Candlelight

3

After the battle, the first thing you had to do was to find Keith to slap him in the face. Of course you hugged him right after he apologized, but hopefully, he had learned his lesson about recklessly sacrificing himself now. You hadn't spent much time with the ex-red paladin, but with the few conversations that you had shared, he had quickly become another person in this universe that you knew you could cherish as a good friend. He felt the same and very indirectly showed it to you on occasion. It took some time to understand but after confiding in Lance about his behavior it confirmed a friendship budding between you.

Another thing you were supposed to do after the battle was straightening out your emotions to Matt, almost losing him on the battlefield had finally given you the push to do so. After a long talk with a friend, you'd finally made up your mind that life was too short in the middle of an intergalactic war and that it was okay for you to be selfish from time to time. This was one of those times, your friend told you.

And you agreed, so you set off on a search for Matt after leaving the ex-blue, now red paladin with another tight hug.

However, both you and Matt had proven to be busier than ever after the battle for Naxzela. Since the captain of the rebels had their hands tied going around planets and rallying new fighters (they'd lost quite the number to in the previous battle), Matt had been promoted to a higher rank in the rebels: he became the official link between the rebels and the coalition. The fact that he was related to one of the paladins was released to the public and helped strengthen the promise that they would be acting side by side against Zarkon's empire from now on. For publicity, he was spending more time with Allura than ever before and it ate away at you. But on your end, you were so busy that you barely had time to think about.

The sea of information that you had gained from hacking the satellite was a mess to comb through. In the midst of the battle, there was no time to actually separate useful and useless information from each other and much less time to decrypt everything that was coming through. Not only that: since the battle, Coran had also been needing assistance in handling certain of his chores for the coalition that every day had exponentially grown in sponsors, partners and more. About two earth weeks had passed since the last time you'd actually spoken to each other. And if it wasn't for you being exhausted all the time, you would've noticed how his smile was forced when greeting you.

----

"It's over Pidge, she said she had someone else in mind already," he said, head sinking into his sister's desk.

"What?!" The younger brunette shouted, eyes lifting from her screen. "Really? Did she say who?"

"No, as she was about to answer Keith got control of the canon and—"

"And?"

His thoughts drifted: the night after Naxzela he saw you and Lance talking to each other at the docks and you had seemed depressed. You left him with higher spirits but before leaving him you hugged him tightly, sending needles into his heart as he saw him hug you back with a soft expression on his face. It was clearly affection: of what kind he didn't know but his tired mind had concluded that it was romantic. After those dark thoughts of envy and jealousy made him spiral into an episode of self-hatred and eventually, led to him avoiding you. With this new schedule, it was an awfully easy thing to do too. The new workload was a good distraction for him until he saw you again, your face beam up in the hallways at the chance of seeing him after a few days. It was clear that you were borderline overworking yourself and every time he saw how much you were in need of a break he wished nothing more than to simply return to that sad, lost radio outpost where you'd both met, where no one could bother you there.