Catch the Stars ||Keith Kogane||

65

"Trip!" Pidge's voice echoed in the training room, which only contained Trip up until this point. The Commander, having heard the footsteps beforehand, doesn't look up from her personal training warmup.

The training room had generated two pillars from blue particles that would disappear the second a weapon touched them. Luckily, Trip's hands weren't officially a weapon the software recognized. Which meant she could do a lot of single-person exercises when she had free time. Today, she hung from a rod between the two pillars, pulling herself up and lowering herself down. When someone interrupts her, she slowly exhales and lowers her curled legs back down to the ground.

"Pidge," she says when she lands, out of breath. Her hands release the rod, and the pillars break away into the air. She would never get used to Altean tech.

"Your two weeks are up," Pidge stops just as she enters the room, "I knew you'd be in here!"

The two weeks ended exactly six hours ago, and Trip had taken it to heart. The second she'd woken up, she was in the training room before the rest of the paladins were awake for their own training schedule. There was no time to waste, she had to rebuild her stamina. Luckily, breathing no longer felt like inhaling embers from a fire. Now, it was more like inhaling smoke from one.

"No time to waste," Trip laughs as she swings her arms to loosen the muscles, "But I doubt you're here to train with me."

Pidge adusts her round glasses, "nope, but I was looking for you!"

Trip opens her mouth to relay that she hasn't heard anything back about Tando yet. She'd sent the message out with their last shipment of supplies, but nothing had come back. It would take a while since the further-out troops used written communication rather than radio. There was too big of a problem with interception.

"Remember me and Hunk have a surprise for you?" Pidge leans up on her toes, the way a bird does when investigating, "it's a "congratulations on being fully healed" present, now!"

She'd forgotten about that. It felt like forever ago that she was walking out of the mountain and struggling to stand up for longer than 10 minutes. Was that only two weeks ago?

It had been a long two weeks...

"Come on!" Pidge says in excitement, waving an arm over her shoulder to follow, "Everyone's waiting to see you open it!"

Everyone? Did that mean everyone?

Trip purses her lips, still breathing deeply over her workout. She had no room to argue, Pidge is already halfway out the door and practically vibrating around the corner. All Trip can do is shake her head and tell herself it doesn't matter.

She'd kept interactions with Keith to a bare minimum for almost the entire two weeks she had been back on the castle, and never was willingly alone with him. For no other reason than sheer embarrassment. Even thinking about their last moment alone made her want to rip her own hair out and erase her memory of that day entirely. There was no desire for another awkward encounter while the two of them were alone.

"Alright, alright," Trip chuckles as Pidge impatiently waits just beyond the door, "I'm right behind you."

Grabbing her sword and sheath from beside the door, she follows the green paladin out in the hallway.

"Do you have any guesses?" Pidge asks as they walk, just a few steps ahead of Trip to lead the way, "Remember the hint?"

"Comic book," remembers Trip while strapping her weapon back into place on her back, "but I gotta admit, the Earth store was a little too long ago for me to remember much about comic books."