WHO: Shiro, Pidge, & Matt WHAT: testing out the code in Shiro's prosthetic arm. It's Galra tech, so naturally it's boobytrapped. WHEN: last night (Saturday, December 2) WHERE: Holt house WARNINGS: a prosthetic arm on the attack, Shiro gets a little electrocuted, and everyone has a lot of feelings.
It would be a lie to say that Shiro wasn’t nervous. He was. But he also felt that he was doing a good job of hiding it.
He’d thought a lot since his conversation with Pidge. Mainly, he’d reminded himself time and time again of what she had told him: They were doing this for him, not to him. And in the end, he knew it wasn’t fair at all to compare what the Druids had done to him to how the Holts were about to help him.
Still.
He had also thought a lot about whether or not he would be willing to go without an arm if Pidge figured out how to successfully remove the Galra tech but didn’t find a way to rebuild him one -- or if it would take awhile for them to rebuild him one. He didn’t know what the answer to that was. He knew that was leaving himself (and his team, to a lesser extent now) vulnerable. And he knew that Pidge had said tech was tech, but he didn’t fully believe that. Intent had to count for something. And this prosthetic hadn’t been made primarily to serve as a functioning arm for him; it had been made to be a weapon first and foremost, and his arm second.
He settled in at the Holt living room table and rested his metal arm on top of it, trying to make himself comfortable so that he could hold himself still while Pidge and Matt worked. It was reassuring to be in a space that he was somewhat familiar with -- a far cry from the cold metal and glowing purple that had made up Haggar’s lab.
He rolled up his sleeve, not sure if they were going to need him to take his shirt off all the way.
…
“All right,” Pidge said excitedly, her laptop, disabled from accessing the internet, sitting a few feet away from Shiro’s arm. She felt thrilled with the results of her makeshift connection to Shiro’s arm. Being able to interact with the arm, not simply take it apart, was an exciting aspect. And she was sure as hell glad to get some feedback that came with messages. Even if they, somehow, ended up being error messages.
She opened one panel off Shiro’s arm and looked at him, then at Matt. “Here goes,” she declared, plugging the wide cable to the back of his palm. She had copied, as best she could, the setup they had used in the Castle. It wasn’t quite the same, but it wasn’t likely to fry anything, arm or computer. “I had to make my own Galra keyboard assignments, but that was the easy part.” The code was, after all, in Galra.
The data streamed across her laptop, not all of it making sense at first glance. She really hadn’t spent that much time learning alien languages. Just using computers enough to do what she needed. “On a positive note, I don’t think you receive wireless updates. So whatever we have is whatever you had when you escaped.”
…
Shiro really had been doubtful that they’d be able to find or create something that would be to interface with his arm, but Pidge had seemed completely confident in her ability to do so, so Shiro had trusted her.
A slight ping of alarm ran through his body when Pidge spoke. This was the problem, he figured. He didn’t even know what to worry about with the arm. He had worried that maybe it was changing him, maybe it could be disconnected, maybe it could send information back to the Galra, but he hadn’t even thought about it as something that the Druids could continually update. Which he supposed he should have -- it was what they did with computers all the time.
He cleared his throat and resisted leaning forward to look at Pidge’s screen.
“Is it working?” he asked instead.
...
Her eyes ran back and forth across the code scrolling across her screen. A background window ran pings, just to continually make sure they had a good connection. That read in, well, what she considered English. And the pings came back quick and clear. Honestly, her side was more limiting than his.
Previously, Pidge had been looking through the code for secret messages, a location to meet allies to their cause fighting the Galra Empire. Which, it happened, was successful with some hiccups along the way. So, yay that. However, it meant she hadn’t been paying nearly so much attention to the actual code which ran his arm. No one had been asking questions about how it worked or changing how it worked or anything like that. This interaction was, thus, completely different.
“Well, we have tons of code to look through. Probably should spend some time reading it. But yeah, I mean, your arm is working, and we’re seeing it working. Which is pretty amazing,” Pidge smiled. It was incredibly more advanced than anything earth had, their earth or this earth. And while it was brutally meant, it could not hide what it was - a near perfectly assimilated prosthetic arm.
