Lance stepped off the plane, parted with Griffin, and pulled his phone out of his pocket, turning it on for the first time since he'd texted Keith back the other day. He ignored the litany of notifications and unlocked the home screen. Veronica's house was too far to walk, and he didn't have a car parked on base. He hadn't expected to be back from deployment this early.

A car pulled up twenty feet away, and the driver's side window rolled down. "Were you seriously going to call an Uber?"

Lance looked up into familiar purple eyes, and despite himself, he couldn't stop a tired smirk from appearing on his face. "Whose car did you steal to get here?"

"Get in and find out," Keith countered, and Lance sighed before slipping his phone into his pocket and climbing into the passenger seat of the truck.

"This is Shiro's, isn't it?" Lance asked as he took a look around and found the truck to be absolutely spotless, leather seats practically glistening.

"He has three. I doubt he'll miss this one." Keith didn't look over, but he waited for the click of Lance's seat belt before he switched gears into drive and started down the street. Due to the late hour, the car was dark, and his face was only illuminated on the occasion that they passed underneath a streetlight. Lance didn't mind the dark. There was a part of him that – despite knowledge of his friend's superior eyesight and observative nature – wanted nothing more than to hide.

"I thought you were on Na'leer," Lance said after a moment, turning his head to look out the window.

"I was," Keith said, casting a side glance at Lance, who refused to look over. "Until I heard about massive casualties in your unit and you wouldn't tell me a damn thing."

"Sorry brother," Lance said with a long sigh, any pretense of ignoring the issue at hand slipping away. "I..."

"You don't need to say anything. Or apologize," Keith deflected, taking a slow turn at the intersection. "I get it."

Do you? Lance wanted to ask, but he kept his mouth shut. He had a hard time imaging Keith, fearless leader, ever leading a mission that decimated his entire team based off of bad intel. No, that was a mistake only an idiot like Lance could possibly make.

"You don't think I understand," Keith surmised after a moment, and Lance didn't say anything to confirm his assumption. Keith slowly pulled the truck off to the right, and the ride got bumpy for a moment as the tires switched from eating up asphalt to devouring gravel. He let the truck roll to a stop, and a few last pebbles skid off into the darkness before he shifted into park and looked over at Lance. "It's different, I know that. No two teams or missions are ever the same. But I've gotten plenty of people killed, Lance. And I live with that every day."

How? Lance wanted to ask, but he looked over at Keith with a frown. "I've gotten people killed before too, Keith. You're not special," he said, a small attempt at humor in an entirely humorless topic, but he couldn't lighten his tone enough for it to land. He exhaled, eyes drifting up to the ceiling of the car as he counted the deaths on his shoulders. "Syria, 2X31. Had a kid no more than 23 picked off in a local village. Bahrain, 2X32. First female ever in my platoon. 26 years old. Walked into a trip wire, blew two of her limbs off. Wouldn't take another female on the team for four years because...it was harder, seeing what happened to her. Harder to watch." He saw Rizavi in his head, lifting up her gun, putting her eye up to the scope, firing twice, three times, ducking behind a pillar to avoid fire, popping back out to take two bullets to the upper torso and one to the throat. He could hear her over the gunfire, over the yelling as she rasped in her last breaths. "I've seen death, Keith. This was...this was a fucking nightmare."

"Two years ago," Keith spoke up when Lance faltered, unable to go on. "I was leading a group of Blades into a research facility on one of JiLu's moons. The report was that the JiLuans were conducting experiments on children from a rival species, the Wixxen. Three previous Blade teams had gone in; none had returned. So they called me in. I went over the plan with my team for weeks. We trained in a replica facility, drilling every single day with the same layout as the target site. We hacked into the JiLuan comms. We had up to date blueprints that included vents and access points that we couldn't spot with our recon drone. We had all the recon you could possibly have, Lance. Everything. It was the most comprehensive intel for a mission in my entire career." Keith took a long breath, and Lance watched him, keeping still, refusing to look away. "We had all of that, and still..." He trailed off for a moment, eyes staring off through the window shield, unfocused, and Lance wondered who he was watching die in his mind. "Turns out the Wixxen children weren't victims. It was a trap. The Wixxen and JiLuans allied in order to kill Blades, as many as possible, and they'd run the same trap over and over again."

