Hey there, it's me again! I've mentioned this story a few times in passing, but here I am, finally getting around to writing it. I wanted to wait until season six came out so I could better determine Lotor's motivations which yeah- really good idea on my part. Anyways, this is actually an idea that I've been toying with ever since abyss of memory- this is actually the idea that I mentioned in the author's note of the very first installation of that, that split off from it. So it's been in the works for awhile!

I'm pretty eager to write this one, got some fun stuff planned. Fun for me, I mean, not necessarily fun for Keith.

Anyways, please enjoy!


who you are in the dark

chapter one

halfbreed


Groaning, Keith forced himself awake.

There was nothing he would like to do more than sleep longer, but he couldn't afford to be caught sleeping when the patrols came by. The last time he had given into the temptation, he'd woken up not in his cell, but strapped to a table, a druid looming over him.

Not an experience he was eager to repeat.

Pushing himself up, he pressed his back against the wall. He caught faint whispers in a language that he was only just barely coming to understand, but he forced himself not to pay attention to them. He wasn't alone in the cell- though those in here with him seemed to rotate, some disappearing and never coming back.

He suspected it was because they were dead.

At first, they had spoke to him in Common, of which he had a faint understanding of, thanks to the translator microbes that Allura had given them all. They had started failing after his first week here, but he had always paid attention, able to pick out enough of it to carry on a conversation.

Now they didn't speak to him at all, or even dare approach him. They just hovered in their corner, as far away from him as they could possibly get. It felt as if he was being treated like some kind of dangerous beast, and to be honest, he was sick of it.

Getting captured was stupid. He still didn't remember how he had fucked up the mission so bad- the last thing he remembered was following that scary dude- called a druid, he'd since learned- into some strange chamber, and then after that, nothing.

Probably because he'd hit his head, but still.

Pulling his knees up close to him, he rested his arms on them. His paladin armor was long gone- he'd been stripped of it shortly after he'd woke. The threadbare outfits that the Galra provided their prisoners didn't provide much protection from the elements, and he often found himself shivering in the thin material, having to pull into himself to keep himself warm.

It had been... fuck, he didn't know. He'd lost track of time after the first week. It was always dark here, and though his eyes had finally adjusted to it, it made telling time impossible. Even back on the castle-ship, Coran had made a conscious effort to keep them on some kind of day and night schedule, dimming the lights as needed.

It could have been months, for all he knew. Everything blurred together here, with only a few events of note standing out.

Like that damn witch pulling out all of his teeth. That he remembered.

His jaw had throbbed for days afterwards, and he was just grateful for whatever freak mutation he had that allowed them to grow back. It was something he had realized back on Earth, which left like a lifetime ago now- that his teeth didn't play by the same rules as everyone else. If he lost one, he'd always grow it back, and over time, he learned to keep it to himself.

He just wished they'd come back in normal this time.

He only knew they were sharp because he could feel them, scratching his tongue when he spoke- which wasn't often, these days. He'd cut his finger examining them, and had cut it again trying to suck at the wound. He hadn't seen hide nor hair of a reflective surface since he had been brought here- even the metal of the sentries was kept dull.

At least he had something to defend himself with. The first thing he'd done when they'd stopped hurting was to sink them into the arm of the first flesh and blood Galra that had come to collect him, dragging him off to who knows what.

In hindsight, maybe that was the reason why his cell mates were treating him like he was some kind of dangerous beast. They had been excited at first, hearing whispers that he was the red paladin of Voltron, feeling that surely if he were here, then this must be part of some kind of plan.

Nope. He'd just fucked up, that's all.

It didn't even bother him that the other paladins hadn't come for him. Good. Better they find a new pilot for the red lion, than risk everything to free him.

Near as he could tell, he had been transported to Central Command- because of course he fucking had. He'd even met the big man himself, just once- apparently before him, the red lion had been piloted by Allura's father, which gave Zarkon just enough of a passing interest in the current red paladin to have him brought (dragged) before him.

He'd been restrained like the thrashing beast he was pretty sure he was gaining a reputation of being, but that didn't stop him from spitting in his face.

Would have been so much more satisfying if Zarkon had so much as flinched. Not a guy you wanted to play poker with, some part of him had dimly noted, even as his head was smashed into the floor.

