Lance watches Pidge go. Watches after she's gone, because the alternative is turning to face the beach again. He feels the breeze play across the back of his neck, the hushed breath of a predator lying in wait.

Keith sighs and mutters something about training. He slopes off. Two seconds, just to make sure.

One, two...

Lance lets out a breath, and turns to face home. It's not. It's not home, he remembers that. Tries.

"You OK, man?" It's Hunk. Hunk's still here. Lance treats him to the full megawatt grin, no expense spared.

"Yeah! Course I'm OK, it's me, remember?"

Hunk smiles.

"You glad to be back by the water?"

"Yeah - yeah, should be fun. Bit of sun to touch up the tan. Should be great."

It's like a frame from one of those home movies Uncle Euquerio loved to make, with the entire family just out of shot. Lance desperately wants to tug them back into view, to see the grinning faces and hear the laughter crackle over the background rush of the tide. Delfia would have punched his shoulder and smiled, the little ones would've bowled him over and Cedro's hug would've nearly crushed his ribs.

He always seemed to get lost in those videos.

"Listen, man, I've got to, uh, go and check on Pidge. She looked pretty upset." He turns and walks away too fast, leaving Hunk to stand alone on the sand. It's a different colour than at home, he decides. Too pale. A ghost image.

He doesn't find Pidge. It's impossible to, if she wants to hide. That girl is small enough to curl up anywhere if she wants. Instead, he goes to his room, and stares at the fern sitting in the corner. Ferns, it turns out, are pretty common. Coran got him this one at the Belt market and passed it on when no one else was looking.

Lance never actively meant for it to be secret, it was just - private. Pidge would probably denounce it as alien because of some difference to Earth ferns in its microscopic pores or something, and that would ruin the point of it.

Keith - he shudders to think of how Keith might react. He doesn't know how, exactly, but he's sure it'll be in a super stupid way that will sting more than it's meant to, as per usual. Stupid Keith with his stupid face. Not that his face is particularly special, it just happens to be where Lance's eyes are drawn whenever -

Lance grabs the little spray bottle on the side and dampens the fern's leaves. Then he sits on the bed and watches it, in case his lifeline to Earth goes up in smoke, and tries to make up a lie convincing enough to stop him going out onto the beach again.

If he could surf, it would be better. Surfing cleared his head, helped him think. As a kid, Lance always wanted to have the waves to himself. Symptom of growing up with siblings; too many voices, too much noise.

Now he has his wish. An entire coast, maybe even an ocean to himself. But the water has hardened. It seems linked, in the weird, far off way the moon controls the tides. The moment Lance's family disappeared from the beach, so did the waves.

There's a knock at the door. Lance looks up, smirk in place, one-liner on the tongue -

It's Coran. The smirk relaxes a fraction.

"Ah, there you are! Wanted to talk to you about something. I see you've been watering Eustace."

"I - what?"

"Eustace! The fern!" Coran's moustache frumps like this should be obvious.

"You named my fern Eustace?!"

"Well you weren't naming him. Poor little guy." Coran makes a face like the fern (not Eustace) is an adorable puppy.

"If I had named him, he wouldn't be Eustace." Lance makes a face like the name leaves a bad taste in his mouth. "That's like the most random name ever."

Coran sniffs haughtily, and Lance worries his moustache will disappear up his nose.

"I once knew a fine Portnark called Eustace. He had five feet, very lucky."

"Well yipee for him, but my fern is a she, not a he, and her name is Fernzilla." Lance turns to the fern with an apologetic smile and a little bow. "I appologise for my freind and hereby dub thee Fernzilla."

The fern doesn't move, unimpressed. Something clicks in Lance's head and he turns back to Coran.

"You just got me to talk to a plant, didn't you?"

Coran's eyes twinkle.

"I got you to name the plant. It's a proper pet now! Talking was just a hilarious side effect. And look, you're smiling, so it must be working. Coran strikes again!"

Lance shakes his head, smiling.

"Sly old man."

Coran's moustache is endangered by another sniff.

"I'll have you know I'm fashionably matured, thank you very much." He grins. "Now come on, I've got something to show you."

Lance follows him to the elevator, which takes them to a floor he's never been to before. Coran has a conspiritorial glint in his eye.

"Are you still missing home, Lance?"

Lance jumps, coughs (it's suddenly so hot in here) and looks at his feet.

"...Yeah."

"Well that's good, otherwise I'd have just wasted the last week!" Coran beams and leads him into a room. It's dawning on Lance these must be his private quaters, he never sees him on the acomodation floor. He feels slightly honoured, and pleased. It's about time someone around here recognised his awezsomeness. Now if only he can get the private tour from Allura too...

On a table, something hides under a white cloth.