…
It was at least a little endearing to see Pidge get so excited about what she was seeing. It was at least a little bit reassuring too. She just viewed his arm in a completely different way than he did; he viewed as a weapon that was changing who he was. She saw it as a potential source of knowledge. It helped Shiro relax a little. At least Pidge was having a good time.
“I’m in your hands,” Shiro said with a smile, settling more into his chair. “Let me know what you need.”
...
She leaned further over the table, closer to the laptop, as the code streamed. Most of it was static, merely code as to how the arm worked. Pidge wasn’t looking at Shiro moving his fingers, lifting his arm, or using it to cut through something, etc etc. So she settled in too, pushing a copy of everything to Matt, so he could pore over it at the same time as she did.
Then Pidge read. Or rather, she looked for patterns in the code, which tied back to what the coding language was, what it was doing, how it fit together. It was Galra in the sense that any earth computer language was English or Japanese or whatever. It used the same characters, but they functioned differently. Which was good because Pidge didn’t even know how to ask where the bathroom was in Galra. But patterns were present everywhere; it was how science worked. And she started to notice combinations of code that repeated or was held within other pieces, everything that was simply… grammar.
“Mmhmm,” she agreed belatedly to Shiro’s comment. Her fingers ran over the arrow keys, guiding her through the code for what felt like maybe half an hour, but it could have been longer (or shorter). It simply was how long until she felt like enough of an amateur to modify someone’s code and, probably, not kill anyone.
“So, huh, I think I could try to test things,” Pidge said slowly, “Just to make sure things do what I think they do. It shouldn’t make you hit yourself or anything… And I’m keeping a copy of the original…” She looked over, blinking a couple times. “That sound good?”
…
Pidge only seemed to be half aware of what he had said, so Shiro merely settled in, knowing better than to disturb her while she read. This wasn’t so bad, though. With his arm just plugged in, he could almost forget what they were doing. His anxiety began to ebb.
“Sure,” Shiro answered. He didn’t know exactly what that meant she was going to do, but, still, he reminded himself that he had trusted Pidge with this.
...
“Sweet,” Pidge grinned. “I’ve got a decent idea of what’s going on, so we’re just gonna trial and error to ‘that’s what that does.’ So you’ll need to move your hand, your arm, etc, just to y’know… confirm or disprove…” She waved one hand around. Fortunately her cable gave him some wiggle room (literally meant, to some degree).
She looked over at Matt, ready to color code the code; because what were they? Animals? It honestly made it easier to track what was going on. Pidge had already started color coding the grammar to an extent. It let her know what she was experimenting with. The whole process felt like being eight years old again. In a good way.
“Okay,” Pidge looked across at Shiro. “Lets start. Move your fingers…” The longer nothing happened, nothing happened differently, or humorously, the more systematically Pidge developed tasks for Shiro to do. Inevitably, changing code usually did something. Sometimes she deleted the code instead, to really make something act up. It was trial and error, truly. Slow but exciting, with laughs at every discovery. And excellent notetaking.
Her eyes felt bleary the longer they continued. The code was hardly the most efficient or elegant, but it was functional and generally bug free. Until Pidge introduced them. Rubbing her face, Pidge scrolled to the next segment of code on their list. “Okay,” her finger hovered over the delete key, “It’s wiggle time again.”
…
This, so far, had turned out to be comically easier than Shiro had been expecting. Mostly it was just a lot moving his hand and arm around in different ways, which, to be fair, he did that in his day-to-day life.
This time, though, was different.
When his fingers moved, a searing pain lit up the inside of his prosthetic and traveled up into what remained of his human arm and into the side of his neck. He was bent over it before he could even process the motion, left reeling from the magnitude of the pain. He tried to remember how to regulate his breathing.
...
Her fingers hit the undo button before Pidge’s brain registered what had happened. Her eyes ran from the screen to Shiro and back again a few times. “The quiznak,” she muttered, shaking her head to get out of it. Her chair screeched as the legs were shoved backward so Pidge could fumble around the table to reach Shiro’s side, unsure whether or not to touch him.
He was breathing, she determined (suddenly feeling unprepared for the lack of a defibrillator on the premises). “Shiro?” Pidge asked, uncertain of much more. “Shiro, does it still hurt? Is it still hurting you?” Because if it still was actively harming him, she really needed to get back to the computer and figure something out.
