Caged Bird

She was lighter than air and surrounded by a comfortable darkness.

How did I get here? No one answered her question. Taking a moment to think, she decided to ask a more basic question. Who am I? As she pondered this question she began to feel heavier. She was sinking down, back to reality, where answers started flowing through her head. I am Katie Holt. Yes, that was her name. My friends know me as Pidge. What an odd nickname, it sounded like a name for a bird. I am a paladin of Voltron, my lion is green. That memory triggered her float down into a crash back to reality.

Pidge, now fully conscious, looked around her, a single light source in the center of the room allowed her to do this. Dark grey wall surrounded her with a heavy-looking metal door on the wall opposite where she was laying down. She tried to get up, but pain in her left leg did not let her get far. Gently, with her hand she feels her leg, checking for broken bones. It was definitely broken, someone had put a splint on her leg to keep it in place. Looking at herself she noticed she was not wearing her paladin armor or her regular clothes. She was wearing a Galra prisoner outfit. She had seen the black jumpsuit and dark purple, torn shirt too many times not to recognize it.

Unable to move and check out her new surroundings, Pidge was left with her thoughts. She came to realize that she had no idea how she got into this room, this cell. She could remember every battle she had been in as one of the paladins of Voltron, every moment with her friends, but not how she came to her cell or how she broke her leg. Her thoughts drifted to her friends, were they captured as well? The Galra could have separated them, but Pidge chose to believe that they were safe in the Castle of Lions. They would be coming to get her out soon.

Closing her eyes, Pidge tried to communicate with her lion. Green are you there? There was no answer, Pidge hoped that meant that Green was safe in the Castle of Lions and not captured by the Galra. This also meant that she had no way of contacting the Castle. Since she had no idea where her helmet was, her only form of communication was through her bond with the Green Lion. Even so, it was better that the Galra just had her and no one else, hopefully. Just as she was about to give up trying to figure out what was going on, someone in a dark purple robe entered her cell.

"Haggar." Pidge said angrily through her clenched teeth. The Galra's head Druid smiled menacingly at her.

"Green Paladin. It is nice to finally meet you in person." She laughed, "You know there was a Terran prisoner that looked just like you. He had arrived with Champion and he was so much fun to play with." Pidge froze, she had heard from Shiro and various other prisoner they freed that the Druids liked to experiment on their prisoners.

"Where is he? What did you do with him?" Pidge roared in anger. Haggar dared to have touched her brother, she was going to pay, big time.

"Unfortunately for you some idiot guard let him get away." Haggar replied, "I never thought the Alteans would go as low as having children fight their battles for them. I guess they are not as good as they see themselves to be." The Druid smiled and began pacing menacingly in front of Pidge.

"I fight because it is my choice. No one forced me to be a paladin of Voltron. I have been and will always fight against evil, against you. Your treatment of the people you have conquered is horrifying. You do not fight a noble cause, Haggar." Pidge said. She tried to make herself look bigger, to intimidate her enemy. Her small stature and broken leg just elicited a mocking laugh from Haggar.

"You are certainly going to be fun to break, young paladin. I hope to have more time with you than the other two Terrans." A shiver went down Pidge's spine with Haggar's words. She knew what was coming, but she also knew her friends were coming soon.

"You won't get the chance. The other paladins will save me." Pidge said more confidence than she really had. She was terrified something had happened to her friends, she had to find out one way or another.

Haggar laughed again, "I know you do not have any memory of your capture paladin. How do you know that your teammates are not locked up in cells just like yours? Or they may be dead. You do not know if help will ever come. If I were you I would be preparing for a very long stay in this cell." Pidge was now lost, Haggar neither confirmed nor denied what Pidge suspected. She was not going to be able to get an answer out of the Druid, unless she remembered on her own.

"It is time to get started, my new toy." Haggar laughed manically as she threw a lightning bolt of pure quintessence at her captive. Pidge tried her best not to scream, that is what Haggar wanted. As the intensity of the quintessence grew, this became more and more difficult. Quickly it became impossible and Pidge let out an agonizing scream, then Haggar stopped. "Good, I have found your limit. When I come next is when the real fun begins Green Paladin."

After Haggar left, Pidge started coughing into her hand. Pulling her hand away she saw red, her blood. She desperately wished that her leg was not broken so she could find a way to free herself, but her fate was in the hands of her friends. They needed to come as soon as they could.

As time passed, Pidge wished that she still had her watch, but it had been taken away along with her paladin armor. The only way she told time was meals and when Haggar would arrive to torture her. They only seemed to be feeding her two meals per day, which is what she would normally eat back on Earth often skipping breakfast. After every two meals, Haggar would torture her for information on Voltron, she never told anything. Pidge managed to deduce that she had been imprisoned by the Galra for a month make matters worse, whoever put her leg in a splint did something wrong, because she was still unable to move it. Her hope of being saved was starting to falter.

In captivity Pidge often thought back to a poem she had to read for an English class in middle school. It was called "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings" and was written by Maya Angelou. She could not help but think about how it applied to her situation. "… a caged bird stands on the grave of dreams/ his shadow shouts on a nightmare scream/ his wings are clipped and his feet are tied/ so he opens his throat to sing. …" Pidge had never been much of a singer, she had been taking piano lessons since she was little, but singing badly in the shower to annoy Matt is all she did with it. Whenever thinking of the poem, Pidge would attempt to sing some songs she remembered hearing on the radio on Earth. It sounded terrible, but brought her comfort. It is funny how one experience can affect how you see something. She now had a whole new level of understanding Maya Angelou's poem. Of course, she did not have Pidge's situation in mind, but Pidge did feel like a caged bird…a caged pigeon.

