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Chapter Text

Earth glittered like a gem from space.  Blue, green, gold.  The huge black and purple spaceships going to and from it was all that it took to shatter the image.  The content lives of earth’s native inhabitants was broken as they now lived in barracks as slaves to the Galran empire.  The trillions of humans that lived on Earth, stacked in together in their tiny cells and cots to provide every meter of ground for the raising of food to ship off planet to feed and support the endless Galra army that was reaching beyond their simple solar system.  None different from the others in their black and purple rags and full body coverings.   All kept their heads down and worked hard to stay unnoticed from the task masters’ gazes and to be allowed their daily portion of food.  Those that did not prove themselves worthwhile enough were weeded out like the cattle that they raised.

On the land that was once America, a few Galra taskmasters turned as they heard young laughter.  They paused their electrical whips to smile slightly at the human children as they helped each other get their carts loaded with the ripe vegetables and then try and race each other to the unloading dock.  Even with the danger and oppression, a few families had learned to not let it destroy them.  It started with a latino family that had fled from Cuba when the Galra first attacked.  Even with the world falling apart, it was still better than their life had been before.  The old regime in Cuba had trained them to survive as slaves, just without ever using the word.

One of the young girls skipped by the towering Galra with her bag of vegetables that was all that she could carry.  She looked up at the pupilless yellow eyes to smile with a single front tooth missing.  “Smile!  You look like you didn’t sleep last night.”

The Galra over seer smiled softly at the innocent kindness.  “Your sun is too bright for me to see comfortably.”

“You need sunglasses then.  I’ve never seen them before but that’s what I heard we used to have for that,” The little girl said.  She tripped then to fall as she was not paying attention to her unsteady footing.

A young teenage boy laughed as he stepped over to pick her up.  “Careful.  You don’t want to bruise anything.”

“Kay,” The little girl said as she curled up into her older brother’s arms.

The Galra watched the interaction fondly.  “You would get a lot more done if you were carrying food instead of Estella, Lance.”

The tanned skinned boy with soft brown hair and deep blue eyes looked up at the lavender skinned invader with his smile not dimming in the least.  “Don’t give me that, Xarac.  I saw you carrying your rations for your wife last night even though she can bench press you.”

Xarac forced his smile away to have the mandatory glare back in place.  “That is why I’m going to let you get away with this.  Move along.”

"So generous,” Lance teased lightly as he set his little sister back on her feet and they took the loads that was all they could carry onwards. 

The small bag he once carried had become a pack heavier than his own weight, and a cart to drag behind it.  There was no skip in his steps as he braced to trudge with his loads, but it was not desperately straining under them.  The loads were usual now and just the normal.  As he came out of his field, he smiled as he saw another more muscled boy of his age coming from another and pulling a larger cart with his greater strength.  “Hey Hunk!”

Hunk Garret hunched in on himself as he glanced about at the robotic sentries and flesh Galra about.  “Could you try to be a little more quiet bro?  I don’t want to get in trouble.”

“We’re getting the same amount of work done and they don’t care.”

“I still rebuilt a drone wrong last week.  I still might get in trouble for that.” 

“You?  Forget it.  You’re the best mechanic in the entire area.  They’re going to do nothing to you that could potentially slow you down.  So, that girl…”

Hunk groaned as he reached up to scratch his dirt covered cheek.  Both of them had the kind of sun-scorched skin that said, ‘I haven’t known shade in years,’ Hunk’s deeper tone barely hiding under the smudges of ash and oil.  “Dude!  Please stop dragging me into your dating schemes.  Go talk to her yourself instead of having me tell her how great you are.”

“I do, but I need the extra help.  She’s really hot bro.  You need to help me so that I can help you when you find someone pretty.”

“This is such a bad idea,” Hunk groaned as the road brought them to the buildings of their area.  Each had their place and purpose for their specialized slaves.  The worn path between the planting zones and the tech sheds shimmered under the sun, a daily pilgrimage from labor to repair.  The mechanics and technology repair center had its doors wide open to keep it from becoming even more hot inside and cooking the workers like in an oven.  Huge pieces of harvesting equipment were inside for the grain and other kinds of vegetables that were not too hard for technology to pick out.

“Hunk!  Hunk!  I see a space monster!  Its black and slimy and has the attitude of a gremlin,” Lance dramatically panicked.

A tiny girl with long brown hair that was knotted back in a bun that hadn’t gotten into her teenager years yet raised her black grease smeared face from the console of the alien technology to glare at them.  “If you actually did any work, Pretty Boy, then you would be a lot worse looking.”

“How?  You’ve never had to lift anything before, and you don’t look human anymore.  I, on the other hand, have all this rippling perfection,” Lance flexed while a confident smile.

Katie Holt pretended to gag as she focused on her console.  “That’s the last thing I wanted to see today, a skeleton trying to make it’s bones bulge.”

“I didn’t think it looked too bad,” Matt Holt said as he walked with a box in his arms over to his younger sister full of parts for the repairs and improvements they were making.  He set it down heavily to drop down to sit with it.  Their family’s ingenious minds and talent had saved them from ever having to push themselves further than they could physically go each day.  They were strong but not forced to be overly so.

“Shut up string bean.  You two ladies’ men can work on being something special later.  Who's the idiot that coded this thing?  Its wasting power and going slower than it can,” Katie growled as she typed fast at the console to input the new coding.  Her screen blurred by at an almost sickening speed.

“It's hard to when we already are,” Matt teased as he flexed and sent a secretive grin as his teasing partner in slight rebellion.

Lance snapped to shoot his finger guns back at him.  “It’s hard to be humble when you’re perfect in every way.”  A sentry in the facility turned towards them, ready to activate the electrical whip if they were not doing enough.

“Get lost before I feed you to the cows!” Katie snapped at him.

“Which ones?  His family’s dairy cows, or Kinkade’s meat, Pidge?” Matt questioned as the other boys passed the electronics facility.

The next building in line was the storing and shipping depot.  Most of it was electronic in its work, but a few slaves were still required at certain steps and for special products.  Past the depot’s shadows, sun-bleached rows stretched back toward the horizon, an endless cycle of sweat and harvest.  A tall partially Japanese descended adult man smiled at them as he easily dumped the heaping carts that most struggled to get to the facility onto the conveyor belt.  “Careful how much you tease Katie.  You are in danger of having her new harvesters tested on you.”

“Yeah, sorry about that,” Lance said as he rushed to help the black-haired man with the carts that had piled up on him.

Takashi Shirogane smiled kindly down at the boy.  “Don’t worry about it.  I like hearing the trouble that you get into with Matt.  It’s nice for him to not be alone.”

Once he had been the star prodigy of the space program Galaxy Garrison.  The greatest pilot of their generation.  He had been among the first to engage the Galra when they arrived in orbit.  His efforts had been brave and valiant, but technology so far behind the invaders’ had made his and all other space pilots efforts like flies.  Swatted out of the air as pests.  Now what he was and could do was not known to their masters.  He was a slave number and that was all.  But some humans still remembered and considered him their hero.

“Please don’t encourage him,” Hunk begged.

“It would probably be good for him to get caught,” a young teenage boy their age grumbled.  His Korean genetics came through despite the roughly cut mullet that his hair was.  His violet eyes glanced up at them to ignore the lean built McClain.  “A couple hits with a whip might make him shut up.”

“Hasn’t done much for you mullet,” Lance snapped back in willingness for a fight as he heaved his pack to empty onto the conveyor.

“You do realize it’s me punching you in the face that gets me in trouble, right?” Keith questioned as his hands deftly sorted the tide of dirt covered food in the shade.  The one thing that the Galra had quickly noticed was that some colors of humans burned easily in the harsh sunlight.  These kinds did so and continued to burn instead of tanning and getting better.  The easiest fix was to assign them inside a facility with a roof on it.

“As if you could ever get me.  You just can’t admit that I can get more done than you can,” Lance challenged back proudly.

“That’s enough.  I can take care of this.  You’d better get back out there,” Shiro broke up the boys as he continued to get the much shorter line up emptied.

“And when will mullet stop standing around?” Lance aimed back.  “Or is that all you can do with those big light sensitive eyes of yours?”

“Dude! Stop,” Hunk begged as Kogane’s hand’s tightened in his work as if he was keeping himself from lunging over the belt to pummel the latino.

“Careful mullet.  We don’t want you over working yourself,” Lance called as they left with their packs empty.

“There has to be a better way to be his friend,” Hunk grumbled.

“He never talks to anyone unless they get him mad.  Besides, I can beat his daily quota any day.”

“We really need to work on both of your interpersonal skills,” Hunk said before they split off to their own fields.  Lance easy jogged back to his family with his empty pack and cart to pick up the next ones that were filled.  The day was filled as it always was.  Push and work as hard as you can.  Finding laughter and happiness in the small things as they did.

A blaring siren cut through the twisting heat filled air for everything to still.  “Dinner time!” Estella rejoiced at the familiar sound that began and ended each day’s work.

Veronica McClain frowned up at the sun still high above their heads.  “We’re not supposed to be let off for another couple of hours.”

Rosa saw fear ripple through her children like a wave. She smiled anyway. That was her job. “Come now.  Let’s go get this all put away.”

The hundreds of workers streamed in from their separate sectors to unload it at the shipping facility before going to wait in lines outside their barracks. Hunk and his family were just ahead of the McClains.  Rachel adjusted her filled pack to snort to herself.  “Go get Hunk out of his panic attack before he loses his stomach again.”

Lance saluted as he stepped past everyone else in line to go up to the boy that was steadily becoming a green hue.  “Hey my man.  Beating me again.  You’re the only one that can keep up with my amazing speed.”

Hunk turned to look slightly down at him.  “This is not good.  Not good at all.  You know what happens whenever we’re called off early, and it’s always horrible.”

“Not always.  Last time they were introducing us to our new masters.  Just think of it.  We’ll get extra time to get our beauty sleep in and you can do some cooking.”

“But what if they reassign me to another sector?  I’ll never get to see my family again or you and I’m going to throw up and have a panic attack and they’ll get rid of me because I’m weak and…”

“Are too valuable here.  You take care of all the kids for them, besides you are one.” Lance interrupted the spiral calmly as he nudged his friend forward to put his load down on the belt.

“I’m getting older and bigger though.  When I am not going to be a kid any more to them?” Hunk questioned as they helped everyone else as they waiting for their families to gather into them. 

“When you’re not going to be a kid?” Lance raised his voice as he put on a show of pondering.  “Maybe when you get to look like mullet, but if you’re anything like Shiro, then you’ll forever be considered a kid.”

Shiro ducked his head to hide his smile.  “Since when did I become immortally youthful?”

“Since you make a disaster of a human that is almost ten years younger than you look like an old man,” Lance stated.

A tiny rotten tomato splatted into the back of his head then.  Keith hummed to himself.  “Your hair is ruined.”

“Still better than yours will ever be.”

“Don’t know how you think the crappy hair cut you have is any better than mine.” Keith said as the last produce of the day was put on for him.

“My mom did it!”  Lance exclaimed.

Keith looked up at the McClain family for a flash of sadness to enter his violet eyes.  A mother and siblings.  Something he didn’t have.  Only Shiro who had claimed him as an adopted brother before the world fell.  “No wonder the rest of you look decent.” Keith looked away. For a second, something fragile flickered across his face, then vanished under the usual scowl.  “Nothing can help you though.”

Rosa cleared her throat pointedly to keep her eldest of her two living sons from retorting before she smiled at the oriental young men.  “Are you having dinner with the Holts tonight?”

Shiro rubbed the back of his neck, “You don’t need to keep having us over.  You have a large family and we’re alright on our own.”

“Forget it.  You two look like you’re completely lost without trying.  Besides, it’s good to have the right number of men and people back in our family,” Rosa said.

“I don’t want to replace them,” Shiro protested.

“You’re not.  You can’t replace their memory, but it does get rid of the lost feeling to have the full head count.” Rosa stated.

Shiro smiled slightly, “Thank you.  We were not planning to be with the Holts tonight.”

Katie grinned knowingly at the oldest McClain boy.  “I know why you were really invited over.  Lance wants to hear more space and flying stories.”

“What?” Lance squawked, “Of course that too.  I mean, doesn’t sound awesome to everyone else?  Getting to fly around the entire moon, seeing Venus and Mars up close, getting to experience zero gravity.  Can you imagine if the Galra didn’t find earth for a couple more years?  We could all be in the Galaxy Garrison space program and learning how to be fighter pilots!”

Hunk paled at the thought, “Yeah.  No thanks.  I don’t do well off the ground or moving.  Maybe an engineer?

“I would definitely be a communication specialist.  I would hack everything and tear it apart to make it better,” the Holt girl said with a dangerous smile.

“Or you would have been a scientist like dad and I,” Matt put in.

“What about you, mullet?  Would you try to be the brooding model for all the recruitment posters that would take a lot of photoshop to make look half decent?” Lance ribbed.

“Fighter and I would leave you completely in the dust,” Keith stated simply.

“I fly too!” Estella cheered as she ran over to wrap her arms around Kogane’s leg and sit down on his boot. 

She smiled up at him as he tensed to stare down at her uncomfortably and uncertain.  “Umm… hi?”

“Go, mullet!  Go!” She urged him.

Keith looked up at the rest of the grinning and laughing audience that was enjoying his rare personal interaction.  “I… don’t really hug.”

Lance laughed as they got started for the barracks.  “Estella, mullet can’t even walk normally.  I don’t think he can give you a ride with how big you are.”

The youngest girl pouted at the news as Keith’s lost expression turned to be one of determination.  He forced his now weighed down foot forward to try and walk with his passenger.  Estella laughed in joy at her ride.

Xarac noticed them coming in to line up to duck his head to fight his smile at the sight.  “Took you long enough, but you do have a parasite attached.”

Lance paused in their lining up to adopt an overly serious scowl and attempt to look down his nose at the Garla towering over him.  “Is that a smile I see, soldier?  Horrible.  It makes you look too nice.  Get rid of it.  Now.  I don’t ever want to see it back again.”

Xarac looked away as he fought with all he had to get rid of the expression that he was not supposed to have.  Watching a human boy mock the very rank Xarac served under only made it harder to hold in his grin.  “If I get in trouble, I’m taking you down with me Lance.”

“Only the weak get caught,” he returned flippantly as he got into line.

Hunk groaned to himself, “Xarac.  Please.  You have to tell him that if he keeps this up, he’s going to get in trouble.”

“I have.  Multiple times.  He’s just like my brothers though.  You can’t get anything through to them,” The Galra said as he strode down the line to make sure all under his watch were accounted for.

Veronica shifted to try and see why they had been called off work early.  “Oh no.”  she looked back at all of them with fear in her eyes.  “It’s the gladiator chooser.”

Faces blanched at the news.  One of the few ways that their numbers were selected to those who would not stay.  It was not often, but more than anyone ever wanted.  Out beyond their solar system was a system of arenas that they had been told nightmares of.  Ones were Galrans would gather for a game.  Being in the arena with the only goal of killing each other and letting blood and life flow for their entertainment.  Earth and its humans were usually forgotten as they were simple and mostly unevolved Terrans compared to so many that made a greater show in the death matches.  But still they had selections.  The weakest and the troublemakers were first considerations; the strong and good looking the only others if they wanted the possibility of a good fight.

“I told you it was bad,” Hunk whispered much too loudly to his best friend.

“You’re not going to be chosen.”

“I’m big and getting old enough that they will.”

“They won’t.”

“They might choose you too.  They took your dad and Marco,” Hunk stressed.

Lance tried to soften his swallow.  His father had been military trained in Cuba.  He had been considered too big of a potential problem.  Marco had been strong and had tried to protect them as they settled into this land and new system.  “I’m too tough for them to think that.”

That drew snorts from Keith and Pidge as the new Galra strode down the lines confidently.  With a nod, the gladiators were chosen.  All held their breath as he came by them.  None wanted to be chosen, wanted no one to be chosen, but if someone had to be, don’t let it be those they loved.

The more colorfully decorated Galra slowly stalked by each of them with a critical gaze.  His golden, pupilless eyes were void of any care as he walked through the garden to pick out the thistles, the wilting petals, and the blooming flowers for the enjoyment of watching their leaves be shredded and their stems stripped.  He reached the Holts. Paused. And nodded.

Matt’s knees almost gave out from under him before he weakly stepped forward.  Terror was in all eyes and expressions, but they kept silent.  Crying and fighting would do nothing other than greater harm for all as they had long ago learned.

Another nod and Shiro stepped half forward as his eyes were fastened in wide horror at his friend.  Someone that would have been a part of his flight crew to Kerberos in a couple of years.  Keith was fast in joining his adopted brother’s side as he was also selected.  The Japanese descended man snapped his gaze to the younger boy and then back to Matt.  The selecter continued on.  Passing Rosa and her two youngest.  Then his gaze was on the three remaining eldest McClain children.

Shiro shifted his attention desperately between it all before an almost animalistic roar came from him.   Keith flew sideways, hit the dirt with a sickening pop. Shiro was already on Matt, wood driving into his thigh, hands closing around his neck. “I’m going!  No one else!  I want blood!”  Shiro roared as his hands tightening on the boy below him.

No one could move in their shock.  This was Shiro.  The one that had lasted only a day in an animal facility for constantly apologizing to the animals for having to push them over to get through them.  The crazed expression softened for a split second before glowing ropes shot out to wrap around him.  Restrained, the sentries dragged him off of the boy and towards the awaiting ship.  He thrashed and yelled for death as they hauled him from sight.

The Holts were there then to sit Matt up right and begin compressing his bleeding leg as the Garrets and McClains did the same around Keith.  Kogane pushed their hands away as he tried to get up.  “Leave me alone.  Shiro!”

Rosa firmly pressed him down to stay sitting.  “No.  Stay put.”  Her fingers gently but firmly probed at his shoulder.

Racheal looked up to freeze at the eyes of the galra on them.  “Hush.”

All movement paused as they stared like deer caught in the headlight of a speeding car.  The armored Galra didn’t even blink.  “Get that one’s number,” the chooser ordered his aide.  “He might actually last a few rounds.” He glanced at the families then trying to care for the hurt boys.  “Remove them.  They’re less entertaining when they are already broken before they even enter the arena.”  He turned away then to continue to look through the slave for his other choices.

“He saved me,” Matt whispered as they worked at trying to help them. 

“Are you sure?” Samuel Holt questioned.

The thin young man nodded.  “He told me to take care of everyone before they dragged him off.  It was an act.  He hurt us so that we wouldn’t have to go and die.”

Keith’s gaze snapped to the gladiator ship in panic.  “Shiro!”

“Stay quiet.  Let him go and die in peace knowing that you are safe,” Rachel said as she glanced up at her mother.  “Dislocated shoulder?”

Rosa nodded in agreement.  Rachel took that as her queue to shove the Korean boy over to lay on the ground as she stepped on his shoulder and took his arm.  She was almost violent as she jerked to pop the joint back into its socket.  Keith grunted in pain as he lay on the ground.

“We’ll get you a sling when we’re dismissed,” Lance said as he picked the other young teen off of the ground and supported him as he tried to find his feet.

Keith blinked as his stance firmed before he realized who was supporting him to step back and support himself entirely.  His gaze trained on the gladiator ship.  “I want to go too.”

“You love him, but that’s no reason to die.  Remember him and live.  We would miss you too if you were taken,” Rosa said as she gently guided him back into line.  “You’re moving bunks to stay with us. You’re one of us now.”

After they were released, they ate in silence. Eyes tilted skyward, watching the gladiator ship. It waited. Then, with a low growl, it lifted into the stars and vanished. One more stolen. But the rest of them… still breathing.

Chapter Text

Every day was the same once again.  The terror and weight of the gladiator selection was over, and its horror had loosened its hold on the community.  Life continued on as it was forced to by the whip.  All trying to go back to normal with holes in their lives obviously bare.  The sun was hot and searing as those out in the fields harvested and ensured that water was getting to all the fields so that they at least did not have to die.

“Which field needs these?” Hunk questioned as he lifted three huge metal pipes into the transport vehicle.

“Three.  The one around the pond.  Its pipes broke and they need to be replaced to pump the water to the fields further out.  Bring the old ones back,” Katie ordered as she did the final tests on the new pump that was going to be put in.

Matt limped over to them on his hurt leg that was healing but still painful.  “We can’t wait to melt down the metal and trying to make a harvester that can pick everything that you guys do by hand.”

“Sheesh.  Trying to make me irrelevant,” Lance grumbled as he carried over his pipes to slide into place.

“Hard not to do,” Katie grumbled under her breath as she slumped over the pump to finish her work.

“I’m awesome, Pidge.  You’ll never get rid of me,” McClain declared.

“I’ll try harder,” the girl grumbled before standing up.  “Get this on there, Goofball.  If you can.”