…
Shiro became aware of Pidge saying his name, and that helped him focus a little bit better, to bring himself mentally back into this space and away from the world-encompassing sensation of pain.
“I’m okay,” Shiro reassured her.
He worked on unclenching his metal fingers from where they were digging into his stomach. He was a bit wary, waiting to see if the pain was going to come singing back, but he didn’t. He straightened and placed his arm back on the table.
…
She stood next to Shiro even after he spoke. Pidge watched every move he made, eyeing his arm from his fingers up to his shoulder with great suspicion. “Mmhmm,” Pidge said slowly, as though the arm would seize up again in a moment. However, since it did not do so, she was able to move more slowly back around the table and avoid any additional bruises.
Carefully, as though even scrolling over the code could trigger something (an accidental press of a button could), Pidge focused on the code. Initially it did not look that different from a hundred other sections of code they had already tried out. But it was different. “Okay,” she spoke slowly, “How about… we come back to that one another time. Once we understand the rest better.” It certainly felt like a booby trap; removing it at least was one. It was like a bomb. Pidge had to understand it better to defuse it. But after this many hours, she was not at her best. So if they could simply let it… be?
…
“Okay,” Shiro agreed. He could have insisted that he could take some pain -- and he could. But she was right. There were other things to test, so many more things to learn, that it wasn’t necessary right now to keep pressing at the thing that hurt him.
Still, it made the back of his neck prickle with awareness again. He had gotten too relaxed as they set through their initial motions. Of course the Galra had put booby traps in his arm. He didn’t even know what they were necessarily for -- but of course they had, because they were Galra, and he had been a prisoner. They could have put them in simply for spite.
...
“On the plus side,” Pidge said, not looking up until her cursor was fully in the next area of code, “We know something they care about!” Which sadly did not encompass fine motor control over each finger or the near instantaneous reaction times between electrical signals coming from nerves to those used to move the arm or hand in remarkably precise ways. Perhaps they cared to some degree. If Shiro’s arm experienced significant lag, it would not have been useful to them (certainly not helpful in battle). But still, what needed electronic protections was something else. They may as well have flipped on a bat signal when she messed with that code. Now she knew it was something to fully understand. And change. Because it was Shiro’s arm, not theirs.
Her heart rate was still coming down, but the next time she pressed delete, Shiro did not double over in pain. So… back to being a good night.
…
Shiro settled back into the chair a little more easily as Pidge continued running through her tests. He couldn’t let himself fully relax, though, and he didn’t know if that made anything better or worse. It certainly wouldn’t help him in any meaningful way if that pain came ripping up through his body again. All he could do was endure.
Unfortunately for him, that wasn’t what happened when Pidge hit the next booby trap in his arm.
Before he could process what was happening, his arm snapped across the table. His fingers clawed at the air, careening toward Pidge. Shiro’s entire body lit up with panic and adrenaline. Even as the arm was moving toward Pidge, Shiro was trying to pull away, resulting in the near-agonizing sensation of what was left of his flesh arm pulling in a different direction from the mechanical one. He couldn’t regain motor control over it at all. The programming was overriding his connection to it.
...
Her eyes turned toward Shiro first, coming together in puzzlement that felt nearly total for a fraction of a second. Then they widened with understanding. Pidge turned away from Shiro long enough to reach toward one end of the table, where her bayard sat, round and at rest, abandoned for many hours. Pidge hadn’t expected to need it, but with a multiverse of opportunities, she always kept it close.
As soon as her hand grabbed it, the bayard transformed into its familiar triangular shape, two edges glowing green with energy. Pidge pushed the chair back, standing so as to get the best reach. Despite the twitching irregular movement, she punched the bayard forward, where it made strong contact with the side of Shiro’s forearm. Its metal conductivity took care of the rest. Pidge held the bayard against the prosthetic arm as best she could until she heard a sound from her computer suggesting it was restarting. There were only moments.
Pidge dropped her bayard beside the computer, where it transformed, to paste the original code back into that segment. Then she grabbed the bayard again, holding it ready, as she watched for signs of Shiro’s arm to return to attacking her.
