Chapter Text
"I'll be back soon."
That was what Lance had told him, just before shutting him in a closet and walking away.
Soon.
Rowan repeated the word in his head, trying to fill the silence. The others had all been quiet for the last... last... Rowan wasn't sure how long he'd been here. He'd lost a lot of time himself since Leth first made themself known. They were the only one besides Rowan who was active anymore, and of course they were the only one he couldn't talk to.
It was lonely in this place, especially for someone who'd never really been alone before. If Wyn wasn't there, then Eran was--except now Eran had taken Talm and retreated somewhere Haggar couldn't touch them, somewhere no one could touch them, even Rowan. And Wyn was...
Wyn was just gone. Probably not forever, but Rowan couldn't be sure.
It hadn't been like this at first. Eran was more active for a while when they were first brought here. He'd made a few escape attempts and had even punched one of the guards. It all ended the same way: pain, punishment, more lost time.
It would be the same this time, wouldn't it? Lance wasn't going to come back, and then Haggar would find him, and then--
Rowan leaned forward, putting his head between his knees as everything around him went weird. This body never fit him quite right--it was too small, too young, too frail--but it was familiar, so he knew things had gone wrong whenever he started to become pressingly aware that it didn't belong to him. It responded sluggishly, even, and he dug his nails into his palms to try to ground himself, rasping breaths echoing in his ears... Oh.
Oh, he was panicking.
...
Rowan came back to himself with a start, a headache taking root behind his eyes, and bit down on his lip until the pain chased all other thoughts away. How long had he been sitting here? How long had Lance been gone?
Leth.
Rowan's face burned with shame as he realized what had just happened. He'd been panicking, and Leth had--Leth had tried to switch with him. To give him a break.
Not that Leth knew that, or meant to do it. They couldn't control the switches, didn't even know they were happening. They were just a terrified kid trying to survive. That was what Eran said, anyway. Eran hadn't actually talked to Leth, either--none of them had--but he could check in on them, sometimes, when things weren't at their worst, and that was more than Rowan had ever managed.
And that was the worst part. Not knowing. Not seeing. Not letting himself see. Rowan knew everyone who shared this body. Knew what they looked like, what they sounded like, what they wanted, why they came to the forefront or retreated to the inside. Rowan wasn't good for a lot, but he was good at watching. At listening. He was good at taking care of his headmates.
Except Leth.
Guilt coiled in Rowan's stomach, and he shrank back into the corner of the closet, pulling his knees in close to his chest. He closed his eyes, reaching out with his mind to try to find Leth. It wasn't--that wasn't how it worked, and he knew it. Maybe for other people, but not for them. It wasn't about reasoning his way to an answer or wishing for one of the others to show up. Especially not with Leth. Rowan wasn't aware of them the way he was aware of the others. Leth seemed to exist only in the negatives. In the time Rowan couldn't track, in the smooth places his memories skimmed over. He'd noticed they were there, so he knew there was a new person lurking around, and he'd figured out some of the details, but...
But Leth wasn't ready to face the rest of them. Rowan wondered if this was how Eran felt when Wyn glossed over his presence. If so, Rowan felt twice as bad. As it turned out, it really sucked to want to protect someone, only to have them shove you away every chance they got.
The door slid soundlessly open, spilling sickly light into the closet, and Rowan froze, heart pounding. He felt Eran stirring, for the first time in a long time, and tried to start breathing again. They couldn't do this. Not now. It never worked, and Rowan didn't want Leth to have more unexplainable aches the next time they woke up. Things were tough enough on the kid as it was.
The figure in the doorway shifted, the light changing just enough to break Rowan's thoughts out of their panicked loop. It wasn't a guard staring down at him. It wasn't a druid. It wasn't Haggar.
It was Lance.
Relief crashed down on him with so much force it drove him momentarily into the floor, and he pressed his hand to the ground to steady himself. With the next breath, he surged to his feet and threw himself at Lance, clinging to his armor as they both stumbled.
You came back.
The words gathered in his throat and died there, turning sour in a mouth that hadn't spoken in poebs. He wanted to thank Lance. Wanted to know that everything was going to be okay. Wanted to tell him he should have just gone. Rowan would have been fine. He could take what Haggar threw at him. He was good at surviving. Lance didn't need to risk himself just for him.
(Except it wasn't just Rowan, was it? Because he couldn't take everything Haggar dished out. That was the whole point. Leth took the things Rowan couldn't, and he would keep taking them, and there was nothing Rowan could do to stop it.)
"Woah! It's okay, buddy." Lance grabbed Rowan by the shoulders, holding him steady, and Rowan thought he would burst with gratitude. He wanted to beg Lance to take them out of here, for Leth's sake if nothing else, but it was all too big to put into words, so he just held on, shaking, as Lance went on. "I'm right here. I'm right here."