“Watch me.  I’m nothing but muscle,” Lance said as he heaved the huge pump up to carry it with near ease if it was not for its size.

“Hard not to be around here,” Matt pointed out.  “They don’t give us enough food for anything beyond work and survival.  Fat can’t build up on us.”

“Uh oh,” Hunk breathed as he gazed out of the repair facility.

They all turned to look out at what he had noticed.  From the shipping facility two of their Galra overseers threw a too familiar figure out into the sunlight.  Keith hit the dirt and scrambled to rise, already too slow.  “What did he do this time?  Punch James again for being a whiny brat?” Lance questioned about the hot-headed boy that sometimes let his fists think before the rest of him.

“Sh!” Pidge silenced him so they could listen to the guards.

They were laughing with smiles to be fully displayed.  Such reactions when they were discouraged and forced out was terrifying.  “How did we never see it before?” One laughed as he kicked Keith hard in the gut.

“He tried to hide it,” the other agreed as he continued the torment.

Keith tried to get away from them as they beat him.  Scrambling to get up before the next kick brought him back down, crawling to have a heel ground into his back.  Unable to get away from the torment.  “Stop!” He shouted with his teeth grit together.  Wanting to fight and be strong and left alone but unable to.  Tears trickled down his face from the pain and his fear without his wanting.

“No.  We finally get to have some fun,” one of them laughed.

The dark-haired boy went tumbling across the ground as the commander of the region stormed over.  “What is going on here?”

The two taskmasters straightened to force their smiles away.  “We found a half breed, sir.”

Commander Cathar turned his gaze to the teenager that was slowly getting to his feet, appearing entirely human.  Skin a soft white, all physical characteristics, so tiny compared to them.  Then the purple eyes that were not common among humans.  “Did you take a genetics test?”

“Yes.  We noticed he was different from the others and tried it.  Probably a baby smuggled out of the pleasure slave quarters,” one reported as their smiles began to come back to them.

Cathar’s smile was less wide than theirs but just as interested.  “A Galra-human hybrid.  Pathetic.  Why some of our kind are willing to even think of getting pleasure from such animals, I don’t understand.”

“I’m not an animal,” Keith snapped as he stood to face them.  “And I am not a pleasure slave result.  My dad said that my Galra mother loved both of us.”

The three galra looked at him blankly for a moment at the idea and the began to laugh at its absurdity.  “Who could ever love a mistake?  Humans are barely not worth eating like all the other cattle, and we are too strong to ever let our blood be polluted by another species,” Cathar said before he motioned for the others.  “This will be fun.”

Keith’s violet eyes widened in fear before he was sprinting with all he had to get away.  The taskmasters had much longer strides as they pounded after him.  All slaves held their breathes, praying to any being that would hear them that the quiet boy that always hid behind Shiro would make it.  Kogane was snatched up by his arms to be dangled above the ground between the two Galra like a toy.  His flight turned into full fight as he began to kick at them as they began to bring him back.  Hunk wrung his hands.  “Keith’s half galra?”

“Yep.  Great night vision, strong, better instincts than the rest of us,” Lance said in long suspicion confirmed.

Cathar chuckled to himself as he looked down at the suspended hybrid.  “You’re going to make things interesting for once.  We don’t ever get to watch the gladiator fights live. Let’s see what half of him knows how to bleed.”

Hunk breathed heavily, “They’re going to kill him.  Just like that little girl half breed.  They tied her up and tore her apart and took out her eyes and every muscle...”  He turned fast to instantly lose his stomach at remembering the graphic torture the four-year-old had gone through.  She had done nothing other than exist.  Be part of a species that purged all others and hated the slightest spreading of their self-considered superior genes even more.

Lance’s smile was gone as his lips thinned tightly.  “Go get something to drink Hunk.  Don’t think about it.”

“If only I could do that,” The more muscled teen gasped as he turned away.

Lance’s fists were clenched behind his back. Joking wouldn’t help now. Nothing would. “Pidge, you remember the cave out in field seventeen that we found?” McClain questioned.

“Yeah,” The girl said as they watched the Galra with their captive turn for their base building.  “The one that we used to explore, and none of the adults cared because it was so small getting in and it wasn’t work.”

“Get Keith there,” the Latino boy ordered as he stepped out of the repair facility.

“How?  He’s going to have trained Galra stabbing him,” Pidge pointed out.

“He hopefully shouldn’t get that far,” Lance said before he turned the corner.  He made his strides long to cover ground without going so fast that it attracted attention until he got to the Galra headquarters.  He found a blind spot, leapt, caught the edge, and hauled himself up.  Carefully he moved up the metal that shifted under his weight to come to the peak to look down on the three and a half Galra approaching.  He watched them seriously as he reached out to twist one of the screws rivetted to the roof to keep the metal on.  It broke off at the pressure as many other of the neglected screws already had.  Whenever a windstorm came through, more snapped off as the metal flapped more until it came loose.  Other sheets had been gathered and resecured back in place, but this one had not been considered enough of a problem to bother with yet.

Cathar went out from his sight and the sound of the lock disengaging on the door to let him inside sounded as the others were lagging behind with their now almost feral dangling captive.  Lance slowly breathed as he timed how fast they were approaching.  As they came nearly to the building, his fingers hovered over the last screw. If he was wrong, Keith would not escape and would die. He twisted, and shoved the metal hard.  It screeched as he ducked out of sight.  Sliding down wards off the roof, breaking off other screws holding lower metal roof sheets as it went down.  Shouts were nearly deafened by the horrible screek and scream of the metal skidding across each other.  The metal was off the roof then to land on the ground with an audible wobble before crashing flat.

Lance slid off the roof and froze as the patrolling sentry turned its back to him to focus on the sound on the opposite side of the building.  It then sprinted for the corner.  He let out a breath of relief before joining everyone else that was rushing around the side to see what happened.  He glanced Keith sprinting around the corner of the building, unseen soft buttermilk white skin broken and bleeding red from his beating, and smiled in relief.  His plan had worked.  Enough of a distraction to get them to let go and give the half human boy the chance to escape.  The metal of the collapsed roof was pushed up for the taskmasters to crawl out from under it.

One grunted as he stretched to get the bruises of being forced down by the metal out.  “We really need to get this roof fixed.  I’ve been waiting for this to happen.”

“Where’d the half breed go?” the other questioned.

“No clue.  We’ll get him.  There’s no where for him to go.”

They turned to survey the wreckage of the roof to pause at noticing one of the metal sheets was not flat as all the others were.  They hurried over to lift it up for Cathar to be underneath.  Lance’s heart stopped as he saw the commander lying on the ground.  He was supposed to have gone inside.  He was clear of everything like the other two had been with the exception of it being close enough to surprise them. Cathar had turned back. Maybe he heard the roof shift. Maybe he wanted a better view. The metal had found him instead.

The lesser Galra knelt beside their commander to grasp his casual armor and lift slightly.  Purple blood gushed out, pooling on the dry powdery ground.  The back of his neck deeply severed from the edge of metal plunging through like a rusty, dull guillotine.  Gravity did not seem to be fully working anymore as Lance stared.  Light, floating and dizzy.  Dead.  Cathar was dead. And it was because of him.  There was only supposed to be a couple of bruises.  The commander shouldn’t have stepped back out.

The two living Galra looked at each other in grave silence before one reach up to his com.  “Lieutenant.  You need to come to the front entrance.”

“I am busy,” the Lieutenant dismissed.

“This is important.  Sir… you need to see this. Now,” the task master said softly.

Lance stepped back out of sight before stumbling.  His breath caught, then broke as everything began to hit.  Almost in a daze back to his work, hopefully to hide out of sight and back to a thing that was certain. 

~

Keith ran.  Around corners and any way from Galrans.  Pidge suddenly leaped out to grab his arm.  “Where are you going?”

“I have to go,” Keith said as he kept trying to run.  “They are going to kill me.”

“I know.  Come on.  I have something better,” the girl said as she rushed into the repair facility.

The hybrid followed her as he had no other direction.  Where could one run when the entire world was under the control of those that want you dead?  They hid behind a harvester as slaves and sentries walked about before dodging for the next cover.  They got to a transport loaded with pipes.  “Get in and hide.  Don’t do anything,” Pidge ordered.

Keith climbed into the pipes to push some out slightly to make a small space for himself against loaded power units and pulled the top ones back over his head to keep himself unseen from all sides.

“Hunk!  Where are you?” Pidge shouted.

“I can drive,” Matt offered.

“You can’t walk, and your string been arms can’t get anything unloaded.  I’m driving and Hunk’s the muscle,” Pidge stated certainly.

“Coming!” Hunk called as he jogged over.  “Sorry, I just can’t…  I feel awful.  Why do they want Keith dead?  I mean, if I found out he was my half-brother, I would give him a huge hug.”

“Panic later.  Get in and stay quiet. They’re going to be testing all of us now to see if we’re also Galra,” Pidge ordered

The transport whirred to life for them to hover quickly out and through the compound for the fields.  Through a gap in the pipes around him, Keith could see the crowd around the collapsed roof.  The thing that had given him this chance at living.  It was too well timed to have been an accident.  Even he could see that.  That roof was bound to break at any moment, but just when he was going to see sunlight for the last time…  He curled in on himself as the pipes rolled and threatened to crush him.

The green of the fields was around them then as they quietly made the trip out.  They stopped a short distance from the pond that supplied the water to all the region’s crops for Pidge and Hunk to jump out.  “Get the pump out and going.  I’ll go check how far out we have to replace the pipes,” Pidge ordered.

“Right.  I can do that,” Hunk said softly like he was about to lose his stomach once again. 

Keith stayed silent as the pump was taken out from near him and the mechanically gifted boy trekked for the pond.  “Come on!” Pidge hissed.

Kogane slid out from under the pipes to join her as she led the way through the field.  It was mostly flat with nothing of notice.  Anyone would be able to look up and see them.  She stopped at a small outcropping of rock that barely rose above the terrain.  A tiny crack was among them.  “It gets bigger inside.  You can hide here, and they won’t think to look for you here.  I don’t know how you’re going to survive…”

“I’ll be fine,” Keith said before smiling slightly. “Thanks.”

“Don’t die,” she ordered but under the gruffness was begging.

“Don’t plan to,” He hesitated at the mouth of darkness. Just for a breath. And then he vanished.  Then she turned and walked off, already fading into duty.

Chapter Text

Lieutenant Harfax sat in his darkened room as he worked at his data pad.  He didn’t glance up as one of his men knocked and came in.  “Sir.”

“You found the saboteur?”  He demanded for results.

“We believe so,” the Galra agreed.

“Send it in.”

The Galra clasped his fist to his chest.  “Vrepit sa.”  The rag clothed slave was pushed into the room then.  Lance glanced the space before he silently came to stand before the new commander of the region with his eyes on the floor as he had been trained.

Harfax eventually looked up at him to take in the offered slave.  “You are not what I imagined Cathar’s murderer to look like.”  Lance did not speak.  “But I suppose that no human would match those expectations.  Did you kill him?”

Lance did reply.  “Answer me!” Harfax shouted the order. “Was it you or shall I gather ten others to go with you?”

“It was,” McClain stated.  “I was not trying to kill him.  I thought he was safe.”

Harfax put aside his pad to stare at the teenager.  “Why did you break the roof?”

“To save a friend,” Lance stated as he raised his eyes slightly to meet the gold.  “He’s a half Galra and they were going to kill him.  I only wanted to let him escape.  I never wanted to hurt anyone.  It was an accident.  I swear I didn’t try to kill Commander Cathar.”

The newly promoted galra sneered, “A half breed.  Why would you try to save a part Galra?”

“Because he is part human, and I don’t hate people for the fun of it.  Even if he was full Galra, he is my friend.”

“If you had known… that it would end like this.  Would you still have done it?”

Lance took a minute to consider with a strengthening breath.  “Yes.  I would have done something different that wouldn’t have killed anyone, but I would still try to save him.”

Harfax huffed in scorn as he picked up his tablet again.  “Humans.  Your ideals of emotions and loyalty are what make you worthy of dying.  I suppose I have to thank you though.”  McClain blinked in surprise at the words.  “I have been considering how I was going to kill Cathar myself without it being discovered as murder.  The purposeful death of a Galran, even by Galra hands is against the law.  You have solved that problem nicely for me.  Now I am finally commander, and I will be able to rise enough to get off of this cursed planet.”

The room was quiet as Commander Harfax worked.  Eventually he spoke again.  “Usually, the punishment for what you have done is being sent south to work yourself to death trying to find the Blue Lion in the desert, but I have something special for you.  I need a display to prove that I am not to be trifled with and to not attempt what you have.”

“I am to be an example then,” Lance stated in too much familiar knowing. 

“Exactly.”

“I’m to be a gladiator for your entertainment then?”

Harfax smirked slightly, “That’s usual around here and much too fast.  Don’t worry.  You’ll be dead soon, but it will be long enough for you to wish you had done so a thousand times before.”

“Don’t hurt my family,” Lance begged.  “They were not connected with what I did in the least.  I did it alone.  Don’t do this to them too.” Lance didn’t speak to save himself. He spoke to draw the fire inward. Let the blame be his. Let them walk free.

The commander considered it for a minute before nodding.  “They’ll be spared.  They will make sure to remind everyone if they are half as caring towards you as you are of them.  Not that a toddler would even be able to think of doing what you are going to be.”

The guard came back in.  “Take him to a holding cell.  I’m contacting a friend of mine that told me that he is in desperate need of slaves with the high turnover rate they have. He says they lose labor daily. Personally, I think they eat them.”

“Vrepit sa,” The guard saluted before dragging the slave out.

Chapter Text

The humans marched out of their barrack homes in drudging lines to get their morning meal before work would start for the day.  Estella yawned as she hugged her mother.  “Why did Lance or Keith not come home last night?”

Dark circles were under Rosa’s eyes.  “Keith didn’t because he’s not coming back.  Our masters didn’t like him very much, so we’ll never see him again.  I don’t know where Lance is, but he better have a really good reason when he comes back.”

“Generally, the answer to what your son is up to comes from a couple other mouths,” Cathleen Holt stated with a knowing look at her own children and Hunk. 

Hunk shook his head, “I don’t know where he is this time.  I promise!  I haven’t heard anything.”

“That checks out.  If he’s doing anything that will really get someone in trouble, he won’t tell you so that you don’t get hurt if it gets found out.  That’s why he has us,” Matt said as he took his food bowl to accept his food before trying not to spill it with his strong limp.  “I haven’t heard anything.”

Eyes turned to the girl that was being too quiet and guilty, shoulders hunched in and eyes darting about to not look at anyone.  “Katelyn,” Her mother intoned seriously at the trouble she was in if she didn’t spill.

“I don’t know what he is doing right now.  I know what was going on a little while ago, but not now,” Pidge mumbled.

Samuel looked down at her.  “Care to share with the rest of us what you do know?”

“No.  It’s better that no one does,” She turned down.

The siren blasted to end the interrogation.  Panicked glances shifted among all instead as terror tensed them.  They had just been gotten up with the siren, nothing good could come from it going off like this.  They inhaled the last swallows of food before they lined up.  Their new commander came out to pass by them as a small ship became noticeable in the sky.  Whispers of another gladiator choosing spread, that or being so weak that they were being culled to feed the druids’ robeasts as the uncommonly small cruiser landed.  The ground didn’t shake. But their bones remembered what came after landings like this.

Harfax stood at relaxed attention as the ramp lowered to let another Galra out.  “I trust you had a safe journey?”

The other smiled slightly as he went up to fondly put an arm around commander Harfax’s shoulders and pat his back.  “Safe and uneventful.  It was wonderful.  You should invite me more often so I can get off of that cursed planet.”

“If I have any more troublemakers, I’ll call you,” Harfax promised as they walked down from the landing platform.

The newcomer scanned over the line up of agricultural slaves with bone dead exhaustion showing despite his strict posturing.  “I’m taking it that these are not the ones I’m here for.  They’re too well behaved, and weak.”

“No, it is being brought.  Congratulations on becoming a Seargeant.  You will begin to rise fast.”

“On Medilin, advancement is too fast, if you are not the one to die.”

“Is the war there that bad?”

The Galra shook his head, “Not the war.  The Medai have cities under the water and some of them live their entire lives on its surface.  There is no land on Medilin.  They are decent fighters, but nothing we can’t handle.  It is the water and the planet itself that is the true killer.  The water and its movements are electromagnetic in their pull.  Any powered technology is shortly drained after arrival, making us turn back to our primitive ancestors and their manual labor crafts to wage the war.  Anyone that touches the water has their energy, and strength and their very life drained out of them.  Though, I have come to believe that just being near it is enough to slowly do the safe.  You do not know what strength that this trip has brought me, Harfax.  Invite me again soon so that I might be able to regain enough strength to outlive my superiors to get a promotion off of that planet.”

“I will ask the commanders of the other regions if they have any that they want to be rid of for you.” Harfax said before motioning towards his base.  “There is yours.”

Eyes turned from fearfully watching the newcomer to the one that had supposedly summoned him.  Sharp breathes were taken in as the young teenager stepped out with the guards, hand shackled behind his back.  Estella frowned at the shackled boy. “Mama… that’s Lance.” Rosa gripped her hand tighter.  Lance.  The cheerful McClain boy that no chain or whip had ever managed to break his optimism and happiness.  He seemed relaxed and confident with his shoulders back as he was guided towards the ship.

The Sergeant over a war in another solar system looked at the teen in disbelief.  “This can’t be the one you are giving me.  I’ve seen Galra kits that are more than this.”

“You’ll find our newborns stronger than any of their adults. This one killed my commander, defied the empire, protected a half-breed, and brought down a building. He’s too dangerous to keep.  Do you have anything to keep such a creature down?”

The newcomer smirked in grim amusement.  “That is all Medilin is.  I doubt that this excuse for a life form will last longer than a movement.”

“My men have been placing similar wagers.  Rumor has it that the average life expectancy of slaves on Medilin is four pheobs,” Harfax said as the lined-up slaves stared in horror at the almost child that had been condemned as they translated the alien time measurements to their own.  Roughly over and around four months as the average life span of a slave on that awful planet.  A week estimated for the boy to live.

“Depending on the species and how whole they are before they come to us.  Theres nothing left by the time they are done.  There’s nothing on this one in the first place.  He would probably prefer to die now before we put him to work,” the newcomer explained.  He snorted in amusement to himself.  “The average life expectancy will plummet with how fast it's going to die.”

“I think Commander Harfax explained all of that to me in a quarter of the time.  Can you try to be a little less dramatic?  That’s my job,” Lance said lightly as he was pushed past.  His knees almost gave out when the ship came into view. But he straightened, because someone had to see him stand.

The Holt girl stared in horror at her friend at his fate along with everyone else.  She glanced at all around her that could barely breathe, before she quietly slipped away.

~

Keith sat beside the pond as he slowly drank in the morning coolness before everyone would arrive to work and he would have to hide away.  He studied the lines he had drawn in the dirt as he considered.  “Keith!”

He looked up to see the young girl sprinted towards him.  “Pidge?  What are you doing here?”

She came to stop beside him breathing hard from her sprint.  “Lance is condemned to die!”

The half breed’s violet eyes went wide, and he stood up fast.  “What?!  Why?”

Pidge swallowed as she tried to slow her breathing.  “He was the one that dropped the roof on the Galra to let you get away.  He’s the reason you’re out here.”

“Lance did that?” Kogane asked softly in disbelief.  “Why?”

Pidge snorted as she rolled her eyes.  “You’re an idiot.  Because he likes you.  He thinks you are awesome and has wanted to be your friend ever since he met you, but you keep brushing him off.”

“I thought he was obnoxious and just trying to pick a fight.”

“No, he was trying to get you to pay attention to him.  Pay attention.  He was trying to let you get away and he killed Cathar.  They’re sending him to a planet that is basically water hell to die!  He’s going to be dead in a few months if he lasts that long!” Pidge rubbed at her eyes to stubbornly try and keep the tears in and hidden.

The dark-haired boy stared at her broken emotions she always held at bay behind determination for her work before his gaze shifted towards the compound.  In the distance, the small cruiser lifted of and disappeared into the atmosphere.  One on there that he had never wanted to get to know, but had known him so well on there.  The pond didn’t ripple. The wind didn’t stir. But something in Keith cracked so loud it felt like thunder.   Someone had cared even though he didn’t want them too.  Too many people did when they shouldn’t. “Why?  I’m just a half breed.  Why did Shiro hurt me to keep me from the arena?  Why Lance? Why…”

Chapter Text

The room was probably decently sized to be a small private room for a Galra, but in the pitch black that it was kept in, it was extremely small.  Lance leaned against the thrumming wall as he kept his eyes closed to try and block out the abyss.  He had never heard of planet Medilin before.  Perhaps it was better than they were trying to make it sound.  Galra had a thing for being dramatic and making things sound worse than they were.  It was supposed to be a water-based planet, maybe there could be mermaids on it for him to meet.

