When Hunk came out of the cryo pod, Pidge was waiting with his and Lance's favorite blanket. It was huge, very soft, very fluffy, very thick, and covered with traditional patterns from a planet they had liberated a few months ago. And it had been handmade by someone's grandma. Pidge didn't know whose grandma, but it just had to be a grandma, that was all. Lance said once that the blanket reminded him of one of his aunts who had made personalized afghans for every kid in the family who went away to school. Lance's afghan had, of course, been left behind at the Garrison when they took off in Blue.

Pidge didn't know how Lance had obtained this blanket. He had come back to the castle with it after they'd had a feast with that planet's inhabitants, who were ecstatic over their freedom from Galra rule. He might have bought it at a market, or maybe someone had given it to him as a thank-you gift. Hopefully someone's grandma. Lance deserved to get a present from someone's grandma.

In any case, it had instantly become Lance's favorite blanket, and therefore Hunk's as well. Lance wasn't stingy with it, either. If Pidge had gotten something this awesome and fluffy and soft and warm, she probably would have kept it in her room and only reluctantly allowed anyone else to even know of its existence, let alone touch it. But Lance dragged this blanket around with him to whatever lounge or rec room the team was hanging out in during downtime, and Pidge was pretty sure he also took it in his lion when they had an extended mission. It should be ragged and gross by now, but Lance took shockingly good care of it. It was almost pristine, only a few ragged threads on the corners beginning to unravel, which was normal for homemade knitted creations.

It might be the blanket's fault that Lance and Hunk had stopped even trying to pretend that they didn't just want to snuggle at every single opportunity that presented itself, come to think of it. After the blanket became part of their home, whenever Lance had it and was hanging out with the group, Hunk was there, too. It became very normal, very fast.

Lance shared the blanket with anyone else who seemed to need something warm and fuzzy, of course. He had draped it over Pidge on more than one occasion when she was getting cranky and overtired, including her head, as if she was a bird who could be put to sleep by making her think it was dark out. If Keith was separating himself from the group again, Lance would wrap himself in the blanket, then inch closer and closer to him until Keith suddenly found himself enveloped, absorbed in an instant by the Lance-shaped blanket blob. Shiro was not immune to this treatment, either, though Lance was slightly more respectful with him. Only slightly, though.

But Hunk was a willing participant in Lance's shenanigans, as usual. On movie nights, the two of them always ended up cuddled under the blanket together, often with one or both of them asleep. It became common to spot them napping together on a sofa in one of the lounges, spooning under the blanket's warm expanse, or hanging out with it over their laps while Hunk studied Altean ship manuals and Lance worked on one of his small craft projects. Pidge was pretty sure that whenever one of them had a nightmare, he ended up in the other one's bed that night, blanket there to comfort them both.

So of course Pidge had grabbed the blanket almost as soon as she and Shiro returned from Malkord. She dropped the hard drives off in her workshop, unable to stomach the thought of working on them yet. She knew already, though, that when she decrypted the footage, it was going straight to Allura, no one else. Shiro didn't need to see it, and Coran was far too attached to Lance and Hunk (and all of them, really) to be able to deal with it. Allura would hate it, too, but she would be able to keep a clear head. Pidge would watch it with her, and then they would decide what to do.

Hopefully that decision would lead to at least a little destruction down on Malkord. Green was totally up for it, Pidge knew that already. She didn't know for sure if there actually had been a rebel group, or if it had been a cell of the Malkordan military that they didn't mind mowing down themselves in order to keep up appearances. The idea of an attempted mind wipe, like Lance had talked about, indicated the latter. But the soldiers Pidge had ridden to the base with in the tech van had seemed truly disgusted with the "rebels" and destroyed them without any qualms whatsoever. Then again, maybe they just hadn't been privy to the plans of their commanders, so they really did believe that they were slaughtering bad guys, not their own people.

Whatever. It was a worry for later. After Pidge knew for sure that her friends were whole and healed and as close to okay as they could be.

After dropping off the hard drives, she took off her armor, cleaned up, and got something to drink and snack on to fortify herself. Then she fetched Lance's blanket (she found it in Hunk's room, this time), and carried it to the infirmary.

Shiro and Coran were waiting, too. Hunk did not do well with cryo pods. They felt small to him, even though objectively there was plenty of space even for much larger aliens. He usually came out of one half-panicked, and after what had put him in there this time... Pidge wouldn't be surprised if he had a full-on panic attack the instant the pod released him.

