I was a great warrior once. I remember that much. I remember the weight of the medals I had on my chest and I remember the statue of me that had been in a parade. I flew one of the most powerful vessels in the galaxy and I had flown it well. Keith. That had been my name then. But now...now...

I am nothing.

I stare at my callused and scarred hands, caused from the hammer I had to hold when I broke rocks nineteen hours a day. The other six hours, I sleep, or at least, tried to because every time I close my eyes, I see the screaming faces and burning towns. I only sleep when my body can no longer function properly. I realize that I have been sleeping longer and longer these days.

I walk down the same path I walked every day for nearly two years. I pass the crucifixes marking the graves of slaves that had fallen. I count them everytime I pass. With hardly a reaction, I notice that there is a new one. I pause to read the inscription written on a piece of cardboard. The writing was a reddish-brown color. It was written in blood.

Patrick "Pidge" MacDuff

My jaw clenched. Pidge. Another one of us has fallen. I resume my walk, but unbidden, the memories returned. Hunk had been the first of us to go. He had died in the Lion that he loved as it was being torn to pieces by Hagar's now legendary Ro-Beast--the monster that had finally beaten the Voltron Force. Arus had been taken immediately after and was now a wasteland, its resources exhausted by Zarkon. Coran had fallen next when he tried to defend the Castle of Lions. He had stood and greeted the robot soldiers when they had stormed Castle Control. He had turned on the auto destruct sequence and when the Castle became filled with soldiers, as well as Lotor, it went up in a burst of light. Allura had wept when she saw it. I felt like somebody had torn out my heart.

Lance, Pidge, and I, along with the Princess, tried to make it out of Arus in the remaining Lions, but the entire Doom Fleet had converged on Arusian airspace. We were overwhelmed. We couldn't defeat them without Voltron. We still fought, but it was in vain. The Lions were severely damaged and when we were captured, they were turned into scrap metal. As for us, we were put into slavery. By some fluke of fate, we were lost in the sea of slaves that were being shipped into Doom and Zarkon never found us. He searched, but we eluded him every single time. It helped that I had grown a beard and my hair grew so long that I could pull it back. Anyone who had known me when I was King of Arus would never recognize me now.

So here I am.

I can only hope that Sven is still out there fighting even though I have given up on a rescue. I tried to escape once, but Zarkon had a chips implanted into the slaves' skulls that prevented them from leaving a certain area. My head nearly blew apart when I tried. Now, I'm not even considered to be a threat by the guards. I was known for my immediate surrender.

So here I am.

I walk to the work area, a large pit, and saw men smashing the rocks. Then, I noticed another person. A woman with shorn blonde hair that stood out in tufts around her head. A woman whose face I had dreamed of for two years--only two years though it felt like two hundred. She raises her head as if she knows I was watching her and her blue eyes froze me on the spot.

"Allura," I whisper.

She looks at me as if she didn't know me and turns back to her work. I feel a savage pain in my chest at her response, but I know it was the smart thing to do. If they see that we know each other, I would lose her again. I jump down into the pit next to her and begin to swing my hammer. Hypnotically, I stared at the rocks break underneath its metal head. Time didn't exist in the pit.

Only when the whistle went off did I stop and go back the way I came. I feel Allura brush against my hand, but I didn't turn to look. She went in the opposite direction towards the women's barracks. I wondered how she managed to survive. Beautiful women didn't usually stick around in the pit which was how she was spotted easily despite the dirt she had smeared on her face. She couldn't disguise the large blue eyes that caught the attention of any hot-blooded male...or cold-blooded. Last I had heard, she was Zarkon's plaything and she had borne him another son. That was the fate of the once courageous and strong ruler of Arus. A mere whore. Seeing her here meant that Zarkon had finally grown tired of her. I was thankful for that, though she was exchanging one nightmare for another.

I passed by the dungeons, as I always did, and heard the voice.

"My name is Lieutenant Commander Lance Clamant. ID number 435, alpha, 364. I was born in Lyon, France on Earth on..."

