⤷ 『 “ I understand that you don't trust me. What can I do to change that? ” 』
A small scoff sounded at the hopeful and gentle words uttered. He understands full well that his cooperation is required at this point in time, if only for his adjustment to the new circumstances he has found himself thrust into. However, seeing as said circumstances are wholly the fault of the Galra and their morally-loose druids, well… Is it any surprise he'd rather choke on the sensations assailing him at all times of the day and night than succumb to honeyed words from someone who was just as likely to turn around and inject him with something to make the change permanent.
He's being paranoid, he knows.
The change already is permanent, after all. He knows that, can feel it in every fibre of his being. He… is no longer human. Not that he had ever been before, admittedly, not really, but the sentiment is still there. He might not ever have been more than 50% human, but he had grown up there, with their values and morals and behaviours. He did not fit in here, did not want to fit in here.
After all, there was a difference between having his heritage naturally brought to the surface surrounded by friends and allies who would support him and reassure him that his physical changes meant nothing in the face of his personality and personal values, and having the change happen here, on a Galra ship surrounded by enemies and druids who were far too happy to simply grab him and inject him with various unknown substances.
It didn't burn anymore, but that was but a small mercy.
"Change me back." He snaps then, curling in on himself despite the desire to appear strong and threatening to the surprisingly meek medical officer. Or perhaps the other simply played meek in order to placate him. It's true enough that he wouldn't respond well to someone like a druid, or worse, Sendak or Haxus. Frankly he doesn't want to find out the kinds of reactions he'd have around them now. Everything is sharper, more focussed, overwhelming… Most importantly, he'd become impulsive. The years of training careful control of his reactions all shot to hell and leaving him reacting instinctively to the slightest of perceptions.
Even now his ears were twitching, an uncomfortable and distracting sensation that only set him more on edge, and it was a tell besides. He hates it.
The demand is pointless anyway, and they both know it. Just as Ulaz should know that the odds of Keith learning to trust him were below zero. Yet the other persisted, gently but firmly, and he feels the exhaustion creeping up on him, gradual but inescapable. it's too much still, he can't stay awake for very long yet because of the overwhelm of all the new sensations he still needs to get used to before he can return to any semblance of normal.
"Just—" He sighs, a sound mired half in frustration and half in a bone deep tiredness that reaches beyond physicality. "Just get me somewhere safe. Warm, quiet… I need to rest."
Pidge was in that stage of sleep where her brain was waking itself up lobe by lobe, and while it kept her body locked, her brain began to process the world around it.
The first thing Pidge noticed was how much she hurt. “Sore” would be a better word, since her muscles more ached than stung, but she didn’t have access to her whole vocabulary yet. She couldn’t spare much nuance beyond noticing that her right leg hurt the most. It did not ache or sting, but rather, throbbed.
The second thing Pidge noticed was her being incredibly uncomfortable. She was uncomfortable less so in the hurt way—although, that did nothing for her comfortably—and more so in the awkward way. It felt like she was laying down on a bed of rocks, getting prodded by a million points.
The third and last thing Pidge noticed, because this was the thing to kick-start her consciousness, was a voice. She couldn’t understand any of the words being said, as they only amounted to meaningless noise in her ears. She did catch timbre and pitch of the voice, though, which made her ask herself, “Who is that?”
She knew it wasn’t her mom. Or her dad. Or her brother. If it wasn’t them, then it had to be someone on the team, but this voice didn’t match any of them, either. It had to be someone she knew; she had heard this voice before. She asks herself, “How do I know this person?”
It only makes sense that a person as inquisitive as her operated by question, because her train of thought solidified enough to pierce through the fog of grogginess, and reminded Pidge of a claw—a giant one, able to crush her.
That’s when Katie finally woke up, gasping in the pitch of mortal terror. “Sendak!”
She hadn’t say his name to address him, but lo and behold, she had. He was the first thing she noticed—not their cave shelter, or the jungle terrain stretching beyond the mouth of the cave, or even the splint around her right leg. She saw Sendak, or better yet, the mangy thing he’d become, and her brain jumped over the how and why to dive right into the reactionary.
There was an attempt to get up, but it failed before there was any approximate to success. She went, “Ack,” as she fell back onto her make-shift rock-bed, yet even in her heap, Pidge was as tense as can be—squaring her shoulders like she might pounce.
She glared hard at Sendak, pouring adrenaline into balled-up fists and words alike. "What are YOU doing here?! You should be dead! Go away and die already!”
Lance being brought to Sendak was strange in itself. The now prisoner sees Sendak often in the pits; watching him. Observing. It made his skin crawl. No one had glanced his way since he was thrown into the pits and used as bait for other champions from different planets.