…
Shiro didn’t think he had ever been so relieved to be in pain. The electricity from Pidge’s bayard lit up his arm, coupling with the pain of the pull against his stump.
Finally something in the arm gave, and he had control over it again. He felt near frantic, his mind beginning to fully process what had just happened -- that he had nearly harmed Pidge. He hadn’t thought -- He’d known that there might be some kind of traps in the arm, why hadn’t he thought that some of them might be made for someone who was tampering with the arm?
He pulled the metal arm sharply back in against himself, grabbing onto his own shirt as if that would make any difference in holding it there. He brushed aside the wires that Pidge was using to do the readings on his arm and then bent double over it, holding it in place even though it was no longer moving up of its own volition.
“Matt,” Shiro begged, “get her out of here.”
...
“No,” Pidge replied firmly.
She unplugged her laptop from the cable to Shiro’s arm and closed it with one hand. The other, still holding the weapon, lowered to her side. “I am fine; you are not,” she said. “And between the two of us, I will keep being fine, and you’ll get electrocuted - if it’s not okay,” Which, she was not about to let Shiro walk away from her, leave the house, and return to places with other people in them if she had any concerns the arm was a danger to her or anyone else. Because if it still attacked her when she was not threatening it, it could attack someone else, someone who would be hurt.
When she picked up the cable, Pidge briefly checked that the end was okay, the side that plugged into Shiro’s arm. That was the macgyvered limited edition connector. Then she looked back and forth between the boys and back at Shiro. “Now, will you let me look at your arm, or are you going to sit in time out?”
…
For the most part, Matt was just playing back-up to Pidge here. He was good with code, about as good as Pidge was, but she had proven herself over and over again to be the better problem solver of the two of them, and he was happy to let her take point, offering ideas where needed. He had ended up being mostly helpful in color-coding. He hadn’t had any super brilliant ideas to offer so far.
He was just back-up, again, when the arm attacked his sister. Before he had done anything more than take a step forward, not knowing precisely what he was going to do, she already had it under control. He came to a halt, arms still outstretched, hands empty. What had he been planning to do? Use his hands to pry Shiro’s fingers from around her neck?
His gaze snapped over to Shiro when he heard his name, and his stomach twisted. Shiro needed him to make the right decision here, the decision that would protect them all. He wanted to protect his sister, of course, but she didn’t really need his protection, didn’t need to be kicked out of the room like a child while the adults worked. He had never treated her that way, and it didn’t feel right to start now, especially when she had just proven she was perfectly capable of defending herself. And especially when he was fairly certain she was the key to figuring out the arm. Shiro didn’t want to hurt her, but he needed her help. Matt needed her too.
“No,” Matt answered, echoing his sister. “We need her, Shiro. For the code and for… the booby traps. She handled that better than I would have.”
--
Shiro hadn’t honestly expected them not to listen to him, and when they both protested his request, his mind stalled out, uncertain what to do.
He regretted this so much. He didn’t know what there was to be done now, because he didn’t want Pidge (or really anyone) touching him again, but he also understood that they couldn’t just leave it alone now. He wished it was just gone. That was what he really wanted. To do that cleanly, though, that required continuing digging through the code. He wondered, belatedly, if there was a messy, manual to have it done, to just cut the fucking thing off.
If options right now were to let Pidge continue working or just remain where he was, he would take the second. He didn’t right himself from where he was still leaned over his prosthetic.
…
Matt backed Pidge up, which was what she expected. It fit right. But Shiro… Shiro hadn’t moved at all, nor said anything in response. He looked like a frightened dog. Also perhaps like Bae Bae curling his tail between his legs, caught having done something wrong. They were not comforting thoughts (though Pidge had been missing Bae Bae, now that Matt and she were in their old house).
Unfortunately, she doubted she could rub that one spot behind Shiro’s ear and make everything better. So Pidge stayed frozen too, for a moment longer. The arm she could figure out. She could fix. But Shiro? People weren’t that easy.
“We’ve worked on it for hours,” Pidge said. Hours and hours, honestly. They could likely all use sleep, a break. But she also didn’t feel comfortable letting Shiro anywhere on his own. Not like that. “It’s enough for a day’s work,” she decided aloud. “Lets just have something to eat…” Or - or what? Pidge didn’t know how to finish that sentence. All her brain power was still running over code. It seemed to reflect off the back of her glasses.
