Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Drifting alone in the fabric of space and time, a large fractured mecha floats within the sea of white. The pilot, weakly catching the gaze of another mecha in contrast to his own, escapes the high-energy space like a flicker of light. He stretches out his hand as if saying ‘Don’t you dare go and leave me…’ and rage flows through his veins, pulling the thruster controls and entering the code quickly to escape the rift to catch up Voltron.

He pierced the veil.

Blue electricity fires throughout the cockpit. The pilot raises his head up, with his eyes now glowing in golden sclera, completely replacing his indigo pupils. His mad rage prompts his fingers to type in coordinates frantically to find his rival robot. His carelessness has no class. His frustration at the controls malfunctioning causes him to land his fist in a thunderous slam on the dashboard, sending him in a remote part of an unknown quadrant. His vision becomes foggy as his body gives in to weakness, losing his grip on the controls, and causing his mecha to fall straight down as a result. The Sincline skyrocketed through the atmosphere of a desolate and deeply dense jungle-like planet. Shooting through the depths of the forest, the mecha began catching vines across its the armor and kept sinking into the sheer length of mud and bog of the swamp. Over time, the vines of the forest start to grow over the Sincline in over many vargas, attracted to the residual quintessence still lingering across its metallic surface. A small traveler catches the sight of the violent meteorite in the sky and runs over the puddles of the rainforest to find it. Running with satchels of food strapped on her back and a tribal mask over her face, the nymph-like girl halts before the head of the Sincline succumbing to the swamp. She stares at the eye window, where the mecha ejects a pod out its chest to the other side of the forest several meters nearby. Soon, she pulls out an arrow and taps on the pod resting on the side of a large banyan-like tree. The pod opens up to reveal the ragged armor-clad pilot, sleeping in peace before and now lifting his eyes forward to the one who found him.

“Who… are you?” His voice ragged yet his eyes glowed. The little scavenger was taken aback by his appearance, as long red corrupted marks dripped down from his cheeks through his lips. His long unruly white hair kept her curiosity, as it glimmered with quintessence across his lavender skin. His torso was exposed with red marks across his body like tribal tattoos, causing the girl to query.

“Which village have you arrived from?” She scowled at him. The pilot looked at her appearance, for she wore a double-layered poncho, baggy shorts, cloth wrapped around her arms and legs, and little brown boots. A maroon wooden mask covered her face to his curiosity. He noticed she carried a satchel of arrows and a bow across her back. “I never heard of a village controlling a large beast such as this from the heavens. Are you here to destroy the Galra?”

“Galra…what is that?” He spoke weakly.

She was stunned by his response. “You have a lion’s mane. Your teeth are sharp. You must be the one known as Voltron.”

He knitted his eyebrows together. “Child, what is Voltron…?”

“How could you not know of Voltron? Second, I am not a child for I have scavenged across these parts of the forest for quintants after the Galra destroyed my village.” She pulled off her mask, revealing lovely emerald skin and sharp red eyes, with yellow marks across her cheeks, forehead, and chin.

A foggy memory surfaced his mind. “A…Dalterian…”

“Descendants of the great Dalterian race led by Trigel thousands of years ago…” She grimaced. “Would have kept their peaceful life had it not been for the Galra.”

He slowly rose up from his cockpit with his claws grabbing the sides and rising up to reveal damaged vambraces across the lower parts of his arms, falling down headfirst from the pod in an instance. He grunted in pain and the girl looked at him with worry. She pushed him over to his side as he laid on the forest ground, as he slowly gasped and coughed weakly. While feeling unsure of who he was, she decided to pull out a wooden bowl from her bag and run to a nearby pool of water. She came back to him and offered him the bowl.

“Take it.” She commanded him.

He looked at her and the bowl, and right back at her. “How do I know you’re not trying to poison me?”

“Just because I’m rude, it doesn’t mean I don't have the decency to act like a living being, you dum-dum. Drink the damn water.”

“…Alright then.” He lifted up his hand, lowering his claws as soon as he held the bowl and slowly drank the water. It tasted terrible for swamp water. He winced and looked up to see her proud little grin, giving her a small grin as well. “You really ought to find better water, child.”

“I’m not a child and this is the best water I can find! Everything else is poisoned.”

“So I drank poisoned water then?”

“Partially. I don’t know.”

“I guess I’ll partially die.” He weakly chuckled. “What is your name?”

She stopped and looked down sadly. “…Kari.”

“Kari, where are your parents?”

“My dad is dead. My mom betrayed me and died too.” There was a tear in her eye. “I hate her... I hate her for leaving dad and leaving the village and me.”

A faint memory slowly rose to his mind of a woman clad in violet silk hood and glowing yellow eyes, giving him a small shiver.

“Are you cold? You literally don’t have a shirt.” Kari looked at him confused.

“No…I just…I understand how you feel.” Who is that person with the hood…? He wondered.

Kari went through her bag and pulled out a large cloth. “Sit up.” She told him and he obeyed, letting her wrap the cloth around him, tying up the knots to give him a poofy long-sleeve shirt. “You’ll have a fever if you walk around the swamp like that.”

He looked at her with a smile of gratitude. “Thank you, Kari.”

“No problem…”She looked down. Then she ran to a tree and ripped out a sturdy vine-like rod and gave it to him. “If you have trouble balancing yourself, this might help...err, your name?”

He blanked out. “Sorry, but I don’t know that.”

“If you don’t know, then you can’t be a person. Better a ghost than no one, though. Sometimes I feel like a ghost.” She gripped on the vine rod. “I shall give you a name for now. Because you are a dum-dum, I’ll call you what my village calls someone ‘a forgettable fool’.”

“And I am?” He looked rather nervous.

“Kal.” She smirked rather proudly, giving him the staff. “I dub thee, Kal.” She gave him a curtsy.

He held the rod and pulled himself up, almost losing balance but Kari tried to hold him up despite her size. Little by little, she guided him through the forest ahead of him as they trekked. Quintant by quintant, they would rest on some days hiding below the large tree roots from the pouring of rain throughout the forest and leave when it cleared up to keep on moving. Kari would create a small fire and pull out galactic frogs on sticks and roast them over the fire, offering to him some food. Kal would refuse, leading Kari to shove the roasted frogs in his face, making her laugh and himself look wearily at the girl. But felt warmth when she laughed, crunching the fried space amphibians with his fangs.

“Why are your teeth so sharp like a Galra?” She asked him, wiping away the tears of her laughter. Leaning in, she opened his lips to see his gums. “Like look at these.” She awed.

He put his hand on her shoulder to gently push her away from examining more of his teeth, rubbing his cheeks. “If you want to consult the structure of my canines, then perhaps you should find a better profession.”

“La-dee-da. You keep on speaking such big proper words. Like one time, instead of saying a trap, you explained it as some ‘mechanism that ensnares greater beings of predator or prey’.” She pointed at him with her fried frog stick.

“I suppose that’s true.” He threw the empty stick behind him.

“Your hair is really long, though.” She walked up behind him and felt the tendrils of the soft white hair. “Do you braid it?”

“Braid? I’m not quite sure…”

“Kal, I’m braiding your hair.”

“What.” Suddenly, he almost fell back on the log he was sitting on. The tug of his hair was pulled by Kari, making him nervous. “Wait, wait, wait---!”

“Quiet, Kal. I’m fixing your hair.” Kari was busy separating parts of his hair. “If you leave it open, it’s gonna get damaged—which I’m surprised it hasn’t already. Now don’t move.”

“Alright, then…” He sat up straight, yet still felt nervous.

He waited for quite a while and soon looked up at the stars with the embers of the campfire spiriting away to the cosmic dust above them. In such a deeply dense forest, he felt like they were the only two stranded with a source of light by them. But the stars being so clear, his indigo pupils began to appear to reveal to the true clarity of the galaxies in his vision.

“There! Now, you can look---!” Kari stopped as he turned around to feel the complexity of his braid. She caught the sight of his blue eyes. “…You look different.”

“I guess the braid gives me quite a look.” He chuckled.

“…Yeah.” She smiled nervously.

“I like it.” He smiled. “Thank you.”

She nodded slowly, rather disturbed by the feline slit of his pupils. “Uh-huh…”

“These star patterns in the sky, Kari.” He pointed for her to see. “I believe if we follow that constellation there with the blue star at its tip, we have a set of cardinal directions.” He looked back at her. “I am a bit confused, but where exactly are we going?”

She stood firm. “We’re going to find the source of what is killing the forests of my planet.” She pointed with her little finger to the dead woods. “The trees appeared healthy just a few quintants before, right? But lately, the rest of the forest is dying so quickly, which gave such a hard time for my village as we use healthy wood for our customs. But it looks like their lives of the trees are being sucked out.” She took a stick and drew out a picture in the green mud. “See, this is where we were earlier and this is where I found you too.” She drew a line and triangle as well. “If we keep going in this direction, we can find the mountain.”

“What’s at the mountain?” He looked up at her.

“The Galra base.” She bit her lip. “They’re taking away the life of the forest, ruining villages such as mine so they can occupy and enslave us. I was just lucky that I escaped, but I have to help my people if I just managed to survive.”

“But all you have are arrows.” He pointed out. “You can’t expect that your bow could do much justice based on your description of them.”

“I want to try, though.” She made a fist. “I want to do it for my father after they took his life away.”

He looked down with worry but then turned up his head in determination. “I’ll help you.”

“Thanks, but you’re not carrying a weapon.” Kari pointed at him.

He looked at the vine staff he had. “What if I used that?”

“That’s a start but you don’t have a mask of protection.”

“You mean the one you have behind your head?” He pointed to the red mask she kept.

“My people wore it to symbolize warriors who hunted for peace. This is my dad’s, though.” She tenderly felt it. “Wait!” She jumped up with an epiphany. “I’ll be back and don’t change yourself or do any magic while I’m gone.” She sprinted back into the forest.

He sat there alone with the campfire awkwardly. “Sure…” He pulled up his braid. “Magic…? What is she talking about?”

She returned back after several doboshes, which made him quite worried, with a beet red wooden mask and handed it to him. “Carving it took the most time, but now you have a mask of protection. It’s only half its true size but it's good enough.”

He pulled it over his face, which only covered a bit past his nose, leaving the rest of his face exposed for the red marks to appear. “I…gladly appreciate the gift, Kari.” He chuckled nervously. She walked forward and pulled over a cloak over him and tied the knot with a wooden button at the end. “There. Now you’re a peace hunter, Kal.” She giggled.

They carried on their journey through the parts of the forest and made stops as they went, watching the seasons pass and the quintants growing closer to the day they find the Galran base. He learned how to hunt by Kari, even surprising her on clever tactics of how to capture better prey than space frogs. He even used the staff to fend her and Kari a couple of beasts that tried to attack them (as well as a bigger dinner). Soon, they met themselves the base of the mountain, looking up to the Galran base situated on the side of it like a dark castle.

He felt apprehension crawl up on his back. “I…feel like I know this…”

“Have you been here before?” Kari looked up at him.

“No, but the structure is familiar to me somehow.” He scowled and put the mask over him, along with the cloak. “Prepare yourself.”

She nodded and they begin to scale up the mountain. At one point, a drone spat out from the forest to attack them, causing him to flinch and jump on the sides of the trees to jump high in the air to slam down the staff through the drone. It broke apart, with bits of its transistors and wires spilling out like entrails. Kari looked at him in surprise and he looked back at her sternly.

“Stay by me, Kari. I don’t know how many more of these will be available.”

“Don’t worry about me.” She pulled out her bow and arrow. “I know how to take them down.”

“Good. Let’s keep moving.” He turned around and Kari quickly followed after him. “This staff is made out of a remarkable material to take down metal.” He looked at it curiously.

They reached the Galran facility, where the entrance opened up with soldiers moving back and forth from a sliding door. Soon, the rotation of the soldiers stopped, allowing Kari and him to run quickly to the door. He looked at the keypad and a faint memory bubbled in his mind. Kari almost slammed an arrow at the keypad, where he stopped her quickly. “Wait. Kari, I know you’re impatient but I think I know how to open this.”

She stepped back from him. “How?”

He stepped forward at the pad and entered a series of symbols into it, opening the door quickly.

“Access granted for the Pro-Tem.” The automated voice spoke.

“Pro-Tem? What is that?” She stared at him.

“I…don't know. But whatever it is, I feel pulled to come here.” Lotor stared at the dark hallway lit by violet lights.

“Hold on.” She grabbed the edge of his shirt. “How…do I know you’re not one of them?”

He looked at her with worry and came down at his knee. “Because I can count on you to make the right choice even if we don’t know everything.” He smiled for her.

“Okay…” She nodded and held his hand as they walked into the path of no return.

Chapter Text

The dimly lit hallways of the Galran facility felt endless and ominous. No way of telling whether there would be an enemy lurking around the corner or that the threat may be nearby to their closest inconvenience. Despite feeling apprehensive, Kari readied her weapon and studied the layout of every turn they made, making note of every nook and cranny and possible detail to add to her own mental map of returning to the exit safely. She couldn’t help but look up to her companion, Kal, of whom she looked up curiously to his brand new mask that he wore across his face valiantly under the hood of his new cloak. She had hoped it was strong enough so no spears can pierce through as it was the same wood variety preserved deep within the forests of the Dalterian tribes after all these years. The tribes don’t seem to be in a state where they could survive much longer unless they can find whatever that may be hurting their planet as well as her people. She still remembered the loss of her father because of the Galra. The only good that reminded her that she can still live under the warm light he had emitted in her life. She began to realize she was going to approach her thirteenth year as a young Dalterian in the next few varga. 

Kal, a title that the taller of the two received, as he began to look down and felt uneasy about this place. They could be walking around for hours but hasn’t felt the closest sense of danger just yet, which just about made things worse for his own anxiety. It was an uncanny feeling that he felt that maybe there could be someone actually watching over him and Kari. Enough to take their lives away in a single second without a moment for the two to try to escape or retaliate. It seemed as if the labyrinth was taking a toll on his own sanity, just a chip slowly at a time. One step closer…one step closer to whatever it may be ready to rip their throats out callously. He swallowed and took a deep breath as they trod carefully.  

They kept moving through the corridors of the facility, with Kari ready with her bow and Kal with his staff. “Kal, where are the Galra?” Kari asked innocently.

“I’m not sure…I feel like we’re being followed.” He looked up if there could be some sort of surveillance device hidden in the walls or the corners of the corridors. “I don’t understand why there isn’t anyone that could be stationed here.” Or were the guards so relaxed, that they decided to leave the base because they felt no danger whatsoever? He pondered. 

“They couldn’t possibly be that proud…” Kari looked down. “Are we really just that weak compared to them…?” She tightened her little fists out of frustration. 

He frowned at the thought and felt terrible watching Kari feel shame for her people all of a sudden. He never imagined that a few steps into enemy territory would feel so disappointing for the most unexpected reason. Opening another door with the palm of his hand, finally after all the walking, he was soon granted access beyond the gate once again. “Welcome Pro— Emp —LO— Unregistered .” The door opened promptly despite the AI voice glitching in an unsettling manner. 

“Kal, are you alright…?” Kari looked up to him, who seem to be frozen in place for a moment. 

“Yes, I am alright…” He felt concerned by the verbiage. ‘ Unregistered’ — that seemed to be in some part a reference to himself. First was Pro Tem , but now this is the current name for him…? An emptiness filled inside him from the previous anxiety. He never imagined feeling like he didn’t exist within a place threatening his supposed existence. “Nonsense…let’s keep moving forward.” He kept frowning beneath the mask. 

They two walked forward but stopped before what seemed to be a balcony. The room itself was about more than a few thousand feet with the balcony stretching around itself like a perimeter and there was a staircase leading down to a glowing force emanating in the darkness. Kari and Kal walked down the metal steps carefully as it hollowed out echoes of their presence until they reached the descent of this place. There was a vat, long and wide enough to be holding a certain hyper-bright liquid pink, just bubbling and reaching to the ceiling from the ground on which it stood on. Kari looked up to the sheer size of the volume of this…energy the liquid appeared to be. 

“What is all this stuff…?” Kari observed but felt unsettled. She looked down and found a dashboard with several more mechanical parts taking pieces of what appeared to be wood and large plumbing tubes to an area connecting to the soil of this planet. “Impossible…this is where they’re extracting the life out from our planet…?” Kari looked in horror and turn her face again to the sickeningly amount of energy flowing upward through the facility within its thick glass tank. 

Kal looked forward to the dashboard and walked up to mess with the buttons to bring him to some sort of page in the holographic screens explaining the process. Instead, the holograms jumped toward him, startling him as he collapsed on his back, opening his eyes to video footage of Galran soldiers trapped the members of the Dalterian people within vessels of their size, locked behind the glass as they screamed to escape. He watched the footage of them banging on the glass, trying to pierce the surface with their weapons but failing so that it didn’t leave a single scratch. 

“Kal, what are you watching?” Kari was several feet away from him when she heard the recorded screams. “Who is yelling—?”

His eyes dilated to the sight of their bodies sucked in from the inside out as they curled and their eyes sank behind their eyesockets. Their hair turned frail and lost color, and their lips became dried and thin. Their screams turned into rasps, uselessly begging for help, and Kal got up slowly to see many dozens, no, thousands of the Dalterians captured be held against their wills within their own coffins. The glowing green life force energy that seemed to belong to every last one of these victims shifted into another vessel that began to convert into the very pink energy that was flowing into the large voluminous glass tank behind the hologram images hovering and then pixelating before his eyes. 

Kari froze in place when the recorded screams stopped, where the hooded mask-covered ghost looked up to Kari and began to hallucinate crawling detestable hands reaching out and strangling her from the darkness. Images within his own fragmented memory began flickering in a nauseating hyperspeed. He stumbled to get up but his balance tilted, looking at the ground that was suddenly swirling. The images would not stop. He saw a facility once upon a time that carried thousands of others that appeared to be his kind, only half so. He then saw a woman who was pouring energy into a ship but felt exhaustion and sweat that he begged for her to rest. Suddenly, another—people trapped in test tubes, flowers growing into carnivorous monsters, eyes of beast that he carried on the left side of his face and the other right side where his honorable hidden facial markings dripped and cut across his face with blood pouring out and solidifying a few feet away from him — a person of his past he wanted to block out so desperately. She, the bloody hooded figure with golden eyes preying upon him, would point at him with a condemning finger that established his tragic fate. The hallucinations swirled and kept flickering again to make himself epileptic, so much so that his hidden trauma quickly caused him to feel something writhe up within his esophagus. He ripped off the wooden mask in Kari’s direction and soon the substance of his former digestion escaped his lips. 

“WHOA! KAL!” Kari yelled at the sight of him vomiting on the ground, picking up his mask immediately. “You can’t just treat this relic like it’s garbage! I went through a lot of trouble trying to do this for you!” She stopped as she saw tears roll down his cheeks and neck. He struggled with the continuing vomit while he was on his hands and knees. “Can you stand up?”

He shook his head in disagreement, panting with each weak breath. 

“This isn’t good.” Kari looked up while her hand was on his back to try to console him. “Okay, no more frogs for you Kal.” She made a mental note. 

“Help…” He lowered his back but the smell of his own vomit made him even more nauseous. He tried to straighten his back up and slowly got himself up on his feet, suddenly coughing as he felt sick and had a throbbing headache. 

“SEIZE THEM! THEY’RE NEAR TO THE ENERGY SOURCE!” A Galran soldier finally appeared in the base facility. 

Quickly, more soldiers caught the two of them from the top of the balcony, shouting and running up to them in an attack. The two sprinted away from them with Kari tugging on Kal’s sleeve of his cloak to pull him to a place where they could hide. But soon, laser beams of their own arsenal began firing at them and Kari soon found herself now on the offensive. Her arrows darted its way to three of the soldier in front of them, wounding them in their weak spots and struggling to get up at the realization that the arrowheads were laced in a biological poison native on this planet. “That should teach them, these bastards.” Kari gritted her teeth. 

The ambush prolonged for a while and soon Kari couldn’t keep fending off the soldiers with his paralzying arrows, as she ran out of them. “Dammit!” She looked up to sight of the towering Galran soldier before them.

He gazed down on them due to his larger stature and soon grabbed Kari with one of his arms right before Kal’s eyes. 

“ KARI! ” He yelled out and stumbled up to fight back against the large Galran soldier, only for himself to be thrown back and crashing against several large glass tanks behind him. He weakly pulled himself up from the shattered glass. He yelled in agonizing pain and threw his head down violently to began to seeing red. He threw himself up and started to combat against the soldiers, knocking them down within the halves of seconds before reaching back to the giant soldier who was carrying a screaming Kari. He punched the sides of face and felt a large swipe of a laser sword across his back and screamed in pain. 

“KAL!” Kari cried out as she watched him fall back to the dirty trick of one of the other soldiers with his own his bloodied back. 

He tried to lift himself up but realized he was just lying on the side of his back, where he felt his blood ooze out from the long wound, burning and infuriating him from the inside out. He didn’t realize his hood was open and his face was in plain sight to the other Galran soldiers, who looked in fear and gasped. He heard them whispering and muttering all around him as their lingering, judging, and somewhat gossiping eyes surrounding him, all glowing in the darkness. 

“I’m surprised why the emperor of this fallen empire decided to come here of all places. Now he looks like he’s on the verge of death.”

“Such a pathetic sight.”

“Unbelievable.”

“What part of him is good anyway?”

“I never trusted him when he announced for peace.”

“All this for him to be on good terms on that princess he wanted to sleep with.”

“Such a stupid foolish half -breed.”

“To think he just lost so easily to us lower-ranked soldiers, just whisking away an easy life with an easy job.”

“It’s no wonder of the job of him being emperor never suited him. He was never meant to rule over all of us.”

“Just a damned monstrous bastard the great Zarkon had produced.”

The voices wouldn’t stop. The endless comments of their perception of a failure damned to be unsaved who couldn’t save a single life all because of — Quintessence.

It was slowly coming back to him but the memories remain just as faint as before. He began to see a child walking up in a throne room with a tall beast of an emperor lowering his eyes down himself with a hooded figure by his side. The sight of the witch who was known as The High Priestess. An evil being who brought shame and pain in his heart, yet he still couldn’t understand who she was. The Emperor was known as Zarkon: the man who was his own father.

The large soldier knocked out Kari, causing her to pass out and for him to sling her body over his shoulder like rag doll. He stepped forward and from the sole of his boot, Kal’s face was right next to it, and soon the soldier kicked him in the face with an unforgiving amount of force. Kal writhed in pain and coughed, feeling a broken nose. “Never could anyone escape this place. But never — had I seen such a fool walk into here on their own free will. Whatever your objective is, especially now that you are unregistered from our systems for the past two years, is gone. I am the captain on this front and the warden will have a word with you once you’re behind shackles. It’s been a sight to see, former prince Lotor.”

“What are you talking about…?” He hoarsely spoke as his ears were ringing, muting everything else he was hearing. “What did you say…?” He looked up by lifting his chin up in anger but soon felt the floor in an instant, passing out cold on the freezing ground.    

Chapter Text

Voltron — the greatest weapon in the entire universe, or even many more. There were figures with foggy silhouettes that piloted parts of the grand beast, lion by lion… paladin by paladin… a disappointment after the other. 

By the number of probabilities that team Voltron succeeded against, their presence gave a wave of lingering raw anger and bitter sadness in his heart. That was what he felt from them. Leaving him to die in the rift... He wanted to understand who he was and why Voltron had left him in the first place. He knew he was the prince of a tyrant and wondered if this was the reason but questioned himself after remembering he killed his father. But what was more unsettling was the word ‘Quintessence’.

It bothered him. It made him want to shake and collapse. And realized he was, on the ground in a remote Galra facility, was him clasping the sides of his head and suddenly experiencing visions of numerous people in pods. Drained of color in their skin and eyes, people with red marks streaked across their bodies were healthy and become dead like the trees of the forest withering away. Instruments on top of them to resituate them, equipment strapped on to them as they held the controls inside of ships, and returning back with the pods revealing their bodies in need of life. The image of his father Zarkon strapped onto a table with the High Priestess commanding guards to attach pink tubes of quintessence through his body and soon found himself repeating the same process on these people with the energy known as—

Quintessence! Quintessence! Quintessence!

He started shaking at the word as the gleeful insanity and greed ripped apart worlds for its raw power. He was watching the people who gave their trust in him perish in his arms, sinking past his arms in ashes as pink flowers grew up and glowed in the darkness. He looked up to see a planet exploding. He turned his head to the left and found his father and mother behind him and found another version of himself on his knees watching the traumatizing sight of millions he took care of, all being taken away from him. He began to scream at the three figures in his memory and began to run from it all from this terrible nightmare. Soon, he found himself surrounded by an array of white light and blue electricity and found another version of himself standing in front of him with his sharp teeth and bulging eyes, giving into the insanity of the residual quintessence still soaked within him and triggering his emotions. He watched himself laughing maniacally as the blue electricity of the pure quintessence eroded his reason and what was left of his mind. 

“Make it stop! Make it STOP! ” He screamed violently in anguish as his vision faded to black. He woke up to a sore throat when he was croaking out his screams from his nightmares, finding himself in tears to the misery swirling inside of him. Who am I, goddammit? He wanted answers, so much so he was crying while shackled to the wall with handcuffs. He stared at his tears on the ground for several moments before feeling depressed. The emptiness and shame within his heart that felt endless…

=====

“ Lotor. ” Dayak looked at the young prince.

“Yes, Dayak?” The small one looked up at her curiously and innocently.

“How many times do I have to tell you that you need to stand up firm?” She whacked him with her stick.

The boy began to cry and Dayak whacked him again twice. “You need to understand that your father will not stand for weak posture.”

He held back tears, but a lump of pain grew in his throat. “ Ok… ” He softly whimpered, sniffing and standing up straight for her.

“You can’t afford weakness in the eyes of the enemy, Lotor.” She put her hand on his shoulder and quickly let go, realizing her mistake.

“Dayak?” He asked her.

“Yes?”

“Who is my mother?” He bit his lip from crying more.

“That…Your father may know.” Dayak turned around and the little prince followed after her.

“Lotor.” Dayak looked at the young prince.

“Yes, Dayak.” He sat in his desk with Kova curling in his lap.

“You need to continue your training.” She looked down and found the cat. “Why do you have the High Priestess’ creature with you?”

“His name is Kova and he is staying with me. I have Haggar’s approval.”

“Very well but the way of your sword needs work.” She pulled out a sword and kept her other arm behind her, watching the boy pick up his sword and quickly run up to her with attacks in all directions, flying through the air in sharp agility and swiftly rebutting all of his attacks instantly.

Lotor felt the thrill of fighting with a sword, dodging attacks from other enemies on a battlefield, or sneaking into arenas to find himself first-class entertainment. Observing and carefully analyzing his opponents one by one. His studies in astronomy and the cultures he met in his travels as a prince were so enjoyable to him.

“You don’t know when to stop, do you?” A silhouette of himself spoke to him in the distance.

Kova beside him meowed out for his attention to pick him up, so Lotor did and soon the shadow of himself disappeared. He looked out in the white atmosphere, alone and decorated in the colors of his beloved companion by his side and soon others matching the color scheme as well. But he turned around to look at his companions and they all disappeared. He turned around and found a hooded figure with Kova jumping from his arms and towards her.

The damned witch.

Soon, many people with cheek marks go past him in multitudes toward her in excitement and joy. They wanted to see her for thousands of years and she raised their people to reach their potential and success in the technological age she brought up. The beloved alchemist to whom he looked up in inspiration and admiration; the one known as — Honerva.

“Lotor…?” The voice of another woman came up to him behind the figure Honerva, fading away like dust in the darkness. She had a kinder voice and a stronger heart than his own. 

“Allura…?” The child walked forward. “ Allura…? ” The man stopped before her. 

“Lotor…listen to me. There could be a real chance that Honerva and Haggar may be the same person?” She spoke calmly yet urgently. “Please…you need to see the truth…”

He curled into a cruel smile. “Is this some sort of joke? Hah!” He laughed harshly yet Allura stood firm, for they were only two beings in the void. He lifted his chin up and scowled at her. “You abandon me, calling me like I am after my own father — my abuser if I may point out to you — and state that I am directly related to the one starting this damned war in the first place. You lived such a cozy life before my mother decided that playtime was over. The wounds you received from this war are just enough from my own mother and father as I had received my wounds from them. But guess what? You get to sleep .” He continued to laugh maniacally until tears formed in his eyes. “ And I…? I'll never get it because they’ll never stop chasing me no matter what. Reminding me that I will forever remain as a lost and lonely star in this universe.” He frowned and found himself alone in the darkness. 

It doesn’t have to be like this… The blooming and glowing flower spoke out to him. 

“Allura…?” He looked forward and found her standing in the place of the flower. “Please…if I mean nothing to you and you are willing to believe in what you see…then I respect that. Just leave me be to rot in my own hell that I started.”

“And if you?” She walked forward to him, placing a hand around his face, suddenly causing him to clasp around that hand with both of his hands, holding tightly to the morsel of comfort to his being. “Do you really believe you’re strong enough to withhold all of that pain without remorse?” She looked into his eyes intently, those beautiful ocean-like eyes of hers.

“Had we met in a different time under different circumstances, all without the ones who decided that time and space itself should be destroyed, that perhaps we would have worked together peacefully?” He asked her gently yet solemnly, closing his eyes to the long-forgotten touch of her warmth. “You are life as I am death — how could we possibly be together, Allura?”

“Then find me again.” She commanded him. “Make yourself anew and remind me, lost star.” She faded away with the petals of the juniberry flower up into the sky. “Find me, Lotor.”

Chapter Text

Rustling leaves creeped past the elven ear of the masked wanderer, who remained shackled to the wall of his own cell as he slumped forward with his arms held aloft. The pain swimmed around his forehead and the nausea he felt prior to himself passing out earlier remained on the tip of his bitter tongue. It felt so fast, the images shifting, and the familiar pain, such unwanted misery he didn’t wanted to be a part of. 

