Warning: Bending canon to serve my own nefarious needs once again.

Disclaimer: WEP owns Voltron.  (But what are they doing with it, really?)

To Each His Own

Green was just made for him.

Lying on his back on the top of Green’s head, Pidge closed his eyes and let a feeling of warmth invade him, warmth that had nothing to do with the heat of the sun beating down, but came from the knowledge that somehow, whoever had made the Lions knew just what the pilots required.

Green responded so smoothly to him that it was simply amazing.  It was nothing like any sim he’d ever been in—there was always the critical lag between seeing and reacting and then making the machine react, too.  This . . . it was like the Lion read his thoughts—no, like Green was an extension of him; the claws were his claws, the powerful mechanical haunches that thrust him into the air belonged to him, and the roar was his signal to the universe that he was on the prowl . . .

Suddenly nervous at the direction his thoughts were taking, Pidge sat up.  Whoa.  The psych-eval board would have a field day if they knew about that . . .

A little shiver seemed to run through him then . . . or did it originate in the Lion?

He was definitely thinking too much about it, either way.  There was no way that Green could react when he didn’t even have the key in the slot . . .

All is as it should be, my young friend.

Totally unnerved now, he glanced around, looking for the person who had spoken, because he was not, was so not going to believe that the voice had emanated from the Lion itself.

If my Green Lion responds to you so well, I am glad.

Pidge clambered back down into the cockpit, put the Lion to rest in its den and headed back to the castle post haste.

He was never going to mention that to the rest of the team, no way.

***

It was an incredible piece of machinery.

Lance wiped a nearly invisible speck from the viewscreen, then smiled down at the controls and ran one hand over them lightly, just barely touching.

He’d already learned that whenever he touched anything, Red purred to life, ready to go.  But there was no need to do anything right now; he was just making sure that she was in prime condition.

Back at the Academy, there had been some guys that had fabulous cars—sports cars, muscle cars and the like.  Their parents had been high mucky-mucks in Galaxy Garrison, so they could afford to buy their kids these high performance cars.  And some of these guys had been nothing less than in love with their cars.  Lance often joked to Hunk and Sven that they couldn’t have been any closer to their cars unless they went out at night and had sex with the tail pipe.

It gave a whole new meaning to the phrase “auto-erotica”.

But now . . . he understood how those guys felt.  Maybe.  A little bit.  He wanted to take care of Red, wanted to make sure she was always ready to go, wanted to make sure there was nothing she lacked.

He could rationalize some of this away—he depended on this machine to save lives, both his own and those of the Arusians, so he needed to make sure she was always in tip-top condition.

But that didn’t explain why he was out here on his off-shift, doing everything short of waxing her gleaming hide.

He ran his hands over her controls again, and felt the Lion shiver around him.  “It’s all right, baby,” he soothed, and stroked the console.

Already Red would do anything for you.

Lance jumped at the voice that seemed to echo directly into his head.  “What the hell?!” I thought I was alone! he thought, and started to reach for his gun. 

Whoever could sneak up on him in the cockpit was good.

It is good to see that my Red Lion is so well cared for.

He whipped out his laser pistol and headed for the top hatch.  It was a very bad idea to surprise him like this, and he was going to make sure that whoever it was knew it.

***

This, now, this was what he liked best, Hunk decided.  He was up to his elbows in grease and machine parts, trying to figure out what made the Lions tick.

Looking at the deceptive simplicity of the designs Coran had dredged up from somewhere, he could only shake his head.

There was no way that machines that flew so well, that responded instantly to the merest thought could be so . . . uncomplicated.  He’d been around machines all his life—from simple alarm clocks to the most advanced fighters Garrison had to offer—and he understood them.

This time, it was more like Yellow understood him.

And, as if Yellow had known, somehow, that he wanted an excuse to look around at the Lion’s insides, it had developed a stutter, a fluctuation of some kind, and he’d gleefully pounced on that problem, so small that was hardly a problem at all.