But then, he recently started fighting back. The first fight, the champion died by sheer luck on his part, an accident really, the next fight, Lance threw something, a knife he got as a reward from his last win at his opponent’s head and killed him and now he was moving up in the totem pole.
“Thank you, my emperor.” Lance is forced on his knees. Not like he could resist, he can’t really. He’s too weak to do so, “I’m glad you saw my first kill.” He won’t lie, it felt good.
“Your second in command layed his hands on my friend. She was doing her work and he was preventing her from accomplishing today’s goal. In her defense, I prevented him from harming her anymore and I pushed him away from her.” And then punched him as a warning, “I’ll take full responsibility and hope my emperor forgives my transgression.”
quick drabble based on this verse (lovingly known as the commander dad verse) with @galransandextras about katie and sendak kick-starting their strenuous father and daughter relationship
Katie felt like she had more pit than gut.
Here she was, standing before Zarkon—the emperor of the known universe—asking favors from someone so ancient that he had probably gazed upon the stars of her galaxy as young celestial bodies. She felt the same regret she had seeing Sendak and Haxus strip and shackle her teammates. Katie still tried to stand tall, throwing away all her second-doubts about her deal with Sendak, and focusing on her payout.
She had already presented Zarkon with her tribute, as Sendak had instructed her (Along with how to bow and salute). Now, she only had to name her reward.
Zarkon rumbled as he spoke, making his words ricochet off the wall and stab into her ears. “And what were you hoping to trade for Voltron, child? Your kind does not know the glory of serving me yet.”
Taking a deep breath, Katie tried to talk in as big of a voice as she could muster, “I.. I was…I want my family t-to be safe. And my team. I just don’t want any of them to be hurt.”
“Ah,” he droned the same way one does when a child was telling a meandering story. It reminded Katie of the same unimpressed sounds her teachers made when she gushed about the scientific world.
To her horror, Katie realized Zarkon was bored. She had given him Voltron. She had given him the bayards and the armor, too. She had even given him the other paladins! Her friends! Yet, she might as well be an ant. Katie gulped on nothing as she reeled over her own insignificance.
She opened her mouth to say something. Whether to beg or bargain was to the snap-decisions of her neurons furiously trying to process all the different things wrecking her brain.
But Zarkon finished his deliberations before any sound could rattle out of Katie’s throat, and he decreed, “I leave your fate to Sendak. I have no obligations to fulfill the requests of a little girl bartering for favors with my lions.”
Sendak, who had bled into the background until now, stepped forward from his place behind Katie. All too easily, he replied, “I will keep the girl. I hope to keep her family, too. They have proven enough scientific prowess to be assets to my own development teams.”
“I will consider your request.” Zarkon said with a flippant flick of his wrist. “The fates of the remaining paladins are still to be decided.”
“But–!” Katie cried, balling her tiny hands into angry fists—as if they might intimidate a god.
“Thank you, Sire,” Sendak crooned smoothly, slamming his organic hand to his chest in salute, while his mechanical hand picked up Katie easily. She blustered plenty from between his fingers, but Sendak walked her out of the throne room without giving it any notice.
Once the grand doors were closed behind her, he dropped her in a heap. Katie scrambled to her feet quickly, looking angry in the face as she seethed, “You used me!”
It wasn’t an accusation. It wasn’t even a condemnation. It was a fact. It was a sad, miserable fact said by a sad, miserable girl.
The rest of her was shaking, but it wasn’t an angry shaking. It was more akin to the shivering you see in the last leaf of a tree trying to hold our during the first winter storm of the season. Her seething didn’t last long, as her voice took on the type of heaviness that comes from having an emotional wad in your throat.
“You used me.” She said again, quieter, this time, as the dust from her ruined schemes finally started to settle. She had been tricked, and she wanted to be angry; however, she was now grappling with everything she had lost in this gamble. “A-and now.. I don’t have anyone.. Except you. Because you own me. You monsters own me and everybody I love. Because you used me. And.. And, now.. none of them have a reason to love me anymore. Because I gave them up. I gave them all up for nothing, and now they’re all gonna hate me forever and ever.”
She wished she knew more words. She wished she knew bigger, fancier words that could describe everything she was feeling right now. It wasn’t enough to say Sendak had used her; it wasn’t enough to say she’s lost everyone who ever loved her. That didn’t explain the betrayal, and the hurt, and the shame that sunk into her heart like fishhooks. She didn’t know what else to say, though, because those words were beyond her—locked away somewhere in the seventh grade vocabulary journal she never got a chance to study.
She bleated, like a goat, before her first sob was wrung from her soul. It came from a deep, deep place within her, and more and more sobs followed. Katie hit the high note of her crying without any crescendo, bursting with horrible sounds from the throat and horrible fluids from the face.