He tilted his head up and realized the mask that Kari carved was still on his face. Perhaps the soldiers placed it back on him for some reason…? Whatever it may be, the proverbial cat was out of the bag with his apparent identity being that of the son of the late tyrant. Though the details remained fuzzy…the words he caught from the soldiers were ‘peace’, ‘princess’ , and ‘Zarkon ’. But the term that bothered him the most was quintessence . 

There still remained that image of a witch-like figure that continue to deliver a chill throughout his lower back — odd, that she seemed more terrifying than the very force that struck this universe upside-down — and why she had remained by his father’s side for some reason. He will need to remind himself again if he were to forget about this with the current state of his weakened body. Everything was feeling like a fever dream to him still. 

He tilted his head up slightly, feeling a unbearable neck pain surfacing. Dammit …if he can’t just shake off whatever post-traumatic stress his previous identity had endured, then how is he going to escape this current situation he’s wrapped under? Focus! He tried to snap out of it and forced to shake his head left from right a couple of times. He’s going to just deal with this nuisance of a neck and look forward for a solution. 

The lights near his kneeled knees appeared to be in the shape of bars casting a shadow… was there a upper frame to the outside right above him? He jerked his head up, a bolt of pain traveled through his nape of his back, and squinted to see the withered trees offering its brittle leaves through the iron bars. The unexpected warm of the sunlight peeking out through the fog and mist felt comforting to him on his lower back. The air tasted musty…he squinted his eyes to the gated door locking him in his isolated cellroom. 

The thought of Kari reminded me of the hundreds of fears that the soldier may do to her. His anxiety shot through his own prison cell, so much his ears shot up sharp and his eyes dialted. He knew he can’t be kept here for long — no, not that much longer goddammit . He needed to find a way to get out. He clenched his teeth and his mind fired ideas for his escape strategy. 

The door slid open and a pair of soldiers and their captain walked into his cell. The captain led the entire Galran facility as well as the entire planet, stunned to see the emperor in his hands in his own post. “Well, what brings you here, your majesty?”

“Frankly, I like to answer the same .” He glared with intense anger and scowling lips. 

“It’s not necessarily every day we get such as high-seat presence from the ruler of the Galran Empire.” He got walked around Lotor in a pace as the soldier aimed their guns at his head. 

“Care to explain why you’re playing with a little girl whose village we destroyed in the forest out there?”

“Where is she? ” A growl was felt under Kal’s own tone. 

“We’re planning on interrogating her by using our methods.” The Galran captain smiled deviously.

The color drained from Kal’s face and jumped up towards the captain, getting stunned by a violent electric shock immediately. He screamed out in pain and fell down to the ground, looking up irritated to the laughter made by the cruel being.

“You honestly believe that if we followed your ideas of peace and unity that the Galran can just jolly along with it?” He laughed down at him. “You’re no emperor of mine, sir. A mere half-blood, at that.” He turned his back on him. “Call the High Priestess. We found the bastard she’s been looking for.”

“ Who is the High Priestess!? Where are you taking me!? ” He began to panic as he darted his eyes to both sides of where each soldier had a firm grip of his locked arms. “Let go of me!” He felt that he was losing his presence of mind before one of the soldiers shocked him again, sending him into deeper agony. Kal rolled on the ground from the electric shock again that was now ten-times stronger and felt that his own teeth began to clatter. He felt that his head was spinning endlessly. Soon he was dragged on the floor by the Galran soldiers like a rag doll.

The captain leered forward and cupped the brim of his chin. “For such a pretty prince, it’s no wonder your mother was such an apparent beauty back in the day.” He grabbed his face, flipping the mask to the back of his head held by its jute-like string, and roughly moved his face left from right. The captain frowned at the long dripped blood red marks past his eyes. “Such a shame that her son looks like the witch now. Your half-breed marks prove yourself worthless.” 

Kal spat on the eye of Galran captain, of whom yelped back trying to claw back the substance on his face. “Disgusting! You damned rat !” He roared in anger.

“ Worthless…? ” Kal’s own hoarse voice cracked but a strength now growing inside of him. “Try me, you piece of shit .”

Kal bended his knees and jumped high up in the air and twisted his body to knock both of the soldiers with his spin of kicks within seconds. A sudden memory resurfaced in his mind in those matter of moments and contorted his own arms in front of himself and to the captain’s own horror. With all the strength he could muster from the agonizing pain earlier, he swung both of his arms to land a blow on the side of the Galran captain, who ducked and pulled out a ray gun to point below Kal’s chin. The captain fired the gun but instead the shot broke the shackled right in front of his eyes, with Kal’s leaning back just in time with his lightning reflex. Kal spun around and gutted his punch to the captain’s neck in front. Kal then pulled the captain’s arm and overthrew the captain over his own back to land the finishing blow, incapaciting the captain. 

“. ..Don’t you dare insult your emperor! ” The muttered words, unfamiliar to Kal, had escaped his own lips in a unexpected yet familiar rage. He blinked suddenly, as if by instinct, started to raise his own arm up as if he was expected to ready a specific martial stance. The feeling was so natural to him…

He raised his arm and soon glowing bright particles of light hovered together and formed itself into the reminiscent shape of a glowing-hilted Galran blade of formidable steel. He swung it forward and back, light and easy as his muscle memory could recall quite effortlessly. Kal had now acknowledged that his identity was of a Galran figurehead held in upmost infamy and wanted by the state if alive. He wrapped the hilt of the blade to hide the Galran design in the case of he were to find Kari now, that she wouldn’t need to suspect… her knowing his true identity would hurt her more , Kal figured. 

Kal wrapped the mask over his face and lifted the hood over his head. He would need to tread carefully now… He made note of the knocked-out Galrans behind him as he sprinted ahead. There’s no telling what else may be out there. Kal carefully conquered the labryrinthe hallways. 

He spotted the end of a corridor and leaned on the side carefully, feeling a beaded line of sweat on his face when he noticed another Galran soldier walking casually as two others stood near another jail cell by the looks of it. Kal realized that this might be a cell where Kari was kept. He was now close to a possibility of rescuing her now. 

Good. Kal noted, readying his sword and in the second he began his attack, a loud explosion was heard behind the door of cellroom. Kal blinked to his own surprise. The soldiers turned around in bewilderment, allowing Kal to take advantage of the confusion. Kal snuck an attack on the first soldier, causing them to pass out and land two more blows on each guarding soldiers’ necks with the hilt of his sword to incapacitate them effectively. 

“Kari!” He called out for her as he ran through the doorway into the room full of flames. No voice called out for a few moments. He stood at the edge of the door, watching the fire eat up the wreckage throughout the Galran base, realizing that smoke had begun to choke its very hallways. He readied his sword in his hand for the next possible incoming attack within the prison inferno. 

Sentry soldier arose from the flames like zombies arising from the graveyard.

Shit...Kal realized as he noted the sheer number of them scattering the corridors. It's now or never.

Kal bent down and darted like a flash of lightning. Storming in with a sword in his right hand, Kal struck down several of the dozen sentry soldiers like thunder striking down from sky. The robotic enemies split in half from the vertical down, to the horizontal right across their torsos, and some tried to attack Kal from behind but failed because he had already scored off their heads off as their circuits spilled like guts.

He kept running down through the facility, hearing more explosions and suddenly returning back through the same room he and Kari were previously captured in. To his suprise, the entire vat of flowing pink quintessence was completely empty. The glass barrier was shattered along with the entire control room was ultimately destroyed. 

"What in the world?" Kal was bewildered by the sight of the metal pipes that were previously sucking away the quintessence of the Dalterian planet now crushed, twisted, and removed in sight. "Who removed the pipes?"

Chapter Text

Many years ago...

Liquid escaped from the glass at a rapid rate with colors shifting back and forth from golden to violet at each extraction. Hundreds, if not thousands, of vials of this golden quintessence, was lifted into different cargo sets and handled by the druids to convert the raw energy into refined Galran standards. Druids lined up, casting out their hands to place their magic on each vial and another smaller druid completed the same task. She cast out her hands on the vial on the assembly line and dropped down in weakness before being reprimanded by Macidus, the head druid.

“Concentrate! Or should you experience a palenbol to understand your role!” He shouted at her.

The young druid nodded and stood up quickly to cast out her hands quickly to convert the quintessence into the familiar pinkish violet.

The crown prince observed the incident from a balcony overlooking the operation, where Kova rested on his shoulders quite peacefully. He was given the role to rule over a planet with its own colony and was instructed to observe the conversion of the raw quintessence extracted by the Komar. He disliked the Komar and the one leading the Komar.

“Bring me that druid to me.” He told one of the sentries. “I like to speak with this one.”

They brought her to Lotor, where he sat down on a chair and Kova rested on one of the arms rests. She kept her silence, looking up to Lotor with her druid mask still on. Something shuffled beneath her cloak, causing Lotor to glance up at her curiously. “What are you hiding there?”

She lifted up her hood to reveal that she had no eyes at all.

Lotor blinked and casually rested his head on the back of his hand. “Huh. You can understand me right?” She nodded, letting her tiny ears twitch. “So what is your name?” Lotor asked.

Kova got up from the armrest and headed towards her. He sat before her and meowed aloud, causing her to look down and lower herself to the feline moving his tail back and forth. Soon a tail popped out behind her cloak and repeated the same movement like Kova’s tail.

“Interesting…” Lotor watched. She stretched out her hand and Kova remained still, letting her pet the ancient creature. Soon Kova’s eyes glowed, causing the cat to turn around and move towards Lotor. He rose his head up and sat up straight as his cat got closer toward him. The cat turned his head, as the female druid repeated the same. Kova jumped up back to the armrest and looked at Lotor’s face for a while. Lotor became rather uncomfortable by the awkward silence. “If you could…please explain what you are doing?” He looked at her a bit worried yet intrigued. Kova meowed for Lotor to pet him, nudging against his arm, where Lotor looked at her again and proceeded to pet Kova.

Can you hear me…?

“Gah!” Lotor took his hand off of Kova quickly. He stared at her in amazement. “…Y-you have a talent!” He chuckled at the young druid. “Granted, telepathy isn’t exactly my favorite but this is rather splendid.” He smirked at Kova. Placing his hand on Kova’s head, he began to hear the hollowed echoes of her voice and proceeded to query.

“Who are you?” Lotor inquired.

Narti. A half-breed Galra for the purpose of fulfilling the role as a Druid for the Galran Empire.

“Why did you choose to be a Druid?” Lotor raised an eyebrow to his lingering curiosity.

Being a druid gives me the purpose of utilizing my alchemic abilities present from my previous race.

Lotor blinked. “Why would you say ‘ previous ’?” 

Because…I am much more useful as a Galran as my other side is considered weaker. Narti’s own voice was felt more mute and sorrowful to Lotor’s hearing.

Lotor knitted his eyebrows together as he gazed at her, looking down in quiet shame but turning up at her in determination. “You are not weak. It is that side of you that makes you stronger instead.”

Narti’s curiosity from the tilt of her ears perked up. What of you? Do you know who you are?

“ That …is another conversation for another day.” He looked away like a child hiding a shame to himself.

I apologize. It was not my intention to offend the prince of the empire. Narti had assured him.

“Don’t apologize for that. You are welcome to speak with me with anything you are curious about.” He smiled. “Now how does this all work, actually?” He looked at Kova with a bit of excitement.

======

Kari sat in her cell wondering if she would be released or even speak with anyone. It seemed like a hundred vargas since she was kept her. Soon, she heard an explosion, scooting up to the window in her cell to see of what was happening outside. She caught the sight of what appeared to be…rather… fashionable pirates?  

Several Galrans was decked out with colorful scarves and spectacular hairstyles as they fired their weapons at the robotic sentries. “Look for Lotor! The transmission reports that the captain of this base kept him here in a prison cell!” They bellowed out in midst of the panic.

“If we find him, we’ll be super-duper rich by the Galran Empire for this!” A gleeful yet friendly voice cried out. 

“Or even Sendak’s forces! We would get new ships and more battle armor!” A more buffer and burly-sounding voice agreed along the jolly companion. 

“Check over here!” A serious yet very level-headed voice appeared to be the leader of the three voices in the smoke so far. They broke down the door on Kari’s cell, where the source of the voice belonged to a taller blue elfish Galran woman. “What the…” She looked at Kari in great curiosity. 

“Axca! I’m leaving over here!” A colorfully-striped pink Galran walked on the side. “Go take care of that runt when we find the reported bastard from the radio transmissions feed, m’kay?” She waved back and headed to another direction.

“Okay Ezor.” She nodded and turned her head to Kari again, walking up toward her.

“Don’t touch me!” Kari shouted.

“I’m not going to hurt you.” Acxa looked at her shackles.

“How do I trust you if you’re one of the Galra?” She glared at her.

“Because I fight differently than the Galra and clearly think differently as well. Hold still. ” She broke the shackles with her gun.

“I guess I’ll think differently toward you,” Kari muttered sarcastically.

“And you will.” Acxa retorted, making Kari’s shoulders jump.

“Wait… do you know where Kal is?”

“Kal…? Who’s that?” Acxa looked down at her rather confused.

“He wears a mask like mine’s and he has long red marks on his cheeks, purple skin, and long fluffy white hair too!” Kari hurried towards the door. “I have to find him!”

Acxa was disturbed by the girl’s description. There’s no way… “Let’s go look for him then…” She spoke wearily. Did he escape the rift…? But if that’s the case, then where is Voltron? She looked at the girl in horror. No…he destroyed them. Her face became pale. Looking back at the girl and given how friendly she was with this ‘Kal’...perhaps this might not be the same Lotor she knew before, but the dread weighed on her mind. He was the witch’s son, after all.

Kal ran through the hallways of the usually large jail cell, after realizing it wasn’t just a single jail cell where Kari would have been kept. However, he had the rather annoying pleasure of slicing down sentries in half in mere ticks. “Why is there suddenly so many robots?” Kal questioned to himself.

Kari…where is she? He wondered as he wandered throughout the parts of the base, reaching the prison cells but not finding her in any of them. He realized he had to move up the higher floors if that’s where they kept the interrogation rooms. He moved around parts of the corridors, where flames decorated the halls. 

Suddenly, a group of rather fashionable Galra run past him, to his surprise. He let out a sigh of relief that they didn’t notice him surprisingly.

“ Kal…? ” A small voice called out for him. His ears perked up quickly. 

He looked up and realized that he was in the intersection of the two hallways, wondering which cardinal direction the voice came from. Acxa stepped forward and quickly pointed her gun at his face as Kal pointed his sword at her own simultaneously. A sweat carried at her forehead. “…Sir? Is that you…?” She gripped on the gun firmly yet with a slight hesitation.

He remained silent, not sure of who this person was. “…Who are you?”

“Is it really you under that mask?” She clenched her teeth. “Why do you not recognize me?”

His blade was near her neck at this point.

“Kal! Kal, you dum-dum!” The two turned to the source of the voice.

“ Kari…! ” He whispered, pulling the sword back and embraced the little forest sprite out of immense relief. “Thank goodness! Were you hurt? Did they do anything to you? Where did they keep you? Are you feeling okay? Were you tortured by them?” He fired questions left and right to make even Kari’s head spin as he inspected her arms and legs carefully for any signs of damage, but thankfully they were none. 

“ Kal! You big dum-dum! I’m okay!” She hugged him back again, but instead her height allowed her to hug only his leg for now. “I thought… you were gone forever when they captured you…” Small tears carried in her eyes. “I thought you were gone like Papa… I thought you were dead… ”

“I’m partially dead, remember?” He sighed and smiled behind his maroon wooden mask Kari had carved for him. 

“So you know the child?” Acxa raised her eyebrows and stepped away from him, lowering her gun.

“Kari, step away from the man,” Acxa told Kari.

The forest sprite turned around in surprise. “Why should I? Clearly, you haven’t met Kal before, have you?”

“I’m not sure about that right now…” She looked at him with a slowly growing apprehension. “What happened to you? How did you escape the rift?”

“The rift? What is that?” Kal replied back with a confused look as he tilted his head.

Acxa stared at him in horror. Did he lose his memory…? Axca stopped and began to realize that this might be a good thing in disguise of all the current chaos. If he doesn’t plan to remember, the universe will be safe for now… After all, there’s no denying of that familiar sword wrapped behind that cloth either. Axca observed the blade carefully from the corner of her eye. 

“We need to get out of here!” Kari spoke up between them. “I don’t know how you guys know each other but we can’t stand here.”

Kal stood firm. “She’s right. We---“

Kari screamed as her body was lifted off the ground, where she tried to pull an invisible force choking at her neck.

“Axca, what is this little critter ? She’s so tiny…” She revealed herself from her camouflage.

“What?” Before Kal could attack, muscular figure behind him pulled up beside him, placing her burlesque palm of her hand on his shoulder, almost intimidating to not make a sudden movement. 

“Axca, who are these people?” Zethrid stared in awe. “Are they residents of this planet?”

“They look like a pair of fighters.” Ezor added, lifting Kari up in the air. “I’m guessing this little girl is this guy’s daughter, judging by the matching masks.”  

“Ezor, please! Put the girl down!” Acxa lectured her, but felt uncomfortable with the idea of her former superior being a father of some kind. 

"Okay, fineee." Ezor pouted and let go of Kari, who landed on her feet and hands like a cat. "Still weird though…" Ezor stared at Kal carefully at a distance. "His shoulders wide apart like that remind me of someone…"

"I don't believe so." Zethrid placed both of her large claw-like hands on Kal's shoulder, causing Kal to sweat on the back of his neck. "This shorty ain't really that built if you ask me. He's seems pretty skinny to my eyes." 

"Yeah you're right Zethrid." Ezor closed her eyes and sighed in relief. "I was almost thinking it was probably Lo—"

"How about we focus on escaping out of here first?" Axca urged Ezor, placing a hand on her shoulder to distract her. Axca knew the two of her colleagues aren't very bright but their instincts could still give away their unwanted guest’s identity in an instant.

Ezor and Zethrid smirked in unison. “No problem.” Zethrid had an unusual glint in her eye. She walked over to the one of the locked doors and kicked the steel door out like it was sheet of paper from its hinges. “After you,” She curtised for Ezor who looked very pleased with her. 

“Thank you very much.” Ezor smiled at Zethrid with rosy cheeks.

“Follow me!” Acxa told Kal and Kari, as they ran together with her through the corridors.

Zethrid and Ezor took down more of the soldiers and sentries up ahead of them within seconds like a synchronized pair of dancers. Axca readied her gun as she ran to target any of the soliders’ weakpoints and kicked down the last one of them guarding the exit of the facility. 

“ Very nice. ” Zethrid walked up to the entrance to a hanger, finding a few cruiser ships resting inside after she ripped another door out effortlessly. “How about we take a few of these and get the hell out of here?”

“Might as well.” Ezor giggled as she smoothed out her multicolored striped antenna, admiring their destruction of the entire Galran facility. “Their carelessness of not placing more reinforcements with the announcement of Lotor's death have made them so lazy in the past several varga.” 

Kari looked up in Ezor’s direction with an uneasy expression. “Is that so…?” She looked down to her feet. 

Zethrid walked past Kari’s direction carrying a few energy cells to load up fuel for one of the cruisers, chuckling to herself. “Why looking so sorry for yourself, little midget? You can’t trap your own prey without an elaborate trap.”

“Yeah…” She looked away from Zethrid feeling ashamed for herself, catching the attention of Kal who listened to the exchange. Kari stopped in her tracks as Zethrid and Ezor went up ahead to inspect one of the ships with excitement. 

Axca stopped a few feet from Kal and Kari and looked around to see the facility still in shambles. She paused. “Kari, is your name right?” She had a hint of kindness in her serious tone. She smiled for her. “Were you one of the residents who lived on this planet?”

“Yes.” Kari looked up despite her short stature to Axca. “Yes…I am.”

“Consider this a form of debt you now owe to me.” Axca looked in the direction of the burning facility. “Those two in front of us are in their own world now but they also aren’t aware that they’re part of this too.” Axca sighed. “Whatever it may be, we helped you unexpectingly so you will need to find a way to help us as well to return the favor, no matter how small or grand it may be.”

Kari knitted her eyebrows. “I don’t know if I’m anywhere near the strength of all of you.”

“You do have a strength.” Kal bent down on one knee to see eye-to-eye with Kari. “You have courage when no one else did.” He gazed through the slits of his mask. 

Axca paused. It’s not possible… She pondered anxiously and bit her lip. “Look here.” She stood firm, addressing Kal in a more hostile tone. “Do you think that what you’re doing is some sort of sick joke in another one of your twisted games ?”

“I beg your pardon?” Kal got startled, standing up immediately to see eye-to-eye to Axca. “I hate to ask but have we met before ?” 

“You can’t be serious.” Axca frowned, eyeing carefully to Zethrid and Ezor in the distance while they were inside of the hanger.

Axca also noted of the vast forest near the Galran facility and how much life was sucked out of it to the depressing state of the trees withered and perishing. “Everything you do — every action that you create — all leads to everything around us dying.” She scowled bitterly. Axca shot a sharp glare back to him. “And you don’t grieve a single one of those actions, do you?” She sighed and walked past him. “We’re done with you, Lotor.”

Kal’s eyes dilated as the entire world felt like it tilted on its axis. He turned around and walked up to call out to Axca. “ Hold on, what are you on about?” He desperately asked. 

Axca’s teeth clenched in anger and turned around to point her gun at him. “You are such a fool.”

“Axca, what are you doing?!” Kari watched in fear. 

“Tell them!” Axca yelled at him, alerting Zethrid and Ezor who exited out of the hanger. “Tell them—” Kal quickly darted to close her mouth with his bandaged hand in an instant, suprising even Axca of his lighting speed. 

She screamed under the palm of his hand, causing Zethrid to charge toward Kal like a raging bull. Kal let go of Axca quickly and jumped high above Zethrid who was centimeters away from grabbing him and pulled out his sword quickly as he landed. Zethrid halted and almost stumbled in her step at the sight of the sword and its familiar violet glow. 

“Hold on a minute…” Zethrid felt like her head was spinning and slowly judged Kal’s appearance carefully. “But…that’s impossible…that sword could only be pulled out by only one person in this universe. And it’s the same one I’ve seen when we spar too.” 

Zethrid snarled and swung a punch at the side of his face, knocking off the mask off his face as it felt onto the dying, dusty earth. He rolled across several hundred feet across the ground and slowly but struggled to pull himself up completely, facing toward everyone with the long running blood-red marks across his lavender complexion and silvery white hair spilling from the messy braid. 

Ezor stepped back and placed both hands on the sides of her face while trembling in fear. “ ZETHRID, RUN! ” She screamed with tears in her eyes. 

“...No way.” Zethrid looked at him in horror, unable to move a single muscle. “Why does this one bastard out of all of them has to be immortal ?” She took one step forward. “ LOTOR! ” Punching her fists against each other, she charged toward him as she grabbed a steel beam to swing at him.

Kal realized that Zethrid was about to destroy him in a matter of tics, dodging the first three of the swings that could have easily broken his spine. She roared in frustration and charged at him again, twice the amount of speed she had before. He ducked backward on the fourth swing of the destructive pillar that was a hair’s length away from his chin that would have decimated his entire jaw. 

With the strength he had at his disposal, he contorted one of his arms again to hold the hilt with both hands to cut through the steel beam clean in half. Zethrid dropped her jaw and grabbed one of the two beams split to swing in a 360-degree direction with Kal dodging her action once again in time. 

“Gah!” Kal grunted as he landed back to the ground and noticed the beam was heading toward Kari’s direction — and at the speed of light — he blocked the cut with another slice instantaneously. He had his sword gripped fiercely in the palm of his hand with the blade shining valiantly in the hazy sunlight and forest smog. 

“Don’t hurt her!” Kal yelled at Zethrid. “She has nothing to do with any of this nor with me! Whatever reasons you have against me, come at me!” He readied his blade at Zethrid and Axca who had her gun ready. 

“ That’s rich coming from you. ” Zethrid grabbed the other previous beam sliced in half and bended it into a U-shape. “All of sudden you think you’re some kind of hero?! ” Zethrid threw the horseshoe steel beam towards his direction. Without Kal noticing, Ezor while turning herself invisible had slipped under him and kicked the sword out from his hand and grabbed Kari all within seconds. 

“Kal!” Kari screamed. 

“Honestly, I can’t believe you’re even alive.” She revealed herself from her camouflage with a scowling glare. “So…you defeated Voltron, huh?” A bead of sweat fell on the side of her face.

“ What—? ” Before he could attack, he was pulled up Zethrid who grabbed the U-shaped beam and wrapped it around in seconds to incapacitate him. 

“I can’t believe you’re alive, sir .” Zethrid looked down at him with vexation in her eyes. “What in the world happened to your face? You look more like Haggar than you reminded of how you were still Zarkon’s son. Where in the absolute hell have you been this whole time? ”

“Especially when you went batshit crazy on us too,” Ezor added, lifting Kari up in the air.

“Wait — Ezor! Put the girl down!” Acxa pleaded her and lowered her gun quickly.  “She really has nothing to do with this! We were supposed to sneak in and grab a few ships, not go ballistic which you two did and destroy the place!”

“Oh, now you’re gonna act like a goodie-two-shoes here? Look at this girl and look at us, Acxa. Sooner or later this girl is gonna end up like us like how Lotor decided to go off with his own plans for bringing peace to the universe or some shit.” She clenched her teeth while looking down. “Associating with him only brings more trouble for us!” Ezor yelled at Axca. “Hell, I wouldn’t be surprised if he threw the girl away after how he killed her!”

“Ezor, please!” Acxa begged her while Kari struggled to breathe to her horror. 

“NARTI! HE KILLED NARTI, AXCA!” She cried out, strangling Kari even further.

Kal pointed his sword at Ezor. “Let Kari go!” Ezor stared at the blade as it was inches away from her face, bewildered that she didn’t notice him near herself sooner or how he escaped the steel beam instantly.

“You’re gonna point that thing at me?” She spat out bitterly. “The same thing that took away her life! ” Ezor yelled at him.

A faint memory arose in his mind.

Lotor…? Can you hear me…? The image of her slain body on the ground of their falling ship with a cat looking up at him, placing judgement upon his entire being and witnessing his blood-stained action.

Kal dropped his sword almost immediately. 

Hold on…I did this…? The sword touched the gound and had disintegrated like sands drifting in an hourglass. I couldn’t have…Who is Lotor exactly…. and why is he me? He questioned his undeniable memory of slaying his comrade and looked at Ezor in horror. Her face was a mixture of pain and unresolved sorrow.

“You really are the the witch's son… ” She lowered Kari, loosening her grip as she observed the newly elongated red Altean marks on his face.

He rose his hands up to surrender. “Please… let her go…” He begged her but Zethrid grabbed Lotor from behind and started choking him.

Acxa fired her gun at Ezor, stunning her instantly, and instantly letting go of her grip on Kari.

“What are you doing?! ” Zethrid cried out as she ran up to Ezor’s side, releasing Kal immediately. “This isn’t part of the plan, Axca!”

“Neither is endangering one of the people who live on this planet!” Axca yelled back. 

“Who gives a shit! None of them could survive this place anyway! And there’s no room for any future for any of them as long of our damned blood of the Galra exists!” Zethrid argued. “We exist to steal and to steal and to steal forever! It’s how we goddamn survive, Axca!”

“That’s not true!” Axca cried out.

“This is reality! That bastard proved to us by just surviving after he stole the lives of Voltron and countless others!” Zethrid stomped on the ground with one foot down. “If we are to be warlords and continue surviving, then you have to start by stealing this one man’s life!” She pointed to Axca’s gun. 

Axca stared at her weapon as her hands started to shake. 

Zethrid roared at her. “END THIS, AXCA! KILL LOTOR! ” 

Her ears felt like it was ringing as countless birds escaped from the forest surrounding them.

“NO! KAL, NO! ” Kari screamed as she fell on her knees. “Axca, please!” Kari begged her as tears dripped from her face and onto the ground. “I don’t want any of this to continue!”

Axca readied the gun at Kal’s face. Her eyes were stone cold and Kal gazed upon his impending demise at the barrel of the gun manifesting its energy into a bullet. 

“Please, Axca!” Kari sobbed. “I don't have anyone else now! He’s my friend!”

The sound of the ringing intensified and erupted. The shot fired from the phaser gun changed direction. The large bullet energy fatally struck the side of Zethrid’s face, directly into her left eye as Zethrid screamed. She immediately released Kal from her impenetrable grip as Zethrid herself passed out from the shock of the pain. Her entire body slammed onto the ground with a gigantic thud. 

“This is all my fault…”Axca muttered to herself, grabbed the side of her arm tightly. “I should have controlled myself better.” Axca looked down before Zethrid and Ezor who passed out beside each other. 

“We don’t have enough time.” She turned around with a painful grimace. “Lotor…or Kal, or whoever you decide to call yourself now. It doesn’t matter but we need to leave and sort out this whole situation. I should have killed you just now to end this goddamn pain but there has to be a reason for you to survive…”

He looked at her uneasily. “...What about Kari? What about her planet?”

“We can’t stay here anymore is exactly what I am saying.” Axca spoke bluntly. 

Kari ran up to hug him tightly on his right leg. “There’s no one left for me. All the villages had escaped to the far corners of this planet to avoid any trace of the Galran facility here.” She wiped away her tears. “Kal, let’s leave this place.”

“Kari, are you sure…?” He looked down at her anxiously. 

“I’m extra sure.” She tried to stop herself from crying more. “I don’t want to lose anyone in my life now. I need to become stronger.”

“Let’s go then.” Axca nodded. “Follow me! Quickly! ”

They ran deeper into the woods, and drones came out as Acxa fired them down quickly with her gun. Finally, they reached the base of the mountain where Acxa’s cruiser was parked, opening the cockpit. “Kari, come up here!” She pulled up the girl to the seat and turned around, seeing Lotor at the ground. “What are you waiting for!?”

“Acxa...?” He looked up at her, realizing he now recognized her name.

“Yes…?” She blinked and became frustrated. “We have to go!” She stretched out her hand. A memory arose in his mind.

For Narti. Her voice echoed out in the desolate ruins of his home planet in the hollow memory.

She had betrayed me before… He realized unfortunately.