Despite all the bad things, Pidge's memory had been slowly regaining some memories. She still had no idea how she ended up in her current situation, but she did now know that the rest of her friends were safe. Whatever happened, she was on a mission alone at the time. That lead to the question of where her teammates were. She occasionally had intrusive thoughts of her teammates being happy that she was gone and already have replaced her. Whenever a thought like that came into her head she quickly pushed it away. She trusted her friends to come for her, they needed her. Every single member of team Voltron was important in their own way. Though, after a month, it was starting to get harder to keep those thoughts at bay.

Haggar arrived, this time with two guards. "Your leg has not heal properly." Haggar observed, "We are going to have to remove it if you are to ever fight in the arena." Pidge's eyes grew wide in shock and fear. The Druid laughed, "How do you think Champion ended up with a metal arm? Replacing limbs is a lot easier than trying to learn the biology of lesser creatures." Pidge tried to struggle when the guards grabbed her, even though there was no way for her to get away.

The guards brought Pidge into a room much like her cell, but with what looked like medical equipment and a large metal table with straps. They strapped her onto the cold table and Pidge once again began to struggle to get out. "She's moving too much. We need to make her unconscious." She heard one of the doctors say. A needle was stuck into her arm and soon the world went black. In her unconscious state Pidge began to dream about how she became a prisoner of the Galra.

Pidge had been away from the Castle of Lions and the other paladins for a few days. Allura and Coran had sent all the paladins out separately to bond more closely with their lions for a month of Earth time. Pidge was against this, she had a bad feeling in her gut about being separated from the castle and the other paladins. So far bonding with Green was harder than she imagined. She was making no improvements to her bond.

Now, landing on what she assumed to be a friendly planet for supplies and to let her lion rest, the feeling became worse. Shiro had told her not to worry, that it would only be a month, and Pidge trusted Shiro, so she went along with the plan.

Now she landed her lion in a secure spot and turned on the cloaking device she had installed. No one would be able to find Green now. Feeling better now that her lion was secure, she started walking around looking for a village or drinkable water.

After walking for an hour, Pidge was about to give up, until she heard loud shots coming from further to her right. Pulling out her bayard, she snuck closer to the sound to see what was going on. When she was safely hidden in some bushes she looked to see the source of the noise. Five Galra soldiers were standing around shooting at some of their prisoners, laughing.

Pidge was furious, but that's when she noticed that they were about to kill a prisoner who looked like a child. In an effort to save the child, Pidge stood up from her hiding spot and yelled out, "Hey Galra! Why don't you pick on someone that can actually fight back?"

"It's the Green Paladin! Get him!" One of the soldiers yelled. That's when Pidge noticed her mistake, she was far from her lion and was unable to fight all five Galra at once. She decided her best bet would be to run back to her lion. On the way she tripped and fell down into a ditch. Landing on her left leg, Pidge felt a sharp pain shoot through the leg and she collapsed on the ground. "I found him!" She heard a Galra soldier say behind her. Pidge turned around to see a fist fly towards her face, then she only saw darkness.

Pidge felt the familiar floating through darkness feeling, but this time she had her memories. She was only supposed to be gone for a month, her friends could still find and save her. Haggar would not have Pidge much longer. The return of her memories gave Pidge a new wave of hope. She only had to last Haggar's torture a bit longer now.

Pidge paused in her rejoicing. Voices, she heard voices. She struggled to hear what was being said, but it was like she was underwater. Taking that logic, Pidge attempted to swim upwards in the darkness. The voices started to become clearer, they were her friends.

"How much longer will she be in there?" That was Keith's voice.

"Hopefully not much longer." Said Coran.

"She'll be out before we know it. Pidge is really strong and stubborn." Hunk always did have so much faith in her.

"We should have listened to her, this wouldn't have happened." Pidge would recongnize Shiro's guilt-filled voice anywhere.

"You could not have known, none of us could have." Allura, she was probably blaming herself as well.

"What's done is done, all that matters is we saved her." She did not expect Lance to be the voice of reason.

Pidge felt her eyes begin to open as the door to the healing pod she was in opened up. She saw all of her friends excitedly run over to her. Hunk lifted her up into a big bear hug and she felt a huge wave of relief that she was back with them. When Hunk finally put her down a wave of fear washed over Pidge's heart. She looked down at her left leg and pulled up the pant leg covering her view. The fear was replaced with disappointment as she saw metal instead of her leg.

"We arrived just as they finished." Shiro said hanging his head in shame, "We're sorry that we didn't get there sooner."

"We only realized that you were missing when you did not return with the other paladins after your month. It did not take very long to track your lion, luckily, and through your lions memories we managed to track where you were." Allura explained with shame in her voice as well. Pidge ran up to the two of them and tried to wrap her arms around Shiro and Allura. She felt them stiffen up in shock, but then relax enough to return her hug. The tender moment was soon ruined by Lance yelling, "Group hug!" and the others getting involved, even Keith.

"It's not your fault I got captured. I just had a stupid plan to save some kid." Pidge told them, "When I woke up, I lost my memory of how I got captured or where you guys were. I am ashamed to admit that I almost lost faith that you guys were coming to save me. I knew that you were coming, but after so long I started to believe Haggar that you all were capture as well."

The group hug deepened and Shiro said, "We'll always save for anyone who needs it Pidge, not matter what situation we are in."

"Hey now Pidge and Shiro are prosthetic buddies!" Lance exclaimed as the group hug broke, "I wonder what your new leg can do?"

"Let's get the training deck and find out!" Pidge said as she began to run towards the training deck with the other paladins in tow. The Galra just gave Pidge more fire power to fight them with and she would make sure to save and extra special kick for Haggar.

THE END