Anger boiled in Lance's throat, escaping in fiery bursts of fury. He rattled mercilessly into the intercom, floating alone in space as Red disappeared from his sight. The anger helped, kept him focused. Kept him from thinking about the vastness of space and what a tiny spec he was, floating in the universe.

A tiny, tiny, defenseless spec.

But the anger clogged his throat and kept the fear at bay. As long as he was cursing Keith, he was okay.

Relief came in the form of Shiro's voice, ringing through the intercom with authority: finally he could talk to someone rational.

"Lance is fine."

Lance was aghast. He was shocked, and he was angry. He was alone, abandoned, furious. He was burning, a fiery cinder of fury and curses, and he was very, very small. The concept of being 'fine' had never felt to foreign to him before.

"I most certainly am not! He left me behind in space Shiro!" He heard the panic in his voice, but Lance couldn't help it. Fear was beginning to break through the anger in his throat, constricting his vocal chords. The empty void of space was getting to him.

"What?! What are you two doing?"

There was a loud boom in Lance's ears: Lotor must have hit Keith again.

Ha. Serves him right.

Shiro did not have the reaction Lance was looking for. All he needed was Keith to get told off for abandoning teammates and told to come and collect Lance. That's all Lance wanted. But they were already on to discussing Lotor and Lance felt he should at least listen to what had happened since he had shot the battle cruiser.

But the voices were difficult to listen to. Hearing of Lotor's request to meet was not taking priority in Lance's brain over the fact he was stuck in outer space. Call it a primitive reaction, but Lance was struggling to focus on the big picture. Had Shiro already forgotten about him?

"It'll be nice to have you back, Keith."

Lance snorted, only mildly guilty for ruining the sweet comment. Sure, it would have been lovely to have Keith back, if Keith hadn't been a complete idiot and abandoned his teammate. The guilt quickly dissipated. "It'll be nice to get to yell at him again," Lance muttered.

"And Keith? Please remember to collect Lance before you head back."

"Damn straight!" Lance shouted. He knew shouting was pointless, but it felt good to yell, even for a second. With his own voice filling his ears, space didn't feel so vast for a moment.

Lance crossed his arms, making sure he looked properly enraged for when Keith would appear. He focused on arching one eyebrow, a look he had learned from his mother when she was displeased with him and his siblings. It used to strike fear into his heart, now he would use its powers for justice teach Keith a lesson about irrational thinking.

The fear in his chest was threatening to extinguish the anger: he needed to distract himself. "I can't believe how stupid you can be, Keith. Honestly, you may have been the Garrison's best pilot, but you're a total jock! Let in for your skill, any forward thinking be damned!"

Lance wasn't entirely sure he believed what he was saying, at least not 100% of it, and knew he would more than likely apologize for it later. But he would wait until he had at least received his heartfelt apology from Keith first.

Yet strangely the harsh words earned no response. Keith was ignoring him, and Lance felt as though lighter fluid had been thrown onto the embers of his fury. "You always do this! You're completely selfish in battle: you get tunnel vision and everything else melts away. It doesn't matter who gets hurt, who gets left behind, who gets put in danger. Your goal is all you care about."

As Lance spoke, he felt the volume in his throat build: the panic, the anger, the fear. Each emotion fought for dominance, amplifying his words. He needed to expel them, feeling them fuse as he spoke. "I'm supposed to be your teammate, your friend. You're supposed to stand by me!"

The silence after that last loud sentence was deafening. Still Keith didn't reply: Lance didn't know if he had managed to guilt him into submission, and he didn't care. Not right now. Not when he felt so hurt.

When he felt so betrayed.

"I suppose this is what you do," Lance said, his voice back to its normal level. "You leave. You don't think how it will affect anyone. You just up and go, and we're left to deal with the void you've left behind."

Lance had skipped across space to help Keith: he had supported Keith's decision to leave because he thought it would help him be happy. He had stood by Keith - heck, he had become the pilot of the red lion, Keith's literal right-hand man! He had had to leave Blue behind. He had given so much, and the hurt of just being dumped because it suited Keith slashed viciously inside his chest.

"We should trust that we'll be there for each other."

Again silence met Lance's ears. Still no apology, no reassurance of their friendship. Not even breathing. Not even static.

Wait.

Lance couldn't hear any static crackling.

"Keith?"

Was his intercom turned off? Keith could mute him, sure, but the intercom would still be turned on, still crackling quietly in the background.

"Keith?"

New panic blossomed in his gut.

Lance activated his jet pack, spinning a full 360 in an effort to work out what was going on. Something, somewhere, was blocking his intercom.

As he began to move a brilliant purple light shone out. He covered his eyes with a startled cry: there was no way he could avoid the shot from an ion cannon, there was no time! He shut his eyes, bracing for an impact he knew he couldn't survive.

No impact came.

He edged his eyes open a crack, surprised to find himself bathed in purple light. It surrounded him, tinted his vision with its glow. Lance's hands fell away from his face: the light touched everything he could see. He tried to activate his jet pack to look further, but it wouldn't work.

Lance looked up.

"Oh no."

Above him was Lotor's ship.

It was then that his predicament dawned on him: he was currently trapped in a tractor beam.

He could move his limbs but none of his equipment would work. In a panic he felt his arms moving as though he was swimming. He kicked violently, but unsurprisingly it had no affect. He was being sucked up into Lotor's ship, and Keith was no where to be seen.

"Keith! Keith!" He screamed his name, his voice growing hoarse. He didn't know what else to do.

Lance reached for his bayard, but the weapon refused to enter into it's rifle state. He looked hopefully to the Blade of Marmora knife in his hand, but the weapon revealed no plan to help him out of this situation.

