Chapter Text
When Allura was confident that the tyrant was tracking them through her, Kate protested without thinking. She didn't really have a good reason for how Zarkon was tracking them, but she knew for certain that it had to be her. Pidge suggested it could be through the black lion, but Coran didn't really go for that theory. Shiro declared they were going to go to the planet Taujeer to fight off the nearest galra tomorrow.
"Is everything okay?" Shiro asked her.
"Yeah," she waited until they were gone, and until they were alone. She took a breath. "No...I'm not. Zarkon is clearly tracking through me."
"You said that before," he noted, "Why are you so convinced about this?"
Kate stared at him, not knowing what to say next. She sighed heavily and dropped her head into her hands, avoiding his eyes.
"Keith," He said gently, "I wouldn't know unless you tell—"
"I betrayed the team,"
He blinked. "What?"
She still didn't look at him. "I. Betrayed. The team." Her violet eyes finally met his dark ones, "Cain drugged me in doing so…"
"Cain?" He was astonished. "The Assassin Roland warned us about? You met him?"
Kate moved to the thick glass and watched the stars and the black void before her. "He... interrogated me right after I sacrificed myself to save you and Allura." She looked over her shoulder at him. "And he drugged me with some sort of truth serum that made me tell everything about the paladins... and made me forget the entire interrogation. The lost memory came back to me a few hours ago, and I'm a complete idiot to carelessly forget about it!" banging her hand on the glass.
Shiro stared at him, concerned. "You think he did something to you ?"
"I can't remember how it ended, the memory is still hazy, but he must have done something." Something like implanting a tracking device in my body.
Shiro reached his hand to her shoulder. "Okay, let's check it out. Go into the healing pod, and I'll check the scanner to see if —"
Her eyes widened in horror when he said 'healing' pod' and she suddenly jumped(back) away from him, jerking his hand off her shoulder with a sharp "NOPE!"
Her leader looked at her surprised. Kate bit her lip and her nails dug hard on her left arm. "No," she said in a hushed voice, "you know what? I'm fine. Just tired. Like you said, I should get some sleep. And take a shower, I smell like live barbecue meat." She walked away from him. "Goodnight."
Shiro watched her go with concern.
Maybe talking about Cain to him was a bad idea.
—later—
(Shiro's perspective)
He was shocked when he heard Keith and Allura use the pods to escape the castle in the middle of the night. He knew he should have talked to the raven-haired before he made such a reckless decision.
"Princess, Keith, where are you?" Coran said after successfully contacting the pod.
"Exactly where we should be," Allura said strongly, "far away from the Castle."
"What? Why?" Shiro demanded.
"We must know if we are the ones Zarkon is tracking."
"They're isolating the variable," Shiro heard Pidge say behind him. "Well, isolating two variables."
"In English, please?" Lance said.
"In order to test a hypothesis-"
"I said English."
"Ugh! Never mind!!!"
"Pidge is right," Allura said, " If Zarkon finds you despite my absence, we will know with total certainty that we are not the ones he is tracking."
Shiro shook his head in disbelief, how did it all come to this? "Splitting up the group makes us far more vulnerable. Come back to the Castle immediately."
"I'm sorry, Shiro," Allura apologized, " I cannot do that."
"If Zarkon does find us," Keith said, "I can pilot us to safety. We're in wide-open space with plenty of room to maneuver. Plus, we'd be able to outrun him. Pidge added that booster rocket."
"That thing's still on there?" Coran questioned.
"We need both of you back here now!" Shiro commanded, but they were interrupted when the alarms blared.
-later-
"We've been here for hour- vargras," Kate observed the black void before her, "Still no sign of Zarkon."
Allura crossed her arms. "Well, I'm glad I don't have to wait here alone." She looked Kate in the eye, "You understand I could never live with myself if Zarkon was finding us because of me. I must know. We face such a dire threat from the Galra."
The same goes for me , she thought, but... "Well, sure, they're bad. No doubt about that." She paused. "But at the same time, couldn't at least a few of them be fighting for good? Just look at Ulaz. He sacrificed himself to save us."
