Langst One-Shots

Langst Nine - Ghosts

Requested by Luna8325

"Lance, don't you dare!" Keith cried, watching as his teammate ran into the galra ship.

"Keith, what happened?" Shiro asked.

"He... That idiot hero went to blow up the engines so the planet won't have to be evacuated." Keith slumped down in his lion. "He's not coming back. He knows it, too!" Keith thought of the sad grin that Lance had flashed him before running into the warship.

"There's still time. If we're fast, we can rescue him just before-" Hunk gasped and stopped talking as the ship exploded.

Taking Lance with it.

°•°

"The blue paladin... The hero of Veruda!" A short furry creature yelled as he pulled down a tarp. Under the tarp was a statue of Lance, in full likeness. His paladin helmet was under his arm, so his hair was sculpted to look as if it was being tousled by the wind. He stared off towards the planet's sea, his favorite place on Earth.

He looked happy, but sad. Like he was experiencing the most bittersweet moment in history from afar. On a plaque near his scaled up feet, his name was engraved.

Lance McClain.
The Second Blue Paladin of Voltron
7/28/01 - 7/28/17

As Keith inspected the plaque, he noticed that Lance had died on his birthday. He didn't tell anyone. Nobody had known... He was exactly sixteen when he died. It wasn't fair! Only sixteen...

The best thing he could say was that Zarkon and Lotor were defeated. There was only a small bit of resistance left, only a small amount of galra soldiers who hadn't surrendered peacefully. The ship that Lance had destroyed was the biggest threat to Voltron and the known universe, so Lance had been to one to make the final blow towards the Galra empire.

Perhaps that was the bittersweet moment that Lance's statue seemed to be witnessing: his own death. Save the universe at the cost of your own life.

Lance had made the ultimate sacrifice, and on the most important day to him. On a day that should have been celebrating his birth, he instead initiated his own death.

Keith sighed and looked up at the starry night sky. He could see large chunks of debris still in orbit around the planet, charred and burned and bent until it was scrap metal. He wished Lance could see it, though. Lance had loved the stars. Lance had loved space.

Nobody knew much about what Lance loved other than that. He was widely regarded as the least valuable paladin. He was widely regarded as the most useless paladin. The weakest.

But to Keith, he was the MVP (Most Valuable Paladin) of Team Voltron. He was the strongest, the best. He had found the blue lion. None of this would have been possible without him. Keith and Hunk seemed to be the only ones who felt this way about Lance. Pidge, Allura, Coran and Shiro didn't seem to care that much about Lance. Of course they were torn up about his death. They would miss him more than anything. But they would heal.

Hunk and Keith knew that they would never recover.

°•°

"What just happened?!" Hunk groaned, sitting up. He knew he want in the yellow lion - maybe he had been injured? But when he opened his eyes, he was in a house. He vaguely remembered seeing a house like this before... But when? And where?

He hadn't been on Earth for five years, when the team went back and told Lance's family about his death. How he saved the universe. How the universe could never repay the debt it owed to him.

But... This house was definitely an earth house. How on Earth could he be on Earth? He turned around and saw Pidge and Shiro behind him, blinking and shaking their heads as if they, too, were confused. He turned back to the front and saw Keith laying on the floor - he hadn't been before. And in front of Keith was a small child, about three feet tall.

"Holy shit." The kid whispered.

"Who are you?" Hunk asked.

"Well, uh, it's a little hard to explain." Why did this kid sound so advanced? He was talking like he had been talking for years!

"Well, I'll start. My name is-"

"Hunk, and you're the yellow paladin of Voltron."

"How did you-"

"I'm, uh, Lance." The kid held one hand over his elbow.

"You're Lance? Really?" Shiro asked.

"Well, I was. I'm technically Lance Jr., but I remember my old life. As the blue paladin. As the leg of Voltron. As... As your friend."

"Wait, so how did we get here?" Pidge asked, rubbing her eyes.

"Well, you sort of just appeared." Lance recalled. "I don't really know. Maybe you were teleported?"

"I doubt it. Allura was having problems with the Teladuv again." Keith reminded, standing up carefully.

"Well, we didn't just pop into existence here. We had to get here somehow." Pidge groaned, running her fingers through her hair.

"Lance, you said you remember everything about being a paladin?" Shiro asked, turning towards the five year old.

"Yeah. I didn't at first, but then, my parents, they were telling me a year or two ago about my 'older brother' called Lance, and how I was named after him, and it all just clicked. I remembered everything. They know, too. Nobody but my family even knows I exist for this reason."

"That's just weird." Hunk said, crossing his arms. "But maybe it has something to do with the way blue's been acting. She deliberately hasn't chosen a new paladin - maybe because you're still 'alive'?"

"Maybe." Lance speculated, sitting on the ground carefully. "But I'm only a kid. I'm like, not even six. I may be as smart as a sixteen year old, but would I be able to reach the controls on my lion with my stubby fingers? Probably not."

"Technically, you're as smart as a twenty-one year old." Keith pointed out as he joined Lance on the floor.

"Lance! Lance, are you in here?" A smiling woman with brown skin a shade darker than Lance's and hair as dark as chocolate walked into the room.

"I'm here, mamá." He called back. "I have some friends, too! The rest of the paladins are here..." Lance's mom walked towards Lance and frowned.

"I don't see anything."

"But, they're right here... Say hi, Keith."

"Uh, sup, Ms. McClain?"

"Holy crow! Who was that?!" Lance's mom panicked and ran out of the room, swearing in Spanish.

"Ah, she never changes." Hunk smiled.

"So, if she can't see us, but she can hear us...?" Keith trailed off.

"Maybe we're ghosts." Pidge laughed.

Shiro shrugged. "Maybe we are."

A/N - well, there may or may not be a part two, but here ya go!!