Brittle Innocence

Ok, guys. To get this show on the road.


Voltron and all associated characters belong to WEP (World Events Productions) and are their property. I have no idea who owns Golion. Elements and characters from these two series do not belong to me. I’m only “borrowing” them for a little while. Then I’ll put ‘em back, promise. All other characters and story are original. Please ask permission before using any of them. Please let me know if anyone wishes to archive or post this work of fiction on their site.

Thanks to all the guys at vying for their help and information regarding the series. And a special thanks to KAMJIIN, who runs The Merchant Republic website for his help in proofreading and editing my atrocious grammar. He has done so much to make this work possible by continued support and understanding.

WARNING!!! This work is yaoi, and will contain graphic male/male sex at soment. nt. If this subject matter offends you do not read further.

Now on with the story.


Brittle Innocence

They call us beautiful, the makers of heaven and earth, the divine creators. If only it was true. I know full well that all of us who survived the second great betrayal with our sanity can empathize with me on this.

While we did create the multitude of younger races, we are far from the gods they perceive us as. Sometimes, I feel it would be easier on our consciences if they could see us as beings such as themselves, mayhap more evolved, still striving for perfection.

They are, as races go, still children. And we…we are their parents, perfect in their eyes. Which makes what we must do all the more difficult. It goes against our very natures to abandon our children. They are the most precious of gifts, the very future. But we, as a race ourselves, have sinned so greatly that we are no longer fit to parent our own children. We have abused that which we breathed life into, and for fear of it happening again we must leave that which we so love.

I did not fall into the madness, but it struck far too close to home. My twin, the most dear to my heart next to my mate, second in command of my double triad, succumbed to it. There are no words for the agony of the loss. No words, save that I never wanted to understand the pain of my brethren who cannot find all of their partners for their own double triad.

It hurt. But I and mine were some of the most fortunate. The sickness had not had time to fully take hold of her and we were able to return her to our arms rather than have to sunder her spirit from her soul; then track them down and destroy them. Most of the others throughout the galaxies were not so lucky. The mind-sick ones hunted down their former families, loves, and double triads first. They killed so many of our own people and used our own creations as toys for their amusement, or simply destroyed them when they didn’t comply to their twisted desires.

My heart is sickened and my soul heavy over the sin of my race. So too must be the souls of all who survived the betrayal and subsequent purge. Why else would this retreat have been called. We must protect them from ourselves. We must protect ourselves, from our own hubris.

We have removed all traces of our technology from the worlds. Destroyed our beautiful city; leveled it to the very foundation stones and then sunk that beneath the waters. It was debated whether or not to remove the artwork the children had created with the knowledge we had given them. In the end we couldn’t bear to take it from them. We cannot bear to take their toys away as well.

I hope that in spite of all that has occurred and all that will come to pass, may this race of children survive and one day come back into our arms. They were far from the best and brightest; their genetic structure was tricky to recode to contain the potentials for the gifts. My eldest brother says that most likely it will be 10,000 years or more before any of the gifts emerge among their race and then they will most likely be weak and sporadic in appearance.

If we had been able to stay longer, we could have gotten more work done and the time would not be so long in coming. With more time things would have gone far easier on them. In the end…my brother had also said they would have as much potential as the prided children of Aggabar. Those two races would be the most likely to succeed in reaching our own level of evolution first. I pray that one day we will look upon the skies of our homeworld to see their ships arriving.

I pray that my kindred can forgive those of us who left here the one collective sin we will commit together. We must leave them alone to evolve on their own. But we will not leave them utterly. I will leave behind a blood-son that this race and our race will be one. So too have many of the others done here. And we will not erase the memories of us from their minds. While the pain of our leaving will hurt them, they will have the comfort of knowing they were loved.

From the collected journals of the First General of Midgard, Past


Chapter 1


Defeated. Again. Always. He knew he’d never win. No matter how many victories he brought home it would never be enough. He was his fathers perfect little failure. He’d overcome countless enemies, won too many battles to remember, stood covered in blood and dust as his opponents begged for his mercy and he’d given them none.

He would not be weak; mercy was for the weak. It had been drilled into his brain since he could remember. His father wouldn’t tolerate weakness; bad enough the slave that bore him had been a weak fool. Bad enough, that he himself was hideous, somehow the mixing of races creating some neanderthalic abomination physically, perhaps mentally as well according to the popular rumor. Bad enough that he was the only child that the king had ever managed to sire. But to be weak would have been all the excuse his father needed to destroy him.

