Just like in Becoming a Cyborg, this story is not presented in chronological order. The second scene of each chapter is the "present" and follows a continuous timeline. The first scene, however, takes place sometime in the "past." In the last chapter, for instance, it took place during imprisonment, as does the first scene in Chapter 4. The first scene of this chapter and the next take place before Voltron's revival. From Chapter 5 onward, the first scene of each chapter follows chronologically through the last few weeks that Katie has been with Voltron. Hopefully that is not too confusing. There is a very good reason for why it is written this way that hopefully will make sense as you read.

Chapter 2

Holts never slept. Well, Holt 1 and 2 slept, most of the time. Holt 3 and 4, not so much. Shiro and his foster brother? They slept. They were dead to the world on the pull-out couch when Katie crept down the stairs in the early a.m., toes gracing spots she knew would not creak. She made it to the kitchen bar, watched the silhouettes of their rising and falling breaths as she filled a glass in the sink.

Movement from. . . whatever his name was. She could not call him The Intruder anymore. When he and Shiro had arrived for dinner, he had nodded at her, and she had nodded back, and it was the closest thing to friendship she had experienced in years. But she could not just ask his name and admit that he had been there six times with Shiro and she only then cared to learn it. Until someone dropped the mullet-crowned cadet's name, he would be Nameless. When he sat up, his eyes briefly reflected pinpricks of light from the window, but then he rolled over to hold onto Shiro and left her in peace.

The front porch light had been turned off hours before to not disturb them. The light on the cadet's eyes had been from a faint yellow casting through the window and on the wall behind the porch swing. Matt, an insomniac after her own heart, no doubt made worse by the anticipation of the launch. Intent to take advantage of her last chance to pester her older brother, Katie chugged the water, set the glass in the sink, and slipped out the front door to the warm summer air of Rustling Branches, New Mexico.

It wasn't Matt, but her dad, illuminated in the soft light of a reading lamp. He looked up from his book, some text a professor friend at the Garrison had given him, and smiled when he saw her. "Couldn't sleep, Peanut Butter?"

She shrugged. She had been too busy programming S.L.A.V.E. to fold laundry (because it was a waste of her time no matter what her parents said) to find out if she could sleep or not. "You?"

He laughed lightly and looked to the telescope at the edge of the porch. It was small and pathetic compared to the tools the Garrison had, but that had not stopped them from spending hours crowded around it. "I'm like a kid on Christmas Eve! Except instead of waiting for morning to open presents, I have to wait four months."

Four months to Kerberos, two months on it, and another four back. He had never been gone so close to a year before. She must have made a face, because his smile softened, and he pat the spot beside him on the porch swing. She took it, and leaned into his warm shoulder while he draped his arm across the wooden back behind her. For a few moments, she tried to read his book with him, but her eyes glazed over at the word "botany." The night was warm and silent, save for the sparse howls of coyotes from somewhere deep in the desert. "Other planets are cool and all, but what I'm really jealous of is that you get to go as far away from humanity as currently possible."

That made him chuckle. "By staying locked in a tiny ship with the Pining Prodigies. Months and months of no personal space. Besides, if it goes well, we'll get the chance to find a race beyond humanity."

"That would be neat," she conceded. "You're basically the only tolerable person on Earth though."

"What about your mother?"

"She can be on the list too."

"And Matt?"

"Hell no."

He laughed, loud without reserve and at risk of waking anyone else in the house. Katie leaned into his rumbling chest, and not for the first time wondered if her father was the alien he wanted so desperately to meet, because people were hard but he was so easy. She turned her face into his shoulder. "I'm going to miss you."

His arm squeezed her shoulders. "I'm going to miss you too. It's only twelve months though." He froze so abruptly that Katie looked up, saw him staring off at nowhere. "God, you're going to be fifteen when I get back. Am I getting. . . old?"

"Of course you're not old. I think the word you're looking for is 'decrepit.'"