Coran had been doubtful, but had provided the schematics anyway, and now he was ensconced in Yellow’s lair, wrenches, screwdrivers and scanners to hand.

He’d made the Lion lie down on its side, the easier to access the power source, and so it still lay, but from time he glanced up at it, frowning.  It was downright foolish, is what it was, but he keep getting the fidgety feeling that he wasn’t repairing Yellow as much as operating on an animal that wasn’t anesthetized.

Still frowning, he turned back to the blueprints, one blunt finger tracing the line ran from the power source to the data feeds.  He thought that the trouble was in that line, but, crawling back into the wound he’d opened in Yellow’s belly, he couldn’t find it.

I think that the problem lies in the second board from your left . . .

With the top half of his body still stuck inside the repair shaft, for a moment he wondered that he could still hear Keith so clearly, then his eyes lit on the boards, and he saw, indeed, that there was a damaged, blackened piece.   Carefully, he worked the board loose from its slot and started to back out of the shaft.  “Thanks, man,” he said, and sat down to rummage through his toolkit for the small soldering iron.  “I can fix this in less than a minute.”

My pleasure.  I like to keep my Lions in good repair.

Immersed in his repairs already, Hunk merely grunted.  When he looked up again, board ready for reinstallation, he was alone.

He shrugged and started to creep back up inside Yellow again.  I’ll have to remember to thank Keith later . . .

***

It wasn’t that he didn’t like his teammates, Sven knew.  It was just that some of them—all right, he allowed with a sigh, most of them—were loud and boisterous, and he needed solitude a lot more than they seemed to.

He found himself craving quiet and isolation more and more frequently now.

It was quiet in Blue’s cockpit.  There was hardly any sound at all, and the dim light, filtered by the depth of the water and Blue’s screens, was soothing.

His meditations in Blue refreshed him more than anywhere else he’d ever tried, even in the dojo with his sensei, which was surprising.

There were times—more and more recently of late—when he felt that Blue was somehow . . . welcoming him when he arrived.  He got the sense that even when the key remained in his pocket, the machine wasn’t off.  It was only resting, as if it wanted to be alert to his need.

Today, he wasn’t meditating as much as enjoying being alone.  He was sitting in the pilot’s seat, watching schools of fish swim past the view screens, head propped on one hand while the other ran idly over the control panel.

For some reason—perhaps I’m just being whimsical today?—he half expected Blue to snap playfully at the fish.

Sven had never been one to believe in animism, to accept that computers could become sentient and “wake up”.  The longer he was exposed to the Lions, however, the more willing he was to admit that he might—might—possibly be wrong, because there were times when he almost felt that Blue was alive beneath his fingers.

He’d always had mostly above average scores in the flight sims, and he knew he was a good pilot, but the way the Lion reacted to his commands . . . well.  Only something that was alive could respond so quickly and well.

You are quite right, my friend.

Slowly, Sven blinked, looked down at his console, then around the cockpit.  “So . . . it is alive,” he said, and was unsurprised at the wonder in his voice.

My Lions are sentient machines, but to reach their full potential, they must have as their pilots those with an open mind, who can accept that sometimes, strange and wonderful things can happen to those who believe . . .

Sven waited, breath caught in his throat, but the voice did not speak again.

It was still some time before he left Blue.

***

Honestly, Keith never thought he would like the Lions.

From the very first, despite how desperately the Princess and Coran believed that the five of them had come to save Arus from Zarkon, he’d had his doubts.  He’d hidden them, of course, because, even as pragmatic as he was, he just couldn’t pull the last hope away from a people as beaten as the Arusians.  They needed to have something to believe in, and if it was him and his team, so be it.

When he’d seen the Lions, his first thought hadn’t been about how powerful they looked, how sleek and deadly, but that they were great mechanical monstrosities that could never fly.  He’d been more interested in how they might form Voltron . . . and why, when Voltron had been broken, it had fallen as Lions, rather than something else.

To him, it meant that behind the legend, there must be another legend, and then, somehow, the truth.