He was barely tolerated as it was. Everyday the snide comments from his parent, his court, his very own soldiers, even when being schooled from his fellow students. They all looked for any weakness to exploit. He couldn’t afford for there to be any for them to find. He hated them, all of them. Haggar he hated most of all. He’d trusted her once, when he was young, shed been the closest thing he could call a friend. Then he’d found out the truth. She was the one who constantly whispered in his father’s ear, telling him how pitiful an excuse of a son he had.

He’d been sent away to school. No one liked him there either. He made sure they had a reason to truly hate him. He excelled in all his studies. Tore apart the hardest tests the arrogant instructors threw at him. Made strategy and tactics look like child’s play. He singlehandly rewrote the standards of excellence, and graduated two years early, at the top of his class, earning more honors and lauds than any who had ever graduated before him.

From there he took to the battlefield for his father, conquering worlds, enforcing his fathers will, and bringing glory to his house and family. If it was impossible to win, Lotor would win it. If victory would be a costly thing, Lotor would take the challenge and emerge with miniscule loss. If it was anything less, there would be no challenge for him, and boredom made him even less merciful.

His father’s enemies feared his name. His soldiers, while proud from their victories, feared and hated their leader. More than a few had attempted to kill him. The other soldiers would find those traitors in the morning, dead after torture and interrogation. He made sure all of his men knew the price for failing him, as well as the price for disloyalty. Still, behind his back the whispers continued.

He’d grown used to it over time, as much as one could he supposed. They said no more than the same words that echoed through his mind in his father’s voice. They weren’t his father though and he could destroy them.

It hadn’t occurred to him to wish things were different for many years. He’d wished as a boy to be loved, adored. That had been a foolish dream. No one loved him; he was reviled for his appearance. No one adored him; he was hated for his position, intelligence and cunning. It would never be any other way.

Battle followed battle, and the Prince negotiated death to opponents. He’d almost grown to think it would last this way forever. He could tolerate this life; it left little room for any idle thoughts. Then it too dissolved like a dream; his father wanted him to return. Unbidden, hope arose only to be shattered. Some recognition from his father would be his, he was sure of it.

He had gotten recognition, just not how he had hoped. The invincible warrior found defeat. Not in the words of others as he’d become accustomed, but on the very battlefield. By a boy his own age no less.

The humiliation of returning defeated was almost too much to bear. His father’s wrath was brutal. He had to hide the agony his body was in for weeks after the beating he got. If only he’d died from it.

Fortune had laughed in his face; Hagar had stilled his father’s hand. Hagar had saved his life. He wasn’t sure why, and that worried him. She was up to something, something he was sure he wouldn’t like.

Only two things about the situation disturbed him more than Haggar: that girl, her face so heartachingly familiar, and the boy who had snatched guaranteed victory from his very hands. They made his mind ache with questions almost as bad as his body had ached from the beating.

That face, he’d dreamed of it for years. Actually they weren’t dreams but nightmares instead. He always tried to run to it, reach it, touch her. And always the monsters would push him back, forced him down, while a sinister shadow drug her away as she called out to him. It hurt to see that face attached to someone real, someone he was fighting. Even if it wasn’t quite the perfect image of the dream, the body was different, and her hair was wrong, even so it haunted him. Seeing that had thrown him off balance, but he’d recovered.

It hadn’t been that that defeated him. It had been that annoying brat of a boy. Keith was his name according to the intelligence reports. A simple soldier from Galaxy Garrison. A mere soldier who held no rank worth mentioning had defeated him. And for the life of him, Lotor couldn’t understand how.

It wasn’t any flaw in his planning that Lotor could find. But when he should have been on the ground unconscious Keith had somehow come to and managed to save his teammates and Arus from the delicious plans the Prince had for them. It shouldn’t have happened. It wouldn’t happen again, he had assured himself. But it did. Once was bad enough, but twice, then three times. Lotor was furious. With himself, with Keith, with his father, with Haggar.

He vented his frustration on his harem, but there was little satisfaction in raging at the captive women there, he knew the whole time he tried it was pointless and empty to try and place the blame on them. They hadn’t been on the field, and their only usefulness was to relieve his sexual tensions, not that that worked very well. He’d tried to use them but they just didn’t thrill him the way women were supposed to. Not that he’d been thrilled by any woman. He supposed his lack of drive came from knowing that they too must despise him for his hideous appearance. He could perform well enough he supposed, but his heart had never been in the task at hand.

That having failed, he vented his frustration on the soldiers until his father beat him for killing too many. Replacements were expensive enough without having to deal with his son killing the few that remained as well. After those routes were exhausted, Lotor just slammed the doors, beat the walls, broke the china, anything he could think of to relieve his own anger at the situation. If possible he despised his father more than ever.