“I…” He spoke wearly but soon another explosion erupted at the facility. He grabbed her hand and suddenly noticed a patch of green leaves growing underneath his feet as the tiny vegetation began to spread slowly. He stared and looked at Axca with a sense of determination.

“I’m coming with you.” He stepped up into the cockpit with Kari in the back seat, watching Acxa flip the controls and tug them back to accelerate into the atmosphere in a matter of ticks.

======

Allura looked at the pod where Shiro was kept and began to ponder upon the quintessence flowing from her fingers to the clone body she put his soul in. She wasn't sure. After everything that had happened, was it really alright? She had so many questions. So many to count the stars above her head. Romelle stated that she only knew part of the truth but they all never could figure out why would Lotor do it in the first place. She began to wonder but felt pain in her throat. She felt like she was losing confidence in herself. Was her judgment really correct? How would she know....? She made the decision to overthrow the emperor but felt angry with herself to leaning on her biases and the team's overall opinion, rather than herself. Over time, she felt like she was drifting away from the team and began to feel shame for herself for trusting Lotor in the first place. Krolia was checking Shiro's vitals and walked over to her to place her shoulder on her. For a moment she felt a chill, remembering the time she poured so much of her alchemic ability into the ships Lotor and her built to bring free quintessence to save the entire universe from war. In that time, she had trusted him. But the warmth from Krolia's hand and the familiar touch from Lotor's made her stop and step away from Shiro's pod.

"Allura, you need to rest," Krolia spoke to her.

"How can I...? " Tears flowed past Allura's cheeks. "I've done everything I can to make sure Shiro was alive because of how I and all of just---!"

"It's not your fault, Allura." Krolia hugged her. "Sweetie, you can't blame on yourself solely for this."

Allura fell silent, remembering the paladins' reaction after the whole event and even losing the castle of lions. They couldn't speak with her for days when they were each individually traveling in their own lions. Whenever they had a conversation in which Allura had a chance to speak, there was always an awkward silence. Romelle tried to cheer up Allura but felt tenser with her each time. She didn't know the right decision. She couldn't appear weak before her team. She can still remember the maniacal laughter of her former love falling into oblivion, with no one to save him despite his sins. Could someone really save someone of their sins? Was she truly correct to abandon him?

"Allura, what's wrong?" Krolia asked her gently.

"...We left him! We left him to die, Krolia! I..." Her voice cracked. "I can never forgive myself for that. I betrayed our customs to bring peace to the universe. And for what? Destroying his life? He turned into a monster because I made those ships for him! "

"You have to be stronger than this. I know the feeling of losing a loved one because I had to make the hard decision to abandon my loved ones to help the universe too, Allura." Krolia spoke weakly, causing Allura to stop crying.

"Krolia, you mean your husband and Keith...?" Allura gently stepped away from the hug. "How did Keith managed to keep himself from being angry at you after you left him?"

"It was hard at first but it took a lot of talking. Lots, and lots, and lots of it. We had arguments here and there but what mattered more is that he learned to forgive me in the end. He doesn't have to apologize for the hurt I caused him for leaving him but it mattered more that we were able to reconcile. It took two years of it." Krolia chuckled.

Allura smiled weakly. "I see..." Her smile grew into worry. "I don't know if that could ever be accomplished in this case...He probably lost sight of who he is now.."

"Then do what you do best, then." Krolia pointed to Shiro. "It's who you are that makes you so great." They both watched from afar at the sight of a peacefully sleeping man who's life was brought back. 

“Allura… there’s something I need to show you though.” Krolia frowned.

“What do you mean?” Allura gave her a concerned look. 

“Follow me to the visual room. There’s some images that have been bothering me for a while now…” Krolia kept her face away from Allura as she exited the room.

“Alright then…” Allura followed Krolia.

Krolia entered the key code to a room down the hallway. The door slid open and Krolia stepped forward and found a dashboard to enter a series of commands to open up a series of holographic panels with images of a odd Galran facility. “When Keith and I found a Galran facility on the moon of the planet where we found Romelle, there just seemed to be a lack of other Alteans who was residing in the planet.” She frowned. “I could be wrong and that we rushed through things when all of this was unfolding, but it just bothered me Allura.” Her eyes shifted to images of a hanger filled with Altean pod ships. “It’s just that…”

“Just what…?” Allura looked confused.

“I shouldn’t suspect Romelle, Allura.” She bit her lip. “She already lost so much but I feel there are gaps in her story.”

“How can that be? What we learned so much is enough for us to keep moving forward.” Allura argued.

“Right. But there are times we can’t extrapolate too much. There are parts of the story where it made me wonder what happened to the other remaining Alteans who weren’t taken by Lotor, or how the details of how the facilities were constructed to keep the ones who were selected from the others are still alive.”

“I beg your pardon — what?” Allura paused. “If they’re alive, why didn’t you all free them?”

“This is the tricky part…” Krolia leaned against the wall while crossing her arms. “There is the case of the pod ships readily available and capable enough for any Altean to travel to the moon facility with the ‘consumed’ Alteans who were selected at any time. How Keith and I discovered a vat container of quintessence with an address to the Altean colony, not necessarily from it. Question is…” Krolia pulled up an image of a very unsual sight in Allura’s eyes.

“Are those…juniberry flowers?” The image hovered before her displayed the sight of a full field of them under a glowing violet light. “Krolia, what’s going on?”

Krolia looked at the image of the flowers fearfully. “There’s something about these flowers and the marks of the Alteans drained of their quintessence having a very unusual connection but I don’t have access to any research data as long as we are missing in action from the entire universe at the moment. I need to investigate this matter further and why these flowers give me a very unsettling feeling.”

She zoomed in on one of the flowers more closely and noticed very odd light particles coming off of it. “I have a very bad feeling that Lotor is deeply connected to all of this.”

Chapter Text

The crown prince sat with Kova in his chair in his own private cruiser with more ships by his side. He felt empty inside as he watched the stars beyond the deck of his ship, operated by other robotic sentries. He was banished from the Galran Empire after his failure to rule his planet properly. He felt like he was on the verge of tears but Kova purred next to him for comfort. He had lost Ven'tar and her people. He wanted to ensure a better chance for the planet to remain stable and extract quintessence without harming the planet nor the people with Ven'tar's help. He had lost entire histories, languages and their dialects, customs, festivals, and families… He was silent in disbelief that he lost everything. Now there was nothing for him at this point. Soon, Lotor couldn't pay attention to everything that was happening around him. He gave back his protocol IDs, his licenses, some of the positions of the planets he was supposed to rule later, and anything else he was commanded by his father to lose his place as an exiled prince. All he had were three ships. A mere amount compared to the hundreds of thousands his father led over. His rank as a prince was laughable to most Galra, looking down on him and pitying him that he was able to get as far as he could because he just so happened to be the emperor's sole son. He took a breath and opened up a holographic interface to debrief himself with anything to distract him. It was only a few deca-phoebs since his failure.

“Prince Lotor…” High Priestess Haggar appeared on the screen.

He narrowed his eyes, refusing to look at her. “What is it?”

She scowled at him and raised her eyebrows. “You check the outpost on the far sector on quadrant nine and ten. The operations will be held by one of my students.”

“Your druids?” Lotor, still refusing to turn his head.

“Yes. They shall keep an eye on you as you look over the operation of how to properly extract quintessence without collaboration with your colonists. Report to me when you have completed your tasks. Vrepit Sa.”

“Vrepit Sa.” He spoke flatly and the screen disappeared.

He found himself in the facility as he was guided by the sentries to his position. A line of druids had welcomed him but he refused to look at any of them. He then looked around the quarters of the assembly operations but soon Kova jumped from his shoulders toward a particular druid. Lotor realized that it was Narti.

Over time, he watched the orientations of the extraction processes with the druids. Over time, he observed their magic. Over time, he promoted one of the druids to be part of his own personal squadron. Narti was the first member of his crew. Haggar didn’t want to lose one of her best students, especially Macidus who was angered heavily that the exiled prince would dare take one of his pupils too.

“You dare take my student for your foolish brigade!” Macidus yelled at him.

“Silence! I would have none of your insolence towards the prince of the Galran Empire!” He glared at him. “Narti is appointed by me to be part of my squad and you have no say over it by the power of your position!”

“Let him be, Macidus.” Haggar spoke over them on the screen.

“High Priestess!” Macidus pleaded.

“He is the prince and taking in a half-breed like himself makes our sect much purer. Vrepit Sa.” She ended the call promptly.

He glared at Lotor, who was rather smug but disdain towards by Haggar’s end of her comment. “Vrepit Sa…” He turned off the call as well.

Lotor leaned back in his chair and sighed. “I hate that witch.” He petted Kova.

As do I…Narti kneeled down before Lotor.

“Please! There is no kneeling for a general such as yourself!” He waved his hand.

She pulled over her hood and began to sign. The way how you have taught me this language is rather useful to me…I don’t have to keep using Kova to be my guide as I can now stand by my own to speak…This language…You got it from Ven’tar, right…?

His eyes looked down in grief. “Yes.” Pulling his hand from Kova.

If I ever die, I like to thank her for spreading such kindness to you and me…

“Why must you say that?” He looked at her with concern.

Because I am a druid, I am also filled with the witch’s hateful magic. At any point of life, she can choose to kill me of her own will or even use me against you or anyone else innocent…I wish to avoid that but if I am unable to fight back with my will…please take away my life.

He chuckled. “Narti, please don’t say that.” He gave a sad smile.

Kova’s eyes glowed for Narti to see Lotor’s face.

I have the ability to see because of Kova, Lotor…Please be honest when you speak…

He looked at her with a warm smile. “Alright, I promise to be honest.”

Will you promise me that if I ever double-cross you, that you take me down for the sake of the universe…?

“Narti, I do not want to promise that. I do not wish to take away your life. You mean more than this.” He assured her.

I can accept that as your promise then…

“Speaking of which--!” Lotor turned to Kova and back to Narti. “If you’re gonna be my general, I expect you to have a set of eyes to watch my back.” He chuckled. “Kova, go to Narti.” The cat obeyed and walked toward Narti who picked him up.

I-I don’t deserve Kova…

“Trust me. You need him more than I do.” He smiled.

It was overtime that Lotor grew with more soldiers at his hand, more ships at his feet, and more generals watching behind his back. He needed to strengthen the grasp of his reduced power as an exiled prince. And so he went searching for more ways that his mother’s culture could possibly help the universe as a whole. Soon he explored planets with various Altean structures like temples, underground libraries, and caves hidden within planets. He began to realize that even some of the people hidden away in the far stretches of the galaxy happened to be Alteans as well, keeping track of planets and reports of possible Alteans. But he also realized that he needed to keep them safe from the witch’s eyes such as the druids themselves, asking Narti to look for generals as he looked for his mother’s people. By the time, Lotor realized that the quantum abyss was not susceptible to Haggar’s magic, he tested out a route and noticed that there was a trans-reality effect interfering with Narti’s magic. He scheduled a route for his own ships, cargo, for now, to keep a low-tech presence to avoid surveillance, where they were carried over to a planet where he built a base using the sentries that he had Narti reprogram to build structures for the Alteans. Soon, he realized that Narti could control people with her magic, which began to give him a rather nice advantage when getting ships and all from high-ranking generals from the Galran Empire. This meant better equipment and better weapons as well.

On one planet, they explored a desert planet with an unruly Galran leader forcing slaves of his colony to build great structures and move heavy cargo in the harsh heat. Lotor noticed a girl with great muscular built who was hit by the leader to keep moving a large plank of bricks over her head, even though she hasn’t had food or water in days. He instructed the leader to back down but he refused, challenging Lotor to a duel. Narti and Kova watched the prince effortlessly take down the tyrant, letting him sink into the sand and grabbed a bowl of water for the girl.

“Please don’t offer that to me, prince. I am not full Galra…”A tear fell in her eye.

“You are the strongest person I know.” He smiled proudly. “You are made of two things that bring you up, just that those bricks that society or even that awful master might throw on you. You can be an incredible person without having to be half of something that others wanted.”

She looked up at him with a smile, and soon she followed after him to various more planets across the galaxy, competing in matches to have fun with Lotor and Narti, and even fighting alongside them as they conquer more and more challenges in the cosmos.

On another planet, the crew of four (counting Kova) found a black market in one of the islands in search of materials to build for Lotor’s grand plan. One of the merchants were selling items in an auction that the four attended in disguise and looked up to see a dancer with lovely coral skin and blue-yellow marks across her body. She jumped up from her cage and demonstrated her flying abilities, and danced beautifully to enchant the audience and even Zethrid. Lotor smirked at Zethrid and quickly she blushed angrily at Narti and Lotor laughing at her, disrupting the audience’s attention and catching the girl’s attention toward Zethrid who raised her fist. The bid caller accidentally asked Zethrid if she was a bidder and she sweated nervously. Lotor raised his hand and called out an obscenely high number and Zethrid gaped at him and quickly called out another. Soon enough, they were calling various numbers, deals, or any trades to take the girl with them.

“I like to take the girl for a quadrillion GAC!” Lotor laughed aloud.

“I-I LIKE TO TAKE HUNDRED QUADRILLION GAC FOR HER!” Zethrid cried out frantically.

The girl started laughing in her cage in tears of laughter but was halted by the bid caller, tapping on the metal bars. “Now, now, don’t act so happy there.” He glared at her, which caught the attention of Lotor and Zethrid who glared back at the bid caller. “Going once! Going twice! SOLD!” He slammed down the mallet.

Behind the circus tent, the bid caller walked up to them with the girl chained with shackles by two burly men behind her. She glanced at the two behind them and sighed, but was soon stunned to see the prince when he removed his hood, smiling at Lotor much to Zethrid’s disdain. Suddenly, the bid caller laughed darkly and looked at Lotor with a clenched smile. “To think it was the prince just jerking around with his time during his exile, huh? Now, what brings you over to this lowly part?”

“You’re right. I do seek entertainment.” The prince smirked. Narti appeared behind the two men holding the girl in chains and swiftly took them out with her tail. “And I also don’t wish to pay for entertainment that might disappoint me as well.” He chuckled.

“How dare you!” He looked at his knocked-out men and back at him. “What makes you say that!?” Swiftly, Zethrid slammed down her fist on top of his head. He fell back and Zethrid walked up to the girl.

“What is your name?” Lotor asked gently, where the girl looked up.

“E-Ezor…” She looked at him and back to Zethrid, who broke her chains.

“You are f-free, Ezor.” Zethrid almost stuttered at Ezor’s beauty.

“Where am I going to go?” She looked worried.

“Wherever you want to be. Wherever you desire to go.” Lotor walked up to her and extended his hand to her. “We can take you there.”

She looked at his hand and back at him. “Galra…I’m only part of that…”

“As do I.” He smiled, causing Ezor to blush.

“AND ME TOO!” Zethrid bobbed her head between them. Lotor started laughing again and Zethrid quickly started arguing with him as he nodded his head to her bumbling retorts.

Ezor watched them all and noticed Narti by her side, which Kova on her shoulders, reaching her hand out to pet. Kova almost swiped his hands at her but was caught by Narti who shook her head at the cat. Ezor felt the soft fur across the bony body of Kova. “He’s so cute.” She giggled. “What’s his name?”

Kova…

“Wah!” Ezor shrieked as she lifted her hand off of the cat, causing both of them to turn as Zethrid pulled Lotor by his collar.

“Trust me, even I have a hard time getting used to that,” Lotor replied slyly as he looked away with a nostalgic smile.

They traveled together on Lotor’s ship and soon each of them learned how to pilot their ships, with Ezor being the fastest of them all. Working together on different operations and even on their own as Lotor hurried away to keep an eye on the Alteans. When he returned to the colony, he was rather stunned that they made a statue of him in their gratitude for him. He felt immensely breathless by their sheer love for him even though he thought the statue was incredibly cheesy but smiled for them as a thank you. A part of him thought about changing the statue to that of Honerva instead, his personal hero to look up to as she was his mother. He began to wonder of where she was this whole time…

They stumbled across a planet full of rain, where he told the crew to wait back in the ship for him. He wore a dark cloak over him and walked over to a tavern where Alteans were hidden in disguise and he told them that the Galra would never find them in this place for their peace. After taking them into the cargo ship for his safety, he noticed a young girl lying on the side of the wall in an alleyway. Her eyes and cheeks were sunken as if she hasn’t eaten for days, and her violet hair fell past her shoulders with two black long horns across her head. She looked at Lotor with eyes that could peer into someone’s soul.

Lotor stopped and closed the door on the ship to walk toward the girl under the rain. Busy street dwellers moved away and passed by the girl but soon she realized that he was walking up to her.  He asked her, “Are you hungry…?”

She nodded weakly. “Leave me…I am dirtied-blood Galra, sir.”

He clenched his jaw. “No, you are a beautiful child who needs food, water, and a home.” He kneeled down before her. “You deserve happiness than to just waste away like this. Come with me and you can become someone greater and stronger.”

“Why must you say that?” She tilted her head.

“Because I see someone who knows how to make the right decision.”

=====

The fire embers cracked before Acxa as she tossed charcoal into the pit. Using a stick, she pushed some of the fuel to make the flames gently grow to bring warmth for her guests. They were situated on a moon on a greater planet with rings in the vertical and horizontal direction. The night stars showered over the silk of blue sky and the embers lifted themselves up from the fire to reach the heavens.

“All life returns back above, doesn’t it…” She looked up and stared back at Kari whose nose was wrinkled and eyes looking at the sand beneath her feet. She felt bad for the girl for what the Galra Empire had done to her home but felt so perplexed of what happened to her former superior. “Sir…you really don’t remember what happened to you…?” He sat by the fire and wrapped his arms around his knees, looking up to Acxa with his face now exposed. She couldn’t believe how much more he looked like his mother. She couldn’t believe that she didn’t catch it earlier during the years she served as his right-hand. “Do you remember me, Zethrid, and Ezor…?”

“It’s…foggy, unfortunately. All it is, are just feelings I have when I look at you all. I know the star systems, the Galran architecture, and pieces of when I was a child. I know of Zarkon though and how I may had a role in defeating him.”

“Wait don’t you know that--?”She stopped herself, changing the subject from jumping into personal territory. “Do you remember that you were exiled?”

“I…believe so.” He ran his hand through his hair. "I'm starting to accept that my identity is indeed Lotor. There's no mistaking that, but...there's still so much to unravel that I fear how I may react when I learn the truth to my supposed downfall with Voltron."

“I see.” Acxa stopped and looked at Kari. “I’m sorry you didn’t know that ‘Kal’ was the Galran Emperor, did you?”

“I can see that he truly is a forgettable fool.” She smacked her lips bitterly. “Your name was Lotor this whole time, huh?”

“It’s not your fault, Kari.” She looked at her with returning sympathy.

“Maybe because they’re dead? Maybe because they and my village and myself were robbed because of the Galra?” Her tears began to form and quickly ran up to him to start punching at his chest. He coughed by the first punch as Acxa watched the small child beat down the man’s chest repeatedly.

"Kari..."Axca pitied her.

“You lied to me! You lied to me! My dad could have been alive had it not been for you all! My mom wouldn’t have betrayed us and me if she didn’t choose an easy way out by siding with you all! And look where it got her! Dead!” She cried. "What was I thinking! Axca would have ended your life back there and instead I pleaded you of all people to be alive!" Tears streamed past her little cheeks. "I don't what's wrong with me to still consider you to be my friend after everything.

“Kari…I--”A final punch landed on his chest, right where his heart was. Soon, a memory blossomed in his mind.

How many…?! HOW MANY!? A tearful princess cried out to him.

Back in near the edge of the rift, there was a woman who he once knew. A woman who believed in him. Who understood him... a woman who he fell greatly in love with. Her name…her name was---

“Allura…” He spoke in his breath.

Acxa stared as Kari stopped. They watched Lotor stand up and walk past the campfire.

“Where are you going, Lotor?” She asked him.

“I don’t know..." He spoke as he looked up to the stars. "But I know that I shouldn’t be here. I need to get back. I need to return back to someone named Allura…” Lotor stared at the stars. “She might be the key to helping me understand what I need to do.” He turned around at them. "I believe I was supposed to save the universe by ending this war."

Chapter Text

Passing by several moons in their journey, Acxa turned her head around to see Kari and Lotor silent in the back. She took a small sigh and looked forward. A question began to bother her at the back of her mind, however.

“You remember your duel with Zarkon, right?” She asked as she tilted the controls to the right.

He snapped out of his daze from looking outside to think of more memories he must have missed and he turned to her with a solemn gaze. “I…remember fearing for my life. But also wanting to stop him as well. It’s funny to think that one of the greatest enemies in my life happens to be my own father.” He turned his head and found Kari asleep but had a feeling she would be awake. He dismissed the thought and kept speaking. “I keep on remembering when I was a child too. I was brought before the throne room with Dayak sometimes and later without her as I got older. I seemed to remember that as I got closer to the memory of fighting with him, there was a group of people I felt like I wanted to earn their trust with. They seemed suspicious of me. I believe it was because I was the son of the tyrant."

“How exactly did the emperor of a ten-thousand-year-old reign die?” She spoke casually.

He wrinkled his nose. “I saw a beam of light coming from him and it was directed at the people I wanted to earn favor with. Then I ran and stabbed him in the back with the debris from his fallen ships.”

“So you never really killed your father by your sword, as you said at the Kral Zera.”

“Kral Zera?”

“It’s a ceremony where they choose a new emperor for the Galran Empire. When your father died, team Voltron helped you obtain the throne.”

“Where were you in my memories?” He turned his head up.

She was silent for a moment and then spoke. “When you dueled with your father, I was working with him along with Zethrid and Ezor. It was supposed to be an exchange to get you back to the former emperor with one of the paladin’s missing father, Sam Holt, we held hostage. Back the Kral Zera, we sided with Haggar and opposed to you becoming the new emperor as Sendak, who was Zarkon’s student.”

He blinked. “That’s…awfully harsh of you.”

She raised one of her eyebrows. “That’s all you can say?”

“Well, it just seems like everyone was after my head and even you too.” He chuckled, wrapped his fingers together. “Makes me curious to know what exactly I was as a person.” He grinned. “Although to be fair, I can understand that you had your own motives too.” Narrowing his eyes, Lotor began to remember the scene of her pointing a gun at him as soon as he turned his back from looking at something…something paramount. “Is it normal for you to double-cross people?”

“Not unless the person proves to fail my expectations.” She retorted a bit bitter, causing Lotor to chuckle.

“Now Acxa---“ He grinned.

“Don’t ‘now Acxa’ me!” She snapped with a sour face at him and turned back to the controls.

“Was he like your ex or something?” Kari woke up, causing an awkward silence between the two. She yawned and knitted her eyebrows at the two. “Maybe siblings?”

“He used to be my boss.” She spoke flatly.

“That’s pretty cool that you would exchange your boss to get whatever you want.”

“Kari, that’s not how you want to think.” Lotor quickly waved her hand at her.

“Perhaps I can right now. Sooner I get rid of you, the sooner I’ll be at peace.” Acxa narrowed her eyes.

“Oh dear, now look what you have done.” Lotor felt rather nervous toward Kari and Acxa.

They landed on a desert planet with a lime-green atmosphere, parking the cruiser near a couple of sand dunes as they traveled to a bazaar bustling with aliens of various races. Lotor kept his mask on and hood up while Kari kept her mask away. They walked past a couple of spice stands along with meat and vegetable stands with produce extracted from various parts of the galaxy. Soon enough they come across a stand with the word ‘Unilu’, causing Lotor to stop.

“I feel like I know what this is…” Lotor walked forward.

Lifting the beaded tarp above his head, Lotor, Kari, and Acxa walk inside one by one. The shop was filled with a variety of artifacts collected throughout the expanse of the universe. Astrolabes, 4D Olkarion cubes, alchemic carpets, golden nun-chucks, bottles of multicolored potions, spinning hourglasses, and scavenged hardware parts from Galran ships. A memory surfaced of him as a child as he was observing the markets for his economic studies and caught his eye at the Unilu shop’s collection of wonders and wanted to visit there himself on the day. Kari looked over a table where various tiny bottles with miniature figures of people inside. She tugged Lotor’s shirt.

“What are these?” She asked him, causing him to bend down and look.

“Why…aren’t these voodoo dolls?” He stared in awe.

“And right they are!” The shop owner walked in carrying stacks of silks piling up in a tower. He set them down on the counter and walked over to them. “They say you can use a person’s very soul trapped within these vials of glass as if you have their very lives in your hands! Very sadistic, would you say---OH WHOA WHOA!!” He jumped up from Lotor and pointed his shaking hand at him. “Is that…!?”

Acxa grabbed her gun before pulling out and Kari grabbed an arrow behind her, ready to stab the shop owner’s eye if needed.

“IS THAT!?” He gulped, building the suspense towards the girls and Lotor who felt a bead of sweat on his face. “THE DALTERIAN MASK THE GREAT TRIGEL HAD WORN IN BATTLE!!”

The three stared at him in silence and then sighed in relief.

Lotor coughed. “Uh…yes. What about it?”

“It’s worth hundred quadrillion GAC!” The shop owners had stars in his eyes, moving his hands slowly to feel the dark red wooden mask. “Please! I must have it! I’ll trade anything in this shop to have it!”

“Oh! In that case, can I get—?”Acxa pointed at a series of galactic rifles but Lotor pulled Kari and her in a corner to talk privately.

“Kari… you did say you were a descendant of Trigel, right?” He asked her.

“Yes but that’s only a legend though. It’s been thousands of years since her line supposedly died out.” She crossed her arms in a pout. “I can make those masks any day, along with battle armor too. It’s what my dad did as a craftsman.”

Acxa and Lotor stared at her incredulously and realized they hit a gold mine.

“So many ships just like that…” Acxa stared in the distance just thinking of the numbers.

“So many resources to travel…” Lotor was bemused by the sheer treasure, feeling it on his fingers.

“I literally carved it out from a dead tree.” Kari flatly spoke. “Geez, you people are greedy.”

“You’re just a kid.” They both patted her on the head.

Lotor jumped back to the counter where the shop owner, extravagantly leaning across it and flashed a toothy smile to charm the rather confused yet enchanted man. “How much you said this mask cost, hmmm?” He leaned in closer with a little smirk. “Please…tell me, again.” His voice became deeper.

“I…” The shop owner felt like there were rose petals flying past his ears. “It’s a hundred quadrillion GAC, sir…” His eyes softened as he slowly leaned closer to look at the mask’s craftsmanship. “Such detail…”

“So exquisite---yes?” He played with his eyebrows behind the mask.

The shop owner blushed. “I…what must I trade to have that mask or even--!”

“Hush now…!” He felt his chin delicately with his finger and revealed his fangs, causing Acxa to quickly cover Kari’s eyes from looking.

“Whoa, what is happening?!” Kari cried out.

“I don’t even know right now…” Her eyes grew wide at the sight with horror and awe. She knew Lotor could sweet talk, but she’s never seen him with much less restraint.

“Who are you behind the mask…?” The imaginary rose petals intensified around them like a tornado.

“A phantom fallen from the stars…” He flashed a gleaming smile and wiggles his fingers to charm the shop owner.

“Oh! I could almost just!” The shop owner jumped over the countertop to dive in for a kiss but Lotor stepped away quickly, causing him to fall straight onto to the floor.

The three looked down on him in a circle in awkward silence. “Is he okay…?” Acxa asked.

“Err…” Lotor caught the shop owner having a rose-colored dream with the mysterious phantom who was about to spirit him away. “Maybe we should wait for him to wake up.”

The shop owner arose to the smell of swamp tea drifting to his nostrils. “Ah, mother’s favorite—wait, hold on!” He sat up straight from the alchemic carpet and two stacks of silk to serve as his pillow. “The mask! Where is the man with the mask?!”

“Please, he left to grab some food.” Kari took the tea kettle from the flame in the tiny kitchen of the shop. “I call him Kal for short.” She looked bitterly at the swirling green water.

“Kal, huh?” He took the small cup from the small girl and sipped the bitter water quite bitterly. “I made myself into a fool.”

“You ask him the meaning of his name. You’ll get quite a laugh from that.” She stirred the water.

“You have something behind your head, though?” He pointed at her.

“Oh…this.” She pulled out her mask. “My father made this.”

The shop owner blinked. “Wait, you’re Dalterian?”

“I heard Trigel was a paladin of Voltron and lead the Dalterian belt as well. The Dalterians used to be good allies with the Galra. She is supposed to be my ancestor even I’m far shorter than her and my hair wasn’t as long as hers.”

“So this design was carried on to her descendants for generations, then?” He looked at her in awe.

“Yes. Followed by making shields, vambraces, spears, swords, breastplates, and of course the masks of protection.” She looked at her father’s mask held by her small fingers.

“Can you make all of that?” He stared in awe. “The Dalterian craftsmanship is known to be legendary for it’s the long-lasting endurance of their armor.” He set his cup down. “If you were my apprentice, I can let you build these pieces of your forgotten culture to help the Voltron Coalition.” He revealed his coalition badge. “I got it from a good trader friend of mine with orange hair to join the cause.” He gave a smile with a gap between his teeth. “You can travel with me to help bring supplies and materials for them too to help the Coalition just your ancestor Trigel helped out with Voltron.”

She stared at him with big eyes. “I…need to talk to Kal about this.” She looked down.

“Ah! Absolutely! Absolutely, no rush!” He waved his hands.

Lotor walked across the market streets like a ghost. Lanterns were carried by running children through the streets as he watched the people tattered in rags and other material for clothing. He pulled down his cloak and came across the smell of cosmic salmon grilling in a little stand. He pulled out his bag and realized he didn’t have any money until Acxa held her hand in front of him and ordered two sticks of blue fire-roasted fish.

“You intend on returning to Voltron, sir?” She asked but he didn’t turn his head as he was more fascinated by the food, taking a bite into the hot scaly flesh of the fried fish.

He chewed and swallowed with a gulp to finally speak. “Yes.”

“You might not like their reaction if they see you again, sir.” She looked away as they walked. “Your appearance has changed and even the way act seems to be different as well. But…” She smacked her lips. “I’m afraid that you will turn into your bad side if you receive your memories again.”