He didn't, but it was close. His eyes were wide, breath too fast, and he stumbled out of the open pod as fast as he could. Shiro and Coran were already there, catching him on either side just before Hunk's knees buckled, and they lowered him to the steps. Pidge leaped in with the blanket and draped it over them all, and they sat there together, holding on, while Hunk's breath steadied and his shaking eased.

"This feels...weird," Hunk said after a long moment, leaning heavily on Shiro.

Shiro stroked his hair with one hand. Coran had his arm around Hunk's shoulders on the other side, and Pidge squirmed between them, almost in Hunk's lap. "What feels weird?" she asked, when the others were too slow to answer for her liking.

"The...the mind wipe, I guess. They tried to erase my memory. Of when they hurt me."

Coran nodded gently. "Yes, Lance mentioned that. He said it was worse at first, you couldn't remember anything about the journey to Malkord, but then some memories came back. He was worried about you, the damage that might have been done to your mind."

Hunk laughed, tears in his voice. "Of course he was. And here I am, sick to death with worry about what happened to his mind..."

They were silent for a moment, before Pidge piped up again. "But what's feeling weird to you? Did the cryo pod fix it?"

Hunk shook his head, slow, like it hurt. "No, the memories are still gone. I can't catch the...specifics. But... I feel like they're there, underneath. I didn't have that feeling before. Maybe the cryo-replenisher tried to heal my brain, but couldn't quite finish."

Pidge tried to wrap her mind around that, around what it would feel like to know that you had been tortured, but not be able to actually remember it happening. Knowing the memories were there, sensing them hidden under a thin layer of forgetfulness. What if they came back? What if he wasn't ready for them? This could lay Hunk out flat with no warning at all.

It occurred to her that this was exactly what Shiro was dealing with.

It occurred to Shiro, too. He shuddered and held Hunk tighter, the side of his chin resting against his temple. "I'm so sorry," he whispered.

"Not your fault," Hunk said. "And I know you didn't just mean that as an expression of sympathy, though the sympathy is appreciated, trust me. I know you feel guilty, too. I'll tell you all day long that you shouldn't, and so will Lance and Keith, and I know you won't believe us. But still. It wasn't your fault."

Shiro laughed, a little choked, but sincere for that. "You're so smart, Hunk. What would we do without you?"

"Well, you wouldn't eat as well." Pidge, pressed against Hunk's stomach, heard it rumble. "Speaking of which..."

Coran chuckled and squeezed his shoulders. "You have time to eat before Lance wakes up. Would you like me to fix something for you?"

"No way, man. I was just trapped in a cold cell for like half a day, and for most of it my hands were attached to the floor." Hunk circled one wrist with the other hand, almost unconsciously. Those stupid, clunky cuffs Pidge and Coran had removed with Coran's tools must have hurt. "I want to cook."

"Fair enough." Shiro drew Hunk's arm over his shoulders and gently levered him to his feet. "Let's get you a shower and clean clothes, too. There's plenty of time, right, Coran?"

Coran replied in the affirmative. The men started moving toward the door, Hunk asking questions about Keith and Lance while Coran answered. Pidge collected the blanket and set it aside for when Lance got out. It was good to have Hunk back. He was always such a steadying presence.

When Lance woke up, Hunk was waiting right in front of the pod, clean and freshly dressed and fed, a big smile on his face. The groggy post-cryo expression on Lance's face lightened immediately, and he fell into Hunk's arms without hesitation, laughing joyfully. They hugged as tight and hard as Pidge had ever seen them do it, and yeah, at first it just looked happy and bright, like a reunion after a long separation. Before long, though, she realized that Lance was shaking, and so was Hunk. Their soft, mutual laughter was starting to rise toward hysteria.

"We made it," Lance said, barely above a whisper. Somehow it seemed to echo in the room, loud and ringing. "We made it. We lived."

"Did you doubt it?" Hunk asked, arms wrapped so tight around Lance that they almost circled back to himself.

"Never. Not with you on my side."

Hunk laughed, soft and deep, and turned his head to kiss Lance on the cheek. "I love you so much, dude."

"Love you too, man."

"Okay," Shiro said, a hand on both of their shoulders. "Maybe you guys should sit down now."

"Yeah," Lance said shakily. "That's a decent idea."

So to the floor they went again, and Pidge brought the blanket. Then she fetched the plate of scone-things Hunk had made and set aside when Lance's pod started to beep. She snuggled in with them, Shiro on the other side, Coran behind them patting Hunk's back and Lance's head. At the sight of the scone-things, Lance squealed and made grabby hands, so Pidge gave him the plate.