Rowan gulped in air, trying to calm down. He was better than this. He should be better than this. He wasn't the type to panic, or to cling to someone like they were the only thing keeping him afloat. It was almost enough to make him think Wyn had finally come back, but he knew before he had time to get his hopes up that that wasn't the case. This whole ordeal had just finally showed Rowan what his limits were, and he found himself suddenly, desperately wishing he could just go home.
He wished he had a home to go back to.
After a moment, though, the burst of emotion calmed, and Rowan pulled back, feeling a little more himself as he looked up at Lance.
"You ready to get out of here?"
And by the ancients, he was.
There was a lot about Rowan's life that he didn't understand. He'd read some stuff, back when they still lived on New Altea, so he knew that their condition wasn't completely unheard of. There were others like them out there, and some of them managed to work things out between all their headmates. Rowan knew some terms, and he had a pretty good idea why he existed in the first place, but when it came right down to it, he was still a little lost, trying to piece together answers when he wasn't even seeing the full picture. It wasn't like he could talk to anyone about it, except his headmates, and they didn't know any more than Rowan did.
Wyn knew less than most. He knew about Rowan, and Rowan suspected he knew what that meant. Or at least he'd considered the possibility. But thinking too hard about Rowan and about the times when someone else took over, when Wyn blacked out--that made him uncomfortable. Rowan tried to ease him into thinking about it. Into allowing for the possibility that it was more than just Wyn and Rowan stuck inside the same body.
Those attempt hadn't gone very far. The problem was that Rowan wasn't very good at standing up for himself, even to his kid brother, and his efforts to talk about it fizzled as soon as Wyn flinched away. Eran would have been better at this--but then, if Eran had the option of talking to Wyn about it, about anything, then there wouldn't be an issue.
The point was, Rowan was sort of the resident authority by virtue of being the only one who really had any clue what was going on, and he would have laughed at that if he hadn't felt so much like being sick.
Lance was gone.
He'd given Rowan his armor and shot him out an airlock, and there had been a long stretch where Rowan was pretty sure Leth had taken over, because being out in space felt too much like...
Like something. It was familiar in a way that tied Rowan's insides up in knots, and he wasn't sure, ultimately, if he'd blacked out because of Leth or because he stopped breathing for too long. He wasn't sure it mattered either way. It still ended with him waking up on the floor of an unfamiliar ship. The ship seemed to be flying itself--Rowan wasn't sure where--and Lance was nowhere to be seen. Of course he wasn't. He was back on Haggar's ship, alone and without his armor, because he'd wanted so badly to get Rowan out.
The knowledge sat heavy in Rowan's chest, but his panic seemed to have decided to respect his exhaustion for the time being, because it barely stirred as he sat up and picked his way to the front of the cockpit. He hesitated a moment before sitting in the lone chair, but there was no one around to complain, and if something happened, he might be able to fly himself out of there, assuming he figured out how to turn off the autopilot. Wyn had had flying lessons from his parents, and Rowan had sat in on some of them. He could probably figure it out.
Then again, maybe he didn't need to. There were ships all around, some of them Galra, most of them not, but none of them paid Rowan's ship any mind. He tensed each time another ship came close, but after a few repetitions he started to relax, though he stayed curled up in the pilot's seat, eyes roving the battlefield for signs of his destination. (That's what it was, after all, wasn't it? A battlefield?)
He finally found it: a sleek white ship. A New Altean ship, he was almost sure of it. Rowan's chest tightened, and he curled in on himself. Why was New Altea here? They didn't do rescue missions. That was the point of leaving. Wyn's parents had wanted to cut contact. If they were here now--
Rowan's shoulders shook with silent laughter. If New Altea was here now, so what? It was better than Haggar. Anything was better than Haggar. At best, Jana was on that ship, and Rowan would have a friend around again. Wyn's friend, at least, and maybe that would be enough to pull Wyn back from wherever he'd gone.
At worst, Rowan would be back where he'd been before all this began.
There were worse things out there.
The ship set down inside a massive hangar, engines roaring in a way that seemed almost animalistic, and Rowan pushed himself up to look out through the viewscreen for familiar faces. He saw no one. Not even any maintenance bots or other ships. This ship was bigger than he'd realized--and he still wasn't sure how he'd wound up inside it, unless Leth had...
But Leth wasn't here now, and Rowan didn't see how they could've programmed the autopilot to come to a strange ship and land--and put up a shield, he realized, jumping as a shimmering blue barrier closed in outside the ship. Had Lance programmed the ship to do all that? Or was someone controlling it remotely?
Rowan peered around the hangar for another long while, trying to work up the courage to go out there and figure out what was happening, but the thought alone made him queasy. He'd be so exposed out there, and he still didn't know who had saved him. Or captured him. But... Lance wouldn't let that happen, would he? He'd seemed like he had a plan. Rowan should trust him. (Right. Trust. Rowan never had been good at that.)
After a moment, Rowan settled in, looping his arms around his legs and staring at the cockpit around him, rather than out at the empty hangar. He still glanced out occasionally, just in case someone decided to show up, but all that open space made him nervous.