The slowing of the engines and then ending of their thrum had him opening his eyes to try and see what was happening.  It took a few minutes for the door of his temporary cell to slide open and the Sergeant that had picked him up stood in the doorway.  “Get out here.”

Lance got to his feet to walk out into the low purple light.  “You could try saying please.”

“No talking.  If you’re going to do something useless, then resist and give me more time off of that planet,” The Sergeant growled as they went down his ship’s ramp into a large hangar.

A large cargo ship was settled in the hangar as well with hundreds of slaves of countless species being forced out and into lines that were funneled for large pods. The human teen kept up with the Sergeants as he stormed over to a sentry sorting through the slaves.  “Here’s another one.”

The robotic soldier nodded to direct the boy into one of the lines as the flesh Galra stormed to the front of a line to get into a pod with another Galra.  Lance smiled at the slaves around him.  “Hello.  How are you doing?”

The slaves around him stared blankly down.  “Going to supposedly die.”

“I was meaning other than that,” Lance said as he studied those around him.  They were all towering masses of muscles.  Varying sizes that were all above his head, many with arms as thick as his torso.  He was the smallest of all there and looked like a toy compared to them.

“I killed five Galra to get sent here, so I am content with myself,” One answered gruffly.

“Sabotaged and stole parts from a Galra base and blew it up in my escape,” The one in front of him grunted.  “You?”

Lance forced his smile up as he began to realize who they others were.  “Political steppingstone and point.”  He suddenly felt very small, not just in size. These weren’t rebels with dreams. They were weapons with names.  The murderers, thieves, and spies.  Ones that would have done what he had on purpose and with as much trouble as pressing an ant to a table until it popped.  The worst that the Galra empire had conquered and could not get rid of in any way beyond this and the arena.

“Thought those went to the arena,” Someone grumbled.  “I hope to take down a couple more of those scum here.”

“Wait until they think that you have given up,” another slave suggested.

They were crammed into the pod that seemed to have no space in them, but Lance was small enough to keep from being entombed in the mass of hulking bodies to glance out the small viewing port.  The door slid shut behind them and they were launched with just force of machinery instead of ion and quintessence power.  The planet they were speeding for from its moon was light aquamarine green in hue.  As they entered its atmosphere, the green became watery waves of liquid.  It had been a long time since he had been able to see the sea that he had been born near. The waves rolling past the viewport reminded him of home. Not peace, but salt wind, open sky, and the idea that there had once been days without chains.  Verardo beach with its soft, hot sand that got everywhere.   The clear blue water swarming with tropical fish and sharks.  It was soothing and gentle to see.  They then crashed into the water's surface hard with no slowing before.  Nothing to keep them safe other than being packed together so fully that it just crushed them even more.  The transparent green water surging over the view port before they rose above it to bob in the swells.

In the distance, a long black thing moved across the water towards them like a beetle parasite on a healthy leaf.  It was a sharp sea ship that was long and narrow.  Prow and bow bladed and sharp.  It was very similar to an ancient roman galley without its sail and the spindly legs of its oars replaced by Galra sized turbines that churned the water to pull the huge craft towards them.  As it approached, the turbines on the side facing them were lifted free of the water and pulled into a small protective alcove along the side of the ship for them so that they could not be hit and damaged by the pod. 

Chains were thrown out to hook their pod and pull them in close before it was opened.  The new direction to go was simple.  Slaves in their full body covering purple and black rag suits climbed up onto the deck of the craft that was so different from any other that they were known for.  They lined up for the gaping black opening to the decks below with two slaves that were huddled near the entrance.  Each in line paused at the old being for the slaves used to this place to grasp heavy metal loops.  The shackle was lock onto every being around their ankle, leg, or first solid joint, a large ring loose and small seaming in its significance.

No sentries were present on the ship as living Galra took every position of command on board.  The commander glowered at them, but he seemed to relax at their arrival.  “About time they sent us more slaves.  We were starting to run low.”

“Hopefully these are better than the last they sent us.  We need to make them last until the next shipment,” The lieutenant agreed.

The commander stepped forward for his voice to carry loudly over the waves.  “If any of you are considering escape, forget it.  No one can survive these waters.  They seem calm, but will instantly pull anything down to the bottom that is not perfectly balanced like this craft.  It will drain your life from you.  If one of you wants to die now, please, come demonstrate to the others.”

None moved.  None were that foolish.  Rebellion happened later once everything was known of the ship and their commanders.   Then they could plot.  Each next in line disappeared into the dark below.  Lance paused beside the slave that was as tall as he was kneeling.  The impossible creature paused in its work to stare at him with disbelief at his small size compared to everyone else.  It huffed in scorn as it found the smallest shackle it could before crushing it around his ankle so the metal warped and wrapped around to be small enough.  Lance grimaced as a sharp corner dug into his leg before nodding.  “Thank you.  You have a good grip.  My sisters always wanted me to wear more jewelry.”

The alien just stared at him.  He stepped into the dark, and the smell hit him like a wall. He didn’t gag. He wouldn’t. That was weakness in an empire that did not let any survive.  “Wow. Five stars. Love what you’ve done with the lighting,” he mumbled to himself as his eyes adjusted to the darkness.  Every bit of waste was left there.  Waste and excrement of the slaves left on the floors below where they stood.  A few of the slaves were going down the small aisle between both sides of slaves at their stations shoveling all the waste through a small slot at the bottom into the sea outside.  The old slaves stared up at them with nothing in their diverse gazes.  No pity or sorrow for the new condemned.  No happiness or joy that they had someone to join them in their suffering and help ease their work.  All energy and soul was already gone from them.  Dead mentally and every way but physically. This is what survival looked like now. Not breath. Just… delay.

The old slaves moved out of the way to let the new be pushed into their places and trudged to the grate in the center of the aisle.  It was unlocked to allow them to drop below into the hold that would be their home and prison when they were not working.  Lance cautiously moved to stand in the space he was forced into.  He gazed at the blood splattered against the metal wall beside him that was all between him and the ocean.  “Lance, what did we learn? Never volunteer for tropical vacations.” He muttered to himself.  Through the hole where his machinery attached to the turbine outside, he could see the soft sunlight and the inviting swells that called so softly without an audible voice, but one that could be felt in the soul.

He forced his eyes from watching what he could not reach and had been promised to kill to the dark inside of hell.  The set up was simple and the same for him and every other slave in front and behind him.  A single handle that they would push in a circle to turn their turbine.  Around in circles.  No seat.  Nothing other than a large metal block by their feet.

“Take your turbines, slaves!” Their commander shouted.  “We have far to go before your relief will take over for you.  Churn!  Push!”

Whips and chains cracked down on backs of the unknowing new slaves to force them to take hold.  Each of them grasped their handle and shoved it forward and down before pulling it back to lift up to repeat.  It was chaos in the sides as all went at different speeds and directions. The poles weren't independent.  Row out too fast, and you drove yours into the back of the next man’s skull. Too slow, and someone did it to you.  Lance rowed hard at his place as he timed his movements with the others around him so that none of them were hitting each other.  Only because of the work and labor he had done back on earth was he able to keep up with the other slaves’ pace.  Finding the purpose of the block at his feet fast to push against.  Strain to pushed forward, and then heave back with his entire weight, body, and extra strength on top of that to get his pole back.  In minutes he began to feel the pull in his muscles.  He was very strong among humans for his age and size with all that he had to do, but this was speaking instantly to that not being enough.  Despite all their harsh training and building, they were little.  A hundred more muscles were needed to do this work.

His mouth opened for another quip towards his neighbor, but nothing came. Just breath. Just pain. He grit his teeth hard as he kept going and they all began to settle into a rhythm of all forward and back at the same time and same pace.  A pace that matched the slow beating of a drum that they had not paid any mind to before.  Their hearts and pulsing organs trembling faster than it at the exertion that none had expected to be so harsh but still coming to line up with all other rhythms.

Chapter Text

The sun began to come through the small turbine holes into the Galra ship as morning began again on Medilin.  It meant nothing.  Only the steady beat of the drum.  The synchronization of all slaves at their power and steering stations.  Turning.  McClain focused on it though.  The light came through the small slots to dance like waves across the walls and ceiling.  Mesmerizing in the darkness of death.

“You know, if you squint, the light looks like starlight on water. I used to swim under that kind of glow,” he said softly.

“If you can get this ship to stop rocking like it's on water and instead be in the desert like my home planet was, I would prefer it,” the huge slave in front of him grunted as he shoved forward will his whole huge body.

Lance’s hands slipped on his handle for him to readjust.  Fingers cramped and frozen into their grasp on the pole.  Unable to move but shaking and so weak that they were almost falling limp from it.  “Desert sounds nice.  I could work on getting my tan there.”

“Tan?” the one behind him rasped as he barely managed to get the word out.

“Yeah.  Humans can have the heat of our sun cook the outer layer of our skin to darken it some.  Tanning.  The better the golden tones, the better you look to the girls.  Being down here in the dark is probably killing mine.”  He leaned forward to push his pole forward for his arms not to engage in the forward motion with him.  His silently snarled to forced them back into action to stay with the others.

“That sounds awful.  For being infant sized, humans are barbaric,” an older slave that was more used to all they were doing stated.

“Not wrong.  Back home I got on decent terms with a couple of our Galra taskmasters and we talked.  It seems like humans and Galra are pretty similar in a lot of ways to each other.  Galra go to the druids for willing pain to be modified into something more cool, and humans like sticking metal through our skin and stabbing needles in to paint permanent pictures on our bodies.  It hurts, but for some reason we like it.  I was in the generation that all that stopped with the conquering, so I don’t have any of that myself.”  His arms trembled. His grip cracked open. Not yet, he begged with his own self that did not listen. Just give me one more minute to make them smile.

“Why did humans ever survive to evolve this far if this is what they do?” the one in front asked himself.

Gagging for air was becoming louder behind them.  One of the old prisoners whose skeleton displayed that he had once been as great as all the others but was now nothing more than withered flesh flopped against his pole in desperation to keep going but was failing.  He collapsed to the side and aisle to gasp for breath as his body was obviously on the verge of completely failing him.  Worked so hard that every little thing was stripped away to this.  Death.

“Get up!” a task master shouted as he brought his whip down on the fallen slave.  The alien rolled over to try and shield itself from the biting weapon, but did not have enough of anything to rise.

All other slaves continued their synchronized work.  Those in front not sparing more than a glance at what was happening.  They couldn’t.  They had to keep forcing themselves to do more or fall the same.  “When I get off this ship, I’m opening a spa. First session’s free for anyone still breathing. You in?”  Lance asked to get their attention off of their fallen brother that none of them knew.  He didn’t look. Couldn’t. If he stopped to care, he wouldn’t get moving again.

“A spa?  I do not want to participate in any of your painful earth practices.  This is enough for me.”

“It's not painful.  It’s nice and relaxing.  You lay around to have people pamper you and make you look and feel awesome.”

“Seventy-six,” a Galra growled.

Lance looked up at him.  That’s all he was now.  The number of his station.  Not even the long number of his enslavement that the empire used to keep track of all their slaves.  Short and simple.  Their lives had now come down to that long.  He paused to step out of the space to let the other larger slave that was his relief, and the other one call seventy-six to take his place.  As he stepped into the aisle, he staggered.  His body and head still going back and forth in motion from doing so for hours on end, legs nearly giving out under him at having to do an action that had not been trained into their memory already.

A week.  That was all that he had been here in the dark on Medilin.  That he had lasted this long was beginning to become a surprise for himself.  He had pulled off the top half of his slave uniform to let his thin body be displayed but let the slight breeze that came in cool his sweat.  That lack of cover revealed the horrible truth of his biology.  His body was self-destructing.  Warm caramel brown skin was gone.  Distorting the dark, vibrant shades of deep blue and purple that had swelled underneath.  Torn muscles, blood vessels, and severe bruising bleeding the wicked colors through his arms, back and chest.  His legs were undoubtedly the same.  The swelling making his thinness less noticeable, but the heat of his body desperately fighting to repair sweltering as much as the air.  His skin twitching and jumping of its own accord in its pain.  Rest.  Finally, he could have a little rest.

He staggered down the aisle for the grate in the floor that would let him down into the prison below.  One that held no whispers or planning for escape.  The work had swiftly stolen all energy from them to convey for such plots.  Every shift forcing the mind to place all its effort into pulling, pushing.

The teenager paused at the huge fallen being curled up in the aisle before the grate as the guard hit him to get him up.  The male raised his tentacle like arms to shield himself from the blows as high-pitched keens of agony came from him.  “Let him rest!” Lance shouted over the noise.

The taskmaster shifted his glare to him.  “He’s had his relief.  He started his work just a varga ago.”

Lance stared down at the dead seeming eyes that had just enough light left in them to show that the being was not gone yet.  Pain and fear of the bit of the whip.  Wanting to get up and not die but accepting that it was coming no matter how hard he fought.

The human boy stepped into the empty station and began to churn with the others.  “His relief is here.  Let him rest a little longer.”

The Galra sneered at him as they could see how close he was to falling the same as the one he was replacing.  “Mercy is weakness.”

“Any other inspirational pep talks you have for me?” Lance said with a grin.

The Galra sneered at him before dragging the nearly dead slave over to the grate and dropping him inside.  The relieved breath that his muscles had taken at the promise of rest screamed in blood curdling agony at the torture they had thought they had escaped for a few hours.  Lance forced his sob of pain into a smile at his new neighbors that were staring and glancing back at him in disbelief at what he had done.  “Hi.  Do you guys have any good jokes from your planets, or should I share all of mine?  I’m testing to see if there is a species in the universe that can understand them without an explanation.”

“That was very foolish,” one behind him said.  “You’ll be dead before the relief comes.”

“And you guys are lucky enough to have my awesome self before that.  I am the best looking and amazing personality this side of the solar system.  How do you guys feel about singing?”

“My planet had songs,” his front whispered to himself.

“Great!  You’ll have to teach me some.  I have this child’s one from my planet that I think fits this perfectly.  It is called ‘Row, Row Your Boat.’”

“Singing is not allowed.”

“I don’t remember that in the rule book.  Has anyone tried it yet?”  Lance sang the song.  Focusing on thinking instead of the almost unbearable pain in himself.  Singing and laughing to dull the pain and the time.  Give the others something to cling to even as he fell.

Chapter Text

The aquamarine green sea was calm if it was not for the fleet of black ships crossing her horizon.  Black metal with the red symbol of the Galra Empire on their sides.  On the command ship, the deep drum kept a slow and steady beat for its slaves to row to for the turbines to send them across the water.  The Galra watched the exhausted but strong slaves work at their posts, waiting to encourage any that lagged.  The ship’s commander stepped down into the dark hold to stare emotionlessly at the suffering souls that he had to rely on.  He turned slightly as his lieutenant came down to report.  “In a dobashes, the consul’s pod will be coming along side.  Get ready to raise turbines.”

The Commander placed his fist over his armored chest as the salute was returned.  “Vrepit sa.”

The lieutenant went up above then at the commander watched the slaves.  With a nod, his man beating the drum to control their timing called out.  “Raise turbines!”  All shafts went downwards, and the paddle generators were raised from the water.  “Down turbines.” Down they went back into the water with a splash.

All Galra of rank on the command ship stood in lined rank as the pod that had hit the water came up beside them.  As its doors came open, horns blared in welcome but also in warning and signal to the extensive fleet of the one that had arrived since no technology could be used on this planet to do so.  A Galra with yellows and reds decoratively worked into his armor grasped the chains hanging down to pull himself up onto the ship.

A slave from below watched through the small gaps to the outside as the Galra passed right by him.  His tired eyes darted back and forth between him and those around him in worry and life enough to think.  “The new Commander, Perikaryon.”

The new commander strode down the top of the vessel for all commanders and soldiers to go from mandatory stiffness to formal attention in practiced flair.  All lesser officers followed after him.  Those that had originally been in control of the ship kept their gazes forward as the older Galra looked into all their expressions.  His large ears stood out from his helmet with the fur between having gone white with age.  Wrinkles lined his features, but the scowl of disappointment that seemed almost mandatory among Galra was not present.  Just a calm neutral as he studied every little detail and considered it.  He stepped to the lesser commander to give him a sweeping look.

Perikaryon stared for a long moment, enough to make the lesser commander begin to sweat under his armor.  “How many slaves?”

“Two hundred, Consul,” the commander snapped out the answer.

“And their reliefs?”

“Thirty.  Every varga.”

The Consul considered the ones powering his ship as he stepped down the stairs for the darkness leading below.  Two hundred to give them power at any time.  Thirty of them given a varga’s rest to not get another for another seven vargas.  A rest schedule that Galra used in basic training to break them and make them stronger, not a lifestyle.   He stepped into the darkness of the slave quarters.  The air grew dense as he stepped into the slave quarters. Sweat, rot, and memory pooled like stagnant tidewater.  Taskmasters stood at attention.  He passed by them to slowly look over each slave.  The full body suits that were customarily given were mostly gone from them.  No boots, arms and legs bare.  Just enough kept for each of their species’ forms of modesty.

He paused as one of the slaves began dryly coughing for want of water and incoming illness.  He held out his hand for the closest taskmaster to hand him his whip.  He continued down the aisle.  Muscle was taught and hard in each of them.  Grips sure and strong.  These were not new or broken slaves.  These were the best that could be gathered from the fleet to serve the command ship.  Eyes stayed straight ahead, focused on the drum master, almost quivering with their readiness to throw themselves back into their work.

The Consul forced the handle of his taken whip under face of the one that had stifled his coughing to look at him.  There was strength and determination to seem fine and continue, but everything else spoke of his decline.  “This one is ill.  Replace him.”

“Change him,” the lesser commander ordered his taskmasters.

The sick slave weakly crawled out from his spot with relief in every line in him at not having to work with the sickness ailing him.  As the grate was lifted to let out a new slave and let him in, the Consul turned to the other side.  He shoved hard at the bare back of a black creature with a tough skin.  Deep lash marks were against his back and arms for scabbed over blue of his blood to been seen.  “This one been giving you trouble?”

“He’s insubordinate, Consul.”

“That will stop,” the Consul directed towards the slave.  The alien shifted back upright with a hot glare that promised death in his eyes.  Spirit that was usually broken on Medilin and life drained away.  There was some of it in most of the gazes here.  It was almost strange to see a living beings staring back at you.

He moved around the grate and the pole that would give direct access to the deck above if climbed to the back half of the power area.  He jabbed the handle of the whip into a few to test their reaction before moving onto the next.  His golden eyes glowed lightly in the slight darkness as he took in each working his ship.  Then a pair of deep blue eyes met his own.  He was being watched and studied in return.  Calm and certain with a strange brightness, almost amused mirth in them.  The creature slowly turned its attention away from him and towards the front as it should have been.

The Consul paused to continue watching. The being was physically small compared to all others but were as muscle had decreased for many of the others, it seemed this one had not shriveled.  Not bulking with muscle, but taut under its golden skin.  Its brown head fur was long and matted, but no lash marks were overly obvious on its back.  Not rebellious, but defiant enough to be relaxed in not being perfectly submissive.  “What service have you seen?”  None of the slaves answered.  The white haired Galra looked upwards to the number etched above the turbine station.  “Fourty-one.” 

The creature looked back to him quickly at his number.   It looked at him as if gauging before answering.  “A day less than a pheob on this ship.”

“You keep an exact count,” the Consul noted.  “And before?”

An almost daring smile came to the creature that was almost worrying with the place it was in.  “Seven pheobs on other ships. It’s like musical chairs, just hoping the next one's less murderous.”

The Consul slid his gaze along the arms, toned back and chest, long legs in consideration.  “Eight pheobs.”  Slowly he turned to continue checking over the other slaves.  He turned then, snapping the whip, fast and sudden.  A yelp of pain came from it as it turned fast to face him.  Not just collapse like every other slave.  The smile came back tightly.  “If you want me to go, just tell me.  Give orders before you start punishing.”

The Consul tilted his head in interest at the human that had survived so much and yet still dared to smile and joke as the whip strike swelled welts along its line on its back.    He stepped back to be directly across from the creature nearly half his size.  “You have the spirit to fight back, but the good sense to control it.”  The creature shivered in pain from the whip strike and its limbs were loose in not holding its post.  Capable and willing to lunge for him, but not.  “Your eyes are filled with hate, fourty-one.” The Consul’s eyes sparked with delight as blue, and gold held.  “That is good.  Hate keeps all things alive.  It gives them strength.”

He turned away to stride back to the front.  “Now listen to me.  All of you.  You are all condemned.  We keep you alive to serve this ship.  So turn well,” he turned himself to look back on them.  “And live.”

