Imagine an au where alchemy is there on Voltron Earth and Lance did the Thing™ when he was young (maybe to bring Loraine back?? :3c). He got an automail, gave up on alchemy (tried to) and pursued being a space pilot and than next is what happened in the show.... Imagine him feeling like 7th wheel but also feeling reluctant to use alchemy cause it killed Loraine again but also geeking over new material and it's science cause he still an alchemist by heart
Lance tells people he lost his arm in an accident.
Climbing accident. Childhood accident.
(It’s only partial truth. But Lance rejected the concept of truth as a kindness or something to value a long time ago. Truth is not his friend– Truth is honest, and honesty is rarely a kind or merciful thing.)
It’s fine, really, he tells them. He barely remembers it, between the pain and his age and the meds afterward. And he got a cool automail arm out of it that’s twice as strong and sturdy. Not as neat as Shiro’s but… not bad.
(”I killed my sister.” The truth claws at his throat on sleepless nights, compelling him to discard his dollface and reveal the monster, the sinner, beneath. “And then I killed her again.”)
Lance comes from a family of alchemists– Not by profession or trade, but by natural ability and luck. His mother can fix holes in the roof with a piece of chalk and ten minutes grace. His grandfather can coax stones into little statues at the drop of a hat, for the amusement of the children of the house. His cousin can make sparks fly like fireworks every time she snaps her fingers together, thanks to the little stick-and-poke array tattoo on her palm she got in tenth grade, much to her parents’ woe.
Oh no, not him, he responds when they ask. Never him. Alchemy seemed boring as a child. He was much more interested in soccer and t.v. and mud.
(Loraine was the best of all of them. She drew clumsy arrays onto her wrists and arms with permanent marker, and then refined, delicate ones as she got older. She could change stone and wrap metal. Freeze water with a touch and then bring it to the boil seconds later. A genius. She taught him everything he could ever want to know, decorating him with arrays when he was a toddler until their mother screamed at her to go wash him before he hurt himself accidentally transmuting something.)
People always accepted–do accept– this as truth. It’s just Lance, after all. Clumsy, bumbling Lance, who can’t keep his head on straight for more than two minutes. The idea of him applying himself to the concentrated, methodical work of alchemy training as a young child is such a laughable idea, he almost tricks himself into thinking the same.
It’s a pretty lie, all tied up in ribbon and paper. Merciful to them, but mostly to himself.
(He was taught what sins of alchemy are unforgivable before he could even fully understand them, lectured to him and his sister in their Grandmother’s croaking voice on cold winter nights. Not a pretty lesson to hear, to have drilled into your head over and over, but a necessary one.
…He never was very good at listening, anyways.)
Pidge is the only one on the team who can perform any alchemy. Mostly small transmutations, to fix broken equipment or repair frayed wires. Whenever she huffs and complains about wishing she’d read more books on the subject, how useful it would be out here, in the war, Hunk looks to Lance, and then bites his tongue. He may disapprove, but he’ll keep Lance’s secret until the day he dies, and for that much Lance is thankful.
(It took him two years after she died to figure out how, to stash the materials in the back shed under a tarp and learn to draw the circle. The risk inherent was assumed, and he was willing. Lance was thirteen and reckless and world-weary. His mother needed her baby back, his sisters their littlest member, his cousin her best friend. And he needed Loraine’s smile, one last time. If it killed him, it was a gladly given price.)
Sometimes it’s more than tempting, when they get divvied up into groups for missions and no one knows quite what to do with Lance. Good sniper, fast talker. Slow on the upkeep, mediocre pilot, too noisy, too silly. Fucking terrible at close combat.
These are truths, he doesn’t deny them.
But occasionally he can’t help himself, and forces old Galran ship construction texts through the translator, memorizes the elements both familiar and foreign, and does what he was born to do. Equivalent exchange and transmutation circles, and all the possibilities, stored away in the mental vault of things he’ll never let loose.
They’ll call for him when he falls behind on missions, and he’ll tear his eyes away from ship walls and chase after. He knows he can tear the place apart from the inside out with only a few presses of his hands, but he won’t. He can never go back, and this is the closest thing he has to atonement for his crimes.
(It seems almost fitting, that Truth would take his left arm.
He’s no idiot, he knows it’s the hand that let go first, that let them fall and caused her death to begin with. The fact that it’s the price he paid to bring her back–to kill her all over again–is justified irony.
Lance was prepared to give both body and soul for her. Instead, he lost what ruined him to begin with, in exchange for a long-haired, dead eyed creature of sour breath and creaking limbs, with none of his sister’s warmth or life.
They didn’t even bury it. Lance had stood in his oversized shirt, empty sleeve flapping in the wind, as Mavis burned the monster he had made of the person they both loved the most. Her lips were tight and she wouldn’t look at him, and he knew truth in shame.)
“What are you?” They ask him now and again, on those far away, newly liberated alien planets, and he shrugs.
Something the Truth swallowed whole, chewed up, and spat out again, half-dead and very much broken. Even that didn’t want to keep me.
“Just a leftover.” He says, and that is not quite a lie, either.
(No Truth is not a kind master. It rules from high above, and breaks the backs of anyone who dares to claim it as their own.
Lance has seen Truth, and he knows what it is– The Truth is, he should have died when he was eleven, and he let his sister die in his place.)
The real lie is saying he survived. There was never anything left, after that.