Sendak could try to hush or beat her quiet, but Katie was all but lost to her anguish. He settled a hand atop her head, considering how else to handle her little episode. Without much thinking much beyond her absolute childishness, his hand swept down her head and curled around her cheek. He had to crouch down to so.
In a moment of pure desperation, Katie leaned into the warmth—she leaned into the warmth of the man that had ruined her life. Because she really was a sad, miserable girl, and she had no one else to hold her.
Sendak felt true pity in his heart at the sight. How young was this creature to wail like a lost kit? How underdeveloped was this creature to nuzzle into his hand like it was a litter-mate? It stupefied him to know that the Altean princess had hoped to pit her against the likes of Zarkon. She would’ve already been gored to death, had it not been for his manipulation.
Sendak didn’t think much about how he would’ve been the one to gore her to death, had he not concocted this entire scheme off the assumption of her being related to a slave of his. It was a given. Sendak served Zarkon through word and tooth, and he served best by biting before speaking. Truly, there was mercy in his manipulation. Katie was just underwhelming and useful enough to win it over his teeth.
He relaxed his fingers, curling them so his claws pressed into his palm instead of the girl’s scalp. He brushed through her hair as he did so, disguising his sleight of hand as further affection. Although, he wouldn’t be able to tell you exactly what he was disguising.
Katie responded immediately by squeezing her face into Sendak’s hand. She also hugged his forearm, treating his entire arm like the plush toy you give kits to comfort them during cosmic storms.
Sendak felt some mild disgust, seeing how her snot was smearing into his fur and onto his armor, but he supposed it was marginally more sanitary than the blood and gore that’s soaked through pelt and suit alike.
He sat there, crouched down low for some moments, as she cried and cried. She was no longer sobbing, so Sendak considered her soothed.
Katie’s tears were just as fat as before, though, leading him to realize that she would be beyond words until she had some rest.
It was a strange habit among prisoners—especially those too young to truly comprehend the vastness of the empire that had claimed them.
They would cry and cry until their first sleep. Then, acceptance would slowly wash over them.
Sendak thought about knocking Katie unconscious. It would be easy enough; she was positively miniature in his war-torn hands. She was already pitiful enough, though, and he wondered what a concussion might do to an under-baked human brain.
Feeling indulgent in the wake of his victory (He had guaranteed Galra salvation with only some minced words), Sendak slipped his hand out of Katie’s grasp. He was amused, in a twisted way, by how grief-stricken the girl looked to lose her makeshift plush toy. He suspected she might’ve started sobbing again, had he not used his snotty arm to hoist her up to his chest.
Katie settled there, awkwardly, resting her chin on Sendak’s shoulder after the vertigo wore off.
She was too deep in the pit to care about the wrongness of this all. Her soul was too heavy for her to carry, right now, and she only wanted to be held.
She just stared, numbly, at the walls, as Sendak walked her deeper and deeper into Central Command.
“Here are the schematics for the weapon, sir.” Hunk shows a blueprint of the weapon Sendak ordered his engineers to make. Another weapon used to harvest quintessence from unsuspecting planets and effectively killing it. What bothers Hunk the most is that he makes them.
" i cannot wait to see you explain yourself this time. " From Sendak
"Your corrlux--sorry, commander was asking for it."
Hunk stares down at his hand. The corrlux in question was harassing Pidge. And it was just so easy to knock him down a peg or two. He’ll admit, it felt good. But he knew he was in trouble now and will reap the consequences of his actions. He’ll accept that.
It’s something he hardly gives, and it’s something he now doesn’t have. Even after how long he’s fought. Even after how much he’s bonded. Even after the one he loves has opened her heart to him--the hearts of others remain closed.
Were all those days of love and life for naught? They certainly seem to be, for no matter what he does to prove he’s not the man who just betrayed them, he can still feel the tension in the air when his name is said. Perhaps he’s even more suspect now that the other Lotor has proven himself untrustworthy--the same questions about him now lurk in everyone’s mind, and above all they may wonder, Is he next? But no one questions him harder, he knows, than Coran--annoyingly mustached, and just as annoyingly the shade of mayonnaise, and with the most annoying accent to boot. (Why the hell do all the Alteans speak British? Oh, he knows the answer is that they learned English before American English was invented, but he thinks the real answer is that they did it just to be even more pretentious.) The Paladins had seemed to trust Tobias more the closer he got with Allura. But Allura’s deepening trust in him seemed to make Coran trust him less.
He grits his teeth and leans in closer to his Torah as he feels Coran enter the room. The man is obviously here for something, but Tobias doesn’t want to give it. He doesn’t even acknowledge the man’s presence with a growl or a hiss--the book should be enough indication; can’t the ginger see he’s busy? But the longer he sits there in silence, the more he wants to yell--the more he wants to do the verbal equivalent of taking his claws out and sinking them deep into Coran’s face. He puts down his book. He turns around and glares.