He raised his eyebrows and turned to look at her. “What do you mean…?”

“You lost your patience, sir.” She looked at the distance.

He felt nervous and asked her another question. “Why did you shoot me back then?”

She raised her eyes and looked back down. “That was because you slew Narti with your sword.”

“So it’s true, then?” He sighed. “I keep on getting memories of her and I never imagine that I would end up doing this to her later on. I also keep on seeing Allura from Kari, especially the way how she speaks about her father... I feel as if I’ve caused so much pain to all three of them.” He frowned sadly. “I wish I can do something to change all of that for them.”

“And for so many more, sir,” Acxa replied. “The universe can’t live on with you preaching for peace, even you do not remember doing so. You have to be proactive about this.”

“You think I can really help change things for all these people.” He turned his head to her.

“I had believed in you back then relying on the fact that you alone could save the universe.” She stopped. “But I wish to find my own path to help the people myself.”

Lotor turned around at her as the people passed them like fading sand. “You...no, I respect your choice.”

She grinned. “The one you’re looking for is Allura, right?” 

He turned his head. “Yes…” He replied shyly.

 “She and you have a lot of talking to do.” She turned around and headed back to the shop with a contented smile.

They returned back to the shop with another space salmon stick for Kari but found her sitting at a lacquered table as she looked at her father’s mask, turning her eyes at both of them. “Kal…”

“Yes, Kari?” He stopped. “What is it?”

She got out from her chair and walked up to Lotor. She was far, far shorter than him, who stood over her like a benevolent giant. “I like to join the Voltron Coalition.” She looked up at him earnestly.

“Really?” Acxa replied in surprise.

“The Coalition?” He asked.

“Yes; they’re the allies and rebels that side with Voltron against the Galran Empire.” She explained.

“It would be amazing if she can help out the coalition as well.” The shop owner returned, catching an eye at Lotor and blushed, and coughed to maintain his composure. “I also wonder if I can recruit you all as well.” He turned around. “Wait right here! One of the rebels is actually here to today so I’ll make a call to make a tour of their operations for you all!” He ran to the back through the strings of beads acting as the door.

Kari stood firm before Lotor. “I know it’s not much but I realize I can’t go back to my planet since there’s no home for me back there. I realized that what my father had taught me in the art of making battle armor is still treasured, then I want to carry on my culture’s legacy.”

He smiled. “Of course. The skills you showed me have great talent and your heart is strong as well. You choose where you want to go and where you want to be, Kari.” He bent down to put his hand on her shoulder.

“But that would be mean separating from you…” She hugged him. “I know I haven’t exactly treated you well these past quintants but I want to give something for you so you won’t forget about me.”

“I can’t wait for it.” He caressed her head softly.

“Great news!” The shop owner returned, causing Kari to jump away from Lotor in a tick. “Tonight, we can catch a ride with the Coalition in their ships.”

They traveled deep into the bazaar and soon found themselves at a tunnel as the entrance to an inactive volcano inside of Acxa’s cruiser. She stopped the cruiser, opening the hatch of the cockpit open. Lotor turned around as well as Kari as the shop owner went on ahead of them to the tunnel.

“Acxa, what’s wrong…?” Lotor turned to her.

“This is far as I am going.” She smiled.

“You’re leaving?” Kari looked worried.

“Yes… I am.” Acxa spoke but soon she felt Kari jump toward her with a hug.

“I’m going to miss you.” A small tear fell past her cheek.

“I do, too.” She smiled but stopped when she looked at Lotor, paying attention to his long corrupted red marks. “Lotor, do you realize that Haggar is---?” She shook her head. “No, Lotor you have to be careful since you escaped the rift.” She set down Kari. “The quintessence from the rift must have caused you to have that deformation.”

He felt his face. “What’s going to happen to me?”

“I don’t know. But where your memories lead you too, you have to be careful about yourself and those around you. Till then, I have to go find my path.” She waved and turned back to her ship, accelerating in a stream of smoke across the desert night.

Lotor and Kari turned around to find another tunnel of darkness like the one on the Galran base so many quintants before. They kept walking down the path and soon light poured out from the end of the tunnel to reveal machinery, fighter jets, tents, and many rebels traveling throughout the facility, where the hole of the mountain above them was the entrance for cargo ships and more. A man with a tiny ponytail, a half-poncho, and an orange-green suit, while holding a pole made of scavenged parts, turned around to meet the guests the Unilu shop owner spoke about.

“Matt! So good to see you! Now how are those Monsters & Mana dice working out for you?” He shook with hand with the taller human boy. “Matt, these are Kari and Kal.” He pointed at each of them.

“Pleasure to meet you too!” He shook hands with both of them.

“Nice to meet you.” Lotor smiled.

“Now Kal, Kari is going to start on her apprenticeship soon and I tend to make a lot of stops through the galaxies to help the spread word and supply for the Coalition. This…might not be the last time you both you would see each other.”

“I understand.” He looked at him and bent down at his knee for Kari. “Be careful out there, alright?”

“I will…” She sniffed and pulled out a wrapped bag and gave it to Lotor. “Open it later, okay?”

“I will.” He hugged her and watched her leave to join up with more apprentices her age, excited to meet the new member in their league as they slowly drifted together away from him with laughter and pride. “I’ll miss you, Kari.” He whispered.

“AUGHHHHHH!” Lotor quickly turned around to the sight of Matt sobbing and quickly squeezing Lotor in his tears. “They’re holding hands! They’re marching to be the next generation of hope! Our future with them is so pure! AUGHHHHHHH!” Matt continued to sob and quickly jumped back from him, coughing to restore his composure. “Hello! My name is Matt Holt!”

“Ah yes! We already did this, but a pleasure to meet you, Matt Holt—.” He blinked and saw a memory of a man similar to Matt in shackles, glasses, and long hair.

 What exactly are you planning to do…? He spoke from his cell with Lotor sitting by him.

What…?

“Uh dude, you like blanked out for a second. Are you those types that get paralyzed while awake?” Matt looked concern.

“Uh no, not at all. I do have to apologize for my behavior just there. I don’t quite always know what is going on sometimes.” He chuckled.

“That’s relatable!” He pats him on the back. “I look forward to working with, Kal!”

“Absolutely.” He walked up the steps to Matt’s cruiser, turning around in worry. Matt gave him a tour of the cargo ships and showed Lotor to his own room in Matt’s ship.

“It might not be much but I hope that this can serve as your humble abode, my dude.” He flashed a toothy grin.

“Quite certainly. I appreciate your generosity, Matt.”

“No problem!” He gave a cheery salute and turned back to the door. “Let me know if you need anything.” The door slid behind him, giving Lotor space with his own personal quarters. He sat down on the bed and removed his mask, and found a mirror in front of him. He never noticed his red marks until now…He never noticed them before and felt one of them with his fingers. Picking up Kari’s gift, he opened up the wrapper and found that she had created new armor for him. A new blue shirt, new breastplates, a pair of gloves, and a new dark multi-patterned cloak to replace his old one. He put each of them off, but left the armor he wore since exiting out from his mecha in the forest long ago. I realized that if he needed to access his sword, the vambraces on his arms would be left alone, even though they grazed. His boots and the armor on his legs would be left alone as well. He looked back at the mirror and noticed his braid from Kari was becoming loose, examining the pattern she gave him, and rebraiding it. He pulled his hood over from the new blue shirt he wore, which concealed his white hair. He realized that Kari would know that people would have recognized him as Lotor for his hair. He put on the red wooden mask and stared at the mirror.

It would be a long while for him to remove his hood and mask. But he felt as if a bad omen was coming back to haunt him, should his identity be revealed...

Chapter Text

Allura rolled around beneath her comforter three times in a row. She hardly got any rest within the past month. It just rattled her. Like a snake, her thoughts beg and torment her and always hissed even she had the most peace by herself. Her eyes lifted up to the glass portal above her head, watching the stars float and dance so gleefully and wonderfully outside of her Blue Lion. She wished that she could waltz as well, drifting away from the painful memories in such a sweet dream. But what of it…? She felt anger and confusion, and hate…and grief, and so many questions swelling up like restless butterflies within her. She curled up in her blanket. She already cried but again would distract the paladins in the journey back to Earth. She had to act like a leader. She can’t be reckless again. She closed her eyes and took a breath. Opening them, Allura saw Lotor walk alone in the landscape of a desert planet where all the paladins with Matt and Sam Holt were. The prince appeared so weary but his eyes shimmered in determination, however. His armor broken and his hair in disarray, Lotor walked slowly toward them as they all watched the one who killed the tyrant, his own father. Sam Holt looked at the paladins and back to Lotor, where he stepped forward but Pidge held his arm quickly.

“Dad, what are you doing?” His own daughter who just got her father back after so long felt wary of him being near the fallen despot’s son.

Her father looked at her dearly. "Katie…let me be, okay? I wish to speak with him.” He stretched out his hand to pat on her head and turned to meet up with him.

Lotor's breathing was ragged, clutching on to his right arm tightly, as he walked but stopped when Sam approached him. He looked at the human with a curious sort of fear in his eyes, Allura noted. She remembered that Sam only spoke a few words with him and turned away to return back to Pidge and Matt, with Matt especially with a look mixed with disgust and confusion toward Lotor. There was silence standing between the crew and Lotor as the dust rolled by in the wind. Allura bit her lip and walked up to Lotor, whose expression was numb and sorrowful but squinted his eyes at her, standing up firmly before her. 

Allura breathed in and held her ground in front of him. “There is much to … discuss when returning back to the Castle of Lions. For you to have the black paladin’s bayard was a hazardous choice.” She glared at Shiro and turned back to Lotor with the same. “The whole operation would have resulted in the loss of the one thing that could save the universe...For that one of our objectives ended up being completed rather swiftly. I cannot...” She pulled out shackles into her hands. “We cannot release you as of yet despite the deed you have done. We will have to speak with the group and the Coalition of what can be done for you.”

He lifted both his hands forward for her. “It’s understandable to not trust me so quickly, princess.”

She didn’t know how to feel. She wasn’t sure whether to celebrate such a long-awaited victory in such a circumstance like this. Allura took one of his hands, noticing that his claws retracted as soon as she felt his palms, and placed the shackle on each one of his wrists. She guided him to the pod ship with everyone watching and they followed after the two as they returned back to the castle ship. It was over the course of a few quintants that Allura took the role of patrolling Lotor. He remained silent during their trips of Allura returning and retrieving him from his cell to speak in the few meetings they had before returning to Olkarion. They would pass by Sam Holt who was dressed rather well compared to Lotor, whose armor was still damaged. Allura looked away in guilt as she yet again returned Lotor back to his cell. She couldn’t treat him like this forever… she remembered what he said about judging him by his actions. By the time they arrived on Olkarion, the morning stretched forth over the skies as the Castle of Lions landed on the planet’s main base. Ryner took the Holts will her to discuss the rapid evolution of their technology as the other paladins checked over communications with the Coalition. The elevator just held Allura as it drifted down deeper until it hit the level where he was held in captivity. Everything was moving around her at the idea that Zarkon was dead and the one who took his life was sitting before her in a glass cell. Before she knew it, Lotor was already awake or has been since their departure. His back was turned but no armor was upon him except his suit. The pieces of his armor laid across the bed in a neat formation of where each would have been worn on him. Puzzled, Allura walked forward as her heels clicked in echoes, not even nudging the prince to even turn around at her as he stared at the pieces.

“Lotor…?” She called out to him, still not turning to look at her. “We need you to be in the meeting today.” She tilted her head to see his face. His expression was blank yet his eyes were closed. Allura began to wonder if he was meditating or something. But why without the armor…? What could attack him within his cell even he wore it? She wears her on regardless because her constant call to action to pilot the Blue Lion but felt very much confused as to why he wasn’t responding and leaving himself vulnerable like this.

“A moment, please. It has been a while since I have taken this all off my back.” He finally responded. Pulling his hair to the front, he placed the pieces of armor on himself as Allura watched waiting for him. He turned around to look at her finally and pushed his hair behind his shoulders as Allura stepped up to release him from his cell. He walked over the edge and stood before her to her to lead the way, but Allura stared at the scar across his armor. She looked side-to-side and lifted her eyes at him.

“I…” She felt her arm. “…think you don’t need to wear these shackles on your wrists now. But I noticed that every time I escorted you, you let out grunts of pain quite silently to yourself. It always seemed to happen when you were trying to breathe. I know you are… still processing all of this.”

He looked down. “There is no need to concern yourself with me, princess.”

She looked down as well, but out of boldness, she placed her hand on the center of his chest. “You need to have room to breathe as well, don’t you?

Lotor gazed at her but held his breath. 

She looked up at him. "Take this as a few thanks from me.” A light glowed from her hand across his chest as the soft blue light emanated across his whole body swiftly, with something glittering near his eyes across his cheeks, causing Allura to look up at the strange hallucination. The armor had begun to appear brand new as the light lifted off of his chest. He almost spoke but closed his lips, finally being able to breathe in and out easier. Allura to lift her hand off of him and guided the way to the bridge of the castle without a word.

===========================================================================

Lotor felt the center of his chest as he looked at the mirror in his room. "Time to put this back on again." He examined the new mask he held and wore it, realizing it covered his entire face now. Kari must have modified it for his own safety, he realized. He wore the vambraces, the braces on his legs, breastplate, and placed the cloak over him, pulling the hood over his head. He breathed in and exhaled slowly. "I have to keep moving. I must keep going. I must keep seeking." He stepped out of his room and began to hear someone crying in frustration down the hallway. 

“Damn, why aren’t these transistors linking up with each other yet!” Matt pulled back from his desk and leaned across his seat in frustration. “By theory, the switches should have all lined up to complete the communication circuit, but fuck that when all the signals speak in various frequencies to screw up the connections every few seconds!” He rubbed his hand across his face. “Sometimes I wish Pidge was here to show me what I’m missing.” He turned his head to see Lotor walk into the room past crates of scavenged tech and tools scrambled inside them.

“Hey Kal,” Matt called out for Lotor who was still in disguise with the mask to cover his face. “Do you know anything about Altean and Galran inhibitor connections? I know they’re supposed to be one-to-one but the transistors have trouble hooking up with the overall parallels.”

“May I see?” He leaned over to take a closer look at the tech that Matt was building. “Are these radios?”

“Yep! I need them for the combat missions when we go out on the field from time to time. I suppose you have experience with fighting, especially with that wickedly cool sword you got on yourself.” He pointed out the blade hidden behind a leather sheath. Lotor realized he couldn’t summon his sword the usual way by his old vambraces, otherwise, others would quickly know of who he was, even wrapping up the hilt entirely for his own secrecy.

Lotor felt his sword with a soft grip. “It’s a keepsake of mine. I don’t intend of losing it either. I have fought time after time with it. I must say...The structure of these communication lines is quite extraordinary. Perhaps I can look at the circuitry and see what you’re saying from the venting you have had earlier.”

“If anything, you are welcome to evaluate the many mistakes I make on the daily, partner. Well, I should say team since N7, me, and you are in it. Rolo, Nyma, and Beezer are not with us right now because they’re off in another mission.” He sighed. “Now these transistors.”

Lotor felt the circuit boards in his gloved hands, tracing where the signals route toward in the silicon planes. “Have you tried splitting the switches? Perhaps the power delivered on each transistor is bringing a greater amount of the signals you intended in your design.”

“I guess I can try the multiplexors. These Boolean gates get pretty tedious over time, though. Especially when they get to the thousands of bits being communicated from the analog channels to digital.” Matt took the board gently from his hands, pulled out a black mask, and used a laser tool to solder the components together on the board. He lifted up his hood and pulled a magnifying lens to examine the details. “That should do it.” He grinned and then hooked up the board with black and red wires to a multimeter and an oscilloscope to observe the strength of the signal frequencies by the amps, volts, wavelengths, and etc.

Lotor squinted through the cracks of his mask and noticed the crowns of the wavelengths were slightly off. But the flowing patterns of red waves began to distract him. The fluctuating beams of light dancing through the small screen of the oscilloscope caused him to feel the surface of the screen. It felt like it was almost yesterday when he was observing the strength of the wavelengths produced by energy emanating in the cockpit of a young pilot gripping on to the controls in exhaustion and fear and screaming---

“You okay, Kal?” Matt tapped on his shoulder twice.

“Ah---I must apologize for that. My mind tends to drift sometimes.” He rubbed the bottom of his right arm. “The signal is almost synchronizing. You just need to tweak it a little bit.” He pointed to the parts of the circuit board where Matt needed to fix. “By that, it should be perfect.” He chuckled.

“I see, I see!” Matt’s eyes lit up and quickly tinkered the pieces. “There!” He smiled at the screen and soon a sound cracked through the speakers. “Huh, that’s weird…” He turned the knob to increase the volume. “I’m hearing some beeping clicks in between the propagation peaks in the signal being passed.” He adjusted the frequency, flicking the switches on the side of the device and connected another wire to the board to his small bulky computer. “Woah.”

“What’s the matter?” He leaned into the computer screen and suddenly realized what was happening.

“A distress signal.” They spoke at the same time.

Matt looked at him and quickly laughed. “Wow, we said it in synchronization.” He gave a toothy grin.

“Please, no need for puns for that connection.” He grinned wholeheartedly and both of them continued to laugh together loudly.

Another rebel walked into the lab room where they were stationed and stared at them just chortling together. She wore a white helmet over her head with a 'V'-like design etched across the face and wore a green ragged cloak over white armor with black undersuit. She also had a vambrace wrapped around her right wrist and a brown belt around her waist. “What’s going on over here with you two? Matt, did you say that there was a distress signal?”

“Shit!" He quickly grabbed a pair of headphones and tuned in further of the beeping clicks. “Do you recognize this pattern?” He pulled them off and gave it back to her. “Being used to stressful calls like this has begun to dull my sense of alertness. I promise not to do that anymore.” He smiled at both of them.

She placed them on over her helmet and waited for a few moments before taking them off. “It’s the Blade of Marmora…they’re in need of backup. A couple of druids are destroying a civilian planet and they need to Coalition to come by to sweep in the civilians.”

Matt stood up quickly. “We’ll be on our way, N7." He nodded at her and turned his head to the door.  "Kal, get ready. We’re about to go on your first rescue mission.” He turned back to the radio to alert the higher-ups of the rebels.

“Got it.” Lotor stood up.  They ran into their rooms and grabbed supplies and hurried together with Matt leading the way back into the cockpit of his ship. Lotor watched the rebels clear the way for the rebel ships to take off from within the lanes, one of them raising light sticks up and throwing them down for Matt and the other pilots to take off and shoot straight into the atmosphere in mere doboshes. They landed on the war-torn planet after a few vargas, watching beams of violet light shoot back and forth from the skeletons of cities before them. The rebel ships stationed outside the cities, where Matt and the crew followed near the crumbling brick walls and tattered flags of the fallen villages. Enemy fire was above them as Lotor pulled the hood over his head deeper and gripped on his sword ready to attack. Matt held his staff tightly and N7 aimed her rifle for any enemies about to launch an attack at them.

“The druids are fighting against the Blade of Marmora ever since another power vacuum existed in the Galran Empire.” She leaned against the wall, speaking to Kal as she looked over for any nearby druids. “Under the new emperor, he sided with the Voltron Coalition and exchanged their networks with the Blades, giving away all of their identities during that reign. But since the emperor fell---” She fired a series of laser bullets. “We have to deal with this mess.” She ran forward with Matt following after her.

“Stay back, Kal!” Matt turned his head back at him. “We have to get the other civilians back to safety!” But before he could speak any further, he turned back to see that the druid threw a bomb toward the three, causing Matt to pull N7 out of the way.

But the explosion caused the ground they stood on to fall all at once.

The ground caved into a large gaping hole where they all fell into the abyss. Deeper and deeper they drifted away from the sounds of their comrades fighting for their lives as well as the Blades against the numerous druids surging through the streets. The fall would have to be about several hundred feet, where Matt fired a parachute on his back to and grab his teammate’s hands to avoid crashing at the bottom. Lotor looked up to see the streams of dirt falling from the tiny hole of light above them all.

“We’re screwed.” Matt looked up in horror.

“Perhaps not…” N7 pointed toward an underground city from the ledge that they were sitting on. The three looked down to see any exits, climbing down the wall of the cliff to the small mining town that they were in. “These people must have designed them years ago. There might be civilians hidden all the way down here.”

“As well as druids. That one attacked us to be stuck in here. They probably did the same with the rest of the rebels too.” Matt grimaced at the hollow pueblos in the large cavern, wary at the probability that any of the people may have survived. “I hope that there are others still here.”

“Should we find a place to hide for the time being?” He suggested.

“Maybe, for now, Kal.” Matt agreed with him. “We’ll have to come up with a plan and I worried about the strength of the radios from this depth from the surface.” They walked into one of the tunnels leading out from the underground mining city and continued along the path until they found glowing crystals with a pool of water flowing from a small stream. “Let’s wait out here for now.” He set down his supplies and N7 helped him out with the radios. “Kal, can you get the fire ready?”

“Certainly.” He nodded and pulled out a lighter and couple of pieces of charcoal and wood, sparking a flame to get the campfire started. “How long do you think we’ll be out here?”

“I’m not exactly sure,” Matt replied. If I can create a signal to guide us out from this cave network to the surface, then we can meet up with the others by that time.”

“Best that we keep our guard up as well.” He replied through the wooden mask.

“Will do. I’ll see if I can get a communication line in the few minutes we’re here.” Matt looked at the devices confidently.

Nothing was working in the few hours he spent time on them. “Damn it.” He put down the radio next to him as the fire crackled.

“Let’s take a break for now.” N7 put her hand on his shoulder as Matt threw his head down to sigh.

Lotor looked over them and walked over to the radios that Matt had. He wanted to help them find a way to get out of here soon before any enemies find them hidden within the caves. “I suppose that dire situations call for some desperate measures…”He looked up at one of the crystals, feeling his hand across the surface as it suddenly shifted its color from bright teal to a rosier violet. “What the…?”

“Whoa, Kal!” Matt jumped up in surprise. “Can you connect with the crystals like the Balmerans? Not a lot of people know that technique.”

“If you can connect with them, then perhaps you can see through a way to get out the caves by the crystals’ connection with each other,” N7 replied in awe. “What exactly are you, if I may ask, Kal?”

“Oh, that’s…” He lifted his hand off. “I…am sort of mix, you see.”

N7 lowered her head. “I understand... Just so that there’s nothing I’m hiding from you, I’m actually half-Galran.” Lotor jolted his head up at her. "It's not much I could gain talent from my lineage but I wanted to make my own mark as my own." 

“What.” Matt looked at her. “I didn’t know. All this time since I met up with you when I decided to join a year ago. Why didn’t you say anything before?”

“I had to wear a helmet to hide my identity. Anyone would recognize the eyes of Galra, Matt. I joined the rebels because I wanted to help them out. Not out of spite against my Galran lineage but because I wanted to prove that we can change as well. I hoped to change that representation others had seen at us.” She lifted her helmet off to reveal short red-violet hair, a lovely lavender complexion, and golden eyes with emerald pupils. “I consider you two as my comrades and if anything should happen to me, I thought I let you two know.”

Matt gaped at her as Lotor lifted his chin to close his mouth. Matt’s face blushed into rosy red. “Ab-ab-absolutely! I can never imagine anything happening to you! I think you’re a wonderful person! You’re so beautiful and I---!” He smacked his lips when he realized he pulled out the finger gun, slapping the side of his face with his hand immediately. He turned around and bent down to the radios again. “I…think I have enough energy to tweak them again...”

Lotor chuckled behind his mask and decided to touch the crystals again. He felt a familiar feeling when the energy began to course through his fingers. “Maybe you won’t have to, after all, Matt.” Causing the flustered boy to look up at his taller companion. “She’s right.” He closed his eyes to concentrate on the crystals’ emanating energy. “They are leading up to somewhere above us.” Soon, he began to see the streams of energy flowing through the impenetrable earth to the surface. He darted his eyes to the right and started walking toward in the direction of a tunnel. “Let’s get out of here and move. There’s something peculiar from this stretch of the distance we’re going to endeavor in.” Matt and N7 grabbed their supplies, with her kicking some dirt over the fire to put it out and followed their hooded friend through the path with crystals continuing to light their path.

He couldn’t quite understand why he was able to understand the crystals’ energy. It was almost innate and natural to him. Something ancient and something all so familiar to him that it seemed that it had passed onto him finally after all these years. He wanted to understand but he also wanted to learn why it started happening now. It had an alchemic feeling. He turned his head around warily at Matt and N7, who just put her mask on. Should he tell them…? He felt afraid if they knew who he was and how his absence as the emperor caused them to be in this dire position. He had to make it up to them by following this long arduous path of freedom, as they climbed over boulders and perilous cliffs to reach the surface. It seemed to be hours or less, but at this point, he wasn’t sure. But soon they stopped at another hidden mining town, much smaller than the one they found before. He took a few steps at the ledge they were at and realized that there was a small hooded figure.

It turned its face at him. He stepped back and recognized the druid mask they were wearing. “No! Turn back! Turn back!” He yelled at Matt and N7 but soon the druid appeared in between them and kicked him off the ledge fearsomely. Grunting in pain as he reached the bottom, Lotor looked up above him to see Matt and N7 fend the druid off with their weapons and soon it appeared again in front of his mask.

With his eyes wide, Lotor tried to kick the druid out of his way as it disappeared quickly. He got up on his feet and started running after it with his sword in his hand and began to hear echoes back and forth from the hollow streets. “Show yourself! Do you dare be a coward now? Or are you willing to fight? You won't be a wandering ghost forever when I'm through with you!” He yelled out in the intersection of the streets. The lanterns fluttered by a soft breeze, turning his attention toward the direction. The wooden doors rattled, causing him to sweat on the side of his neck, lifting his sword to reach his attack. "SHOW YOURSELF!" He hated waiting at the suspense clinging onto him, as if an awful familiar memory arose in his mind to remind him of who the druids were...they served her...they served that awful woman...the witch.

"Haggar will cease to exist like you, druid!" He yelled further in the direction of his sword.

He felt a hand on his shoulder so light yet claws dug in.

Don’t speak such lies, Lotor…

A chill shot through his spine as the forceful whip of a tail sent him crushed against a wall, breaking instantly as he laid on the rubble to soon lift his head up in horror as the druid unveiled herself. A whisper left his lips as it echoed out cruelly through the cavern grave town. “Narti.”

Chapter Text

Ochre dust settled across the fallen bricks of a wall that once stood. Violet streaks of magic carried around his former general as she curled up her fingers to gather the dark power into a concentrated orb of energy. By instinct, he leaped away as soon as she tossed the ball to decimate further of the structure of what appeared to be a house in half.  Lotor gazed at the graven streaks across the earth, turning his head toward Narti’s position and hoisted his sword as he ran. He snuck between the alleyways of the underground mining town as more explosions carried in his trail. Quickly, he hid behind a shed appended on the side of a building, shuffling inside the brittle wooden structure. A radio latched on the side of his waist buzzed thrice. He pulled it out, extended the antenna, and dialed the frequency.

“Matt, is that you?” Another explosion blew up nearby. “Can you hear me?”

“Kal! Where are you?” Matt’s voice fuzzed out in the audio. “N7 is with me and we’re coming over to where the blasts are happening.”

“No! Don’t come after me!” He urged them, turning his head cautiously to see where Narti is.

“What! Why? What’s going on out there?”

“I’ll explain later! I’m going to find a place to hide.” He pushed the antenna down and proceeded to sneak deeper into a corridor, spotting a structure with a huge sign written at the top saying “BAR” in an alien language he quickly recognized. Perhaps, he could hide in there for now. He sprinted into the building, pushing the wooden panels for the doors, and stepped into an old-fashioned lobby with the bar on the left and a group of tables on the right, along with an array of miniature green alabaster lamps spread across the ceiling. He hid behind the countertop, adjusting his radio now that he found some refuge at the moment. “Matt! Can you hear me now?”

“A little bit. I just hope those radios can last long enough or transmit a strong enough signal while we’re all the way down here. Why is that druid targeting you anyway?” Lotor could hear them walking in the audio.

“It’s a long story.” That’s strange. There have been no explosions for the past couple of minutes. Sweat began to trail past his neck. Out of realization, his eyes widen as he heard scuffling across the floorboards. Couldn’t she cloak herself invisibly?

The entire countertop was ripped out its wooden foundation. Lotor looked up in horror and quickly grabbed a couple of booze bottles to throw at her as a distraction but crashed against the walls when she shifted her position like a quivering shadow. Her tail wrapped itself around his neck to pull his entire body up. Squinting his eyes as he tried to grab on the tail with his hands.

“H-how…Ugh!” Pain crept around his neck as the grip tightened. “N-Narti…please--!” A shock ran throughout his entire body in mauve lightning, letting Narti drop Lotor fall face first to the ground. His fingers felt weak and stared at the sword from his fingers and soon felt claws grip around the collar of his cloak to bring his weakened body near her face.

You left me to die. Your dream will peace will die too.

“No…that’s not true!” His voice cracked. “Y-you were possessed by Haggar! I should have realized that information was leaked because she took control of you…Please!” He rose his hand weakly. “Narti, I beg of you! Please understand!”

Does the memory haunt you? Or does the day you were silent haunt you more?

“W-when I was silent?” One of his eyebrows twitched in the coiling pain.

Do you not remember, at all?

His eyes grew wide. “What are you talking about?”

What is the value of life mean to you, AT ALL..!

Electricity flowed through her fingers in her left hand and slammed them across his face.

I will force you to remember of your sin, you coward!

He screamed in utter agony, erupting through the darkened paths of the empty streets and hollowed houses, of burning lanterns for forgotten ghosts, where memories of pain seeped through his veins, and marks of blood glowing fiercely bright across his cheeks. The two rebels looked up in fear, in such at the thought that their friend was tortured by a minion delivered by a certain witch of the Galran Empire. They ran quickly to the direction of the cries and quickly found the broken down and shoddy place of a saloon where their comrade could be. They broke down the door and heard silence, looking at a body lain across the wooden ground with a broken glass of booze bottles spread around him. His sword was near Matt’s feet, causing him to lift up the blade and watch the bandages around the hilt fall like silk to the ground, revealing the familiar Galran violet glow at the tip and base of it. He knitted his eyebrows together where N7 held their companion’s head on her lap as she cradled his head, where he slowly began to wake up.