"Hunk, you glorious fondue fountain! You remembered!"

Hunk smiled, arm still around Lance's waist under the blanket. "Didn't have time to try for a cake. We'll do it later, when everyone's rested up a bit. And we have to get Malkordan ghee."

"Yeah, and you gotta have me with you in the kitchen to help whip the meringue," Lance said through a mouthful of crumbs. The entire conversation made no sense, but Lance and Hunk were happy, so that was all that mattered.

When he had slaked his hunger a bit, Lance put an arm around Pidge and leaned into Hunk with a contented sigh. "I'm so glad to see you guys," he said, looking at Shiro and Coran, too. His other hand was still clenched in Hunk's shirt, as it had been since he emerged from the pod.

Coran offered a smile, slightly strained. "Same."

Lance snickered, most likely because Coran was using a human expression he'd taught him. Shiro huffed out a breath and ruffled his hair. "How's your head?" Pidge remembered the way Lance's nose had been bleeding and looked up in his face to gauge his response.

Lance sighed, and suddenly he looked tired, even though he had just gotten out of a machine that replenished energy. "I don't know. It feels...weird. Like, almost healed, but not all the way."

"That's what I said." Hunk frowned. "I thought they didn't try the mind wipe on you."

Lance hummed. "Must be similar technology, right? Maybe it has the same side effects."

Shiro swallowed thickly. "Do you think you two could tell us what happened? Not...all of it, if you don't want to. Though we will certainly listen, any or all of us, to whatever you want to say. But if you could at least give us the bare bones, that would be helpful."

Hunk tightened his arm around Lance's waist, and Lance leaned his head limply on Hunk's shoulder. He looked even more tired now. Pidge scooted closer to his side, feeling his warmth.

"The Malkordans wanted information about the lions," Hunk started the tale. "I don't remember it, but our best guess is that they questioned me about how the mechanics work. What they wanted from Lance was...different, though."

Lance drew in a breath, then spoke. "They didn't even ask me any questions. They didn't have to. They just wanted to...study me. My bond with Blue."

Pidge felt cold all over, remembering that ruined machine in the room with the water and blood. The chair with straps, the headset that had been ripped from its cords and flung across the room. She had thought that it had something to do with mind manipulation and electrical power, and it had been clear from the controls that the machine was powerful and damaging, with no attempt made to mitigate the danger. But she hadn't realized it had anything to do with the lion bond.

"It hurt you," she stated, because that fact was plainly obvious, and Lance seemed reluctant to say it. "Hurt you a lot. What they did to you...it amounted to torture, even if that wasn't their goal."

"Yeah." The word was soft, grateful. Lance appreciated the assist in getting that part out there. "The thing about getting shocked with electricity is that it...it doesn't dull eventually. It just keeps getting worse."

They were silent for a moment, taking this in. Lance raised his head from Hunk's shoulder and looked up at Keith, still in his cryo pod. "What they...what they did to Keith might have been even worse, though. There was...so much blood..."

"No," Coran said. His hand rested on Lance's shoulder and held him firmly. "You must not compare your experience to his. All three of you went through something horrible, unforgivable. The fact that Hunk cannot remember exactly what happened, the fact that your mistreatment was different than Keith's... That doesn't mitigate it. Not remotely. You are allowed to acknowledge your own suffering."

"More than that, it's necessary," Shiro murmured. "When you're ready, when you want to... We'll talk about it. Remember how you all staged an intervention for me when I wasn't doing well? It's the same thing. We will all help you and Hunk and Keith cope with what happened, but you have to let us in. I know it feels different when it's your own pain, believe me, I know, but the same things you said to me back then also apply to you."

Lance drew a shuddery breath and nodded against Hunk's shoulder. "Yeah, I know. It feels good to hear you say it, though."

Coran squeezed his shoulder, and Shiro ruffled his hair.

Pidge leaned her head into his side. "What happened when they tried to study the bond? Did something go wrong? On our end... That might have been about the time that Blue went crazy."

Lance's eyes widened, and he looked at Coran. "Blue went crazy?"

"She wanted to find you," Coran said. "It seemed that she could hear you, even though the distance was too great. She tried to scratch her way out of the hangar, and when she lost contact, she started pacing back and forth and wouldn't stop. Shiro and I made the decision to open the hangar doors and let her out, in case she could find you. She went straight to the city and started making passes. Then, suddenly, she seemed to hear you again, and she turned and flew straight to that base where they were keeping you. Shiro and the Malkordan military followed her, and... Yes. That's the short version of what happened from our perspective. So I'm presuming...the electricity they subjected you to affected the bond?"

