The boys had laid a huge blanket higher up on the banks of the lake, among a thick patch of spring snowdrops that wafted their intoxicating scent over them. Above them, the pristine blue of the Arussian sky was filled with towering clouds, like huge puffs of newly picked cotton, and the sun’s gentle warmth smiled down upon them like a blessing.

It was one of those idyllic afternoons that sometimes almost deceived Allura into thinking that there was nothing to worry about, that her world was actually at peace. Almost – but not quite. For the moment, though, she was more than content to bask in the golden sunlight and drink in the afternoon breeze, allowing all to fill her being and heal her soul.

Nanny had prepared a huge picnic lunch for them and had generously conceded not to chaperone the Princess today, in exchange for the promise that Allura would not swim in the lake with the boys this time. It was a major concession that she had allowed Allura to go out of the Castle at all, no matter how near it was. The early spring weather was pleasant, but the water in the lake was still too brisk – and the Princess had just come from a cold. But today all of them were getting a well-deserved break – even workaholic Captain Keith, whom Coran had threatened to throw forcibly out of the Castle if he didn’t comply with the order to get some much needed R&R.

Lunch had just been packed away and the blanket just cleared, and the boys had eagerly struck out towards Blue Lion sitting just off the shore as soon as everything was put in order. They were all eager to once again best each other in an impromptu diving competition that they always engaged in whenever they could.

The Princess was left sitting on the blanket watching after them, with Keith, who had opt to remain ashore with her, now lying supine beside her and reading a book. That he had remained was a fact that slightly confused her but also secretly filled her with a subtle sort of happiness, warming her more effectively than the sunbeams dancing on her hair.

She laughed in delight as she watched Hunk and Pidge execute a cannonball dive together, launching themselves from the top of the Blue Lion with a loud, “Geronimo!” Lance was close behind them, jumping off the Lion even before the other two had splashed ignominiously into the water, his body straight as a spear and knifing through the water with barely a splash. From her perch on the blanket, she couldn’t make out the jibes that the three threw at each other as they surfaced, but considering the sudden burst of agitated war-like splashing they directed toward one another, she was sure they had been biting and affectionately insulting – as usual.

Allura sighed wistfully, wishing she could have been splashing along with them, then turned her eyes on the one member of the team who had stayed.

Keith had his head pillowed on one of his arms, the other hand grasping the book by the spine and raising it above his face as he read. His shirt was off, but his red pants kept him modest, one barefoot ankle propped on top of one of his raised knees. His face was shadowed by his book, but she could imagine the intense look on his face as he read, his brow furrowing and his soft generous lips put out in a subtle pout of concentration.

Keith. He was still a mystery to her, always had been. She knew first-hand of his courage, his strength, his intensity, his fierce loyalties – and of his gentleness, his protectiveness, and his kind heart. But even as she appreciated his efforts to slowly open up to her the same way that she had opened up to him, she knew that many details of his past life remained hidden to her. She was only given small revealed in glimpses of this in Lance’s stories about their days in school together and Keith’s own stilted words and actions. Even then, there was still so much she wanted to know about him…

She sighed again, turning away from him and hugging her knees towards her chest. She lay her chin upon them and trained her gaze back towards the others frolicking in the water. Maybe it was better this way. No matter how much she wished otherwise, he was not here to stay. None of them were.

And even with things being the way they were, it would already be difficult enough to let him go.

“Is it just me, or has the wind picked up a bit in this area of the shore?” a teasing voice inquired from beside her. She turned her head towards it, blinking in slight bemusement.

Keith had closed the book he was reading and had pulled himself up, knees raised to his wide, well-defined chest in the same manner that she sat. His earnest dark eyes regarded her with friendly curiosity tinged with concern. “I thought I heard you sigh once too often. Are you feeling okay?”

That was Keith for you. She gave him a bright smile, touched by his concern. “Of course I’m fine,” she said with a small nod. “I was just… thinking.” She took her turn in giving him a frank perusal, then tipped her head to one side towards the lake, eyes twinkling with lively curiosity of her own. “So, how come you’re not out there, swimming with the rest of the team anyway? You’re almost always the first one in.”