Keith, though was another matter. Keith who continued to defeat him and keep him as far away from Alura as the monsters ever kept him from the woman in his dream. Keith, he hated with every fiber of his being. He would find a way to defeat him, Lotor swore to himself. He would defeat him and kill him.

It just didn’t seem like enough. He wanted Keith to suffer more at his hands than simply that. In a way what he wanted to do seemed almost merciful compared to the amount of rage he felt inside. Mercy is for the weak he chided himself. He’d defeat him and capture him, bring him back to Doom under his father’s very nose and then find some fitting punishment, torture, something to do to him that would make him beg Lotor for mercy as all the others he’d crushed had.

Lotor was determined to find out everything he could about this soldier. Then, he’d know exactly how to utterly destroy him. After his fourth defeat, he amended his list; he had to know everything about human battle tactics as well. He decided while he was at it to find out everything he could about humans from Earth in general. He knew he’d be able to pay enough to get one of the best spies to acquire this knowledge for him.

The only problem he perceived himself encountering was that most of the information he wanted was only written in the human’s native language. That had not been a part of his education. He would also need to learn to speak and read their tongue. He was convinced it wouldn’t be a problem and would probably greatly increase his victim’s fear once he was captured.

The spy was secretly hired, no need for his father to know yet just how completely his son was planning his revenge, and sent off to find the requested items. If the man thought the content of the information his employer desired was odd, he said nothing. That, he had always liked about this particular information gatherer. He was utterly discreet, reliable, and thorough from Lotor\'s experiences with him. After this the Prince had waited.

Which had brought him to where he was now, he supposed. Not that things seemed much better, if anything they were worse. He’d been handed six more defeats from his nemesis and still was no closer to knowing why he was so drawn to the human Alura. He was exhausted from battle plans that just would not work, even if they should, exhausted from trying to think logically and be patient, exhausted from the constant insults that flowed about him from the court and his father, in agony from the last “reprimand” his father had bestowed upon him for his last failure, and he was so tired of trying to act as if none of it was getting to him. He knew he was at the edge of a breakdown of some kind and he was terrified of what would happen to him when he finally cracked.

Then, one night, it was as if fortune had spun back into his arms like some fickle pet. He’d just received a private transmission from his spy that he had the informatio was was looking for, and the coordinates where he was waiting for Lotor to come and get the package. The prince was almost giddy with sadistic joy. Now he could figure out all the answers to his problems. Then he had a sobering thought. It was the answer, only if his father would give him the time necessary to assimilate all the information. His spirits dove again as he realized there was no way Zarkon would allow him time off just so he could study.

His steps slowed as he moved down the shadow-ridden grey corridor and he hung his head in despair. It would never end. He reached out to trail black gloved fingers along the dulled metal walls as he tried to find some solution to this newest perceived setback.

“What troubles you, Prince Lotor?” an all too familiar voice warbled behind him, causing his skin to crawl underneath the stifling fabric that made a Doom Commander’s uniform. She was not one of the people he wanted to deal with at the moment. Haggar was always bad news.

“Your presence is what troubles me, witch.” Maybe she’d be offended and leave, he hoped, as the dark walls seemed to shrink around him. He knew it was all in his head but his world always became more like a cage when he had to endure her presence.

“A pity, I thought perhaps it could be the overbearingness of your father, or the impossibleness of the task he has set before you,” the witch all but cooed as she shuffled in her tattered brown robe around her scruffy cat-familiar to be able to walk beside the Prince.

Her tone absolutely sickened Lotor to the pit of his stomach. But then, most things about Haggar tended to sicken him now. Even the cat revolted him. She had some kind of plan at work, he was sure of it. And knowing her, he couldn’t trust it.

“What do you want, witch? I do not wish to play at word games with you,” he all but snarled in her direction.

She sighed, her breath almost making him gag at the smell of decay; “You need not be uncivil. I am trying to look out for your best interests as well as the interests of Doom itself.”

“I doubt you have my best interests at heart in anything you do. Now tell me what you want or leave me be,” Lotor’s voice snapped as the sharp clack of his boots echoed along the corridor while he quickened his pace.

“A private audience.” She wheezed as she struggled to keep pace with him and not trip over her precious Coba as he ran along between her feet.

He stopped suddenly and spun to face her, white hair spilling over his shoulders and across the front of his slate-grey uniform. His gold eyes blazed as he challenged, “Why so you can try and worm your way into my trust again, just so you can betray it?”

“Trust will destroy a ruler. If you were ever to be king, you had to learn that lesson quickly, boy.” She hissed at him, reaching one of her withered black talons out to clutch into his shirt front, ragged claws raking against his chest.

