Prince Lotor

It isn't as though he hadn't once allowed himself to think that something like this might inevitably happen. Because how else had he lived up until now, than to assume that someone something or was going to attempt to get him, or take him back under their control? The worst case scenario of Zarkon not being fully dead or debilitated had been something that had been an undercurrent to his thoughts every so often - just one potential, one possibility. No matter how much he wanted for things to be under his control...

The fact was, he'd never had the power he'd thought he'd had. Not in the ways that he'd hoped. Underneath it all, he'd always known, too - and that was the rub of it, really.

But what he hadn't expected was for the ship he'd created from the comet that matched the descriptions of how Voltron had first been engineered to be so alive, for it to act in the ways that it had, to get inside their heads-

He still remembered crashing on a planet not too far from a fleet outpost. Which normally wouldn't have been a bad thing - he could make his way there, and then from there back to his generals, and that would be it, he'd be back on his feet. But this time, he'd had his father's entire empire breathing down his back, with both accusations of betrayal and unnerving interest in the ships that were his - his team's - and those feelings of how none of them were going to ever be taken, controlled, ever again... the ships had moved almost of their own accord, everyone panicking as one, forced in different directions.

It hadn't been pure chance that had found the Voltron Paladins landing on the planet. He was injured, running low on supplies, and with no method of communication outside of his own ship. He knew how these Paladins worked, he knew what would bring them running over. 

He'd also known that, as long as he didn't aim at hurting them first - not counting their previous encounters - they would treat him with more honour than most Galran prisoners were treated, or at least, so Acxa said, and he had no reason to doubt her word.

It hadn't surprised him that while the Paladins were still planetside and discussing the pros and cons of letting him onboard, a casket containing what the Yellow Paladin - Hunk - had started to call a 'Robeast', had also arrived.

What had been a surprise was the fact that, again, their head was seeming to be absent. He could count all of the colours present aside from Black, at least. He made a passing comment that given he was well used to being the head of his own comet-created ship, he could fill in seen as there was clearly a gap - except that then Keith, the one in the Red Lion's armour, made a line toward the Black Lion, and the one in blue went for red.

For a moment, it seemed as though everything was going to work out. But then he realised that they were calling for someone else, who was coughing so hard that it was clear that they were in no fit state to fly, let alone fly a Voltron Lion, and the words Well, what do we do? This thing is attacking the townspeople, but we can't kill it without Voltron, and without Blue, we can't form Voltron reaching his helmet through the static.

His own prior words of It looks like you're missing something, perhaps I could help come back to bite him, because when he goes to jump into his own ship, the Blue Lion, sitting attentively nearby, opens up to him.

Somehow - somehow - they managed to win. Without causing too much undue damage to either the civilians, or his ship, which he could still feel in his mind, poking curiously at what was clearly the presence of the Blue Lion. 

"Like I said before," Keith says once they've landed on solid ground again, "I don't like this. But you just showed that you can work with us as well as you can work against us, so. I'm willing to give it a go."

"Well," Lance adds in, "that and I trust Blue. She wouldn't let anyone in if she didn't see something in them, right?"

Which was, of course, how he'd ended up - temporarily, of course, only until the situation was fixed to a satisfactory extent and he could meet back up with Zethrid, Acxor, Narti and Ezor - in the Paladins' Altean Castleship, half by choice and half because there was simply nowhere else he could go.

The sheer fascination of the Altean engineering and history and the fact that he wasn't under constant threat of death made the actual gradually dissipating distrust and outright disagreements almost bearable.