Keith looked nonplussed for a moment then recovered quickly, shrugging and gesturing towards the book he had laid down on the picnic blanket beside him. He leaned back, letting his arms support his weight as he regarded her. “Um… because I couldn’t put my book down?” he offered with a tentative grin, the dark eyes meeting hers hopeful and pleading at the same time.

He looked the same way Cheddar did when the mouse was caught sniffing at the cheese in Nanny’s pantry.

Allura frowned suspiciously at his trepidation, then noted the reason for it in the laser gun and the transmitter hidden discreetly just beside his hip. She raised her eyebrows at him then gestured towards the laser and the transmitter.

“If my memory serves me right, you are supposed to be off-duty right now, Captain,” she said sweetly, injecting just the right amount of reproach in her lilting voice. She tucked a stray strand of golden hair that had escaped her bun behind her ear. “And being completely off-duty means leaving off your mother-hen syndrome for a few hours.” She gestured towards the others swimming in the lake. “Go on and swim, Captain, before I radio Coran to send down some guards throw you in.”

He looked rather disgruntled and a slight blush lit his cheeks, but he held his ground. “I don’t think Nanny will take very well to seeing you all alone up here while all of us were meters away from you in the water,” he began cautiously, thrusting one hand through his hair in a boyishly nervous gesture, then stopped when Allura shot him a scowl.

“This isn’t about me not being able to take care of myself again, is it?” she countered, her tone just a tad menacing. “We’ve been over this so many times. Do I have to tell you again that I don’t need any protection?”

He shook his head with a soft groan. “I just knew you’d take it that way,” he sighed, rubbing the back of his neck wearily. She glared at him, furious blue eyes smoldering with ire, and he tried to placate her with frantic gestures of his hands. “Wait, wait, wait – it isn’t about that. I just wanted to be on stand-by in case Coran needed us at the Castle…” He was about to say more, but she cut him off.

“Well, whatever it really is, I don’t want to hear about it,” she interrupted stiffly, shifting position and turning her back towards him. She reached beside her to pluck a snowdrop and twirled it in her hand before tossing it to him with a careless, dismissive wave of her hand. “I give you permission to stop hovering over me – and I promise that Nanny won’t hold you accountable if anything happens,” she said coolly, slipping into Princess mode in order to hide her wounded pride. And here she thought… she snorted softly to herself, hugging her knees even closer and laying her chin on them, refusing to give him another glance.

“I do not hover!” Keith exclaimed, his tone of shocked affront enough to prick her lively sense of humor. She turned back towards him, hiding her smile under the cover of her hand and found him glaring at her, the snowdrop’s stem as good as crushed in his tightly clenched fist.

“Unfortunately for you, Your Highness, you’re stuck with me the whole afternoon, so try to like it – because you don’t really have a choice about it,” he went on hotly, waving the flower in front of her nose in irritation. It was all she could do not to laugh. “Since I’ve been forced to go off-duty, as you yourself have already said, I can do whatever I damn well please with my afternoon.”

She coolly raised her eyebrows at him, but her eyes were twinkling mischievously now. Before he could continue his tirade, she suddenly flashed him one of her sweetest smiles to disarm him. When the stunned expression on his face told her that she had, she took advantage of his surprise by plucking the poor snowdrop from his slightly slackened fist. Still grinning, she playfully tucked the flower behind his ear.

“Look, Keith, let’s not ruin the afternoon by arguing and just agree to disagree, okay?” she said cheerfully, unable to hold back a chuckle at the comical expression of stunned bemusement on his face. The flower behind his ear that he made no move to remove did not help things any.

“Tell you what,” she continued blithely, but watching his reaction closely. “If you’ll pretend that I believe you when you say that you’re not being a bothersome mother-hen again, I’ll pretend that the reason why you aren’t out there splashing your heart away with everyone else is that you happen to prefer my incredibly bubbly company to theirs.”

At her words, Keith’s stunned expression gave way to a slightly disconcerted look. Reading the off-balanced expression on his face, she half-hoped that he would admit to her that she had guessed right, that her company was the real reason her had chosen to be left behind.

She held her breath.

After a telling pause and a slight hesitation that sent her pulse racing in anticipation, he appeared to regain his bearing and warmly grinned back at her. “Let’s call it a truce,” he finally said, taking the flower from behind his ear and offering it to her with sham gravity.

