It was Pride month, campus glowing with rainbow flags and glitter-drenched students parading around the quad, but Pidge couldn’t have cared less. Her dorm reeked of cheap weed and the half-finished whiskey bottle tipped over on her desk. She was slouched in the corner, hoodie thrown over her head, cigarette dangling between her fingers, smoke curling against the sharp glint of her lip ring. Her knuckles bore fresh ink — rough, jagged letters etched across her skin from the night before. Tattoos sprawled up her arms like constellations mapped in black.

The migraines were killing her. Period cramps gnawed at her insides like knives twisting, the kind of pain that made her grit her teeth until her jaw clicked. Her laptop screen glowed with rows of numbers, data sets she tore through as if the counting distracted her from the pounding in her skull. But it didn’t. Not today.

There were photos of her teammates pinned crookedly on her corkboard, reminders of a war that hadn’t left her. PTSD kept her tethered to the screams and fire of battles long gone, looping through her head at night until she drowned them out with another hit, another drink, another faceless hookup. The Voltron squad went to the same college, sure, but she usually didn’t show up when they messaged. Being around them meant dragging up too much of who she used to be — the nerdy nice kid who hacked computers and cracked jokes. That girl was dead. She buried her under ash and smoke years ago.

The Galra insignia scrawled across the wall of one frat house had made her snap just days earlier. She remembered the blood — knuckles split, someone’s jaw shattered under her punch, the coppery taste of fury boiling out of her. She despised them, despised their legacy, despised anyone who dared joke about them like the war hadn’t left scars carved into her bones.

Now, with campus roaring outside in rainbow celebration, she stayed in her dark room, phone buzzing with texts from girls she barely remembered. She wiped sweat from her forehead, cursing under her breath. “Happy fucking Pride,” she muttered, voice hoarse. The migraine pulsed harder, and for a moment, she wished she could claw her own brain out.

Pidge was taller now, sharper, rougher. Every smirk carried a dirty undertone, every word laced with profanity. She wasn’t the little genius kid anymore. She was something else — something darker. Something broken and unrepentant.