Title:  A Pain That I’m Used To
Author:  Cheezey

Theme:  Doomite Fic

Characters/Pairings:  Cossack, Lotor

Album and Song: Depeche Mode – Playing the Angel; “A Pain That I’m Used To”

Rating/Genre:  K+ / Drama

Summary:  Doom's recent string of defeats has left both Cossack and Lotor's moods quite foul, except this time it’s not Lotor that reaches his boiling point first.

Author’s Notes:  Cossack is the least angsty of the Doomites, which ironically is why I wanted to write about him for this song.  It’s set in the immediate aftermath in the last Season Two episode.

 

 

The sound of an explosion, yet another in a series of increasingly violent ones, filled the air around him as he ran, followed by a hot blast that nearly cut short his escape.  He lurched to the side to dodge it just as the ground beneath his feet shook again.  Commander Cossack cursed under his breath and quickened his pace even more even as he leapt up over the foot-wide crack that appeared beneath his feet from out of nowhere.  His ship was only a few more yards away, but the world was quickly falling to pieces around him, and he could not get to the ship and off of that asteroid fast enough.  Another quake rumbled ominously around him just as he approached the craft he and Prince Lotor had come to gods-forsaken place in, and he traversed the final few feet onto the ramp and made it inside with a surprisingly agile adrenaline-enhanced jump.  Once inside, he shouted to the idle robot pilot to start the engines pronto and turned back around to take a final look at the disaster he was about to leave behind.

 

Still out on the doomed landscape as he had not had the lead Cossack had, Lotor ran for his life toward the ship, his white hair flying wildly behind him as he crossed the hostile plain of shaking ground, noxious gases spewing from ever-widening cracks beneath his feet, and an ever-darkening atmosphere full of debris and smoke.  More columns of fire burst forth from the rock and dirt, reaching for the ashen sky all around the fleeing prince.  “Come on Lotor,” Cossack grumbled with growing impatience and anxiousness.  He cast a nervous glance at the robot pilot before turning back to see if Lotor was any closer.  They were cutting it so close…

 

The ship engines came online just as Lotor reached the ship.  Without a second of delay Cossack snapped at the pilot, “Get us the hell out of here, now!” 

 

The entry hatch had only been closed behind Lotor for what seemed like a nanosecond before the vessel lifted up, blasting into the atmosphere of the dying planetoid and leaving it behind for the safety of deep space.  The abrupt takeoff knocked both Doomites off their footing for a moment, and as Cossack straightened and got his bearings he looked at the bridge’s view screen.  It displayed a disconcerting picture of just how narrowly they had escaped; they cleared the chain of explosions that spelled the end of the unstable asteroid they had lured the Voltron Force and Merla to pretending that it was planet Doom—he was still amazed they pulled that off, and that not a one of them had thought to check their instrument panels—with only seconds to spare.

 

While Cossack remained silent, Lotor fumed with unspent fury.  “I hope he was blown to bits!” he raged, referring to the Voltron pilot Keith.  Just before their inglorious escape, Keith had bested Lotor in a hand combat duel as a final insult added to the embarrassing injury that was their defeat and failure.

 

“Yeah, the asshole stole my light sword,” Cossack said sourly.  Although the sword was the least of his concerns at the moment, losing a weapon he had only requisitioned a week prior was just one more thing pissing him off—and at the moment, there were plenty of those.

 

The robot pilot dashed their hopes that they might at least have seen the end of their enemies with its next update.  “Scanners indicate five lion ships in the immediate vicinity on a projected course in line with planet Arus.”

 

“What?” Lotor roared.  “No!”  He drew his sword and threw it in the robot’s general direction.  Fortunately, that model was agile and the prince’s aim was not what it would be had he been five feet closer, and it only stabbed a relatively unimportant section of the console.