“Truce, then.”

Allura took the snowdrop and gave his proffered hand a shake, nodding her head in agreement as she schooled her expression to reflect the same irreverent parody of seriousness his had taken on, even if she was slightly disappointed by his answer.

She tucked the flower behind her own ear with a barely audible sigh. Served her right to be disappointed. What silly thoughts she had been thinking anyway? Of course he wasn’t here for her company at all. She had known Keith long enough to know that he almost always carried the concept of duty a tad too far – this was just one of those times. She should have already seen it coming.

So why did she feel suspiciously like… sobbing?

In order to hide the sudden moisture in her eyes, she shifted positions and reached out for the book he had laid down on the blanket. “What are you reading anyway?” She ran her fingers over the leather binding, gently caressing the gold-colored engraving. “’The Ancient Code of Arussian Chivalry,’” she said aloud, her tone thoughtful. “My father wrote this.”

She lay the book on her lap and gingerly turned the thick ivory-colored leaves. “Hmmmm… it’s been a long time since I last  read this,” she murmured as she browsed through the book, regaining her composure in the process. “It’s a book of tales the ancient bards of Arus sang about the warrior knights of old.” She looked up at him with an enchanted smile. “Father used to read stories from this book to me to put me to sleep.”

A gust of spring breeze suddenly buffeted them, and Allura raised both hands to keep the stray strands of hair from her bun from whipping painfully against her face. The motion caused the book to topple from her lap. Reaching out to pick the book up, she found that that a small snapshot had fallen from it. She reached out to pick the photograph up from the picnic blanket instead of the book.

It was the picture of a couple nestled against each other’s side, looking at one another with eyes shining with love. They were both leaning against a wooden fence, framed against the blazing red and gold backdrop of woods in the autumn.

The woman appeared to be rather small but she was incredibly beautiful, with a delicate-featured elfin face, wide emerald-green eyes, and thick, lustrous red-gold hair cascading down her back. She was looking up at the man with a glint of challenge in her eyes, while she reached up to brush off a lock of hair from his forehead.

The man, whose arm was draped around the small woman’s shoulders, was smiling down at the woman fondly, his smile crinkling the corners of his intensely dark eyes – the dark eyes and handsome features so disturbingly familiar…

The Princess looked up at Keith in askance, the picture cradled in her palm. She watched a flash of pain cross his features and felt an answering hurt settle in her own heart for him, realizing who these people were without his saying.

“My parents,” he confirmed with a slight nod, leaning forward and folding his legs in an Indian sitting position. “Rear Admiral Zachary Lionel Montgomery and Lt. Commander Katherine Montgomery. I… I was the one who took that picture right before I first left for the Academy – barley a year before they were declared MIA.”

She held the picture with gentle fingers, knowing instinctively that this one small photograph was one of his most prized possessions. After a moment’s hesitation, she reached out and placed a light hand on his, squeezing in subtle comfort before quickly taking it away. She looked at the man in the photo then back at him, smiling at the striking resemblance between the two of them.

“You do look just like your father,” she said in awe, noting the same dark eyes and handsome features. Then she bit her lip, considering. “But your smile – you have a smile just like your mother’s.” She slowly traced the delicate line of the woman’s jaw, seeing in her sunny smile the same slowly blooming warmth that Keith’s smile held… and he was smiling at her in just that way now. She felt her pulse quicken yet again. Did he have any idea at all how adorable he was when he did that?  “She was very beautiful.”

“Yes, she was,” he agreed with a wistful laugh, and Allura could hear in its tone just how much he loved his parents. The laugh petered out and he suddenly fell silent, but she didn’t push him to continue – although she wanted him to.

“To dad she was ‘my Kat.’ She was also very sassy, stubborn, and spirited – and dad often didn’t know what to do with her,” he finally went on after a while, the affectionate amusement still ringing in his voice. He shot her a sidelong glance filled with mischief. “But then it appears that most of the women I have the luck of meeting are like that,” he said with a mock weary sigh.