At first, they had pressed him with questions- about Voltron, about Allura, about the Castle of Lions. He adamantly refused to answer any of them, even when they got sick of asking and started demanding. He'd rather bite off his tongue than tell them a single thing, which, given his impressive new set of teeth, was probably a literal thing he could do.

Scratching the back of his neck, Keith winced, sucking in his breath. Right, his teeth weren't the only things that had gotten sharp- he kept forgetting that.

Drawing his hand away, he glanced down at it, studying his nails. He wasn't sure when it had happened, just that it had been after the teeth, but they had taken a turn for the sharp. He had tried to trim them with his teeth, but that had just resulted in a lot of blood, and suffice to say, he wasn't that interested in bleeding to death in a Galra prison, so he nixed that idea.

They didn't ask him questions anymore.

At first he thought it was because they knew he wouldn't talk- but now he wasn't so sure.

Gaze flickering in the direction of his cellmates, he could almost feel them tensing up underneath it. There had been the faint brewing of a conversation- one not about him, but that had stopped the moment they had noticed he was looking at them.

What the hell did they even see in him that had them so spooked? He was a prisoner, for crying out loud, no better off than the rest of them.

Heaving a sigh, Keith dragged his gaze away, fixing it back on the door. Just as he could feel them tense, he could feel them visibly relax when it left them, the faint undercurrent of chatter that he could pick up probably having more to do with him than it had before.

It left him with nothing to do until either someone came to get him, or it was meal time. Every time he so much as stood up, the air in the room grew tense, so even basic exercises were out of the question. Nothing to do but sit and stare off into space, and think.

Mostly he just thought about Earth.

He'd never been homesick for it, in the same way the other paladins were. The only person of value to him on Earth was Shiro, and he was up here with him. Sure, he guessed he kind of missed the food, and there was nothing quite like a desert sunset from the roof of his shack, but other than that?

Guess there was his dad's grave, maybe. But at the end of the day, that was just a rock stuck in the ground, hardly anything to cling to.

He'd probably rot away in this cell. There must have been a way to escape- Shiro had done it- but if there was, he hadn't found it yet.

Not that he knew where he'd even go if he escaped. Back to Earth? Nothing for him there. To Voltron? By now, they'd probably found a new red paladin to replace him, so it was better not to even bother. He'd just be dead weight, and he'd never really been a part of the group to begin with. Maybe he could find a remote planet or something, where he could eke out the rest of his life alone.

Didn't sound too bad.

Footsteps broke him out of his thoughts- metal striking metal. Sentries.

They stopped in front of his cell. He could hear his cellmates hold their collected breaths, doubtlessly hoping that they were here to take him, as opposed to any of them.

The door to the cell unlocked, the sentries seeming to loom over him. He didn't put up a fight as they reached for him. It was better to conserve his energy for when he actually needed it.

Today he sensed there was something different.

"You are being relocated."

That was all the sentry told him, before jerking him to his feet. He stumbled for half a second, before he found his footing. He'd rather avoid being dragged.

Relocated. Maybe to the arenas, he thought. If they couldn't get answers out of him, why not make a spectacle out of him?

Whatever. He didn't care.

Just another phase of his life- ever since his father died, nothing had ever been the same. Things had started to look up when Shiro had come into the picture, but then he'd left, and things went back down again. When he came back, things began to look up again, but he knew better- he'd been bracing himself for the crash the entire time.

And what a crash it was.

At least it was him now, and not Shiro. Better it be him.

Just on the edge of his hearing, as he was being carted away, he thought he could make out some words he could actually understand this time.

"The halfbreed is leaving," one of his (former) cellmates whispered, their voice not nearly so hushed as they thought it was.

He tried not to spend too much time thinking about what that meant.


They didn't take him to the arena.

They had dragged him off to a smaller cell block, isolated away from the main cell block. Here, those who had caught the interest of Zarkon's witch resided, he would later come to learn.

He had his own cell now, smaller than the one he had been in before. At least he could get up, stretch his legs, move his body, with no one watching. His muscles had grown slack in the time he hadn't been using them, and even if there wasn't a whole lot of space here, it was at least enough to offset that.

Above all else, he didn't have to deal with the hushed whispers. At least, not until he left his cell.

