Disclaimer: WEP owns Voltron. Song arranged by Wench Work.
Traditions
In all his many years on Arus, Lance could not recall that it had ever snowed upon the eve of the new year. It might storm for the entire week before—indeed, one year, a blizzard had raged that long—but on that day, the clouds would always break before sunset, and by moonrise, the skies would be sharp and cold and clear.
When the midnight bells pealed from the kirk in the village below, you could hear them from anywhere in the castle just as plainly as if you were sitting in a pew. It was a sound that never failed to make his heart fill to overflowing, or make his gut clench with feeling.
But it was not something he was looking forward to tonight. This time, the ending of the old was not accompanied by the sense of new beginnings.
Not when the doctors were shaking their heads in amazement that Hunk had managed to linger this long. Not when he was living through the utter hell of watching his friend die by inches.
Every night, those learned men and women cautioned them not to get their hopes up, that the chances were slim that Hunk would live to see another day. But he had, somehow; had woken to more sunrises than they had dreamed. And Lance had begun to think that maybe he’d make it. He’d bounced back before, hadn’t he?
But something—perhaps the way Hunk’s breaths sounded more labored than they had just yesterday?—convinced him that tonight, they were right after all.
It was not a conclusion that he liked, by any means. In fact, it was probably why he’d been in Hunk’s sickroom so much less today than he had in prior days.
And let’s not forget a healthy sense of guilt, Lance reminded himself in a tone filled with self-loathing. Can we say, “It’s all my fault”?
I knew we couldn’t.
He shifted slightly in the uncomfortable chair, trying to find a position that didn’t make his bones ache without waking Hunk. He slept the fitful doze of the terminally ill, the pain or just the desire to be aware of his final moments forcing him awake at short intervals.
Despite Lance’s effort to be quiet, the chair protested his movement with a faint creak, and Hunk’s eyes opened. Immediately, Lance plastered on the small fake smile that he felt like he’d worn forever. “Hey there.”
Hunk blinked up at him and smiled brightly in return. Lance could see him visibly gathering strength, and then he whispered, “Hey yourself.”
He thought he’d gotten used to it, he really had, but still Lance found himself having to force away tears at the raspy sound. Hunk’s lungs and throat had been destroyed, ravaged by the cancer that left him wasted and looking far too small in his bed. That hoarse whisper was as loud as he could speak.
Lance checked himself before saying anything further; Hunk was trying to speak again. After a painful moment, he got out, “Not . . . with the others?”
“Nah. Hanging with you will be more fun, anyway.” He grinned, trusting that his grief would be well hidden behind his usual humor.
Hunk gave the dry rustling sound that passed for his laugh nowadays. “You think?”
“Sure. Why not?”
Hunk started to chuckle again, but was wracked by a short, violent coughing spasm.
Lance stood and took a step toward the bed, to hit the call plate, but Hunk shook his head, asking him not to, and he could do nothing but watch as the other struggled to recover. Something must have shown in his face, however—doubt or fear or the heartache he had tried to hide—because Hunk smiled up at him again. It was not the same, not filled with the happiness he felt at having a friend close by, but somehow softer, pulling an answering smile—sincere, this time—out of him.
Hunk’s hand was still huge and blunt as he reached out, and if he could have ignored the way it trembled in the air, the hospital room around them, Lance would have felt that nothing had changed at all . . .
But when he grasped it, the crushing strength that he expected wasn’t there, and he swallowed, looking at Hunk’s thin face, and knowing.
“I won’t say . . . don’t be sad,” Hunk got out, looking at Lance, giving him that comforting little smile. “It’s gonna happen. Just . . .” And here he tried to squeeze Lance’s hand, but he hadn’t enough vigor to apply any pressure; his fingers twitched against Lance’s and that was all. “Don’t blame yourself. I told you . . . it’s not your fault.” He closed his eyes, taking slow, shallow breaths.
“Hunk . . .” He stopped, hearing his voice quaver. I’m not ready for you to go! he thought. I . . .
“Lance. It’s ok.” He moved his fingers again in that not-squeeze. “Sit with me . . . please.”
Until it happens. Until I’m gone. The unspoken words hovered in the air between them.
I chose this. I chose to be here tonight. Grow up and face it, Lance told himself firmly. Reluctantly, he released Hunk’s hand, lowering it to the blanket, and then resumed his seat.