“That’s because we’re the best kind there is,” Allura replied crisply, turning up her nose in the air for a moment. It was his turn to raise his eyebrows skeptically at that, and she shot him a look of mock indignation, sticking out her tongue at him. But she couldn’t quell another rush of warmth at the thought that he thought her like his mother – whom he apparently held in very high regard. She gave him a grin. “I think your mother and I would have gotten along.”

Keith threw back his head and laughed loudly at that. “I’m sure you would have,” he confirmed with a wide grin. “But I’m also sure that together you both would have driven me insane.”

She stuck her tongue out at him again, enjoying the look of fond amusement on his face, the light in his eyes. “Did she used to drive your father insane?”

“All the time,” he recalled, a small grin left to hover on his lips at the memories. “We used to team up against my dad – but to no avail because he usually used brute force to subdue the both of us.” Keith lay back on the blanket, pillowing his head on one of his arms again and gazing at the clouds. After another short pause, he went on. “But she was a great fighter. Dad always told me that she was one of the best pilots in her batch at the Academy – better even than him – and that’s saying a lot.”

She looked properly impressed. “Now I see that you come by a lot of your talents honestly,” she said, watching the now far-away look on his face. Seeing that there was no more pain marring his features, her curiosity about what his childhood was like before his parents passed away won over her reluctance to open old wounds. “What was it like living with them? What were they like? ”

“Typical parents I suppose,” he said with a shrug, his brow slightly furrowing in thought. “Mom was more strict with me growing up, but not that much more than Dad. I do know they loved me very much. They were both a lot of fun. We laughed a lot when we were together.”

Keith smiled reminiscently, and Allura was once again struck with an image of him as a little boy, unable to hold back an answering smile of her own as he met his eyes. “They bickered with each other constantly – Dad would often prod Mom about how bad her cooking was when they first got married, and Mom would counter that with how Dad never learned to dance to save his life even after a year of dance lessons.”

“Your father took dance lessons?”

Keith nodded, chuckling softly. “Hard to believe, isn’t it? Mom was a great dancer, but Dad was terrible at it. When they first met, my Mom would have nothing to do with my Dad – not part of her plans, she said – and she refused to go out with him unless he could take her out dancing… for my Dad, an impossibility,” he confided with a wide grin, meeting her eyes. “But Dad was persistent and got his teacher to pair her with him in their flight simulation class – and she ended up falling in love with him anyway. He never let her live it down.”

Allura threw her head back and laughed at the story, remembering one just like it about her own parents. “Mother and Father were a lot like that,” she shared after her laughter panned out. “Father never let Mother live it down that she called him uncouth and obnoxious the first time they met – then ended up marrying him anyway.” She gave a reminiscent smile of her own, lowering her knees to the blanket on one side and leaning on her free arm for support.

“Your parents must have loved each other very much,” she said softly, taking another look at the smiling couple before handing Keith the picture. He took it and tucked it back inside the book with one hand. Allura grinned at him, knowing that frank curiosity was written all over her face. ”But tell me about your father. Are you a lot like him?”

He didn’t answer at once, but he appeared to mull over her question even as his eyes followed the trek of the clouds across the sky once more. “Dad was an Academy legend,” he told her after some thought. “He graduated with the rank of Captain, the highest rank any cadet from the Academy had ever attained upon graduation.”

She quirked her eyebrow at him as she shifted again, hugging her knees to her chest once more. “But according to Lance, you graduated from the Academy with the rank of Captain, too,” she said, the note of challenge in her voice daring him to deny it.

He scowled at that, then gave a long-suffering sigh. “Yes, I did,” he slowly admitted after a lengthy pause. “And Lance talks too much.”

“I’m sure they would be proud of you,” Allura said softly. She knew she was, so very proud of him that her throat ached with the need to tell him so. But of course she had no right to do so, so she didn’t. “Was he the one who chose to send you to the Academy?”

“I chose to go to the Academy,” he stated firmly with a shake of his head, a wry grimace passing over his face fleetingly. “I’d always known what it was mom and dad did – and from the very beginning I knew that I wanted to be like them. I was the one who pestered Dad until he allowed me to train under him in hand to hand even before I enrolled. Afterwards, well…” Keith shrugged.