Lance nodded. "Yeah. I could tell. Even through the pain, I could feel my mind...expanding. They were only trying to study the bond, map it, but they super-charged it too. Blue heard me, I could tell at the time, though I didn't realize... Um. But then I passed out. That must have been when she lost contact with me."

Hunk took up the narrative. "They brought him back to the cell after he passed out. He was unconscious, and his nose was bleeding and just… It wouldn't stop. It took me and Keith awhile to wake him up, and then he was really limp and weak. The electricity really did a number on him."

"And they did it again?" Coran asked. "The second time Blue heard you?"

Lance didn't respond immediately. Hunk grimaced and ground his teeth together. "Actually, that was Lance's choice."

Shiro hesitated. "I don't understand."

"We...escaped," Lance said slowly. "From the cell. While I was gone, Keith and Hunk had managed to get hold of a scrap of metal, and we shaped it into a tool. Then I...figured out how to disable the wrist cuffs."

Hunk shuddered. "Those cuffs were the worst. If the guards chose to activate them, they instantly adhered to the wall or floor. Super powerful electromagnets, I'm guessing." Pride infused his voice. "But Lance figured out how to break them."

"It wasn't that hard." Lance shrugged. "Okay, it took me a long time. Hunk could have done it faster. But his wrists were trapped on the floor, and they took Keith, so I was the only option. I'm just glad I figured it out."

Hunk held him tighter. "You were amazing, buddy. Don't downplay it."

Lance looked up at Keith again, then slumped into Hunk's side. "Yeah. But anyway. They brought Keith back and he was...like that. And we knew we had to get out. So, short version, I disabled all the cuffs, and we attacked the guards the next time they came for us. We managed to get out of the cell and down the hallway, but there were bars in the way, so we ducked into another room. It was the one with the machine they used on me."

Pidge began to understand what had happened. "So you...decided..."

"Yeah. We had to get out, and I knew Blue would hear me, so..." Lance fell silent.

Hunk cleared his throat. "Keith and I were not happy with that decision, let me make it clear. But also..." His breath came a little more ragged, and he braced his cheek against the side of Lance's head. "You were so brave, sweetheart. So strong. And I... I am grateful. I never wanted you to go through that, and I hated watching it happen, but you did save our lives. All of us. I can never thank you enough."

"Yeah. No problem." Lance let go of Hunk's shirt long enough to pat his knee. "I love you, big guy. Never doubt it."

"Never will."

Shiro sighed and touched Lance's head again, gently stroking through his messy locks with spread fingers. "Can you talk about what happened afterward? I saw some weird stuff, kiddo. Seems like the machine let you do more than contact Blue."

Pidge craned her head to look up into Lance's face. She had seen a lot of unexplained things on the way down into the base. The destroyed door, the bars broken to splinters, the water everywhere. At the time she had subconsciously associated it with Lance, the guardian of water, but her mind had been too busy to examine what it could mean, just set it aside as a puzzle to be solved later. What had happened down there?

Last thing Hunk and Lance said, they were trapped in a room, desperately trying to contact Blue to come rescue them. Between Blue taking off for the base and Shiro actually finding the boys had been at least twenty minutes of searching and fighting. Without resources, without weapons, all three on the edge of collapse, Hunk and Lance and Keith had held off what was surely a concentrated attempt to recapture them by fully armed soldiers. And then they had gotten past the Malkordans and made it all the way to the surface. How?

"Blue," Lance said softly. "That part is...um. Really fuzzy. But I know... I know I was able to speak to Blue, and she heard me and came running. I think I lost consciousness again, but... Then she was there. It was...amazing. Really amazing. Just an incredible, overwhelming flow of power. I'd never felt anything like it, and I didn't understand it, but I knew it was Blue. I trusted her."

Shiro opened his mouth to speak, maybe to ask a clarifying question, because none of this was making sense. But he closed his mouth again, and Hunk didn't volunteer his own version of events. He watched Lance with concern and...wonder? Yeah, that was wonder in his eyes.

It was Coran who spoke. "You felt her presence through the bond, we understand that part. Then what happened?"

