Title: Damaged People
Author: Cheezey
Theme: Doomite Fic
Characters/Pairings: Cossack, Haggar; Cossack/Lotor and Haggar/Zarkon implied
Album and Song: Depeche Mode – Playing the Angel; “Damaged People”
Rating/Genre: T, Y / Drama, Angst
Summary: When Cossack gets an unexpected glimpse at one
of Haggar’s personal effects it sparks a conversation neither particularly want
to have.
Author's Notes: This song about dysfunctional relationships brought to mind Haggar and Zarkon right off the bat, but as I got to developing the idea I thought it would make a nice twist to include Cossack and Lotor as well.
Cossack walked into Haggar’s lab, not bothering with the courtesy of a knock as he generally did not when he went to see the witch, and upon finding the chamber temporarily abandoned, he frowned and looked around. “She calls me down here and isn’t even around,” he grumbled with annoyance to himself. The commander’s mood was somewhat foul and his temper was on the shorter side than usual. His recent argument with Lotor on the way back from the debacle on the fake Doom still weighed on his mind. Even though things had resolved relatively easily and peacefully, the situation still nagged at him in an unpleasant way, and the memory of Lotor holding him at sword point for telling the truth was one he found hard to banish from his thoughts.
He glanced around the room, wondering where Haggar had gone off to. Her cat was nowhere in sight, but her altar candles were still burning as though someone would return before long, her crystal orb had the glow of recent use, and things were laid out on her bench top in a manner that suggested they were still needed. “Guess even ugly old witches need to use the can once in a while,” Cossack mused aloud, and leaned against a table to wait.
It was then that he noticed the closed leather bound book on the tabletop beside him. A snuffed candle was beside it, but the faint scent of wax in the air and tacky wax pooled inside its top indicated it had not been that way for long. “A spell book? Wonder what’s in it.” He picked it up. He was surprised to find no arcane writings of magical verse or heavy scientific theory inside, but glossy images affixed to its pages instead. His yellow eyes widened. “Haggar has a picture album. Who’d have guessed?” Absently he flipped through the pages, but the vast majority of the pictures were of individuals he did not recognize. He supposed that a woman as old as Haggar probably had pictures of many who had kicked the bucket long before his time in the universe.
One image gave him pause, and he took a few steps into brighter lighting to get a better look at it. It was a picture of Zarkon, or if not, a relative of his that bore a very strong resemblance. He was wearing ceremonial war gear that Cossack recognized as being from a time period a good century and a half past, carrying a weapon that looked like a hybrid of a scythe and sword, with sharp points on either end of the blade. “Yikes. I wouldn’t want to be on the unfriendly end of that thing.” He made a face.
He continued to flip through the pages again, recognizing a face here and there, but mostly just browsing to kill the time. He had just turned a page when he heard a sudden creak behind him, and felt a cold rush of air that ruffled his cape and sent a chill against his back. Flinching out of instinct like a child caught stealing sweets from the candy dish, Cossack straightened and nearly dropped the book as he spun around. He had already opened his mouth to give an explanation to Haggar, who he knew from experience could be touchy about her things being handled, that he wasn’t snooping and that he had just been bored waiting for her, but he found that he was about to apologize profusely to her cat instead. Coba had pushed the closed but unlatched lab door that Cossack had entered through back open and brought the chilly draft along with him.
“Oh, it’s just you.” He cast the feline a friendly smile, and then said, “You won’t tell on me, will ya?”
Coba looked up at him with a gaze that seemed to say, “Yeah right.”
Cossack frowned. “And I thought we were pals.” He tossed the album back down on the tabletop, and it fell open to the page his hand had been on. On one page was a picture of yet another individual Cossack did not recognize standing with two children, presumably in her care. The caretaker was an alien from a world in the coral quadrant, but the children were Doomite and clad in expensive looking garments bearing the royal crest. One was a young girl and the other an infant of no more than six months, and Cossack guessed that they were Zarkon’s children and the woman their nanny, for the girl had the same scaly complexion and old world Doomite ears as the king. He had only seen Princess Vanarya in passing; she had been married to Prince Xarleth of planet Sulqin for many years, but once he made the connection it was easy to figure out that the infant was Lotor. Seeing that cherubic little face served as an unwelcome reminder that even so many years later Lotor still acted in ways that resembled that picture, and Cossack turned his gaze sharply from the image. The last thing he wanted to dwell on was Lotor and his recent behavior.