Hunk had closed his eyes again, and was silent but for his rough breaths. Before Lance could convince himself that Hunk had drifted off to sleep, he heard that harsh whisper. “. . . time is it?”
Surprised by the question, Lance looked at the clock above the bed. “About half past eleven. Why?”
“I’ll make it,” he croaked, his satisfaction clear in his sudden grin.
“Make it?”
“Yeah. I want to hear the song.”
Lance smiled wryly. The song. Allura picked up on some of the oddest Earth customs—her intention of introducing rabbits into the Arusian vernal equinox festival had not gone at all well—but for the celebration of the new year, she had chosen well.
The team’s first Christmas on Arus had been a very cheerless one. In their own way, each of the five of them had been mourning that they could not spend time with their families, or what remained of them.
After the day, despite the pseudo-gaiety with which they had exchanged gifts among themselves, the depressing atmosphere had only grown worse. No doubt it would have continued to go down hill had Lance not filched a keg of Arusian brew from the cellars beneath the castle kitchens.
While at first their spirits had been lifted, the first flush of drink had soon faded and the closer it came to midnight, the more maudlin they had become. When Allura had finally found them, just after the bells had rung the new year, Pidge and Lance had been sobbing on each other’s shoulders, while Keith, Sven and Hunk were rendering a version of Auld Lang Syne that was not only dirge-like, but sadly out of key.
The next day, after they’d sobered up, Allura had asked that they sing “that song” again. When they’d looked at each other, completely befuddled, she’d cleared her throat and sung, “Frold la-anzine, m’dear . . .”
With a bit of prompting, and some shuffling of feet, Sven had sung the full version, and on key this time. Later, Pidge had managed to find an old recording of the air, violins and bagpipes lilting hauntingly, for accompaniment, and they’d all sung it once more.
The following year, rather than getting drunk in the cellar, they had stood in the castle courtyard and sung as the bells caroled at midnight. It had only been the four of them and Allura; Sven had been lost early that spring.
And so it had become a ritual, a tradition. The beginning of the new year was an important holiday on Arus. The existence of an Earth song—and an old song at that—that spoke of remembering the past while still looking forward must have indicated to Allura that it was just as significant to her pilots. So it was that Auld Lang Syne replaced the time-honored Arusian song.
Realizing that he hadn’t been aware of Hunk’s breathing for some minutes, Lance came out of his reminiscences with a start. But no, he’d just grown more used to the sound of it. Hunk was sleeping once more, and he sank back into his chair in something like relief.
Even asleep, Hunk’s face was taut with pain, as if unconsciousness was not the escape it ought to have been. Lance frowned. It looks familiar . . . and somehow, it’s all wrong . . . He shouldn’t have to go through this. No one should . . .
Then he remembered where he’d seen that same look, that kind of suffering-without-end, and he closed his eyes. Sven. And he discovered that there are hundreds of different kinds of guilt.
Sven had never been strong after his trials on Doom. He had had so much of his vitality sucked out of him by that harsh planet that it should not have been a great surprise that he died not too long after his 45th birthday. But it was, really. It always was. It had been painful, having his friend ripped away again; Lance had even thought that maybe it wasn’t real. Throughout the long, nearly silent trip to Pollux, he had wondered about it in the back of his mind. Not a joke, but . . . you know, since Sven had come back from the dead once before . . .
But that time, it had been all too real. He hadn’t truly believed it, hadn’t wanted to believe it, until he saw Sven lying in his casket, pale and cold and waxen and looking far older than any man his age had a right. His dark hair had gone completely grey, and the lines carved in his face, around his mouth and eyes, spoke of deep pain long endured. Surely, he thought, stunned again, surely he hadn’t looked like this when we saw him a few months ago? Then, remembering, he realized with a start that it had been nearly a year since he’d seen Sven, and the white light of brutal honesty laid bare the fact that the man had been failing even then.
But the great shock had been when Keith died not ten years after Sven.
Unlike Sven, there had been no indication that he’d been slowing down. Quite the contrary, Keith still attacked every day as if Lotor was going to return to lay waste to Arus and he was all that stood in the Prince’s way. At breakfast one morning, Keith simply collapsed across the table, coughing up blood. Within a day, he was dead.