He handed back his borrowed whip as blue eyes stayed on him.  Even from so far back, they still watched each other.  A slight smirk on Lance’s lips, mischievous and warning of trouble he could cause.  “Ship ready Consul,” the commander announced as the drummer went back into his place.

“Strike turbines,” Perikaryon ordered.

“Strike turbines!” the slave master shouted and started the slow beat, all stations engaged instantly to begin churning.  The ship almost leaping forward with the power and strength of two hundred seasoned slaves being put into perfect use.

Perikaryon turned to head back up on deck to the sunlight where all the other officers waited.  He paused in the warm light to look over all of them and then at the endless ocean about them.  “You know that Medilin’s greatest fleet of galleys has been withstanding the might of the Galra empire.  Destroying our patrols.  Emperor Zarkon has honored us with the task of seeking out and destroying them.”

Chapter Text

Across the ocean of the planet, the Galra fleet moved as it searched for its opposing force.  Perikaryon removed his bulky breastplate armor to be left in his more comfortable flight suit as he came below to the slave level.  A chair was brought out for him to rest in as he watched other beings slave away.  It was dark and most Galra had turned in for the night to their rest and amusements.  The officers stood by as their new leader settled for his own in the less than nice place.  None of the prisoners stood out as they moved together as a wave of motion and strength.  His gaze still went beyond to land on the smallest of the alien creatures here.  Almost completely eclipsed from sight by the larger slaves in front.

Shove forward. Shove back.  All straining to keep their own pieces going.  Perikaryon leaned slightly towards the slave master.  “Battle speed, my friend.”

“Battle speed!” the Galra bellowed as he sped up the pace of the drum.

All instantly matched the pace.  The slow but sure turns replaced to circle with purpose.  Perikaryon glanced over all the manual turbines.  Left and right, both sides holding strong.  Then back to the human.

Lance glanced to his sides to see if any of the others around him were doing anything worthy of that gaze to find none before chuckling softly.  “What battle are we going into?  One in his head?”

Soft huffs of laughter spread around him as they pushed with greater ease for a second.  The Consul opened his mouth and paused.  “Attack speed.”

The other officers began to watch the slaves in concern as they glanced at their new commander as he obviously tested their abilities.  The drum sped up another notch.  “Attack speed!”

The ships commander stepped over to the Consul’s side but kept himself quiet.  They needed to keep the slaves strong for when they did meet the other fleet.  Wearing them out now would only do more harm.  Gasps for air began to come from the slaves as they drove themselves forward and then flung back to get the tick long rotation completed.  The Consul didn’t seem bothered as he looked over the strong bodies moving together.  Sweat, slime, and anything else that could be excreted glistened and began to bead on the slaves.  Any fur became damp as the speed was maintained.  Teeth bared in snarls against the poles in hand as if by clamping their teeth they could have extra power.  Coughs began to come from some as their throats dried from the exertion.  Shoulders bent downwards to push harder to let the lean human be seen more clearly as he stood straighter to leverage his strength and power into his length than pure muscle.  Eyes still not down on his pole.  Up and looking around.  The words and soft talking he had shared with those around him had stopped as he saved all for that for his breathing.

The most shrivelled of the slaves began to lose their hold on their poles as their eyes rolled back into their heads, and yet they fought to continue on.  To help the others and not be singled out for their weakness.  Like glitter or a full gloss, their muscles moved under their sweat in the barely lit darkness.

“Ramming speed,” Perikaryon ordered mildly.

The commander looked down at him with a protest on his tongue but kept it.  “Ramming speed!” the master shouted as the beats of his drum went as fast as he could go.  His thick arms bulging from repeating the motions day and night for almost every moment.

The slaves threw themselves as hard and fast as they could at their stations.  Water outside going up in plumes with how fast the blades of each were spinning.  Churning the water into a foam that lasted long in their wake as the other ships of the fleet were left easily behind.  A tusked slave suddenly grasped at it hallow gut in agony.  It stumbled and grabbed onto the other alien in front of it to try and stay up but went down heavily.  Not getting back up as it convulsed and writhed in the agony coming from its overworked organs.

Lance shifted his feet to give him leverage in both directions as he kept up with all the others.  Perhaps the weakest of all when he had first come to this planet, his body shredded nearly instantly by all of it.  But it had rebuilt.  Stronger and more capable.  Able to keep up with the others, even at this wicked pace.

Perikaryon let his gaze slide along both sides and all rows.  Judging each slave and comparing them.  Agony was in all their expressions as the ramming speed that was supposed to be for a short time extended longer and longer.  The commander shifted nervously as they all started to faulter.

The snap of whips began to sound as the task masters found those that were starting to slow and fall out of rhythm.  Skin hallowed out over bones as breathes were gasped as hard as they could.  Some wrapping their arms around their poles as their hands began to give out.  The drum master’s expression tightening as they continued on.  The Consul watching the far slave as the deep blue eyes finally closed to blindly row and not let anything else take his attention.

Gagging sounded as some species lost what little was in their stomachs.  Others feinting from too little air, or too much at once.  From a strangle yell of pain, a monstrous behemoth seized as his muscles tore and collapsed into the aisle.  The whip came down on all of them.  Perikaryon raised a skeptical eyebrow at them.  Others falling over their poles.  Falling back to sit.  Staggering in their places.  The whip not inspiring anything more than an almost unnoticeable pain in those that were too far gone to care anymore as they just sat back in clocked out subconsciousness. The lash came down and was ignored. Pain had already taken everything.

The commander desperately switched his gaze to each of the numbered beings as it seemed his entire ship was about to die.  Taskmasters jumping down into the stations to drag out the unconscious and worthless ones as the relief slaves below were forced up and immediately jumped into the empty spaces.

“Rest,” The Consul finally permitted.

“Raise turbines!” The drummer ordered before ending his beat.

All called out for water as even those that had stood strong collapsed to the floor to heave for breath.  No precise training was left in them as they tried to get any strength and energy to survive.  Lance glanced at the ground that was filled with huge legs before weakly smiling at his neighbor behind him. His lungs burned. His legs trembled. But if silence won, they’d all vanish.  “Mind if I sit on your lap?  I’m not that heavy.”

A slight nod and he sat on the hulking knee like a child. Slightly above the now fallen giants, he rolled his shoulders and stretched to find the Consul still watching him. The aging Galra stood from his seat to enter his room.  He’d ordered them to rest, but he knew better. They hadn’t.  Especially not that one.

Chapter Text

The Consul slept soundly on his bed.  His room was small on the ship, but it was lightly lit by glowing stones.  A tiniest bit of added luxury around for the higher rank commander on a primitive ship.  The door opened for Lance to be pushed in.  The lean human looked back as the door closed behind him to take in the space.  Maps and plans written out when no technology could hold it for them.  Armor and a few changes of clothes in their place.  Weaponry hanging on the wall.  And a Galra laying right in front of him.  He stepped over to right beside the bed to look down on the species that usually looked down on him.  This was the one that controlled their fates, had tested all of them not long ago to the point that some of the other slaves were taking longer than they should have to recover.  The aging Galra seemed peaceful now in his sleep, if he was.

The golden eyes fluttered open at the feeling of someone else in the room to groggily look over.  He bolted up right and threw off the thin cover as he found some one that was not an allied Galra beside him.  His feet touched the floorboards before he calmed enough to study the seemingly small and pathetic creature in front of him.  Tense and ready to lunge out of the enclosing sleeping nook that was a trapped corner if he was attacked.  “Why are you here?!” He snarled defensively.

A soft smile of amusement came from the golden skinned alien.  “I was ordered to report to you during my relief.  Looks like it was during yours.”

Perikaryon took a slow breath to calm himself from the sudden fright he had.  “Yes… I’d forgotten.”  He got up to slowly walk past the teenager that came to just above his hip.  His golden eyes scanning over him head to foot before he turned and pointed to his bed.  “You could have killed me as I lay there. You’re a condemned slave, why didn’t you?”

“Not quite ready to die,” Lance answered as he propped a hand on his hip.

“What do you think will save you?”

“I don’t know, but I can feel that I will be.”

The Consul turned away to sit at his desk with his sneer only in his voice.  “Hope.  It’s a blind and foolish thing.  It doesn't exist in anything but your mind.  It doesn’t have any more power than mine own.  My hope or determination will not help me.  Yours won’t help you.”

“That is a matter of opinion.  Maybe hope and optimism doesn’t give life or save anyone, but it gives the opening for when someone or thing offers it.” Lance stated.

The Galra idly barely raised his gaze up to meet the blue eyes.  “Really.  Then I might.  Does that interest you, forty-one?”

McClain’s gaze sharpened to watch the Galra as he waited for what was being said.  The white haired Galra glanced up lightly.  “Oh, I can see that it does.”  He leaned forward then.  “I’m a fighter by profession and in my leisure moments, it amuses me to trade and train fighters.  I own some of the best gladiators and racers around Central Command.  Would you like to become one of them?”

“To die as your slave?” forty-one questioned.

“Better than to live in chains below these decks.”

The smirk came back.  “Thanks, but no.  I’m not going to be here forever.”

Perikaryon shifted to lean against his arm rest in interest as he evaluated this slave.  He stood to cross to the wall of his room.  “Oh?  What would you do if you escaped?”

“My family and friends were left behind on my home planet.  My mother, sisters, younger brother, and those that were siblings in everything but blood.  They are innocent and I want to go back to…”

“Don’t say that you were innocent,” the commander interrupted in annoyance.

“Would it do it any good to say it again?” he almost cockily snapped back.

“No.  Now consider my offer carefully,” the Consul said as he circled around the short being.  “You will never escape while we are victorious.  If we are not, you will sink with this ship, chained to your station.”

“I love the water.  It wouldn’t be bad to feel it again,” the human smirked up at him.  “I was given a movement to live here.  I’ve lasted much longer than that.  There has to be a reason.  There is something out there that I feel calling me and I doubt I have survived these eight pheobs to die chained to a scrap pile.”

“That’s a strange, stubborn amusement you keep,” Perikaryon muttered bitterly.  “The record for surviving as a slave on this planet is eleven pheobs.  Set by a traitorous Galra.  Trained and hardened beyond anything you were since the beginning.  Do you aim to break that?”

“If that’s what it takes.  Might as well make people pay attention as I go.”

“To believe that existence has a purpose,” The Galra spat.  “A sane being would have learned to lose it long before this.”

The Latino boy stared at the lavender skinned giant as the tone was more inwards and self-loathing. “As you have.  What drove it out of you?”

Perikaryon turned fast to look at the slave that had dared say that.  His jaw tightened. He hadn’t noticed he’d stopped breathing. Perikaryon glared at the small being.  What answer could he give to something he had buried alive? “Go back to your turbine, forty-one!”  he snarled.

Lance slowly saluted as he went for the door.  “Enjoy your beauty sleep.  Get some for me.”

The fleet commander stood in the empty room, going over every part of their conversation.  That tiny creature had seen through him.  There was more than hope in him, but more than enough to spread to all others.  There was life and a reason to live and continue.  He had everything in this horror that should have stripped him of it that he himself had lost with his life of relative ease.

The ship;s commander opened the door to duck inside.  “Consul, enemy sighted.”

The Consul took a breath to steel himself and force everything that now filled his mind out.  Now was time for battle and strategy.  A game that he could fight against.  He grabbed his armor before darting out of his room.  “Signal the fleet.  They all have my designs and their orders.  Prepare for battle.”

A fist thudded hard against a breast plate in acceptance of the commands as the commander rushed after him.  “Vrepit sa.”

One the surface of the morning sea, ships with triangular sails that used the wind and the current of the sea itself to power them instead of living muscle as the Galra had approached.  Perikaryon rushed up on deck to scan over their numbers and their positioning.  Scattered and well dispersed.  No line to break, but nothing they would have to group up against either to face.  Galra soldiers rushed to pull out all artillery and weapons that were of their long ancient past that did not have high tech power for the coming assault. 

“All on watch,” the commander ordered all of them.  “Battle positions. Catapults ready to fire.  All excess take below.”  Fires were struck in basins as oil and was pored in others.  Flammable wood was tossed in to soak as metal ones were piled on the deck.

The Consul went down below to the slave galley as he undid his simple weapon belt that he had placed on to sleep with to hand to one of the soldiers as he worked at getting the rest of his true armor on.  “Raise turbines!” the drum master called.  The poles were lowered as the slaves rested for the short moment before their all would be demanded.  “Chain the slaves!”

The taskmasters were waiting to pull the heavy chains out from under the raised aisle and began to make their way down each side and row.  Looping the chain through the large loop attached to the shackle on their lowest sturdy limb they received on their first moment on Medilin.  The slaves watched tensely as their lives were locked with the ship’s.  Beaten too harshly before for resisting to try and stop the inevitable now.

The Consul watched the process as the chain was pulled through forty-one’s shackle.  The condemned slave grinned though.  “Welcome aboard the SS Nope. Lifeboats not included, sanity sold separately.”  The slaves around him smiled and laughed softly as they loosely prepared to go.

“Guard,” Perikaryon called.  A close task master paused.  The highly decorated Galra pressed his lips together tightly as he locked a cape into place over his armor and then looked away.  “Unlock forty-one.”

In the far back a slave was screaming as he tried to stop the lock from being put in place.  “No!  No!  I don’t want to die!”  Another Galra stepped forward to hold his upper limbs back to let the one chaining him continue.  “I don’t want to die!” The creature sobbed in his terror and desperation.

“Hey!” Forty-one called loudly from the other side. Slaves instantly looked to him as if he would end the nightmare their lives had become.  The human’s features were soft but still light.  “Hey. Look at me. You’re still breathing.  That means you’re still fighting. That means there’s still a chance.”  A touch more mischief came in.  “Nobody’s dying today. I already made dinner plans with despair and told it to get lost. So, row hard enough and maybe we’ll outrun this whole empire. If not, at least we’ll be ripped.”

The slaves still worried, but they calmed.  Grasping their poles in determination.  They were going to stay alive no matter what else anyone said.  The Consul put his helmet in place and turned away.  Storming upwards to the deck.  A taskmaster worked his way through the row of slaves to bend down and unlock a single chain and pull it free.  Lance did not move as his shackle became empty.  He didn’t move at first. Couldn’t. His body didn’t recognize freedom anymore.  The Galra then rushed back to his post.  He watched him go in confusion before reaching down to loop his fingers through the large circle.  Empty.  Not chaining him to the ship.  The only one on the entire slave crew that was not.  A towering alien stared at him similar.  “Forty-one, why did he do that?”

The human slowly looked about searching for an answer.  “I don’t know.  No one has ever helped me before.”

“Battle speed!” the master shouted and the drum set their pace at a fast charge.  All surged into motion to match the pace and advance into Medilin’s native fleet.  Even as he worked as always along with the others, blue eyes travelled down to his free ankle.  Then as he pulled back, he spotted the Consul watching from the deck through a slot.  The Galra shifted and stormed away for the battle.  The human continued to watch.  He was the one that had unchained him.  Why?  He had turned down his offer to be an entertainment sacrifice.  He had been angry with him.  Why free him?

~

The consul rushed to the prow of the ship as they came upon the green and brown colored ships.  They closed in on each other with the same intent.  “Number one!” He ordered.  Catapult number one had a flammable ball loaded and ignited.  “Fire!”   The mechanics snapped, flinging the blaze into the air towards the other ships.

Fire and hard projectiles began to soar through the air from both sides as they tried to destroy each other’s ships.  The slaves below churned with little knowledge of how tense it was above.  It their hits were landing or the other’s were about to.  Flaming rods ejected with precision into the side of Medilin ships. Then they were all mixed together.  No one side easy to pick out.

“Lift up turbines on command,” Perikaryon ordered.

The order was transferred to the slave master.  “Lift turbines!  Pull!”

The slaves instantly stopped their heaving to pull their power stations out of the water and into the nook on the side of the ship to protect them.  “Steer right,” The Consul ordered.

They drew alongside the enemy ship as if about to board for the sharp prow of their ship to cut through the underwater fins that were using the water currents to force them forward.  Snapping them off as jetsam and leaving the ship nearly powerless.  Their sides ground together as they passed.  The slaves below in the Galra hold braced themselves at the rattling hit and readied.   The Consul stepped over to look down into the hold as the drum master bellowed.  “Extend turbines!”  The thin and small slave shoved his turbine back out to full length in the water.

Fire was launched into the weakened Medilin ship to let the blaze take care of it as they passed onto another one.  Trails of smoke through the clear air as hard metal balls crashed through sides and made holes in hulls.  All ships in the fleet fighting their own wars.  Crashing into ships to exchange warriors.  Arrows and spears flying thick to cut down warriors lined up on the opposing deck.  Fire red and slow as it came over.  The slaves below only glimpsing a little of what was happening through their small turbine slots to the outside.  A fire ball landed above them on their deck to try and set them a flame for a Galra to kick it off into the sea and stamp out the flames.

Ships sank in billows of raging flame.  Bodies tumbling off and only Galra bobbing in the water and being pushed aside by still standing ships as natives sank.  Galra ships rolling over as their bottoms filled with water.  The once clear air hazy with smoke and screams of the dying.  The Consul turned in every direction to fasten his sight on a Medilin ship in front of them.  “Steersman!  Ram’s course!  Order below, ramming speed!”

The drum master heard.  “Ramming speed!”  The drum went instantly to as fast as it could and the slaves did likewise.  Almost thrashing with how fast they were circling back and forth.  Their ship drove into the broad side of the other, slicing it in half.  The slaves below tumbled back in all directions as the sudden expected but unexpected stopping to their great power and speed.  They worked to untangle each other from each other’s stations and grasp their own to go again.

“Fire!” The consul ordered.

“Consul!” an archer called on the other side of the ship.  He pointed out.  “Galley on ramming course!”

Perikaryon whirled fast to see the Medilin ship aiming right for their exposed side.  Their slaves were barely getting them back up to decent speed.  One of the slaves below lost his grip on his pole for it to drop for a second before he got it again.  “Five second rule!  You’re good,” Forty-one cheered.

The slave offered a weak smile as he glanced out his small slot out at the battle.  He froze as he saw the Medilin ship with its jagged prongs aimed right for them.  Too close.  “We’re going to be rammed!”  he screamed as he dropped his pole to jerk at the chain keeping him in place.  “We’re going to be rammed!”

All the slaves dropped their poles to begin fighting against the chain promising death, desperate for it to loose and let them live.  Forty-one stood on his tip toes to see what the taller others could then threw himself hard against his station.  “Don’t stop!  Ramming speed!  We can get out of the way if we go hard enough!”

Terror was too loud in all other ears as they screamed and begged.  The whips of the taskmasters fell hard on all but were ignored as chains rattled through the loop and the shackles jerked as if their lock would break after all this time.  The other ship came closer at full ramming speed as their own fell basically dead in the water with its power completely frenzied.  Completely open and ready to take the horrible Galra sized spears sticking out of the front. 

Flesh began to be torn with how the slave fought to free themselves.  McClain’s gaze shifted from outside as he stopped churning.  There was no point anymore.  He looked up at the taskmaster that was as desperate to live as the rest of them and understood how they could have done that.  He didn’t fight his chain that was not in place. He didn’t scream. He waited, eyes wide, breath held, heart slamming like a drum of its own.  Skin was completely gone and the shackles bit into muscle and veins as it was jerked and cut deeper.  Bone becoming visible on some.  He saw his family, not faces, just light and laughter.  The human braced himself at his station for impact.

The starboard galley crumpled. Spears tore through the hull like claws through paper, right into the slave deck.  A row of slaves instantly taken out and impaled as the green water rushed in.  Any thrashing against their chains thrown about with the force.  Their begging became splitting screams of terror.

Above, the water born Media leaped from their own ship onto the Galra with weapons at the ready.  Not uniform and as perfectly armored as the Empire, but savageness and their own perfection for their home world driving them.  Warriors clashed and mixed in the violent mob.  Purple blood spurting to mix with blue. 

Below the slaves began to push themselves up from under their destroyed stations and watched in knowing horror as the water flooded down below into the relief prison and would soon reach them.  Blood of varying colors tinting the water.  Hulking giants reaching and begging for help as they were trapped and bleeding under steel beams.

Lance was on the aisle clear of the chaos with his arms wrapped around a Galra task master’s neck.  He strained to keep his grip at the lavender skinned conqueror pulled to free himself before he fell limp and unconscious from the strangling.  The lean human let him fall to the watery floor as he pulled the keys free of his belt and instantly crouched to unlock the closest row of slaves to him.  It turned too slow but came open for the loosed chain to nearly cut his fingers with how fast it was pulled free.  He handed the keys to a slave that was regaining his head enough to start helping for him to unlock the others.  Turning fast to slowly lift the fallen beam off of the injured giant.

On deck, Galra drove swords through Media cores, as blades went through the little weakness at their necks to behead them.  Oil was tipped over into the lit fires to set the ship a blaze and the sea around as the flammable liquid poured down the side.