Keith looked over at Lance, pain etched into his face but an old pain, a faded pain, one he had come to live with and respect. "They took out my entire team, Lance. We'd just secured the lab, and my team members spread out, taking vitals and trying to provide medical care to the Wixxen children before attempting to transport them. And every single Wixxen child pulled out weapons. They took my team out point blank. And the only reason they didn't get me was because I had stepped into the hall to radio command that we'd reached the objective." Keith's mouth turned up at the sides, but it wasn't quite a smile. "Even once I'd returned alone and could look down at the moon from afar, I still hesitated. Knowing how they'd annihilated my team, I should've nuked them right there and then, but...they were children, Lance. A hostile alien species but still children. I reported the mission events to leadership, and they're the ones who launched the missile that took out the lab."

Lance was quiet. They'd seen too much death for small consolations like I'm sorry. And he knew that Keith wasn't looking for consolation anyway, that he'd only shared his story so Lance would understand that he wasn't alone.

"We had bad intel," Lance said instead as Keith switched out of park and let the car drift back into a paved lane. "I could've had it verified. Should have. But it was from a source we'd used before, a source that had given us good intel on prior occasions, and the priority was high, we didn't know how long the target would be on site..."

"You're not the only one who could've verified the intel though," Keith reminded him. "You've got people behind you and above you, leadership that exists solely to protect special operators. They had just as much of a chance to investigate the intel as you."

"Maybe, but those were my men, Keith. They were my responsibility."

"And whose responsibility are you?" Keith asked back, and the two of them went quiet.

"How'd you even hear about it so fast?" Lance asked some time later, and Keith had the gall to look vaguely embarrassed.

"I have an alert set up," he started, and Lance raised an eyebrow, signaling for him to continue. "Just- any time you have an op."

"That's not public record though."

Keith shrugged. "Maybe I've got a close friend who can hack her way into anything..."

Lance gawked at him. "Are you saying Pidge hacked into elite special op records to spy on me for you?"

Keith avoided eye contact, but he was smiling. "We call it LanceRadar."

"Do you two really not trust me to carry out my missions?" Lance asked with a snort, but instead of laughing, Keith gave him an inscrutable look that lasted several long seconds before he turned his attention back to the empty road before them.

"Maybe we just don't trust you to come home," he answered softly.

--

The silence in the car persisted until Keith rolled to a stop in front of Veronica's driveway.

Lance had refused to respond to Keith's last point, but he looked over now and nodded. "Thanks for the ride."

"Anytime, brother."

Lance stepped down out of the truck and shut the door just as the screen door to the house was shoved open, the flimsy frame twacking against the siding of the house as a small tornado flew down the steps.

"Tío Leo!" Raphael yelled, running down the front steps and almost tackling Lance in a hug, his tiny stick arms working their way into a hug that almost crushed Lance's ribs.

"Woah there!" Lance said with a chuckle, tousling his nephew's hair and giving a wave to Keith. Keith waved back to both him and Veronica, who had appeared next to the screen door, before driving off. Veronica had her arms wrapped around herself, dark bags under her red-rimmed eyes, but she kept quiet as Raphael bombarded Lance with questions that Lance laughed off due to Raphael's chokehold around his abdomen. "You are getting pretty strong, little man. How many books did you say you were benching?"

Raphael chattered on about his "workout regimen", and Lance allowed himself to be tugged up the steps to the front stoop, whereupon Raphael released him to run into the house in search of something he wanted to show Lance.

The screen door eased shut, and Veronica stared at him for a long moment before reaching out and pulling him into her arms. "You scared me," she said, and Lance wanted to issue several corrections, that he hadn't scared her but a group of enemy hostiles lying in ambush had, that she said he'd scared her pretty much every time he went on a mission and returned home, that he'd never promised to not scare her, only that he would always come back, but Lance was smarter than he'd been during his Voltron years and he kept his mouth shut.

"I'm home," he said instead, rubbing his hand in a soothing circle between her shoulder blades, and he continued to hold her up even as she collapsed into him.