Allura regarded him quietly, smiling encouragement, but not saying anything. She was content to leave things as they were if it was too painful for him to go on. It was gift enough that he had chosen to tell her as much as he had.

She took a deep breath of the spring afternoon breeze, then looked at the clouds, letting the faint sounds of splashing being made by the others make the waiting easier. The silence between them was light and comfortable – not the kind of silence she felt she had to break – the warm silence of two old, very good friends between whom words were no longer needed.

“It was never easy following in the footsteps of a paragon – you can even say two paragons if you include my mom,” Keith finally continued after a while. “I was in my first year at the Academy when they… disappeared, and I had to live up to everyone’s expectations without them to guide me or keep me grounded.” He shook his head. “It was lonely. And terrifying. What if I let their memories down? What if I could never be as good as people thought I would be? It was… very difficult.”

Allura was fascinated by the play of emotions that flew over his expressive face as he spoke of his experience alone: sorrow, anger, wistfulness – and an immeasurable amount of love. Her heart constricted for him, knowing just how he felt – she was going through it, too, only he had been dealing with it for more than half of his life. She at least had had Coran – and now she had Nanny and the rest of the team as well. He had been all alone. It took an incredible strength to merely survive such a loss, but to rise above it…

Feeling that she had no right to see him this vulnerable, fearing that seeing this side of him drew him even more closer to her heart, she looked away from him, shifting positions and tucking her legs under her. She trained her gaze on the others still splashing at one another on the lake. Hunk caught her gaze and waved at her, and she waved back at him. Keith didn’t say anything more, and the comfortable silence once more fell between them – until she felt he had to say what she was thinking.

“But you did it,” she finally concluded just as quietly, but she didn’t look at him for fear of what she would still see. “You became the best.” She hesitated, then felt that the depth of his sharing deserved an admission of her own. “I wish… I wish I could also say the same for myself – about living up to what my people expect of me, as my father’s daughter,” she confided with a sigh.

The weight of his hand on her shoulder startled her into looking at him. He had pulled himself up again, and after a moment’s reluctance, he took one of her hands and cradled them in both of his.

“My dad always said that in order to be the best, to actually tap into your potential, you have to find something you can care about enough, to put your heart into the cause you are fighting for,” he said, his wise eyes meeting hers. He smiled at her reassuringly. “Your heart is in the right place, Princess – it always has been – and becoming the best you can be both as a ruler and as a pilot is only a matter of time. I truly believe that.”

She slowly smiled back, her cheeks flushing with pleasure. “I’m glad you do, Keith. It means… it means a lot to me to hear that,” she admitted, turning to fully face him. “And it also means a lot to me that you, all of you, are here to help me through...” She trailed off, unable to find any other words good enough to express what was in her heart. A mere thank you was hardly enough, but it was all she could say – and so she said it, heart in her eyes.

He shook his head, grinning at her. “No – thank you,” he countered. He hesitated again, then reached into his pocket with one hand, not letting go of her hand in the other. “Before I came to Arus, this is the only thing that had kept me going.” He pressed his other hand from his pocket into hers, coming away and leaving a small disc cradled within her palm.

It was a large gold medallion threaded through by a worn leather thong that had evidently snapped, large enough to fit into her palm. Gingerly, the Princess ran her hand over the face of the disc, tracing lines of the face of a roaring lion intricately carved but less distinct with age. Near the center of the medallion was a dent that went all the way through the back of the disc. She fingered the protrusion that marred the smooth surface of its back, wondering what force caused the dent.

“My Dad gave that to me the night before he and mom left for their last mission,” Keith explained, regarding her gentle treatment of the medallion with a smile. “It was a gift from my mom, and he always considered it his lucky charm. When he gave it to me, both he and mom told me that with the medallion I carried their pride and their love with me wherever I was. When they disappeared, it stood for the promise I made to myself that one day I would find them again. It gave me the courage I needed to go on – for a while.”

She warmed the medallion with her palm, seeing in her mind’s eye the lost little boy who had drawn his strength from a medallion and the futile hope it stood for, the image almost bringing tears to her eyes. Her pain-filled gaze met his and, unable to prevent herself, she touched a gentle hand to his cheek. “I wish… I wish I could change how it was for you,” she said, the words a whisper torn from the deepest recesses of her heart. “I wish… I could heal you.”