 

Meanwhile Cossack continued to glower.  “Of course.  Letting us have that much would’ve been too generous,” he muttered in overt and clearly aggravated sarcasm while an angry and nauseous feeling gnawed in the pit of his stomach.  It occurred to him just what a complete and utter waste of time and resources their mission had been.  Though he was not averse to the idea of taking a gamble if the payoff was good enough, that had been over the top and he chastised himself for going along with it when he knew it was crazy from the start.  He’d had reservations when the idea was brought up, but he knew Lotor was counting on him, and he did not want to disappoint him.  Lotor’s approval was something the commander valued highly, and hey, the mission did have the perk of allowing him to rile Merla by showing up on her “No Boys Allowed” planet and letting him insult the Voltron fools while wearing a King Zarkon mask.  But it was hardly worth the indignity of defeat, and that debacle ranked up there with most rank of defeats he had endured—and with the Voltron force involved, there had been some doozies.  In fact, Lotor had come up with a number of those as of late, and Cossack was growing increasingly sick of having to be there while they were explained to King Zarkon, especially when he was the one that wound up receiving the brunt of whatever rolled downhill from Zarkon directly and then indirectly from what Zarkon gave to Lotor.  That time even Haggar had not been there, and Cossack wished that she had been.  Though the old witch had her quirks, she might have been able to help salvage that mess.

 

A tense silence settled over the bridge while the robot continued to pilot, Lotor started pacing, and Cossack remained rigidly where he stood, arms crossed and yellow eyes narrowing further as he stared at the image of the shrinking fireball on the monitor.  What galled him most was that the insane plan had actually worked… for a while, anyway.  Their wild gamble of a constructing a hasty Castle Doom replica on a throwaway world, using tons of lazon, and banking their expensive efforts on an unbelievable level gullibility and stupidity on the part of both Queen Merla and the Voltron pilots had actually paid off.  Merla bit on Lotor’s corny line about changing and falling in love with her and even more unbelievably, the Voltron force bought Lotor’s sob story that he had changed because of their compassion and Merla’s love.  Cossack nearly gagged thinking about how much bullshit Lotor must have spewed to pass that one off, and the biggest whopper of them all, his expressed desire to take down his tyrannical father for the good of the galaxy.  The part about wanting to oust Zarkon might have been true, Cossack mused sourly, but it certainly had no roots in noble reasons and it was about the only part that had a single grain of truth in it.

 

But then Lotor’s brilliant—and although it was crazy, Cossack conceded that it could rightfully be called such given that it had worked—plan went down in flames like so many robeasts at the unfriendly end of Voltron’s blazing sword.  Only that time their defeat was not due to the blazing sword or just plain bad luck, but because once again, the prince lost his focus and started thinking out of his pants. 

 

The realization inspired Cossack’s features to twist into a visible scowl.  He remembered how he had overheard the beginning of the end of their scheme through a small ear receiver that he had been wearing in the Zarkon disguise to listen for cues that the Voltron Force was on the way to confront “Zarkon.”  Lotor had been leading them in and Princess Allura complemented him, saying how wonderful Lotor was now that he had changed and was acting like a “real prince.”  Real prince, yeah right kid, you ought to know by now princes aren’t any different from any other men, he thought with disgust at her saccharine naïveté, and had the mean thought that he hoped she wound up with one that had a fetish for violating insipid blonds with toys in acts that would make a seasoned veteran of a bordello blush.

 

Of course, such words from the object of Lotor’s obsession eradicated rational thought from the prince’s brain and he jumped at the chance to profess his love for her, forgetting that he was supposed to be a reformed man in love with Merla.  While Cossack could identify with a desire to act when it meant getting something one really wanted, even someone as impulsive and short-sighted as he was often accused of being knew better than to jeopardize an entire mission just to get laid.

 

His discontent escalated into an audible growl.  Haggar’s right, he really is a fucking idiot sometimes, he thought angrily.  And I’m getting tired as hell of being caught up in it!

 

No wonder Merla had told Lotor off and left.  It would have been a lie if Cossack had said he had not been seriously tempted, if only for a moment, to blast off and leave that selfish fool behind.  Of course he did not, and deep down Cossack knew he would not, could not, do such a thing.  Not to Lotor.