Her eyes distant and blank in shock, Allura ordered an autopsy. It did not take long to discover that Keith’s entire body was riddled with an insidious cancer, the cause of which was unknown.
After hearing that, Lance retreated to his room. There, safe behind his locked door, he cursed and threw things, sobbing and berating himself by turns, and ignoring everything that went on outside. Finally worn out, he sat on the floor and stared blindly at the wall. It was nearly an entire day before Allura found the correct codes to override the locking mechanism.
“It’s my fault, Princess,” he muttered, over and over. “I’m his best friend, and I didn’t even notice he was sick . . .” She started to cry at that, and at her tears, so did he.
The source of Keith’s cancer had been a complete mystery to the doctors for many months. Then Hunk had started to complain of great fatigue, and Allura of ferocious headaches. Their check-ups had revealed the very same disease that had killed Keith; Hunk’s was advanced, while Allura’s was still in the early stages.
The very idea that the Lions had emitted harmful radiation had never occurred to any of them.
Quite suddenly, the doctors were full of hypotheses; that the radiation in Black Lion was much more concentrated, that it had siphoned off power—and emissions—from the other Lions, that Keith’s very nature— driven to protect others—had fostered the illness within him, that the stress he put himself under had caused it to progress far more rapidly than it ought.
Lance and Pidge had been scanned for the cancer as well, but showed no signs, which leant credence to the idea that Black Lion had somehow drawn the radiation that Red and Green produced into itself. Lance’s guilt had deepened substantially after that.
As soon as Allura and Hunk were diagnosed, their treatment started, but though Allura responded well, Hunk did not. Several years of treatment and many, many operations later, he was pronounced cancer-free, but he’d lost much of both his larynx and lung tissue.
Through it all, though, he’d never lost his big grin or good nature. Even though he caught pneumonia because of me . . .
Hunk stirred, and Lance pulled himself back to the present again, trying to shove his remorse down once more.
Hunk blinked and turned to Lance a bit anxiously. “Did I miss it?”
Lance shot a glance at the clock. Slightly more than five minutes until midnight. “No, but it’s almost time.”
Hunk nodded, and relaxed slightly. “You sure . . . you’re not going to sing?”
Lance rolled his eyes as if amused. “I told you that I’d have more fun hanging out with you. It’s friggin’ cold outside.” Then he shrugged. “And I don’t sing so well anyway . . .”
“Better than me.”
He snorted. “Everyone sings better than you. Even when he was so drunk he couldn’t stand up, Sven still sung better than you.” His breath hitched when he realized what he had said. I didn’t mean . . .
But Hunk just chuckled rustily. “It never took much.” After a short rest to recover some strength, he spoke again. “Open the window,” he ordered in that harsh whisper.
Lance leaned back in his chair, shaking his head and folding his arms to make his point. “No way. I’m not letting all that cold air in . . .”
“It can’t hurt me now.” He closed his eyes with a soft sigh.
Lance flinched at the words, but said nothing.
Turning back, Hunk smiled at him gently. “I can’t hear it with the window closed,” he reminded Lance. Then his eyes took on a faraway cast. “I want to hear it echoing against the stars . . . Just like we always did . . .”
Lance bit his lip, his resolve wavering.
“Please, Lance.”
His eyes burning, he stood stiffly and did as Hunk asked. Despite the heavy sweater he wore, the chill of the wind cut through him in an instant, making him gasp. He started to close the open pane immediately, but the sound of dissent from the bed—barely audible just a few steps away—stopped him.
There was no way he could deny Hunk’s request, even though he knew it could only hasten the end. He left the window open and stood near it, trying to angle it so that the breeze blew somewhere other than on the bed.
He was just in time. As soon as he stopped fiddling with the window, he could hear the familiar old air—the same one Pidge had found a lifetime ago—floating up from the courtyard.
It would be just Pidge and Allura singing this year. While they weren’t alone—Allura’s children and grandchildren were also gathered in the courtyard—only they two, the former pilot and the former princess, would sing.
Because that was the tradition; the song had been brought by the Earth pilots. Lance wondered if it would lapse once he and Pidge and Allura were all dead. But then Allura’s sweet soprano rang out through the clear night, and he shoved all such thoughts aside.
They were too much in his mind recently, anyway, and he didn’t enjoy thinking them.