Instinct made Lotor slap her hand away as he bitterly retorted, “My father will most likely live forever, thanks to your potions.” He truly didn’t like the thought of it, but the words came out unbidden.

“That is why we must talk, my prince.” The ancient crone wheedled to him.

She wasn’t going to go away, he realized. He didn’t need to have her following him into the hanger and asking where he was going either. Best just to listen to her babble and be done with it. “Fine,” he ground out. “Lead the way.”

She led him back down the ill-lit passage and through the many dark cornered twists and turns that led into the bowels of the castle where her cluttered laboratory lay. Once there she ushered him into its stifling gloom and locked the door behind them. He ignored the tables overflowing with paraphernalia he had no desire to know about or even be near, searching until he found a chair that wasn’t overflowing with any bizarre objects, and sat down, annoyed at the whole delay. She paced the worn stone floor in the gloom for a few moments, and it slowly occurred to Lotor that whatever it was she was wanting wasn’t something trivial. Finally, he heard Haggar mutter, as if to herself, “He isn’t fit to rule.”

He leapt from the chair, jarring his hip against one of tables and almost knocking the dangerous grimoires on it to the floor. On his way back to the door he hissed, “I did not come here to listen to you ridicule me.” Grasping the iron knob he was preparing to leave, when she grd hid his arm with both shriveled claws.

“Not you,” she said vehemently. “Not you, him, Zarkon.”

His hands slipped from the door in shock. “What?” he heard himself question dumbly. She was pacing again, and he felt as if he was standing somewhere outside of himself, watching everything.

“He’s not fit to rule. He keeps sending us after Voltron, and we cannot beat the thing. It is too powerful; even the best of my magic cannot defeat it. I have tried.” She answered him with what sounded like bitter regret.

Lotor snapped back to himself. “Then we use science,” he declared, his eyes all but glowing in the murky light, “If magic isn’t working we will use science.” She shook her head inside its cowl, chuckling ruefully, “Science won’t work either, nor will magic and science combined. It is too old a thing built by too powerful a race.”

Lotor began to question her about how she knew this but was interrupted by her. “I’m old enough to remember legends long dead by your people. It was all that could be done to stop the thing for a while; twice it has been stopped. Once, before my attempt, the most powerful minds in the galaxy collaborated to destroy it. But they failed. It was stopped for several thousand years, but it came back.

“My attempt, the work of one person alone, was only enough to stop it for several decades. Now it is back. I am telling you the truth when I say it cannot be destroyed. But your father will not listen and continues to squander our resources in his blind obsession to destroy the thing. You are the only one who seems to understand this.”

She turned to him, as he was absorbing what she’d just given him, and waited for it all to sink in.

“What can we do?” he asked, his brow wrinkled in confusion. “Are you telling me it should just be left alone? Or can you do to it what you did before?”

She shook her head again; “I do not have the strength to do so again. Sundering it once cost me dearly. I have not the power to even attempt to do so again. But you seem to know what to do,” she whispered as she moved up to him and grinned with rotten yellow teeth. It was all he could do to fight the urge to step away from her.

“You plan to take down the pilots themselves, starting with their very spine, don’t you?” She was looking at him with what he could swear seemed something like pride. His head swam with joy. Someone finally, at long last, was proud of something he’d done.

“Yes,” he smiled back at her. “Take down the leader first, destroy their morale.” Then he shook his head and frowned, “But my father will not give me the time I need to study the information I’ve gathered on them in order to discern their weaknesses.”

Hagar sighed and slumped against a worktable, sending vials rolling over the edge to shatter against the floor. “How well I know. He would rather beat our one hope to death than admit to himself he could be wrong.” She complained as the mixed liquids from the broken vials hissed, bubbled, and smoked up the stale air of the lab with a cloyingly sweet scent. “He fears you, and rightly so. You will be a far better leader than he ever could.” The witch confided.

“As I said before he’ll live forever…” the Prince began.

“So long as I keep him alive,”she countered. “Unfortunately we also need him right now to keep the rest of the Drule Empire off of our backs.” She frowned, “But that does not mean I do not know that you are our future, even if you do look like a monster. Even so, you are the best and brightest leader I have seen in centuries. I am no fool, Lotor. I want you in charge of this empire, and I am prepared to back you in your endeavors. I only ask two things of you.”

So there was a price to this, Lotor mused. Well, lets see how much she wants from me. “What do you want?” he tried to keep his voice even, almost fearing what she’d demand.

