When Two Worlds Collide

Epilogue

Epilogue

Things after Keith left were different. Lance wasn't really sure how to describe it other than that. Lance just had this off feeling once he left and Shiro took things back over. Another thing that happened after Keith left was Shiro. There was something with the new/old Black Paladin of their team. And yes, Lance knew that with all of the trauma that he's been through, Shiro isn't the same person that he once was. But that wasn't what Lance was getting at here. He was doing and saying things that they all knew that Shiro wouldn't say or do regardless of the trauma. He's brought his concerns up to Hunk before over the past couple of months that this has been going. Hunk noticed the change too, but he told Lance that he was exhibiting all of the signs of a trauma victim that his mother taught him about. Hunk wasn't wrong, but Lance just had this feeling in his gut that there was something more to this. Though he didn't have any proof and he knew that if he went and brought up his concerns publicly to the whole team then he'd ust be laughed out of the room. To this day, Lance doesn't know why Keith ever thought that Lance was more important to the team than he was. With Shiro back in charge he's just been treating Lance like a little kid. And he hated it.

The first time that Shiro was in control, he treated Keith like an equal, or well like he should be an equal if he just believed in himself. And then when Keith took over after Shiro vanished he treated Lance like he was just as much the leader as he was. Then when Shiro came back he just started to act differently around all of them. He'd undermine every single decision that Keith ever made, and he'd all but go ballistic when they listened to Keith instead of him. He even had Allura turned back against Keith, and agreed when she wanted to go pro Lotor. No wonder Keith wanted to leave, it was hard to be a leader and be respected by your team when all that they ever do is tear you down. And it probably hurt worse coming from the person who was supposed to be like a brother to him. Lance, even though he really didn't want to just sucked it up and let it happen around him. He still put his two cents into the conversation though, even if he got ignored or chewed out every time. He knew that something was wrong and he was fully prepared to figure it out, fix, and still be ready for when their alliance with Lotor came back to bite them in the ass, like he knows it will.

He was also really wanted to talk to Keith about all of this. And even though Lance wasn't very happy that he was leaving and the last conversation that they had face to face before he left wasn't that pleasant. The two of them went forever without talking to one another. And for the longest time Lance thought that Keith had gone back to hating him for what he did. But all of that changed when they tried to go up against the Garla at the Battle of Naxela. The idiot almost blew himself up to kingdom come! Lance had never been that worried about another person in his life before now. He thought that Keith was going to die that day, and he didn't really seem to care about it at all, and that scared Lance even more. He knew that Keith didn't have that high opinion of himself. He knew that Keith had anxiety and probably more mental illnesses than he was letting on or even knew about. Lance knew that Keith struggled with cutting and other forms of self-harm and overworking himself to the point of exhaustion. But refused to think for even a moment that Keith was the least bit suicidal at all. But when said crush tried to ram himself into a protective barrier trying to keep the universe from blowing up, opinions change. And as much as he hates to say this, if it wasn't for Lotor coming in at the last minute then Keith would be dead right now. Lance doesn't even want to think about that possibility.

When everyone came back to the Castle to celebrate afterwards, the first thing that Lance did was try and track Keith down. Surprisingly, it wasn't as hard as Lance thought it was. When the Blade members boarded Keith took off and vanished before anyone could get to him. Lance wasn't sure why he went there, he just had this feeling. He went to go and look for Keith in that secret little look out room that Keith almost killed him in about a year ago. Man, it feels a whole lot longer and a whole lot shorter at the same time since that happened. By the time that Lance found him, Keith was sitting on the little bench at the window, looking outside into space. Lance stood in the doorway for what must have been about 15 minutes, just watching Keith. He wasn't really sure what he was supposed to do about him. He was pretty sure that going up to him and saying "Hey, why did you just try to go and kill yourself?" Wouldn't be the best option for him to do at the time. He was still running every possible scenario in his head on how this would go down when Keith spoke up and shocked him back to reality. "What are you doing here Lance?" Keith asked in a monotone voice. Lance jumped about three feet in the air at the time. "Uh, um, I wasn't doing anything!" Lance said, panicked. And damn it Keith the asshole thought it was funny and started laughing at him, but the way it was just so detached from himself was kind of scary. "That's not what I asked of you." Keith told him. "I asked you why you were here." "Well, I wanted to make sure you were alright." Lance told him as he walked closer into the room. "You kind of disappeared before anyone could check up on you." Keith just shrugged his shoulders in response. He wouldn't say anything else to Lance from that time until the Blade left the next day. And that was the last conversation that the two of them had before Keith just up and vanished into thin air. No one in the Blade knew where he was, and they thought that he was either captured or dead, or most likely both. But Lance wasn't going to give up on him like that. He loved Keith too much to do that, and he deserved someone in his corner fighting for him.