But the mask was off of his face.

Matt’s eyes met with the man whose red marks burned on his face, whose pure snowy hair dripped from his scalp, and eyes opening to reveal the golden-indigo of a former dawn emperor. He dropped the king’s sword to the wooden floorboards and quickly pulled out his weapon at him, pointing the tip of the staff at his face. “N7, GET AWAY FROM HIM!”

“What are saying? He’s hurt!” She pleaded.

“Don’t you know who he is? That bastard is Lotor himself!” He gritted his teeth.

 “That’s impossible! No one has seen him since the Voltron disappeared from the explosion that happened from their duel. Why would he be here helping the rebels?”

“He took away my sister! Pidge is gone because of him!” He pulled up his collar but N7 quickly stopped him by grabbing the sides of his arms to push him away from the wounded emperor. “Let me go! He murdered my sister and the rest of the paladins of Voltron! This bastard’s absence is the reason why there’s a power vacuum in the first place, N7!” He jolted around to push N7 away but she kept her ground. “Why won’t you move?”

She kept silent.

“Let me go…!” Tears flowed past his cheeks as his teeth clenched.

“And then what? Run and kill the man out of revenge made of hate and grief for your sister? You really think that if we continued this cycle of committing murder left and right just because they wronged you for the pain you can’t erase? Let him speak for himself. If he really is a murderer, then give him some due process! You expect to win if you always go your way!” She shouted at him. “He’s already about to die if you decide to take away his life like this!”

 Matt stopped moving around. His chest grew less of harsh breathing and grew weak in her grip on him. “Alright, then.” He spoke bitterly and stepped back as N7 held his hand to comfort him as the both of them to look at Lotor’s weakened state. “Let’s set up a signal out here. We’ll need back up soon since we’re higher in elevation now. I’ll contact any Blades to let them know we’re here.”

“And of Lotor?”

“Probably. I’m not sure what we’ll do with him at that time.” He wiped away his tears on his sleeve and sniffed, but kept glaring at Lotor as he groaned in pain silently.

Sounds echoed out outside of the bar, where Matt walked forward to peer out the window to see groups of people being carried off by druids to a tunnel at the end of town. They turned out to be the inhabitants of the planet, as civilians were wearing glowing shackles around their wrists and shoved into carts where they were carried off in the railways of the large tunnel.

“This is bad…real bad. We’re the only two rebels here and there’s no way of getting a proper signal quickly to tell the others of where the druids are taking them to!” Matt’s hands fell into fists. “Shit, how the actual fuck are we gonna flip this situation around?”

How did she know…? Lotor’s thoughts ran as the sounds of the people softly murmured and cried as they were carried off into the tunnel of an unknown fate them all. How did she know that I would be here…? He turned up his eyes to look at the small lamps fixed at the ceiling and noticed something emitting light from where the bulbs would be. His eyes widened as soon as he realized what was happening.

The bulbs were made out of bioluminescent crystals. The same kind from the caves that he connected with earlier. “Q-quint-essence...” He coughed out. She tracked his quintessence from the crystals he connected with from that time. That’s how she found him.

“What?” Matt looked down at him.

Lotor weakly pointed his finger at the lamps, causing Matt to slowly turn his head at the lamps with the crystals. “You… need them.” He spoke more weakly and coughed again.

“I don’t understand.” He narrowed his eyes at them.

“Radio…” He coarsely spoke out. N7 quickly propped up his back against the base of the counter. Matt raised his eyebrows as soon as he realized what Lotor was trying to tell him.

“Let me see if I can get some water from the back.” She got up and walked over to the back hallway in the already damaged bar room.

Matt walked up closer and stepped onto a table to pull them out from the ceiling. It radiated softly in his hand and as he stepped off to bring it to Lotor, as the light began to grow stronger. Lotor winced in pain as the crystal’s radiance grew, causing the red marks streaking past his cheeks at the edges of his lips to resonate with it. Watching the small gem illuminate before him, Lotor slowly began to drift off into sleep.

========================================================================

“Sir, you really think that this is going to work?” Zethrid asked as Lotor walking confidently in the front of the other generals at a small porch overseeing a large facility producing parts of ships. Sentries carried materials in cargo pods left and forth in the assembly lines. Medical doctors strolled pilots down and right by the ships they were to drive. Checking their vitals on the screens of the dashboard inside each and every cockpit of the ship, the pilots shifted their gears and extended the wings to prepare for take-off.

“Oh, I’m quite sure of it. Everything should be according to the referendums and diagrams they reviewed in their orientations beforehand. He smiled at them below him, giving a wave at one of them. “Even mastering the simulations as well, despite the lack of distance they have. The operation will undoubtedly go down as history’s greatest endeavors for this kind of pilots. They will bring forth the future generations’ prosperity and peace as well.”

“The systems are ready to follow the program’s guidelines, sir,” Acxa replied at she checked the information displayed in the holograms above her wrist.

“Begin the ports for the docking stations ready for their return. I am quite proud of each and every one of them being able to partake such an honor.” He smiled as he walked away from the view.

“When are you gonna tell us of who these special pilots you found anyway?” Ezor leaned as Lotor walked away chuckling.

He waved his hand. “They are a special brand, you see.”

“I guess the Prince can really find his own court. Looks like he really will be the future emperor after all. ” Ezor giggled, looking over to Narti who nodded as Kova sat on her shoulder licking his paw.

Kova’s ears twitched and looked up to the direction of a pilot screaming. Lotor stopped in his tracks and turned around, running and gripping the rails of the balcony to the sight of more and more pilots strapped onto bed carried away by Galran doctors immediately. 

“Sir…” Acxa watched in horror.

“Give me the status update of the pilots.” His voice was hard and his claws gripped on the bar of the rails.

A 3-D graph was pulled up from her wrist as Acxa expanded its size to show the real-time data of each of the pilots and down to the parts of the ships highlighted in red and warning signs. “Their vitals are collapsing on themselves. They cannot sustain their bodies like this if it continues.”

“Keep them in immediate care until a better method is found. We cannot lose this chance.” He commanded.

“What if they lose their lives?” Ezor looked concerned.

“We cannot afford that risk, by any means necessary.” He clenched his teeth. “I will not allow it. I will not watch them all die again.”

A vase of flowers stood on a small table before him in a dark room. Lovely gossamer-like petals pouring out its pink beauty with the golden trident pistil in the center highlighted the beauty of these juniberry blossoms. All bunched together by a single scarlet ribbon within the glass vase. What a shame that he slammed it across the ground in violent rage. His frustration dissipated as he watched in horror of the damage he committed. Glass pieces everywhere in millions and Lotor dropping to his knees as he held one the individual ones in his hands, caressing the limp green stems and dripping leaves of it. Gripping the flower and holding it deep into the bosom of his chest as he quaked in pain. He looked up to see a figure dressed like a dead flower before him, with her hood over her head and the edges of her cloak seeping across the ground.

“You are still a foolish child, Lotor…” She let out a cruel and horrible laugh at him, allowing the darkness to surround him like water, juniberries decaying in the dark violent energy absorbing them all.  “To obtain peace is by war. To end war is to remove life. Taking lives is how one survives in life, after all...” She stood above him as he began to drown, reaching his hand out for help as he cried in fear. “It is ‘victory or death’, for a reason.” Her golden eyes glimmered as his and her red marks shone brightly.

============================================================================

Coughing suddenly, Lotor looked up to an unfamiliar ceiling and laying on a bed, where a lamp lit by a flame on a desk nearby. He realized that N7 wasn’t wearing her helmet this time but the light of the flame accented her lavender complexion, burgundy bobbed hair, sharp nose, and soft emerald eyes. But they became narrow as soon as she turned her attention at him. He wasn’t quite sure of what to do since the cat was out of the bag now. Knowing that N7 was half-Galran like him was one thing, but being the one who supposed to bring stability and end to this war was another matter entirely. He looked away, ashamed at himself for being this inadequate and angry that he wasn’t able to do anything at all either. Matt was near him on the table with radio equipment setup, tuning the dials once more and resting his fists on the wooden surface. He turned his head to find Lotor awake.

“I suppose sleeping beauty is awake.” He spoke bitterly at him. Fiddling with the small crystal in his hand, he continued. “Know a way of how to get out this shit show?” He held it tight between his two fingers for Lotor to see.

“How long have I been out?”

“Just a few hours now. But we can’t wait any longer.” He set down the crystal hard on the table. “You’re gonna have to fix this whole situation considering you’re Lotor himself. Remember that time you blasted a huge-ass beam through the gigantic Galran cruiser?  Do something like that.” He pointed at him. “It’s because of that unselfish act that my friend Keith lived instead of committing suicide by crashing into that ship to save all of us. But you became selfish to remove both him and Pidge out of the picture.” He clenched his teeth.

“Matt, please...” N7 called out to him softly.

“It’s okay. At least I know how to cool down faster than he did fighting them.” He folded his arms and turned his head away from him.

Lotor looked at him and let his face fell, turning his attention to the claws hidden behind the gloves of his gear. “It’s understandable if you cannot forgive me for what I may have done.” He lifted his eyes softly to Matt. “When you’re about to lose something precious in the midst of war, we all know how we tend to go by our heart than by wisdom. I was selfish, I admit that. Your pain, I understand that. And you not understanding me is fine as well.” He folded his fingers together. “I’m sorry for causing you this heartache, Matt.”

Silence fell through the room until Matt broke it.

“Just when we got my dad back, back then we could have taken away your life just so I can reunite with my family again.” He peered out to the horizon of the ghostly town, peeking from a window covered by the curtains tightly as he stuck his finger in between the linens to see. “I remember going inside of the prison you were in control of where you held my dad as your inmate this whole time. That cell…whatever I saw in there, I knew you couldn’t possibly be allowed to live. But the bargain between Zarkon trading my dad’s life for yours was far too risky. How would I know to trust you since Zarkon double-crossed us that time?” He leaned back on his chair. “Are you just like your dad, then?” He glared at the window.

You’re more like Zarkon then I could ever imagine!

The faint memory of the voice of the woman he grew deep admiration with lifted into his mind and soon he felt a choking pain inside of his throat. It began to burn and soon he clutched onto the sheets of the bed tightly. “I…am not Zarkon. I never was and could never be. What must it take to prove who I am to you all?” A tear streaked past his cheek as N7 watched in the distance in surprise.

Matt swiveled around in his chair and tossed the crystal square at Lotor’s chest. It fell on top of the sheet in between both of Lotor’s hands clenching onto the white linens. “Atone for it. Show me that you really are a king than an emperor. Show me that you can use your intellect to produce good than just the sake for peace. Stop contradicting yourself and trying to be the smartass at all of this and be humble instead. My father knew how to and he taught this to both me and Pidge.” He rested both of his fists on top of his knees. “If you really care about the value of a life, then let’s start with the ones outside of this cage right here.” He turned his chin fiercely at the window.

Lotor gazed at Matt in awe. Holding the small seagreen crystal in between his hands, Lotor looked up at N7 with a determined look in eyes. “Is there any parchment and a pen in this place?” He stepped out of bed slowly.

“You sure you can stand up alright?” She watched him worryingly.

“I’m sure that I will be fine.” He smiled and walked by her to the door to the hallway and came back into the room after a couple of minutes. He set down the large beige paper on the table next to Matt and gripped on the pen in his left hand and the crystal in his right.

“What are you going to do?” Matt looked up at Lotor who towered him and gazed at the sight beyond the window. Lotor gave a small grin.

 “Alchemy.” He breathed.

Images spread across the surface of the paper in seconds at the pen traveled across space. His eyes closed as the crystal grew in vibrant light and his marks shining brightly as his hand leaving the ink spots precisely and fluidly in the parchment.  Like marking the pillions of stars in the galaxies, details overlay the isometric view of their current location, to the hundreds of meters below the surface and all the way to the top. The map grew as it revealed the constructions of the towns and their channels in stacked layers. Even tiny notes were placed near certain spots of the mining structures beneath the ground as well. Matt and N7 gaped at the sheer density of detail across the isometric rendering that Lotor created.  A roadmap to help them carry out a rescue operation.

Chapter Text

“…Why didn’t you tell us before? ” Her voice soft yet filled with wonder directed the cloaked man to turn around at N7.  How could anyone not ask the same question to Lotor, like an echo carrying throughout the tunnels of the caverns with Matt guiding the way for them. 

A snapping flicker, a match scrapped across Matt's vambrace and lit the torch in his hand in the midst of the darkness. He grimaced behind them and let the emotion melt away at the sight of her worried velvet eyes. The question still echoed in the small crevices in his mind. Drips of water carried on the sides of the walls as the trio navigated their way through the hollow corridors of the caves. 

A contained voice knocked through the wooden layer of Lotor's mended mask, one broken by the one he had hurt and betrayed. “The same reason why I couldn’t say I am also like you, N7.” He replied with a soft chuckle vibrating outside it. 

Matt squinted, subtly glaring at him. “N7 isn’t her full name, you know.” He spoke flatly. 

Lotor side-glanced at Matt who led the way but N7 waved her hand to dismiss Matt's remark. 

“Just a small nickname, you see." She chuckled to make things less awkward between the two. "It's just something that the crew had for me. It’s from Matt’s favorite games when he was on Earth.” She gave a warm smile for Matt.

Matt's cheeks slowly became warm and slowly turned his head around to promptly walk forward. 

Lotor turned his head away from staring at Matt. “Then, what is your name?” He tilted his head up at her curiously. 

She looked away to the adjacent edge of the path, where a large crevice below them hundreds of meters deep. “Nzelyae.” She replied softly and looked back at Lotor again. “It can be a little bit hard to pronounce... but I assure you that the meaning of it is honorable on my mother’s side.”

“I see...” Lotor shifted his attention at the end of the corridor where Matt was, where he walked forward with the light, illuminating the crystals plastered across the walls as they kept traversing.

“The inhabitants are known to draw their source of energy through these crystals,” Lotor explained to them. “However, when contacting these ley lines, others can also tap in as well to eavesdrop too. I have a strong feeling the druids are aware of this method as well. I may have a tiny connection with the crystal I had in the sea of information flowing through these walls, but there’s bound to be someone on the lookout for abnormal connection.”

“A druid’s gonna be looking for us, huh,” Matt replied. 

“The same one as before,” Lotor spoke with a bit of remorse. If they ever cross paths again, he already felt fear trembling down his spine.

-----

“Over here!” N7 pointed to the speck of light at the end of the corridor. They ran after it and stood before a wall with the ray of light piercing through the ceiling a few inches above them. “Stand back.” She pushed through the both of them and pulled out her rifle to shoot at the roof, creating a large gaping hole as sand poured through. They climbed up the rocks like a staircase and finally found the surface covering in golden moonlight across the vast desert. The village attacked a day ago still stood as rebels lined around creating small campfires as they noticed the trio walking forward to them. Lotor pulled up his hood and placed the mask on his face, catching N7’s attention who sheepishly put her helmet on as well. Matt looked at her from behind and turned his head away sadly.

“Where have you guys been?” One of the rebels met up with them.

“We fell through a sinkhole,” Lotor explained through the mask, however, Matt pushed him aside to speak with the rebel instead.

“Where’s Kolivan? ” Matt replied.

“He’s deeper inside of the town right now. You’ll need a Blade agent to guide you all though.” The rebel turned his head to look for any of them walking by. “Oh! Good, there’s one grabbing some info from another one of our pals right now. I’ll go up to ask her quick!” He scurried off.

“Why do you need to see Kolivan?” N7 asked beside him.

“We need to tell him about the victims being held up by the other druids deep below the surface.” He whispered. “We have to act fast.”

Lotor turned his head away from their conversation and back at the Blade agent walking up to them. “Follow me.” The agent said.

Deeper through the carved out city that used to be filled with the inhabitants resided before, they found themselves at the base of a building where they found a small iron-wrought gate at the base of small pueblo house. The agent pried the door ajar and found the other Blades crowded around a wooden table under a flickering lamp. A shadow smeared across the commander’s face by the small flame, his eyes intense in examining the large wrinkled canvas of a map they had and placing marks on certain stations of underground mines with a piece of charcoal. Kolivan lifted his eyes from the map and toward Matt and the others standing at the doorway.

“What brings your lot here?” He inquired them.

“A bigger perspective.” Matt pulled out the map Lotor made in his backpack and placed it on the table. “There are civilians held by the druids underneath the tunnels of where we came from. If anything, this would be of some use for you all.”

Kolivan took the map from Matt’s hand and scrutinized his eyes at the piece, handing it over to another Blade next to him without looking inside of it. “Where did you get this information after all? I know you are rebels but how can I trust with this piece of intel you gave us?”

The Blade holding the map uncurled it to reveal the intricate blueprints, causing others to pull in to examine the workmanship. “That’s some good detail right there, fella.”

“Detail is one thing. A plan is another and more profitable than this.” Kolivan replied. “I can’t risk my agents to walk into a nest with a blizzard of hornets like this.”

“Why?” N7 walked forward. “You have the best information available to land an attack towards the druids.”

“And what is the use of having this information of what the underworld would like except the path of how to destroy the demons inside of it?” Kolivan stood firm.

“How to destroy a druid…” Lotor felt a pain in his throat.

“We have luxite blades to destroy their compositions but the issue is the surmounting power they have in their magic and well as their advantage in the underground environment.

N7 turned her head at Lotor, with concern hidden behind her mask.

“You need an alchemist to fight them back,” Matt spoke up, surprising both of them. “It’s not much since we only got one.”

“Negative,” Kolivan replied shaking his head. “We need several of them. Hundreds, even.”

Lotor turned his head down to the table and looked meekly to where his small crystal hidden within his fist. He lifted his chin to catch Kolivan’s attention.

“What you need is a guide to lead you into the hornet’s nest,” Lotor spoke behind his crimson mask.

Matt glanced at the red hood Lotor donned as he walked to the table with the map and strategy pieces. Like a game of chess, he delicately lifted one of the pieces and placed it in the center of the map. “I can be your bishop to assist you in the operation to destroy them.”

“How would you know?” Kolivan questioned the cloaked figure under the flame lamp.

“I understand of how they operate. I will even tell you that there are even hundreds of ways to destroy them other than luxite blades.” Lotor bit his lip.

Now he got all of the Blades full attention on him with even Kolivan narrowing his eyes at him. “You dare offend my men and me?”

“On the contrary, I mean no offense at all.”

Matt pressed his palm on the table. “What he means is---” He glared at Lotor and back to Kolivan.  “--is that we have communication pathways structured all throughout hundreds of these ley lines underground. The locals used these crystal streaks across the layers beneath us to send signals to the others to build the mines to harness the crystals’ energy for their infrastructure.”

“And that he act as an operator to guide a path made from these hundreds of connections.” N7 spoke up behind Matt and Lotor.  “Kolivan, if you allow our friend Kal to be your guide, he has the means of entering through the caves at will. He’s the one who made that map.” She promptly stated before the chief.

Kolivan kept silent as he gazed at the three of them. “You all better tell me as to why you have an alchemist with you in the first place.”

“He’s just a---“ Matt spoke up quickly but Lotor lifted his hand to halt him.

“My…race died out because of the introduction of dark arts that the druids used from the witch. If anything, I can provide you more than a map just by using me as your resource.” He placed his hand on his chest. “Use me. Allow me to be your foot soldier to make that first step towards victory.”

“Even if it means that it’s improbable?” Kolivan retorted.

“Even if it means I lose my life, I gave you a chance toward winning no matter how small my efforts made be.”

“If you were the king in this game of chess, you better appear in last second for that promised victory.” Kolivan walked forward and grabbed the map from one of his agents. “I need a moment to speak with my crew.”

Matt, N7, and Lotor stepped outside of the quarters as a tarp fell down the doorway to shut behind them. Whispers of the rolling desert night curled up like will-o-wisps as stark silence laid between the three of them. Wrapping her palm around her wrist and turning her chin up to Matt and Lotor, N7 looked to the side and up to the three moons in limelight above them. Shuffling his feet while keeping watch on the rest of the Blades’ chatter flickering like crickets within the tattered place of once was a household a while ago, Matt squinted his eyes in a slight memory of his sister running around the front porch of their home on Earth millions, millions, and millions miles away from where they all stood in the war zone. Lotor kept his gaze on the dusty flecks of the red sands and mustard rocks, examining the details on the torn down brick walls and fluttering shredded cloths wrapped loosely around each wall. The mutterings within the hideout mellowed down until a final word was uttered to break the silence.

“Kal.” Kolivan lifted the tarp above his head and walked forward to Lotor. “Follow me. You two come along as well. I’m taking two other men with me to a discrete location that my agents spotted a few days ago. For now, I need Kal to use his ability until that time.” He turned his head at Matt. “Radios, right? Good. I need you to set up a network with this.” He gave him a broken mask fit for a Blade agent. “There are coordinates embedded within the circuit board of my fallen one’s mask. I need you to track down that history in honor of them. Whatever they found, they found a weakness in the druid’s nest.”

Matt gulped as he held the mask in his fingers, feeling the melting edges of the bridge of the nose to the chin, for the mask was scarred split in half that way. “A…absolutely.” He spoke solemnly and clenched his teeth.

“And you.” Kolivan looked at N7 as she looked at him warily but dropped her composure as he gave her a luxite bayonet rifle. “Also a memento from my agent for you. It seemed to have reacted with you for some reason. I trust you keep that reason for a good use.” He stepped away and walked in front of Lotor.

“Who are you really?” The chief stared down at him for he was a few inches above his height.

Sweat beaded across Lotor’s neck. “Must I ask you the same for the identities of your agents as well?” He retorted somewhat quickly.

“At least I know who my men are before they die. For now on in this mission, you all are under my jurisdiction. I have the right to know.” Kolivan kept his position.

“Kal, wait—!” Matt spoke up but Lotor lifted his hand to stop him again.

“You are correct.” He bit his lip behind his mask. “I will show you before we enter into their inferno.”

“Very well then.” Kolivan turned away from him and walked with his agents. “Let’s move.” Each of the Blades followed out with him in the hollowed-out streets, with each of the soldiers skipping out from the shadows and joining with Kolivan. He stopped in the middle of the road and turned his attention where Matt, N7, and Lotor where. “Don’t be idle. Be pragmatic, you lot.” He lifted his finger and pointed at Lotor. “You’re coming with me.” Lotor stood up firm and promptly followed after Kolivan as he pointed again to Matt and N7. “And you two need to make sure to protect our only source of intel as well.” Kolivan

“Yes, sir!” They spoke in union.

One of the blades pulled out a tarp covering a large battered hovercraft, with Kolivan jumping into the pilot’s seat in the cockpit as his squad including the trio sat within the back of the ship. Taking off in a shot of gusty light and jet fuel, Kolivan grabbed on the controls with his rough palms and gripped them to his chest to zip through the lime desert night to a series of mountain ranges far ahead of the tattered village they once were at.  Guiding the hovercraft near the base of a valley, Kolivan clicked on the controls to rest the vehicle and stood up from his seat to walk across the thick metallic floor to send light stomps throughout the ship. “Move out. Give me survey info around the parameters of the area. Report to me immediately of any abnormalities you spot and act quickly.” He commanded the Blades as they ran out the doors and dissipated into the desert sands within his gaze. “You three stay here. I need to inform you all of the strategy we have.” He sat down on one of the cargo boxes in the ship and waited to speak until he was sure no agents were around. “Now. Tell me now before I move forward from this spot.” He folded his hands together as his elbows rested on his knees.

“Yes.” Lotor stepped forward and sat down on another cargo box in front of Kolivan and pulled the hood off his head and slowly removed his mask.

Kolivan blinked as he dropped his composure, letting the palms of his hands clap on top of his knees to grip himself. “That’s why your voice sounded so familiar.” He leaned forward to examine the details of the elongated red marks stretching from Lotor’s cheeks from through the edges of his lips. “The bastard son of the tyrannical Zarkon turns out to be alive this whole time.” He gave out a quick rough, bitter laugh. “Tell me because here have you been this whole time, emperor ?”

“I ask the same myself.” Lotor smiled grimly.

“From an emperor of the Galran Empire to a foot soldier of my crew? You were always so strange.” Kolivan sighed. “What brings you here on this part with these rebels?”

“I have no obligations since my rule was pretty much shattered so I do what can here on this planet for now.” He folded his right leg over his left knee.

“You’re just casually playing hooky while the rest of the universe is going to shit right now?” Kolivan narrowed his eyes at him.

“I guess I’ll die like a regular soldier in this war.” He chuckled bitterly but it fell into a frown filled with concern. “I have places to go, however. I may not be the emperor anytime soon but I need to find certain individuals that can help stop this war. I lived long enough to give some wisdom of trying to mitigate my father’s mistakes but being his son, I knew the choices I had to make as soon as I drew my sword at him.” He lifted his eyes up to Kolivan. “I am unforgivable. I must atone my sins otherwise I would end up like my father when he missed his chance. ” He turned his gaze down to the metal ground. “Abandoned in some wasteland…alone and forever forgotten.”

“You never forgot your father, it seems.” Kolivan spoke up, surprising Lotor.

“I…suppose so.” Lotor chuckled even more than usual, to his surprise.

“You’re a lot more timid than before, too.” Kolivan stood up, towering over Lotor in the middle of the room. “Ever since that fight with Voltron, you look like you lost your sense of bravado back there. Enlisting yourself for a suicide mission hidden beneath the many layers of hell in a remote planet in this part of the galaxy? What kind of man are you asking to be anyway?”

“A simple one, I suppose.” He gripped on to his little gem in his hand.

“Are you stupid ?” Kolivan sharply declared at him. “Humility is one thing. But becoming a pathetic one is another, former emperor. You had the tactics to lead hundreds of soldiers in hundreds of ways, didn’t you? The best thing you can do is learn how to advise yourself in this maelstrom to lead some sort of path that doesn’t end up in the hundreds of millions of lives out here.” He walked to the door and turned his head back at Lotor. “Soldier, this is war. You were brought back from the hell you deserved because you still regret not being the king you  wanted to be.” He opened the door and walked out from the ship as Matt and N7 turned their heads back at Lotor who was silent in his seat. N7 nudged Matt by his elbow, although he was hesitant to approach him but then sighed.

“…Lotor? ” Matt slowly walked up to him.

“Kolivan's right...” Lotor spoke weakly as he clenched his teeth and curling his fingers into fists. “What more can I do? Every time I tried to lead a better future for my people, it always ended up getting destroyed. Millions…I lost millions…” He lowered his head in frustration, reminiscing of a burning planet curling itself into an eternal inferno in his mind. “If my father came back from left for dead just like I did, wouldn’t that mean that my efforts would still be in vain before I return to hell again? This path I am taking…this far I am going…and I am wearing a mask just like him too before he was slain in battle?” He felt the wooden maroon mask on his face, his cheeks burning in shame. “Is this all of this just a joke?! ” He squinted his eyes and gritted his teeth in the memory of Voltron destroying his ship in the wastelands of the quintessence field. 

Matt's hand fell on Lotor's shoulder.

“Don’t focus on your personal mistakes right now, Lotor.” N7 walked forward.

“We still have a mission ahead of us,” Matt spoke flatly. “Kolivan is right to point out of the things you're failing to see when you're running so far ahead of others with your mindset."

"We don't really know we’re going but…I hope that there really is some sort the end of all of this.” She spoke softly. "You have to remember of what you need to do if you really are Lotor in the end."

Matt scratched his head and sighed, turning his eyes to the dark desert valley outside. "There's never really a clear cut way to obtain rest after a battle, but perhaps you may have tried to find thousands of ways to find peace for all of us."

Peace… The memory of the woman he loved spoke that word to him in such a gentle and warm melody. Allura’s smile to him in the ancient planet of Oriande began to fill his heart with a golden feeling of trust. He looked up at Matt and N7 and began to find that sense of gold from them. He breathed in and exhaled, getting up on his feet and walked to the edge of the doorway of the ship with his own sword out, covered with bandages at the hilt. “The nest is a long way from the surface on this part.” He closed his eyes to remember the details of the map, opening his eyes when he found a way to navigate through the caves. “Come with me.” He jumped off the edge and landed on the sandy surface, followed by Matt and N7.

“I can wire a transmission packet from this Blade’s mask to see the images he saw before his death.” He pulled up augmented holographs from the device strapped around his wrist, swiping through the intel in the bent-up black mask. “There’s a huge amount of civilians loaded up by a couple of druids in this image. Another one displays one of the druids holding loads of quintessence with one of the civilians picked out by one the druids to perform some alchemy from the earth. Perhaps poisoning the quintessence of this planet with their own.”

“They’re trying to amplify their resources,” Lotor remarked. “The druids must be running low of quintessence since my fall and trying to use barbaric methods of using the people’s own alchemy to increase their own as well as their energy supplies too.”

“Look over there!” N7 pointed out the Blades hurrying down a tunnel at the end of one of the cliffs in the immense valley they were all in. “That entrance is must be how they’re loading the people into their nests beneath us.”

“Let’s follow them.” Matt, N7, and Lotor ran quickly through the dark valley guided by the limelight of the three moons and kept going until Lotor turned his head up at the three celestial bodies out of curiosity. He widened his eyes in realization and halted in his tracks

“Hold on! Stop what you're doing!” He yelled out to the other Blades waiting at the tunnel with Kolivan.

“What? What’s going on?” Kolivan stepped forward but was met by several appearances of druids hidden throughout the valley in disguise. Several detonations signal off between the several meters of distance separating Lotor and the others from Kolivan and the Blades. A massive gaping hole opening up with byzantine flames of sulfur throughout its circumference of the inferno as massive Galran ships lifted up from the imploded entrance made by the druids. Kolivan and the Blades stared at the rising vessels, which were even fitted with the seagreen crystals growing on the sides of each of the ships, which turned out to be the cause for their swift levitation. “Get onto those ships! We’re not letting them escape in the night like this!” Several Blades fired their jetpacks and swarmed in bunches toward the ships, with Kolivan jumping off a cliff to stab his own blade into the surface of one of the ships.