 

And that made him angriest of all.  To feel like a chump, taken advantage of, and generally made miserable by someone he could not kill or at least beat to the point of putting him in traction, someone he trusted and respected, and not do anything about it went against the very grain of his Doomite nature—even a Doomite as relatively even-tempered as Cossack the Terrible.

 

Plucking the earlier thrown blade disgustedly from the console and re-sheathing it in his belt, Lotor strode over to Cossack, who glared back at him in stony silence.  “That was a disaster,” he declared with a distinctly accusatory note in his voice.

 

“No shit,” was Cossack’s blunt response.

 

“Father is going to be furious when he finds out how much lazon we used, and that the Voltron Force all survived.”  Lotor eyed him expectantly, as if waiting for him to assume responsibility.

 

Cossack stared right back at Lotor, giving him no such satisfaction.  Instead all he said was an equally acidic, “Yeah.”

 

“How do we explain this to him?” Lotor demanded.

 

“‘We?’” Cossack repeated dubiously. 

 

“Yes, we.  Don’t think that you’re not taking your fair share of the blame for this.  It was you that—”

 

The tenuous hold Cossack had on his temper snapped.  “That what?” he cut him off in heated challenged.  “Me that blew everything?  I don’t think so.  I just stood there and wore a mask and insulted a bunch of flyboy pilots pretending to be your dad.  I gave you a ride to Merla’s.  I helped you,” he pointed out, and straightened so that he faced the taller man as eye-to-eye as their statures allowed.  “You were all ready to take the credit for spelling the end of Voltron and duping Queenie.  So you can take the credit for this fuck-up yourself.”  He waved his hand dramatically.  “I was just along for the ride.”

 

Lotor was livid.  “You dare to say this was my fault?”

 

“Yup,” Cossack said with unapologetic flippancy before adding, “And this time, I’m not taking the heat for it.”

 

“You’ll take whatever I give you,” Lotor said menacingly. 

 

Cossack let out a bitter laugh.  “Yeah, don’t I always?  Well not this time, Lotor.  I’m tired of it.  I’ll follow your orders as long as you keep them straight, but when you say one thing and do another it gets really old figuring out what to do and what your priority is when it changes constantly.  Destroy Voltron, but don’t hurt its blue leg.  Take over the planet, but don’t hurt or upset the pretty blond standing in the way.  Haggar might have a crystal ball to help her figure out what the fuck your plans are one minute to the next, but I’m fresh out and little brown robes don’t do much for me anyway,” he unloaded, his sarcasm laced with a level of venom few, including Lotor, ever heard from Cossack.  “This was your brainstorm.  You made the mess.  I’m not cleaning it up for you.”  He turned away from Lotor, shaking from anger.  “You’re lucky I’m not the type that would’ve just left you there.”  He then slammed his hand against the wall and stormed down the corridor, headed for the inner cargo chamber, anywhere Lotor was not.

 

Lotor, however, was hardly the type to let such an outburst pass, and he pursued him with swift and equally furious steps.  No sooner had Cossack stomped into the cargo bay and hit the mechanism to close the door with a heavy palm than Lotor appeared in it, shoving the mechanical door aside long enough to pass through with surprising ease.  “How dare you speak to me like that?” he hollered in what had changed to a very personal anger now directed at Cossack rather than the enemies who had sparked it earlier.  While Cossack running his mouth was nothing Lotor had not witnessed before, the commander had never been so openly flippant and hostile to him.  On the surface it angered him, but on a deeper level it hurt, for while he generally treated Cossack like he did any inferior, he truly did not regard the commander nearly as inferior as others beneath him.

 

Before Cossack could even answer, Lotor took three bold strides forward and shoved him roughly against the metal wall.  “I am a royal prince, your prince!”

 

To Lotor’s surprise Cossack did not shrink back, either from intimidation or respect, only stiffened his posture glowered right back at him.  “With royally shitty judgment, your highness,” he snarled back with sarcastic emphasis on the title.