Other things happened while they were in space too. For example, Pidge found both her father and her brother. Then she almost lost them again, and they got into a pretty gnarly fight with Lotor's generals. But luckily they were able to get Pidge's dad off back to Earth safe and sound. They sent him off with messages to all of their families and they hoped that Sam would be able to convince everyone that a threat was coming. If they believed them then maybe they would have a chance to prepare Earth before the Garla tried to come in and take over. Lance didn't even want to begin to think about what would happen to his family if something like this were to happen. So he went and focused on other things to take his mind off of it. It didn't really work but he wasn't going to stop trying anytime soon.

But, hey that wasn't all of the fun that they had over this long, long journey. There were the promotional stunts that Coran had talked them into doing. Lance himself thought that they were fun, but he was also the only one who had the same sentiment. He knew that Allura really hated it because she had to pretend to be Keith. And he can guess that it wasn't her favorite part of the job. And Lance can remember them starting all of this PR crap back when Keith was still in command. He hated doing this stuff, Keith didn't like interacting with people, and he got nervous when he had to go and speak to them publicly. He'd always freak out right before he had to go on. More than once did he have to go and calm Keith down enough so that he could go out there and interact with people. He knew that Keith's anxiety was bad, he knew that all of this stuff that he was being thrown into wasn't helping. He felt awful that he couldn't do anymore than he already was to help Keith out. But Lance was highly doubtful that they had any kind of anxiety medication in space that wouldn't end up killing them all in the process if he took any of it. He just wanted Keith to be okay, and now he couldn't even do that since he had no idea where the idiot was! 

And things just kept on spiralling from there. Let's see, he died, Allura had to bring him back to life. Started working with Lotor, realized he had a Nanny. She's scary, no wonder Lotor acts like he does. And they were able to make some chaos around the royal ship, that was a fun day. On the other hand, he was pretty sure that Allura was now in love with Lotor, and he had her and Shiro both wrapped around his little fingers. When he tried to confront them about it, things didn't turn out so well. Allura accused him of being immature and jealous, and said that she didn't want to talk to him. Shiro told him that he wasn't seeing the big picture and that he needed to be more open minded. Pidge and Hunk were on his side, but neither wanted to go up against Allura and Shiro. And that left poor Coran stuck in the middle playing mediator. Things on the ship got very, very tense there for a little bit. Then things got worse than that. Allura and Lotor found this sacred Altean place to teach them all of the secrets of alchemy.They all almost died from the lack of oxygen, and that brings them to where they are now. Lotor off with Allura to finish his master plan and Lance with a sinking feeling in his stomach so intense that it could rival all of the headaches that Shiro's been having these past couple of weeks. Things were going great! NOT.  

There was a highlight to all of this though. It was when they got an incoming transmission from an Altean pod, and it turned out to be Keith! Yes! The moron was still alive, but it was more than that. He looked older and more grizzled, in other words he was hot and Lance wouldn't mind jumping his bones at all now. He also didn't come alone. He brought with him another Altean. A giant space wolf that looked pretty cool. And the big taker was that he had a female Garlan with him who was supposed to be his mother! Crazy, right, where that's not where the story ended. Turns out Lance and Keith were right and Lotor's been evil all along. His master plan was to take over the universe not help it. There's more Alteans out there that they didn't know anything about. Haggar made a clone of Shiro and she's been mind controlling him since the start. Said clone went rogue and Keith had to go after him to stop him from delivering Lotor to her. He almost lost his crush to death again! Though he's pretty sure that Keith might still be mad at him since Keith really hasn't spoken to him, but he'll give him the benefit of the doubt since things are a little bit nuts at the moment. But he was definitely confessing to Keith after this! Nothing was going to stop him from doing it this time. 

In the end they defeated Lotor and got to go in a rift through dimensions and save the universe again. Though the war is still far from over. And they also lost a lot. They lost the Castle ship and had to travel in the lions, which now decided to die on them. They have Shiro's body or a Shiro body, which Allura was able to put his consciousness from the Black Lion into it. But finally they get to go home. He gets to go home and see his family and make sure that they're okay now. And he knows that the journey ahead of them is going to be no picnic, but he knows that with his team by his side that he can get through everything that is thrown their way. And finally, they're coming home.

The end or is it?