…
Matt watched Shiro, guilt curling in his gut. He knew how deeply Shiro’s fears and insecurities ran when it came to his arm and everything else the Galra had done or made him do. He remembered his first few months with the rebels, when he’d tried to convince them to go back to the camps and save the prisoners there, only to be talked out of it again and again - rightly so, probably, because they didn’t have the resources to take on all the Galra’s monsters and break their prisoners out, and it would just end in all of them getting killed. But he’d wanted so badly to go back and save his friend, or at least to find out what had happened to him, because the not knowing had been so hard to bear.
And looking at Shiro now, he felt like his friend was still stuck there. Physically he was out of the Galra arena, but he had Galra tech attached to him, an arm which operated under its own power and against his will. Shiro probably hadn’t anticipated that the hand would actually try to attack them, but now he knew that it could, and without warning. Probably wouldn’t do it at a time when they weren’t messing with the code, but there was no way of really knowing. Matt couldn’t imagine how heavy a burden that knowledge was to bear, and Shiro had already been burdened.
He stepped forward slowly, planning to move to Shiro’s side, and then paused after only two steps, just at the edge of arm’s reach. He wasn’t scared of the arm, but he knew Shiro was, and didn’t want to make this worse. He bent down a little so that he was closer to Shiro’s eye-level.
“We’re gonna get you out of this, Shiro,” he said quietly. “We can… take more precautions, if that’d make you feel more comfortable. Disable the arm with electricity or put a solid handcuff on it, or something.” He almost made a joke about that being kinky, but stopped himself just in time. “We can do that now, even though we’re stopping for the night. If that’s something you want. Or whatever you need to handle this until we can actually do something about it.”
--
Shiro was aware of Matt’s movements around him, and he tensed up more, unable to help himself. He had trusted Matt to protect Pidge above all else, and the same of Pidge toward Matt, but he realized that they also trusted him too much. They knew he didn’t want to hurt them, but he suspected that they both believed that tech was tech.
And that just wasn’t true.
If Pidge had designed and made this arm for him, it would be radically different than what was attached to his body right now. The intent would be all different. As it was now, he had this object that was both part of him and not. He didn’t want it, but he had to bear responsibility for it.
He internally flinched at the idea of a handcuff, because he had been cuffed down to a lot of slabs in the recent past. But he knew that worked, so he knew that was one of the things that had to happen.
“Yeah, okay,” Shiro said.
…
Pidge frowned, unable to simply keep her thoughts to herself. The situation felt off, felt wrong, and she still didn’t like the way Shiro was standing. But Matt was better with people, and the two of them were close in a different way than she had come to know Shiro. So while there was likely something helpful she could do, Pidge simply didn’t know what it was.
But she neither wanted to nor had handcuffs to hold Shiro down anywhere with. Further, nothing in the house was particularly outstanding to her as a steady place to handcuff Shiro to. So all in all, none of that tonight. Which meant no more work on the arm. Which she was fine with, all things considered.
So Pidge nodded and ducked into the kitchen. Quickly, because it was an easy way to feed herself when her mom had been too distracted by grief, she toasted some bread and pulled out peanut butter and jelly. It was filling.
She carried two plates in, one for Shiro and one for her and Matt. Still keeping some distance (it felt like she was the big bad thing Shiro pulled away from, even though she knew he was afraid to hurt her), Pidge set his plate a few feet away from him at the table and retreated to the other end. The bayard was within arm’s reach, again, but she looked between the boys, unsure of what else to do.
…
Matt let out a breath. He didn’t know how helpful that suggestion really was - he didn’t like the idea of having to lock Shiro’s arm down - but at least Shiro had agreed to continue. That meant something, at least.
“Okay,” he said. He glanced back at Pidge, but she had already headed toward the kitchen. “Let’s just stop for today, then. Try to relax.” He really wanted to pat Shiro on the shoulder, or hug him, but he had seen the way Shiro flinched when he came closer. “We can try again tomorrow.”
He glanced back when Pidge came back from the kitchen holding sandwiches, and smiled at her. He reached for one. “Thanks, Katie.”