--

The following two weeks passed in a blur for Lance. There were twelve funerals for him to attend, twelve families he could barely look in the eyes, twelve friends to bury. He and Griffin went to each one, standing tall next to one another, not saying a word. Keith appeared sometimes when he wasn't occupied with Blade work, and he kept quiet too. Lance wasn't sure how the Blade conducted funerals, but he knew that Keith had likely seen no shortage of dead friends as well.

Lance barely slept, frequently escaping into consciousness from the sewer system that he couldn't seem to leave, even in his dreams. Whether it was a nightmare or a new migraine that woke him seemed to make no difference; he'd get up, make himself a cup of coffee, and run a few miles. Then, if he could still hear Rizavi's choked breathing, he'd run a few more.

If all else failed, he'd run over to Griffin's apartment because he knew Griffin wasn't sleeping either, and they'd run together or get a drink or do anything but talk about the reason they were both awake at four AM.

On one such morning, Lance was running over to Griffin's when he slowed down a block from his friend's apartment, having glimpsed yellow police tape around the doorway. He proceed forward, picking up his pace, to find cops crawling all around the apartment.

"Hey, what's going on here?" Lance asked, asking the first cop he saw.

"I'm sorry sir, this is a crime scene and I'm going to have to ask you to–"

"Crime scene? What happened? Where's Griffin?" Lance asked, trying to get through, but two officers were holding him back. "I'm special ops. Griffin's in my platoon, let me through," he said, presenting his identification, and the two officers exchanged looks before the first one cleared his throat.

"Listen, sir, this is a bad time. Let us process the scene, and we'll take your statement in a–"

"Griffin!" Lance yelled, eyes scanning what little he could make out of the apartment beyond the partially open door.

"Please, sir, keep your voice down, it's only four thirty and the other residents are still–"

Lance opened his mouth, about to call again, but he faltered when he made out a red splatter on one of the walls. "Is that–" He pushed against the guards even harder, breaking through this time, and he shoved past the door before coming to an abrupt halt.

Griffin, the last remaining member of his platoon, dead. Sitting on the couch with a bullet in his head and a gun in his hand.

"Excuse me, who are you and how did you get in here?" a man in a suit asked, coming over to him with a clipboard in hand, gun holstered at his side. A federal agent, if Lance had to guess.

"We tried to stop him," the first officer offered, coming up behind Lance and sending an apologetic glance Lance's way.

"He's special ops," the second officer said before clearing his throat. "We checked his ID. He was Griffin's Commander."

"What the hell happened here?" Lance asked, eyes frozen on Griffin. They talked just yesterday. They'd been at the bar, catching a drink. Griffin had said something dark, something like he was lucky he hadn't been gunned down in the sewers because he had no family to show up to his funeral. And Lance had gotten upset at his comment and they'd fought for a moment, but then they'd dropped it and had resumed their drinks. And before they'd left, Griffin had told him that he'd meant it, about getting payback, and Lance had seen that he was serious and had agreed to meet up the following day.

And now Griffin was dead.

"I'm Agent Pelios. As you can see, it's fairly clear-cut," the federal agent said, turning to face Griffin.

"Who killed him?" Lance asked, eyeing the gun in his friend's hand.

"Killed- excuse me?" Pelios asked, raising an eyebrow and turning toward Lance.

"I asked who killed him," Lance repeated, clenching his jaw before looking over at the fed. "Who murdered my friend? Do you have any suspects?"

"Commander," Pelios said slowly, eyes flicking between Lance and Griffin. "This is a textbook suicide. Your friend – and I regret to inform you of this – took his own life."

"No," Lance denied immediately, shaking his head. "Not possible."

"I'm sorry, Commander, but we found a note," Pelios said, gesturing toward one of the technicians who was currently taking a photograph of something on Griffin's laptop.

"Someone framed it to look this way," Lance said, hands clenching into fists at his side. "Griffin didn't do this to himself. Someone else did, someone who wanted to finish what they started. Look, that gun in his hand – he hates that gun, always has. If he were going to do something like this – and he wouldn't – he wouldn't in a million years have used that gun, he would've used his .22."

