Voltron brought forward a lot of underexplored...things. At least unexplored in most children's shows.
That was horrible wording. English is hard. Even as a first language.
Anyway. Voltron brought forward situations and characters that made people think. A show for 12 year olds, maybe, but one that made you think about race, sexuality, good and evil, insecurities, body types, disabilities (such prosthetic limbs), death, obsession, so many things packed into a children's show.
Then there's the super toxic part of the fandom that thought it was done wrong because it didn't fit their ideas of it. Go suck an egg, toxic fandom people.
For whatever reason, my muse for this has sky rocketed. Three years later. So we'll see what comes of it.
Lance was no stranger to severe mental illness. His cousin was a psychiatrist on Earth who specialized in abuse victims, and his other cousin's best friend had been severely abused as a child. He had heard plenty of stories of people who, now that he thought about it, acted a lot like Slav. Maybe not all the talk about alternate realities or building superweapons. But the superstitions, the paranoia, the aversion to certain things. Now that he had an idea of what had been done to Slav, for as long as it had been done, he could see it clearer.
Slav did not like to be touched. If someone touched him, he would flinch, duck away, sometimes even shoot across the room if they surprised him enough. Touch was only okay if he initiated it, usually to have someone carry him. He would flinch when people moved too quickly and he wasn't expecting it. Usually he seemed able to hide it, or at least be so lost in whatever tangent he was going on that he wouldn't notice it. He didn't like to be enclosed either. As far as Lance could tell, Slav preferred to be in larger rooms. If that wasn't an option, the door had to be left open -at a certain angle-, or a window had be open and clear enough to see through. Slav had been on the castle of lions for a while now, and Lance had seen his room twice. It was always a bit of mess, but the window was clear and so was the path to the window. There was even a nightlight by the bed, as if he was afraid of the dark. Drawings and unfinished plans for weapons, ships and buildings were scattered all over the room, some crumbled up, others neatly on the desk. And there were a lot of blankets, always arranged in a specific way on the bed and all different colors.
All this time, he had thought it was just Slav being weird. He felt stupid now, becuase he should have known better! He'd been part of the rescue mission, he knew the type of security they had in Beta Traz! But there was nothing he could do about that now, besides try to understand better in the future.
And maybe that's what made him notice things had changed one day. While working on the...whatever he was making, something had gone wrong. The wires Slav had been working with sparked, and then shocked him hard enough to throw him back several feet. Initially, he had seemed okay. Shaken up, sure, but unharmed. He had gone off on anyone who was nearby, blaming it on Keith's socks not matching, Shiro letting a red and green wire touch, Coran's mustache having an uneven number of hairs, all things that made 0 sense to everyone.
Something was different though, and Lance was sure of it. Slav had chased everyone off again, deciding their chances of success were better if he worked on this machine alone. Sure enough, a few hours later, Pidge had gone to find Slav for a meeting he was late for only to find that he was no longer with whatever machine he was building. Tools were laying haphazardly on the ground, as if he had left in a rush.
"Has anyone seen Slav?" She asked, re-entered the sitting room.
"No. Is he not still working on his weapon?" Shiro asked. Pidge shook his head.
"It looked like he left in a rush. The tools weren't laying in the neat piles he usually leaves."
"I'll check the cameras." Coran said, pulling up the giant holographic screen, divided between all the many cameras. The halls were quiet, and everything looked fine, except the bay door for one of the smaller cruisers they kept on board.
"Why would he take a cruiser though? Where would he go?" Shiro asked. "Does he know how to drive one?"
"Of course he knows how to drive one, they aren't too hard and he's pretty smart." Pidge pointed out.
"Did anything happen today that would set him off?" Garlos asked.
"Oh! The weapon shocked him! It actually blew him back a few feet." Lance recalled.
Garlos's ears went back a bit. "That's not good. It could have triggered a memory. He either could think he's back in the Galra prison, or be confused about what reality he's in right now."
"So we have a genius weapon maker who's confused about where he is running loose right now." Hunk clarified.
"We need to find him." Allura said.
"Where would he go, though? We don't know what state of mind he's in, we can't just fly around in circles and hope we find him." Keith pointed out.
"I can track the ship. All the cruisers are connected to the castle." Coran went to work on typing away on the computer, and after a few minutes, a map of the nearby part of the universe appeared, with a little blinking dot.
"There. He's heading towards…" Coran squinted. "It looks like the ruins of a planet? Pretty far from here, he must've taken the cruiser Pidge installed that turbo boost on."
"That looks like where his home planet used to be. Before the Galra destroyed it."