 

Lotor’s hand fell to the hilt of his sword.  “I won’t tolerate your disrespect!” he warned.

 

“What, you going to kill me for telling the truth?” Cossack retorted, and shoved Lotor’s arm, either believing the threat to be a bluff or simply not caring because of how angry he was.  “Though I guess I’d make a better scapegoat that way, dead men tell no tales and all.  Never mind that if you’d just told me what you wanted to do—”

 

The laser sword surged to life and Lotor brought the tip to the other man’s throat.  “I don’t owe you any explanations.  You are my subject, Cossack.  You follow my orders.  You don’t question them.”

 

“I wouldn’t have to if you clued me on what you’re actually gonna do and follow through on.”  Some of the malice was gone from Cossack’s tone, his words more sour and sullen than truly defiant.  Whether that was simply because Lotor’s blade was inches from his neck or rooted in something more in addition to that was hard to say, although what he said next hinted that it was the latter.  “Do you even get why I’m so pissed?”

 

“I don’t care,” Lotor retorted, although the question did elicit a raised brow from the prince.  He did not lower his sword, but he did lower his voice a notch.  “What part of our plan do you think didn’t play out like we planned, aside from the Voltron Force getting away?”

 

Casting a wary glance at the glowing blade at his neck, Cossack straightened to arch away from it and quoted in a melodramatic tone, “‘Marry me, Allura.”  He frowned in disgust.  “When you first came to me with this scheme I wondered if you’d gotten cracked in the head when you said we were going to Merla’s planet so you could patch things up with her and seal that marriage deal your father and her worked out, and I about lost my lunch at the whole ‘modest castle on a small planet’ bit back in her chicks-only castle, but you never told me you weren’t serious about it.”

 

That time Lotor did lower his sword, and stared back at him.  “You heard that.  Were you listening at the door?”  The accusation was one of surprise as opposed to indignation.  Apparently Lotor did not find eavesdropping nearly as serious a crime as open defiance.

 

“Kinda,” Cossack admitted, meeting the prince’s pointed look.  After a moment he added, “I couldn’t help it.  The dwarf chick guards were doing it too.  They couldn’t believe it either.”

 

His temper now cooled to a non-murderous level, Lotor sheathed his blade and shook his head at Cossack.  “All this time serving me, and you actually thought I wanted Merla, and were surprised I acted on that perfect chance to make Allura mine?  Merla,” he frowned disdainfully, “means nothing to me.”

 

Cossack shrugged wearily.  “She saved your life.  Lots of guys have fallen in love for less.”

 

“And I thanked her.  But I don’t owe her anything, love or anything else,” Lotor asserted.  “At best Merla’s a suitable body to fill a role in the royal hierarchy if Father insists I marry someone before I capture Allura.  For that, Merla could’ve been useful.  But given the choice between her or Allura?”  He shook his head again.  “How dumb are you, Cossack?”

 

The sting in Lotor’s words made Cossack bristle.  Though Cossack was used to being treated and thought of as dense, it only bothered him from those he actually respected, especially when said individual was guilty of behavior that was, in his opinion, far dumber than his.  “Well, I thought you were into Queenie, the gods know why.”  He folded his arms.  “I didn’t say I thought it made sense.  But it is what you said, and you didn’t tell me the whole thing was about getting your mitts on Allura.”

 

Lotor straightened importantly.  “That was a fringe benefit.  The goal was getting rid of Voltron.”

 

“Right,” Cossack said in a tone that was sarcastic, but could have been taken as simple agreement.  It was subtle enough that Lotor did not call it into question even though it was the former and not the latter.  “So what would you have done if you had to marry Merla before getting Allura?”

 

A cruel smile spread across the prince’s lips.  “What do you think?  Allura would—she will—be by my side one way or another.  I’d have her as my slave until she could be my bride.  I make sure I get what I want, Cossack.  You ought to know that.”