--
Shiro didn’t really want to resume tomorrow, but it felt like too much effort to argue. And now that they had started, he knew it was dangerous to stop. They had started to wake up things in his arm, and Shiro didn’t know if it was safe even when they weren’t studying the code. It was a chilling thought, but he reminded himself that Pidge had been on guard and ready with her bayard before either he or Matt had been able to do anything. She was capable of keeping them safe while he was here.
And after that, he could just retreat to his own place and make sure to keep away from the others until Pidge and Matt were a little more certain they understood the arm.
While Pidge was out of the room, Shiro tried to use the time to collect himself a little further. He unclenched his metal fingers and forced himself to sit up properly. He flexed his hand experimentally, but the arm behaved exactly as it should, no indication that it had acted on its own -- other than the deep ache that now resonated in the human part of his upper arm. He rolled his sleeve up a little, assessing if he could see any visible damage and then rolled his shoulder. It hurt, but he didn’t think it was anything serious.
He also smiled faintly when he saw Pidge reappear with the sandwiches.
“Thank you, Pidge,” Shiro said, echoing Matt.
...
Peanut butter was a wonderful thing on its own, lacking any context, but in this situation, where no one had particularly right words, the way it glued her mouth shut felt like a gift, a bonus. And Pidge suspected it might feel good to Shiro and Matt too, especially Shiro. The excuse not to talk was good. Various attempts at reassuring words ran through her thoughts (that code only triggers when something threatens it, your arm is no threat to me, I can totally beat you up among them), but none of them sounded good, even to her.
Instead, Pidge settled on something just as honest but that came from her feelings, not a wildly off base guess at Shiro’s. “I would feel better if you stayed the night here,” she said after a period of quiet. “I can booby trap my door if that makes it feel safer.” Though, again, something that would hurt him more, if it came down to it. Still, Pidge grasped that he would much rather be in pain than give her a papercut.
…
The food did help. They had been at it for awhile, and now that the adrenaline from that moment of panic was wearing off, a quiet tiredness was permeating Shiro’s body.
“No, that’s all right,” Shiro answered. “I’d rather head back to my own place.”
He just didn’t like having to be this vulnerable in front of any of the paladins -- not that it hadn’t happened before. It would certainly happen again, and Shiro knew that any of them would support him with everything they had, but Shiro had greatly needed his facade to power through being the leader of Voltron. Any slip in it felt dangerous.
...
Pidge frowned again. They couldn’t keep him there, but Pidge didn’t like Shiro pulling away from them, away from her. It frustrated her that he felt the need to protect her when she didn’t need his protection. Admittedly she had also been annoyed a few times he had protected her that she had needed it. But this felt different, not one of those times. Why didn’t he believe in her?
Still, none of that felt right to say. Pidge had tried, and she had failed, on most counts. So she gave up for the time being. Other than protecting herself, everything since the arm attacked felt like the wrong thing. There were too many wrong choices. His felt like one too. But… ??? “Oh… kay,” Pidge said.
…
Matt glanced at Pidge when Shiro said he wanted to leave. Matt also wanted him to stay, but he couldn’t think of any way to convince him. The only thing he could think of was that the arm might be unpredictable after they’d messed with it, but that was probably the very reason that Shiro wanted to leave. So that he would be the only one who had to deal with it.
“Okay,” he said. “On one condition. You have to tell us right away if you notice any differences in the arm after what we did today. Even the very smallest thing.”
--
“Yes, sir,” Shiro said, mock saluting Matt with his human hand, if only to infuse a little bit of levity. It was a reasonable contingent, though, and one that Shiro didn’t mind listening to if it meant that he wasn’t going to be left staring at the Holts’ ceiling all night wondering how much of a danger he was to them.
…
“Don’t be a stranger,” Pidge said blearily, half joking but honestly not entirely joking, not really. For all they had figured out (and they had! The color coding alone had done such a good job at pattern recognition that the Galra coding language and style was making much more sense), the evening felt like a failure. They had only made things worse, and Pidge didn’t know if Shiro would give them the chance to make it better.
But it was better, this tired, not to pick too long too hard at that bone.
…
Matt grinned when Shiro saluted him. It was a real grin, albeit a tired one. If Shiro could joke around, he felt they could get through this. He raised his hand and saluted Shiro right back.