She snickered as his palm bat at the side of her head, quieting only when he changed to brushing strands of hair loose from her ponytail behind her ear. "It'll be almost time to submit your Garrison application. What is it you're going to be now? An engineer? Or a pilot?"

"Both. I'm going to be an engineer to design the first FTL ship, let the Garrison pay for its construction, hijack it, and then it's just me and the stars." The corner of her mouth twitched up as she twisted her head to look at him. "I might let you tag along if you ask nicely."

He closed the book in his lap and flicked off the reading light. "Your kleptic secret's out now. I'm not above blackmail."

Their eyes adjusted to the darkness, so that tiny stars appeared above them while his heels gently rocked the swing.

Gradients of white, blue, and purple light from the wormhole strove through the cockpit to dance on the faces of the three standing in the back of the Green Lion, huddled around the holo from Shiro's gauntlet. "The mine covers the entire moon, but since most of the luclusium they're mining has dried up, they've downsized to this area. That still houses about twelve thousand workers. It has a foreman and twenty-four other officers headquartered on the level below the hangars, but most of their work is administrative. Security is mostly handled by sentries and drones and the officers only step in during a major discipline issue, which hasn't happened in several phoebs. The prisoner-sentinel ratio down in the actual mine is about six-to-one."

Katie worried her lip between her teeth as she stared at the holo, then stepped back to pull it up on her own gauntlet. "They've probably upgraded that for us."

"This is how it was when the Blade was here two days ago. If it's been upgraded in the last phoeb, this is it."

"Doesn't seem like much of a trap," Matt mused.

"It is," Katie bit through tight teeth. Feeling their eyes, she bowed her head, so the holo disguised her agitation in shadows. "We only gave Kolivan a prisoner number, not a species, but he said the prisoner in the system here was a human. Dad's here, and they know we're going to come for him."

"I just meant there's got to be something here that the Blade didn't pick up on." Matt's voice was too soft, too apologetic, and Katie swallowed down the guilt and swiped through the layout glowing at her fingertips.

"We'll just keep our eyes open and be flexible," Shiro said before the silence could get too long. "Have your masks set to filter in case they try to gas us. You should probably also stick to your staffs and katar at the start so they won't anticipate your lightsabers when they finally do try something."

With just enough of the tension gone, Katie lifted her head and held out her holoscreen for them to see. "Top level is just the hangar and immediate storage, then it's the officers' quarters, and then levels three, four, and five are the cells. The mines are right below that, although the actives mines don't actually start for another couple miles down. They have terminals by the elevators on each prison level to monitor the movement of the workers. If we can get to one of these, Shiro can check to see where Dad is."

Matt watched the hologram from the other side, and when she had finished, zoomed out the image to the surface of the planet and pointed to one of the dead zones neighboring the active mine. "We can land in the hangar here and make our way down through that. Shiro may even be able to reactivate one of their terminals in there so we don't have to risk encountering anyone in the active zone."

With no objections, Shiro went to the cockpit to inform Pidge. Katie closed the hologram, and in its absence found Matt staring at her, looking no less apologetic but all the more hesitant. "What do I need to know?" A pang of anxiety hit her stomach, but he quickly amended, "It's obviously a trap. If Lotor's here, what do I need to know? Will he try to kill us?"

"I don't think so." She had never seen him fight. In her running log of weaknesses of those in her vicinity, he had none, only flaws, a callous and vindictive nature. But he was too patient see the unhindered fruition of their manifestations, so that she had no idea how to turn them against him. All she knew was from his comments when he had watched her spar with Ezor. How easily he could call out her every weakness. "If you try to take the offensive, he'll get in your head and use it against you. The best you can do is try to not get hit." Even saying that felt like too much. "He wouldn't be here though. He has to stay active in the Empire so that Zarkon doesn't boot him out. He probably has a lackey here that's supposed to trap us and inform him."

Pidge called to them that she was activating the cloaking. Shiro rejoined them and snatched up his helmet from the floor. "I'm going to open the door."