He wasn't the only one in this cell block- and he sensed that any fresh blood inevitably would attract the attention of the rest. Whenever he was removed from his cell, he could hear them- louder, and easier to understand, the voices of prisoners who had been alone for so long they had forgotten what it was like to control their volume.

(Solitude wasn't a problem for him. He'd been more isolated than this out in the desert.)

He heard the word halfbreed a lot, and each time, he forced himself to ignore it. He didn't want to find out what they meant by it.

He got the feeling he'd learn eventually.

The witch- Haggar, he learned her name was- had taken a keen interest in him. He didn't understand why, but he could sense that it was nothing good.

Whatever she wanted, she didn't tell him anything. She didn't say a word to him the entire time, except to give him the periodic instruction, which he ignored. It didn't matter- even if he didn't obey her, he was forced to. Sure, it would be easier to just go along with it, but spite had kept him sane this long, he wasn't about to surrender it so easily.

Sometimes she would leave him alone for days, no one coming to his cell except to give him his daily meal. The taste of it had changed, something which he immediately grew suspicious of, and tried to eat as little of it as possible.

She found out quickly.

He half expected her to try force feeding him after that, but the taste of the food instead went back to normal. Either she had gotten more clever, or she had changed tactics.

When the injections began, he knew it was the latter.

His entire body ached for hours afterwards. He didn't know what was in the injection he was given, but the moment it entered his veins, it burned like fire. He screamed until his throat was raw, after which, he was pretty sure he'd passed out.

He learned to tell time again by them.

Once a week, like clockwork. The second one was as bad as the first, as were the third and fourth. By the fifth time, he'd either grown numb, or his body was adapting to it, either way, it didn't hurt half as bad.

After the fifth injection, he was brought to the arena for the first time.

After living in near darkness for so long, the bright lights of the arena were almost blinding. It took his eyes a few moments to adjust, giving him a powerful headache until his vision settled.

If he thought he felt like a caged animal in his old cell, closely watched by his cellmates, that was nothing compared to this. Looking up towards the stands, the jeers and taunts of the watching Galra all blurred together, creating a cacophony that had him fighting the urge to plug his ears.

Is that what Shiro had been put through?

No, Shiro had said... he'd told him he'd had a sword. He hadn't been given anything.

The sound of gears grinding caught his ears, and he turned to face it. He couldn't place what manner of creature he was facing, just that it was bigger than him, covered in fur. It stunk too, probably having gone unwashed for longer than he had.

(God, what he would give for a fucking shower.)

They wanted him to fight this thing with his bare hands.

He remembered laughing at the thought, bitter, and without the least bit of humor, and not much else. It wasn't as if he had blacked out- he remembered fighting, but all the details blurred together, instincts taking over. Getting hurt, getting thrown around- there would be scars later, testaments to it.

Clarity only came to him after he won.

Breathing hard, he felt his whole body seem to convulse. Maybe it was just the ringing in his ears, but the jeers started to sound a lot like cheers. Forcing himself to take slow, steady breaths, he turned on his heel to face the creature.

It wasn't moving anymore.

Either he'd knocked it out cold, or he'd...

The sensation of something warm and sticky on his hands drew his attention down to them. His hands were covered in some kind of bright pink substance, spattered all over the front of his torso.

Blood.

So it was dead, then.

Somehow, the thought seemed foreign, distant to him. He was too focused on his nails, watching them glint, dangerous and deadly, under the bright lights of the arena.

No, they weren't nails, not anymore. Before, they had been sharp, sure- but they had still been nails. But these...?

These were claws.


Halfbreed.

Half of what, exactly?


He became desperate after that. Frantic, even.

A reflective surface- anything would do. How long had it been since he'd seen his face in a mirror? Not since before he had been captured, and that felt like a long, long time ago. He caught himself searching, looking for any bright glint of metal with which he might use to see his face, anything.

He found nothing.

Touching his face with his hands, he felt his claws press into his skin. In the aftermath of the arena, he had forgotten the lesson he'd learned back when his nails had first sharpened, trying to chew them off. He didn't bleed as quick, but he did bleed in the end, and it was with a shudder that he realized these things were very much part of him now.