“The druids were planning to use the crystals when the three moons are full in luminosity. An ancient alchemy technique that the Alteans used long, long ago…” Lotor gazed at the gigantic rising crystalline spacecrafts. He sprinted back to Kolivan’s ship with Matt and N7 following after him and into the cockpit of the ship. “Hold on!” Flicking the switches and pulling the steering wheel to his chest, Lotor lifted up Kolivan’s cruiser off the ground and into the atmosphere in microseconds. “Matt, can you block the transmissions signals from the druid ships?” He gripped on the shaking steering wheel as the ship vibrated to each cut through the layers of the atmosphere.

“I can try. N7, I need your help!” He pulled out own black breathing mask over his face and headed to the door to unlock the latch, unleashing gusts of wind through the portal and N7 running along with him as they both jumped out from the edge and latched themselves to one of the massive ships below them.

 N7 pulled out the bayonet rifle and started firing at their ship’s latched portals with her right arm as her left arm grabbed on the side of the railings with Matt clinging along too. She jumped from the rails she was clinging onto and used both of her feet to kick a druid at the entrance of the portal, sending the druid like a bullet through pitch black space. “Hurry!” She called out for Matt as she stretched out her arm for him, pulling him inside the jade-augmented Galran ship.

Lotor watched the two shuffled inside the ship and pulled his steering wheel to the side spiral around the ship to look for Kolivan and the other Blades. Druids were taken down by the luxite blades in mere seconds, to Lotor’s surprise. He clenched on the controls in the ship, sending missiles to one of the druids’ ships, but only managed to graze one of them as they used magic to shift their own ships’ positions like shadows. They’re using the crystals’ power to amplify their own…He gritted his teeth. Suddenly he felt a loud thud thundered through the hollow vessel of Kolivan’s cruiser. Lotor turned his head and his eyes grew as Narti walked inside the ship headed towards the cockpit.  In a heartbeat, he flicked the switch to change the ship’s gears to autopilot, jumping out of his seat and pulling out his blade ready to defend himself.

“Narti!”  He came closer with one foot at a time as the ship began to tilt and her tail began to slither.

There was no way she was going to listen to him. There was no way he’s going to make it on this ship if Narti attacks him. But…he was expecting this. He lifted the crystal up before Narti as the sounds of exploding ships, shattering crystals, clashing luxite blades, beaming rays of dark alchemy pulsated throughout the outside of the ship the two were standing inside of. The horrendous thunderstorm with hundreds of quivering druids battling against the league of Blades. An alchemist wearing a mask of crimson and a druid wearing a mask of blood-taken stood from each other by a few meters. Bending his knees to lower himself by millimeters by milliseconds, Lotor kept his full attention of Narti’s movements and especially her tail. Raising her elbows to lift her palms ever so slightly yet ever so quickly, Narti lifted her tail to throw a wooden crate towards Lotor’s direction, of which he dodged and ran past her to jump outside of the ship to freely fall through space before grabbing onto a rail on the main Galran ship. He knew that if Narti was appearing in his ship, then the leader of the druids would have been nearby.

And he was correct. He kicked down the door by the sheer strength in his right leg, slamming the metal door through the hallway to destroy a few druids in his way, where he ran deeper and deeper into the main ship. Pulling out his sword, he grunted and hacked down more druids swiftly and kept making turns in the corridors to look for the main control room where the leader would be. Finally, he found the room that he was searching for in the labyrinth of corridors and levels in the Galran ship, kicking down the door with his left and swung the sword to the direction of where the leader was in the room. A harrowing figure towering in his long mauve robes trimmed with gold and long mask with many golden eyes glared at the hooded emperor. “… I have waited for you, sire.” He grinned cruelly.

“Macidus!” Lotor pointed his own blade at one of the witch’s longest and most faithful members of her sect of dark alchemy for the Galran Empire. He remembered how he mistreated Narti when he first met her and grimaced as he stared at the ancient druid.

“Bringing back my student? After you slew her by your sword? You have to admit this is was very fitting, wouldn’t you say?” He chuckled cruelly. “Now it's your turn.” He snapped his fingers and suddenly Narti appeared on his right-hand side. “Do me a favor and die, you emperor of sands forgotten."

Chapter Text

Rattling throughout the air shaft of the ship, electricity of toxic violet flowed from the ancient hands of the head druid. Standing with pride in his wrinkled smile behind the bone mask of many golden eyes, Macidus gleefully cackled. It wasn't really much. Not at all for the experienced warlock. Traveling to many realms of space with the high priestess Haggar gave Macidus quite a bit of formidable power in his hands. But also frustration. Petty anger fueled the veins in his neck. The bastard son of hers was the very reason she abandoned them all.

He walked forward to the fallen emperor, now wearing new clothes of dark navy cloak and a rather red tribal mask he donned. His sword was wrapped in cloth to hide his esteemed pride, as the druid knew it was modeled after an Altean broadsword no less. Still, he knew that the boy didn't use alchemy like his mother. But he felt something strange. Familiar and ancient like her...

"You plan to use that sword to slit my throat."  Macidus spoke to him and turn his head to Narti. He can still use her but not yet...something's wrong with the boy. "Why is it that I sense magic from your hands, Lotor?"

He gripped his sword and pointed at Macidus, but heard him cackle like a withered organ whose notes taunted him and flickered around the room. "Do not test me. I know where you are, you servant of the witch."

"I don't serve her. But she..." Macidus' shadow appeared near Narti as he rested his clawed yet wrapped hand on her shoulder. "...serves at my command."

Lotor scowled at him. "You sicken me."

"You make me uneasy. From the moment you were a boy and even a supposed emperor of our nation, how else can I keep my hands clean of what I have done? No Galra can claim themselves as a rightful ruler and no less from someone who is half of that. Thank the witch for your disgrace." His other hand rested on her other shoulder. "And thank me for using that disgrace into something productive."

"Why did you take Narti?"

"She is still bound to me, you foolish boy. All druids are bound to the one who still connected to the river of quintessence. As I am bound to Haggar, Narti is still to me. Thus, Haggar brought her back from her state." He began to chuckle. "In other words, you can't truly kill her."

"Because you all are tainted by the witch's own quintessence to sustain your own life force." He looked at Narti with fear. "You all made a pact with the creature from the rift."

A single finger made of swirling black shadows pointed at Lotor and Narti charged at him like a bullet. He used his sword to shield him from the blade made of swirling electric violet magic Narti yielded in her hand. His feet slid across the room as he tried to hold back from the force and glided his sword from her energetic blade to escape. "Macidus!" He roared out but heard his cruel laughter throughout the hollow corridors out the door. Out of the corner of his eye, Narti twirled around to slam an enormous orb of energy on the side of his body, causing him to fall back on the ground. He coughed and looked up where Narti was, dodging a stabbing blade where his head was through the metal floor. Throwing his legs up, he hoisted himself up and staggered left from right as Narti zigzagged him with shots of her quintessence-fueled blade to stab him in the throat.

"Dammit!" His fangs bare and neck close to being slit. Closing his eyes, he concentrated his energy in his hands with lightning flickering in his hands and his stretched Altean marks brightening intensely. Narti dipped down to swing her hand filled with the violet storm of energy as Lotor opened his eyes to punch the orb of raging electricity to her chest.

A shriek was heard and she fell back to the ground with streams of flickering lightning arches around her body. The older druid halted, appearing out from the shadows and cruelly chuckled at Lotor. "My, my you dare hurt your fellow comrade like this after you sent her to Hades?"

"As my fellow general, I'm willing to do anything to bring her back to her senses. But I will not take away her life again ." He declared, squinting at Narti's stunned body. Lifting the sword in his right hand and the orb of alchemic energy in his left, Lotor glowered at the aged fiend. "You're my next opponent, Macidus."

"So be it. " The edges of his smirk perked up as he charged toward at him in a nanosecond. Lotor flinched, bending his arm to cut through his robe and blasting the orb to project himself off the ground. His eyes darted around to look for him and swung around the surge of dark quintessence filling behind his back. Dropping back to the ground, Lotor opened up a wide wave of energy from himself to shield himself from Macidus's blinding toxic attack. Pushing again the alchemic force in the thin yet sharp claws of the arch-druid, Lotor exerts the poisonous alchemic blast through the room of where they were standing. Windows shattered in Macidus's command room, allowing the force of space to properly them on the roof of the jaded-crystallized ship. Lotor grabbed onto the petals of the metal hole melted by the alchemic blast, clinging onto his sword, lifting his head up to a towering dark sage in the fabric of space. He jumped up and allowed his feet to slide across the shaft of the ship as Macidus pulled out a sword forged by his own swirling black magic. "Now we can be equal as the monsters we are, boy." He cackled, zipping randomly around him to slash his toxic blade against Lotor's tarnished one. Flashes, slashes, and several dashes across the shuttle of the ship kept the two alchemists at bay. Lotor could watch the chaos ensuing around him as falling ships of emerald fell through the atmosphere of the planet sacked by the druids. Backup of the Blade of Marmora arrived with the rebel ships to securely rescue the planet's kidnapped inhabitants into their aircraft.

"Give it up! Your fleet is falling, the miners you enslaved of the citizens are fleeing for freedom, and your countenance is fading!" Lotor roared, preparing another blast of blue-white energy from his hand.

"I had enough you!" He barking aloud in laughter as streams of fiery ships fell behind him. "There is no use for you! There is no use for your mother as well! Looking for a wretched whelp such as you ! Wasting our forces and driving our empire to the stake because of you !" He pointed his finger at him.

"Enough of your insults when you should be praying for your life as now!" He combined the energetic orb in his left hand into his sword in his right, sliding through the mask of Macidus.

The pieces of the marbled mask of many golden eyes fell on the surface of the ship like glass, revealing glowing tattoos around his face as he grinned more gravely. "...Ever wondered of how is it that Haggar bore you as her child...?" He lifted his eyes toward Lotor's own.

Lotor directed his sword at him. " Freeze before you make another move! "

"She found disgust upon you as a crying fetus. A mother would never look away from her child made from her and her lover's blood and yet her disgust was enough to think of you as unworthy and tainted by such Altean blood flowing in your veins like your alchemy!"

" I said shut up !" He snapped, increasing the force within his Altean broadsword.

"Are you really this insecure ? Such raw anxiety is the reason why you're so unrefined than you so were as a prince." Macidus slowly got up from his knees and dark quintessence filled his aged palms. "That's why you need to be disciplined ." He launched a blast on Lotor's right side, destroyed the entire right side of the space craft. " Don't toy with me, boy ." He screamed in laughter and swung a punch of energy at Lotor, who dodged quickly and crashed their swords again as another version of Macidus appeared behind Lotor, blasting him with the poisoned magic burning his back. Lotor screamed and rolled down the surface of the falling ship, stabbing his sword through the metal to prevent himself from falling off the edge and turning his head up at Macidus yet again.

" You have no place to call yourself an alchemist! " He directed both of his hands with socket-lighting of violet quintessence toward Lotor, as he tried to fend off the force with the electric blue alchemy persisting in his left hand. The alchemic force between the two energies continued to snarl against each other and continued to drive his sword deeper and deeper to the edge of the ship. Lotor roared as Macidus screamed in the violent storm of the forsaken protoscience.

"You are a monster just like me ! A beast who belongs in hell just like me !"

"THEN DIE! VICTORY OR DEATH!" Lotor screamed as his pupils turn into slits as he ripped his sword out to quickly stab him through the swirling sword into arch-druid's chest, surging the electricity through the blade.

Zipping away his dark magic into the wound made by the former emperor, Macidus staggering back and flinched in pain as the electricity flickered around him. Watching Lotor rise from the edge of the ship with his bare claws, Macidus felt as if a lion was rising up from certain death and to make himself his prey. "...Damn witch..." He clutched onto his wound and about to escape until Kolivan stood in his way.

"That's enough." He readied his own blade at him.

"You're right. But you will be my prey, foolish Blade ." He grinned smugly.

"Count your prayers then, druid." Kolivan retorted as Macidus jumped off the ship to fade away with the void of space.

Kolivan scowled at where he disappeared to and spoke on his communications glowing around his wrist. "Agent, do you copy? I found Kal and he looks wounded out here."

"Roger that." The static cracked as Kolivan switched it off and walked toward Lotor who collapsed at his knees with his sword in the ground to lift his body up.

"Quickly!" He stretched out his hand to him. "We don't have much time Lotor before this whole ship does."

Lotor looked up as streams of fire carried through the edge of the planet's atmosphere and grabbed on to Kolivan's hand to pull his arm around the commander's back. Lotor's eyes widened. "Halt!"

"What's the matter?"

" Where's Narti! " He slung his arm off and ran to the blasted hole made by alchemy, jumping down to find her laying near the back wall. Kolivan followed after Lotor.

"We don't have much time!"

" I don't care! I'm not leaving her behind! " He lifted her up and pulled her over his wounded back, wincing in pain.

" You fool! You're just as wounded as her!"

"I'm not abandoning another innocent life!" He roared at Kolivan.

Suddenly the entire ship reverberated and the both of them looked up to a familiar rebel ship hovering near the former windows now shattered. A door slid out and hand reached out to belong to that of Matt and N7.

" Lotor! " They yelled his name for him.

Kolivan gazed at the three and stole Narti from Lotor's back on to his own and carried his arm around his neck again. "Come on!" Kolivan carried them to the rebel ship.

=============

" Is it too much...? " Allura peers at the large mirror, wearing jewelry made of small yellow flowers around her neck. She felt her collarbone to feel the delicate flowers and quickly untie the knot to set it down on the desk. "Maybe this isn't a good time to be wearing flowers..." She frowned, looking at her reflection. No crown was on her head...she squinted. How could she forget about it...? It was probably lying around some random part of the garrison and here she was wearing something golden other than the familiar gold that adorned her forehead.

Who was she now? She felt as if she lost track of herself, never mind the amount of strife and travel it took to reach the paladin's planet. It wasn't her own, to be honest...but she shouldn't think so coldly of her comrades. She made the decision to fight back, obtain what was rightfully their planet even as she lost hers in the crossfire thousands of years ago.

It felt...so distant.

Like a frail fairytale, nothing to uphold, nothing to bring back but just reminisce of the drifting memories of her beloved home with her family and her people.

She bit her lip. How could she become so weak...? Clutching onto her friend who had lingering feelings for her after the horrible revelation of her first love? Was she a hypocrite? Her eyes squinted to fight back the tears of shame for her vulnerability. Wiping it away with the sleeves of unfamiliar clothes of another race than her own, she felt like she was losing her strength.

Stop it. She told herself. Stop it... Allura looked at the little golden flowers. They...

Lotor.

She looked down at her knees.

She still remembered.

The times they explored around the ancient ruins of their ancestors in Oriande. The realm that poured the secrets to secreting peace between the Galra and those oppressed and at war with. She clung on to hope and stood up for hope even if it was wore by someone exiled by his own empire. They were even close to ending the war. They entered that future together in the quintessence field. And they ended together as well.

It was all so fast and so cruel. She had so many questions but soon others began to not persist in these urgent queries about why and why and why and why...

She couldn't forget leaving him. It was against her values to leave a living being behind.

And yet, she couldn't stop being in love with him after everything.

==============

Lotor opened his eyes and realized he was in the medical bay of the rebel base several moons near the Milky Way, based on the nurses whose race belonged to the planets associated with the galaxy. He winced and turned his head to Narti who was found in another room with tubes around her. Was she on life support...? Lotor worried. Did he overdo it? He cursed under his breath and twice on the searing pain on his back. But suddenly he was separated in a completely different room adjacent to her's.

And his mask was removed.

Kolivan walked into the room with Matt and N7, with Kolivan speaking with the nurses to keep Lotor's confidentiality as a patient as they nodded quickly while escorted by other Blades. "What happened? What's happening to Narti?"

Kolivan spoke up. "She's fine and she's under a sedative to keep her under a deep sleep from her to attack the nurses. We don't know of we can do with her considering her condition."

"How's your back?" N7 asked him.

"I should be fine. Galra tend to heal little quicker and persist pain better, right? " He smiled at her.

"I suppose so," She chuckled.

"Will he be able to stand?" Matt asked Kolivan.

"After being knocked out for two days straight, he should be fine. Using alchemy uses a lot of the user's quintessence as a fellow comrade of mine did in our battle long ago against the witch." He briefly explained, perking Lotor's ears to the conversation.

"Battling against the witch? As in Princes--" The memory of being blasted by Voltron in the quintessence field and her tears in the bridge of the castle ship collided with each other in his mind. " ...I...I see ." He looked away. Even with the recent events he experienced since his crash in the jungle planet, his memory continue to betray and remind him of the pain from the past at times. But...he looked away from the negative and looked up to the positive.

He pushed the covers from his bed and walked forward to the window. " May I ...try something...?" The memory of Allura placing energy into the symbol of hope they both shared triggered in his mind.

N7 and Matt smiled behind him. "Sure." Matt replied to him. They walked over to the other room and looked at Narti with tubes from her nose and IV drip on her arm and electrode patches around her collar bone and head. Lotor walked forward near her bed and placed two fingers from each of his hands to place them around her temples, sending soft blue electricity through his fingers as he closed his eyes.

Matt and N7 watched her whole body beginning to glow in soft white-blue light and began to hear a voice echoing around her.

Lotor...Is that you...?

"I hope I am and you're free from Macidus' grasp." He smiled

Is that so, huh...How long have I been gone?

"Never mind that. Wake up for the future, Narti." He opened his eyes.

A breath was inhaled from Narti's body and soon Lotor lifted his right hand off and kept his left on her temple. She shifted in her bed and turned her face at him. She realized she was seeing herself through his own eyes.

When did you learn alchemy...?

"...A long time ago. I thought I knew how to do it but for a while I felt unworthy of it." Lotor replied sadly.

I can sense you're very new to this. It's really unrefined. Not your style.

"Looks like I need to enhance it then." He chuckled with a tear in his eye.

I see something but I feel something warm and painful from your throat...

"It's nothing. I'm fine..." He fought back from crying.

Where's Kova...?

Lotor paused. "I don't know...I haven't seen him for such a long time." How could he had forgotten about his first comrade...?

I hope he's doing well...

"I hope so too."

============

A pair of two pirate lovers look up in the galaxies above their heads. One stretching out her coral hand to the sky with a larger teal hand embracing her other one as they sat behind the large windows in the command center of their ship. An ancient feline crawled up between them to fall asleep in the friendly Galra's lap as the buff Galra petted the creature's head with her finger. "Hey Narti, we're still looking over your cat for you." Ezor replied bittersweetly.

Chapter Text

Wandering endlessly, Allura walked across the blue sands of a faraway planet in search of minerals to power the lions of Voltron. Shiro, Krolia, Romelle all stayed back with Coran to help repair the lions, while the rest of her fellow paladins trailed behind her as she led the way using her alchemic abilities. Around every so couple of times, she kneeled down on the sands to place her hand to feel the quintessence of this planet that they had stowed away on. The violet stars in the sky felt like beacons to the fallen princess, as her eyes met with its mysterious constellations. Her hand clenched onto the sands and felt its weight slipping past her fingertips. She suddenly wrapped her arms around her shoulders and gritted her teeth. She felt so ashamed of herself. She couldn't get a single signal of the crystals they needed to power the lions just for a couple of quintants and yet here she was... 

"I already feel like an absolute failure..." She whispered weakly to herself.

How many planets have fallen since the time jump from the sacrifice of the castle? How many galaxies plundered to the chaos of the Galran Empire? How many lives ...have she and the paladins abandoned ?

"Allura?" She heard the shifting steps of the sand from Keith, who approached her. He looked like he hadn't slept for days as the other paladins appeared fatigued. "We need to keep moving."

"I'm sorry." She pulled herself up. "I'm not even sure if we'll be able to find the resources we need at this point." She averted her eyes away from him. 

"Maybe we can go on for a couple of more kilometers. We just need to stay together and head back to the others." Keith sighed. "You know I'm not sure right now... The others don't look so great." He turned to check on them. 

"We can turn back now. I don't want to push them any further than this because of my instincts." Allura watched the sand escape with the wind from her boots. 

"Sure thing... I'll go ahead and tell them." Keith nodded and stepped away to meet up with Lance, Hunk, and Pidge.

She only understands how much she needed to prove to the other paladins despite her lack in strength. Romelle began to rally the others and bonded more closely with them as Allura smiled and slowly drifted away from them in their conversations. She found herself alone with the stars more privately nowadays as the crew traveled to more planets, visited Earth after so long and rescuing the mother planet as well from the grasp of Sendak.  Allura found herself traveling to and fro the hallways of the garrison without her heritage around her forehead, softly glancing at times to her sacrifice to give life to another for Shiro's sake. Stumbling across the cafeteria, she noted the families around Pidge and her parents, Hunk and his parents, and Lance and his parents as well. And Keith with his mother Krolia. She smiled bittersweetly in the distance and soon felt relief meeting with Coran. She gave him a morning greeting and he returned back the same warmly.

"Were you able to sleep well today?" Coran asked kindly.

"I suppose so." She chuckled. "It's... strange. I haven't felt like this before since the recent battles. Sleeping in more and yet finding trouble waking up at the right time despite the alarm clocks I've put in place. I don't really think I would carry the royal title anymore and feel it would be better to stand in the sidelines, if you get what I mean." She nudged a look for Coran to see the paladins' families. " I don't wish to interfere since I had so much since the beginning of our times as paladins. You remember how hard I was in making sure we needed to be prepared to fight Zarkon?" She laughed again but felt the side of neck with her hand awkwardly. She could only imagine how fruitless their training must have been for who had dealt the finishing blow at the end.

"Have you gone to inquire about the status of the Altean?" Coran asked quickly. He felt concerned over her well-being despite currently living on a now peaceful planet.

"I haven't yet. Though I must... I shall return back with the others soon." She waved goodbye and walked back by herself through the endless corridors.

There were questions. Questions she still wanted to know. Where did the Altean come from? Why was she piloting a robot as an enemy to them? Where would more Alteans such as her out there in the universe?

Allura touched the glass where on the other side the sleeping Altean was on life support and checking her vitals. The doctors wore hazmat suits and precariously took notes as they observed the redheaded Altean. She wanted to ask her so many questions as soon as she woke up. She wanted to know if her people still survived just had Romelle did. She wanted to know if they would perhaps know more secrets regarding Altean alchemy. Her hand on the glass clenched into a fist and soon she stepped away until she met Romelle's face in the doorway.

"R-Romelle? Good morning -- I didn't see you here just now!"

The blond Altean smiled kindly. "Ah no worries about that! I was just..." She looked at the Altean with the IV tubes embedded on her arms. "...wondering if Luka was alright." Romelle walked closer to the window.

"Y-you know her?" Allura asked in surprise.

"I do...in fact she was in the same colony as me when Keith and Krolia found me."

"You were alone when they found you?" Allura was puzzled. "I thought you had escaped by yourself to join up with them?"

"Yes..." She replied quietly. "It was only a matter of time before the others would realize I had gone missing. But never had I imagined they would all go missing when the Blade of Mamora couldn't find them after giving them the coordinates of my location."

"How did you know Luka specifically?" Allura asked hesitantly.

"We have different beliefs but I always admired her sense of dedication. I would doubt and she would believe. I would stay and watch and she would run and fight. We would come at odds but respected each other as a set of friendly rivals." She chuckled a little. "You don't suppose that feeling of having another to become a comparison of yourself, don't you?"

"I...I never really felt the need to be jealous of others. It would be a selfish thing to do, really." Allura looked down and held her arm. "I shouldn't even if I do..."

"Good! Now that's something you shouldn't worry about at all!" Romelle leaned close to her by surprise. "I'm gonna go look for the paladins and I hope to see you there too!" She waved goodbye and headed out the door, leaving Allura behind.

Allura turned her head slightly toward Luka's direction and shifted back towards the doorway solemnly. It's only a matter of time until she wakes. She told herself.

=====

"Hello -- do you read me?" Matt adjusted the radios on the ship as Narti pressed the buttons to fix the coordinates from her cockpit.

"Any luck so far?" N7 approached Matt with a cup of hot coffee. "I hope I got the recipe right to your liking." She smiled at him who blushed quickly upon realizing she wasn't wearing her helmet right now. "Ah! Thank you!" He sipped his beverage bashfully. 

Hah . He had just forgotten his ship was now full of half-Galrans except for him. Was he some sort of magnet towards them somehow? He sipped on his coffee more to contemplate on that answer.

Well... granted. He set the cup down and grimaced at the sight of Lotor walking up into the cockpit with the others, who looked away from Matt awkwardly despite donned in a red mask and cloak.

It only has been... how many months now? Matt realized. They had been on missions for the Voltron Coalition one after the other, but had heard no sign of Voltron for so long. He gripped on his microphone and pressed on the button to return back another passing message but still no reply back. Matt reminisced the times for his current crew with Narti had certainly changed missions to go along more smoothly yet meet with perilous foes in the ongoing battle with the fractured remnants of the Galran Empire. They had been successful in avoiding as many Galran ships as they could but still no news from the other rebels. And no news if his sister and the others were still out there...

He glared at Lotor, who had now shuffled away from the crew and began looking and marking maps on possible locations for Voltron. He began to soften and sighed, feeling powerless for a moment. It's been such a while since his confrontation on his true identity and how he wanted so much for him to atone for being able to survive the battle with Voltron and not the others. He hadn't been able to press further questions as to how he survived specifically and how he lost his memories to begin with. He certainly remembers that Lotor didn't always have those red marks across his face before when he first met him after retrieving his dad from the exchange with Zarkon.

He still felt disturbed upon what he had seen in his father's holding cell from the prison Lotor had been in charge of. So much so, he had to push Nyma out of the way in raw anger. He still remembered and wanted to interrogate him so badly as to what the hell his dad was doing in his time as a prisoner.

Only time will tell, however... Matt kept observing Lotor examine the maps of the stars as Matt feared how much more he would examine his missing memories. Will he become the person who took away his sister? Or would he actually change past that? Anxiety swirled a little within his stomach. He wished he could hear his sister's voice again.

" MATT!!! " N7 called out his name suddenly.

Matt jumped and turned his direction to the signal frequency on the radios resembling...Earth's! He twisted the knobs and punched the buttons and adjusted the sliders to pull up the video streaming from the monitor above his head. "Hello! Hello! This is Matt Holt!"

A view of his father came to the silver screen. "Matt...we won." His father grinned. "Our battle against Sendak’s occupation on Earth has ended because of the help from Voltron."

Matt froze and asked quickly. " Pidge is...? "

"She's right here . " Sam moved the camera to the paladin's face, smiling happily in her hospital gown.

"Hey Matt... " Pidge spoke up to her brother through the screen, after so many quintants. Tears welled up through her older brother's eyes.

" Hey Pidge... "He choked back from the tears, wiping them from his face. "Where were you...?"

"Well after traveling the universe after realizing we were missing for two years from the blast from sacrificing the castle of lions to destroy the rifts in reality, we were trying to find Earth via the lions alone. Believe me when it wasn't at all easy to charge the lions and overtime through a lot of challenges having to scope how much damage that was caused when Voltron was missing, we ended up finding Earth in the hands of Sendak and banded with the Garrison to help the revolution to free the people of Earth. The battle with Sendak along with a massive robot that Voltron fought against in the end had left all of us recovering currently at the garrison hospital here." She chuckled. "The Balmerans and most of the Voltron Coalition are headed their way towards Earth right now. And I personally wanted to ask you to come back to home to see Mom, Dad, Bae-Bae, and I."

" I love to! " Matt wiped another tear from his face. "I miss all of you so much and I missed you Pidge so much too..."

"I miss you too." Pidge teared up.

Matt rubbed his face hard from his sleeve. "Tell you what! My crew and I are heading our way and you make sure not to go anywhere else right now, alright?" He pointed at the screen with a grin.

"Will do, big brother!" The green paladin laughed. "I'll see you and everyone on board soon!" She and their father waved goodbye to Matt as he did as well.

He watched the screen zip back to black and fell back on his chair in a sigh of relief. Matt couldn't believe it. Two years...And no signal because of the blast? The castle of lions is gone too? He stopped grinning. He couldn't exactly tell his sister that he may be bringing the one who fought with them to lead to such a sacrifice in the first place.

"I'm so happy for you Matt!" N7 said cheerfully. “You were searching for her for so long…”

Narti put her hand on his arm, causing Matt to jump . I didn't know your sister was a paladin of Voltron. Congratulations on their recent battle.

"Haha yeah ..." He smiled awkwardly and looked down. "She's the best little sister in the whole universe." He suddenly looked at Lotor and scowled. "And I am so proud of her."

=====

"Ms. Holt, you wanted to see me?" Allura walked into the indoor greenhouse.

"Ah Allura! Just the person I needed to see!" She wrapped the vines of an ivy plant around some wooden supports set up all around it and hurriedly walked over to her. "You must see this! I think you might like it." She grinned excitedly and showed the familiar fuschia-colored flower before Allura's eyes.

Allura ran up to the blooming flower. " A Juniberry! " Her hands clasped over her mouth. "But-but how? How is this possible?" She couldn't believe her eyes. After ten thousand years and traveling across the universe to fight as a paladin of Voltron, she never imagined a last living piece of her bygone culture would reside in her fellow paladins' planet.

"My husband, Sam, had recently learned from Coran that you and him used to celebrate a festival over flowers such as these and noted quite well to Sam that you had loved them very much. I can only hope I have done my best to revive this rare seed in the time it has survived for you." She gazed at its wonder.

"I suppose we share something in common then." Allura wiped away her tears. "How did Sam even retrieve a Juniberry seed to begin with?"

"That..." She looked away. "He mentioned that when he was a prisoner of the Galran Empire, he had to study them for some unknown reason. As if they were vital to someone somehow..." She felt concerned and shook her head. "I was wondering if I could give it as a gift for you." She placed a hand on her shoulder. "Maybe if more seeds come from this one, we could plant more of these together."

