Prompts: Revenge/Loss of Identity/"I see what's mine and I take it."
Lance would know that ship anywhere. How could he forget? It was there the day Keith died. Was stolen from him.
"He's mine. I'm going." It was not up for debate. He broke Red from formation, darting after the small fighter. He wasn't fast enough last time. But this time he wouldn't let him get away. Not again.
"Lance! Think about what you're doing," Shiro warned.
"Oh, believe me, I have." It kept him up at night, alone in their bed, thinking long and hard about how exactly he would have his revenge. At first his anger burned hot enough he wanted swift reparations. But it had been years. That anger had simmered into something slow and cruel.
"This isn't who you are!" Hunk called after him.
Lance had to laugh. It felt bitter in his mouth. "Sure. Maybe that was true at one point. But then I lost my home. I lost my family. I lost my partner. That changes a person, Hunk."
"We've lost people too, you know!" Pidge shouted.
Allura, who truly had lost everything, chose not to weigh in. But her silence was a statement in itself.
"I think if the Lance I knew back at the garrison could see you now, he'd be really disappointed," Hunk tried again, more calmly this time. As if it would make a difference.
"Yeah, well, life is full of disappointments. That Lance... he couldn't hack it and, well, he's gone now. I'm what's left."
"You don't mean that," the hurt clear in his tone.
"We all have to grow up sometime," Lance said as gently as he could. He was far from them now. So far away they had disappeared from visuals, even in the atmosphere-less vacuum of space.
"Lance if you kill that man in cold blood you will never see the inside of the castle again," Allura's voice was calm and even, full of warmth for him, even then.
"Wouldn't be the first time I lost my home." They couldn't all be saints, not like her. She was able to keep who she was whereas Lance had to shed and chip away pieces of himself until everything was bearable.
"I'll have Lion back when you're done, then."
"Yeah," he agreed. There was no place for someone as broken as he was on Team Voltron. He'd known that for years. It was Coran's time to shine anyway.
"And Lance?"
"Princess?" He had closed incredible distance on the one-man fighter.
"Know that we love you."
"I know."
He cut the comms and made his move.
