At first, it was subtle enough that none of them realized it.

The bond with their Lions—that was obvious. Lance had felt it pretty much as soon as he laid eyes on the Blue Lion, and the rest of them had all had similar experiences.

It was the bond with each other that was harder to pick up on.

They'd really started to notice it after the first couple times they'd formed Voltron. When their Lions all linked together, so did they. Able to work together as one unit, thoughts communicating faster than words. They'd accepted it without much question—they were able to telepathically communicate while forming Voltron. It made sense; if they were mentally bound to the Lions, then why not to each other as well?

What took them much longer to realize, was that the link was still present even when they weren't in Voltron.

It was in the little things. The moments when they'd accidentally say things in unison; or when they'd look over to the door, expecting someone to be there, just before it would open; or the times when they'd be talking and one would excitedly shout, "I was literally just thinking the same thing!"

But these isolated occurrences started becoming more frequent, and sometimes they'd get snatches of dreams or memories that they knew weren't their own. And bit by bit, they'd started putting the pieces together.

They gathered in the lounge one day, the five of them, unwinding after a battle, hesitantly bringing it up to one another.

"Guess the whole mind meld thing Coran made us do actually had a reason," Pidge grumbled, crossing her arms.

The other Paladins were silent for a moment, remembering how Pidge had thrown down the headband in anger, refusing to let the sequence continue.

Hunk glanced between them all. "…You guys wanna try that again?"

"Not really," Pidge muttered.

Lance was quiet for a moment, thinking. "This means we literally can't have any secrets between us," he mused.

Shiro nodded. "We need to be completely open with each other."

There was a moment of uncomfortable silence, none of them wanting to be the first one to open up. Pidge sank further into the couch cushions; Hunk stared stubbornly at the floor; Keith's leg bounced incessantly.

"You aren't hiding any other big reveals, right?" Lance asked, raising an eyebrow at Pidge. "You're not, like, secretly an alien or whatever, right?"

Pidge snorted, shaking her head. "Nah. I already told you guys the only real secret I've been trying to keep." She paused, biting her lip. "It's just…I don't like feeling so exposed."

"Yeah," Keith agreed. "I've never really been one to…open up."

Shiro sighed. "Well, we're going to have to get to that point eventually," he reminded them, and the level of discomfort in the room only rose. "We don't have to do it all now. But we will need to feel comfortable enough with each other to be completely open like that."

It was a slow process.

Despite being in school with them for a full semester, Pidge barely knew Lance and Hunk, and they barely knew her. And Keith hadn't really known any of them, only really meeting them the night that they rescued Shiro. And Shiro? He didn't want to burden them all with his memories of his year in Galra captivity.

But gradually, they got used to one another, finally starting to relax, beginning to let their walls down.

That's when the dreams started.

"I think it's based on emotion," Pidge hazarded one morning. None of them had gotten much sleep the night before, the five of them all dealing with one of Shiro's nightmares. "The shared dream thing. I think it localizes to whoever's having the most emotional dream."

"Had to be nightmares," Lance muttered. "We couldn't all have a shared dream about, like, the beach."

Shiro seemed more uncomfortable than the rest of them, but they'd insisted that he not be alone after that. At Lance's comment, he winced, saying again, "I'm sorry—"

"Don't you dare," Keith interrupted. "It's not your fault. You didn't ask for any of that."

"And you said so yourself," Hunk added, "we need to be comfortable with one another. We need to be able to be open about this sorta stuff."

Shiro sighed. "I just wish you didn't have to see all of that."

"Dude, you're the one who went through it," Lance said. "Don't worry about us. We'll be fine. I'm more worried about you."

"Do you, like, wanna talk about it at all?" Hunk asked cautiously.

Shiro was silent for a long moment, and they could feel the hesitation and anxiety rolling off him in waves. But he took a deep breath, forcing himself to calm down. "Yeah," he eventually whispered. "I think that'd be a good idea."

The dreams only got more frequent after that, picking up on the high emotions, taking advantage of the walls that were going down between the five of them. But though they happened more often, none of them viewed the situation as getting worse. "This is good," Hunk told them. "It means our bond is only getting stronger."

And if a side-effect of the Paladin bond was an increase of impromptu slumber parties in Shiro's room, then so be it.

What really hit them all, was the moment Shiro disappeared.

Suddenly, a section of their minds just felt…wrong. It wasn't empty, as if their link with him had been severed. But it felt dampened, like they were no longer on the same frequency, like they were just out of range, like their calls were being redirected.

And it felt wrong.

"I don't think I realized how strong it was," Pidge whispered one night, "until it was suddenly just…not there."

They tried the mind meld again when Allura became a Paladin. They didn't have the time to let their bond grow slowly and naturally like they had before. So they all donned the headsets and sat in a circle together, hoping that it wouldn't be too hard for her to sync up with the rest of them.

The adjustment period was rough, but she managed to work her way into the bond, fitting like a puzzle piece that they hadn't initially realized was missing.

But does Allura feel the gap too? It was something they all wondered, somewhere in the back of their mind. Does Allura feel the spot where Shiro should be?

And then they found him again (does he feel a bit off to anyone else?), and it took some time for the six of them to find their way together, always just half a step out of rhythm.

It was the off-tempo beat that first set off Lance, the feeling of their bond being just a bit too crowded, and wouldn't it be better if there were just five?

"Don't you dare," Hunk had told him when he sensed his friend's trepidations. "I've know you for years, man, you can't just leave me like that."

They noticed when Keith started building his walls up again. When they'd try to reach out to him mentally, only to run into a roadblock. When they'd try to reach out to him physically, only for him to push them away farther.

When he left, left being a Paladin, to join the Blade as a full member, it was as if their whole bond did a stumble-jolt; like that moment where you don't realize there's one more step at the bottom of the stairs, and you have to catch yourself from falling. There was a step missing from their connection, and the bond had to readjust around that to keep them from tripping.

(It felt different than when Shiro vanished. More of a purposeful repression, than a weak signal trying to reach from out of range.)

(They didn't really know what to think of that—only that it didn't feel right, and that there was a constant feeling of something missing.)

Right before Naxela would have blown, they felt a spark over the bond, a sudden rush of emotion. Anger, remorse, regret, but strongest of all was an overwhelming sense of love. None of them were quite sure which one of them it was coming from—at this point, their thoughts were all so tightly interwoven that it could have been any of them, or all of them.

It wasn't until they were back in the castle afterwards that they realized that Keith had knocked a hole in his walls.

And it wasn't until they started poking at the rubble there that the gravity of what had almost been hit them all.

(And if a side-effect of the Paladin bond was an increase of impromptu slumber parties in Keith's room, then so be it.)

AN:

Lance asking if Pidge is secretly an alien, haha, I crack myself up; you're so close, Lance

I just love the whole implication that they have this mental connection going on. Maybe not enough to, like, speak coherent sentences in each other's minds. But enough that they can sort of feel each other, share feelings and ideas. They're just…connected.

I tried a sort of different writing style here? More objective, disconnected; rather than the specific POV narrative that the rest of my stuff is.

As always, please feel free to come say hi to me on Tumblr (this-book-has-been-loved) or the Platonic VLD Discord server (NHYrCz5)

See you tomorrow!

~Brigit