"I heard about your mission," the agent said after a moment. "And I'm sorry to press, Commander, but...if I'm hearing you correctly...you believe that an international hitman traveled halfway around the world to eliminate James Griffin...for what purpose?"

"You just said it," Lance said, crossing his arms. "To eliminate him."

"Okay, but...why?" Pelios asked, eyebrow raised. "You and Griffin have been stateside for two weeks, give or take. Why'd they wait until yesterday morning to kill him?"

Lance stilled. "Yesterday morning? That's...not possible. I was out with Griffin yesterday afternoon."

Pelios met one of the officer's eyes, and Lance didn't particularly like the look they exchanged. "Look, Commander–"

"I know what I saw. Your time of death is wrong," Lance insisted.

"You've gone through a lot lately," Pelios said in a softer voice. "You're not in the best state to be looking at this objectively, Commander."

"I'm telling you, this is no suicide. Someone killed him." Why was everyone looking at Lance like he was the crazy one?

"But back to my previous point, Commander. Why would they kill him? Did Griffin know something that made him worth killing? Or did he manage to come into possession of something worth having?"

Lance heard his questions but had no logical answer. "I don't know," Lance snapped. "You're in charge of the investigation, so fucking investigate."

Agent Pelios raised his hands defensively. "With all due respect, Commander, I don't believe you're in your right state of mind. Why don't you go home and let us handle this."

Lance knew it was pointless to stay, knew that they'd already made up their minds and wouldn't listen to a single thing he said. He cast one final glance at Griffin, turned on his heel, and walked out the door.

--

"We were sitting right here," Lance said, gesturing at the two stools at the corner of the bar.

The bartender squinted at him. "Sorry, pal, but we get a lot of customers. I can't be remembering who all drops by every single day."

"What about a video camera?" Lance asked, gesturing to the camera stationed near the ceiling that pointed down at the bar.

"That thing?" the bartender asked, casting a skeptical glance over his shoulder. "Sorry, son, but I've had that thing unplugged for a decade. Just keep it in here as a deterrent."

"All right, thanks," Lance said, putting down a twenty on the counter, and the bartender nodded his thanks before moving down the line to other customers.

Nobody could recall having seen Griffin with him yesterday. It was starting to seem like the only place Griffin had been was in his mind.

--

"It's just a precaution," Lance said, brushing off Veronica's concern. "I was supposed to get a routine scan done immediately after the mission but I wanted to get home faster, so I put it off, and now..."

Now I think I may be going crazy, and getting my head scanned doesn't sound like the worst thing in the world.

"All right," she said, biting at her lip. "As long as it's nothing serious. And..." She looked over at the living room to make sure that Raphael was thoroughly engrossed in his TV show. "I'm sorry to hear about Griffin," she said quietly. "I know you two were close."

"Yeah," Lance said, nodding and looking over at Raphael because he didn't want to see the pity in Veronica's eyes. He'd thought Griffin was fine. He knew that Griffin was messed up, but they both were, and Lance thought they were working through it.

What if Lance had missed the signs? What if he could have gotten Griffin help before he'd resorted to suicide?

If it was a suicide, Lance corrected, but even he wasn't sure of himself now.

"Are you sure you don't want a ride?" Veronica asked. "I'd be happy to drop you off."

"Nah, it's a long procedure," Lance said, giving her a crooked smile that he didn't quite feel up to these days. "Wouldn't want to keep you up late on account of that."

"Well, all right," Veronica said, turning to the living room. "I guess it's just us tonight, kiddo," she said, addressing Raphael, who turned to look at Lance with big eyes.

"Tío Leo isn't staying for movie night?" he asked, eyes suddenly wide in alarm. "But we're going to watch Toy Story, and that's Tío Leo's favorite!"

Toy Story wasn't necessarily Lance's favorite movie, but when pressed by Raphael for his favorite kids' animation, he'd picked one out randomly, and that sporadic decision had become set in concrete as far as Raphael was concerned.

"Sorry, bud," Lance said, going over to him and ruffling his hair. "Next time. You two have fun, okay?" he asked, looking over at Veronica with a raised eyebrow. "And yes, before you ask, that's an order."