Allura's brows furrowed. "For all we know, his sacrifice was a ploy. One life means nothing to Zarkon."
Kate flinched at her cold statement. Was her vendetta against Zarkon and the galra this terrible? "It means something to me," Kate said strongly. "It means some of them are actually willing to help. And we could use all the help we can get!"
Allura crossed her arms again. "Any offer of help from the Galra is merely a prelude to a trap. I know all too well how quickly they turn."
"It just seems crazy to lump everyone together."
Allura turned her with fury in her eyes. "Listen, if there are any good Galra, they have had 10,000 years to take down Zarkon. I would never count on them for help."
Kate stared at her and turned away saying nothing. She couldn't convince the princess. Now she was certain…
Allura will hate her once she finds out about her ancestry. Disgusted and resentful if she found out about her past...
She tried to change the topic of trusting the galra. "So, what happens if Zarkon does come after us?"
"You said you could pilot us to safety, right?" she pointed out.
"Sure," she shrugged, "but after that, could we even go back to the group? And if we don't, who would pilot the Castle or create wormholes?"
"Well, what about you?" The princess countered back, "Without you, the team cannot form Voltron."
Kate stayed silent for a few heartbeats. "Allura… I don't know if you noticed but...paladins can always be replaced." Allura blinked, surprised. "When Shiro and I were stranded in that moon, I piloted the black lion to save him…"
"What?" She was flabbergasted. "You...you piloted—"
"Yep," Kate quickly said. "So if I don't make it, maybe you or Coran, or someone could pilot the red lion. I don't think I'm worthy of it anyway."
Before Allura could open her mouth, Coran's voice interrupted them. "Keith, Allura, are you there?"
"We're here, Coran." Allura immediately replied. " What is it?"
"Zarkon is definitely not tracking us through either of you."
"He's not?" Kate questioned. Cain didn't plant any bugs in her body?
Allura asked, "How do you know?"
"Because you're out there, and a Galra fleet just showed up here! We need you now!"
The two girls shared a look.
—way later, after fighting and junk—
Allura looked down to the ground. "I'm so sorry for leaving." She apologized to the rest of the team.
"Me too," Kate said guiltily, "We thought we were doing the right thing."
"But clearly you were correct, Shiro." She looked at him. "We are always stronger together."
Lance tilted his head. "At least we learned that Zarkon isn't tracking us through you two."
"Plus," Hunk added. "I learned that my lion can grow armor and extend its claws like that. Ting!" He made a claw-like gesture with his hands. "Which will come in handy if we ever needed to, say, I don't know, slice up a giant steak while getting beat up." He paused, noticing the stares he was getting. "Or fight evil and save innocent people. That too. That would work."
"The fact that the Red Lion came to help Keith from so far away is a vital piece of information." Shiro said. "We now have proof that a lion and a Paladin can, in fact, connect over a far greater distance than we realized. Which means we finally know how Zarkon is tracking us. It's through the Black Lion."
—Kate's room—
The black lion… was how they were tracked, huh?
She was a complete fool leaving them. Another mistake.
"You ready?" Victor asked her as she came out of the bathroom, wearing a galra uniform.
She nodded. "Yeah," she closed her eyes.
She never thought this day would come.
It's been 12 long years since she last used that other form of hers after she broke.
Even though she vowed herself to never use that form again, this was the best for the team. Besides, it was Zarkon's men who were going to see hell, not her friends.
She was somewhere else away from them. Away from this ship.
A misty purple cloud swirled around her, and when it vanished, her appearance changed. The cat ears and tail, her sharpened claws and canines, and her purple skin, altogether made her a perfect galra. She loosened the power within her pendant and her raven hair grew back halfway, medium length, not till the waist. She made a quick waterfall braid with her wavy raven hair and put a black ribbon. Another reminder she had from one of her dead friends.
She turned to Victor. "How do I look?"
"Too stunning," he replied, "and the braid looks like one of the things my sister would do to her hair…" She gave him a look and he realized what she actually meant. "Oh, uh… your disguise is perfect."
Kate nodded. "So let's get to work."