Welcome to acts two and three of An Inquisitive Personality! Act one was Becoming a Cyborg. If you would like to read in detail about Katie's time with Lotor and how she got back to Voltron, go for it. If you would rather not, since it is not nearly as action or whump filled as Insatiability, I understand completely and thus will give a summary in just a moment.

Warnings! Story contains severe violence (including torture and mutilation), swearing, character death (not Katie, but everyone else is fair game), self harm, manipulation, vomit, and sexual abuse, including kissing and offscreen is no smut or explicit sex of any kind.

Becoming a Cyborg: Fighting on her own while the others got to their lions, Pidge and the Green Lion were captured. After a month of fruitless interrogation from the Druids, during which the Green Lion was piloted to freedom, she was transferred to the custody of Lotor. At first she assumed that his kindness was meant to manipulate, but when he offered to protect her father, instead of using him to pry information from her, she concluded that he was as in love with her as he seemed, and to keep her father safe she needed to reciprocate. A year later, she was busted out by the freedom fighters, including Matt and the real Shiro. Refusing to talk about why Lotor wanted her, going so far as to call herself Katie again to pretend it happened to someone else, the resistance deemed her a traitor. Matt and Shiro escaped with her in hope of finding Voltron and through them Sam Holt. They tracked down the Blue Lion, where Allura had been in cryo since the attack a year before. They found the rest of the team on Olkarion, where a new castle was being built since the last had been destroyed in last year's attack. The team had figured out that their Shiro was a clone, as well as their new green paladin. Seeing everything she once was handed to this new Pidge, Katie could no longer deny the last year and began to regret leaving Lotor's side.

Note: Katie is asexual-aromantic. Pidge, her clone, is at the very least not aromantic, hence her dating Lance. But Katie is definitely aroace.

Chapter 1

Bile burned up her throat, in her mouth, another dry heave and probably not the last. When her stomach stopped convulsing, she rocked back from the toilet and slumped against the wall. The cold purple seeped the heat from her skin, but she was already shaking, sweating, hyperventilating, but she couldn't pull her breaths under control, couldn't think of anything except the invisible grime on her flesh, in her flesh, and how much it hurt, god it hurt. She curled into the fetal position. It didn't help.

A voice that sounded too much like one she would use to tease Lance when he fell on his face flirting sneered, "Congratulations, you just banged the prince of the universe!" The hands hugged tightly around her raked down her arms, up her legs. Skin coalesced under her fingernails, her pale flesh sported bright pink trails, but he was still there.

Pinpricks lead to violent swipes at her eyes with the heels of her hands. She was not going to cry. She had gone forty-seven consecutive quintants without crying, and if she cried, the record would be broken and she would have nothing to look forward to. She had to make it to forty-eight. No crying. This wasn't that bad anyway. The worst of it was over.

Until next time.

She slapped a clammy hand over her mouth to stifle another gag. Her chest ached and eyes stung from the constant vomiting, please no more, please no more. But there would be next time, and a time after that, and dear god she was never going to get out. A sob cracked, muffled against her hand, and Pidge curled deeper into herself.

This isn't that bad, this isn't that bad. Mom was safe on Earth, far from the war. Matt was with the rebels. With this, Dad would be safe too. Lotor would protect him for her. Everyone was safe. That was all that really mattered.

If he asked, she would say her campout in the bathroom was from a nightmare about the Druids. For the time, she just kept her eyes closed. She was too damn tired to care about anything else.

Matt hovered. Wherever Katie went, Matt was there, to talk her through a panic attack or glare away anyone who would so much as look at her weird. The same brother who, when she was seven and got punched by a boy on their street for calling him an idiot, just said, "But you punched him back, right?" She wouldn't mind it as much if he would let her do the same for him. But whenever he had an issue – a nightmare woke him in the middle of the night, any number of triggers she didn't know yet set him off – he just marched away to deal with it himself. Sometimes, he let Shiro help. Maybe it was big brother instincts, or just human pride, and maybe it was wrong of her to want to see him have a breakdown, but dammit she hated feeling like the only unstable one. As it was, his mothering, while helpful, only frustrated her.

But for once, he had left her alone. Not just him, but everyone. The new Castle of Lions was a literal breath of fresh air, courtesy of Olkari flora and a distinct absence of colleagues breathing in her face at all hours. The tiny moon hideout had been a nightmare for personal space and no one missed it. At present, Matt was off utilizing against Shiro his infamous method of annoying someone until they realized the only reason they had not throttled him was because of how deeply they loved him – she had heard the echoes of his off-key rendition of "My Heart Will Go On" – so she was alone in the new castle lab.