"I would love that." Allura tenderly felt the petals.The authentic soft feel from so many ages ago when she was a child running through the fields of thousands of these flowers on Altea. 

======

“Nyma, does it make sense for someone like me to even be out here?” A spunky little masked fighter sat in the second seat of the cockpit belonging to an golden alien with splendid violet eyes. “I wanted to reconnect with Kal's crew soon.”

“Well Kari,” She grinned. “Since you’ve finished your training in the corp for missions for the Voltron Coalition, the instructors and I have decided to take you on your first rescue mission on gathering intel from the Galra.” Nyma turned the steering wheel towards the direction of what appeared to be a ship caught on one of the greater asteroids in the asteroid belt they were traveling in. “By the looks of it, this ship has probably seen its better days.”

She parked their cruiser ship on the outer rim of a crater of the rusted asteroid and got out of the ship with Kari with plasma rifles in their hands. They both walked carefully to the blown up ship and noticed other aliens were going in and out of the facility of the ship with crates and other boxes full of parts that they could use to repair their broken ship. Nyma and Kari ducked out of the eyes of the moving crew members and ventured inside of the vessel where Nyma guided the way using a device tracking the coordinates of the distress signal. 

“The signal appears to be ending on this part of the vessel for some reason.” Nyma looked up on the great wall at the end of the corridor they were in. “There doesn’t seem to be anything that would otherwise lead to this direction. Perhaps we should turn a different way--” Her eyes alerted at the direction of incoming crew members headed their way. “Shit!”

“Step back!” Kari pointed the rifle at the wall and carved out a hole quickly for the two to run inside. “Wait a minute …” She looked up at the ceiling that they were in and looked in horror. A row of crewmembers aimed down at the two with plasma rifles in their hands as two female space pirates approached forward. 

“Now this is an odd little reunion we have with you, little masked girl.” Zethrid let out a chuckle. “ Kari , now was it?” She jumped from the rail balcony and slammed down to the ground on her two feet and snarled at the sight of Kari. “That means a certain infamous VIP is here.”

“Stay back!” Nyma pointed her rifle as Zethrid held her bazooka. 

“Please, you both are outnumbered.” Ezor slid her hand past Zethrid’s shoulder, causing her to blush and held a plasma firearm in her hand. “Like what do you expect to get out of this? We planted a simple distress signal weak enough to make an unassuming Coalition member to waltz right in annnd you both pretty much did the trick. So… not sorry.” Ezor cocked the gun at Nyma with a snicker.

“I’m not sorry for both of you anyway .” Kari jumped ten feet from the air and spiraled her body to shoot her rifle at all the crewmembers’ weak points simultaneously in seconds. She plummeted downward toward Zethrid until Zethrid caught her leg. 

“DIDN’T KNOW YOU WERE FUN-SIZED!” Zethrid bellowed.

“TRY ME, YOU BIG SHIT.” Kari twisted her body and took a shot at Zethrid’s arm, causing the giant woman to yelp and fall back with a grazed arm, letting go of Kari without realizing. 

Ezor ran over to Zethrid quickly and snarled at Kari. “You little runt!”

“Try catching me to choke me again, floozy!” Kari grabbed Nyma’s arm and sprinted out through the room through the hallways of the ship. 

As they kept running, Kari and Nyma could both hear Zethrid and Ezor trailing after them as other crew members came their way. Nyma pointed her rifle and shot promptly at her targets and slid under one of them to confuse them and shoot them from behind. Kari jumped wall to wall of the vessel until finding the exit. Nyma tosses a grenade in the air and the two jump out of the ship where an explosion was heard behind them. Nyma grabbed Kari and rolled across the rocky ground among impact. Nyma stood up and coughed and looked out for any others in pursuit of them. 

“Let’s go Kari!” Nyma and her ran towards their cruiser and the two of them jumped inside before realizing Ezor and Zethrid had jumped on top of their ship. “ Damn, they’re persistent!” 

A sharp sound came from the roof of their ship. 

“You have got to be kidding me!” Nyma threw the ship on auto-pilot and pulled out her rifle towards the roof, where a hole popped out and the space pirate duo fell down inside. 

“Now you can’t stop us!” Ezor ran towards Nyma but suddenly got slammed by an invisible wall. “What...what the hell..? ” She quickly saw the flash of golden grids surround the perimeter of the ship outside the cockpit, closing in her and Zethrid into a smaller and smaller cage of running electricity. 

“I had a feeling some intruder would immediately come close to the pilots during flight and try to sabotage the ship.” Kari walked forward. “You’re dealing with a Dalterian, right here.” She pointed at herself with her thumb. “And it would be an embarrassment to my kind if I wasn’t able to trap my own prey .”

Chapter Text

" Allura, come here. " A queen of heavenly stars called out to her princess of moonlight.

"Mother!" The little lady ran through the fields of the juniberries, with her hands stretched out and her eyes fixated on her mother's lovely face covered by the sunlight.

" My darling, my sweet Juniberry.. ." Her mother's beautiful laugh echoed through the winds of Altea.

"Mother! Mother! " She fell before the hem of the empress' gossamer gown, looking up from the ground gasping for breath. With a big smile, she held up her hands to emanate a glow of soft electric blue. "Look what I can do!"

"You can do alchemy?" She leaned closer to her daughter's face and gently held her hands. "My...you have great paths to follow and grand dreams to have..." She felt the side of her little girl's face, who had quickly taken both of her hands to hold on to her mother's hand that was a size greater to her own. "You have much to grow, my Allura ." The queen of peace chuckled, taking a seat in the fields with her daughter laying on her lap. 

"Can you tell me a story, mother?" The girl's large blue eyes had such a capacity for curiosity.

"I shall..." Her lips curled into a smile.

All life had begun with a single juniberry.

Her petals, long and graceful to dance around with like a ballgown.

Her eyes, golden and radiant like will ‘o wisps guiding the universe to her song of freedom.

Her hair white and soft to melt away the worries of bygones and vagabonds and allure her suitors who seek her beauty.

And her gift to give life with her own life as for spring for winter.

For the juniberry had vowed for life and multiplied her soul for more life to continue to thrive in the universe.

=====

Matt Holt held the steering wheels of the ship to set a course to Earth. He was finally heading back home and home was waiting for him. They had already passed by the moon of Pluto, Kerberos. Matt gazed at the icy blue planet that had taken away his father, Shiro, and himself by the Galra all those ages ago. It was strange to think how much had changed because of their abduction. How it had changed the universe from that point onward. As a spark of revolution from his sister’s rebellion and for her -- finding the fated members of Voltron. It was so strange now putting it all together in perspective. And now the next final chapters of this war were to end soon. Just how much longer will all of them as fighters persevere in this penultimate war?  

He leaned back in his seat and sighed. Looking up at the ceiling of his cockpit, even with the mass amount of buttons and technology at his disposal, he knew none of them could possibly enact an action to change their current course in life. If any of his actions were great enough to change the course of the universe like his sister had easily done…

Getting up from his seat and switching the ship to auto-pilot, he suddenly yawns which drew the curious attention of N7 and Narti. Matt chuckled and said “I’m gonna go take a nap for a bit. You two can continue driving up ahead for another hour or two.” 

Narti’s tail lightly touched his shoulder to pass on her message telepathically. Rest easy. You’ll be at home soon. 

Matt suddenly paused and smiled to the ground happily. “I know I will finally.”

“Hey Matt, is it alright if I can talk to you for a second?” N7 walked closer to him. 

“ Sure thing… ” He felt a rosy blush rising from his cheeks. They walked together through the corridor. “What is it?”

“I was just thinking about meeting up with the other rebels and what all is going to happen once we meet. I’ve been hearing reports from Nyma and Rollo about their recent mission with ...Lotor’s companion named Kari being able to capture two space pirates on her first mission. I was planning to tell him about it soon.” She chuckled as Matt jaw-dropped. “Other than that, there was supposed to be a general meeting held by Allura and the current leader of Voltron named Keith.”

“Oh! Keith! I remember that guy!” Matt hit his right fist on his left palm. “It was kind of confusing since I heard Shiro was the leader then it flip-flopped between Keith and him for some reason as soon as Shiro had reappeared mysteriously. Pidge was saying that Shiro was acting weird and I guess maybe going back as the leader probably took a mental toll on him somehow. But Keith returning back from the Blades as the leader of Voltron again? I wonder how he’s gonna roll with the punches as the leader again.”

“Judging by his character, he seems to have dealt with a lot of pain as a half-Galran too. It’s a bit comforting to know that there’s someone as the leader of Voltron who represents people like me.” N7 smiled at the thought. “I was kind of wondering about how you and Lotor haven’t talked in a while…”

Matt froze and stopped smiling, crossing his arms as he turned his gaze away from N7. “Why should I?”

“ Look...I-- ” N7 held her arm. “I know things had been weird after discovering his true identity and it’s kind of why I was wondering how we’re gonna handle the situation with the team of Voltron with him in disguise. I just...I’m just thinking about this realistically if there was a chance that they would find out his identity--”

“They won’t think of us betraying them, believe me N7.” Matt turned his face to her.

“But if they hear his voice and if one of them recognizes it--!” She said anxiously.

“I wouldn’t mind turning the tables, to be honest.” Matt narrowed his eyes to the ground. 

“ That’s exactly the main problem with our team right now! ” N7 whispered but suddenly realized she was floating along with Matt. “Narti! What happened to the zero-gravity controls?”

Narti shook her head and raised both of her arms up with her palms flat. She pointed with her tail to the gravity stabilizer crystal emitting a weak glow. 

“Oh! It needs to be replaced!” N7 swam over to her room with Matt following inside to look for the spare part, closing the door behind Matt as soon as he was inside. “Matt, could you look in the cupboards above my bed if it’s there? I’ll go look in this corner.” 

Matt floated above to the cabinets and opened them, watching the items jump out slowly into the air. “I still think we don’t have to worry too much about Lotor. We can just put him back in his own personal prison like he did with my dad.” 

“Did you ever think of talking to him as to why that happened?” N7 turned around.

“I was thinking of asking my dad about it, not Lotor.” He stated flatly.

“ Matt, please. ” N7 came closer to him, taking him by surprise as he blushed.

He turned his head quickly from her face, only causing her to get mad and place both of her hands on the side of his face. They were at least three feet above the air and the distance between them was only a couple of inches now.

“You need to give him a chance .” She knitted her fuschia eyebrows together. 

Matt felt his heart beat out of his chest and tried to pay attention to what she was saying but ended up staring at her lovely lips. He looked up into her eyes and didn’t realize there were stars within them.

The zero gravity turned off.

“OOF!” Matt’s back slammed against the ground and felt a weight above his body, realizing N7 was on top of him. All the other items in her room hit the ground as well like toys. 

A crystal hit Matt’s face and rolled off of him. 

“I guess Narti found a spare in the glove box.” N7 lifted her face off of Matt’s chest. “Oh! That’s the one I was looking for... Oh… ” She realized now how close their faces were to each other. “ Ah--sorry-- I,” Her face became rosy. “ I-I should probably get off of you now.” Her voice was sheepish.

“ Ah...yeah. ” Matt couldn’t take his eyes off of her as she pulled herself up. He got off the ground soon after and coughed into his elbow awkwardly to break the sudden tension. He found N7 rubbing the back of her palm still blushing. S-she...is so cute. A thought had bubbled within his mind. “I-I should probably head back to my room for that nap.” He scratched the back of his head while chuckling nervously. “ I-I’ll see you in a bit…! ” He ran out from her room and quickly escaped to his room. Taking a deep breath, sliding his back against his closed door all the way down to the ground in a flustered state. 

He covered his face in embarrassment. Now, he has other things to worry about... He took his hands off, staring at the ground now. He really didn’t want to admit this himself, really. Lotor was making strides in the past couple of missions since he and N7 found out. He even found himself back-to-back in the mission just recently...Even though he still felt conflicted about the whereabouts of his sister. He still remembered the mission on an liquid nitrogen ocean planet and how they had to take down one of the ships from the Galra about nine thousand feet in the air. Matt had somehow fallen off the edge and was about to plummet down towards the waters until Lotor jumped out and grabbed his hand just in time. The look in Lotor’s eyes was both of determination and...of anxiety.

Matt didn’t quite understand why Lotor had such a look on his face to begin with. He had quickly jumped into battle with the other Galran soldiers on the ship soon after. If Lotor hadn’t caught him, he knew for sure he would be more than just freeze to death from that ocean. Crossing his arms over his knees, Matt was now stuck in a decision about confronting Lotor with the questions he had anxiously been waiting to ask.

=====

“Romelle, are you really sure it’s a good idea to go on a date during this time.” Allura leaned over to the chirpy blonde Altean combing her soft fluffy white hair. 

“You need a break! Besides, when’s the last time you haven’t been on one since... err… ” Romelle pulled her collar nervously. 

“ Lotor? ” Allura gave her a side-eye. She turned to look at the mirror with her new outfit for the date and gave a sigh. “I’m not really sure if I should have said yes so soon. Lance has been supportive of my mental well-being since our battle with Lotor and since then I’ve only seen him as a dear friend.”

“ Dear or friend? ” Romelle leaned into the view of the mirror with a mischievous smirk. “You have to pick one or the other for a guy who has been interested in you since the start of Voltron, according to you .”

“That’s exactly why I feel anxious about going on this date. It doesn’t feel right...the timing is just so...immature.” She spun her hand in the air.

“Are you saying he’s immature?” Romelle raised an eyebrow.

“ I...He ...I don’t think I would be the only one saying it, no offense to him.” Allura smacked her lips and looked to the ground awkwardly. 

“ Well if it doesn’t work out…” Romelle slowly combed a tendril of Allura’s hair.

“If it doesn’t ...?” Allura raised her eyebrows at Romelle. 

“I could give him a shot---” Romelle stopped speaking as soon as Allura started choking.

“I’m sorry. WHAT? ” Allura was flabbergasted. 

“It’s just that I was kind of getting a sort of...vibe with him when we were in the blue lion together. I really, really didn’t want to say anything right before your date with him and I definitely don’t wanna stop you from pursuing him.”

Allura jaw-dropped along with her mice.

She rubbed her temples and took a deep breath. “Let’s just get this over with.” She got up from her seat and grabbed her purse, exiting out the door. 

The festivities of Allura’s day included: a) meeting the parents of Lance, b) meeting more family members of Lance, c) having dinner with the entire family of Lance, and d) finally getting away from the family of Lance. They were really lovely folks to Allura and were so warm and welcoming to her. It’s just that...it ended up making her miss her own.

Clicking her heels across the concrete pavement to the park, Allura contemplated if she would have grand family dinners with her parents if they were still here. She felt rather confused as to why the paladins and her haven’t done a ‘family’ meal together as well. She wished, however. Perhaps something to feel a sense of belonging to being part of team Voltron but be more than just a team. 

“Lance…” She stopped behind Lance who was leading ahead. “Do you think it’s odd that we haven’t at least once planned a gathering together with everyone?”

“Were you thinking about that over dinner?” Lance stopped and turned around. “I guess I should have apologized first.” He placed his hand over the side of his neck. “I saw that you were not looking so happy over dinner for some reason and I should have realized that you miss your dad.”

“I do.” She held on to her purse. “I do miss my father. And there’s nothing really I can do over what happened in the past. I guess what I’m trying to say that I’m sorry to you too, Lance.” She walked past Lance and towards the park.

“Woah, what do you mean?” Lance followed her with worry. 

Allura stopped before an oak deprived of leaves in its branches. “I feel like I’m losing a sense of family to you, Lance.” She placed her hand on the surface of the tree.

Lance fell silent. “Is...Is that how you feel about me?” He spoke weakly. 

“I think it’s just too soon to assume anything between us right now.” Allura turned around to face him. “I’m sorry...I just wish I had said it sooner before going on our date. I thought maybe going on it would take things off my mind but now I realized it doesn’t seem to make sense with the timing and how things have been with everyone else in our team.” She stepped closer and placed both of her hands on him. “I’ve noticed that you kind of were drifting away from everyone else too.”

Lance chuckled. “Hasn’t everyone?” He smiled sadly. “We...really need to reconnect with everyone. Especially before we go off to space again.”

“We should.” Allura smiled. “I'm curious about these interesting places around Earth before returning with our ally forces. Maybe we could do a bit of a road trip with everyone?"

"Sure thing!" Lance began to brighten up. "You can try driving the car if you want." He chuckled.

"I was thinking a plane or jet as you all would put it." She grinned as she twirled around with her purse excitedly.

"We could do a flight race with everyone! And I'll totally beat Keith for sure since it was what I wanted to be as a pilot." He folded his arms behind his back and looked up to the dead branches of the tree. "We should definitely do all of that soon." 

"Hold my purse." Allura gave Lance the pink sparkly bag. She placed both of her hands on the trunk of the tree and her eyes glowed to give quintessence to bring back the fullness of the tree's former glory. It festooned into a plethora of flower buds across its branches and its pink petals rising high above the starry sky.

Allura gazed up as well, watching to where her gift of alchemy sent love to her mother above.

Chapter Text

Memories of nobody inside of her soul, drifting across her eyes the people who she met and departed. A loving mother and a loving father too who couldn’t be with her in this turbulent world. Luka was her mother’s little starlight. An Altean girl too young to remember the ongoing politics the emperor and empress debated with the Galran ruler. Her mother clenched onto her hand tightly as she looked up with her big golden eyes to her father, Alfor’s right hand man. She was timid yet in awe as she watched her father debate and offer royal advice accordingly to the young princess her age but stand tall and confidently as if twice so. Luka watched the young princess Allura in her pearly braided hair and crown worn just as proudly her silk pumpkin-like dress. In every moment, Luka wished she could be as radiant as Allura. Elegant like her father as well but had wished he would attend their home instead of the endless hours of royal work for all the needs of the palace. Instead of the needs her mother would tell him to stay by to remember he has his own family too. 

“Coran, please. I know Alfor is your best friend and we support you in your work in every way. Just…please don’t forget our Luka.” The little girl watched her mother and father argue in their small cottage home, far from the palace but easy to leave quickly with the pod carrier her father travels daily to the palace. 

“For the last time, please stop bothering me right now about this.” He placed the palm of his hand over his face tightly. “I already have enough stress as it is seeing how this world is going to become.”

Luka watched her father leave the house abruptly in the middle of the night, with sweat over his face and fear strewn in his eyes. Her mother walking up beside the young Luka in her pajamas and holding her hand gently, saying “We can’t stay on this planet anymore…”

Her mother packed her things in a small luggage and went through the kitchen cupboards to find a messenger device hidden behind the cups. “Your father will contact us through this device when the time is right.” She showed the glowing tablet to Luka. 

Luka ran with her mother holding on her hand tightly as the wind blew harshly through the grasses and the few juniberry flowers in the fields near their home. Her mother opened up the hatch of the pod ship near the side of the cliff and told Luka to go inside with her. Luka sat in her mother’s lap as the mother took the controls to fly out from the cliff and swiftly shoot out into the sky with an acceleration to make Luka feel scared to the pit in her stomach. By the time she opened her eyes, she found the state of the planet in despair. Flames she didn’t know they could go so high in the sky, towns covered in embers, and the palace suddenly shooting up as its own ship to Luka's suprise, and quickly far away to abandon their home planet. Anger filled in her heart in that time and soon the sacred Altea disappeared in their midst as her mother took her and her daughter to safety eons away from this hell spurned by Zarkon.

=======

“Allura, come over here!” Hunk called out to her in the garrison halls as he waved at her speaking with Romelle. 

“I’ll speak with you later Romelle,” She waved and walked over to him. “Hi Hunk, what brings you here?” 

“You know how you can lift those boxes using that shape-shifting ability you have? I need help carrying them to my family’s auto shop.”

“Sure thing!” Allura replied happily. “Any assistance, I’m sure I’ll deliver swiftly!”

The boxes were twice the size of the both of them combined, about fifty so in total. Allura felt daunted by the sheer amount but mustered up courage and shape-shifted into her Galra form she used when she infiltrated Zarkon’s base with Shiro a while back. Hunk and his dad lifted up their heads to watch the taller-than-usual Allura casually lifting the crates weighing like tons. After a while, Allura began to sweat and Hunk helped to carry them with her side by side. 

“Oof…” Hunk slunked down to the warm concrete due to the summer heat. “I’m beat but you already took up so much of the bulk down in my family’s hanger so quickly. I wish I can shape-shift like you do, whew.” 

Allura slunked beside to join with him. “It’s not every chance I get to do this sort of thing.” She exhaled. “More or less, anyway…” She closed her eyes as she shifted back into her original form, feeling the beads of sweat across her head under the green shade of the auto shop’s hanger and observing the waves of heat dance across the concrete.

“Ahh, I can really go for some vaifala right now.” Hunk smugly reminisced with his hands rubbing his stomach. “Hold on!” He bolted up quickly on his seat, startling Allura. “I can go make some right now! Allura, let’s make it together!” He extended his hand to help her up. 

They walked through the hanger, seeing aircraft half-finished up above their heads and drawers full of tools opened halfway. Allura carefully walked beside Hunk, worrying she might bump into one of the many hundreds of mechanical equipment and engines inside the large garage. The jungle of the wires, gaps beneath their feet revealing the floor mechanics, and walls full of diagrams and diodes soldered into the circuit boards hanging beside them, and notes pointing to each of them with Hunk’s handwriting that she recognized — Allura began to understand why Hunk was such a genius as the engineer in their team. 

Pineapples chopped swiftly with rectangular knives, coconuts ripped from their husks and cracked open to reveal its refreshing hydrating water, and cans carved apart to pour out a sweet viscosity of condensed milk into a jar all enough to make Allura’s mouth water at the sweet drink being created Hunk’s hands. Hunk ran his hands through his hair as sweat popped into sparkles. He held the drink toward Allura as metaphorical fireworks explode behind him as he pulled a charming smile. Allura took a sip from the striped bendy straw and felt the sweet pleasure of the pineapple, mango, and coconut blended heavenly on her taste buds. “Hunk, you must be a wizard to make something as magical as this!” Her eyes gleamed toward Hunk sipping on his own within a coconut shell. 

“It’s my favorite! After the milkshake that Lance makes too!” Hunk laughed as Allura remembered not too fondly on that particular drink’s true process. “I’m really happy I can finally make it ever since I went to space to become a paladin.”

“I didn’t realize how many cultures were within one planet like Earth.” Allura sipped more on the drink as she leaned on the kitchen counter. “Altea would have subsets based on what tribes were placed across my planet and their representatives would come together under my father’s delegation in accordance of my mother.”

“In accordance with your mom? What do you mean by that?” Hunk pulled up a wooden stool to sit on and leaned on the counter as well. 

“My mother is the technically the true ruler of Altea. She carries the bloodline of goddess told in our legends and for generations the matriarchy of Altea has carried our sacred customs and held the annual festival for celebrating the juniberry flowers.” Allura stretched her hand out to the vase of sunset-colored lilies in the middle of the counter, feeling one of its petals with her finger tips. “Each ruler is already blessed with the ability of alchemy and my mother taught me how to use it by using wilted flowers and help restore their lifeforce. Eventually she would teach me how to channel my ability into other living beings like Alteans and creatures such as beasts or birds.”

“Wait, hold on. How come we were always told that your dad was the king of Altea but never about your mom?” Hunk replied. 

“That is because my father was the diplomat in speaking with the other planets and he was known to be an explorer anyway whenever he went on missions with Zarkon before things went sour.  My mother, Queen Melenor, always stayed back to take care of the affairs of the planet Altea instead and looked after my upbringing as the princess of Altea by instructing Coran on how to advise me in my education and etiquette. She wasn’t as shy as other planets would say about her and truly she was technically a better fighter than my father. She always wore the color pink in honor of her fallen comrades when she was in the Altean military and after her coronation, she still kept the color but in a different clothing attire her own way.”

“Whoa so like your mom was like, hardcore in a way.” Hunk leaned in greater interest. “How did your parents meet then?” He pulled a cheeky grin.

Allura laughed loudly. “Goodness! That tale is my favorite! My mother when she was a young cadet quickly rose through the ranks by defeating her rivals one after another—”

"Oh dang, your mom was a badass just like you?" Hunk pointed at her with a laugh. 

"Hunk, please!" Allura waved her hand at him as she laughed but soon stopped. “Ah…" Her voice grew quiet.

"' Ah ' what?" Hunk replied with more curiosity. 

 " Ah as in, ah that was the time she met Honerva.” She set her drink down gently.

“ Whaaaaaaaaaat! ” Hunk stood up in his seat. “No way! You’re telling me your mom knew Haggar from way back then? Allura, you gotta lay down the details here!”

“Well…they met before their secondary academia back in Altea. Honerva was under the royal scholarship after demonstrating herself as a prodigy in alchemy. My mother would tell me stories of how she and her walk through the academy halls together, study for exams and score above their class ranks. They would even sneak outside the castle to go stargazing together. When my mother was running late to her classes, she would call for Honerva to help create a teleportation circle to instantly be at that class’s location at once . Honerva…she was truly gifted and became accepted in the Altean Royal Academy and was placed in the same class as my father."

"Ohh okay so your mom and pre-Haggar were like best buds but your dad and her not so much best buds? I guess friendly? I'm not sure, seems pretty odd to think about." Hunk pondered on the strange idea. 

Allura chuckled. "They were famously known as rivals in the alchemic arts and highly competitive with each other with whatever test or challenge came their way. They always wanted to prove to my mother, she says, as to who was the better alchemist.”

“Why your mom’s opinion?” Hunk raised an eyebrow. 

“When my father first met my mother, he had heard about the royal princess through word of mouth at first. He didn’t exactly knew as to how she looked at first but when he was competing with Honerva through an alchemy competition, he had a chance to see her. As a result, he ended up transmuting what was supposed to be rather difficult flower to grow in a pot but instead a great winged creature burst out of the pot and carry him high in the sky above the palace towers. My mother ran up to the towers quickly to get him down compared to the other academia students who just gawked at my father, well flying. She got to the roof and took a long javelin rod to throw at the chimera’s head and that blow was what finally released my father from its claws to where my mother caught him in her arms. My father, horribly embarrassed that he messed up his transmutation instead got a closer look at my mother’s face and jumped out her arms and ran all the way down through the tower to back to his dorm hall. My father was the laughing stock in his class for months, much to Honerva’s own personal amusement, my mother says. Since then, my father tried to compete for her attention for my mother with Honerva as a result. In a way, that incident helped to humble my father and he truly grew to become a great alchemist and leader at the academy and grew to be good friends with my mother and Honerva. After graduating the academy together, my father would lead expeditions and came across the former paladins of old while Honerva continued to final her final degree in her alchemic research. One of those expeditions, my father had planned to explore Oriande and asked Honerva and my mother to join along with his crew in search of the fabled land. It was that time my parents grew to be very close…” Allura paused, suddenly remembering when she went to Oriande for the first time.

“Like you and Lotor…?” Hunk asked gently. He knew it was still kind of sore subject for Allura and didn't know how to approach her since the battle in the rift. Even though they've made great strides freeing the planet from Sendak, Hunk noted that Allura still shut herself in her room shortly after dinner with the Garrision crew and the other paladins. 

“I…I suppose. My father and Honerva were the chosen ones to the sacred trials much like we did and they both passed. Afterward, Honerva returned back to finish up her final academic research and my parents began their relationship.”

“Man that’s sort of crazy to think that your dad and Haggar from back then used to be rivals.” He wrapped his arms behind his head to ponder on the thought. “But they also became friends too.”

“Great friends, actually. I think when my father was courting my mother, they didn’t seem to see her much as Honerva bury herself in the books. It was when they found the dark creature after the transreality comet crashed on Daibazaal, my father had asked Honerva personally to oversee the research that commenced. At that time, Honerva appeared to be in better spirits after she met Zarkon for the first time, my mother says.”

“Did you ever met Honerva before?” Hunk asked Allura.

“Only once when I was a baby, my mother says. I apparently was tugging on Honerva’s hair when I was an infant.”

“ Ahhh baby Allura! ” Hunk gushed. “You must have been the cutest royal baby ever!”

“I was, indeed.” Allura giggled. 

“Man when I was a baby,” Hunk walked over to grab a family portrait. “I was this adorable chubby bunny and used to eat the mangos in the kitchen before I started teething.” He pointed to himself as a baby in the sepia pictures. “I loved being the only child in my family cause of all the good food my mom would make for me.”

“My mother wasn’t very good at cooking so it was rather my father who had to instead.” Allura chuckled to herself. “Although every time she tried, my father would rush me out the kitchen when I was a child because of the fire.”

“Wait, how bad of a cook was she? ” He glanced. 

“Enough to make Coran cry.” 

“My apologies for the poor dude.” Hunk pitied the mustachio uncle figure from afar at the thought of Allura's mother causing his digestion the foretold torture. "Speaking of which, where is he actually? I haven't seen him lately since that explanation he gave me regarding the inner mechanics of how the Altean pod ships were able to maneuver themselves off of the ground for the Garrison soldiers and I. Actually...this is such a tangent but do you ever think about how crazy apart our technology is between yours and ours, Allura? We have so much to share and yet so much to learn, it's just incredible. I'm like so stoked to hear more from him on how we can expand our existing engineering to where we can advance to new limits, you know? But at the same time... it's so scary to think about how far the enemy's own tech pushed them to the frightening peaks to the sheer number of battleships we had to deal with as Voltron." Hunk took a breath to register his experiences for a moment. "It feels too much, and yet I need to prepare myself every step of the way to help the team as an engineer of Voltron. I'm not like your dad, of course and indubitably so."

"Hunk, you do not need to worry," Allura assured him. "No one is expecting you to sacrifice yourself to contribute some effort for the team except by just simply helping alongside all of us together. I wish my father didn't have to feel alone as an engineering genius to creating Voltron but now you're surrounding by more brillant minds such as Pidge, Coran, and so many more. It's only a wonderful thing to be more thankful that you're one of my greatest friends, Hunk." Allura smiled.