“But you have,” he said, smiling into her eyes, and in his usual sweet way he was the one comforting her for sharing the pain he had lived with for half of his life. Intense emotions constricted in her chest, and she wished with all her heart that it could be possible just this once to throw herself into the shelter of his arms and take the comfort he was offering and to comfort him in return.

Almost as if he knew what she felt, he covered the hand she had laid on his cheek with his own, the reassuring touch warming her soul before he took it away reluctantly.

She took her hand away from his face as well, looking away and fixing her gaze once more on the medallion in her hands, feeling a blush creep up her face as she realized what she had just done.

“Before I came to Arus, I knew I was fighting for a good cause larger than I was and something I believed in, but my heart wasn’t in the battle for me anymore,” he admitted quietly, his face hidden from her view. She felt his hand reach out to tuck another stray strand of golden hair that fell away from her bun, his gentle fingers brushing her cheek as they came away. “And then I was assigned to this mission.”

He took a deep breath, gently caught her chin in one of his palms and made her meet his eyes. “You have become… the first real thing in my life in a very long time,” he confessed gruffly. He cleared his throat self-consciously before going on. “Being here, where I feel I truly belong, with people whom I care for more than my life, it’s given me something to concretely care about, a reason for myself. A reason for my heart.”

His last words dropped into another glasslike silence, unbroken save for the murmurs of their breathing and the beating of their hearts.

Allura was overwhelmed with emotion and found that once more there were no words good enough to express what she felt except the ones that at this point she could not yet say. Or maybe could never say.

Keith, once more seeming to read her mind, touched a finger to her lips and shook his head with a smile that lit his eyes, telling her with his gesture that she didn’t need to say anything.

Making an impulsive decision, the Princess sat up and leaned forward and tied the leather thong around his neck, reaching behind him to tie the knot. As she did so, her fingers lightly brushing against his nape, he looked at her, the intensely dark pool of his eyes holding hers as she deftly completed her task.

He was so close, close enough to kiss – all she had to do was to tip her head up and…  In that one endless moment, it was as if the rest of the world had fallen away, and only the two of them existed, nothing and no one else. The silence between them was heavy, almost palpable, and charged with anticipation. But they remained still, and the kiss never came. It was a moment much too deep even for that.

“This stands for more to me now,” he finally said quietly, breaking the silence, a gentle smile on his lips, his intense dark eyes still holding hers as she suddenly brought her hands down and moved away, a slight blush staining her cheeks. He lifted his hand to tenderly touch the side of her pink cheek fleetingly before taking it away.

The medallion against his chest glinted in the sunlight, momentarily blinding them both. That and the sudden sensation of drops of water hitting their exposed skin broke the spell that hung between them. They both looked up at the water’s source.

“So, what have the two of you been up to?” Lance asked, peering at them curiously, his eyes glinting with wickedness as he looked from Allura’s blushing face to Keith’s wry grin. “Have you both been behaving properly?”

Keith gestured to the book lying on the picnic blanket beside him. “Just telling stories,” he said, feigning innocence so well that Allura had to hold back the urge to laugh at the expression playing on his face. After schooling her own expression to match Keith’s, Allura looked up at Lance only to find him raising his eyebrows at her skeptically.

“The two of you were telling stories. Yeah, right. Sure,” Lance said with a smirk, waving his hand and sprinkling them both with more water droplets. “And I am a monkey’s uncle.”

Allura shielded her face from the droplets with one hand, while Keith playfully shooed Lance off with his.

“You could be a monkey’s uncle,” Keith deadpanned, sharing an amused glance with Allura. He grinned wickedly up at his frowning teammate before cracking, “After all, you sure look like one!”

“You shouldn’t have said that.” Lance bent down and regarded Keith solemnly, shaking his head with a morose expression on his face. “If you hadn’t, I would have been willing to give you a choice – and a little mercy,” he went on. “But after calling me a monkey…”

Before either Keith or Allura could figure out what he was planning to do, Lance whipped off the medallion from around Keith’s neck and jumped away from his reach. “Troops!“ he called out, throwing the Princess the medallion and grinning as the startled Allura caught it deftly in her hand. “Wouldn’t want that to sink at the bottom of the lake now, would we?” he asked, blowing on his fingers smugly and nodding approval at the Princess. “Evidently, I have not lost my touch.”