The lab proper was actually deeper into the ship and most often the domain of Hunk and Matt. Where she was hiding was actually an observation deck into which she had dragged a table and whatever tools she could scrounge up. Out the window, she was able to see the great Olkarion city, where the Olkari and Coran plotted together the last preparations to make the Castle sail-worthy. Past the city, the gargantuan mountains guarded the forest beyond. Untouchable as the forest still felt, the planet was still open and uncramped and breathable and something a little like freedom.

So naturally Lance had to saunter into the room and suffocate it with his presence. "Dude, the Olkari are super intense! They even made the new healing pods self-cleaning! Now we can almost die without worrying about the extra punishment of cleaning."

With the door behind her, she could not see him, and did not look up from the pliers stuck in the tiny hatch in her new weapon. "Fascinating."

His elbows appeared in her periphery as he leaned himself back against the table next to her. "Yeah! Man, I've missed this place. I mean, it's not exactly the same. Not really like a home yet. I miss Kaltenecker."

"Hm."

By his silence, that was not the empathetic reaction he was going for, but she had a faux bayard that kept threatening to electrocute her when she powered it up to take care of. Damn coil stuck in the conduit. Lance flipped himself to be leaning forward over the table to watch, supported by his forearms and laced fists. "So whatcha doing?"

"Working on my bayard." It was not actually a bayard, in that it was not a weapon of the paladins synced to their armor, but she had modeled it after her old bayard and had no other name for it.

Lance leaned closer, face coming too close to the potentially unsafe weapon so that Katie had to take a step away from him. "Lightsaber and fighting staff not enough for you?"

With no small amount of wrestling, she pulled the coil free. "They limit me to close combat with little maneuverability."

"I getcha. Close combat sucks. I'll take my guns any day, thanks."

Electrocution problem solved, all she had left was to close the hatch and light it up. But instead she grabbed any other tool, put it in the hatch, and hoped Lance would not realize she just stuck a color-treater into the viscera of her weapon. Of course he didn't, he didn't know what any of the tools were, or what she was doing, but he was still just standing there watching as she pretended.

His attention span was longer than it had been a year before, but he did ultimately crack. "So when do you think you can go get your dad?"

"Kolivan is supposed to contact Keith today on Blade stuff. If he has an update, we'll go immediately."

He pushed himself off the table to lift a victorious fist. "That's awesome!" She recoiled from his energy. "What's the plan of action? Bust in to the prisoners all, 'Hello, Sir, have you heard of our lord and savior Voltron?'"

Katie's eyes burned from how hard she stared at the finished bayard. "It's just me, Matt, and Shiro going."

Lance lowered his fists, the energy he had been exuding vacuuming right back into him, because of course when the chance for glory is swept out from under him— "What about Pidge?" – or that. Katie's jaw set. "She has as much invested in his rescue as you guys do."

She squeezed the color-treater. The rainbow of wire spaghetti turned green. "Let your girlfriend fight her own battles."

"This isn't about girlfriends and this shouldn't be a battle!" He began to pace behind her. Screwing the charade, Katie dropped her tools on the table and sealed the hatch. "I know you don't like her, you've made that pretty clear, Frosty, but she's a person too! And–and even if she didn't actually live those memories, the feelings they give her are still real! She cares about your dad and Matt and everyone else just as much as you do."

She had been doing so great. Three movements with team Voltron and she hadn't picked a single fight yet. "She will never care about him like I do."

"But she does! And – I just – look, Katie—"

Lance's hands rested on her shoulders. And it was a friendly thing, a very Lance thing, often a precursor to a massage, either out of affection or the more likely bribery, and she knew this, and knew that his hands weren't going to slip below her shirt, but still her heart jumped into her throat and her muscles coiled underneath her skin.

Make him happy, make him happy, except this wasn't Lotor, whose happiness she had down to a science. It was Lance, and she didn't know how to appease him, to make him happy or get him off of her. And that was dangerous, because he could get mad, and then people could get hurt, but Lance wouldn't, still dangerous. Tune him out, check back in later – Sorry, went back to the Druids for a bit there – but she was too damn tired of being disconnected.

"Fuck off, Lance!"

He pulled his hands off immediately, though she could feel his fingertips hover just above her tense shoulders. Then she heard his soft footsteps away. She looked over her shoulder. Gone.