Before he could turn, Matt put a hand on his shoulder and pulled him back. "Last kiss." Katie's stomach twisted and she looked away, only looking back when Shiro's fading voice declared they needed to find a name that didn't sound like a death omen.

Matt went to the cockpit. Katie followed, slow against a rising nausea, which was dumb because she had seen them kiss eight times in the last three movements and it was fine so why did it make her feel sick now?

Matt was looking at her. He had gone to Pidge's side, but Katie had stopped by the cockpit door. She shrugged, leaned against the wall, looked out the viewscreen. Did not look at Matt to see if her nonchalance was believed. They were coming around a gas giant, many of its moons in sight, their target identifiable by the few ships passing in and out of it. By the time Green had stopped above the hangar and Shiro jumped onto the surface, her nausea had passed, though anxiety for the mission still coiled deep in her gut.

With power from Shiro's arm, the door opened, shaking Green and nearly throwing Shiro off the surface as the air inside rushed out. "At least it's not a total vacuum in there," Matt noted. Shiro's paladin armor was suitable for deep space, but his and Katie's were hardly airtight.

Before Green could pass through the door, Katie took a last look to the ships docking a mile to their right. "Hopefully the foreman didn't just get an alert about an atmospheric breach."

The only light inside was from Green's own eyes and the little blue light from Shiro's helmet as he descended in the low gravity to a control station. "There's no power in here," he said into their ears as they landed. "Not even a gravity simulator."

Matt put a hand on the back of Pidge's chair and with the other gestured in the general direction of the facility. "Can you scan, just in case? Heat and bio signatures and all the good stuff?"

"On it."

The hangar door closed, and moments later, Shiro had opened another door at the back. "Air is thin but breathable. I guess the vents between the zones are still open. I'd give it another minute to circulate but then Matt and Katie can come out."

"Copy that," Pidge said, then released the controls to look up to Matt. "There's nothing. It's just empty. No possible source of surveillance that I can pick up."

Matt looked to her, then at the dark hangar, his hand slowly sliding off the chair to hang limp at his side. "That's just. . . too easy."

"He's going to try to get me back!"

Katie clamped her jaw shut, but Matt and Pidge had already jumped in tandem and looked back to her, though Pidge quickly looked away again, and that was too close, too close to the truth, and then her mouth was working on its own, "He can't go to Zarkon and Haggar and admit that he let the old Green Paladin get away because they didn't want him to have me in the first place and he only did because Zarkon hadn't woken up yet so he could command the Druids to hand me over but now Zarkon is looking for any excuse to have Lotor lose public favor so he can kick him out of the Empire so he has to get me back to keep them off—"

With a few steps, Matt's hand settled on her shoulder. "Hey, breathe, Kit-Kat." She tightened her mouth shut again. "I believe you. I just think it's suspicious. But we're still going to try. I believe you."

He believed her. He did. She had thought his not believing was the problem, but when he said that, her chest burned with frustration because he didn't understand—and it was something she did not want him to understand, so she looked away.

"Clear for you two to come down."

"On our way."

Katie moved first, taking up both of their masks from the floor and tossing Matt's to him. When she had put hers on, Matt still only had his in his hands, so she could see the entirety of his somber gaze fixed on her. "He's not going to get you back."

He still didn't understand. Her throat was too dry to respond, so she nodded, and lead the way out through Green's jaw, switching on her mask's light to see through the dark hangar. The moon's natural gravity was weak, so it took only two leaps and several seconds of floating to reach the door Shiro had opened. The shaft was meant for an industrial elevator, capable of holding hundreds of workers or heavy shipments for the hangar. Katie could see the cart several levels below them.

Shiro was already two levels below, held up by a line as he coaxed the door open. Once inside, he held his hand back out, and she and Matt each floated down to be pulled by him into the dark corridor. Mazes of cells reached beyond her light's scope, but to the immediate right was the desired terminal.

Under Shiro's hand, a thick layer of dust burned away and the terminal sprung to life, a purple holoscreen appearing above them with the sharp characters of the Galra script. "What's it say, Matt?"

