodded.
Another second passed, before their brains caught up. And then—
“Wait, mine too!” Hunk pulled up his left shorts leg, revealing a bright yellow marking on his thigh.
Lance pulled up his right pants leg. Again, another marking was revealed, this time in blue. “Yeah, same here!”
Pidge’s eyes widened. She looked over to Shiro and Keith.
Keith sighed and pulled off his right glove. He showed the red Tether on the back of his hand.
“Mine is on my back, but yes, Black and I are Tethered.” Shiro said.
“Okay,” Pidge said. She pushed up her glasses as she pushed back the burn in her eyes. She wasn’t as alone as her younger self thought. It wasn’t just her with an unorthodox Tether. “This can’t be a coincidence.”
“May I see the Tether, Number Four?” Coran asked. He reached for Keith’s hand.
Keith jerked back, gloved hand clutching his other hand as if it’d been burned.
Shiro grabbed Coran’s wrist before he could get any closer. “It’s taboo to touch someone’s Tether.”
Coran’s eyes widened. “Oh, quiznak. I’m very sorry, my boy.”
“It’s okay. You just startled me.” Keith said, although Pidge noticed that he still didn’t let go of his hand.
“You can look at mine,” Lance offered. He swept his leg up over both Keith and Shiro’s laps.
This time, Coran made sure to keep his hands away.
“Hm. That’s intriguing.”
“What is?” Lance asked, inspecting his mark to see if there was something wrong. Allura leaned over Shiro to get a peak at it.
Coran scratched his mustache. “Number Five, may I?”
Pidge raised an eyebrow, but shrugged and offered her arm to him. Her curiosity was spiked, now. She could feel Green reacting to it, imaginary tail twitching in anticipation.
Hands firmly clasped behind his back, Coran got his face within inches of her shoulder. His eyes followed the green arrow and lines that made up her Tether. After a couple seconds, he moved on to Hunk’s.
“Princess, do you see—?”
“Yes, Coran.” Allura still stared at Lance’s ankle, an almost awed look on her face. “I think you’re right.”
“About what?” Keith asked.
“Shiro,” she said, “the Tether on your back. Does it look like a star with three lines to the right of it?”
“It… yes. It does. How did you..?”
“Your Tethers are in the shape of the paladin symbols.”
Coran nodded. “There’s the guardian spirit of the land.” He pointed to Hunk, then Lance, “the water,” then her, “the forest,” Keith, “the fire,” and finally Shiro, “the cosmos.”
Pidge looked at her Tether in a new light. She could see how the marking could look like an alien’s minimalistic rendition of a plant. “Huh.”
“I always thought mine looked like a shovel or something,” Hunk said, “but guardian spirit of the land is way cooler.”
Ignoring Coran’s indignant ‘Shovel?’ Pidge asked, “How long have you had your Tether?”
“I got it at 14. During my first time back home after getting into the Garrison.”
“You received the Tether before meeting your lion?” Allura asked. “I thought one must establish a connection with their soulmate before the Tether appears.”
“Yeah, you have to meet the person first,” Pidge answered. “But I got mine before, too, when I was 13. It’s nice to know I’m not the only one.” She smiled at Hunk.
Pidge remembered the exact moment her Tether appeared. It was during a science class, and they were covering the biology section. She’d never been one for nature. There were too many bugs and allergens out there for her to appreciate it much. But learning about RNA and DNA and asexual reproduction, she could see that plants were just another form of coding, like some super-complex binary.
Her family hadn’t known what to do. Her parents contacted the doctors and scientists they knew, but none had ever heard of such a thing happening. Matt tried to be understanding. He offered as much support as he could, but he hadn’t even gotten his own Tether yet, much less knew what it was like to be without his Tethered. Then Matt and Dad had gotten chosen for the Kerberos program, and the problem got pushed to the wayside.
“I thought I was the only one, too,” Hunk said. He rubbed his thigh. “My parents didn’t understand how it happened, and neither did the doctors. But then I roomed with Lance—“
Lance leaned against him. “I got my Tether at six. So, definitely before I met Blue. Hunk and I bonded over our Tether mystery.” He bumped his fist against Pidge’s unmarked shoulder. “You should’ve told us. You could have joined the Super Sleuth Soulmate Search Squad.”
Pidge shoved his hand away. “With a name like that, I’m glad I didn’t.”
Despite her words, she felt light. On earth, she’d been met with confusion and disbelief whenever she told a person she didn’t know who her Tethered was. They had thought she was lying. That she had Untethered herself, rejecting her soulmate entirely. Knowing that other people had gone through the same plight made her feel closer to these people than any friend she’d made before.
“I got mine when I jumped out a window trying to fly,” Shiro offered.
Hunk and Lance burst into laughter. Pidge joined them. Keith shook his head slowly, smirking, as if he already knew the story.
“Why?” Lance got out between laughs.
“I was eight.” Shiro snorted. He rubbed the back of his neck. “And… I don’t know. I felt called. Like the stars would pull me up to the sky.”