He had spent what must have been hours studying them, trying to figure out how they worked, if he could get them to go away. Sometimes, in the right light, they took on a purple tint, but he dismissed that as his imagination.

In the dark of his cell, shuddering against the cold, he stripped down, ridding himself of the ratty, blood stained prison uniform, until every last piece of it was gone. Searching for deformities, he found no obvious signs of anything, tugging his clothes back on.

He couldn't relax yet, though. He hadn't checked everything. Taking off his shoes with a grunt, the insides slick with sweat from having worn them for so long, he bit back the urge to vomit.

What the fuck was wrong with his toes?

They were... on both feet, were they fusing?

It was with a sick feeling in his gut that he realized that they were. All but his middle toes were fusing together, two into two, as if they were trying to reform into one toe. It was as if he only had three on each foot now, and likely would, should the process complete itself.

Stop it!, some part of him screamed, but even if it did, he didn't know how. Split them apart? He hadn't even noticed they were fusing, if he did something like that now, he'd probably just end up crippled for life.

Swallowing, he reached down a shaking hand, lightly touching what used to be two toes. They flinched under his touch, and now he did taste a bit of vomit, watching as two moved as one, reminding him of a sick, miniature parody of Voltron.

Voltron.

He could never go back, could he? Not like this.

Whatever... whatever this was.


There was no one in the cell block to call him halfbreed now.

He was the only one left.


At the first patch of purple, he knew.

It started with his toes- the tips of them turning purple. There were six now, clawed like his hands were. For human feet, they were now grossly malformed, but he was starting to suspect that maybe he wasn't as human as he'd thought he was. The shoes that he had been given as part of his prison uniform had stopped fitting him ages ago, and it didn't seem as if any replacement was forthcoming, leaving him to go barefoot.

He got used to the sight of them.

He wanted to pretend that it was some kind of side effect of his toes fusing- but no, even his middle toe, unaffected by the change, was starting to turn purple. Tracing it with a clawed finger, Keith narrowed his eyes, realizing with a sinking feeling just what he was half of.

Pressing his head into his knees, he closed his eyes. Had they already changed, long ago? Was that why his cellmates had begun treating him like he was some kind of dangerous animal- because whenever he looked at them, he did so with the eyes of a Galra?

He could never go back now.

Not to Earth, not to Voltron.

He was the enemy.

He wanted to convince himself that this was all Haggar's doing, that she was twisting his genetic code, turning him from human into something else. But he knew that wasn't true. There were too many pieces of the puzzle that fit, looking back- why he never knew his mother, why he could never fit in, no matter where he went.

He hoped they'd found a good replacement for the red paladin. It might be a little rough without the red bayard- it had been taken with him, and he'd not seen it since- but they would make do. He knew his team.

Even if they weren't his team any longer.

Honestly, he wanted to cry. But he wouldn't give Haggar that satisfaction, no matter how cathartic the act of shedding tears might be right now.

Pulling his head up, he rose to his feet. As long as he didn't dwell on having six toes, he could walk just fine. The gradual transition had helped, allowing him to find his balance on changed feet. Pacing helped him sort his thoughts, even as his claws clicked against the floor, serving as a constant reminder.

So he was going to turn purple.

Fine, he could deal with that. He could never go back home, but fine, he could manage. There was nothing for him on Earth, and the paladins had to have moved on by now, even Shiro. Guess his only option was finding that deserted planet, provided he ever managed to get out of here.

Maybe he could find a planet that had desert sunsets that would put Earth's to shame.

Better for him to disappear from their lives, than for them to see him like this. Shiro... Shiro who had so much taken from him by the Galra, if he saw him like this...

Clenching his fists, he felt the bite of his claws. No. He couldn't put Shiro through that. Better that he think he was dead, than for him to learn he was Galra. That he'd been Galra all along.

And yet... there was some small, selfish part of him that really wanted to see him now. For Shiro to put his hand on his shoulder, to reassure him that everything was going to be alright. That he was still Keith, that him being Galra changed nothing.

Slumping down into a corner of his cell, he stopped fighting the urge to curl into himself. Stopped fighting everything, really.

He let himself cry.


Haggar noticed the purple.

The number of injections increased, leaving him delirious with pain more often than not. It was as if he could feel his body betraying him, shaping itself into something new. Twice a week now, and with all the burning intensity of the first one, leaving him writhing on the floor, begging for it to be over.