"It's synchronizing with the mine's database, since it hasn't exactly gotten new information since it closed over a decaphoeb—okay, select that."

A few more shifts of the screen, then Katie was biting her lip as they put in the prisoner number.

A picture popped up.

Samuel Holt, not long after he had been taken off of Kerberos, when he still had meat on him and had color in his face and even with terror he still had a light in his eye.

Underneath were a series of letters Katie couldn't read, but Matt leaned close to the screen and a moment later stabbed a finger at it. "There. Fifth level. He's in a cell on this hall right now." He removed his finger so they could see the symbol. She had no idea what it meant, just that it was a number, a jagged one she already knew, the third in the sequence she had seen on her father's arm. "It says he's a technician instead of a laborer. Of course he is. They'd be dumb not to make him one. Even that's a waste of brains."

"The vents are still open, right? Can we go directly into Dad's hall?"

"No. The prisoners are bunked by size, so the vents in Dad's hall are going to be too small for anyone the size of most grown human males to fit through—and no we're not separating. We can stick together if we reopen the door between the two zones."

Shiro removed his hand and the screen blinked out. "We need to hurry. They have a shift change in half a varga and patrol will be more active to oversee it."

Back into the elevator shaft, they floated down to where the elevator was stationed, cut their way inside, and from within forced open the next set of doors to the fifth level. Matt clasped her hand as they followed Shiro through the grid of inky corridors, sealed halls of cells on every side, around each corner, until they came to the final door to the active zone, one twice the size of its predecessors.

Shiro started for the access panel, but Matt took his shoulder. "Looks like they welded it shut. Giving it power won't do shit."

Hand free once more, Katie rapped her knuckles against the door. "It's pretty thin. You can probably cut through it."

Shiro knelt beside her, tapping his own hand against it, then lit his bionic arm. "If his hall was backed up against this section instead of three rows in, I'd recommend we just cut into it from the back."

"At least it's only three rows instead of half a mile," Matt said above them as Shiro began to cut an archway, a meter high, into the door.

Katie watched him a tick, then once more drifted her knuckles across the door. Clicking off her mask light, she looked up to Matt. "This door should be one of the most fortified. Do Empire prisoners just never try to escape?"

Even with their masks between them, he did not look at her, but at the steady molten glow that followed Shiro's hand. "Attempts are inversely proportional to how effectively you can break them."

"Is this normal?"

Beneath his mask, she watched him swallow hard. "Not this extreme."

Her hand froze over the door. Lotor said he would protect Dad, Lotor said he would protect Dad.

"They may have already seen me cutting," Shiro said. "Get ready."

The tick the arch was complete, he withdrew his hand, braced himself on the floor, and kicked the arch away. The low gravity propelled him the other way, but Matt caught him as Katie dove through the crack. The artificial gravity caught her immediately: her roll to her feet was unsuccessful. The first pair of sentries rounded from the nearest corridor. She swung her arm, throwing the blade of her katar at the first to rip off its head, then topple the second when she yanked it back. By then, two more sentries had appeared further along, but Shiro and Matt had come through by then, Shiro the only one successful in adjusting to the sudden change in gravity. By the time Matt and Katie had pulled each other up, the other sentries were sparking heaps on the floor. "They know we're here now."

Any other sentries or drones they encountered soon joined their predecessors on the floor, until at last they turned onto the proper corridor and saw ahead the hall bearing the symbol she had seen on the terminal. Shiro went to the access panel. Matt stayed at the head of the corridor to guard for sentries. Katie ran to the other side for the same, but before she had made it, three came around the corner at once, two even further ahead.

She had only taken down two sentries when a shot singed past her face to Shiro, his startled cursing behind her the only assurance he was okay. Her katar took too long to fire and retrieve, and Matt didn't have a ranged weapon, and it would have been much easier with Hunk or Lance—

The last sentry fell. Katie pulled the blade back into the handle. When she looked back, Shiro was standing after having apparently thrown himself on the floor to avoid the shot that left the wall next to him scorched and smoking. He braced his purple hand on the wall, lighting the hidden panel.