That struck a cord inside Pidge. The calling. An inexplicable feeling of rightness when receiving her Tether, even when her Tethered was nowhere to be found. Sitting in her eighth grade science class, talking about plant DNA yet sensing a deeper meaning. Nature was just a form of coding, like the coding she did on her laptop. Everything was connected through coding. That’s just what nature was—connection.
Pidge’s eyes widened as she connected the dots. Green gave the image of finally pouncing on a prey. “Maybe we all got our Tethers when we connected with our lion’s sphere of influence?”
Her head spun. The three-year long mystery finally unravelled. She turned to Shiro. “Like, you got yours when you tried to fly. And me, I got mine when I was learning about plants.”
Understanding filled Shiro’s face. He glanced at Keith and back. “That. Makes sense, actually.”
“But that’s not how Tethers work.” Keith frowned.
“How else would you explain getting your Tether?” Pidge pointedly asked.
He had his Tether covered back up by then, both arms crossed. He hadn’t shared how he’d received it, but from the way his shoulders tensed, she knew his story had to be the same as the rest of theirs.
“I think Pidge is right,” Lance said, shooting Keith a glare. “I was learning to surf when I got mine. Hunk got his when he made it back to his homeland. It all lines up.”
“Yeah,” Hunk jumped in. “And Allura’s whole spiel about ‘ oh, only one person is destined to fly each lion ’ sounds like soulmates to me. Maybe weird elemental spirit magic just gave us the Tethers a little early.” He pitched his voice higher and threw on an accent to mimic the Princess.
“It is called quintessence , not ‘weird elemental spirit magic,’” Allura corrected. “And I believe I said that the paladin’s quintessence mirrors their lion’s.”
“So do you think it would be possible for quintessence to allow the lions to bond with us before physically meeting us?” Shiro asked.
Allura shared a look with Coran.
The advisor hummed. “The paladin-lion bond is not a subject that’s been studied to much depth, and seeing as the Paladins of Old are no longer with us…” he paused. Pidge averted her eyes to give him a moment. “Well, stranger things have happened before when quintessence has been involved.”
That was one less mystery to worry about in Pidge’s life. The Green Lion purred, a soft possessiveness behind it.
“That might also explain how you were able to accomplish the flight drill so easily,” Allura added. “It took the old paladins decaphoebs to do, yet Shiro and the Black Lion achieved it on the first try. Maybe this unique connection that humans can form magnifies the regular bond between paladin and lion?”
Lance snickered. “Two days in and we’re already better than the older model?”
“Perhaps not better .” Allura sent a glare at Lance, and the smug smile fell off his face. Pidge had to remember that despite looking looking like a twenty-something girl, Allura had been alive 10,000 years ago. She’d been living in the Castle of Lions. She’d probably been friends with the old paladins, and Lance had just casually insulted them. “But it will give us an advantage in battle that Zarkon won’t expect.”
“Maybe we should start focusing on more mental training,” Hunk suggested. “You know, to strengthen this unique bond.” He twiddled his thumbs in his lap.
“Yeah, exactly,” Pidge agreed. Or, at least, her body did. She’d gotten her ass handed to her over thirty times in one day, and she wasn’t fond of physical activity in the first place. ”The Paladin bond is what makes Voltron stronger.”
Shiro raised an eyebrow. He saw right through their innocent facades. “You won’t always be in the safety of your lion. You all need to learn how to fight if you’re wanting to survive.”
“Shiro is right,” Allura said. “Although Voltron is our main defense, we are fighting a war. It is the seven of us—“
“12 of us. Lions are people, too.”
“Yes, thank you, Lance. The twel—“
“Technically 16 if you count the mice.”
Allura’s eye twitched. She sighed. “ Thank you , Hunk. It is the 16 of us against a 10,000 decaphoeb old empire that spans across countless galaxies. If we are to win this, we must all be in top form, mentally, spiritually, and physically.”
The reminder of what lie ahead for them was bleak. The fate of the universe rested on the shoulders of two aliens lost in time, a prisoner of war, a drop out, two cadets, and a girl just trying to find her family. She didn’t know how they were going to survive this.
“We can begin our revolution with a history lesson!” Coran said. “Starting with how Queen Fala ended the War of Nine and forged the Galactic Union.”
Pidge held in her groan. At least a history documentary was better than talking about an upcoming war. She settled back into the couch, this time squeezing between Lance and Keith. Hunk slung his arm over the back of the couch. Pidge found that it was almost as comfy as the Altean cushions to rest her head against.
As everyone settled in, Coran started the movie. The holoscreen flickered from a transparent blue to solid black with the press of a button. Text scrolled onto the screen, presumably in Altean, as soothing music filled the air.
The text went on for ten minutes with the same soft, piano-like instrument humming in the background. The paladins only lasted for seven minutes. Even Princess Allura was out by minute nine, head slumped against the Black Paladin’s shoulder.
The next morning, they all woke up to blankets on their laps and sleeping mice in their hair.