 

Cossack nodded.  “Yeah, I know that all right.”  He looked away.  “I would’ve helped you, you know.  If I’d known you were going to try to sweet talk Allura, I probably could’ve set it up to get her separated from the others—”

 

“I doubt it.  Besides, I needed Merla to trust me.  Not read your idle thoughts and pick up on something she shouldn’t.”

 

“Kinda like she read yours, you mean?”

 

“I didn’t count on that,” Lotor admitted.  “I thought if she was blinded by her personal feelings...”

 

“Love is blind, but telepaths see better than most.”  Cossack sighed.  “But really sire, you could’ve trusted me,” he said with a look in his eyes that showed just how disappointed he was that lasted only for a brief moment.  “I’m your right hand man, after all.  Doom’s fleet commander.  Head honcho after you and your dad!  Partner in crime!  Loyal comrade in battle—”

 

Lotor cut him off sternly.  “Which is the only reason I didn’t kill you for mouthing off like that.  But don’t push me,” he warned.  “I won’t tolerate insolence, even from...”

 

Cossack’s melodramatic demeanor shifted into one of genuine curiosity and anticipation as he waited for Lotor to finish his sentence.  Though the prince and commander shared an implicit level of trust, for Lotor did confide in Cossack on a level he did not most others, that closeness—which Cossack felt had been violated earlier that day and had been at the root of his foul mood and outburst—had never been acknowledged in any serious way.  For someone, even a noble-born Doomite like Cossack, to address Doom’s royalty with such familiarity as even “friend” implied without consent was to tread on dangerous ground, especially when the royalty in question was as prone to moodiness as Prince Lotor.  

 

“...from you,” Lotor finished with exasperation. 

 

“Gotcha,” Cossack said as the last of his anger ebbed, leaving only a drained and confused state behind.  Though it disappointed him that Lotor did not call him whatever it was Lotor felt he was to him, the fact that he had let him get away with talking to him like that without any repercussions made it clear that it was something important regardless, and that went far in assuaging his foul mood.  Maybe, Cossack hoped naively, it would even mean that Lotor might think about a thing or two he said. 

 

Lotor meanwhile wanted only one thing, and that was to put the misery of the entire fiasco behind him.  “I’m going to the captain’s quarters,” he said in a tone that left no room for argument and invited no company.  “Watch the bridge.”  He then turned abruptly and exited, leaving Cossack alone in the cargo chamber.

 

Gaze fixed on the prince’s retreating form, Cossack muttered, “Have one for me, Lotor.”   Knowing the prince as he did, it was a given that after being denied the pleasure of indulgence in the spoils of victory, he would make up for it with indulgence in another vice.  Given the absence of any harem girls on the ship and not having a captive princess he was obsessed with readily available, it was an easy guess that the company of wine in his bed would serve as the runner up.  That was the Lotor he knew, the one he was used to.

 

Cossack sighed and made his way back toward the bridge.  “The gods know I could use it myself.”

 

* * *

 

“A Pain That I’m Used To”

Lyrics by Martin L. Gore

 

I’m not sure what I’m looking for anymore
I just know that I’m harder to console
I don’t see who I’m trying to be instead of me
But the key is a question of control
 
Can you say what you’re trying to play anyway
I just pay while you’re breaking all the rules
All the signs that I find have been underlined
Devils thrive on the drive that is fuelled
 
All this running around
Well it’s getting me down
Just give me a pain that I’m used to
I don’t need to believe
All the dreams you conceive
You just need to achieve
Something that rings true
 
There’s a hole in your soul like an animal
With no conscience

Repentance unknown
Close your eyes
Pay the price for your paradise
Devils feed on the seeds that are sown
 
Can’t conceal what I feel
What I know is real
No mistaking the faking
I care
With a prayer in the air
I will leave it there
On a note full of hope not despair
 
All this running around
Well it’s getting me down
Just give me a pain that I’m used to
I don’t need to believe
All the dreams you conceive
You just need to achieve
Something that rings true

 

 

 

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