Hands reached desperately up from the relief prison.  Not chained but wanting life as much as the others.  Lance grabbed the keys back to unlock the grate and haul up the others.  Straining more to pull an alien out that had most of its arm missing and bone displayed.  Slaves still chained backed away as far as they could as the side of ship was becoming hot with flames.  Fire and water fighting to claim the most lives first.  Locks undone for them to crawl away from both.

Consul Perikaryon hit hard with his sword against the Media shield to bash it aside and drive his blade through to block another Media with his own shield before knocking a newcomer back.  An impossible fight as more of the Medilin natives continued to come.

Slaves flooded out through the main stairway to escape as water sloshed around their thighs.  Lance broke the surface as he came out of the fully flooded prison below with one last still breathing slave in arm.  He shoved the being upwards into waiting arms for the standing prisoner to drag the now legless creature towards hoped for survival.  There was no chance for some of them, but they did what they could.  Not leaving any that still screamed behind.  The teenager paused as he watched the flood of his fellow slaves crowd the way out before looking upwards at the battle barely visible above.  With one last check that everyone was heading out of this death trap, he climbed upwards.

As his head came clear into the smoky sunlight, he glanced around at the death being fought around him.  Soldiers of both sides fighting and dying.  The Consul proud and surviving more on him than the others with his skill keeping him standing.  A Media raised a bow and aimed for the brightly decorated soldier that would not go down.  A soldier fighting for his home.  Lance dodged a blade coming down on him to grab one of the forgotten metal balls and heaved at the soon to be victorious killer.  The Media took it fully in the torso and crumpled over to recover instead of taking the shot.  The four Media on the Consul condensed to shove the towering warrior overboard.

Perikaryon crashed through the dead turbines and into the flaming water below.  Purple and blue painted the light green waves like bruises. Medilin’s pain mixing with Galra pride.  Forty-one sprinted along the deck, ducked out of the way of a Media blade to grasp as lit torch to start the waterlogged clothing on fire.  Swinging the torch to clear with way with Galra and Media alike screaming and rolling to put themselves out.  Once to the place that the Consul had gone over, the blue eyes searched for him.  The Galra had not come up.  Only a dark form fading into the green.

With no hesitation, McClain dived in with barely a splash.  The current underneath the calm water pulled him instantly down.  A riptide like any on Earth, but in every direction with no ease.  He swam with it to wrap his fingers into the chest plate gaps, then he swam along with and to the side of the current.  Not fighting it but directing himself through it.  He broke the surface with his burden to spot a destroyed ship side floating not far away that had been torn free.  Perikaryon gasped for air as he fought against his dead weight armor and the tide he had never experienced.  The human stroked towards the wreckage towing the two times larger alien through the ocean that was sucking at them to bring to its depths. 

They grasped the wreckage for the slave to help heave the much too heavy Galra on top before pulling himself free of the flaming water.  Perikaryon coughed the water from his lungs as he laid on the destroyed metal and rested.  Almost unable to breathe.  The human was used to the strain of impossible labor and the water crawled over to unlatch the heavy armor and pull it free to fling into the water.  Giving the Galra the ability to breathe and lightening so he could get up.  Leaving him in just his flight suit.

Perikaryon filled his lungs as he weakly turned over.  He sat up fast then to stare in horror as his ship and every other one in the area went down.  His men and soldiers dead or burning as the Medilin ship sailed away.  How many slaves were left to die as well or had been taken by the Media could not be known.  The Galra’s breath slowed as he felt defeat.  The Galra had lost, he had failed.  He looked down to his side to the belt still left to him.  He grasped his knife to jerk free.  The human barely noticed the blade to throw himself on the Galra’s arm to keep the knife from plunging into his chest.  Both of their hands clutching at the knife, trying to take it for themselves.  Perikaryon in desperation to end his life as the unclawed fingers twisted it out of his.  “Give me the knife.  Give it to me,” The slave nearly growled before the blade went into the water where it could not be used.

The Galra’s broken wide golden gaze went back to the ships that were going under around them.  He got to his knees to crawl for the edge of their impromptu raft to go for the water that he could not swim in.  To let it pull him down and end all of it.  The human leaped forward to pull him back.  Half the Galra’s size and mass, but his body was toned from churning the seas at a pace that killed others.  Holding the Galra back from the edge and his death.  Perikaryon’s claws dug at the lean arm as he twisted his head to bite the Terran, trying to get him to let go in any way.

The human glanced about the wreckage around them to spy a chain that was welded to their piece.  He heaved back with the commander to grasp it and bashed the metal hard against the back of his head.  The Consul went limp in his arms. The slave boy let him drop to the wreckage before he sat back and his body finally let him be aware of his injuries and exhaustion.  For a moment, all he could hear was the fire hissing on the waves and the blood rushing in his own ears.  Destruction all around them as he laid back, heaving for breath and rest.  Medilin ships on war path going by what appeared to be two dead bodies.

Chapter Text

Late in the day on the translucent green water, the wreckage floated in an empty ocean.  Nothing in any direction.  Both creatures lay on the floating wreckage as the sun shone down on them.  A Galra and a human.  Neither in good shape.  The black flight suit torn and the crusts of purple blood nearly blacken in its drying from small cuts and wounds that had gotten through his defenses.  A slave with barely anything around his hips and bruises beginning to fade up his exposed, scarred skin.

Perikaryon’s eyes slowly opened to peek out at the bright light.  Slowly his eyes adjusted as he came conscious enough to recognize the bob of water and the wetness of his suit.  He began to sit up for something to pull around his shoulders.    He looked down to find a chain wrapped around his middle and shoulders securely.  The end was in the hand of the slave that had rolled over, ready for him to try and make another suicide attempt.  From sleep, the lean creature sat up right and pulled his loose end tighter through the welded loop the chain was attached to. 

The Galra Consul looked at the system that would keep him in place and then at the slave.  Pitifully small seeming, but more than able to keep him here as he was.  Probably capable of stopping him on equal ground with all he was.  Their eyes met and held for the long minutes.  Both knowing exactly the situation, and what the other could do.  “Why did you save me?” the commander asked with his voice gritty and dry.

The human watched him back, “Why did you have me unchained?”

The Galra did not answer as he measured.  Then he grasped the chain around him to try and pry it free so he could throw himself into the water to die.  The slave pulled his legs out of the water to brace himself to pull his end tighter.  A giant physique against a smaller being made of pure muscle that knew nothing other than push until death.  The tanned hand reached down and forced the clawed fingers back.  Perikaryon settled as he tried to reconsider, his golden gaze slipping down to the thin leg beside his head.  A thick shackle around the ankle that was wrapped and warped down to be small enough for its thinness.  Digging in and probably causing huge amounts of pain without anything else needing to be done.  A loop for a chain left open.  “What is your name… forty-one?”

The slave looked out at the ocean stretching out in all directions around them.  Sparkles on the slight swells and green enticingly beneath.  “Lance McClain.  Most handsome being on this planet.”

“Lance McClain,” the Galra repeated.  “Let me die.”

“I don’t remember that being an option for Galra recruitment.”

“It is victory or death.  I have lost.  My ship, my fleet, my command.  If I live it will be with shame, and my death in the empire will be assured for my failure.  Dying now with all others would spare me and my name.”

Lance looked down at his once captor that he now held captive.  He smiled slightly in tiredness.  “We keep you alive to serve this ship.  Churn well and live.”

The Galra sighed as he slumped back against their raft.  Giving up against the one he could not win against.  McClain waited for a minute before plopping down to dangle his legs off the side into the water that was unknown in its depth or what lurked below.  “You do know that the current drains life itself.  Being in and around it will steal your life until you are dead.”

“Maybe.  I can feel myself getting more tired, but it feels so good to be in water again.  Haven’t felt an ocean since I was little.  It’s been many Earth months since I took a bath in the pond back on the farm.  Its good.”

The Galra watched him through half closed eye lids as he could feel the drain on himself without needing to be in the water, just barely above it.  “Humans are strange.  Living where they should be dead.”

“Yeah.  I’m like a cockroach. Skinny, annoying, impossible to kill.  They like me back home for that.  Fatal task?  Crawl inside the harvester, get it turning again, maybe get turned into hamburger myself? Just another Tuesday.”

“Having your life drain out of you and survive physical labor that kills all by over working them.  The druids would like to get their hands on you.  You seem to be the perfection of all the strength they work at creating.”

“Except not being Galra.  I’m afraid that you guys just don’t like someone looking better than all you old prunes.”

“Surprised someone didn’t cut your tongue out before to stop your chatter.”

“It's too small for them to get a hold of without cutting off my entire head.  You can’t possibly think of hurting this pretty face,” Lance said with a teasing smile.  He paused then as his eyes went to the horizon.  He watched it for a long minute.  “There’s a ship over there.”

Perikaryon looked over.  “Does it have no sail?”

McClain shook his head as he stood up to try and get a better look.  “Can’t tell.  It’s not a cruise ship though.”

The white-haired Galra did not try to resist or escape as he tried to distinguish the ship.  “Better for us both if it’s the enemy.  My death, and your freedom.”

Lance swayed with the light waves as he watched it.  His expression tightened slightly as he identified it.  “It’s Galra.”

Perikaryon’s expression fell at the news as the small Terran looked down at him sadly.  Then the human raised his arms to begin waving attention over to them.  They had to face their fates in some way.  Peace was here, but they couldn’t survive forever alone.

The black ship churned the water steadily closer until it was in range.  A chain was thrown out for the slave to easily catch and drag their scrap raft to the side as the Consul got to his feet.  At the built-in stairway Perikaryon grasped it to climb upwards onto the deck, the slave following a moment later.  The ship commanders reached down to help him up as his exhaustion from the draining ocean made him slow and weak.  Pulling up and steadying him as he staggered on the deck.  Lance behind him to keep him from tipping back into the water.

“Welcome Consul,” this ship’s commander greeted.  “We had given up all hope for you.”  The commander glanced the Galra silk cape in one of his officer’s hands and grasped it to quickly place over the shoulders hunched from wet, cold, and exhaustion.  “Water!”

Perikaryon grasped the rich purple cloth to pull around himself as he gazed at the Galra warriors lined up in military rows on the deck for his arrival.  One that would march him back to his emperor in shame for his execution.  The decorum only displayed because of what he once was.  He turned to look back at the officers that were so stiff and exact in their stance.  “The fleet?” He questioned in dread and defeat.  “All lost?”

“Five ships.”  The commander reported their losses.

The Consul blinked at the small number that he had certain had been more.  “And the battle?”

“The battle was won.  You have a victory,” the commander stated proudly.

Lance straightened from where he was leaning against the railing as Perikaryon questioned in disbelief.  “It was a victory?!”

“Complete.  The surface fleet of Medilin is no more.”

Perikaryon stepped forward to grasp the commander hard by the shoulders to force him to be serious.  All he got was a beaming smile that was discouraged among ranks but felt by all.  He stared in disbelief as he tried to grasp all of it.  Only five ships, but they had won.  Done all that Zarkon had commanded.  And he had tried to kill himself.  He would have been mourned as a fallen victor, instead of the coward he was.  His gaze shifted over to the dwarf slave that was hidden in the shadows of his people.  He was alive only because of him to know of this victory. 

He let go of the Galra to slowly step over to the small creature.  “In its eagerness to save you.  Whatever deity that has kept you alive so far has also saved the Galra fleet.”

The commanders watched in interest at the interaction as a young Galra recruit rushed up with a bucket full of water and a cup for the Consul.  Perikaryon desperately grasped the cup to scoop the water out to drink but paused.  He looked back to the unextraordinary slave, then he extended the filled cup to him.  Lance stared at the metal cup being offer to him before he hesitantly took it.  His swallows were hard and fast to kill the worst of the dry pain before giving it back.  Perikaryon smiled slightly as he took it back, and without getting a fresh cup, drank from the one a slave and impure species had.

As he finished, the Consul gave the young recruit back the cup before grasping the teenager by the shoulder and guiding him with a smile down the deck.  “Hail Perikaryon!” The commander called.

“Hail Perikaryon!” All Galra on board chorused as the Consul stepped past them with the human at his side.

Lance slowed to stop at the slits looking down below as this ship’s drum master called, “Raise turbines!”  The steady slow beat of normal travel speed began as the turbines on both side of the ship began to swirl.  He looked down at all the slaves below.  His own partners in suffering gone.  These poor creatures condemned to a similar death eventually.  The drumbeat was slower now. But it still sounded like chains even as these ones had not been chained in place yet.  Back and forth.  All in synch.  Where he would soon be again.  A relief on this ship.

Perikaryon paused as he noticed the half sized being lingering and the commanders ready to shove him on.  He stepped back to the human to tower over the slats and look below calmly.  He had seen this boy command the living. Now he watched him grieve for the dead.  Stare down at his future.  He glanced back at the small creature to take him by the arm to pull away.

Chapter Text

Space stretched out in every direction.  Stars glimmering in all their colors and splendor in any direction you could look.  Central Command was a huge compound of a base built into its own gravity system between three planets.  Ships zipped all about it as they went about their tasks.  In the dark hallways, Galra soldiers marched perfectly in time. 

Galrans filled the side halls, eyes bright with pride. Their loved ones returned in triumph, with a new planet soon to become their home.  Emperor Zarkon sat upon his thrown watching the proceedings as more ships arrived in perfect formation outside the large view port of his throne room and all the movement of the lower levels of his kingdom.  Generals sharp on both his sides for his orders.

Galra women smiled in joy at their loved ones returning but restrained themselves from ambushing the proud warriors.  In their midst, Perikaryon in his finest armor strode.  In a simple black flight suit that barely was acceptable for the parade of returning warriors, the small human followed him.  The long-matted hair, sweat, and soot gone from him.   Comments about the strange creature stirring.  Strange, and small.  Questionably hideous or good looking on their standards of beauty.  Thin and small with nothing sharp about it.  But such a long ratio of leg and those blue eyes, golden skin almost glowing with life and a daring smile.

Perikaryon glanced back as he noticed his half-sized shadow falling a step behind him.  With a fond smile, he reached back to put his large hand on Lance’s back to pull him up to walk beside him and let his hand stay.  Not afraid to be seen with the other species, letting the entire empire see his pride in the lesser being. At a side hall, the Consul paused and stepped to the side to let all the other soldiers march by.  His expression turned serious as he stared at the large doors at the end.

A shove that was strong enough to make him pay attention to his side came.  The human smiled up at him.  “You’ll be fine.  The boss should be happy with you, if not, call and I’ll blow this entire place to space dust, and you’ll be off the hook as he comes after me.”

“No trouble from you.  Not even a word,” Perikaryon ordered.

Lance smirked with mischief building in his eyes.  “Will do.  Don’t do something I wouldn’t.”

The Consul took a moment to decode the strange Earth saying before turning for the doors.  “I decline.  Anything that you do is worthy of a death sentence.”

“You giant space cats just don’t know how to have fun,” The human said before he cemented his stance as exact and showed the motion of sealing his lips closed to not speak any more.

Perikaryon shook his head in amusement before grimly marching to the doors and stepping inside.  With Zarkon and the greatest in the empire before him, he saluted.  At the accepting nod, he strode down the long expanse to the foot of the raise throne.  Then he fell to one knee with his fist over his chest.  Zarkon regarded him emotionlessly before holding out his hand.   An aide rushed to place a medal in his hand.

The emperor then stood to step down to the returned victor.  Perikaryon raised to his feet to stand at eye level with his superior.  “You have conquered Medilin when all others before you failed, Perikaryon,” Zarkon said as his voice filled the entire room.  “This medal of victory has nobly been won.”

The Consul took it with a strong presence. The weight of it surprised him. He’d nearly drowned before he could wear it.  All of Central Command shook outside with the cheers of all for the return and victory.  Zarkon looked out again at the lower levels that were watching the exchange but unable to hear.  “The thing that you brought with you, what is it?”

“The human that saved me, great Emperor, to return and serve you,” Perikaryon said with a bow.

Zarkon glanced at the doors out of his throne room where the creature had been left.  “Is that all you know about him?”

Perikaryon hesitated to speak.  When the eyes of his emperor turned back to him, he spoke.  “No.  He is a child among his people and a mere infant by our standards.  He was accused of slaughtering a commander of a distant, unevolved planet of Earth.”  He quickly put in, “But it was an innocent accident.”

Zarkon turned his gaze away back to his empire.  “If not, there is a strange inconsistency in this creature that kills a lowly commander yet saves the life of my Consul.  Come tomorrow.  We’ll talk of it.”  He turned back to his throne.

Among all the sounds of return, Perikaryon marched out of the throne room and out to the halls.  Lance was still and submissive as was expected of slaves as General aides stood about and glared at him.  Perikaryon paused to motion to beside him.  The teenager came out of his statue interpretation to walk beside him, Galra moving out of their way with respect and awe, curiosity and questioned hate towards the one he privileged over any other before.

Chapter Text

In the throne room the following day, Zarkon sat upon his throne with the Druid Witch at his side.  At the base of his dais, Perikaryon stood in his formal clothes that lacked armor.  Silk softening his calculated presence.  “We have all the information on this slave,” Zarkon spoke.  “A slave of no consequence.  A child indeed, and a harmless seeming waif.  His attack upon my commander was planned and deliberate to save a half breed.  It was an attack upon my empire, and its people.”

Perikaryon bowed low.  “Great emperor, I am convinced that no such harm was intended.  McClain has the fault of his emotions and loyalty that extend to even polluted Galra, but it’s not…”

“Consul,” Zarkon interrupted the desperate pleading.  “Allow me to continue.  Allow me to be… generous.  As a reward to you for your great victory, he shall not be sent back to Medilin, or another ship.  I give him to you as your slave to do with him as you like.” His gaze lifted to all others in the room listening.  “Such is my will, and the empire’s.”

~

Perikaryon marched out of the throne room and down to the arena below.  Back into the halls that none wanted to go where all the gladiator slaves were kept.  Misery, pain, and death were here.  His steps were fast as he went to the most peaceful section where all the new shipments were brought in and had not been hardened yet by death for entertainment to be a great danger.  At a light laugh, he smiled in relief.  He stopped outside the large cell to instantly pick out the human.  Lance was sitting on the floor with the other alien species, some of which were even smaller than him, and was teaching them some kind of hand game.

The boy put his hands together in front of him with a clap to then extend one outward.  The alien with multiple arms across from him extended on of its opposites to clap and the together again for the other hands to clap.  All the others were gathered around watching interest and smiles.  “I can do that faster!” one called.

Lance smiled up at the challenger.  “Really?  This is meant to start slow and then slowly speed up until someone messes up.  You want to try?” 

The alien plopped down in front of the human in willingness.  “It’s easy.”

The teenage grinned as he stretched, “Well, you’ve met you’re match.  I’m the uncontested champion of this back on Earth.”

He started to sing slowly for them to do the clapping pattern.  The tempo picked up until the other alien was tossing his hands in all directions trying to keep up.  Laughter filled the entire cell as the failure before others were quick in volunteering in the game.  Perikaryon smiled softly at the expected thing of the human before he unlocked the cell.  The new gladiators went silent in fear.  “Lance.”

“Smile.  You’re on camera,” The teenager said lightly.

“You’re going to have to explain the reference.”

“Translation.  Smile.  You’re giving me split ends with that look,” Lance returned.

The lack of fear and forward friendliness did not let the customary calm stay in place.  “Come.  It’s time to go.”

Lance sighed as he waved goodbye to his friends of a night as he stood to leave.  Never to see them again.  “Later! You got this!” The cell clanged shut behind him, and silence followed them down the dark hall.  “Back to Medilin.  Thanks for the trip.  It was nice to finally see the stars.  I always wanted to travel out here when I was little.”

“You are not returning to Medilin.  Emperor Zarkon has gifted you to me, though that is more of a curse than anything else.”

Lance looked up in surprise at the news. So that was it. Not freed. Just redirected. A leash passed from one fist to another.  But freed from certain death.  He grinned to play it off.  “A curse?  Who would ever think that?  Have you even met me?!”

“Yes,” Perikaryon said as he got into his cruiser for his new slave to follow after him.  The pilot started the craft to take off.  “You are mine now.  To kill or keep alive.”  But his tone held none of the cruelty it used to.  A soft, fond warmth.

“You missed your chance for the first one.”

“Indeed, that is why you are returning to my home with me.”

“You don’t live in Central Command?”

“No.  Nearby, but I am well enough off that I have my own estate.”

Lance blinked, watching him from the jump seat. “So… what? Big bad Consul lives on a farm somewhere?”

A pause. Then the faintest twitch at the corner of Perikaryon’s mouth. “Something close.  Peaceful and quiet.”

Lance settled back, looking out at the streaking stars as the jump slowed. “Well, I hope your reflection room has a hot tub. Or at least curtains.”

“No curtains,” the Galra replied dryly. “But if you behave, I may allow you a blanket.”