Where was a talking knife full of ideas when you needed one?

The ship was drawing terrifyingly close, its bay door opening in preparation for his arrival.

Panic ran rampant, thoughts of Shiro's imprisonment morphing into nightmares before his eyes. Would that happen to him? Would Lance lose an arm, a leg? Be experimented on, have to fight gladiators?

Would he die in the ring, a faceless slave providing entertainment to the crowd? Or would they know of him as the blue paladin of Voltron, ridicule him to make the empire appear stronger?

He wasn't as smart as Shiro - he would never escape. He would spend the rest of his life as a prisoner of the Galra empire.

No, not a prisoner of the Galra. Just a prisoner of their disgraced prince.

Much better.

He felt curses blossom anew in his throat: he had no idea if Lotor could hear him, and he didn't care. Again the anger held the fear at bay, and he wasn't about to let Lotor see him afraid.

He realised Lotor probably wouldn't know what half the things that Lance was calling him were. It didn't matter, he would get the gist.

The tractor beam carried him right through the bay doors, holding him in the air. The doors shut below him with a hiss, and suddenly the purple beam was gone and Lance was falling. He was a second too late in activating his jet pack as he crashed into the ground with a groan. The ship below him hummed quietly, and he felt them start to move away incredibly quickly.

"Keith? Keith!" Lance couldn't stop himself, he had to keep trying. He continued to shout his name as he searched the bay, looking for an exit, some way to open the doors again. Better to fling himself out into empty space than stay here and continue to be dragged away.

"Keith! I'm in Lotor's ship. I need you to come get me."

The bay was relatively small, the room sparse. Lance found the door to the rest of the ship with relative ease, but of course it was locked, melded seamlessly with the wall.

"I can't do it by myself," Lance admitted. "I need your help."

There was no getting out of the room, that much was clear. Next plan: set up a defense.

With so little in the room to work with, Lance set himself up in the corner furthest from the door. He activated his shield, holding it protectively in front of him while trying to juggle his rifle. He would usually use two hands on the gun and trust the other paladins to shield him, but he didn't have that luxury right now.

The Blade of Marmora knife was attached securely to his belt. He would be damned if he managed to lose it now, after everything he had been through to get it.

"Lance?" Keith's voice rang through Lance's ears suddenly. His defense fell apart for a second, surprised at the revival of his intercom.

"Keith? Keith, oh my god am I glad to hear your voice!"

"Lance, this isn't funny."

"What? I know that. Listen: I'm stuck on Lotor's ship. I need help!"

"I'm sorry, okay? I stand by that I didn't abandon you, but I'm sorry you felt abandoned."

"Keith? Keith?"

Could Keith not hear him? Was communication still blocked?

Had Keith completely dodged his apology?!

Not important...

Lance's yelling was futile: Keith couldn't hear him.

Did Keith seriously think that Lance was petty enough to hide from him? To be honest he might have been, but where was he supposed to hide, he had left him in the middle of nowhere!

"Come on, Lancey Lance."

How dare he! Only Blue could call him that. How did Keith have this ability to infuriate him so when he had bigger problems to deal with?

"Blue paladin, I suggest you lower your weapon." Lotor's voice rang out and Lance felt his body grow rigid. "I'm not going to harm you. In fact, all I really want is a talk."

"This is a funny way to have a talk," Lance yelled, unsure Lotor could hear him. "Next time, maybe just try asking nicely?"

"Ah good, you're the one with a sense of humour." The door opened and Lotor strolled in, surrounded in a strange, tiny particle barrier that encased his body in a purple dome. As he strode into the room the barrier moved with him.

"Lance? Come on, this isn't funny." Keith's voice crackled through.

Undettered, Lance let a volley of shots loose. All connected with the portable barrier (he was a master sharpshooter after all). All had absolutely no effect before they quickly dissipated.

"Can we not be civilised?" Lotor calmly continued towards Lance.

The guy looked exactly as Lance had imagined. Only he was a lot prettier than Lance would have thought, considering who his father was.

And that hair.

Lance couldn't lie, it was glorious.

"Stop messing around." Keith was finally beginning to actually sound panicked.

Lotor stopped an arm's length away, the particle barrier almost touching Lance's shield. They stayed in silence for several moments. Lotor was infuriatingly casual, calmly staring at Lance, taking in his protective stance and the rifle aimed at him.

"I am Prince Lotor, son of Emperor Zarkon and heir to the Galra empire." Lotor smirked.

"Don't you mean the former prince? I seem to recall you attacking a Galra battle cruiser not too long ago. Not to mention stealing the comet from the Galra empire. It seems you have no loyalties."

Lotor chuckled. "My loyalties are to myself."

Lance was prepared with another witty retort, only the scene before him seemed to melt away for a moment. The hanger, the prince, it all faded as a familiar presence enveloped him.

The sense of companionship overwhelmed him, the smell of sweat and books filling his nostrils. He froze, feeling as though Keith were right next to him, yet was nowhere to be seen.

Lotor saw the break in concentration and acted. The particle barrier dropped and he sprung, ripping the bayard from Lance's stunned hands and throwing it across the hangar. As the brief sense of Keith faded, Lance found himself pressed against the wall of the hangar, head being pushed back by Lotor's forearm, Keith's knife already pulled from it's sheath and cast to the floor.

"Quiznak!" Keith shouted. "Damn it!"

Lance had no option but to stare into his eyes, too scared to say anything. He was completely disconnected from the situation, the brief appearance of Keith's...aura having distracted him.

"I am not looking for a fight, paladin," Lotor assured. "In fact, I require your assistance."