“What the heck are you up – put me down!”

Rushing in from the other side of the blanket, Pidge clutched the surprised Keith in a bear hug before Hunk picked him up and threw him over his shoulder like a sack of wheat. Hunk turned and grinned down at the Princess, seemingly oblivious to Keith’s flailing legs and his arms pounding on his back.

“It’s called mutiny, most revered Captain, sir,” Pidge said from beside Hunk, irreverently saluting at Keith slung over Hunk’s shoulder. “It’s time you really took a break, Skipper – and a dunking!” He peaked from behind Hunk and gave the Princess an apologetic grin. “Sorry – we just have to borrow him for a while. We promise to give him back later.”
 
“I’ll have you all court-martialed!” Keith shouted in a laughing voice, legs still flailing helplessly. “You’re all disobeying direct orders from a superior officer – I’ll have you all discharged!” Allura couldn’t hold back the chuckle that bubbled up from inside her at the sight of Hunk running to the edge of the lake with him, Pidge running along side, their laughter floating on the air.

To Keith, Lance called out, “You’re off-duty, Captain – you can’t order us to do anything, ergo we are not disobeying any official orders. You are absolutely at our mercy!” He shook his head again, his face distorted in an expression of mock sorrow. “He really shouldn’t have called me a monkey,” he confided sadly to the Princess, his eyes twinkling.

“You are all incorrigible,” she said, gasping for breath and wiping her eyes away of tears. Her sides were beginning to hurt, but she still felt like laughing. A loud indignant scream followed by a loud splash caught her attention, and the sight of seeing Keith’s dark head go under the water set her off again. “He’s going to get you all for that!”

Lance laughed, too, then turned back towards her, noting the medallion she held in her hands and nodded in approval to himself, hiding a wise smile. “Sorry for stealing away your escort, Princess,” he apologized, drawing her gaze and bringing the blush back to her cheeks. “But know that if Nanny wouldn’t kill us, we would dunk you after him, too.”  He grinned. “After all, it’s a team tradition.”

“I’d murder you all first before I let you do that,” she said on another laugh. She shooed him away towards the others. “Don’t worry about me being all alone up here, I’ll be fine,” She gestured towards the laser and the transmitter. “I’ll just watch you guys from here. I really wasn’t planning to be with anybody, Keith just stayed to do his old mother-hen routine.”

Lance surprised her by bending down and fingering the medallion’s leather thong dangling between her fingers. He held her gaze, shaking his head, the wise smile hovering over his mouth refusing to stay hidden. He tipped his head towards the laser gun and the transmitter. “If that’s what he told you – you ought to know better than to believe him,” he said dryly.

Disbelief widened her eyes, but she was unable to prevent a small wave of happiness from washing over her at the possible implications of Lance’s words. However, before she could ask him what he meant, Hunk’s booming shout carried over the distance.

“Look out, Lance – Keith’s coming for you and he’s planning to get even!”

“And with that I’m outta here!” Lance quipped to the Princess on a laugh, straightening and whirling around to find Keith stalking him with an evil grin of his own.

Lance darted away from the picnic blanket, and Keith gave chase, not relenting until he had cornered Lance on the edge of the bank and pushed him backwards inside the water, his dunking punctuated by an exceptionally loud splash. That done, Keith clapped his hands together smugly, then turned towards the Princess and gave her a thumbs-up sign – just before Lance grabbed his ankle and pulled him back in the water.

Allura laughed heartily at the sight of him going under once more, giddy from more than just the sheer joy of the day.

Her heart was filled to bursting by the lovely spring sunlight, the intensely azure sky, the sweet afternoon breeze – and the meaning of the gold medallion that she held in her hand. She watched her friends in the distance, their mingled laughter washing over her. Above her the towering clouds continued to make their way across the sky, and Allura thought she saw one cloud the shape of two clasped hands. That and the placid murmur of the lake against the banks filled Allura with a sense of peace and a knowing that all this, more than anything, was what made her whole.
 

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