Haggar watched, impassive.

But sometimes- sometimes she spoke.

And he wished she wouldn't.

"They could have come for you," she would say, "-but they didn't."

He would scream, sometimes just to drown out the sound of her voice. He didn't want to hear that. Even in the depths of his pain filled haze, he knew what she was trying to do. He wasn't- he wasn't going to let her do that.

She could twist his body, strip him of everything that made him human, but he would not let her touch his mind.

He would not become a monster.

A human wearing a monster's skin, maybe. With every new inch of purple, the more those words became true. His body was changing, finding seemingly new ways to betray him each day, just when he thought it couldn't possibly get any worse.

But he would not listen to her.

"They don't care about you," she would croon, "-you've already been replaced."

He already knew!

But that was what he wanted. Saving him was too risky, and he wasn't worth it. He never had been. That was only more true than ever now- before, he had just been Keith Kogane, an orphan, a dropout, someone with nothing, not even family.

Now he was Galra- or getting there.

She would whisper, and he would refuse to listen. Stare at her with hate in his eyes, but not the hate that she wanted to see, not the hate directed towards the paladins. She could do her worst, but he would not turn on them, would never turn on them.

Whenever there was a break in the injections, he was tossed into the arena. He always fought against beasts, mindless in their attack patterns, only desperate for their survival. It was only after his third time that he realized that he too, was one of these beasts- that this was how they saw him, the Galra watching the matches.

He was on display, the former red paladin of Voltron, reduced to this. This screaming, half-feral beast, who fought with claws and teeth because he had nothing else, who grew strong in the arena even as he desperately tried to cling to the fundamentals of self defense, as Shiro had once taught him.

But sometimes he would also drop to all fours and lunge, a growl ripping itself from his throat that he did not know he was capable of making before that moment. Like he was a beast himself.

He tried harder after that. It became easier- he got used to the pain again, his thoughts becoming clearer. He kept this a secret, for he knew the moment Haggar found out, the pain would intensify, or she would think of some new tactic that was more horrible than the last. What time he had to think, he needed.

Shiro had tried to teach him how to meditate on Earth, but it hadn't gone over well. How ironic that he would put it to use now. It helped, at least a little- allowing him to focus his thoughts, which could sometimes be more scattered than he would like, especially after coming from the arena.

Either turn him or break him- those seemed to be Haggar's two goals. If she could not have him as a loyal servant of the Galra Empire, then she would have him as a beast.

Damned if he'd give her either.

He hadn't stopped to take stock of himself in a long time- usually in too much pain to do so. He just knew that the changes had been vast and far reaching, and in truth, part of the reason he hadn't done so yet was out of pure fear at finding how just how deeply they ran.

Running his hands over his face, he felt the bristle of fur underneath the soft pads of his fingers, which now covered near every inch of his body. It was just as purple as his skin, and though he hated it, at least it provided him some protection from the cold.

Hands straying to his ears, he felt them out as best he could. Without a mirror, he would never know for sure, but they had grown- large and fuzzy, not unlike Sendak's, he thought, though their location had not changed. He could feel them twitch and move, which was a strange sensation.

He didn't even remember when he'd grown the tail.

Though purple, it stubbornly refused to grow any fur, for which he couldn't decide if he was grateful or not. Running a hand over it, he tried to shake how strange it was to get sensation from a limb he did not possess before, and instead focused on how it felt almost scaled under his touch.

Great, so he was some kind of Galra chimera now.

Long and prehensile, it had become a weapon for him in the arena far before he'd even stopped to comprehend that he had one now. It certainly explained why it felt as if his center of gravity had shifted, because it, in fact, had.

Speaking of things he hadn't noticed in his haze, he'd lost a finger somewhere along the way, one on each hand, leaving him with eight total. Had two of them fused, like his toes had? Bending his finger joints, he frowned, unable to tell, and decided to just be grateful that he still was in possession of an opposable thumb.

His hands were massive now, like those of any Galra- feet and arms too, the latter long and dangling like he had noticed on other Galra. Everything about him was too big now- he felt keenly in that moment like something small wearing the skin of something very large. His overall frame had not changed much- he wasn't bulky, just tall.