Coran rushes over, childlike enthusiasim smoothing over the wrinkles on his face, and whips the cloth back like a magician unveiling a trick.

A smallish box lies there, halved by a glowing blue line. Wires sprout out of its every surface like acupuncture pins, trailing back to a panel in the wall. Some kind of lead or plug is attached to one side. The plug ends in a flatish peice of metal, with two circles of wire mesh at the top and bottom.

Lance leans forward to inspect it, rubbing his chin to hide confusion.

"Huh. So it's a... toaster?"

Coran looks outraged

"A toaster?" he squeaks, "It's a radio, for you to contact home! I had to sacrafice half a matching set of echo cubes to get this working, and let me tell you those are not easy to come by any more -"

"Wait." The truth reverses back into him like a truck that missed the first time, "You're saying that with this thing I can -"

"Contact your family, yes," Coran finishes, and starts to do that 'thinking hard' thing with his moustache. "Of course, it's completely experimental. Never built for this kind of thing. I was thinking we should run it past Hunk first -"

"No." Lance interrupts, holding up a hand. They're not telling Hunk for the same reason he didn't tell him about Fernzilla. Hunk's a great freind, but he can't keep a secret to save his life. Symptom of growing up with no siblings; he'd never had the need for privacy. And if Hunk knew, then Keith would know -

"Let's just keep this between us." for once, the full-watt smile isn't forced "Something between freinds. Can we test it now?"

Coran frowns, "I suppose, but..." then he says something sciencey, then something technical about dissonance frequencies Lance can't really hear over the war-drum beat of the blood in his ears.

He can talk to his family.

Something hungry and primal purs in his chest, in a den safe and sound and warm. Coran has stopped talking. He's looking at Lance expectantly. He can't get the words out fast enough.

"Let's do it!"

"As long as you're sure."

"It'll be a Lance classic!" For some reason this doesn't have the reassuring effect he hopes for, but Coran seems to trust his judgement. Finally.

He whizzes about like a drevish, checking readings, tuning frequencies. Lance speaks his family's home number on instinct. He's branded the digits into memory. Coran enters them, then some galactic coordinates. The hunger builds like a physical force, pressure behind his temples.

Finally, after aeons, they are ready. He feels light headed; his feet aren't touching the floor, but he's proud of how steadily he holds the handset. Stay cool, stay cool...

Coran flicks a switch; the tangle of wires begins to hum.

For the first time in months, Lance hears a phone start to ring.

It almost breaks him, the stupid ringing. A sound as normal and boring and monotonous as breathing turns him to spun glass and water. His hand begins to shake.

No-one picks up.

Six rings, seven - brr brr, brr brr,

The wires on the echo box begin to shiver, unnaturally, from heat not cold.

Come on...

brr brr, brr brr, brr brr,

Coran opens his mouth, but Lance doesn't even let the words pass. The hunger is desperate now, clawing at his insides. Not yet, come on, not yet...

The wires begin to smoke. Lance is dimly aware he might break the handset, he's holding it so tight-

There is a click. A hiss. And then a voice. An actual, human voice. Do they sound different? He tries to remember, tries to ingrain every detail into memory.

"Hello?"

It's Atala. Of all of them, Lance expected him least. Pretending to be an adult by answering the phone.

"Hellooo, are you there?"

Lance hasn't said anything. This comes dully, like the aftershock of an earthquake. He grasps for words, but they come at him in battalions, all clamouring to be spoken. He can't choose.

The echo box begins to spark.

What can he say? To Atala, the youngest of all of them? His abuela would've been better than this -

"Hello? Are you a weirdo?" Atala asks curiously, a billion trillion miles away, too in love with his grown up fantasy to put the phone down. Something finally escapes Lance's open mouth, caught between a sob and and a laugh.

"Hermano -" he says. And then the echo box explodes. Coran yanks him down as it throws the wires off like a porcupine firing its spines. Lance is crouched on the floor, the handset crushed to his ear, blinking too fast.

The line is dead. A hundred meaningless words sit unspoken on his tongue like a pile up on a freeway. Right now he only cares about three.

I miss you.

...

Keith can't decide if he loves or hates his bayard.

He's found his way down to the training deck, inevitably. Whenever all he wants to do is find a quiet corner and think, this happens instead. All roads end here, with a sword in his hand and sweat on his brow and enemies closing in for the kill.

The sparring droids lunge; he parries one, ducks another and swipes at a third; it's white torso is marshmallow under Longclaw's touch.

Red likes the name, Longclaw; it illicits a satisfied purr whenever Keith thinks of it. Long is right, long enough to keep everyone else at a safe distance, but with a hand-and-a-half grip so he can defend and attack on his own.