“You will need time away from this war if you are to succeed in your plans.” She stated without hesitation, “You cannot leave without it causing a great deal of trouble, and the war would suffer in your absence. I need to make a clone of you, which can continue to fight in your absence. When you return it will be disposed of and you can take your rightful place without your father ever being the wiser. The second thing I ask is that which will assure you the throne. While you are gone find a way to keep the Drule from reabsorbing us into their empire.”

Of course, he realized, it would make sense to do things like this and to find some way to keep the Drule Empire at bay was common sense. This was wonderful news. He could almost taste the sweetness of victory.

“Certainly.” He agreed, smiling again at the crone in front of him. “How long will it take for you to set things up?”

“Three hours.”

“My ship will be noticed missing.” The Prince worried.

“No. The engineers have just completed a new ship for you. Take the old one, and I’ll just tell Zarkon it’s already been disposed of.” Haggar informed him as she opened the lab’s door to lead him out.

“YOW!!” came the reprimand from Coba, who had been locked outside during the conversation.

Three hours later

Lotor had just passed beyond the protective ring that surrounded Doom and was heading off into space, inputting the coordinates where he was to meet his spy.

Doom

Hagar hobbled into the stark brightness of the throne room to inform her king of how her latest plan was working. She ignored the constant cacophony of the courtiers as she hobbled towards the gilded throne. Noticing her, the King of Doom ordered all of his court out of the room, and the demanded that the polished brass doors be shut behind them.

Once his orders had been hastily obeyed, Zarkon looked coldly down from his uncomfortable throne at her and scowled, “Well you old witch, did you manage to pull off this plan of yours or have you managed to bungle it as thoroughly as you have most of your recent plans?”

Her answer was a very evil cackle that floated from inside her cowl, “Do not give yourself airs, oh great King Zarkon. I could easily have convinced your idiot son, that you were actually the leader of the Voltron Force in disguise and had him kill you in your sleep.”

The blue scaled ruler’s brutal countenance snarled at Hagar’s ragged brown robed form. She laughed in retort. “As if I would actually want to serve that de-evolved imbecile. He’s far too soft to wear a crown. Thankfully, we’ll never have to see him in one and you’ll still be able to keep up pretenses.”

“MERRROOW!” yowled the familiarill ill enraged at having been shut out during the most interesting phase of the plan. His black tail swished furiously across the polished green marble floor.

The King stood and chuckled, “So he fell for it?” He tugged at his gaudy red on yellow robes to straighten them out and began to pace the blood colored carpet that ran from the brass doors to his throne.

“Completely,” the witch chortled; it was a sound to make ones flesh crawl.

Zarkon’s toothy grin deepened, “What did you tell him?”

“I’m not going through that spiel again. Suffice to say, some truth sweetened by all the right lies.” Hagar snorted and waved one of her hands vaguely in the air, her sharp nails clicking against each other.

Lotor’s father smiled even wider managing to look remarkably like a shark, if there ever was a blue shark that swam around in tasteless robes and a crown, and asked. “Is the ro-beast ready for him?”

“Oh yes, I’ve had it ready for a month now. I have been delighting in fine-tuning it to dispose of him. It has his biosigniture, no matter where he runs it will follow.” The old witch stifled a yawn.

“He’s got no chance to defeat this thing?” Her king questioned her, wanting to make absolutely sure he would be rid of the thorn that had been in his side for the last 17 years.

“Voltron itself would be hard pressed to defeat it. It is the finest I have ever made. He will fall to it quickly.” Was the gloating reply by his loyal right hand.

“Good, then we can get on with business.” Zarkon demanded, heading towards the throne again, “I don’t want you to rush on the work with the clone. I want a son I can be proud of. Make him twice as vicious, twice as dedicated, and even more obsessive than Lotor ever was. Make sure he doesn’t have that wretched quality my former son had of wanting affection. Sometimes, I swear I could look at him and almost hear him thinking that he wanted people to like him. I despised that. I want my son to want people to fear him.”

Hagar smirked, as her beloved kitty stared fascinated by the passing royal robes, and agreed, “Yes, my King.” She turned to leave.

“Hagar?”

“Yes,” she paused at the door, her impatient expression hidden by her hood.

“Make sure that you increase his sex drive,” the king scowled. The expression twisted his scaled face into a hard azure mask; “I’m tired of the whispers that he can hardly be considered a man due to his cool attitude towards his harem and women in general. Its embarrassing.”

“ not not my King, I’ll make him into a monster.” She all but purred as she opened the doors and stepped through.

“NUURRROOWW!!” echoed through the throne room, as Coba pounced the entrancing robes and sank his teeth into the royal calf.