The people they chose.
Something is building inside Lance, something that feels every bit like a star waiting to explode, it comes to a peak with the first message they get from Akira in months.
He comes back on an old Altean pod, with a female Galra and an actual, real-live, from this particular dimension, Altean. Which is a thing, mainly because Lance knows who they are before Akira can even introduce them to the shocked crew.
Krolia stares at him, perhaps seeing the non-humanness Lance is sure he possesses, being a demigod and all. Romelle stares at everything, curious even in her weary state, and she has reason to be both, Lance knows.
He knows the same way he knows this will not go the way it had in the other reality, because Lotor isn't interested in Allura beyond their shared connection to Oriande, instead he's tried every trick in the Galra book to get Lance's attention. There's something to be said about the stubbornness of Galra, and about people not used to things not going their way, he's sure.
The thing is, there's enough time for Akira to do presentations, and Romelle to do explanations, and the paladins to do planning. So that's difference number one, particularly because Akira makes a point to respond to his comment about 'bigger, better, grizzled' with a 'couldn't let you have all the space beauty', which had unspooled something in Lance.
Difference number two is that Shiro is in a pod, unresponsive after what everyone else was calling a PTSD attack; and this time, when Lance brings up the clone thing, they actually listen. Or rather, Krolia talks about an experiment with living organisms that she had only been able to pursue so far, and upon viewing the little information she had on herself, Pidge claimed the thing had 'clone facility written all over', and that had been the end of that.
Difference number three, perhaps the most noticeable, is the matching purple marks and violet eyes on Krolia and Akira, and the fact that the rest of the team is now capable of seeing all of Akira's non-human features that Lance has always been aware of. And, holy fuck, are those purple streaks in his hair? Lance hadn't been prepared for noticeably more Galran Akira, just older Akira, so he's possibly staring, not his fault.
Only, and this is apparently a constant because the feeling is stupidly familiar, Lance has more or less developed a fixation on Akira. Or, ok, he can admit it to himself: he's head over heels, and so utterly fucked.
Because, wonder of wonders, even if Lance didn't have the accursed ability to see into the multiverse, he still would've been unaffected by Lotor's attempts at courting him. Not by virtue of his humanity, Lance found the whole Galran courtship rather romantic, but by virtue of being interested in someone else.
On this someone right here.
But that can wait until the Lotor situation is dealt with, or forever, whichever works better for keeping his current relationship with Akira safe. Lance can't lose him, not now, not after everything.
It feels a little like being back at Westover Hall, what with wearing military uniforms, and having a bunch of adults try and fail to hide things from him. But Leo steamrolls through every single egotistical military person in the building like he was born for it; and Nico follows dutifully.
There are only two reasons they're here, at Garrison headquarters, the first and most pressing, is that after the first Galran attack, the mist stopped working, and demigods of all pantheons were suddenly fighting something other than monsters. The second is a little more self-indulgent, Admiral Wallach, who had been granted the rank after many successful battles against their invaders, had called Leo over to discuss the newest arrival to earth, one Samuel Holt.
YOU ARE READING
Collecting the shards
Fanfiction"Names have power" The words have become a prayer in their nature, if only for how Akira has used them since learning them. He receives a smile for his efforts, which is more than he probably deserves. {or, how the butterfly effect feeds into the...