The door groaned in complaint as its walls slowly separated. Katie ran, squeezed herself through the tiny gap. Aside from the growing light from the main corridor, the only light in the hall was from the purple particle barriers stretched over the face of each cell, ten on each side. She darted to the first cell, attempted to squint past the light of the shield, expectant of faces startled at being awoken, and, maybe, one familiar face brightening in relief. But everything was just dark. "Dad?"

No one responded. She did not even hear a shuffle of prisoners, only heard Shiro and Matt behind her as they checked the other cells.

Metal crashed together, harshly echoing through the hall and making Katie jump. The old discolored doors were slowly closing, but on the other side of them, doors clean and new had already snapped together. Matt cursed as he threw himself at the door, tried to stick his staff into the crack to pry it open, and failing that, his fingers, but Shiro wrapped an arm around his waist and yanked him out of the way before his hands could be crushed by the closing door. It clanged shut. The particle barriers flickered out to darkness.

They had expected a trap. She shouldn't have been disappointed, or anxious, but she was, though not for their situation. Dad wasn't there. Her throat dried, eyes stung, but she pushed those thoughts away and flicked on her mask light to survey the door.

Behind her, Matt's continuous stream of curses quieted to soft assurances from Shiro. Whether his distress was at being locked in an Empire prison again or at their father's absence, she wasn't sure, but he wouldn't want her help, so with jaw tight she let Shiro handle it.

"You okay over there?"

It took her a tick to realize Shiro was talking to her. She finished her scan of the door. "No way to reach the wiring. It's Holt proof. But we can probably cut our way out."

"Bad idea," Matt said, voice still strong albeit croaky. He and Shiro both recoiled from her sudden mask-light on them. Shiro's arm was around Matt's back, rubbing his arm, and Matt had a hand to his ear. "If they see us cutting our way out of here they could summon worse. Goddammit, I can't get through to Pidge."

"Okay, let's take a moment to think," Shiro interjected before anyone could say anything else. He tapped the side of his helmet then pointed to the ceiling. Katie pressed her lips together. Always listening.

With a shaky breath, she stepped in a slow circle, taking in the cell hall. She stopped with her light's beam on the vent directly above Shiro and Matt. Too small. But only for them. When she looked down to them, they already had their lights on for their own investigations. Katie shook her head for her dancing light to get their attention, then gestured to the vent. They glanced to it, then back to her. She propped her staff against her shoulder for use of her hands. take out foreman

Even with unnecessary words dropped, the signing was slow, as she only knew the ASL alphabet, and even that only because Matt pestered her to learn it years before. Still faster than Morse code. Matt immediately signed back, seething through his hands that were almost too quick for her to process. theyll expect it or count on it

ill be indirect

lotor

Katie's stomach twisted. Shiro looked between the two, at a loss for what they were saying, though by the twist in his face even he understood that last message. She begged her hands not to shake when she answered. not here yet

Matt was unresponsive long enough that she began to wonder if she had misspelled something. Then, be careful

When she stepped under the vent, Shiro's hand clamped on her shoulder, suddenly understanding, but Matt waved him away. Staff set on the floor, she unclipped her katar and lit it, momentarily blinding them all with its green glow, then aimed the weapon at the vent, heating it to cut. It sliced through the grate, then twisted on its way back down to latch onto it. With a hard yank, the grate ripped off the mouth of the vent, caught by Matt and Shiro before it could crash on the floor. Staring directly up into the duct, she spotted the first branch off and latched onto it with her grapple. After a tug to assure it was secure, she lifted her gauntlet to check the ventilation system on the holo. From the branch, she could reach a large shaft that ran from the lowest of the cells to the administrative level three levels up.

