What they don't know

Part one

Alec sighed. He couldn't hear Red like Lance could and as a result this whole 'space roadtrip' was getting real boring real quickly. He could he hear his brother's fellow paladins chattering on the comms but they weren't entertaining enough for him. All they usually did was scold or ignore him anyway and they didn't even know who he actually was or his past. They just thought he was Lance and although that was the goal it was getting difficult to take all the mental beatings now that he knew how they treated his brother. At this point, if they were ever attacked and he was forced into a situation where he would actively have to protect them he was sure he would hesitate. He was only helping them for Lance's sake. 

Really the only good thing about this trip was the amount of freedom it allowed him. Some might say being cooped up in a gaint AI lion with nowhere to go would be boring and restricting but it was nothing compared to being Hagar's personal play thing. That was probably the only thing he owed to the paladins. If the old Black Paladin hadn't caught her attention he would probably still be there. 

He groaned at the unusually gloomy thought and rolled off the makeshift bed, dropping to the floor with a crash that would have surely caused the Red lion to roll their eyes. Pulling himself up, he made his way into his bathroom. He had forgotten how similar he and Lance looked.

They were almost identical. They had the same naturally smooth, soft caramel skin, the same soft hair- of almost replicated shades- and even a similar scar on their foreheads, although that didn't matter to his disguise as none of the others even knew about Lance's scar. The growing list of differences had definatly given them a lot of work. There was Lance's splash of freckles or how much paler his own skin had become for example. Lance's ocean blue eyes were just a ghost of how Alec's used to be, the amount of pure quintesence he'd absorbed had tainted his to a vibrant purple. Lance had also opted to cut his own hair short and preffered to straighten it while Alec had grown his own out to just below his shoulders. 

They would have been easy to compensate for as humans- they would have only needed contact lenses and a hair cut- but neither of them needed that anymore. It had taken them weeks to perfect but they'd finally managed to figure out how to utilize their Altean shapeshifting methods. From there it was childsplay. Mimiking eachother had been something they hadn't done for years but they could still do it to perfection, although Lance was still undoubtably the better actor of the pair.

Alec sighed irritably. He couldn't wait to give those entitled Paladins a piece of his mind when Lance got back, whether he liked it or not, and then go on his merryway back to doing whatever he wanted even at the expense of others. His bored gaze wandered down to necklace at the base of the faucet, softening his gaze to a fond vacant look. 

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Lance was pacing around the Hangar's floor, deep in thought. Shiro had been acting strangely ever since he got back. Even the way he came back to them was questionable.

No galra chasing him and somehow he managed to grow at least a few inches of hair in a few months.

Sure that's not normally something that could happen to humans but Lance had tried to chalk it up to some weird thing they were feeding him. He had tried to bring it up to people but Pidge and Hunk just brushed him off and Coran and Allura always seemed too busy, not to mention Keith.

As the new Black Paladin he'd been constantly stressed, his brother returning was just about the best thing he had going for him and Lance didn't want to take that away from him so he let it slide.

Ever since then more and more 'coincidences' just kept piling up. Shiro had become harsher on Keith, which definitely wasn't something he needed right then. His temper was worse and he seemed to be more irritable. He was more closed off when they formed voltron and he didn't seem to remember their time in the astral plane.

The tipping point was how often he sided with Lotor. Sure, he wasn't really there for most of the shit they went through because of Lotor but he always took the teams opinions into account (Lance's less so but still) and now he was just... unpredictable. Volatile. 

A month or so after he met Alec, they'd begun looking into Shiro's captivity. They hadn't been able to get anything from normal bases or even higher ranking ships. They'd come to the conclusion that they needed to either get access to a ship or officer of the inner circle of Hagar's corner of the empire or to get the information from its source- the lab Shiro woke up in.

Using the fuel records of the ship Shiro 'borrowed' and Matt's knowledge of rebel outposts, they managed to find the base without directly involving any of the other team members. 

Their plan was all worked out.

Alec would shift his appearance to match Lance's so the rest of the team wouldn't notice his absence and Alec wouldn't be let loose in a Galra base with the opportunity to sell them out. That in it self was a leapt of faith for them. 

Before he left, Lance would transfer some of his quintessence to Alec to make him compatible with Red for awhile. He wouldn't be truly compatible like the Paladins but he would act as a battery for the lion, allowing her to defend the team as a part of voltron on her own. The quintessence exchange would also allow him to use the red bayard so to make it more believable, Alec would keep the Bayard and Lance would take an Altean knife and blaster.

Finally to ensure that they'd be able to find eachother, they had exchanged tracking and communication devices disguised as necklaces.

That was Alec's side of the plan anyway. Lance's was just to break into a low security research base, get the information and get out as quickly as possible. It was simple and easy. He'd managed way harder missions on his own before so why was this worrying him so much.

A hand on his shoulder caused him to jump and bite down on his lip. Lance squealed and clutched his now bleeding mouth. Alec snorted and ruffled his shorter twins hair.

"Aleeeecc.. That was mean. Don't do that." Alec just rolled his eyes and pulled his brother over to the ship they'd bought off a rebel and equiped with cloaking in preparation for this mission.

Alec got to work straightening out Lance's suit and dusting off forgotten corners. It was just a plain Altean suit made specifically for stealth missions but apparently hadn't recieved much use even before Altea had fallen. 

"Are you nervous?" Lance didn't answer and fiddled with his cut lip, wincing ever so slightly. "It'll turn out fine and hey maybe you'll have a good reason to see your Keefy again." Alec punctuated the sentence with a light nudge to the ribs but Lance didn't push back.

"I shouldn't be wanting to find something wrong with Shiro just to see Keith. That's unfair."

Alec carded his fingers through his hair in what he hoped was a reassuring manner, "Either way, it would be good for you to see Keith again, even if it was just a video call or whatever. It's obvious you miss him and I'm sure he wouldn't mind talking to you again either."

Lance took a slow breath and nodded. "Okay. Yeah. I can do this." He turned to climb into the ship before hesitating and falling back into a hug. Alec smiled and softly reciprocated.

"Get back soon."