Another droid slashes at his face with a spear; Keith catches the blade on his own and presses forward, catching the hilt and twisting, putting all his body weight down. The spear flies off to the left; Keith feels a breeze and ducks just in time to miss another blade that would've skewered his head.

He has to remind himself he's in a controlled environment, and the Castle isn't out to get him. Sometimes that's difficult.

He rolls away and comes up swinging, taking first the droid on the left, then the right, still without it's spear. Longclaw is double edged, to fight enemies on both fronts.

And then the floor is empty; Keith is left alone with the sword and his thoughts. He adjusts his grip on the handle and studies it carefully. Elegant, ornate, even. Something a grand knight might weild a thousand years in the future. It feels wrong. Not physically; the blade is perfectly balanced. But - alien. Which is obvious, but also deeper, like he and the bayard were never meant to be.

He doesn't like the way it's moulded itself around him. He doesn't like the way it has judged him, the way he fights, the way he thinks.

Keith scowls and enters in another battle scenario. He's beaten them all, but there's something calming about the rhythm of the fight. The droids rise out of the ground, only two this time, and the red mist descends.

He sees himself yesterday, the shadow of a mime ghosting across the floor. The day before that, the week before, the month. He jabs with Longclaw, and in his peripheral the shadow Keiths do the same. He leads the dance, and they mirror his every move, soldiers marching in time. He wishes they'd tell him why he's always trapped down here, fighting faceless enemies that know him better than any of his team.

But even in his head the shadows' faces are blurred and grey, a sketch of what he should be erased and re-drawn too many times.

Keith wakes up long enough to dice the droids into pieces, then stops.

He wants to practice with his knife, partly to practice close-quaters combat, partly just to hold something that doesn't need a name, that isn't heavy with so much expectation. But that's wrong too.

Maybe it's just as simple as black and white, but the knife (handle worn soft from use, blade webbed with hairline scratches) doesn't fit the sterile whites and icy blues of the Castle. The Castle, the sword. Keith doesn't trust things so perfectly clean.

He plugs in another scenario and watches as the cracasses of the last round are swallowed by the uniform white. It's like they never existed, and in half a second another exactly like them stands where they once stood. The new droid's face is blank like the others. Mirror-like. For some reason it makes him shiver.

He stabs experimentally; the parry is swift and decisive, the counter-attack has him dancing back. Keith grins and reajusts his grip on the sword again. A challenge.

They circle each other, wary, and now it's not just the shadows copying him but the droid as well. He breaks, they clash, he retreats, it follows, their blades meet again. Keith pretends the ring of metal can cover up the pristine quiet of this flying mauseleum.

Normally it's not so bad; he's secretly greatful he spends so much time with Lance and his big mouth, but now, left with nothing but the echo of his own breath, Keith starts to miss people.

The Castle is not meant for so few, you can feel the unnatural absence in the air. It's meant to be full. An ark. Keith thinks of Coran and Allura, and a scrap of old rhyme comes back to him:

"The animals come in two by two..."

Dad had taught -

Keith loses patience and feints to the left. The droid falls for it and he guts the thing. It flounders like a fish on dry land.

They're on a war footing now. Shiro has just proven that. Stupid idiot, Keith should've been the one going last, but Shiro let sentiment get in the way. He's more like Allura than either of them realise. And Keith, being the idiot he is, let it happen, Because he respects Shiro.

Well, not next time. Next time he'll put his foot down. He doesn't respect Shiro enough to let him go down with the ship.

Shiro doesn't have a bayard. What's that like, not having to fight with an ugly reflection of yourself?

The next round emerges, and Keith buries himself in sweat and hard breath.

The Galra have the right idea, in a way. Block, slash, parry, counter. Sometimes strength and duty have to come first.

A droid nicks his elbow. Keith hisses and spins away, decapitating it. He'd better be careful, thinking things like this. Knowing his luck, King Alfor's projection is secretly psychic and he'll be ejected into space for herasy. But Allura has been asleep for ten thousand years, she needs to adapt.

Sometimes you have to fight fire with fire, and he's meant to be the fire guy, right? That's the elemet the Red Lion stands for. Guess that means the job falls to him.

Keith stands panting among the bodies of enemies slain. He misses Lance. And Hunk, and Pidge. He shakes it off, sets another training excrecise, pushes the sweat-matted hair out of his eyes, levels the sword, Longclaw. His hands itch for his knife.

Deep breaths, Centre. Shiro says calm and focus. Respect his teachings if you want him to respect yours. War footing. He'll fight the good fight, because it has to be won. If he doesn't like the weapons he's been given, he'll just turn the enemy's against them. What is it, the Galra say? Repeat Sun?

Repit Sah.