"And there's another ship approaching!" Matt, who had joined them only a few days ago, pointed to the left of Slav.
"We need to move, now." Shiro said, and the paladins plus Matt hurried to the lions, Allura calling after them that she'd open a wormhole for them. They couldn't risk Slav being taken by the Galra yet again.
She, Coran, and Galros could only watch, however, as that unidentified ship closed in on the cruiser, and overpowered it.
The lions came out of the wormhole into the floating ruins of what had once been a planet. All that was left now was floating rocks, no plants or life. There was no sign of another ship nearby. Pidge scanned the surrounding area but could find nothing. No ships, no signs of life. It was empty. They searched for hours, it seemed, through the ruins and doing scan after scan, but found nothing. It wasn't until one more scan, one last ditch effort to find anything, that they noticed the small tick in the far reaches of the screen.
"There!" Matt pointed from his spot behind Pidge. "Whats that?"
"Follow me!" Pidge called to the others, and sped off towards the aea on their scan. They got there just in time to see a Galra ship pass through a wormhole.
By some miracle, they made it through that wormhole too. They couldn't catch the ship. Even Keith, in the red lion, couldn't catch up to the ship. They were forced to go back, without Slav, but at least they knew the ship. Pidge had managed to get the ship's specific signature. They would find it again, and get Slav back.
It took them weeks to find it again, but this time, they had more people. The Blade of Marmora, the resistance group Matt was in -still thinking of a good name-, and Voltron. They were ready to move out, and were closing in on the ship on all sides. And on Allura's signal, they moved in.
It was Lance, Keith, and Matt who ended up finding Slav once they got into the ship. Everyone had divided into pairs or groups of three, though it had originally just been Lance and Keith in this one. How Matt got there, they weren't really sure. But they went for it anyway, and found Slav in a truly horrible situation.
The Galra had Slav hanging by chains from the wrists of his top set of arms. The other three sets of arms were cuffed painfully behind him. He was unconscious, hanging limply. His fur was a mess, his clothes hanging in threads, and the smell of burning flesh and fur filled the room.
"Quiznack.." Lanced cursed quietly, as he took in the amount of punishment they must've put him through after all the chaos of the Beta Traz escape.
"We need to get him down, and get out of here." Keith said, pulling out his bayard. The sword was sharp, and would hopefully be enough to break through the chains. They could get the rest off later, but for now, they just needed to get him out of here.
"I'll keep watch. I don't have the fancy jet pack." Matt said, turning to face the hall while Lance and Keith started their jet packs and went to Slav's level.
"You hold him so he doesn't fall." Keith instructed.
"Nah, I was thinking of just watching while you hacked away at the chains." Lance rolled his eyes, carefully putting his arms around Slav. He didn't want to hurt him, and up close he could see all the burns and gashes that covered the giant space weasel. It took several hits with the sword before the chains finally snapped. Lance held him tight before he could fall, and they lowered themselves to the ground.
"We got him! Everyone out!" Keith called over their radios, and they ran, as carefully as they could with the rather heavy creature in Lance's arms. Matt and Keith had to cover him, since Lance's hands were full.
The rescue was a success. Everyone who went in got out safely, and they had completely disabled the ship and the crew, and they found Slav. Badly wounded, but alive.
"Get him in a cyropod." Allura said as they came in with him, opening one of the pods and turning it on.
With Shiro's help, they got Slav upright in a pod and closed it, watching anxiously while the screen scanned him and gave his vitals and a list of injuries.
"Severe burns, broken bones, internal bleeding…" Pidge read it out loud as it rolled across the screen so everyone else could know it too.
"They punished him for escaping." Shiro said sadly.
Garlos stayed quiet, but he knew others, especially in the Blade, were thinking the same. There was a chance Slav might not recover from it this time. Too many times he had been abused, beaten, and tortured. Whatever had spurred his attempt to find his home planet had lead to more. His 8th time being held prisoner by the Galra. They feared what the state he would be in once the pod opened, and if it would be able to heal him completely. Sometimes, the pods could only heal the more serious wounds, and the rest would have to heal on its own.
He went over to Matt, knowing that the resistance Matt was more or less leading had taken in the others who had been forced to fight with Shiro in the gladiator ring.
"You know of another of Slav's kind, correct?" He asked.
"Yeah, her name is Norda. She's stationed as a guard near a Balmera." Matt nodded.
"See if she can come here instead. Their kind used to be very social creatures, and usually lived in large family groups. It might help him recover if he doesn't feel like the last of his kind."