His gaze then fell upon the picture on the opposite page instead, that of a pretty humanoid female. It was a black and white image that showed its subject from the knees up. She had long light-colored hair that was neatly swept back from her face and behind her shoulders, allowing the one who had captured the image to take in the full detail of her shape-hugging dress, pale skin, and delicate fingers clutching a wooden magical staff. Cossack did not recognize her either, and thought it a shame. “Nice looking chick,” he remarked aloud. “She makes carrying one of those sticks look witchy and sexy. Haggar ought to take a few tips from her.”
“What are you doing?” The sound of Haggar’s shrill voice unexpectedly from behind cut him off with surprising venom and ice.
Immediately Cossack whirled around with a sheepish and surprised look on his face. That look shifted to one of apology when he noticed the unusually irate look upon her dark features directed squarely and fiercely at him. “Uh, nothing. Just looking around while I waited for you.”
She continued to glare at him. “I’ve told you to leave my things alone.”
“I was just looking at a book,” Cossack replied, frowning. Although he accepted that he had earned some admonishing, her overtly snotty tone struck him as over the top and uncalled for. “And if you’re so worried about it, don’t call me here and then not be here when I show up. Or lock your door. Yeesh.”
The old witch’s eyes narrowed, but all she did was walk past him, shut the album, and carry it back to the bookshelf instead. “Most everyone in the castle is smart enough to know better than to rummage through my things. I thought a lock was redundant when it’s common knowledge that anyone who gets on my bad side is robeast fodder.”
Rolling his eyes at the continued lecture, Cossack answered, “Okay okay, I’m sorry. There. Satisfied now?” He glanced at the bookshelf. “So who is the lady with the stick anyway? Friend of yours? Old pal from witching school or something?”
“Why do you ask?” Her tone remained noticeably irritated.
“Just curious,” he replied with a shrug. “She was kind of cute. I’d date her.”
Her face flattened to an expression somewhere between disgust and disbelief. “I don’t think so.”
“No?”
“No,” she repeated harshly, and then added with a pointed look, “I don’t think she’s your type.”
Cossack raised a brow at that odd statement. “Oh really? And you, with the expert insight on Doom’s dating scene that only an ugly old witch who hasn’t seen action in two hundred years can have, know this how?”
Haggar met his sarcastic response with one of her own. “Because I see who you do and don’t pay attention to for more than five minutes, and it’s not any alleged girlfriend or whore you happen past on a bad night.” She bent down to pick up Coba, rubbing against her ankles, and finished with a catty look of her own at the commander, “And if you had any sense at all in what’s under your helmet, you’d realize that he’s not worth it.”
Her words went through Cossack like a bolt of lightning, and it was his turn to snap and glare defensively. “What?”
She lowered her voice and raised her chin in a haughty manner while scratching Coba behind the ears. “You know exactly what, and who, I’m talking about.” She then turned and set Coba down on the console. “You all think you’re so stealthy,” she sneered as she began to key in a calibration sequence. “And you’re all as transparent as this glass.” She rapped her fingers against the bio chamber for effect.
Taking three fast strides, Cossack was at her side in a flash, glaring down at her harshly. “I don’t know what you’re getting at, but—”
Unfazed, she stared back into his angry eyes. “I may be old, Cossack, but I’m not blind. Do you really think nobody notices? For someone as ‘terrible’ as you say you are, as you make yourself known to be to your reports, you sure do concede to him, hang on his every word, go along with his every scheme, even when he treats you like something he’d just as soon scrape off his boot. I think it threw him when you did tell him off the other day.” She chortled darkly. “I was rather proud of you when I heard that. I didn’t think you had it in you.”
