His body shook with the strain of holding himself up, and his legs cramped under the weight of the iron shackles encasing his neck and hands. The chains were connected to rings on the neck shackle and trailed to his wrists, where the metal met another set of rings.
Lance kept his head down as guards led him to the battle arena. He closed his eyes and let his feet travel the now familiar route blind. He was no stranger to the arena. He'd been there before to watch his fellow paladins fight their own monsters. Even though the battles have unusually stopped and Lance hadn't been there in quite some time, he had no trouble remembering the path.
His mind flashed to the last fight he was forced to witness. Pidge stood on one end of the arena, her skin-tight prison outfit stained and dirty, her cropped top hanging off her petite frame in tatters. Her brown eyes were dull with dark circles surrounding them, and her hair a matted mess.
Lance had caught the eye of Shiro, who sat a few stands in from of him and to his left. The older boy's face was stone, but his eyes betrayed the fear he was feeling for the youngest paladin. A guard sitting next to Shiro knocked his gun into Shiro's head, and he looked ahead, not looking back at the Cuban again.
On the opposite side of the battlefield was Grinder, a rocklike creature notorious for grinding his opponents into the ground and a ruthless warrior.
The fight ended in Pidge being taken off the field unconscious and bleeding everywhere, and Grinder picking up pieces of his shattered body.
Pidge had held her own, calculating the right times to strike, and she succeeded in breaking off chunks of Grinder's body piece by piece with a dagger she was granted to use. But she was eventually overpowered by the huge earthen monster and fell victim to Grinder's famous move.
Lance didn't know if she was even alive, anymore.
The sound of clanking metal caused Lance to open his eyes, and he squinted against the bright light of the arena. Galrans were screaming and cheering, their cries so loud it shook the stands. The shackles fell away from tan hands, and then from a tan neck until finally Lance was free from his personal metal prison.
The two Galran guards roughly seized Lance's upper arms and shoved him into the boiling hot arena. Lance stumbled on weakened legs and fell to the ground with a thud, sweat already forming on his skin in beads.
I'm not going to be able to survive this fight. I haven't eaten in days. What if it's Grinder?
Dark thoughts tumbled through Lance's mind until his entire being was consumed in dread. The roaring of the crowd drilled into Lance's head and pulsed between his eyes. Again, he squeezed his eyes shut and shakily pushed himself off the ground, memories of Pidge's fight emblazoned in his brain. His ocean eyes snapped open with a fiery determination, and anyone in the first rows of the crowd couldn't ignore the steel in his gaze.
I'm fighting for her. I'll win this for Pidge.
Lance's chest heaved up and down as a gate to a shadowed tunnel clanged open. The crowd's cheers reached a new crescendo, and it drowned out even the beating of Lance's own heart.
He scanned the crowd, searching for the friends he's afraid to lose; maybe seeing them will give him the strength to fight.
A shock of white hair stood out of the purple and Allura's colorful orbs met his own. They were cloudy, but cleared when she saw it was him. Her royal presence hadn't gone away, and any Galran who sat near her and her guards kept their distance, but her body sagged and her face, neck, and what little of her chest was exposed was covered in strangely shaped scars and burns. Allura offered a small smile and blew a strand of her hair out of her face.
Lance's heart grew heavy to see the once luscious long waves chopped off to above her pointy ears and the state her body was in. She may be a princess—and have the air of one—but she no longer looked the part.
Lance tore his gaze away from her and focused on the tunnel, the desire to find the rest of his crew squashed by the fear of what he would find. The sight of Allura had shaken him; what if his other friends were worse off than her? Seeing them might ruin what little chance he had of surviving this battle.
The shadows in the tunnel stirred until some detached from the wall in the back and made their way to the opening. Lance's blood rushes through his veins with the heat of a thousand suns, and he clenched his fists. His opponent must not be too large for him to take on. If it was, the Galrans would've given him a weapon to fight with. After all, this battle was for their entertainment; they didn't want him to die too quickly.
Lance could feel the stare of the Galran leader on him as he tried to gather what little energy he could muster.
Empress Haggar, the witch who was loyal to Zarkon, watched with slitted yellow eyes as Lance slowly walked towards the mass of shadows nearing the tunnel's end. Her mouth twitched into a knowing grin, and her fingers clicked against her throne expectantly.
Finally, Lance's opponent entered the light of the arena, and the air was sucked out of the entire facility in a matter of a second.
The fire that raged through Lance's body turned to ice, and the boy's limbs suddenly felt like lead. His lungs stopped breathing and his heart stopped pumping and his fists stopped clenching as the world started spinning.
A tormented scream ripped out of the mouth and soul of an Altean princess; a guttural cry came up from a former Blade member; tears silently made trails down a Samoan's dark cheeks; blue eyes watered on a red-headed, mustached man; and quiet weeps floated above the former leader of Voltron.
But these all went unnoticed by the teenage boy now on his knees, the community of Galrans in the arena, and the petite warrior standing in the mouth of the tunnel.
No longer clothed in the raggedy apparel of a prisoner, Pidge surveyed the crowd until her eyes landed on Lance. To his horror, what once were amber irises and black pupils were now a bright yellow. Everything in her eye sockets were yellow; sclera, iris, pupil.
Lance's gaze trailed down her face and rested on the metal contraption completely covering the lower half of the girl's face.
A muzzle. To keep her quiet.
The world was turning into a mess of colors, and the air wasn't returning fast enough to Lance's lungs. He scanned the rest of her body to see that every inch of her skin was mottled with scars and cuts, and that her clothing was one of a Galran soldier. The markings on her armor glowed and cast a purple haze around the girl he fell in love with.
Before he could do anything, Haggar's voice filled the arena.
"Well, what have we here?" Her voice scratched over hidden speakers. "I see our little boy didn't know what had happened to his friend."
The crowd rumbled, but hushed when Haggar spoke again, this time addressing all the paladins. "What was once the Green Paladin is now our soldier, programmed to do anything we demand of her. The muzzle was the unfortunate result of her disobedience in the beginning, but with a few—lessons she learned rather quick to do what is asked of her."
A lump had found its home in Lance's throat, and sobs racked his body as he realized what was about to happen. He stared as Pidge shifted her yellow eyes to his own, watched as Pidge sprinted forward when Haggar gave the word to start, merely closed his eyes and his ears to the screams of thousands as she neared him.
I can't fight you, Pidge. I can't hurt you.
Lance stayed on the ground as Pidge came barreling toward him, her hands fists in her gloves. The lights glinted off her knuckles and it took Lance a second to realize she had steel in hidden in her gloves. The light glinted of the metal peeking out of a rip.
Tears tracked down Lance's cheeks and into his lap but he paid them no mind, his only focus on the young woman in front of him. Wind from the punch gave him chills as they hit his wet cheeks, but still, he did not flinch away from his impending death.
Seconds before the blow came, Lance smiled and looked up into the gaze of his love.
"I love you, Pidgeon."
The other Paladins looked away from their friends—one alive and one not—and sobbed, their grief drowned by the bloodthirsty roars from the Galrans around them.
They did not see her yellow eyes flicker back to their usual amber for a split second. Nor did anyone see her lips mutter three words underneath her muzzle.
I love you too, Lance.
A/N:
Haha, woops. Sorry. This is really sad. Also, this is my first Voltron fanfic and it's Plance because I freaking love them. I'm here to water your Plance, children. Come hither.
~Author