“Ohhh, we’re doing incentives now? Good to know. Put that on the record. Lance McClain: blanket-motivated life form.”

Perikaryon didn’t respond. He didn’t need to. The silence between them was no longer cold, it held something else now.

The planet was a short solar system hop over for the vibrancy of life to draw close as they approached.  Huge, sprawling estates of the Galra elite keeping it alive when other planets were crushed into lifelessness and drained of worth.  The largest in view was the one they angled for and stopped in the hangar.

Perikaryon stepped out and waited for his rescuer to cautiously follow. He started across the hangar filled with hundreds of fine spacecrafts.  A Galra rushed over to lightly bow with a fist over his chest.  “There you are.  Lance, this is your trainer, Garish.  He over sees all my racers.  As I can’t repay the debt of my life that you hold over me if you die in the arena, I am turning you over to him.”

The teenage human looked up at the Consul in surprise.  “You want me to race?  Spaceships?!”

Perikaryon nodded in enjoyment of the surprise.  “You seem capable enough despite your species.”

The sudden mischievous grin was worrying.  “You bet I am.”

Garish glanced over to his superior and back to the tiny creature.  “Are you certain you want him near the racers?  I… have doubts to his compatibility.  Taran would make him into an excellent gladiator.”

Perikaryon just smiled proudly even as he shifted in nervousness.  “Take care of him.  Put on the reducers to keep him out of as much trouble as you possibly can.”

Garish nodded in hesitant acceptance before motioning over to the least advanced craft in the hangar for beginners.  “Vrepit sa.”

The human stared at the nearly scrap metal ship as he walked over to it.  So far advanced compared to what Earth had before its collapse.  He ran his fingers along the scorched metal, and his grin widened. It didn’t matter what it looked like. It moved. Beneath his fingers: power, and the freedom to see stars no one had ever charted.

Chapter Text

Long and sleek a black ship zoomed around an orbiting moon.  A planet at the far end of the solar system waiting like glimmering crystal.  The Galra inside smiled to himself as he polished his boots and gloves to glistening.  He checked his reflection to find the perfect version of himself in place.  He smiled proudly as he sat back to pilot his craft.  “All the others are far behind.  Might as well look our best as we cross the finish line.”

He pushed his racer on for a slight bit more speed for the planet that would end the race.  Suddenly another racer of a similar style to his own looped around him showily.  He jumped at the new arrival.  “What!?  How…”  His blinking comms had him turning it on for a face that was very not lilac shaded or Galra to come on with an easy smile.

“Hi.  How’s the weather?” Lance asked.

“You went off of it!  Off of the course!” The Galra shouted in anger and disbelief.

“Cross country as they call it back home.”

“Through the asteroid belt!  No one can get a racer through without slamming into one!”

“Well, it looks like I did.  Does that make Galra weak or me just special?”

“You can’t do that!”

“It’s a race, isn’t it?  No rules disqualifying using a head for more than decoration.”

“I haven’t flown through a hundred solar systems to come in second place!” the Galra roared as he fired his ship’s systems to full.

“Why did you then?” Lance asked cheekily.

“This race is mine, slave.” The comms blinked out.

Lance smirked to himself in his empty cockpit.  “Ready when you are beautiful.”  The highly advanced racer bust forward under his guiding hands as if words were all that it needed to stop holding back.  Past the largest planets, through rotating moons and scattered meteorites they burst.  Both ships going hard with their pilots guiding them expertly.  Then in the last open run Lance twisted into front to leave the other racer far behind.  “Ye-haw!”

~

The Galra burst through the finish line to bring his racer to a stop beside the other advanced and expensive Galra design already parked.  He leaped out and stormed for the stage where the winner was being congratulated in front of the enthusiastic Galra spectators.  The gaze of his superior on him for losing.  His own was centered fully on a half sized living stick in a black flight suit.  Perikaryon calmly accepted the prize money as his slave stood smugly beside him as transmissions of the winner of the race played and were transmitted to the farthest reaches of the empire for their entertainment.

McClain smiled at him as he stormed up.  “Hey!  Where’d you go?”

The other pilot was coiled in his anger as he glared at the slave that came up to the bottom of his ribcage.  “This is a race for Galra.  Not universe rejects.”

“I’m sorry you feel that way, but I guess there has to be a few like you,” Lance returned.

The Galra’s fist drew back to stop from attacking as Perikaryon’s hand landed on the cocky slave’s shoulder in familiar claim.  “This race is Galra and always has been.  Lance has raced for me with my ship and name.”

The announcer nodded, “It is allowed.  Slaves, servants, and ambitious aides like yourself are allowed to race for their masters’ names.  Many of the other racers are also multispecies slaves.”

“It’s disgusting,” the pilot spat.

“Now you know how all the rest of us feel when you’re strutting around our planets,” Lance returned.

“You shouldn’t exist.  Your kind’s only purpose is as meat to feed the druids’ creations.  All of you are little more than insects.  Your mother must have been desperate to let you live after birth.”

The teasing smile fell for the deep blue eyes to look back.  “You can say what you want to about me but leave my mom out of this.”

The Galra smiled coldly at sensing a weakness to exploit.  “She is worse than you.  Weakness is passed on.  There must have been so much in her for you to receive such a small portion.  Surprised she hasn’t been selected for an arena fight yet to get rid of her.”

Lance stepped up to him and the audience leaned forward in expectation for a fight.  The boy stared up for a long minute before looking away with a tired sigh.  He reached into a pouch on his belt to pull out a GAC.  He turned it over to look at the currency chip before flicking it into the air. The chip caught the light. Everyone looked up.  The Galra watched it go above his head curious of what the slave was up to before a fist went under his ribs.  Lance drove his other fist into the pilot’s solar plexus to have him crumpling before his last hit caught him under the chin and sent him sprawling across the stage. He groaned. Once. Then nothing.  The currency chip distraction was caught and pocketed for the slave to coldly look on the being that was not getting back up for the next varga.  “Don’t talk about my mom like that.”

Perikaryon smiled to himself as he stepped over to look down on the ambitious young man that was knocked flat.  “I believe I should hand you over to Taran.  You will need gladiator training to defend yourself if you keep making friends like this.”

“You know no one can resist my magnetic personality,” Lance stated brightly.

The announcer stepped over to them in excitement of another fight.  “Would you do that again?”

“Absolutely not,” Perikaryon said flatly, already steering Lance toward the exit before a second question could land.

Chapter Text

The consul’s estate was entirely filled with light as night came and crafts streamed to it.  Armor was completely gone as the elite high class came in their finest.  Silk flowed softly in robes, dresses, and tunics.  The brightest colors that none would imagine the oppressive black and purpled themed ships and most everything else the empire displayed to have were shown off.  Perikaryon stood at the entrance to his home in his red and white finest to greet his guests.

As they came in, they condensed on the next being of interest.  Lance smiled as he was dressed like them in deep blue with gold trim.  Not standing out other than in species and size as musician slaves played in the corner.  A commander was his current focus as others gathered around.  “I noticed that you beat my pilot in the last race by spinning through a gap.  How did you manage to get your racer through that space while spinning?”

“Practice.  That’s why they call me the Taylor because I thread the needle.  The spin also adds speed to turns and maneuvers,” Lance explained.

“The combination could have ended in your death.”

“It also leaves everyone in my dust.”

“You are my favorite pilot to watch,” a young woman said.  “You’re not afraid to die like the others and take chances.  Your style of flying is so smooth, yet skilled in its flips.”

Lance bowed to her. “Thank you.  I take great pleasure in thrilling lovely ladies.”

Smiles and stifled giggles began to come up from the young girls about as they gathered closer.  “How do you compete with Galra that are so much better than you?”

“It’s not them physically that I am going against.  It’s our racers, skills, and minds.  Whoever knows how to control their speed and play the right course and maneuvers has the advantage.  And of course, all of you know the reason why the race are so tense and exciting.” Galra leaned in with excitement to hear if the human knew their own reasons.  “It’s the sabotage.  Anything goes in a Galra race as long as it keeps the rules.  Weapons are not allowed, and stopping is not an option, but if you can possibly eject your trash or oil into someone else’s way, or maybe side swipe them.  Get them to slow or better yet, crash, and survive yourself to the finish line.  Just a refined and fast version of the gladiator arena, except for Galra.”

“I thought for certain that you were going to be killed by Crok.  He always destroys those in the lead with him in the most spectacular ways.  But the way you maneuvered around him and then got him to crash himself in his attempts was stunning.  I have that race saved for rewatching,” another girl fawned.

One of them that was not as fluttery in her adoration calmly stood to the side with a relaxed ease that showed her discipline and command experience more than the other elite girls that had not had to see much combat because of their high status.  “You are interesting, human.  You have fully embraced our culture while keeping your own.  I would have thought your own or you would have died to survive.”

Lance shifted to smile at her as her interest seemed more thought out and calculated.  “It’s not that hard.  You Galra have a decent sense of humor once you stop being afraid to show it.  And humans are decently compatible with Galra in evolution and how we think.  We are apex predators on our planet that can also eat plants.  Hunting the different other unintelligent species for food and thrill is something that most like, and then we have had a problem with hunting ourselves.  We have gone to war against ourselves for so long that we love the idea of blood.  There are millennia of wars with special tactics and weaponry styles developed and even ancient knowledge on how to properly torture someone for information, death, or just for show.  We even had gladiator pits.  Different species, languages, and what not.  Similar mindset.”

“So, you have no problem in killing and conquering planets.  Erasing civilizations from existence.  Having great beings that could do much restrained in their potential and disposed of for entertainment,” The calm Galra woman questioned.

Lance’s smile weakened, “I think that Galra and humans are alike in that too.  When we are in power and control, we want the excitement of danger and death, but when it is us that experiences being powerless and oppressed… then it hurts.  I love the races, but I can’t stand seeing other slaves.  They are suffering more than I am.  In pain and hurting emotionally.  I can’t forget that.  I can’t leave that behind.  Blood is in my evolution, but I have seen and felt enough to not want more for entertainment.”

“You endorse our crusade or condemn it,” the woman asked bluntly.

“Condemn.  It’s good to support ourselves to make sure our families have everything that is necessary for life, but destroying countless planets to spread like a plague is wrong and too far.  That’s not survival or simple comfort.  That’s just plain greed.” He looked at the woman.  “Why do you ask?”

She did not blink, “You seem overly cheerful.  I wondered what type of monster or primitive life form you were.  You seem similar to the new arena champion.”

Lance uncomfortably grinned, “Everyone keeps saying that, but I’m not watching. I can’t stop it, and I’ve got enough ghosts without adding new ones.”

“You say that as if you are free to make that choice,” She stated.

“I’m not, but I can dream of it.  Even those which seem in control dream of freedom.”

She shifted at the look and words that were focused so much on her.  The young woman nodded, “Perhaps.  Good evening.” She turned away to go to a less crowded area of the party.  He had sensed too much of her thoughts.  It was dangerous to know.  Her hand went down to her side for her to freeze.  She felt under her dress to not feel the familiar weight and shape at her side.

Now panicked, she glanced around and retraced her steps to the last area she knew she had it.  “Excuse me.  I think I dropped something.  Have you seen it?”

The human slave smiled back up at her.  “You didn’t drop it.  I just wanted to see it closer.  I have a friend on earth that has one like it.  It was his mother’s,” He held out the wrapped form of a blade to her.  He shouldn’t. He knew that. But something in her eyes said she wouldn’t forget this meeting, just like he couldn’t. “Is the symbol your family’s?”

She carefully nodded as she got her blade out of sight.  “It could be.”

“I’m glad I got to meet you then and learn about my friend’s heritage.”

The secret operative turned away, “I am interested in having met you.  Though you could learn to respect a few rules.”

“You love me cause I don’t,” Lance said as he smiled up at the next Galra girl near him.  “Did you go to the druids?”

This one rolled her shoulders proudly as new metal arms replaced her previous flesh.  Deep purple bruising and stitches were along her shoulders where technology and flesh melded.  “I did.  I got tired of being naturally weaker than the men in upper body strength.  Luckily, my family’s druid knew just what I needed.”

“They look awesome.  Very intimidating and scary.  Do they have any cool tricks?”

She frowned, “Unfortunately, no.  But we are working on getting a design that does.”

“Well, you still look amazing to me gorgeous.  You pull off the robotic look perfectly.” Lance said with a grin and finger guns.

Men were beginning to be crowded out of his space as the girls drew closer.  Forwardness in courting was encouraged.  If you were so weak to not be brave enough to tell someone what you thought of them, then you were not worthy to spread genetics.  It was just a fine line between being forward to get your mate and not overstepping to have their family assign you to the front line to die.

The partially cybernetic Galra leaned forward in interest.  “I think you could use some improvements.  Your arms are so thin.  Nothing but bone.”

“And surprisingly deceptive.  I have more than enough strength…” He moved to sweep her off her feet despite towering over him.  McClain’s voice dropped to an intimate whisper.  “…to sweep you off your feet.”

Her golden eyes went wide in surprise before a wanting and slightly hunger smile came to her.  “Yes.  Do you know any secluded places here?”

Lance set her back on her feet as he let up slightly.  “I do, but I also know that beings that sleep with Galra that are not lose their heads.”

“Not when no one knows about it.”

He laughed as he stepped out of her space.  That was the problem. Everyone always knew. Eventually. “I know that Human-Galra hybrids are pretty awesome, and that it would be great to have more of me running around.  But I think that me and my kids better remain out of Galra friendships like that if we want to survive.”

Her smile was still soft and hoping.  “I’ll ask the Consul if I can lease you.”

That would probably be the only thing to save him at this point.  Galra girls loved forwardness and flirting, but most knew it would not work out.  This part was where it went too far, and they could no longer identify the difference between fun and real got terrifying.  A new kind of music ended the conversation.  The party goers separated to the edges of the space as a different species of alien rushed in wearing glittering gold costumes.  The Galra girl smiled in excitement.  “Balha dancers!  I love them!  Come,” her new mechanical hand closed on the teenager’s arm to pull him to the front to sit with her on the edge of a fountain to watch the entertainment.

The gymnastics of the dancers ranged the entire space.  They were amazing to watch.  Lance’s smile slipped away as he watched them.  They were slaves, kept only for entertainment.  How many other species in the universe were extinct because they fought for their lives instead of displaying their culture?  Could his planet have been used as dancers instead of as gladiators and farmers?  His current admirer glanced back at him in excitement for him to force his smile back into place for her.

When the dance ended, the servants rushed out with their trays of food to serve to all as they refilled the space.  Perikaryon shifted through the crowd to the steps going towards his mansion to pause at the better vantage point.  He raised a hand for the musicians in the back to quiet.  He gazed around at his guests and marked where McClain had ended up cementing himself to instead of being led off.  All eyes turned towards him to hear what the Consul had to say.

“Not long ago I returned to Central Command with an adolescent, or kit that had saved my life.” He began with pride and a slight smile emanated out from him.  “You all know him as the finest racer pilot in the empire.  Twenty-eight times he has flown my ships to victory.”

Cheers sounded from all at the pilot they loved to watch.  The Galra girl kept smiling back at the small male as he watched in interest for why he was being made the focus of this speech.  Perikaryon’s smile was fond as he subtly motioned for him to make his way along the sideline toward himself.  He raised a hand to quiet the cheers.  “I know him as one that stands in the place of the son I lost.” Lance looked up as his shadow followed after him at the admittance.  He was the furthest thing from what Galrans considered perfect and yet this was admitted.  He got to the foot of the stairs and watched.  “I have the love and pride in a son’s achievements, which I thought I would never have again.”

He extended his hand towards the teenager.  Lance cautiously stepped upwards to be in sight of all those in the estate.  Perikaryon had no doubts as he clasped his shoulder confidently.  Eyes focused on him even as he spoke for the crowd.  “Nothing could make the bond between us stronger, but tonight I wish to share it with you all.  The formalities of adoption have been completed.”  Lance paused to blink a few times as the words registered.  His head whipped around to stare at the Consul, not believing that he had heard the right.  The aging Galra smiled down at him in enjoyment of his expressions as he continued, “Young Perikaryon is now the legal bearer of my name, and to my property.”  All oxygen disappeared from the planet as Lance tried to get a breath to make everything make sense.  It couldn’t be…  Galra didn’t even take in their hybrids.  The Consul seemed to understand all that was going through his mind that he couldn’t.  He looked down as his large hand to finger a large ring with his family’s seal on it then slid it off.  “This ring of my ancestors… would have gone to my son.  So now it is yours.”

Lance stared at the ring and then back up at the one that had worn it for so long.  It was not a trick, no deceit or joke.  His fingers reached up to take the emblem.  Heavy with the black metal holding a carved red stone.  Shakily he breathed as he tried to place it on though it was visibly obvious that it was too large.  “I think it less of a ring on me than a bracelet.”

Laughter and cheers went up from the crowd as they watched the Consul get his heir.  He stepped down not just to share the height, but the weight. And for once, he didn’t mind being seen as less.  Lance opened his mouth to say anything like expected for nothing to come out, again and again.  Gaping like a fish.  Perhaps it was true that humans were primitive with how his mind was racing and nothing coming out.  His mother would never believe this. And if she saw him now, her boy, adopted by the enemy, would she weep in pride, or in grief?   “This is… a lot. I never imagined I’d end up with a new life, let alone a home. And a father?”  He looked to Perikaryon, expression open, voice steadying.  “But I’m here. And you gave me this ring. So wherever I go, whether I’m flying through asteroid fields or walking halls I don’t belong in, I’ll carry your name. With gratitude. With love. And I swear, with as much honor as I can give it.”  None of the guests mattered as the two looked at each other.  Joy completely from the Galra and trying to stay in control younger.  That went out the window as Lance lunged forward to wrap his arms around his new father.  Perikaryon accepted it with a chuckle as he returned it with just as much strength.

The guests roared in rejoice as the music began once again.  Lance slowly pulled back wiping at his eyes.  “You couldn’t have at least warned me to write a speech?”

“You did quite well.” 

“I was stealing pieces from every other General that has ever talked to you before.”

“It was what they wanted.  I know you well enough to know what you did not say.  It seems that surprises are the way to go to keep you from making jokes,” Perikaryon said as the young Galra girls condensed in on them with a new sharpness to their smiles and fluttering eyes focused on the newly available option.  The Consul took them in and McClain’s growing nervousness as his brain started working again to notice them.  “Come with me.  There is some one that I want you to meet.”

As they got out of the forming pack of predators, Perikaryon smiled back at the one that had gone from nothing to his everything.  “What did you do?”

“Do you even need to ask at this point?”  Lance said as he tried to get back to normal even as he was still reeling.

“No, but you are in control of yourself now.  I can’t turn down offers of leasing you anymore.”

“Fine.  I’ll start being more careful.  Can we still set up a secret hand signal thing so you can come save me though?”

“I have a bodyguard ready for you to do that.  I enjoy the trouble you get into too much to stop it,” Perikaryon said as he went to a more secluded part of the garden and bowed slightly.  “My Lord.”

The Galra slowly turned for it to be a much too recognizable face.  Emperor Zarkon.  Lance froze before forcing himself to bow.  Still not used to thinking of himself as anyone’s son. Definitely not while bowing in front of the guy who turned his planet into ash and ambition. Where did all the escape routes go?  The emperor looked at both of them as his cloaked Druid Witch focused on them with her glowing eyes.  “Rise.”

“I trust you are enjoying yourself?” Perikaryon asked easily from being used to the terror of the universe and being high enough ranking to be marginally safe.

“Yes.  I would not miss watching the public declaration of this thing you have begged me for,” Zarkon said as his powerful and crushing gaze went down to the adopted species.

Perikaryon turned to McClain that was trying to understand.  “To be adopted, one must be both free and a Galra citizen.  Lord Zarkon has been most kind and generous in permitting all to you and me.”

Lance swallowed hard before forcing a slight smile up.  Druids lived off of fear and pain according to the stories, no reason to feed anyone today.  “Why?  I’m fully human.  Citizen ship is not even granted to half Galra.”

Zarkon stared down at him as if waiting for him to crumple as their gazes held.  “I’m finding the pieces of the universe’s greatest weapon, Voltron.  It requires assembling a team of warriors that will fight under me.  I know everything of you.  Medilin takes the strong and weak and devours them.  It only took your weakness and built you stronger, your personality still in place.  A personality I may be able to use.  I have countless soldiers, but if they are perfected enough or have the required traits after wards is of question.”

Lance nodded as he understood.  No longer did he have to bow and grovel to every Galra that was below his father’s position, but they still did for the emperor.  The Galra Empire was just a universal reach of slaves in terror of two beings.  “So, with this citizen thing, does the death sentence still hold true for me and any possible kids since I am not genetically Galra, or is this an exception thing?”