And then he asked, “You want me to walk you home?”
He almost said us, but he knew that it was different for Shiro to be around Matt than it was for him to be around Pidge. He didn’t entirely understand what that difference was, but he knew it was there. And it was especially poignant now when Shiro’s arm had just attacked Pidge and Shiro had wanted her out of the room.
--
Shiro’s eyes lingered on Pidge when she answered. He had a feeling that she was taking his request to have her removed from the room personally. And it wasn’t that. He knew that she could hold her own. She was the youngest of the team, but when it came to tech, she whipped them all soundly, and had never been one to need to be rescued from the middle of the fight.
It was just that the arm had attacked her. He knew she could fend it off, but he didn’t want her to have to do that in the first place. Really, that moment had been so much about his own vulnerability, about his fear of Pidge seeing behind his facade. He still felt vulnerable even now.
“You did good tonight, Pidge,” Shiro said seriously, hoping that would at least open the door for him to let her feel better. None of this had been her fault, and she’d done everything she’d promised and more.
“That’s fine,” Shiro said to Matt.
…
Pidge nodded and waved good night. But she didn’t get up to escort them out of the room, much less out the door. Matt was safe, on his own or with Shiro, she was sure of it. So she stayed sitting there a little longer, not reopening the laptop again but resting her head on her arms for a bit. She would make sure to move before Matt came back, but that was all.
…
Shiro hesitated at the sight of Pidge, but he didn’t know what else to say to make her feel better at the moment, honestly. He felt that they maybe both needed a little time.
As soon as they were outside and a few feet away from the house, Shiro turned to Matt.
“Is she okay?” he asked.
...
Matt patted Pidge on the shoulder before following Shiro outside. He walked beside his friend in silence, giving him a little bit of space between them while trying to make it seem like he wasn’t doing it. He would have been okay with walking the whole way in silence - he really just wanted to make sure Shiro got home okay.
He was surprised when Shiro turned to him and spoke so quickly. “Probably,” he said, after a beat. “I’ll check in with her when I get home.”
--
“Okay,” Shiro said. He was glad that Matt was here for Pidge -- and the same, that Pidge was here for Matt. But Shiro couldn’t help but feel a little responsible for how Pidge had been feeling when they had left behind the house, and Shiro wasn’t exactly sure how to make her feel better. That was hard for him. He rarely was able to fix things for his paladins, but he was used to being able to comfort them.
…
“She’ll be okay,” Matt said. “I can almost guarantee you, you’re taking this harder than she is.”
He watched Shiro, unsure if that was helpful or not. He knew that Shiro had a lot of his demons to struggle with here. He wished he could do something more about it. But probably the best thing he could do was precisely what he was doing: figure out how the arm worked, and how to do something about it. Then they could neutralize it, or maybe even get rid of it, so that Shiro could literally leave some part of his Galra experience behind him at last.
--
“I don’t doubt it,” Shiro answered with a self-deprecating smile. Pidge had barely been fussed when she’d had to wield her bayard. Still. He couldn’t feel that there was something about his reaction to the event that had let Pidge down in some way that he couldn’t fully discern.
…
Matt smiled back at him, a little wryly. He reached out, tentatively, giving Shiro lots of room to stop him or flinch away before he put a hand on his shoulder. “You and her will be okay too. You’ll figure it out.”
He paused, then added, “Right now, I think you should concentrate on you. I know that’s not easy for you-” he gave Shiro a more genuine smile at this- “because you’re the strong, selfless hero type, but try anyway.”
--
Shiro didn’t pull away from Matt when Matt reached out this time. Part of it was purposeful, but he also knew that he would glean some comfort from it.
He was a bit taken by the advice. He didn’t know why. Perhaps it was because it was unlikely that anyone else would give it to him so directly -- perhaps Keith. From Allura, it would have felt different, and he didn’t know if the other Voltron members would have said that to him at all. It was both a compliment and a criticism at once, and Shiro didn’t know how to answer, so he just nodded.
--
He didn’t flinch away, so Matt put his hand warmly on Shiro’s shoulder and squeezed it gently. He watched Shiro’s face as he absorbed the advice, and was relieved when he nodded.