Near as he could guess, he must have grown an extra two feet. Seven feet tall, or taller, but it was hard when there was nothing around for him to accurately compare himself to.

Even his hair had changed color, but he was almost one hundred percent certain that the shock of white was due to stress, and nothing else. It was longer too, more unruly, like a mane- but that was simply from passing time.

At least it didn't feel as if his facial features had changed that much. His nose might have been a little broader, but it was hard to tell without a mirror. All he could do was feel his features out, and that could only tell him so much.

Well, if the witch's goal had been to turn him into a Galra- or more Galra, then he had to say, she very much succeeded.

He didn't know if any of the paladins would even recognize him, even if they saw him. He kind of hoped not.

Assessing his options, Keith paced the floor of his small cell. His gait was awkward now, still trying to get used to longer limbs, this new body he'd found himself in. It was still his body, had been molded out of it, but it felt too much like he'd been forced into the body of a stranger at times, a feeling he was still trying to come to grips with.

He had to find a way out of here.

He was stronger now, but the witch was more clever. Sometimes she would use gas to knock him out before dragging him out of the room. Sometimes it would be in his food, odorless and tasteless, lulling him to sleep. If he could just get past that, somehow...

Whatever else about him had changed, he was still a pilot. If he could just get to an escape pod, or a fighter, then he could get out of here. Maybe the controls would feel strange in his hands, four fingered and clawed as they were, but he would not let that stop him.

Slamming his fist against the cell door, jolting a little at the loud sound it produced, he frowned. A weaker one would have crumpled at the force, or at least bent inwards, but the cell doors were designed to contain prisoners much stronger than he. He didn't even leave a dent in it, all it got him was a sore hand.

He kicked it, producing very much the same result, just with his foot. Ugh.

Grunting, Keith fell back on the floor, crossing his legs in front of him. His tail twitched out of the way, coiling around them, the tip of it moving up and down as if to taunt him. Propping up his elbow on his leg, he leaned his chin into it, closing his eyes.

He found his thoughts drifting to the paladins. What would they do?

Well they wouldn't have turned into a Galra, for one. He suspected that if he didn't have the blood in him to begin with, then Haggar wouldn't have never been able to do what she had done. He wouldn't wish it on any of them.

Lance would have tried to flirt his way out, probably. Unable to help himself, he let out a snort. Yeah, that was not going to work. Even if he wasn't guarded exclusively by sentries, flirting had never been a thought that crossed his mind. He literally could not do it to save his life.

Pidge could probably just crawl into the vents and disappear. She was tiny. He couldn't even imagine how tiny she'd be next to him now- would she even come up to his waist?

Hunk would... god, he didn't even want to think about Hunk being taken prisoner. Maybe he'd just win them over by virtue of how nice he was. Totally unrealistic, but hey, he liked Hunk, he wasn't about to subject him to horrible conditions even in his mental simulation.

Allura... he wondered if they would treat a prisoner of her status different. She was royalty, even if her planet had been destroyed. She would probably keep her head held high the entire time, not showing any signs of weakness.

God, she'd hate him now.

Coran... honestly, he didn't know Coran that well. But he was an engineer, so he'd probably work something out. Stow away a secret tool in that mustache of his or something.

Shiro. Maybe he could have answered that one before. He had already been their prisoner once, and that had changed him. The man who came back was not the same man who had left, although there was enough left for Keith to recognize. Still his brother, that much would never change.

Wish he could say the same about him.

Opening his eyes, he glanced down at his body again. A human wearing a monster's skin.

He would have to grow into the skin, some part of him thought. He didn't want it, but it was his now, and if he hoped to survive this, mind intact, then he would need to.

He could fake it- give the witch what she wanted long enough to get out of here. But even if it was a lie, the thought of vowing any kind of loyalty to the Galra Empire made his stomach churn.

He might look like them, but he was not one of them.

Pretend he'd lost all sense, and act like a beast? That seemed like a bad idea for a number of reasons, least of all because it sounded like an easy thing to do, but a hard thing to shake off.

He put both those options off the table. If he kept his wits about him, he could surely find some means of escape.

Whatever form it came in, if he found a chance, he would take it.

(In hindsight, perhaps he should have been a little more specific.)