"Sir yes sir," she said with a mock salute, and Raphael followed suit.

"Good," Lance said with a smile, relaxing a fraction. "I'll be back late. Don't wait up."

"Okay, have fun," Veronica said, scooting past him to plop down next to her son. She looked up at Lance, already guessing his question. "And no, that's not an order, it's an ironic suggestion."

"Noted," Lance said with a smile before fishing his car keys out of the bowl by the door, exiting the house, and locking up after himself.

--

"Just do your best to stay still," the doctor advised as Lance entered the MRI machine.

Lance took even breaths. In, out. In, out. In...

--

Lance dropped into the sewers and scanned the chamber before clearing the room and motioning for the rest to drop down after him. They moved slowly down the passage, keeping eyes both low and high for trip wires and explosives. At one point, Lance raised his hand for them to stop before gesturing to a thin wire about four inches off the floor, nearly obscured by the water, but Lance had noticed a small glint.

He stepped over it gingerly and waited for the person directly behind him – Rizavi – to do the same. Then he began cautiously proceeding forward while she guided the person behind her and so on and so forth until they'd all crossed the wire safely.

He stopped when they came to a part where the two tunnels diverged, as had been shown on their map. He motioned his team to continue on to the left passage, and once they were a quarter of the way into the room, he spotted the access point at the far end. Lance made a hand signal for his team to fan out and clear the room as he, Rizavi, and Kinkade of his platoon proceeded to the access point. He kept crouched down with his gun, flicking on the tactical light, eyes catching another line in the water, and he indicated to his team that he'd spotted an IED, point at the location.

He crossed the wire and waited for Rizavi. She'd only just gotten across when shots broke out, the sound echoing and amplifying through the tunnel, and Lance turned to see half a dozen hostiles emerging from an adjoining tunnel and another unit coming in from where the two tunnels had diverged.

"We're taking fire!" Lance yelled over his communication device, breaking the radio silence that they'd agreed on for the op as they began returning fire. He took out two of the half dozen hostiles to his left and Rizavi clipped a third one before he was forced to duck behind a pillar, pulling Rizavi with him.

"Looks like someone's rolling out the welcome wagon," Rizavi said through gritted teeth, and Lance looked over to see that her arm was bleeding. "Just a scratch," she said with a grin, and Lance trusted her to communicate to him if she were seriously injured, so he nodded.

"We've got group A!" Lance yelled to his team. "Eliminate group B, then move to the access point. Get a move on!" He popped out from behind the pillar and took out another one, and Rizavi did the same before taking a bullet in the arm. She fell back with a yell, and Lance laid down cover fire to allow her time to retreat back behind him. "Kinkade!" Lance yelled out, looking over to see his team member standing somewhat passively, his hand shaking and his gun at his side. "Kinkade, focus up!"

"Commander," Kinkade said, his eyes tracking over to Lance slowly, too slowly. "I don't..." His face was pale. "I can't die here, Commander..."

Damn it, I should've held him back, Lance thought, taking out one of the hostiles in group B since group A had sheltered behind a pillar on the opposite end of the chamber.

Rizavi, despite her wound, fired out three more shots and ducked behind the pillar beside Lance. Since he was looking over at Kinkade, he saw her profile as she popped back out to take two bullets to the upper torso and one to the throat. She fell back into the water, gun slipping from her hands, breaths raspy and wet as Lance pulled her behind him. He put one hand on the worst of her injuries and pressed down in an attempt to staunch the blood flow.

"Kinkade, retreat to Griffin's position!" Lance instructed. If Kinkade came to join him and Rizavi, the three of them would end up pinned down, and Lance would have a difficult time defending Kinkade, who didn't appear to be combat ready whatsoever, and Rizavi, who was on the verge of death. "Go to- No, Kinkade! Get back!" Lance yelled as he saw Kinkade running toward them, eyes wide with fear.

"I want to see my son!" Kinkade yelled, eyes watering as he attempted to cross the distance between himself and Lance.

Lance yelled, but Kinkade didn't – couldn't hear him.

The IED went off a second later.

--

published 09/24/22 (mm/dd/yy)

4286 words