Hunk appeared to be on the verge of tears and turned around swiftly to sniff softly. "Really...? Augh Allura, you're making me misty-eyed." He began to bawl. "You're one of the sweetest princesses in the universe!" Hunk grabbed a pineapple-printed kitchen towel to wipe his tears and his nose. "Hey!" He suddenly stopped crying and had an epiphany. "I got an idea, Allura! Let's go see Coran and tell him all about it with the team! He's going to love it!"

"Absolutely!" Allura's eyes sparkled and the two ran off from the kitchen and made their way back to the Garrison. 

========

Lotor walked through the narrow hallways of the cruiser Matt was piloting, catching a glance of him in his seat holding the steering controls with N-7 who was chatting with him, noting the two of them growing closer. He walked away to not bother the two becoming love birds and found Narti creating an alchemic map. Lotor placed his hand on her shoulder to speak with her. 

“How is this chart you created coming along?” He asked. It’s only been a couple of who knows how many months have passed traveling through this universe. Their recent missions have been perilous but Lotor still felt anxious with the way how things went. At the same time, he began to feel grateful to create some time to understand Matt’s feelings better and his relationship with his beloved sister Pidge. The same also went for Narti of course, seeing the mistakes that his ego had done in the past to disregard her feelings while she was under his command and beginning to catch himself before making the same old bad habits from before. He was starting to feel…lighter. More agile in a way as well, especially when it came to the usual sparring practices with Narti and hearing her small anecdotes with her feline companion, Kova, back from the past. There was…there was so many things Lotor had begun to regret about himself and how he treated others. As long as that feeling continues, Lotor can see from himself that while lamenting, he can also begin growing more healthier roots with the people around him now. 

Narti hissed in her own version of chuckling.  

I am making progress with my abilities after my recovery from the last great battle we had. I believe that practicing alchemy and my fighting skills is enabling me to become more composed. There’s no more poison from the one who manipulated me and my body for that wretched puppeteer alchemist. This ability…is meant to used as a form of meditation applied for enlightenment purposes for all living beings. 

Her voice echoed through the inside of his mind through the telepathic touch on her shoulder. It felt so much stronger compared to the more frailer voice she had in the past, Lotor noted. 

Should we spar again to practice the alchem—

Narti stopped for moment. Lotor looked at her with a little confusion wrinkling between his eyes. “Is there something the matter, Narti?” Lotor asked gently.

I apologize…I…I must apologize again Lotor but there seems to be an image of a young woman hovering in your mind as I speak…

“What image?” Lotor asked but froze as a blush surrounded his cheeks. “Gah!” He facepalmed. “Why did I forget while you’re reading my mind, you’re also seeing my innermost thoughts. In the past, I was so much more composed but ...” He lifted his hand off for a moment and took a deep breath. "Okay... Let me compose myself again. Hopefully, I can focus better." He placed his hand back on Narti's shoulder. 

It’s nothing to be embarrassed about although this is pretty common occurrence for me as a psychic.

“I know! I–I feel like a immature prince all over again.” Lotor still kept blushing but closed his eyes to concentrate better.

She is very pretty…hang on. Is this that one princess from the team piloting Voltron?

“Yes–" Lotor shot his eyes wide open. "NO!" He exclaimed, feeling his face turn red. "No- no -noooo.” He lowered his voice more gently and lifted his hand off hand to take another deep breath again and placed it back to try again once more.

It is her. Don’t lie, Lotor.

“Narti! Could you please focus your mind reading abilities somewhere else?” Lotor begged while squeezing his eyes tightly to concentrate his very best now for Narti's telepathy. 

How can I? The image of her is suddenly growing to the size of the Galran ship we were at as all your other thoughts cower at her immense presence.

“H-Huh? ” Lotor began sweating, validating her statement. "No-no-no, I'm simply imagining things out of random!" 

Why is she suddenly taking over your mind? It’s covered in this sparkling pinkish…haze? Lotor, I’m starting to feel lost. There’s this escalating staircase to the heavens and she’s wearing this space designer dress with glass shoes while she’s climbing up and she keeps appearing in this…is that a spotlight you’re shining upon her?

“I AM DOING WHAT?! ” Lotor exclaimed so loudly — that Matt and N7, in the other room next to them, were inches away from each other’s faces that they pulled away so quickly and in embarrassment. 

“Should we try next time, Matt?” N7 pushed a tendril of her luscious pink hair behind her ear. 

“Uhhh sure.” Matt flushed, realizing that they almost kissed in that second that Lotor had screeched like a pterodactyl. 

— Two hours later after the second-hand embarrassment. —

Matt was holed inside of his personal office studying every single radio communication out there in space like there was no tomorrow. N7 was still screaming into her pillow in her room on her bed of almost making out with Matt. Narti was in the kitchen area sitting on a table while playing a version of 3D space chess projected by a hologram in the middle of the table. Lotor peeked in, after disappearing from everyone in those couple of hours to compose himself, and walked in to speak with Narti again while gently putting his hand on her shoulder to talk again. 

“I’m sorry, I was still thinking about her, Narti.” He sat down on a chair next to her and watched her play the rather complicated game. Lotor looked away and watched a planet with several rings past by the view of the windows in the kitchen area. He paused and spoke again.

“It’s just…it’s such a forlorn fantasy that can’t ever be remended.” He grimaced. “I damaged it. I damaged her and her heart and damaged so many people…” Lotor stared at the holographic chess pieces fall apart once Narti declared checkmate. “She was right. I am like my father.”

The glimpse of the blue hovering crystals of the hologram of the game continue to shatter until they were all absorbed by the device held by Narti’s hand. “She was also right for me destroying a dream she can’t ever return back to again.” Lotor carried a solemn gaze. 

Lotor lifted his hand off of Narti’s shoulder and looked toward the window of the never-ending space they were still traveling in. The stars danced while they remained far apart, radiant yet lonely, in Lotor’s eyes. “The worst part is that I let her believe in that dream and watch that dream be destroyed because of my selfish actions.” He stared down as he looked at his hands in a calm yet disappointing manner. “It doesn’t ever end, right?” The image of his blood-covered hands appeared for a second. “The war is never going to end as long as we’re alive, Narti.”

Narti walked up to Lotor and rested her hand on his shoulder. A lot of things do not ever end. But many things can begin a new path. Do you plan to return back to her?

“That was my goal when I told Axca and Kari a while ago.” Lotor still looked through the glass. “I can’t believe I never continued my resolve when I began to face things that began to make me question my very existence when I lost my memories. I don’t know if I still have everything but little by little I’m beginning to piece everything now. Matt calls it a ‘brain fog’ but these past couple of years have been the strangest by far.”

You haven’t exactly told your goal to Matt and N7, haven’t you? Narti made a point. Communicating your feelings to those around you instead of keeping them inside, whether spoken or not, is the way to move forward from past. That is the one of the many wonderful abilities about alchemy, even you yourself should know. Bottling those burdens as well as that burden of self-awareness should push yourself to view things in a different perspective. The person you are of before…and the person you are to continue this strange future.

Lotor looked at Narti with an ounce of skepticism. “ Well aren’t you a fountain of wisdom . I don’t remember you being this chatty from when we were back in our crew years ago.”

I like being chatty, let me be. Narti pouted.

“Although you are right.” Lotor looked back to the window again. “Traveling millions of miles without a mission does sound lonely unless I voice my true feelings to my crewmates, correct?”

Correct. Narti nodded and pointed her finger toward a blue globe with a wondrous swirling atmosphere of clouds and familiar terrains upon a certain human on this ship. Perhaps we shall find the answer to all our problems while venturing here on this planet. 

“Impossible…” Lotor widened his eyes. “When did we cross this galaxy…?” 

You forgot already? Your amnesiac well-being is most concerning, Lotor. Matt had captured a call to the transmission belonging to Earth and was able to connect with the other revolutionaries stationed there after a certain takedown of a Galran commander to dictated Earth for a short while before Voltron defeated him.  

“What…?” 

Lotor ran over to the cockpit and watched Matt handling the controls as N7 sat in the seat next to him. He felt the entire ship gravitate to the view of the endless oceans, rocky mountains, whispering desserts, and several cities. Lotor started to realize he had never seen Earth before in a way such as this. If he had stopped by this one planet out of the thousands he had traveled before, could some part of him be better from before? After another couple of hours, finally, Lotor and the others began prepare for a landing in a base administered to what Matt referred to as ‘The Garrison’ . 

Walking over to his room to grab the last of his belongings before descending down the platform exiting the ship, Lotor stopped inside that room to place the wooden mask Kari had carved, re-braided his hair, and stuffed it within the hooded cloak so a single tendril of his damning appearance wouldn’t be revealed to others. He closed the door behind him before catching Matt blocking the hallway to the exit, realizing he was the last one to leave. 

“Hold up, Lotor.” Matt crossed his arms while the sunlight shined behind him, casting his shadow toward Lotor. “You need to answer me one question before you leave this ship.”

Lotor’s hand trembled, causing him to hide it beneath the cloak. Should he be ashamed that all of his confidence went up to smoke? Despite the ten-thousand-year-old reputation he had build is nothing toward a human? Consider him renderless to the piercing gaze Matt had toward him. 

“What is it that you had wanted to ask Matt?” Lotor gripped onto the bag he carried over his shoulder. 

“What exactly did you make my father do while you imprisoned him?” Matt’s eyes did not waver. The sounds of the hanger where the ship was stationed echoed with the sounds of families reuniting to loved ones who had separated from them during the dictatorial rule of Sendak had reached to Lotor’s ears. Guilt welled up in the pit of his stomach like a bitter reminder of his sins. 

N7 looked back to the ship while Lotor and Matt appeared to be in a serious conversation for some reason. She had put down one last box from their ship and suddenly saw Matt walking up to her to hold her hand. “What…?” N7 had blushed under her helmet. “Matt, what’s gotten into you?” 

“I want to hold on to you. Is that alright with you?” Matt asked softly to her with a gentle sadness in his eyes. 

“Ah…” N7 had stuttered for a moment, looking down from the sight of their fingers interlocked and back to the sight of Matt’s face. “Ah…yes. Yes, you may, Matt.” 

The two of them walked forward to the one of the many gates of the airport before meeting with the family members of Matt, that is his parents and Pidge, finally of course. His mother clutched on to him in tears as N7 gave them space and chatted with his father, Sam Holt, who looked pleased to meet her and asked her story of they met. Everything was moving so fast to N7 yet everything began to feel like a blur until she gave one glance to Sam looking at his father briefly while speaking with his mother. Pidge and her chatted for the first time, talking about her role as a rebel and what Pidge was doing while she was on Earth fighting alongside the Voltron team to take down Sendak and his military. Matt walked over to speak with Pidge and exchange their words sibling-to-sibling after being separated to what Matt have believed he had lost her in those short years. They had so much to catch up that N7 had realized it was already nightfall and she was having dinner with the Holt family in their household. N7 really liked their sweet pet, Bae Bae, as she circled around her and followed wherever she went until N7 learned that she just wanted belly rubs. N7 was surprised what a soft surface the belly this little beast had with her as she petted the family dog. 

N7 and Matt stepped outside for a moment while everyone chatted inside of the house. The two of them looked up to the stars in awe that they were both up there for quite some time before reaching this peaceful paradise. 

She swiveled around to face Matt as she took off her helmet. Matt extended his hand to caress the side of her lovely face as she flushed cheek to cheek. “Matt…We…Everything is going so wonderfully here…” She spoke, not realizing her breath caused a soft cloud in the cold climate they were in. The warmth of his hand was so soothing to her but his eyes disturbed her heart for a moment. “But… are you alright?” She held his other hand gently. 

“I-I don’t know.” Matt confessed. “I’m not sure who to think or what to think when I see my family safe and sound to what horrors they had faced. What horrors we had faced as rebels against the very force that their former leader is within our own little ship of all places…This still feels all so wrong yet I was able to meet you. I want to understand one another better and learn so much more about you.” His eyes lit up when he looked into her eyes.

“Then…why do you sound unhappy? Weren’t you happy to see your family? What about Pidge? Matt...it took much longer than before for you two to be reunited this time. You and everyone even thought she was gone since the battle with Lotor.” N7 explained.

Matt lifted the hand off her face and held her other hand. “N7, there’s something about Lotor that might affect us all in the incoming time we have together. I want to believe if there is something good about him, then the time you can finally reveal your true self without the discrimination of others seeing you as an enemy can finally be put to rest.”

“Matt, I–” N7 wanted to refute.

“You were scared earlier, right?” He smiled but the sadness in his eyes told otherwise. "To be honest, I was afraid of what my parents would have thought when I introduced you as someone dear to me in my life and one I wish to stay close with." His face drew near to her own, with only their noses grazing against each other. "It makes me wonder how Keith is too when I think about it when I talked with Pidge mentioning Krolia and how she was his mother. The fact that there was proof that love could exist without being born on the same planet just made me unbelievably happy, N7." He smiled genuinely. 

“Yes... I was scared of everyone but I’m so sorry Matt. I know that Keith stands as a positive influence for Galrans and humans but I can't help to still look at things realistically and how they can still affect us. There is still that discrimination against Galrans that I couldn't help but notice from the other humans I have seen in this base. They're still traumatized by the Galrans because of the actions of one truly evil Galran, Sendak. I can’t help it but I need to wear this mask over me. It’s the only thing protecting me for an indefinite amount of time.” Her voice trembled. “How long will Lotor and Narti need to stay inside the ship? I know Narti is wearing a thick cloak along with her tail wrapped around her stomach to help her blend in with the other rebels with Lotor, but how are they going to interact if team Voltron finds out we’ve been stowing them on our ship?”

Matt looked down to think about this situation carefully. “That is definitely going to be a problem.” He looked up to the sight of Pidge chatting with her mom and dad in the warm kitchen light. “N7, I'll need your help on this whole mess.” 

Chapter Text

“Those were some of the worst years of my life. I didn’t think much of it when I first started because I wanted to create solutions. An answer to end our problems once and for all. No matter the number of fights, doubts from my own mother, the numerous hours of anxiety riddling my mind, I ended up failing them all. My own people. Succumbing to the aftereffects of my own uneducated guesses and useless faith that things can work out for the better. For what it did cost me, it costed my own relationships to those who I hold dear. Because they were far more innocent compared to the sins in my life. I was a prince, yes. But an emperor — that is for the people’s eyes to decide. And the answer to all of it will always be a resounding no.”

Lotor’s voice carried itself like a weak echo within the hidden shadows of the ship. Matt stood within the sunlight that fell across his shoulders like a halo, almost as if the light had separated the two very different realms of their beings between two of them. The strands of his hair began to glow under the soft sunlight even as his voice held the slow rage of brimstone in his jaw.

“I decided to take matters into my own hands and started the experiments.” Lotor continued even as he felt the anger in Matt’s eyes, causing him to look ahead despite the grief in his own eyes. “I went in search of Oriande to find a cure to my own crippling ability to produce alchemy because I believed I was tainted and corrupted by my Galran blood. I had an inquiry toward your father toward his knowledge of where life had originated from in the great sciences — and better yet, the technologies that our universe lacked instead were all located within the smallest part of the endless abundance of galaxies. Earth teaches that life can thrive unless given a motive to succeed. When this motive is introduced, there’s no wonder that things can go from zero to one. The man and the moon. The science and the theoretical potential that alchemy foretold in my ancestors’ past from the fallen Altea. I asked Samuel to give me a prophectical chance that life can exist from the failures from my past. And the most precarious thing is that…it actually succeeded .” 

Matt paused and raised head up slightly, wanting to speak something cutthroat but held his tongue immediately. He returned to his former expression, crossing his arms this time almost to restrain himself from the frustration about Lotor speaking about his father, and continued listening intently, though a growing bitterness soured the back of his throat. “ It had succeeded, you said?” His voice almost cracked to reveal his boiling point.

“I took a tale passed down from a member of my colony because she was told this story time and time again. Her mother had spoken of the ancient Altean scripture as a sort of lullaby to this young girl named Luka — oh how I hope the hands of time does not treat her any crueler than they already have.” Lotor had grimaced. “And I began to think maybe there’s some truth to this fairytale she was telling me with that childlike enthusiasm of hers. That curiosity into the unknown, the greatest of all imagination suddenly becoming a reality. As much as I romanticized these endeavors, the reality that the time was ticking away, unforgivingly so. Samuel and I had to extract the remains of an extinct flower. I received these seeds from Luka, who said they were the vestiges of her parents.  The juniberry flower holds a mythological role of the lion goddess, told by the elders, that long ago she had descended to Altea and established her people there with the use of her life-giving alchemy. When Altea faced the great calamity that had arrived through a void between the dimensions, she had made use of the quintessence that spun the threads of the time and the universe. She gave her body to reconstruct her body composition into a form, to restore the decaying decomposition of the diseased planet of Altea. In the end product of her actions, the life-giving particles of her being, had blossomed across the lands into the pink lilies. Hence, the Alteans had dubbed them as ‘juni-berry’ flowers. That the jubilee of life is returned to when hope was lost for Altea. With the use of the rare flower seeds Luka had provided me, Samuel and I set to work in the course of an unforgivable amount of hours, days, weeks to, until finally, an excruciating two years to end this pandemic upon my people. But should have I led my people with that sense of kindness that there really in fact a lack of honesty on my part? That a selected few of my people becoming soldiers under concealed force hidden from Galran eyes that served under my mother to grant the colony immunity from her vile wrath and excruciating so-called mercy when so many, upon thousands, succumbed to extracting a drop in the ocean chance that we can have infinite amount of quintessence from a well within the void to end this empire’s voracious war for Galrans to become the only race left?” He cocked his head back as his vicious golden eyes with their sharpened violet pupils gazed downward at Matt felt a wave of insecurity deep into his soul. 

“ You piece of shi— ” Matt gritted his teeth and raised his fist to strike towards Lotor’s face like the reckless thunder filled with the same violent rage boiling in his blood.

“ — I believe yes .” Lotor interrupted Matt, who halted to his surprise while Lotor himself remained calm. The knuckles of Matt’s fist barely grazed the tip of Lotor’s nose. Lotor’s eyes gazed intently at Matt’s fist, pushing it aside gently with his own hand and began to let out a hollowed sigh. “ I led you all under the guise of my self-destruction because I can’t fathom why a monster such as myself, a cross-breed from these holy people and astral demons, can exist within this universe.”

He took a few steps away from Matt and looked at the people walking about their business below the deck of the ship. “Because there is nothing greater than to tell yourself that your only worth is as much as the people itself desires so.” 

The sounds of the busy-minded rebels, paramedics, supplymen, families reunited continue to bustle with greater intensity, with yelps of cheers and their shared oddly common sense of camaraderie forged their bonds to become stronger under one cause. In the gap of silence between the masked and unmasked pair, the sounds of the people remained the obstacle standing in between themselves. 

“You see yourself as some hot shit, huh?” Matt stretched out his arms sarcastically. “ Welcome! I glad you’re finally joining to the all collective feeling of being useless as fuck and whatever floats your fucking asshole boat for being prince ‘ charming ’.” He clenched both of his fists and slowly lowered both of them and sighed with a sense of remorse and exhaustion. “So much for all of that when you decided to become a batshit king and almost kill my sister in the temper tantrum you threw for all of the universe to see .” He turned his face away from him and ran both of his hands through his head in his burning frustration.  

Matt held his eyes back into the acerbic glare he gave at Lotor. But then he looked down at the ground. “What I saw in that jail cell that you put my father in, I saw equipment that he shouldn’t have to mess with in his life. Medical syringes, biohazards bags filled with discolored bloody vomit, haunting alien technologies and biological masses I’ve never imagined before, used bandages and medical gauze, blood on the cot that he would have been sleeping on, but the floor and tables were stacked and almost glued together in some weird collage of scribbled papers and nonsense. I thought my own father had gone insane. And the thought of that, it would have been impossible to bring him back to reality. When I had finally reunited with him, he had revealed to me scars on his back and stomach when he was flogged for disobeying an officer order back from your disgusting gladiator rings. He told me to swear not to tell my sister Pidge about it ever in her life because he knew the sight of it would ruin her.” He felt that his own voice started to choke.

She doesn’t need to worry about this about her old man. Samuel’s soft forgiving chuckle had echoed in Matt’s mind as Matt remembered when he was handing a new set of clothes and found his father’s torso exposed when he opened the door. She’s already got a lot on her plate as the paladin of Voltron. What more can make me proud through all the turmoil that we had to endure? I’ll do it for her and you always if I ever had to go through it again.

Lotor fell silent for a couple of moments between them. He grimaced at the memory of his mother’s hidden enclave of ancient journals that depicted her spiral from reality and into the witch she had become. She lost sight of herself and allowed the plague in her mind to corrupt her for an eldritch entity, voracious for addicting power.

“If you’re planning to hate yourself for everything and for the end of time, do me a favor and think about when the value of other people’s opinions start to become a fairytale to your own story. You’re still alive. Do something more productive than just wallowing in the mud and reminding yourself more reasons for me to be even more vindicated for making me pissed off at you.”

He grabbed the collar of Lotor’s cloak and slammed him back into the wall, causing a loud ricochet all through the ship. Matt’s breath heaved and sighed as he glared eye to eye to Lotor, with only Lotor’s mask giving some inch of space between them.

“Just how the hell do you think it’s going to become a tragedy in the end?” Matt yelled at him at the last word.

Lotor fell silent as Matt roughly let go of his collar, causing him to stagger, and then lifted his golden eyes toward Matt who was sternly walking away from him and down the ramp towards N7. He watched Matt grab a hold of her hand with such force, yet it was gentle enough to cause her to suddenly become flustered. His mouth gaped open in awe of his sudden change in behavior.

He continued to be silent as he watched the two of them disappear into the crowd, and then he warily pondered.

“I can try to become different this time.” He told himself.

His chest pounded with anxiety but he clenched his cloak near his heart to quell his fears.

“But maybe by accepting that I can’t change the past and looking at what is in front of me..." Lotor looked forward to the rushing crowds of the people ahead of himself. "... is something I need and what it needs me too.”

The sight of the people of Earth and the alien beings arriving to Earth for the very first time in one place had begun to fill his heart with a different kind of courage. 

“I…I want to change too. Just like them.” He took off his mask and felt the side of his face where his scars dripped from his eyes as a grim reminder of his mother, placing the mask back on again afterward.

The heel of his foot clicked against the surface of the concrete ground of the Garrison. He had just step foot on Earth's soil. He clenched his teeth and looked forward. “I want to change where I am going in my life. Not just only for them. And not just only for me. But for myself and for everyone around me in this universe.” He vowed himself. 

Lotor stepped out from the shadows and into the warm sunlight, feeling its radiating warmth seep into his wooden mask and weathered clothes, and descended down the ramp of the ship to suddenly come across a crew worker with a curious bunch of silvery-white hair bundled into a bun. Along with a particular pink Garrison uniform. 

“Salutations! Nice to meet your acquaintance! Or hello as the people of Earth simply say! Can I help you carry your load to our hanger or anything?” Her voice was like silver bells and rolling hills of a blossoming valley — a nostalgic elegance from a sound he hadn’t heard from a long time…miraculously so.

Lotor stuttered. “Ah—” He felt his own heart stopped in shock. “ I — excuse, no pardon myself .” He felt frozen as his eyes dilated at the sight of her. “ I… ” The courage suddenly erupted within his heart to suddenly throw itself into his voice. “ I … would appreciate your kind help. ”

She cocked her head in slight confusion and giggled. “You’re a funny fellow, you know. Nothing wrong with having someone like you here, no — not at all .” She stopped laughing and smiled warmly for him. “I… would also appreciate your help too, if you so kindly do. ” She gave a quick cheeky wink and suddenly spinned around to look for any baggage near the ship. “ Well! Where do you like to start?” She walked up closer to him within a second, so eager to help and filled with the glorious energy of volunteering her abilities to help others. Lotor had instead remained frozen and he knew that he could easily fall apart if she approached him any closer than this, as if his personal space hadn’t been invaded enough so far.

“My apologies!” She cleared her throat. “My name is Allura. I used to be called Princess Allura but… that’s in the past.” She looked away suddenly and returned her gaze back to him. “I would appreciate it if you call me by this name, unless you like to give me a different nickname as the humans like to do around here. Although…” She placed her palm against his mask, causing Lotor to burn up into a blush across his nose and cheeks. “You have a very interesting mask…Coran had mentioned above a famous Dalterian warrior who served alongside my father years ago who wore this kind of mask, how strange.” She felt her fingers across the bottom edge of the mask, suddenly grazing her finger underneath his chin and neck, causing Lotor to hold back any sound with his teeth clenched and his face becoming warmer than it can possibly be. He gulped and blinked to reassure himself that he was literally right in front of Allura herself. “What is your name?”

Lotor choked for a second. He stepped back to recollect himself and stop his stupid anxiety-ridden mind to goddamn focus. “My apologies! My apologies. My…” He lifted his head from his crouched position. “My…” He looked at Allura with a dizzying feeling in his chest. “Apologies…” He stood up firmly even as his voice awkwardly wavered. “I don’t know if the number of it would matter to you if I listed all of them so—-” He spoke swiftly before the rush of blood came back to his head to make him shut up before he said anything else weirder for her. 

“I beg your pardon?” Allura got confused by his statement. 

“It’s nothing! No, it’s not nothing! It’s in fact everything!” He gave himself a facepalm with both hands planted on his mask to the miserable embarrassment he was making himself to be. “Who am I kidding? How am I supposed to change myself at this point? Everything’s gone to hell and here I am before literal paradise yourself.” He continued to ramble nonsensically, but at that moment, Allura’s cheeks suddenly became rosy.

The former princess laughed at his odd gestures (and his impromptu anxiety attack), and instead waved her hand to ease his worries. “ Well , I for one am glad that I can talk to someone with this unusual amount of honesty. How about we talk more, Mister …?”

“Kal—” Lotor lied while he was out of breath. “For now…you can call me Kal. I don’t exactly have a remarkable name but–”

“Whatever can be a name, I am happy to learn it.” Allura laughed. “You’re no Prometheus but you certainly act to be a mystery, Mr. Kal.”  

Lotor straightened himself up and extended his hand gently for her. “I suppose a handshake is part of human tradition, correct?”

“Yes!” Allura chuckled ever so more, it began to send a sense of fluttering winged creatures within Lotor’s stomach. “Yes, indeed.” She took his kind gesture and felt his gloved hand, feeling a sense of familiarity for a brief moment and quickly diverted her mind back to reality. “I apologize… it appears I have caused you quite some trouble upon meeting you. How ever can I repay you other than helping to unload your ship?”

“I— I suppose a good meal is in order.” Lotor spoke without thinking. 

“Good! You shall serve me out to lunch, my good gentleman.” Allura poked her arm around his arm and pretended to chaperone him. “It’s not like the man always needs to guide the lady. Allow me.” Allura guided him through the crowds of the Garrison through the large stretch of the plaza and towards the cafeteria area where everyone huddled for sandwiches, savory treats, and other goodies at the stands. “It may not be much, but I hope it is to your liking.”

“It smells wonderful.” Lotor felt like he was dreaming. How many millions of miles he had to travel to suddenly be arm-in-arm with the woman he was searching for? He couldn’t believe it. It took him so long and yet so long… 

He peered down at Allura and felt my chest couldn’t contain itself, he felt enraptured and wanted to embrace her so badly and without any apology but restrained himself with that wall of guilt separating the two, he had felt deep in his soul. 

Allura grabbed a tray and gave a tray for him too in the queue of hungry rebels and Garrison workers. She stretched her hand out to grab a carton of fruit and placed one in Lotor’s hands. “These are called grapes. They’re quite delicious! It packs a sour punch but it’s so sweet all around beneath the skin.” She pressed the little fruit against her lips and munched on the delicacy, driving an tormenting feeling Lotor felt in his arms and chest. 

“Try one!” Allura pointed as Lotor snapped out of it and snuck the fruit beneath his mask swiftly within a beat. “Oh my, you’re really fast…” She stared in awe. “It went by so quickly!” She chuckled. “Look at this treat! It’s very fascinating, you must try this as well!”

Upon the dozens of different types of foods Allura had introduced to him, he had somehow managed to consume them all without hesitation but elegantly at a time to make his mask never came off, no matter what. It caught the attention of on-lookers and other people who sat in the tables around their little one, sparking curiosity and suddenly cheering as he finished his fortieth plate. 

“This is quite enough, I assure you.” He dabbed a napkin under his mask carefully. 

“You know how to eat, Kal! ” Allura spoke with excitement. “Keith and the others must see this! Oh! I almost forgot— if you wish to eat more meals, you should ask our team member, Hunk. He’s both a marvelous engineer and a wonderful chef for our crew.” 

“Oh no need to,” Lotor waved his hand to politely refuse. “I believe I have quite a lot on my plate but perhaps we can meet your crewmates another time.” He tried his best to decline a greatly awkward reunion.

“Nonsense! I heard you came from the crew as Matt, so how about we hold a gathering with our crews together this weekend. Keith says ‘we’re going to grab drinks’ so I suppose the lemonade will be in abundance. They add a curious herb from this planet called lavender to it and it tastes so swell to the tastebuds.” Allura cheerily spoke as she placed her hand on his shoulder, almost tenderly. “I would really appreciate it if you came along too.” Lotor looked into his deep set of blue eyes. “Your adventures that you had spoken as a rebel soldier is truly something to tell of the others.” 

Except, he had completely left out the part given his ability to do alchemy and Narti’s name to avoid suspicion. “ I’ll… I will do my best. ” He gave a weary nod. He clenched his fists a little more firmly. “I will make sure to come by to your gathering. But I’ll need some time to prepare since we still have so much to unload from our ship.”

“Of course!” Allura lifted up her hand, thinking she may have pressured him possibly. “You just came back from your journey so take your time to rest for a bit before the upcoming festivities. It’ll be exciting and I hope to catch you later, Kal.” Allura stood up from her seat and said goodbye to him and then walked away to the cafeteria exit. As she left through the hanger doorway, the golden sunlight had just melted upon her silver hair that suddenly resembled a halo for a crown.

After a while of silence, he sighed looking at his generous serving of a meal. “ You’ll always be the princess to me. ” He traced a circle on the surface of the table. A sudden ray of light flickered before his finger and dispersed in a moment’s notice.