The witch’s blunt honesty putting into words what Cossack was not quite able to admit even to himself caught him completely off guard, and he became increasingly agitated as he fumbled through heated words to respond. “Lotor? You think I’ve—what?” He trailed off with a growl and continued to glare at her for a moment until he regained some focus. “Lotor happens to be the prince,” he snapped sourly. “So yeah, I kinda take his orders seriously.”
“Even if it means defying Zarkon.”
“I never defied Zarkon,” he said in heated retort. “Maybe played loosely with some interpretation, but hey, when Lotor’s giving direct orders that don’t follow his rules, what the hell am I supposed to do?”
“Whatever Lotor says,” Haggar answered with false sweetness.
“Exactly!”
“Except,” she continued in the same saccharine tone, “there are ways around that. I do it all the time. How do you think I’ve managed to keep my position so long?”
The irony he saw in her words inspired a dark and snide chuckle from Cossack. “You really don’t want me to answer that.”
That time it was Haggar’s turn to blink in surprise. “Meaning what?”
“Meaning I think maybe you’re projecting.”
“As if you even know what that means,” the old witch scoffed back at him.
Cossack folded his arms across his chest. “It means you’re looking at me dealing with Lotor and thinking it’s just like whatever messed up deal you’ve had going on for the last hundred years or whatever with King Zarkon,” he said flatly, both insulted by her insinuation that he was too stupid to use big words properly and challenging her to deny that what he had said was true at the same time.
His statement had the intended effect on Haggar, and the old witch stiffened and pointed her staff at Cossack in a way that just dared him to give her reason to use it. “You know nothing about my relationship with Zarkon.”
“Nothing except that you call it a relationship,” Cossack retorted with a snort. “So I guess we’re even, ‘cause you know zip about me and Lotor.”
She cast a brief glance in the direction of her crystal orb. “Do I?” He inhaled sharply and followed her gaze while she continued. “Tell me, Cossack, how did you sleep last night? Would you have slept any better knowing he had a nice long conversation with Allura over a decanter of wine while he stared at the painting that makes him think of her? Or would that have just kept you up even later, maybe pacing all the way up to the throne room at two hours before dawn instead of just to the control center and back three times?”
A dark scowl crossed Cossack’s haggard features. “Is this what you do when you turn a hundred billion years old? Spy on everyone because you’re so old and lonely pining for someone who hasn’t given you the time of day since the dawn of time, that you got nothing better to do? Take up a hobby or groom Coba or something. He could probably use it.” He slammed his hand against the nearby tabletop while Coba mewled indignantly in his direction.
“The truth hurts, doesn’t it?” Haggar’s tone was as acidic as his as she stroked the cat’s back.
“Is that the voice of experience?” he snapped churlishly.
Haggar stared hard at him. “I’ve got more experience than you think.” She lowered her voice, and a note of what could almost be called sympathy or concern crept into it. “And you’d be wise to heed the wisdom it’s given me. Not that I expect you’ll pay attention; I’m not as charismatic as Lotor after all.” She paused and added with a cruel, almost coy sneer, “And let’s face it, I don’t swing a sword as prettily as he does, either.”
Curling his fingertips against the stone wall, Cossack replied through gritted teeth, “You’re really pushing it, Haggar.”
“And you’re letting him—and me—get to you entirely too much for your own good.” She let the truth of her observation hang in the air for a moment before she strode back over to the bookshelf upon which she had replaced the photo album. “I’m going to give you some friendly advice, Cossack, even though you’ll probably ignore it anyway and I’m more than likely wasting my breath.” She traced a dark and bony finger along the book’s spine. “They’re poison,” she said, her creaky voice laced with the slightest hiss of contemptuous pain. “Every last one of them. Get too close to them, and they’ll ruin you.”
The commander let out an acerbic chortle as he looked back at her. “Says the bitter old kettle to the pot about how black it is.”