He lost track of himself again, and lost track of time, and he only jolted out of his daze when the ship began to move again. He sucked in a breath, reaching for the controls. Where was the autopilot? There had to be a way to turn it off.
The hangar fell away around him--or, no. It was lifting up? Or was the cockpit lowering to the ground? He didn't know, but it made his head spin, and he scrambled to his feet as the blue barrier flickered out of existence. A hatch hissed open somewhere at the same moment, changing the light in the cockpit, and Rowan backpedaled, searching for somewhere to hide, or something to use as a weapon, if it came to that. He wasn't much of a fighter, but if Haggar had found him--Haggar, or someone else--
"Buddy? You in there?"
Lance's voice pulled Rowan up short, and for a moment he froze, wondering if Haggar could mimic voices with her illusions. Had he ever seen her do that? He remembered seeing people he knew, but they'd never spoken. He didn't think they'd spoken...
Before he could figure anything out, Lance was there, unsteady on his feet, flecks of blood on his skin and a tremor in his hand as he reached out for Rowan. His Quintessence was thin, so thin Rowan could barely feel it. (Haggar. She'd found him after all.) Rowan felt impossibly small in that moment, small and horribly cold as his fingers dug into the ridges of Lance's armor--armor that could have protected Lance if Rowan hadn't taken it from him.
Lance dropped to his knee in front of Rowan, lips quirking into a smile. "It's okay, buddy," he whispered. "You're okay. We got you out of there. You're safe now. How are you feeling?"
Horrible. Sick. Tired. Like he just wanted someone to take over so he could ignore the universe for a while. It wasn't fair that Wyn got to miss all of this and leave Rowan and Leth to deal with it.
Rowan regretted that as soon as he thought it, and he curled in on himself, chest aching. He opened his mouth to answer Lance's question, only to run up against a wall. Even if he'd known what to say, he didn't think he could have forced the words out. There was a pressure on his chest, trapping his voice inside him, and Rowan was at a loss for how to shrug it off.
"Lance!" The voice that echoed in from beyond the ramp was sharp, angry, and it made Rowan flinch away. "We need to talk."
Lance's lips pressed together in a thin line, and he shot a look toward the ramp. "Can this wait a second?"
A moment of silence. Rowan curled his arms over his head, heart hammering in his chest. He didn't know who was outside or why she was angry, but it made his chest tight all over again. He couldn't get enough air, and he felt himself drifting again as Lance rested his hand on Rowan's foot for an instant, then turned and disappeared down the ramp. His voice, and the angry one, drifted up to Rowan, but he was too far away to hear them, everything feeling loose and disconnected like this was all a dream and Rowan had only just realized it.
Maybe it was a dream. It didn't seem possible that he'd actually escaped from Haggar. She was too smart for that, too ruthless. Rowan was going to be stuck in his cell until he died--seriously, the paladins of Voltron? They were a myth. Ancient history. If anyone was going to come save Rowan, why would it be them?
He dropped his head between his knees, clutching at hair that was short and thin and brittle--they'd shaved it again sometime recently, though Rowan couldn't remember when. A lot of things were like that in Haggar's cells. He noticed something had changed, but he couldn't figure out when it had happened.
Tracing patterns in his hair helped to ground him, though, and bit by bit he settled back into himself. What choice did he have? There was no one else to take over right now. No one but maybe Leth, but Rowan could never be sure with them. Better to just... keep it together... somehow... At least until he knew he really was safe. Lance had said he was, but what if he was lying? Or just wrong? People were wrong all the time. Wyn's parents had said they were safe after they left New Altea, and that couldn't be further from the truth.
Rowan kept breathing, and slowly he started to feel less sick. It still didn't seem possible, being rescued like this, but it didn't feel like a dream, either. He forced himself to stand, even though it made his headache worse, and once the cockpit stopped spinning he stumbled toward the ramp, where he could still hear Lance's voice, pitched low and dangerous now. (It didn't feel like a threat, though. At least, not one that was directed at Rowan.)
"--hiding in Blue right now because he probably thinks we're gonna run more sick experiments on him!"
Rowan's breath caught, and rather than tapping Lance's shoulder like he'd meant to, he instead latched onto the hand that Lance flung out in an encompassing gesture. Rowan's pulse was racing again, and he couldn't do anything but hold onto Lance as he spun, dropping into a crouch. Rowan could see other people beyond Lance, most of them dressed in paladin armor like Lance's but in all different colors.
Voltron.
Was it real, after all? Or was Rowan...
"You okay, buddy?" Lance asked, drawing Rowan's focus back to him. He stared, trying to force himself to breathe as Lance went on in a gentle voice. "Look, don't worry about anything. I'm gonna take care of you, all right?" He paused as though hoping Rowan would say something, but then he just smiled and squeezed Rowan's hand. "All right." Lance looked behind him. "He's going to need a cryopod."
A moment of silence, and then Lance turned back to Rowan.
"Don't worry," he whispered. "Everyone here's a friend. We're gonna take care of you, okay? You're going to be okay."