At once she shrunk to the floor and pulled her knees to her chest. She buried her face in them as she tried to rein in her breathing before she could lose complete control of it, gently rocking herself. Excuses to anyone who found her flit through her thoughts – I was just thinking about my mom – Battle memories, amiright? –

This isn't that bad, this isn't that bad.

Some minutes later—two, five, thirty—a tiny laugh broke through her strangled breaths. "Come on, Matt, gone when I actually need you," she murmured. Her heart had started to slow, the phantom hands had disappeared, and her emotions had mostly gone back to their usual sluggish tired. Very tired. She grabbed the edge of the table to hoist herself up on weak legs, glancing to the door as she did. Lance, Matt, Lotor, Iverson, the goddamn Easter Bunny, she wasn't really sure who she was expecting.

A little voice said she should be guilty for snapping at Lance, but she squashed that thought and tried to replace it with pride over being able to stand up for herself again. That didn't work either. It just felt like she had somehow irreversibly screwed herself over. She couldn't allow herself to get mad. Fuck.

She snatched up her new weapon and moved to stand by the wall of windows so that she could watch the door. The handle of the weapon was shaped just like her bayard had been, but without the bayard's magical properties, the blade stuck to the end of it was permanent, albeit not much of an actual blade until she activated it. To do so required her quintessence. Messing with the lightsabers the Olkari had helped her and Matt make had helped her become less averse to manipulating her quintessence. Still, it was not just the fact that last time she had accidentally electrocuted herself that Katie hesitated to activate the weapon.

When she did, the blunt, grey blade sharpened into a glowing green. No more shocking. She planted her feet and faced the dummy in the corner, a metal humanoid still set up from her last attempt. She swung, and, with the silent commands pulsing from her finger into the handle, the blade launched from its rest, connected by a radiant green cord. It wrapped around the dummy, and with a harsh yank, pulled it toward her. At her command, the cord loosened from the metal fiend and withdrew into her weapon. She side-stepped, compelled the blade to super-heat, and dragged it through the dummy as it flew past her. It fell to the floor in two clean pieces, severed edges molten and glowing. Success. All that was left was to test the taser.

Before she could decide how to do that, though, an intruder appeared in the doorway, a wary smile on his face. "You okay, Katie-Kat?"

Matt asked that as if he already knew she was not. As if he knew what had happened. As if Lance had told him. Which was bullshit, because Lance did not care enough to tell Matt about her freak out. No, Matt was just worried because he always was these days, and this had been the longest period they had been separated from each other since coming to Olkarion. "Fine. I finished my – well it's not a bayard, I don't know what to call it."

He strolled over. His curiosity and mothering would normally have him right up against her, but he peered at the weapon from a few feet away. "Looks kind of like a katar."

"I don't know what that is, but I'll take your word for it. Actually, could you hold this for a sec?"

At low speed, she extended the green cord to him. Matt caught the cool blade and had only a moment to look curious before the light current sent his body stiff and pulled out a small, involuntary scream. She retracted the blade. "Taser works."

He rubbed at the hand that had held the blade. "Jeez, Katie-bug." But it hadn't been enough to really hurt, and his grin matched her own. She bounced her heels, ready to run if he decided to exact revenge. But he came no closer. "Well I hope that's been keeping you entertained the past couple vargas."

"Oh, it has. This is the most versatile weapon of anyone's on this ship."

"Mind if I take a look, Kitty Kay?"

He remained still as she took the last steps to him, the blade dimming back to grey. He made sure their fingers did not touch as she gave him the katar. As if he didn't want her grime getting on him. (Unless Lance told him not to touch—Lance doesn't care.) She wanted to not notice. But she did. Matt brandished the katar. The blade lit green. "It's like the lightsabers, right? So if I grab Shiro right now it'll be purple?" He held the katar out, and maybe it was something on her expression, or in how she tentatively received her weapon, their fingers still not touching, but a sudden frown pulled at his face. "What's wrong?"

An apology died on her suddenly too thick tongue. So she stepped forward and planted her face in his chest. Her shoulders constricted, waiting for him to grab them and push her away. But whatever spell had kept him from contact broke and she relaxed as his arms wound around her shoulders and held her tight. "You know I'm always here, right, Katydid?"

She hugged him back, face still hidden. "Going heavy on the nicknames there, Matthewmatics."

"Sorry-not-sorry, Katerpillar. I'm serious though. I'm not going anywhere."

She retracted, taking a small step back to smile up at him. "I know. So, want me to show you how this works?"