One of the witch’s thin eyebrows rose from beneath the shadows of her hood. “Shall I list names?” When Cossack gave no answer save a maintained glower, she went on, “Commander Mogor…”
“Traitor,” Cossack interjected, cutting her off. “Maybe if he hadn’t stabbed Lotor in the back…”
“Commander Yurak.”
“Voltron,” Cossack countered. “Nothing to do with the royals.”
“I wasn’t talking about his death,” Haggar clarified. “Or how about Advisor Garvon? Advisor Dathros? Governor Strieht? Or any number of others littering the bottom of the Pit of Skulls that Queen Lilian warmed her bed with solely to hurt Zarkon?” She pulled the book off the shelf. “Or let me bring up a few more personal examples, ones that flirted with the favor of dear Prince Lotor. Princess Corral. Count Zeta. Princess Romelle. Haram.” She paused and formed a suggestive look. “I’m pretty sure it wasn’t that silly hairdo, but rather that strapping, rebellious form that inspired him to trust him with the Mauran weapon project.” She stroked a scaly hand over the cover of her photo album. “I bet that’s what he sees in you; that and you’re just docile enough to put up with it.”
Cossack straightened and shook his fist in her direction. “You’re a crazy old woman without a fucking clue what you’re talking about!”
“Does he tell you in his way that he’s sorry when he needs you, Cossack? Let you know in so many words how important you are to him, how glad he is to have you always there at his side, at his beck and call, even after he’s shoved you away and belittled you moments before?” Her yellow eyes bored into his as she went on, fueled by the faint and rueful gleam she saw in them that made it clear he knew all too well what she was talking about. “Make you feel different, feel special, like you have something unique, something that no one else understands?”
She sighed and cast her gaze downward. “You think no one knows, that no one else can see it, and even if they did, they wouldn’t get it anyway. But you’re wrong. No, most don’t. We’re all pretty self-centered and we don’t care about what goes on beyond our own lives.” Her fingernail pried apart the closed pages of the album the slightest bit. “Lotor, Zarkon, their kind, they don’t get it either, or if they do, they don’t care, and why should they? They get what they need, and who can blame them for that when we let them, when we go to them, when we want it ourselves?”
The old witch fixed her luminous eyes on Cossack once more. “You wonder how I know? I know my own kind, Cossack. And like it or not, you’re one of them.” She opened the album in her hands once again to the pages with the image of the royal heirs on one side and the woman with the staff on the other.
“You asked who she was?” She pointed a clawed and blackened finger at the image. “Someone who loved one of them too long, someone who got too close, someone who couldn’t, who wouldn’t, turn back from what she knew in her heart was poison but wanted with every fiber of her being anyway. One of us.” With a previously unmatched note of emotion and bitterness in her tone, the old witch thrust the book toward Cossack with a fiery look in her ancient eyes. “And she’s telling you right now—remember that the next time you wind up at his side.”
A startled look filled Cossack’s eyes as the meaning of the witch’s words sank in. Glancing down at the book, and then back at Haggar, he took a step backward, turned on his heel, and stomped out of the room, cape billowing behind him as he departed.
Haggar set the album down on the table once more and bent down to pick up Coba, whose gaze remained upon the door through which Cossack had left. Sighing as she began to stroke his blue fur she mused aloud, “That’s what I thought you’d say.”
* * *
“Damaged People”
Lyrics by Martin L. Gore
We're damaged people
Drawn together
By subtleties that we are not aware of
Disturbed souls
Playing out forever
These games that we once thought we would be scared of
When you're in my arms
The world makes sense
There is no pretense
And you're crying
When you're by my side
There is no defense
I forget to sense
I'm dying
We're damaged people
Praying for something
That doesn't come from somewhere deep inside us
Depraved souls
Trusting in the one thing
The one thing that this life has not denied us
When I feel the warmth
Of your very soul
I forget I'm cold
And crying
When your lips touch mine
And I lose control
I forget I'm old
And dying
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