Chapter Text
Lance loses track of time not long after his capture. Out here, Earthly hours mean nothing; the unforgiving stars outside the window give him no hints as to the passage of time. And aboard the slave ship, time is marked only by the irregular doling out of food.
There are those who would perhaps say it is out of character for Lance to keep to himself, but Lance knows he was lucky enough for them to catch him in plainclothes. If he had been wearing his armor, the mark of the Blue Paladin, he has no doubt he would be dead. He doesn’t want to test his luck, so he keeps to himself, stays out of the riots over food, lingers in the shadows when they come to pick stronger slaves for the ring. He rubs his arms fervently to stay warm in the chill of the slave hold and hopes that somewhere out there, a castle-ship is tracking him down.
Although Lance has no solid approximation of time, it’s hard to deny its definite passage when he catches a glimpse of his reflection and finds his hair shockingly long, perhaps an inch longer than when he had first been jostled aboard the Galra ship. As he runs his fingers almost disbelievingly through the straggling brown strands, the doubts sink into his stomach. If he’s been here long enough for his hair to begin growing out like that, what chance is there that the rest of Voltron will come for him? Lance summons up a hazy factoid: human hair grows about a half-inch per month.
The knowledge knocks the breath out of his stomach suddenly, as though he has been punched. Two months. Two months of endless cycles of eating and sleeping and shivering. Two months of waiting for lions to appear and pluck him out of this hell.
Are they even alive? Is that why they haven’t come for him yet? Lance meets his reflection’s eyes, the blue grim and pained. The only thing he can do is keep living — it’s the best kind of middle finger to the Galra he can offer now, and besides, maybe he can make it out to the other side and rejoin Voltron someday.
Someday.
For now, Lance huffs a half-dead laugh at the sudden thought of Keith’s own hair and what the other paladin would say now.
As best Lance can tell, it’s something like a week after that when he is selected by a portly green alien with lizardlike frills and more gold jewelry than looks healthy for his spindly arms. The alien and the Galra slavemaster jabber at each other for a few minutes before money is exchanged.
Along with the others, Lance is taken down a grimy, winding corridor to a chamber with an ominous chair with what are obviously restraints. Lance tries not to let the fear show on his face as another Galra steps out of the shadows, wielding a terrifying contraption tipped by a needle.
This is it, this is it, he’s dead. Lance scrambles to remember the prayers his mother always told him he ought to utter before his last breath, but all he can think of, for some reason, is the wrenching scream on Keith’s face as Lance had been dragged away. He’ll never get to tease him about his ridiculous hair ever again, never bicker amiably under the pretend rivalry —
Lance closes his eyes as they strap down the first slave. He’ll never get to tell the infuriating, beautiful boy with the amethyst eyes that he thinks he might be a little in love with him.
The alien starts to scream, high-pitched babble in their native language that drills into Lance’s ears and makes him clench his hands until his nails leave red crescent moons etched into his palms.
The screaming cuts off abruptly, and Lance steels himself and then opens his eyes. He is fully expecting to see a horribly dead alien, and at first his mind almost rejects the undeniably alive being led away from the chair. Then he sees the harsh black digits marching up the alien’s side.
Oh. A tattoo. They’re being parceled off to the highest bidder, sentient beings traded like toys.
It’s not necessarily anything new to Lance, now that he connects the whine of the tattoo gun and the pained noises of his fellow slaves; after all, they’d freed plenty of other Galra slaves with tattoos. Shiro himself had had a tattoo done on Asthyantos not long before Lance’s capture, to cover up his own slave-mark. Lance just never thought he’d have to get up close and personal with the Galra tattoo-masters.
When it comes to Lance’s turn, he turns his head away, bites into a handful of his ratty tunic, and tries his level best not to scream. It is a near thing, though, as his eyes water and his fingers flex as if seeking a purchase to stave off the pain. Unbidden, an image of his mother swims to the front of his mind, her own tattoo — a pair of doves, for the parents that had died so that she could start a new life.
The water in his eyes spills over, and he squeezes them shut to prevent more escaping tears. He can feel it in the drumbeat of his heart now: he will never see his family again. The chances had been slim enough when he had been a too-young boy fighting an endless war, but now? Now he is a slave, tattooed and about to be shipped off into the distant reaches of space.
His thoughts are cut short by the sudden silence of the needle and the halting of the onslaught on his forearm. He blinks the pain away, then hisses through his teeth when a cold, stinging gel oozes over the tender flesh. After a moment, though, the pain recedes, and the rough hands of the slave-master pull him out of the chair and he goes unresistingly.