By the time Shiro found them, they had migrated to sit on the table, Katie leaning back propped up on her arms, and Matt holding the weapon aimed directly ahead, blade lodged in the wall, and green cord between them dancing in the air like a writhing snake. Shiro stared at the cord, then looked to Matt with a cocked eyebrow. "Should I ask?"

"It's Katie's new katar."

"That's not a katar. A katar is a type of push dagger. Her weapon is shorter, more like brass knuckles with a sharp edge."

"Even if the blade is short, it's a blade on the right type of handle. It's a katar. Well, right now it's more of a noodle arm."

Shiro fixed Matt with a smile. "Yet still not as noodley as your actual arms."

"Ouch. Did you just come here to insult me?"

The smile slipped off of Shiro's face. The blade whipped back into the handle and fell into Katie's lap as he took a deep breath, looking between them, then said the words they already expected. "Kolivan is talking to Keith right now. They located the prisoner with the ID Katie gave."

They ran to the bridge. As if the saved ticks would make a difference after four movements since she was taken from Lotor. The past three since reuniting with Voltron had been spent plotting everything that could be wrong when they finally received the news. Katie could have remembered the number wrong and they found the wrong prisoner. The news could be old and their father already dead. He could have been moved by the time they went in. He could be there.

They ran anyway.

". . .stall them once we find out their destination so that we can prepare to defend it." Kolivan was speaking from a holoscreen when they stepped onto the bridge, but he was not the first person Katie saw. Pidge was there. She looked over her shoulder to the three who entered, then quickly away, and Katie made a point of looking past her, through Keith and Allura to Kolivan on the screen. "Keith, we will need your assistance."

With his pupilless eyes, none could tell exactly where Kolivan was looking, but Katie at once felt the vulnerability of shared eye contact. She felt cold, but held steady as Allura spoke, studying a map projected before her. "They already have the entire galaxy they are meeting in under their control. Not that there's even much to control there, it was one of the first galaxies they conquered and almost everything is dead. Even in near galaxies I can see nothing that would be worth this much force. It seems an out-of-the-way place to gather. How far could they be planning to travel?"

"If they've figured out Voltron's been hiding on Olkarion," Keith said, and the uncomfortable, vulnerable feeling left, "they could be planning to attack here."

With a flick of her wrist, the map disappeared, and Allura again looked up to Kolivan. "Voltron will be gone long before that. The castle will be operational by the end of the quintant. Wherever they are attacking, though, we cannot let them bring this new komar. If you send us the coordinates, we should be able to destroy it tomorrow, before the fleets arrive on Romak."

"Very well. About the other matter you asked me to look into. . ." Keith and Allura each glanced over their shoulders. Matt stirred beside Katie. "An undercover Blade was acquiring a cargo shipment from a mine in the Lios quadrant last movement and, though she did not lay eyes on the human prisoner, she identified him in their system. If you wish to pursue, I am sending you the layout of the mine." She felt it again, the eye contact. But Kolivan was still not talking to her. "If we understood why Prince Lotor is interested in this particular prisoner, we could provide better information."

"Thank you for that, but the layout will be sufficient." And for one more day, Katie could keep the past year for herself, bless Allura.

(If it were any other day, if her stomach were not already swimming in anxiety for her father, she would have been dizzy with guilt that Allura was standing in the wrong castle because a year ago Katie had been too slow.)

With Keith's declaration to leave for the Blades before the end of the day, the call ended, and Katie and Matt had already started out the door when Allura said, "We can assemble Voltron, and I can open a wormhole to take us there immediately."

Katie only stopped when Matt took her wrist, and then whirled on the others, all just standing there and burning ticks. "We're not waiting!"

Keith crossed his arms, too careful and cool as he met the fire in her eyes. "We're all ready to go right now."

"They're probably expecting us," Shiro broke in, a placating hand between them, "so we're going to try to do this quietly. We'll just be taking in the Green Lion, so we can be cloaked. It's just the four of us."

"We will take that wormhole, though," Matt added.

Allura nodded and turned to her station, calling up the teludav controls. "Of course. I'll open it as soon as you're ready. The rest of us will be on standby if you need backup."

Pidge was already running to the elevator next to her station. "I'll pick you guys up at the airlock."

Shiro watched her, then faced the siblings in the door. "I'll armor up and meet you there. We'll go over the layout and make a plan on the jump over." To Keith, "We'll try to be back in time to see you off."

The door closed behind Matt and Katie. His hand slipped into hers as he ran at her side.

A/N All feedback is appreciated. Thanks for reading! Come shitpost with me on Tumblr!