Then Pidge’s voice wrapped around Allura’s through the chorus, his light tenor meshing into the words beautifully. Lance gaped slightly. The song had never sounded so good to his ears.
Allura’s voice fell away, and Pidge sang on by himself, each word filled with emotion.
But he wasn’t really singing alone.
Lance turned his head as the quiet sound from behind him slowly wormed its way into his consciousness. He glanced over his shoulder, and this time he could not stop the tears. Hunk’s eyes were closed, but he was singing along with Pidge, just barely making more noise than the movement of lips alone.
In spite of the fact he couldn’t be outside, in spite of the fact that he would not leave the bed again, he was still carrying on the tradition.
He stood in shock through the chorus that followed, Allura’s voice twined again with Pidge’s, just staring at Hunk. The sounds grew steadily softer. Finally, he could no longer hear that Hunk was even breathing, but the minute rise and fall of the coverlet stilled his panic. Hunk was looking at him now, eyes brown and liquid and . . . expectant.
Lance cleared his throat. His voice was thin and reedy, not nearly as strong as it had once been, but he lifted it nonetheless. He could do nothing else, because of the way Hunk was looking at him. As the first notes rolled from his tongue, he saw Hunk close his eyes, his faint smile growing wider.
He wondered for a second what the other two would say. He’d told them—adamantly!—that he wasn’t going to do it this year, his heart just wasn’t in it.
I guess my heart’s in it after all . . .
Then he abandoned those thoughts, and sang. Because Hunk could not sing for himself, he sang for him.
The clock struck midnight. Lance closed his eyes, smiling sadly. Allura had timed it perfectly. After all these years, he thought, it’s about time, too . . .
Everything fell away but the music and the words, and he was compelled to complete the song. After a night filled with remembering and regret, he could do nothing else. Even though it seemed that the room was much more quiet than it ought . . .
The voices from the courtyard below rose ever so slightly, as Allura and Pidge poured more emotion into their song. Lance, on the other hand, let his drop to nearly a whisper, his ears straining . . .
The final notes drifted away and out the window, to mingle with the cold night air. Lance didn’t want to open his eyes; he just wanted to let this moment linger as long as it could.
Opening his eyes again would return him to reality, and for just this brief instant, he could live in the past, and the five of them could be young and strong and alive again . . .
But the silence weighed heavily on his ears, silence through which he could only hear his own drawing of breath. He began to tremble, and tears began to trickle down his cheeks in earnest. He still did not look toward the bed.
It was a few moments more before the icy wind down the back of his neck forced him to move, to shut the window. He paused, his hand on the latch, for another instant before turning to the bed.
Hunk was still smiling, eyes closed. His frail hands rested limply on the coverlet, the arthritic fingers curled slightly. But the withered chest no longer rose and fell, and Lance had to accept that he was gone.
He crossed to the bed, and ran his hand through Hunk’s silvered hair. His joints twinged painfully as he bent to press a light kiss to a sunken cheek, the skin creased and pale. “You be sure to help Keith and Sven hold places for the rest of us,” he whispered fiercely. “You be sure . . .” His voice broke, and he stopped.
Then he straightened and wiped his cheeks. He still had to tell Allura and Pidge, to endure their tears and grief, even though they had expected it as much as he.
When he opened the door, he nearly collided with the doctor that had pulled the night shift. He blinked for a moment, trying to hide his tears. But she put a hand on his arm and gave him a sad smile. “His monitors just started beeping at my station,” she said quietly. “He’s gone?”
Swallowing hard, Lance nodded.
She squeezed his arm and released him. “I’m sorry.” Then she disappeared inside the room and closed the door behind her.
He collapsed against the wall by the door, letting his misery wash over him. And suddenly, it struck him. I never told him I loved him . . . His shame was almost too much to bear then, to think that he’d lost yet another friend without telling him how much he meant to him. Sven and Keith and now Hunk . . . He sobbed, turning his face into the wall, wishing, hoping beyond hope that there was a way to lessen the immensity of this pain.
His breath caught, and he wrapped his arms around his middle, recalling the way Hunk had smiled, as if he were giving it to him. Maybe . . . I hope he did know.
It didn’t help him then, as Allura and Pidge flew down the corridor toward him. But it might later.
***
January 11, 2004
Happy belated birthday, Quill!