Lance drew a slow breath. "We had to escape. And I knew I couldn't do it on my own. But Blue was there, and she was...it felt like an offer. So I let her... I don't know. Take over? Sort of. But not really. I was there too. It was my will, her power, sort of like what it always feels like when we pilot the lions. Every time I saw an obstacle we needed to break through, she showed me how, and we did it. I remember feeling warm and strong and...happy. Because she was with me, and I knew that everything would be okay. We broke down doors, I know that. We trapped enemies in ice. Blue could have killed them. She wanted to, for hurting me, but she chose not to because she didn't want to force me to see that."

Hunk swallowed thickly. "I wondered about that. It would have been easier. She, or you...the two of you had to maintain the ice, and you said that it took more energy than creating it. If Blue had just killed Corallis and the guards… But she didn't."

Lance nodded. Pidge was even more confused. "Wait...ice?" She grabbed Lance's hand hanging over her shoulder and squeezed it, suddenly overcome with something like terror. "You were creating ice?"

Lance frowned. "Yeah. I mean, how else were we supposed to escape? At the time it felt completely natural. I can't explain it. It just was...it was what we had to do, so we did it. It was the easiest thing in the world for Blue, and I wanted to escape, and she wanted to help me. It felt...perfect."

"Synchronicity," Shiro murmured.

"Yeah, that's a good word." Lance's voice was a bit absent. He didn't understand what had happened any better than the rest of them, despite having lived through it. But he accepted it anyway. It was who Lance was.

Pidge could not grasp this at all. She squeezed Lance's hand and dragged it down into her lap so she could wrap both of her hands around it and hold on tight. "You and Blue...shared your body?"

"I guess?" Lance shook his head. "That's one way of looking at it."

Pidge looked over Lance's shoulder to Coran. Coran's face was deeply thoughtful, but he didn't seem as freaked out as Pidge felt. "Do you have any idea what that was?"

"I...perhaps." Coran shook his head, eyes refocusing from whatever far-away place they'd gone to, and he gave her a warm smile through his mustache. "I would have to check the castle archives. I do seem to recall some similar incidents in the past, but they were rare."

"But Lance is okay?" Shiro asked, and the anxiety in his voice was unmistakable.

Coran sat up straigher, eyes sparking, and looked over at him. "Why, of course!" he said, instantly reassuring. He sounded sincere, though Pidge couldn't completely dismiss her suspicion that he was lying to make them feel better. Coran reached forward and ruffled Lance's hair strongly, making him chuckle and bend his head away to escape. "Lance, my boy, you did something quite extraordinary, that is certainly true. But all is well. I'm sure the cryo-replenisher has already cured any lingering effects."

"Yeah. And anyway, it's over now." Lance turned his head to smile down at Pidge, squeezing her palm wrapped around his. "It's okay. We escaped. Nothing else matters." He glanced at Keith again. "Except... Yeah. As soon as we get Keith out, we'll be good. That's the only thing that's missing now. Everything else is okay."

"Keith will be fine," Coran said confidently. "He just needs a while longer to finish healing. None of his wounds were terribly serious, though he lost a lot of blood. No organ damage, nothing like that. It's only because there were so many cuts that it's taking this long for him to heal."

Hunk reached over his free hand to pat Lance's chest. "We should get you cleaned up and dressed, and get some heartier food in you, too. Then we'll come back and see Keith when he gets out, and we'll all feel better."

Lance nodded. "Yeah, okay. Let's go."

By the time the pod was ready to release Keith, Allura was back, too. She shook her head distractedly when Shiro and Coran asked her how it had gone down on Malkord. Pidge caught something about "Forget an alliance, the question is if and when we should mete out vengeance," which was enough to tell Pidge that she was definitely right about sharing the footage with Allura and no one else.

Other than that, Allura mostly just muttered darkly about "bureaucrats" and "political nonsense." Coran and Shiro wisely left it be after that.

The cryo pod finally opened up, with a hiss of released air and a sense of chill in the air, and there he was. Keith's eyes opened reluctantly, slow and half-lidded, and he took one step out of the pod. He was greeted with a bear hug from Hunk on one side and Lance assaulting him with their favorite blanket on the other.

"Buddy!"

"You're back!"

"It's good to see you!"

Keith grunted in surprise, then went down, bowled over by their effusiveness. Lance and Hunk laughed and fell with him, controlling the motion so that all three of them ended up sprawled on the floor, half-covered with the blanket. Pidge couldn't stop grinning, and the others looked delighted and relieved, too.

"What..." Keith's voice was fuzzy and muffled. He reached up and grabbed the corner of the blanket covering his face and yanked it off. "What is happening..."