I couldn't listen anymore. I had heard him recite his stats over and over ever since he had snapped underneath the pain of the taskmaster's whip. That had been two months ago, I think. Lance had been injured during our fight with the Fleet and he hadn't fully recovered. He had always been bullheaded, and stayed alive, but he couldn't stand being a slave. He fought back. I had learned after being prodded with an electrical rod that it was no good to fight a losing battle and wiser to lay low until opportunity knocked, but Lance was never patient and he kept on. He fought and fought until his mind and body couldn't take anymore. Now he was chained up to a damp wall. The guards didn't feed him anymore. He was useless. They just waited for him to die.

"Keith...where are you, Keith," I heard him call.

I began walking. There have been too many lapses into the past today. It was seldom that I ever thought of my old friends, but seeing Pidge's grave and Allura again brought back the old pain that I had tried to forget. It did no good to me other than remind me of what we once were.

I entered my cell and waited for the guards to lock it shut behind me. The clang that came with the slamming of the steel doors had once sent a chill down my spine, but I barely heard it now. I laid down on my cot and covered my eyes with my arm. I closed my eyes, but I knew sleep would be impossible tonight. I shifted my position and immediately felt a small object poking my back. I felt underneath me until my hand closed around a spherical object. I recognized it. A projector. My fingers searched for the button to turn it. It came on with a low whine. Allura, her hair shining and long, faced me.

Keith, Allura's image whispered. I've come to rescue you. I've come to save you. I'll explain everything when you meet me. Just be standing by your window at midnight and I will come for you.

The image disappeared. A small clock appeared on the side of the sphere. It was a quarter to twelve. I stood by the small window that three feet above my head. Before long, a small beam of light landed at my feet. I look up and see Allura peering down at me. Deftly, she cuts through the bars of the window silently with a laser knife and throws down a line for me to climb up on. I've retained my muscular strength from all the work I did at the pit and I scaled the wall easily.

When my feet are at last on solid ground, Allura took a shaky step towards me. We stare at each other, unsure of what to do. I take her hands in mine, feeling their softness. Her lips tremble as she took another step. With a sigh, I pull her into my arms. She was whisper thin in my embrace, but I had never felt anything so good.

"I couldn't forget you," she whispers in my ear.

She pulls away and holds my face in her hands, peering into my eyes. Her face falls and I know she sees the broken man that I am. She takes my hand and hurries me towards her waiting ship. I falter and stop. She looks at me wildly.

"What's wrong?" she demands.

"The chip. I have an implant..."

She waves her hand to silence me. "My ship has a device that'll shield you."

We run to her ship and I climb on board breathlessly. I am beginning to feel dizzy, not only from the physical exertion, but because I can't believe that I will finally be free. I look around the ship and see Lance strapped in a seat in the back. He is unconscious. I sit in the seat next to him and take his hand. Allura starts up the ship, its engine nothing more than a whisper, and shot up into the sky. We can hear the alarm klaxons go off but we are too far for them to get us back. I go up to sit next to her.

"Who do you work for?" I ask.

Her head turns towards me quickly, her expression guarded. "For the Alliance, of course."

"How long have you been at the pit?"

"Six months. I've been biding my time..."

I shake my head. "Stop lying to me, Allura. Has Zarkon finally gotten to you? Are you going to feed me and Lance to the big shark?"

She stiffens, which was not what I expected, not what I had hoped she would do. The Allura I remember would have screamed and possibly hit me. This woman sitting next to me now merely looks at me coldly. "You're out of your mind, Keith."

I take her hand in mine. Her soft, clean white hands. "These are not the hands of a slave, six months or not." I clutch at her, pulling her towards me until I can feel her breath on my face. "Who do you work for?"

"Myself," she said, taking off the short blonde wig. Long blonde locks tumbled down her back and spilled across her shoulders. "I work for myself."

"What?"

She looks at me now with hopeless blue eyes and I see the shadow of the woman she'd been. "I've been planning this ever since Zarkon took me. I've been careful. No one knows that I was the one who took you. It took me a long time to find you, Keith." She looks down at our entwined fingers. "I was too late to save, Pidge, but I got you and Lance out. I'm going to leave you at Pollux and then go back."

"Why?" I ask. I can't lose her again after finding her at last.

"I can't leave my son to Zarkon to become another Lotor," she replies.

"So you do have a son," I say quietly, releasing her hand. She quickly takes mine and forces me to look at her when I avert my eyes.

"No, Keith. We have a son."