Route set, she lowered her wrist, and found herself squished tightly against Matt's chest. She bit her tongue against a flash of irritation. She used to do dangerous shit like this all the time, dammit, and no one fretted for her. But he was just worked up because Dad was still missing. . . which she did not want to think about, so she stayed still until he released her. With a mock salute, she let the cord reel in, pulling her up and into the thin shaft, both arms above her head to squeeze in.

At the branch, she pulled herself into the horizontal shaft. She shimmied her way through, went through a turn, shallow ups and downs, until at last she came to the main channel, where above she could see a new branch to the second level. Twisting to be on her back with only her head, shoulders, and arms free, she sent her grapple just above the branch, then let it pull her out and up.

She overshot. Too fast to stop herself, she struck chin-first into the edge of the next shaft, dazed by the impact just too long to catch her mask as it flipped away from her face. The beam of light rotated through the duct, flipping and flipping until at last it blinked out when the mask cracked far below. "Shit. . ."

She started to rappel down to retrieve it, but had only gone a few feet when she realized that if Lotor found them, Shiro and Matt would go straight back to the arena. No time. She pulled herself into the proper channel. She had her katar still in hand, but if activated it would only glow in her eyes. Worse come to worst, she could use the light on her gauntlet.

The light was unnecessary. Even in the dark, she could feel her way through the predetermined path, until she was at the grate looking into one of the officer's quarters. She saw no one, heard no one, and cut through the grate to pull herself inside. "Pidge, can you hear me?"

"Have you found Da—Sam?" her own voice answered.

The hall door opened when she neared it. A drone a few meters away trilled at her, before dropping in shocks from her katar. Katie braced the weapon, looking up and down the hall for any others, and once clear, knelt by the drone and opened its panel to rewire it. Déjà vu. "We only found the trap. Matt and Shiro are locked somewhere without communication, but I'm about to open it. We're not to emergency levels yet but probably going to need a quick escape."

"Copy."

The drone lit back to life, taking to the air. Katie brought up its feed above her arm. "Okay, Not-Rover. Open the way into the control center, please and thank you."

Not-Rover—screw it, she was shortening it to N-R—drifted down the hall. Katie followed until it went around the last corner, then waited and watched over the holo-screen as it approached and opened the control center's door. Two sentries with guns raised greeted it, and behind them, a Galra snarled, "She's not far, find her!"

The sentries moved past the drone, which floated into the room, revealing only the foreman to be there. When Katie heard the steps of the sentries, she dropped the screen and lifted the superheated katar. The moment they were in her vision, the blade sliced through their necks. She was past them before they hit the ground, sprinting for the door. The foreman yelped, took up a near blaster, but Katie's grapple wrapped around his wrist and yanked, slinging the gun away. His free hand wrapped around the cord and swung to the side, pulling Katie off her path. She slacked the cord and stepped lightly with the new momentum until she could regain her stance, braced her foot against a chair to catch herself, then shoved it at the foreman. He made to scurry to the side, but a sharp tightening in the cord around his wrist held him in place. The chair did not injure him, but did occupy him long enough for her to run up, lever herself up with the chair, and strike his head with her elbow. He fell. She hit him again for good measure.

"Status update?" Pidge asked, an emotion evident that Katie couldn't place.

"Working on it." She grappled one of the sentry back into the room, then used her blade to rip off one of the hands, before addressing the monster of a control system. Twenty screens were attached to the wall, most alternating between different views provided by the drones and stationary cameras. Below that, the control panel, with thousands of little Galra characters she couldn't read. Fortunately, only one line was flashing, and it was headed by the symbol of the hall Matt and Shiro were locked on. She tapped the word with the sentry finger. The flashing stopped. "Got it." And with nothing but a lost mask to worry about, Matt.

She looked up to the screens to see that, in one of the few that did not alternate images, a door had opened. Shiro and Matt appeared, cautiously leaning outside the door and glancing up and down the corridor with weapons braced. "That you, Katie?" Shiro asked.