"We're happy you're alive!" Lance cried. He had wrapped both arms around Keith's chest and was nuzzling under his chin like a puppy. Hunk's arm was under Keith's head, cushioning him from the cold floor, and he reached over and patted Keith's face as if making sure all of his features were still in place.

"We have scones," Pidge said, holding out the plate Hunk had entrusted to her care.

Keith blinked up at her from the floor, slow and a bit confused. He turned his head to look at Hunk on his left side, then at Lance on his right. And he went limp with relief. His eyes closed and his limbs fell loose, and he lay there sandwiched between the yellow paladin and the blue paladin. He looked happy, though he wasn't smiling. And his hands were wrapped in Lance and Hunk's shirts.

"I'm glad you guys are alive, too," he said gruffly.

Hunk's eyes welled, and Lance made a muffled sound that was half "awww" and half "what the quiznak" and buried his face in Keith's chest. It was rather ridiculous and over-the-top, but Pidge couldn't stop smiling at it. Lance and Keith had gotten to be pretty good friends over the last year and a half or so since they'd ended up as part of a magic superweapon fighting an intergalactic empire, but there had always been a half-step of distance between them. It was somehow both touching and hilarious to see that it was suddenly gone, banished by less than twelve hours of shared captivity.

Shiro laughed moistly, and Pidge saw him swipe at his eyes. He was grinning uncontrollably, too. "Did the relationship between you three change in the last day?" he asked, voice warm and teasing.

"Yep," Lance said cheerfully. He let go of Keith with one hand so he could reach out and grip Hunk's shoulder. And if his knuckles were a little too white, holding a little too desperately, no one bothered to mention it. "Hunk and I are married now, and Keith is our beautiful baby."

The laughter was universal and uproarious. Keith's eyes popped open, face wry with chagrin. "But I'm older than you," he protested.

"Not by much," Hunk said comfortably.

"Doesn't matter," Lance said. "We've adopted you. It's official. Don't bother trying to escape our love. It's too late for you now."

"I don't want to escape," Keith said. "I just don't want to be a baby."

"It's a metaphor, dude," Hunk said, patting his face with one big paw.

"Nuh uh," Lance contradicted. "Completely non-metaphorical. Our baby now." He put his arm back around Keith and squeezed. "We will raise him well and teach him the ways of the world."

"Don't you at least have to get custody from the former guardians?" Shiro asked.

Lance looked over his shoulder at him, eyes narrowed. "Are you going to try to mess with this perfection? How dare you. We'll see you in court."

"Just sign him over," Hunk advised Shiro, smiling. "It will be easier for everyone involved."

"I still have scones," Pidge said, feeling that this was a good time to mention it again.

Keith made an interested noise, so Lance and Hunk sat up, dragging him with them. Lance let go of Keith long enough to arrange the blanket around all three, and Pidge, Shiro, Allura, and Coran sat on the floor with them, forming a close circle with the scones in the middle. Keith ate, and Shiro ruffled his hair, and Coran asked how he was feeling, and Allura smiled, soft and wide and relieved. It was so good to have all three boys back with them, smiling and laughing and holding on to each other.

Pidge knew this wasn't the end of it. They still had a lot of clean-up to do on the planet, figuring what had happened, who had done it, and how team Voltron should respond. Whatever Allura decided to do, Pidge would back her all the way. It was fine as long as none of them ever had to step foot on the planet again, especially the three who had been kidnapped, tortured, and almost brainwashed.

Hunk and Keith and Lance were going to need time to heal. They were all probably going to have nightmares about this. Even Hunk, if he couldn't remember his own agony, was going to be haunted by images of what had been done to his friends. The three of them were going to end up sleeping in each other's rooms a lot for the forseeable future, Pidge knew that already. Maybe the team should just head it off at the pass and make a blanket fort in one of the lounges, like they had a few months ago when Shiro's PTSD had gotten really bad.

No matter what the future held, they would face it together. Sitting in this little circle, shoulder to shoulder with her teammates, her family, Pidge was sure of it. She smiled at her boys, glad to have them home, and they smiled back.

The End

A/N: Sorry I almost forgot to upload here!

Thank you again for all of the reviews and comments and support! I'm so glad you all enjoyed the story.

There is a possibility that there will be a sequel dealing with the aftermath of this. You know how much I looove writing aftermath. But if so, it will be a while in coming. I have several other projects I'm working on as well.

This is a Big Bang story, so there is art to go along with it! You can visit my tumblr at maychorian dot tumblr dot com and search the tag bchu to find it.