The stern Galra did not blink but the slight smile that came to him had every survival instinct screaming.  “An exception.  Such strength would be good for my empire to have to counteract the weakness than is in it.”

Haggar floated forward then, “Genetics are easy enough to change.” Her bony clawed hand reached forward to feel the creature that was similar in height to her in a universe of giants.

Lance nearly crawled out of his skin as he stepped out her range.  “Alright.  That’s a no.  I’m still a minor you drugged out pedophile.”

The scraggly yellow hair shifted slightly as the gaunt white face tilted to study him was a partially crazed smile.  “So much potential.  I wonder what I can make you into.”

“Nothing!  I’m fine the way I am!” Lance defended himself.

Perikaryon’s hand settled on his shoulder.  “My son, in the agreement that we made for you, a condition was that the Witch would be able to work on you.” His hand didn’t tighten, but his silence said enough. He hadn’t wanted this either.

Where did the Galra girls go?  He could at least get out with his limbs attached to some degree with them.  Lance frowned at the news before facing the empire’s head witch.  “I guess that any Galran is not one until they spend time with the druids. Alright.  Fine, but you are not tearing my body apart and replacing it.  The girls love this face for a reason, so no touchy.”

She cackled for the other guests to glance over and quickly vacate the area as they recognized her.  “Quite fearless.  Making demands like all the Generals.  I will find something perfect for you.”

Lance slapped her reaching hand away.  “No touching.  You can do that in your lab.”

A low chuckle came from Zarkon as he watched.  “You will do well.  You are from Earth.”

“Yep.  Born there as the last million generations have.”

“The Blue Lion has been traced there and is being found.  I’ve heard the climate is extreme, never uniform with mostly the most inhospitable in its extremes.  Difficult to live in.”

“Not for those of the climates,” Lance said lightly.  The three males chuckled slightly at the playful forwardness.

“Young Perikaryon,” A voice called.  The mechanically armed girl came around the corner searching for him with a soft and sharp smile.  She froze at the company he was with to instantly go down to one knee and her fist on her shoulder, “Vrepit sa.”

The Consul laughed to himself.  “Go.  You can’t keep your dear ladies waiting.”

“Just make sure you search them before they leave so you don’t end up losing me by getting smuggled out in someone’s pocket.”  The new Galra said before he fled to the awaiting predators that he could actually handle.

Chapter Text

The night was soft and cool as the planet rotated away from the sun.  Lance sat out in the garden, over-looking the grand perfection and wonder of architecture and design that the Galra once had before their purpose turned to practicality and warfare.  The soft scent of flowers and fruit sweetening while spice drifted out of the mansion.  Quietly he sat as the light mist of the fountains dampened the air as his fingers twisted the large ring that his adopted father had given him.  A slight chain looped through it for him to wear as it was much too large for his fine fingers.

Perikaryon stepped from the house to notice him and come over.  “Are you well?”

“Fine.  It's nice out here,” Lance said with a soft smile.

“Most are not able to walk out of Central Command after Haggar is finished with them,” the Consul said as he sat down with the teenager to enjoy his estate.

With the slightest grimace, McClain rotated his shoulders in test.  “I can see that.  She doesn’t use anesthetic or knock you out when she cuts you apart.  For being so advanced in everything, you would think she would at least be far enough along to beat a back water planet in that way.”

“You still skipped out of her lab and to the hangar while the commander she was working on at the same time collapsed the tick he was out of her sight.”

“He wasn’t used to the pain.  This is nothing compared to churning on Medilin,” Lance said as he stared out at the gardens, gaze distant.

Perikaryon noticed it and watched.  “Do you think you will be well enough for your race tomorrow?”

“No problem.  I have our mechanics fine tuning the thrusters so that I can dodge assassination attempts and space junk.  Prorok’s entered four of his ships.  He’s feeling sore about no longer winning.  Betcha that he has given orders to three of them to take me out and the last one to win.  I’ll take a painkiller before it starts if you’re worried.”

“The race is not what worries me.  It’s that look in your eyes.” As the human looked at him, he continued.  “I’ve seen it ever since you came here.  You miss Earth.  Your thoughts are always of your family and friends.”

Lance drooped, “I can’t help it.  I don’t know what happened to any of them.  Where they punished for being connected to me after I was shipped off?  Did Keith get away or did they find him again later.? Either way, they’re still slaves.”

Perikaryon sadly nodded, “There are somethings that can’t be changed.  You’ll be leaving soon then?”

“I was considering it.  I just…” Lance hesitated as he looked at the grandness around him.  “I’m Galra now.  And I have you.  I never thought I would have a father again after my birth one was sent to the arena when I was little.  You’re my family, and I don’t want to abandon or betray you, but…”

“You don’t want to do the same to those of your birth species that loved you when you were nothing,” Perikaryon said in understanding.

Lance curled in on himself.  “You did the same.  I was nothing more than meat that still bled, and despite your traditions and people, you took me in and have made me so much.”

“You’ve made me even more.  I can’t keep you here.  Staying will only tighten your chains more.  The Red Lion has been found.  The others are close to being discovered.  You will be tried against each of them to find which one you will pilot.”

“I don’t know about that either.  I am supposed to be loyal to Zarkon, but I don’t want to conquer.  Enough of the universe is destroyed.  I don’t need to help with that.”

The Consul sighed as he sat back.  “I’ve given you ability, but also a battle that you alone must fight.  You can’t be on both sides without being consumed.”

“I know,” Lance whispered as he brushed his fingers over the engraved symbol in the red stone of the ring.  “I’m afraid of disgracing either of my family.”

Perikaryon leaned forward to tightly grasp the golden arm comfortingly.  “Though the empire may call you such, I will still be proud of whatever you choose and become.  You’ve never conformed to expectations.  You will set whatever gathering you step foot in into riot.”  Lance smiled to look away.  “Will you ever return to Central Command?”

McClain looked up at the actual question.  Would he come back to the Consul and his new home?  Would he be gone forever to leave the aging Galra alone?  “I don’t know.  I hope so.”

“Hope is a dangerous thing.  It abandons us when we need it the most,” Perikaryon sighed.

“Not when you don’t let it go.  Keep it, and great things will come.”

They sat in the peaceful stillness for a long moment before Perikaryon stood.  “Rest, my son.  You need your strength for the race and whatever awaits you.”

“You too father.” The garden was quiet again. Mist on his skin. Ring at his chest. And the weight of two families pulling him in opposite directions, both calling him home.

Chapter Text

Harfax sat back in his chair as he looked out the window at the fields of green all around him.  Heat made them wave and dance as coolness wafted inside the base.  “Has the shipment for the Vercon sector been loaded yet?”

“Almost.  The last of it is being secured,” his lieutenant answered as he worked at his screen.

“Commander Harfax,” A soldier called from the entrance of the room.  At the gaze, he stepped in with a well decorated box in hand.  “For you, compliments of Perikaryon.”

Harfax stiffened in his seat in surprise.  “The consul here?!”  It must be for repairs for someone so great to have come to such a worthless planet.

“It is Perikaryon the younger,” the Galra informed.

Harfax was out of his seat to accept the box.  “Bring him to me.  Don’t let him stay in the heat.”  He set the box down on a table to open the latch on it. 

“I didn’t know the Consul had a son,” his lieutenant said as he stepped over curiously.

“You don’t know young Perikaryon?  He’s the champion of the great races.” Harfax said as he lifted the lid.  “Why is he here presenting me with gifts?”

“Maybe he has acquired a taste for the food that we supply,” The lieutenant guessed.

Harfax stared down at what had been revealed.  “Look.”  He pulled out a long-curved knife.  Its handle glimmered of lilac diamonds, and its sheath was gem encrusted.  Beautiful in every way.

“It’s magnificent,” The lieutenant breathed in awe.

“And from a man I’ve never met,” Harfax said in disbelief at the wealth and grandeur in his hands that he had never dreamed of touching.

“You’re wrong Harfax,” a voice came lightly.  From the entrance Lance’s lean figure stepped into view.  A blue cape flowing behind him, attached to a decorated strappings across a black flight suit.

The commander stared at the human child he had sent away to die nearly a year before.  Disbelief in his expression as he tried to piece together all that was going on.  “McClain?”  The human had no fear as he stepped up to him and stood proudly.  “By what magic do you bear the name of a Consul of the Galra empire?”

“Your own,” Lance returned brightly.  “You condemned me to the ships of Medilin.  When my ship was sunk, I saved the Consul’s life.”

Harfax just stared, unable to say anything as he tried to understand what had never happened before.  It was impossible.  How could an unevolved Terran have become more than his ancestors and his descendants would ever be?  Lance smirked as he reached around his neck to pull the family ring over his head and took the commander’s hand to slam the seal into it.  Harfax hissed in pain as he jerked his hand back to himself, but the pressure imprint had been left behind.  “You know this seal?” The boy questioned.  It was real.  That couldn’t be faked.  It was impossible.

Carefully he swallowed as he shifted his stance to be more stiff.  “What can I do for you?”

“I’m here to check on my family.  I put you in charge of taking care of them while I was gone,” Lance said as he leaned against a seat’s armrest.

The panic that entered the golden eyes was more than enough for the fear to be shared.  “I’m not in charge of slaves!” Harfax blurted out.

“Only those that you can make an example of,” Lance returned before he straightened.  “It’s a nice day outside.  Don’t worry about a guide.  I know my way around.” He paused at the door as a Galra that had been silently waiting for him turned to face the way out.  Blue eyes that were usually kind were sharp even as the smile returned.  “You know, I’ve learned a lot about Galra.  You were right when you said that murder was not accepted, even when another Galra was the one to commit it.  But there are exceptions to the rule.  It’s allowed and encouraged in the races and arena.  Ever thought of trying one of them out?”  The boy was gone. The Galra beside him didn’t speak. And Harfax... Harfax wondered if this day was the beginning of something his rank couldn’t protect him from.  From a bone cattle that now could stand in the emperor’s court.

Harfax collapsed in his seat as everything hit.  He raised the expensive gift to stare at it almost blankly.  “A fitting gift.  It’s a shame that I might have to dirty it.”

“Sir?”

He shook his head as he looked out at the fields outside, begging emperor Zarkon galaxies away that the slaves he had forgotten about were well.

~

Lance removed his cape and every defining thing to be left in just his plain flight suit before he stepped out into the heat.  His bodyguard silently followed behind him, a grimace coming at the too bright light.  The air was roasting, but the warmth that the teen had missed.  Slowly, he strolled through the buildings.  Not much had changed.  Roofs had been repaired and well bolted down and other once concerning neglects fixed.  Harfax’s fear of someone taking him out the same way as Cathar probably being the inspiration.

The slaves that rushed about with their heads down were recognizable, able to be called by name with their own pasts in the boy’s mind.  They didn’t dare look up to see who he was.  The mechanics facility was crowded and humming as ever as he stepped inside.  He ducked around moving machinery that could easily crush someone, but everyone navigated with calm ease. 

“This is where you are from,” His guard hummed in consideration as he lengthened his stride to keep up with his smaller charge.  “I was envisioning more life and advancement to match your attitude instead of something so… Quaint.  Simple.”

“And Galra are one of the most technologically advanced species in the universe, but you struggle to use a communicator, Neuron.”

His guard smiled slightly at the point.  “I suppose us obsolete planet boys can do great things.”

“As if there could be any doubt,” Lance said before he paused to study part of the labor going around them.  He smiled softly as he walked over to a table where multiple humans were working at piecing drones together.  He leaned forward to look over the heavily muscled teenage boy’s shoulder to watch his thick hands deftly work the wires.  “What cha doing, bro?”

“Making it more energy efficient and heat dispersing, Lance.  This last shipment heats itself and our temperatures cause mechanical errors,” Hunk stated.  His hands stilled as he blinked to recognize what he had just said and who.  He turned fast to stare at the Latino boy that was grinning at him.  “Lance!”

The entire table paused in their work to stare in surprise and disbelief as Hunk surged out of his seat and crushed the lean figure in a hug that lifted him off the ground.  Tears began to flood down Hunk’s cheeks as he sobbed, “Lance!  I thought you were dead months ago!  And I haven’t wanted to eat anything that you used to, and I’ve been trying to take care of your family for you, and I can’t believe you’re here!  Please!  Don’t let me have fallen asleep and this time I’m dreaming of you instead of a cheeseburger!  I don’t want the sentries to get after me.  I’ve missed you so much.  I love you little brother.”

“I love you too Hermano,” Lance murmured softly to calm his best friend as he melted into the hug that was probably closer to a death grip and threatening him physically, but it didn’t matter.  They both needed it.  The pain meant nothing.

“You’re real?” Hunk sniffled as his tears slowed.

“Anything that wasn’t wouldn’t come back.  I’ll take on the entire Galra Empire to come back to you,” Lance reassured.

Hunk put him back on his feet to wipe his eyes and dripping face with his black slave rags.  “Bro, I don’t even know what to say now.  I’ve wished you were here every day since they sent you away.”

“I wish I was here too.  Where is everyone?” McClain said as he looked about.

“This way!” Hunk said as he grabbed his hand to drag him through the mess like he used to.  He paused to hesitantly look at his work.  “Well… maybe I should finish that first.”

“Leave it.  If anyone gets after you for it, you can blame it on me.”

“That is the last thing I want.  Last time you were sentenced to die for that.  I’m not letting that happen again,” the engineer stated.

Lance smiled as he stepped back to pull his friend away from the table.  “It won’t.  It will take something much bigger and someone with a lot more ability than Harfax to do that.”

Hunk studied him for a minute before shrugging and plowing through the hive of workers in the facility.  “The Holts are over here.  Some idiot Galra jammed a shaft in wrong when they were building a harvester and broke the coding chips on it.  Now there’s no coding and its jammed.” 

They came into a space that was for the new harvester that had no specific set area for its work, but all instinctually felt the boundary.  Four humans stood on a platform trying to force the huge, jammed shaft out of its socket that was above their heads.  The gleaming metal was as large as a tree in length and width and its tilt downwards that they were fighting against in addition to the jam hinted at its weight. 

Katie was sitting on the ground at the edge of the space with her computer hooked into the machinery’s wires while Matt was standing tiptoe on a stool with new chips in hand, ready to replace the old ones when they came free.  “Come on guys!  It’s almost there!  I can see the coding base starting to come out,” Matt encouraged.

Without a second thought, Lance and Hunk stepped up onto the platform to help the others.  “Balance me,” the lean boy ordered as he braced his foot against the harvester’s side and heaved back like he once did at his turbine back on Medilin.  The shaft popped free, and the four others yelped as they went sprawling at the sudden release that they were not expecting.  Hunk caught the back of the shaft to keep it from hitting the ground and they alone held the dead weight. 

Matt was frozen as he stared at the teenager he once had joked with that was not supposed to exist any more standing right beside him.  Lance smiled slightly as he eyed the chip in the hand hovering forgotten in the air.  “Don’t you need to do something?”

The eldest Holt sibling startled.  “Oh… Yeah!” He grasped as the damaged chips in the coding section to yank them out hard.  The new chips went between his teeth as he pulled with both hands as the electronics were breaking off in sections.  He held out a hand in demand as an almost undecipherable “Huedier,” came around the chips.

“This?” Neuron clarified as he picked out a tool from a nearby box.

Matt glanced back to see and stalled at the Galra that was offering it to him.  “Uh…” He took the chips out of his mouth with a free hand for a moment.  “Not… quite?  Screwdriver.  It’s a thin metal stick with a flat chisel head on it.”

The Galra crouched down to the box to flick through it for a second to hold up something similar to the description.  “This?”

“Yeah,” Matt agreed hesitantly as he took it.  Then he turned back to the shaft to finish getting the ruined scraps out and installed the new ones.  “You guys doing okay?”

“Just fine.  Take your time,” Lance reassured as his load didn’t even register to him.  He could do much more for much longer and faster before he started breaking a sweat.  The turbines had ensured it.

The chips clicked in place and Matt leaned back.  “Alright.  Let’s get this thing back in right.  Can you twist the chips upwards?”

“No problem.  Tell us when,” Lance agreed as he shifted his grip to turn the shaft.

“When.  Now in,” Matt directed as the others rushed to help but their hands barely got on the shaft when it slid in fast.  Stares were on the long missing teenager not just at his reappearance, but what was not natural to be done happening with him.

The Latino propped a grease smeared hand on his hip.  “Anything else you need help with?”

Matt blinked at him before taking off his glasses to wipe them on his clothes to try and get some of the dirt and grease off before putting them back on.  “I think my eyes are getting worse.  You are not who you should be.  I’m seeing a friend of mine that died a while ago.  What’s your name?”

Katie jumped to her feet with a snarl.  “What are you!?  Humans can’t do what you just did and why are you wearing Lance’s face!?”

The racer held up his hands in surrender as he stepped off the platform.  “Human last time I checked, though that might be a little questionable now all considering, and why wouldn’t anything want to wear my face?  It’s too beautiful.  More beings should have it.”

Matt laughed in relief at the familiar teasing to freeze at the Galra beside him snorting in sarcastic amusement.  Pidge did not loosen her stance with a pair of pliers in hand for a weapon that were looking more deadly by the second.  “Robot, shapeshifter, clone, what are you really?  Our Lance was sent to Medilin to die.  There is no way the real him would have gotten here alive.”

Lance laughed at her nearly feral ideas.  “Don’t all those things mean I became even more important while I was gone than if I just came back, Gremlin?  I mean, why clone me or make a robot covering of me unless I was so awesome that they had to make more of me?”

Katie’s lip trembled. A second longer, and the rage broke. She slammed into him like gravity had given up as her arms cinched tight about his legs.  Matt needed no more reason to do similar around the Latino’s arms.  The teenage girl’s shoulders trembled and heaved as her breath shuddered out of her as wetness trailed down his flight suit suddenly.  Tears stealing more breath than talking.

“I don’t believe it,” Matt mumbled as he held on.  He loosened his grip to step back and yelled through the entire facility.  “Mom!  Dad!  Lance is back!”

Almost everything stopped instantly.  Eyes turned to them to stare at the one that was never meant to touch the surface of Earth again.  The few live Galra’s golden pupils blew wide as sentries started moving over to them as coded to end the disruption.  Neuron growled as they approached.  “Leave them alone.  Get back to work.”  The sentries turned off at the order to not bother the group.

Sam and Colleen Holt were among the first in the facility to get back into motion as they dropped their projects and sprinted through the workstations to join them. Their tools hit the floor. Colleen’s glove skidded across concrete as she ran, faster than she had in years.  “Lance?!  Is it really you?  Are you hurt?” Colleen questioned as she did the required body scan that mothers somehow had hard wired into them.  No immediate wounds did not stop her worry as she began poking at his limbs to make sure nothing under the dark suit was wrong.

“You’ve gotten a little taller than I remember you,” Sam said as he held onto the neighbor boy’s shoulder to reassure himself.  “Hunk has you beat by a ways with all his growth spirts lately, but you are higher off the ground.”

“I’ll send a complaint to the ship’s chef tomorrow about the food quality stunting me,” Lance returned.

Sam chuckled in watery relief as they all enclosed about him.  “It’s good to have you back.”

“Its good to be back,” Lance returned.

Sam shook his head, “You’re standing in front of me, and I still can’t believe it.”

Katie got out of the group hug as she fought to clean her features of any sign of her breakdown.  “You idiot!  Do you know how stupid it was to break the roof?!”

“Yeah,” Matt said as they let go.  “I had to bolt them all back on.  Thanks for forcing them to improve.”

“You were supposed to die!” Katie screamed.

Lance glanced at Neuron as if trying to decide if risking his guard’s life to save his own was worth it.  “Are you disappointed or happy that it didn’t work?”

“How?!  What happened for you…” Pidge started again.

“Katie,” Colleen interrupted.  “Easy.  Don’t scare him off.  I’m glad he’s home.  Your family has missed you.”

“Where are they?” Lance begged instantly in fear and wanting.

“Getting the new land that is going to be field forty-eight cleared and ready to be planted,” Katie said as she turned to storm over to a cruiser that was to the side for eventual repair.  “Get in losers.”

“Katie, be nice,” Colleen scolded as Lance laughed at the sharpness he never wanted to let go of again.

Hunk looked at the torn apart harvester nervously.  “The harvester’s not gonna fix itself…”

“Who cares about that?  I have my best friend back and I’m not going to miss this for anything,” Matt said with a grin.

Pidge cranked the cruiser with her passion alone scaring the machinery into life when it was stubbornly silent before.  “Ditch it.  We’re leaving this rotten shed.”

They all began to pile into the small cruiser to freeze in fear as the quiet Galra stepped over to them.  Neuron glanced over the almost non-existent space left then back to his charge.  “Don’t get into trouble.  I’ll stay here.”

Lance smiled, “Thanks.  Go raid Harfax’s refrigerator or there is a Galra community just down the road.  We should be back tonight.”