She dropped the sentry hand and stepped back to better see the screens flicking over images of the prisoners. "Yep. I'll meet you guys at the hangar. Going to see if Dad is still here first."

Shiro and Matt ran off of their respective screen. "If they aren't using him as live bait I doubt they would still keep him here."

"I'm not going until I know. I'm just looking through their surveillance."

Silent deliberation. "Don't be long."

Her eyes flitted to each screen, searching for a human face, for grey hair or brown eyes. But each flash to a different feed only brought hopeless faces, slaves trudging through their toil with sharp feet and the tips of blasters raining on their backs. By the third round through the feeds, her arms were hugged tightly around her chest, and she jumped when Matt's voice came through her earpiece. "We're at the hangar. Where are you?"

Katie swallowed, gaze still darting between each screen. "Still in the control center. There's a lot of prisoners. I've probably overlooked him."

"Katie." The sober note in his voice made her flinch. "I want Dad back just as much as you do. But he's not here. Wherever he is, we'll find him, okay? But Lotor is probably on his way, and if we stay here until he shows up, then we'll have a whole new host of problems."

"Lotor knows where he is."

"But he and his generals are too dangerous for us to go up against right now. If it comes down to it, we can go grab the others and then come back to face him. But not with just us. I don't want to lose you back to him."

The screen flickered, flickered, more dirty faces, dejected spirits. . . "Okay." Katie tore her eyes away. "Okay, I'm coming. I'll be right up."

She turned for the door, but in only two steps onward, it slid open. Her hand grappled for her katar, but froze over it. A pathetic sound strangled in her throat, just loud enough for Matt to hear. "Katie? What's wrong? What happened?"

The katar rattled under her shaking hand. He looked just as surprised to see her as she did him. But that surprise would turn to anger, and then it wouldn't matter if she had a weapon in her hand, nothing would be safe and she shouldn't have left.

Matt was still asking her what was happening. Her voice had locked up. He didn't have any visible weapons, but she knew there was a sword and knives waiting to manifest from his armor. He took a small step forward, she took a small step back. He held up his hands, placating, as if she were an animal about to dash for her burrow, which would not be inaccurate if he were not blocking the door, and then without realizing she had backed up against the controls and then he was there, close enough to feel the contours of his palm as it rested on her cheek and his thumb stroked under her eye. "You're alright, love. You're safe."

"Is that Lotor?!" Matt shouted in her ear. "Fuck—get away from him!" But she couldn't move, just sat locked against the computer as Lotor continued to stroke her cheekbone, long fingernail dangerously close to her eye as he searched her face. She couldn't move, couldn't come up with a plan over the barrage of Make him happy! Make him happy! as if she had any way in hell to do so.

Matt's curses almost drowned out Shiro's urging him to follow. They were coming to find her. Then Lotor had pricked the earpiece and tossed it to the side. She flinched. Lotor hushed her softly, then pressed his lips to the bangs at her forehead. "I'm sorry they took you."

The words took several ticks to register. Lotor didn't blame her. He wasn't going to punish her. She wrapped her fingers around the wrist by her face. "Where's my dad?"

"Safe, like I promised he would be," he whispered into her hair.

"Where?"

"On my cruiser." He pulled away to look into her eyes, hand still rested on her face. "Zarkon has learned that many of the paladins hail from Earth. He is assembling an invasion force to take the planet at the end of this movement." Before she could dissolve into panic, he stroked her hair. She lost all feeling. "If I can get him out of the way, I can stop or change the direction of the invasion. But I need your help to do so."

The ice that had taken her body from the inside forbade more than a tiny nod. Lotor smiled, kissed her forehead again, then moved his hand to lace his fingers with the ones she had around his wrist. As he pulled her to the hall, she glanced back to the abandoned earpiece. Too far away to hear anything more than the clangs and sears of Matt and Shiro fighting to reach her. But then the door closed, and she could no longer hear them.

A/N Thanks to my qpp for beta-ing, thanks to you lovely reader for reading, and special thanks to everyone who reviewed and favorited!