Maybe that was why was out at Black, rather than doing research in the castle’s archives.  All he had found there were fragmentary reports anyway, in what few books had been untouched when the library had been damaged.  The accounts, though, were surprisingly recent, though they ended quite abruptly when Doom had taken over.

No, he thought, looking around Black’s cockpit, if there are answers to my questions, they’re going to be here, in the databases and schematics that pilots in battle are too busy to look at.

When he sat down and touched the control panel to access the Lion’s computer, Black hummed around him, and he had to double check just to make sure that he hadn’t automatically put the key in its slot.

It took a moment or two for what was happening to register fully in his mind, and when it did, Keith slowly pulled his hands away from the console, staring down at it in disbelief.

Black was purring.

He stood up, started to edge back to the access hatch.  This is more than just legend, he thought, and felt himself teetering on the brink of hysteria.  This is just . . . insane.

Black only wants to you to like him, young man.

The voice sounded stern, and it penetrated his skull to register directly in his brain.  He stopped, refused to look around, because he knew he was alone, and said nothing.

My Lions only desire to please their pilots, the disembodied voice went on.  If you wish to become one with Black, you must put aside your doubts and believe in him.

“Your Lions?” The words burst out of him before Keith knew he was even going to speak.  “What do you mean, your Lions?”

My Lions . . . I designed them, built them . . . they are as dear to me as children . . . The voice seemed to be fading.

“What? Wait!”

But there was no response to his call.

***

“I’ve been having very strange dreams lately, Coran.”

Coran looked away from the view screens displaying the Voltron Force at practice, and instead, studied his ward.  “What kind of dreams, Princess?”

Allura frowned delicately.  “I keep dreaming of my father.  I know you think I’m foolish,” she continued quickly, seeing that Coran had opened his mouth to respond.  “I know what you’re going to say—I dream of him often.  But these dreams are different.  The other dreams, the ones I had before . . . those were of the past, of when Father and Mother were both alive, or when Father would take me with him on his travels.”

She looked thoughtful, and slightly worried.  “Now, though . . . he’s telling me things about the Lions, things that I know very well he never said when he was alive, because when he was designing and building them, I was too young to understand.”

Coran rubbed his chin.  It was his opinion that Allura was remembering things that had actually occurred, that the presence of the pilots and their discussions about their craft were helping her to recall things that she thought she had forgotten about.  It was quite possible that she was remembering words and phrases that her father had actually said.

But he also knew that the Princess wanted to believe in King Alfor’s continued presence in her life.  Her imagination was strong enough that it was quite easy for her to accept that he was a ghost, intent only on her well-being.

Before he could say any of these things, though, she spoke again.  Her words were slow, contemplative; clearly, though she was looking at him, she didn’t see him.  “He keeps saying that the Voltron Force can do even more than they think they can.  They must believe in the Lions, that miraculous things may happen when they do.”  She blinked and returned to the present. 

In spite of himself, Coran asked, “What do you think he means by that?”  Alfor had never spoken to him about the plans for the Lions, so if the Princess thought he had answers for her, she was quite sorely mistaken.

“I think that he means that the Lions are alive, and that they are magical, and that through those magical powers, they can do nearly anything, as long as their pilots believe in them.  The Lions must have a rapport with their pilots in order to work.  Skilled pilots are best, of course, especially young  ones, but . . . in the end, the belief and love are the keys. ” Without waiting for his reaction, she turned her attention to the view screens once more, watching as the Voltron Force put the Lions through their paces.

Inwardly, Coran cringed.  That was the answer he’d both expected and dreaded.  He wanted to sigh at her romantic notions, wanted to tell her there was no such thing as ghosts, that magic was what the uneducated called science, that she could never rule if she continued to dream those silly, schoolgirl dreams.

In the end, though, he said nothing.  There was nothing he could say to shake her beliefs, he knew that well enough.  Silently, he studied the screens, observing as the Lions danced through the air.

And, for one moment, he wondered if maybe she was right.

***

January 6, 2006