“Then I doubt you will arrive.  Should for you means most likely not,” Neuron stated as he turned away and walked through the facility for the large doors with humans scattering out of his way as if a forcefield was throwing them back.

“Dude.  You need to stop making friends with Galra,” Hunk groaned.

Lance laughed to himself as he thought of the thousands of Galra outside of Earth that adored him.  Of his father that had somehow become attached to him.  “I don’t know.  I kind of like it.”

“Hold on idiots!” Katie called back to the boys before she jammed the cruiser into gear, and they shot out of the facility and out into the green expanse.  Fields blurred under them as more and more miles passed.

The dark clothed figures of humans working zipped by as their course was fixed on one grouping of the dark specks.  The cruiser came to a stop nearby for the caramel-skinned humans to look up in interest.  The smallest girl lit up as she instantly started sprinting.  “Lance!  Lance, Lance, Lance!  You’re back!  Mommy!  Lance is home!”

The blue-eyed teen smiled as he scooped the incoming missile easily to hug her tightly.  “You’ve grown,” He mumbled into her shoulder as she strained at trying to op his head off with a ferocious hug.

“I’ve missed you so much!  Why did you go away?” Estella questioned as she giggled in joy.

Lance held her on his hips as he leaned back.  “Because I had to get you the perfect present for when I came back.”

“A present!  Where is it?!” Estella questioned in joy as she started looking over him in excitement.

“Its back at the compound.  You’ll have to wait until after dinner to get it,” lance promised as he thought of the beautiful stones and trinkets he had gathered from each of the planets he had been to.

“Lance!” was all the warning he got to brace for the avalanche of McClains that piled on to him.  Somehow, they managed to stay up right.  He couldn’t feel his ribs, but he didn’t care. Their arms said what the Empire never could.  The excitement was impossible not to notice as other workers looked up to stare and Galrans picked their group out.

One of the taskmasters jogged over.  “What’s going on?” He paused as he distinguished the source in the center of the mob to smile.  “I should have known.  You share more DNA with that insufferable bug, cockroach, than with humans.”

“Hey Xarac.  How are you doing?” Lance greeted as he got some room to breathe.

The Galra smiled at him happily.  “More than excellent.  My wife and I are expecting a kit.  Unfortunately, she has taken to your human custom of surprises in this matter, but I am hoping for a girl.”

“Congratulations,” Lance chuckled at the vibrating energy that was so discouraged for Galra to have.  “You just want an excuse to dress your little princess up in all the sparkly and fluffy human styles.”

Xarac shrugged with a grin.  “Command would never believe you if you tell anyone that I hate my uniform and would trade it out for your fashions any day.”

“I’ll try that out and see if I can get some adjustments made to the dress code.  No one here is afraid of you because you’re a warm marshmallow in a crunchy suit.”

Xarac shook his head fondly as he reached for his communicator.  “Last I heard, you were assigned off planet.  Are you supposed to be here?”

“What would you guess?”

The Galra lifted his com.  “I’ll alert my superior and see what I’m supposed to do with you.”

“Ask for Harfax.  He’ll give you the A-Okay to let all of us head back to the barracks early today,” Lance suggested as he looked back to his family.  They had all grown some without him, a little more sadness in the eldests’ eyes, but no extreme harm that could have been from his actions.

Rosa frowned as she pinched his arm hard.  “There’s even less fat on you than before.  You are starving to death.”

“I really am not mom.  Trust me.  I got a crazy space witch doctor that checked over my physical health and a commander got a sniff of what they were feeding me to improve the meal quality instantly.  I’m doing great,” Lance tried to reassure.

His mother frowned up at him before drooping in defeat in not being able to do anything to help her own children.  “Someday you will all be beautiful.  You will be rounded and nicely fat with enough food to eat instead of starving and skinny.”

“We know mom,” Veronica said softly to their country’s old tradition that remained in myth now.  Her eyes went to the once again eldest male of their family.  “How did you get here?  Why did they send you back?”

Lance looked away from all their curious gazes.  “I’ll tell you later.”

Xarac stepped into their group with a confused expression twisting his lavender features.  “Harfax was very adamant to leave you, and everyone you interact with, alone.  He was almost spewing.  He seemed… scared to me.”

Only a few observant eyes were able to glimpse the sharp smile he pushed back into hiding.  “Harfax has always seemed frazzled to me.  He needs a less stressful job, maybe one that is not so high up in command.”

The taskmaster shook his head quickly.  “I am not going to be the one to mention that to him.  All of you are free to go.  Try and stay out of trouble this time Lance.”

The boy shook his head.  “Last thing on my mind truthfully.  I’m just here to be back with my family.  Maybe I’ll drop by your home to see you and your wife tomorrow.”

“I repeat.  Stay out of trouble.  No killing any more Galra,” Xarac restated as he shooed them away and turned his attention back to the others about that were staring at them.  “Come on.  We still have work to do.”

Three families flooded out of the field back towards their barrack home.  One in the middle tying them all together grasped with such desperation that any Galra would struggle to take him from them again.

Chapter Text

The cold metal of the barrack bunk beds was all too familiar and should not have been as comforting and accepting as it was as they turned in for the night.  No blankets were needed as it was too warm in the summer to require them, and the pillows were grudgingly given.  A light breeze blew in from the cracks in the barracks walls and ceiling to cool the hundreds of humans packed together in the building.  No softness.  No extra additions given that could be avoided.  Just shelves to keep the human slaves in for the night.

Lance stretched on the familiar cool metal that was scorching in the daytime.  No rocking of water and filth like on Medilin.  Not the cramped confines of a racer cockpit with stars blurring by.  Even the soft and spacious beds of Galra luxury were absent, but he immediately began to drift off.  This was home and it didn’t take any climatizing to accept it. 

He smirked as his eyes fluttered closed on the sight of his little brother peeking over the edge of the bunk above him to stare at him in amazement.  The rude awakening was unfortunately just as usual and to be expected.  It also took too long because of that to recognize the sharp things digging into him were common fingers instead of something sharp.

With a stretch he blinked his eyes open to find two young Holts, a hulking Garret, and the eldest two McClain girls staring at him.  “What’s…”

Rachel slapped a hand over his mouth with a glare.  “Stay quiet and come with us,” she barely even whispered.

Lance nodded as this suddenly felt too much like a kidnapping.  He was released just enough for him to silently slip from his bunk, then they were creeping out the usually locked door to outside.  Past the sentry patrols to a hidden area that no one would notice them in.  “What’s going on?” Lance quietly asked as they stopped.

Rachel crossed her arms to glare at him.  “Now we want answers.  What are you doing here?”

“And why are the guards avoiding you?” Katie followed up.

Wonderful.  His least favorite questions and the ones that he didn’t want to answer the most.  He shuffled the dirt at his feet as he tried to come up with something that would not have him destroyed in their minds.  “I came back to make sure all of you were safe.  I’ve been worried ever since I left that Harfax would come after the rest of you because I love you guys and would use you guys as examples here.  I haven’t wanted to think much about you guys out there because I would make myself into a mess thinking about all the possibilities and things that could happen.  I felt like Hunk!”

“Thanks.  I am Hunk,” the thickly muscled teen said dryly.  “I did that so much when you were gone.  All the horrible ways they said you were going to die.”

Lance hugged his best friend to keep the old imaginings away.  “It's okay, Hermano.  That’s not going to happen again.”

Matt sat down to get weight off of his leg that had not fully healed.  “It still doesn’t make sense.  How did you get here? You were condemned to die.  Galra don’t care about slaves.  They wouldn’t have decided to just send you back.”

Lance forced a cocky smile up for them.  “I was just that different from the others.  No joke.  If you think that Galra are big, then you should have seen the slaves that I was working with.  I was doll sized to them.  Hard not to stand out and get attention with a size difference like that.”

Veronica watched him with a softer version of her younger version’s posture and expression.  “Were you that different and unfit for that work that they would send you back?”

Katie snorted, “Yeah right.  That would have just killed him off faster and got rid of another problem on their hands.  There’s something going on here.  You’re not the stick figure goofball that could barely stand up anymore.   You’re…” Her honey eyes picked him apart in the darkness. She didn’t say it, but her voice had that edge, the one that only comes when you mourn someone twice and don’t know if you’ll survive a third.  “Stronger.   A lot stronger.  Stronger than everyone here, and you aren’t spastically showing off like before.  Still a goof, but… more confident?”

“You were always confident before,” Matt put in. “But it was like you only knew how to survive and take are of all of us.  You used to be afraid back then and less certain.  Now you still laugh and make hilarious comments,” that got an eyeroll from his sister, “but you’re not afraid.  It’s like you are willing to take on the entire universe no matter what happens.”

Lance let his smile fall as he looked up at the stars.  “Being marked to die changes your mindset fast.  You are going to die no matter what you or others do.  There is no point when you consider it logically. Why push yourself to go as hard as the other slaves and hurt as you die?  Why not just lay down and have the Galra beat you for a while before just tossing you overboard to die?  I saw a few new slaves arrive that decided that was the best option pretty quick.  Why suffer and prolong the pain to give yourself more until your body has nothing left to give and can’t take any more?”

He sighed as he looked at his family surrounding him.  “I did because I needed to get back to you.  Those that were condemned with me also needed me.  One more helper would lighten the amount of work they needed to accomplish.  My body is different.  Medilin did change me, but I can do great things with what I am now.  Harfax realized that when I got here and warned the others off.  He doesn’t want to know what I will do for you guys if anything happens to you.”

“What will you do for us?” Matt asked.

Lance sighed as he reached up to mess with his black flight suit that did not stand out enough to be marked as one among the slave ones.  “I don’t know.  When I was coming here, it was so clear what I was going to do if anything had happened to you.  I was willing to take Harfax and any other Galra involved to the gladiator arena to gut them to give back every moment of fear and pain they gave you guys, but you’re all safe so there’s no need for that.  Now…”

Veronica stepped over to hug him lightly.  “Talk through it.  It’s always helped you think out the problem and find a solution before.”

“You’re my family,” Lance barely mumbled as his hand followed a seam up his suit to the lump under it around his neck.  “This is my home. My planet.  Where I am supposed to be, but all of you are slaves.  How can any of you be happy or safe as slaves?”  Slaves when he was free.  “Where am I supposed to fight back to keep you safe and sit back?”  Was just torture and harm to them because of his actions the only reason to consider fighting and killing a Galra?  They were still being hurt and destroyed just by this kind of living that he had thought was the only way.  Throwing away your life and happiness to feed an empire that they would never see.

“Uh, how about you forget about the fighting part.  Blood makes me nauseous, and I really don’t want anyone to get in trouble,” Hunk suggested.

Rachel nodded, “Fighting will get you and all of us in the arena.  Forget it.  We are happy and alive as we are now.”

“Are we really though?” Lance asked as he looked at each of them.  He paused to look at Matt.  “How many times do we lower our voices as we work to not attract any attention?  How scared are we when some one trips or a Galra looks over that they will finally be finished with us?  Why do we put up with the terror of the gladiator ship and try to piece ourselves back together again as our families and loved ones are torn apart?  Are you guys really that different from me?  Are we not all condemned to die?  Why do we keep going when it would be better for all of us if we just laid down and died.  We wouldn’t have to watch our brothers and sisters starve to death and the happiness in them be snuffed out.  We wouldn’t have to hug our parents every chance we got because they might be dragged into a ship to never come back again.”

“I’m not going to let anything take the moments I have with any of you away from me,” Rachel stated.  “It’s harder to live, but it is better.  What good is being dead if you miss the best things?  It’s the small things like hugs, smiles, and jokes that make life worth living, even when it is hell.  You’ll never know if things were about to get better the next day, or if you are the one that could have made it better for all of them.”

“I know.” Lance said quietly.  “That is why I held on.”

Katie crossed her legs to lean forward.  “We’re doing the same.  What’s the problem?”

“I don’t want this to be all that you know.  The worst times are supposed to move on so that those good should come in, but the Empire is not going to allow that.  I saw systems out there that have been enslaves for centuries.  Cultures wiped out completely into just work and any hope or happiness gone from them because it’s been crushed out of them through all their generations.  That’s what Earth is going to become.  That or extinction is all that is going to happen in the end.”

Hunk paled slightly, “That’s… not good.”

The Holt girl sat back with a scoff.  “So what?  We all run off and pretend the Galra don’t exist?  They rule this world, Lover Boy.  They rule the entire universe.  There is no where and no one that can have that good stuff.”

The large ring under his flight suit was heavy.  It didn’t dig into his skin, but it felt like it should.  “I don’t want this for you.  Any of you.  I have to do something, but I can’t.”

Veronica pulled him fully into her embrace and gently held him.  “Don’t worry about that.  Just be who you are.  Don’t worry about saving the world.”

“It never stood a chance when humans evolved,” Rachel added.

Lance let his head fall down on Veronica’s shoulder as Hunk’s strong arms wrapped around both of them.  Be who he was.  How was that possible?  He was born to be a Cuban.  In first grade he had been assigned to be a janitor.  That was what his career for the rest of his life was supposed to be.  Just clean buildings and never consider becoming more.  Then the Galra decided he was to be a slave.  A farmer and dairyman.  That’s what his family still were.  Off of this planet he was a Galra.  The son of Emperor Zarkon’s own Consul.  The best space racer in the universe.  Free and Elite. 

He was all these things, but two of them were extreme opposites and could not mix in the least.  Free and enslaved.  Rich and barely living.  Privileged and restricted.  Fearless and afraid.  Conqueror and conquered.  Everything and nothing.  A father he loved and wanted to be with in the stars, and a family he never wanted to leave here.  No one other than Perikaryon knew the full extent of the truth, yet even he had stayed quiet.  It did not have to be said.  There was only one side he could belong to.

“We should head back to the barracks,” Hunk whispered.  “We don’t want to be seen out here.”

The words were not supposed to cause pain.  They were young.  They were supposed to be able to sneak out and talk.  Not be afraid at every moment to do so.  Blue eyes opened slightly as he pulled the chain out from under his suit to look at the ring under his hand.  Its shape was all that could be seen in the darkness, hidden between him and his older sister.  Love that did not care about species or political ideas.

His fingers closed about it hard as if he could squeeze that care out for himself or send his own back.  He stepped back out of the embrace then as he pulled the chain over his head and pocketed the heirloom.  It was not meant to be worn when disgracing the name that had given it to him.  “I’m going to fight.”

Katie raised a skeptical eyebrow at him.  “You’re an idiot.”

“I agree with Pidge,” Matt agreed.  “You’re only going to get yourself killed for real this time.”

“What’s the point of living when it is in chains?  Maybe family does make them lighter to wear, but we’re destroying ourselves when we see others have them too.  Maybe I’ll die, but if that is all that it will take to make the rest of you free, then I will.”

Rachel took a strong step to grab his hair painfully and shake him slightly.  “No.  Use your head for more than a hat rack.  We will all live because we are not going to lose each other.  Don’t get us all destroyed because you have dreams but can’t complete them.”

Lance grimaced as he held her hand to stop the rough love.  “What if Estella is chosen to be a pleasure slave?” Rachel froze.  “What would you do to keep her from that life?”

The second eldest McClain child slowly let go without a word.  She knew exactly how far over the edge she would leap in that circumstance.  Hunk shook his head hard to get the thought out of his mind.  “Nothing that bad has happened yet.  There’s no reason to make trouble.”

“Aren’t we though?  If we eat every day is decided on if we’ve done enough even as we pull tons of food together.  There is more than enough being produced on our planet to feed everyone fifty times over, but we’re barely getting any of it.  I’ve seen Matt.  He can barely walk any more with how his leg is.  When are they going to get rid of him because he can’t keep up with the rest of us?”

Pidge’s ponytailed hair flipped around as she looked at her brother in terror that had long been growing.  Matt swallowed slowly before forcing a small smile up.  “If they’d let me get one of their extra prosthetics, then I would be out running all of you guys.”

“They’re not going to do that.  That’s a waste of resources on a being that can barely do anything,” Rachel stated the truth bluntly.

The warm night dropped in temperature around them to have a chill.  Words were hard to summon.  Lance slowly straightened his shoulders as he would when he would march down the halls for the druid labs.  No fear to be seen, only strength and certainty in his step even as he felt the noose of a Gallow tightening around his neck.  “I don’t care if I am wearing rags or chains.  Freedom isn’t a signed contract.  It’s a personal decision.  What we decide and how we act determines if we are slaves or free.  Galrans say they are free, but they keep their heads down and follow every order and propaganda with out question.  I would rather wear rags than silk any day as long as it is my choice what I am going to do next, and my family has that.  I would rather die free than as destroyed property.  Death is not something to be afraid of when there is a chance another will live to enjoy a true life.  Pain and suffering are less when you own yourself and you chose it.  Give me all the riches the universe has to give, I don’t want them.  I’m not going to stop fighting until I’m dead or every human on Earth has their chains removed.” Lance paused to look at the few of his family with him in the darkness.  “I was raised a slave with you, but I am going to consider myself free as I fight under that name.”

“How?” Pidge asked softly.  “That sounds nice and all, but it means nothing.  You’re going to get your head chopped off just like your dad and brother did if you don’t have a plan of how to potentially succeed.”

Lance took a deep breath even as everything inside of him shook.  “I’ll figure one out.”

“We’re doomed,” Katie stated.

“I’m in,” Matt spoke up.  Eyes snapped to him.  The Holt boy frowned at his leg as he slowly flexed it, feeling the pain of the unhealed injury.  “I’m going to die no matter what.  I might as well do something useful for once.  I want mom and Pidge to be safe.”

“I’m not letting you die, you stupid string bean,” his sister growled.

“You’re not alone little brother,” Veronica said as Rachel nodded.

Hunk raised his hand to be allowed to speak.  “This is really not a good idea, guys.  Remember what happens to uprising slaves?  I would really, really like to not be tortured for days to prove a point as I die.”

“Don’t join then,” Rachel stated.  “Go back to sleep.  We have some planning to do.”

Hunk Garret swallowed hard as he eyed the barracks.  Shakily he shook his head.  “Nope.  I’m sticking with Lance.  I’m not losing him this time.”

Veronica smiled slightly at her brother.  “Any ideas now?”

Lance stared at his chaos crew. Wounded, terrified, and fully his. He didn’t need a plan. He needed a start. “Alright. Who knows how to start a rebellion?”

Katie groaned, “And we’re all following you?”

Hunk sighed, “I know.  Hard not to though.”

“We’re going to need help,” Veronica stated.  “Six people is not exactly enough to free a planet and fend off a universe of evil space cats.”

“We’re going to have to be quiet about this,” Matt said. “But I think I can get the recruitment started.”

“What good is recruitment if we are going up against space weapons with farming tools?” Pidge questioned.  “We need something to give us an edge.”

“There are ships in the main command center,” Lance suggested.

“And none of us know how to use them,” Rachel pointed out.

“I do,” Lance stated.  “I can teach you guys.  Then we’ll have a chance.”

Pidge propped her chin in her hand as she thought.  “The Galra have unlimited resources to keep sending to knock us down.  We’re going to need a thing to keep them off our planet without having to fight them day and night for the rest of forever.”

“I can work on that,” Hunk volunteered.  “Something like a force field.  It won’t let anything through.  But that would take a lot of power and tech…”

“We can use the Galra’s,” Pidge said as her mind started firing at full.  “We can use their stuff and slowly build up to be complete planet protection.  If we can build a way to make field bubbles to let ships in an out like cells do with nutrients, then we could have control of our own airspace.  We could then surround Galra war ships and bring them in individually to take care of and raid their supplies without the whole fleet getting in.”

Lance hesitated, “Let’s not kill off all the Galra.  There are some that would love to be done with the Empire.  I don’t want to have to kill Xarac and his family in this mess.”

Hunk paled, “Yeah.  Agreed.  We’d be killing his baby, and I don’t like kids getting hurt and I don’t want it to be an orphan.  Yeah.  We’re leaving as many Galra alive as we can.”

“I’ll work on conditions for our space neighbors to live by and how we decide if they are too dangerous to keep with us,” Veronica volunteered.

“What about the Blue Lion thing that they are digging up in the desert?” Rachel questioned.

Lance sighed at the never-ending problems they had to deal with.  “Zarkon wants it.  That is not a good thing.  The Galra don’t care about us, but if we cut off their access to the Lion, then they will do everything in their power to get back to it.  If we want them to leave us alone, we’re going to have to destroy it.  It doesn’t exist, and they don’t get it in the end.  It's good for us all together.”

“We’re going to have to get to it first then,” Matt pointed out.  “They’ve been digging out in that desert for years and keep missing it.  I can hack into their coms to get information and then set up our own search area.  Something that will hopefully take us right to the Blue Lion.”

Lance smiled as he put his hand out.  “Alright everyone.  On three.  Rebellion.”

“No,” the others quietly put down the cheer that would get them all in trouble if heard.