[ the worst part of it is how gently they treat him.
he'd been expecting torture and true depravity, nearly out of his mind with terror when the guards dragged him down from the captured blue lion. but the guards don't beat him. they don't even restrain him. his hands are shaking too much to aim his bayard, and all he wants, childishly, is someone to come get him, someone to break through the fog in his brain and tell him what he needs to do to save himself, but then zarkon is standing before him lifting his chin with a single clawed finger, and lance meets his eyes helplessly, and
drowns.
he loses time. sometimes he wakes up in a place that looks like a lab, strapped down to a cold table while druids do arcane things around him, sometimes he wakes up and he is already standing in a great crowded hall like a throne room, sometimes he wakes up in the chambers of the quintessence baths with his skin on fire and every nerve singing, watching zarkon wade forward through the dark, viscous liquid into place between his spread thighs.
zarkon can calm him with a touch. zarkon gives him quintessence to drink to develop his mind and make his body more malleable for haggar's experiments. zarkon knows when he's thinking of trying something, and can freeze him in place with a glance. his body obeys. zarkon tells him not to be frightened, and slips into his mind like he belongs there, soothing down all the wild emotions that threaten to swamp him. there are days when lance prefers that, because it means he doesn't have to struggle or feel uncertain or do anything at all except listen to the black paladin, the true black paladin, whispering in his mind that lance is safe, that he is where he belongs, that the paladins of voltron all belong to zarkon. that he loves them. that he will go to the ends of the universe to make them his.
lance knows that zarkon's brand of love is about power and possession but mind to mind, he knows zarkon is telling the truth. the galra emperor cares more about voltron and the paladins that elude him than his empire and his squabbling generals.
he doesn't feel like a prisoner. he feels like a traitor, huddling in soft robes that have been tailored to his exact measurements and living in a room that literally changed colors for him when it noticed his preferences and hesitantly eating tiny bites of delicious food. zarkon had even given him access to an adjoining set of rooms that looked like something out of a fantasy: pools of hot and cold water in a faux-realistic environment, rocks and ferns and shit, trickling waterfalls, shallow pools with realistic waves, rooms that are dark and quiet with alien stars stretched above on the ceiling, as if the swimmer was out in the middle of the ocean alone with the night sky, and one chamber that completely mimics the look of a tropical beach, the walls projected with some kind of moving hologram to make it look as though he's staring into the endless distance across an ocean.
he stays in that room most of the time, digging his toes into the sand. it might even be real sand. the ground under the water feels like real ocean floor, pebbled and soft. there are sun warmed rocks to sit on and fallen palm fronds to lay on, if he wishes. they smell like palm fronds should, although they don't ever decompose. there are real fish under the turquoise wavelets, and there is nothing in the distance but empty blue sky. a fake sun rises and sets across the walls. sometimes there are drifting clouds. it's a huge room, a decadent waste of space, but he's walked the edges of it and put his hands on the places where the floor meets the walls and the illusion ends.
he knows without asking that it was built for him because he is the blue paladin, and because zarkon knows what he wants. the beach room could've been an earth beach (or a lavish terrarium to keep a wild animal in, he thinks darkly), and the saltwater is exactly the right level of salinity. he doesn't know how zarkon knows. he doesn't want to ask. would zarkon take him home if he agreed to give up blue? would zarkon spare earth if lance betrayed the team and helped him capture them? if he could interfere with shiro's bond with the black lion so easily, could he just make them all not paladins anymore, and let them go?
he tries, pathetically, to use his fledgling sensitivity to reach out through the lion bond to the absences he can feel without alerting zarkon or haggar. blue is there with him, uncertain over his uncertainty, sluggish and unresponsive, so he has to reach further, out in the blackness of space. like the 52 hertz whale, maybe, a call echoing over leagues and leagues of empty ocean and never knowing if anything would respond. ]
CAPTURED LANCE
he'd been expecting torture and true depravity, nearly out of his mind with terror when the guards dragged him down from the captured blue lion. but the guards don't beat him. they don't even restrain him. his hands are shaking too much to aim his bayard, and all he wants, childishly, is someone to come get him, someone to break through the fog in his brain and tell him what he needs to do to save himself, but then zarkon is standing before him lifting his chin with a single clawed finger, and lance meets his eyes helplessly, and
drowns.
he loses time. sometimes he wakes up in a place that looks like a lab, strapped down to a cold table while druids do arcane things around him, sometimes he wakes up and he is already standing in a great crowded hall like a throne room, sometimes he wakes up in the chambers of the quintessence baths with his skin on fire and every nerve singing, watching zarkon wade forward through the dark, viscous liquid into place between his spread thighs.
zarkon can calm him with a touch. zarkon gives him quintessence to drink to develop his mind and make his body more malleable for haggar's experiments. zarkon knows when he's thinking of trying something, and can freeze him in place with a glance. his body obeys. zarkon tells him not to be frightened, and slips into his mind like he belongs there, soothing down all the wild emotions that threaten to swamp him. there are days when lance prefers that, because it means he doesn't have to struggle or feel uncertain or do anything at all except listen to the black paladin, the true black paladin, whispering in his mind that lance is safe, that he is where he belongs, that the paladins of voltron all belong to zarkon. that he loves them. that he will go to the ends of the universe to make them his.
lance knows that zarkon's brand of love is about power and possession but mind to mind, he knows zarkon is telling the truth. the galra emperor cares more about voltron and the paladins that elude him than his empire and his squabbling generals.
he doesn't feel like a prisoner. he feels like a traitor, huddling in soft robes that have been tailored to his exact measurements and living in a room that literally changed colors for him when it noticed his preferences and hesitantly eating tiny bites of delicious food. zarkon had even given him access to an adjoining set of rooms that looked like something out of a fantasy: pools of hot and cold water in a faux-realistic environment, rocks and ferns and shit, trickling waterfalls, shallow pools with realistic waves, rooms that are dark and quiet with alien stars stretched above on the ceiling, as if the swimmer was out in the middle of the ocean alone with the night sky, and one chamber that completely mimics the look of a tropical beach, the walls projected with some kind of moving hologram to make it look as though he's staring into the endless distance across an ocean.
he stays in that room most of the time, digging his toes into the sand. it might even be real sand. the ground under the water feels like real ocean floor, pebbled and soft. there are sun warmed rocks to sit on and fallen palm fronds to lay on, if he wishes. they smell like palm fronds should, although they don't ever decompose. there are real fish under the turquoise wavelets, and there is nothing in the distance but empty blue sky. a fake sun rises and sets across the walls. sometimes there are drifting clouds. it's a huge room, a decadent waste of space, but he's walked the edges of it and put his hands on the places where the floor meets the walls and the illusion ends.
he knows without asking that it was built for him because he is the blue paladin, and because zarkon knows what he wants. the beach room could've been an earth beach (or a lavish terrarium to keep a wild animal in, he thinks darkly), and the saltwater is exactly the right level of salinity. he doesn't know how zarkon knows. he doesn't want to ask. would zarkon take him home if he agreed to give up blue? would zarkon spare earth if lance betrayed the team and helped him capture them? if he could interfere with shiro's bond with the black lion so easily, could he just make them all not paladins anymore, and let them go?
he tries, pathetically, to use his fledgling sensitivity to reach out through the lion bond to the absences he can feel without alerting zarkon or haggar. blue is there with him, uncertain over his uncertainty, sluggish and unresponsive, so he has to reach further, out in the blackness of space. like the 52 hertz whale, maybe, a call echoing over leagues and leagues of empty ocean and never knowing if anything would respond. ]